Antonioni: centenary essays

Abstract

The cinema of Michelangelo Antonioni (1912–2007) embodies – more than that of any other director – the substance of European art cinema. His intensely stylised, stylish, demanding and gratifying films continue to spark controversy and debate – and inspire intense allegiance. On the centenary of Antonioni's birth, this volume places his work in an expanded field in order to reassess his contribution and continued centrality to world cinema. The contributors to this volume argue for an understanding of his work in a variety of new contexts: transnational cinema; conceptual photography; intermediality; thing theory; ecological and climate change theory; rubbish theory; microhistorical urbanism; the theory of the picturesque; and the theory of style. The Antonioni that emerges across these essays is an artist profoundly engaged in formal experimentation and deeply embedded in the complexities of his cultural and historical moment, whose work, therefore, continues to offer itself as a rich resource for thinking through the contradictory conditions of late modernity in the twenty-first century.