Political Cinema Research Articles

Emerging Appropriate Fuzziness: A Spatiotemporal Observation of Post-Martial Law Taiwan Literature and Cinema

Taiwan’s some four hundred years history, culturally and politically, is inscribed by relationships between rulers and the ruled that shape its social sophistication and gaps between forms of high culture and popular culture. Its built environment, inevitably, echoes this complexity as a representation. Examining Taiwan’s very recent built environment, most critically, this phenomenon is highlighted by the uncertainty that translates Taiwan society’s anxiety about connecting the yet passed authoritarian past and the seemingly democratic present when its post-war Martial Law period was officially terminated in 1987. This paper observes the immediate historicity today in Taiwan that represents this uncertainty, through scrutinising different cultural forms which the built environment has been identically (re)represented. As a central argument, this paper schematises a context which mediates different spatial objects that are derived from different cultural political origins, literature and cinema, where as texts in one context could be relevant, contradictory or even parallel, and suggests a form of appropriate fuzziness. This form, unlike the social conundrum driven by the awkward cultural and political status of Taiwan society, through ways of urbanisation, geo-identification and spatial idealisation, has pinpointed the possibility that directs Taiwan’s spatial evolution on the road ahead.

Introduction: Marking Political Cinema

Introduction: Marking Political Cinema

The Myth of Enver Hoxha in the Albanian Cinema of Socialist Realism: An Inquiry into the Psychoanalitical Features of the Myth

Although the mythological status of Enver Hoxha became fundamental in the political identity of communist Albania from 1944 to 1990, the absence of the Hoxha character in the Albanian feature films produced during communism begs the question: why did Enver Hoxha exclude his character from feature films? Both his role model, Stalin, and his nemesis, Tito, were incarnated in feature films produced in the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, respectively.1 However, though Hoxha appeared in many documentaries, several requests by filmmakers to impersonate his character received negative responses. To answer this question requires understanding the myth of Hoxha. Hoxha built his own myth by combining elements from the myths of the Stalin and Tito with idiosyncratic features suggested by the Albanian historical context as well as his own psychopathology. Whereas Stalin appropriated the archetype of the caring father and Tito appropriated the archetype of the die-hard military commander, Hoxha decided to personify the divine heroic son. Th e Albanian cinema helped generate a stereotype of the positive hero who still looked submissive to the ever-elusive divine image of the great leader. Although some elements of this myth might resemble the Stalin myth, it diff ers in that Hoxha did not appropriate a paternal role to his nation. By the same token, while his panegyrists oft en referred to Hoxha as “the legendary commander,” an idea appropriated from Tito, Hoxha himself looked uncomfortable in such a position. Th erefore, the Albanian political cinema of communism can be better understood as the reflection and constructor of a social reality dominated by Hoxha’s presence as a ubiquitous mystic divinity that supervised society. Th at divinity was

The erotic politics of disgust: Pink Flamingos as queer political cinema

The erotic politics of disgust: Pink Flamingos as queer political cinema

Truth after cinema: The explosion of facts in the documentary films of Jia Zhangke

Abstract This article identifies and elaborates on two models of resistance evident in JiaZhangke’s film corpus. The deployment of different cinematic strategies produces an experimental calling into question of the value of truth and of truth as value. In the films here analysed Jia moves from resistance through organic observation to a model of resistance structured around a series of fabulations. If the first regime addresses the truth of ideology, then the target of the second is the ideology of truth. It is in this passage that Jia enters political cinema, collapsing the distinction between factual and fictional and opening up a space that belongs to no collectivity.

Cinema and/as Revolution: The New Latin American Cinema

The New Latin American Cinema has been traditionally defined as a political cinema committed to the transformation of the social conditions that characterized Latin America in the 1960s. The notion of revolution has been placed in the core of this movement. Deeply influenced by the Cuban Revolution in 1959 and by several political movements throughout the continent, a group of filmmakers proposed an aesthetic transformation of what they described as a colonized culture. Our aim in this essay is to explain what these filmmakers understood by a cinematographic “revolution” that could be the condition for a broader political and social transformation. It is not our intention to stand up for the concept of revolution in the New Latin American Cinema, but to try to avoid the stereotypes around this concept and to understand what this notion involved within a particular context.

Marketing and Dreaming

Book Review| September 01 2013 Marketing and Dreaming Futures Market (Mercado de futuros) By Mercedes Álvarez Icarus Films/ 2011/110 min.Dreaming of a Tree House (Der Traum vom Baumhaus) By Beate Lendt Icarus Films/ 2011/85 min. Janina Ciezadlo Janina Ciezadlo JANINA CIEZADLO is an artist and writer who lives in Chicago. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Afterimage (2013) 41 (2): 35–37. https://doi.org/10.1525/aft.2013.41.2.35 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Janina Ciezadlo; Marketing and Dreaming. Afterimage 1 September 2013; 41 (2): 35–37. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/aft.2013.41.2.35 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentAfterimage Search This content is only available via PDF. © 2013 Afterimage/Visual Studies Workshop, unless otherwise noted. Reprints require written permission and acknowledgement of previous publication in Afterimage.2013 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Independent documentary filmmaking in Jamaica: an interview with Esther Figueroa

Esther Figueroa, PhD, is an independent Jamaican filmmaker with over twenty-five years of experience in political documentary cinema. A self-taught activist filmmaker, her work focuses on local knowledge, Indigenous cultures, social injustice, community empowerment and, most recently, environmental issues. Her poignant documentaries give voice to those outside of mainstream media and aim to counter dominant narratives and practices that are driven by commercial and political interests. This interview, which took place via Skype on 20 September 2010, concentrates on Figueroa's documentary work in Jamaica, particularly her latest feature-length documentary Jamaica for Sale (2009/2010), and discusses her filmmaking career in the context of Caribbean cinema and society.

Political documentary cinema in Latin America

Political documentary cinema in Latin America has a long history of tracing social injustice and suffering, depicting political unrest, intervening in periods of crisis and upheaval, and reflecting...

The worker's voice in post-1968 Argentine political documentary

In the late 1960s, the political cinema of Latin America gave relevance and a prominent place to the voices of the people. In the case of Argentina, the worker's voice increased its presence in the films during a period of militant cinema that began in 1968 with the legendary La hora de los hornos [The Hour of the Furnaces]. Later films also incorporated the voice of the workers who played a central part in the largest popular uprising of the period, the Cordobazo (1969) and those of the militants in the so-called Peronist Resistance (1955 onwards). Amid criticisms of ‘the limits of direct cinema’ and the proposal of ‘giving voice to the people’ or of directly ‘seizing the right to speak,’ the worker's voice began to share the textual authority of films, an authority hitherto given almost exclusively to an omnipresent voice-over, typical of one important documentary tradition. If in many cases the voices of the people were connected, if not subordinated, to the theses of the filmmakers, they were nevertheless elaborated in all their complexity, with their place negotiated into the ensemble of the film's textual authority. This article analyses various ways of configuring working class voices/testimonies (those of the workers, the farm workers, and the Resistance), and considers the dialogues and negotiations between these voices and the revolutionary theses and imaginaries that were widespread in this period, as put forward in films concerning social protest and class identity in Argentina.

Dangerous, divine, and marvelous? The legacy of the 1960s in the political cinema of Europe and Brazil

The experience of the 1960s had a profound influence on both politicized cinema and on the critical discourse surrounding it. This article explores that influence and its subsequent legacy in the comparative contexts of Brazil and Europe. In Europe the most striking developments were to be seen in France after 1968, most particularly in the “revolutionary cinema” of Jean-Luc Godard during his involvement with the Dziga-Vertov Group. At the same time, the French film journals Cahiers du Cinéma and Cinéthique sought to theorize the forms of radical cinema within a materialist perspective. By examining Godard’s politico-aesthetic trajectory, and by developing the Cahiers classification of the forms taken by political cinema, we provide a basis for understanding developments in post-1960s European political cinema. In Brazil, with its increasingly repressive regimes after 1964, the impact of the 1960s was more far-reaching. The early 1960s saw the emergence of Cinema Novo, a radical movement of filmmakers among whom the best known figure was Glauber Rocha. By examining Rocha’s filmmaking career, as well as some aspects of his writings, we seek to understand the rather different route traveled by radical cinema in Brazil and, indeed, in Latin America more generally. Here the most significant theorization is to be found in the 1969 Third Cinema manifesto formulated by the Argentinean filmmakers Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino. We then trace the subsequent trajectory of politicized filmmaking in both Europe and Brazil. In both cases there has been a marked retreat from the radicalism in form and content exemplified in the films of Godard and Rocha, with a broadly reformist political cinema prevailing. We argue, however, that there remains a vibrant tradition of radical filmmaking which functions primarily in the area of documentary, and that it is here that the future of political cinema lies.

Governo Lacerda versus Cinema Novo: a grande cidade como arena de debates simbólicos

A proposta do artigo e evidenciar o embate entre o Cinema Novo e o governo de Carlos Lacerda (1960-1965) em torno da representacao cinematografica do Rio de Janeiro. Recorre-se a analise de A grande cidade (Caca Diegues, 1966) para, atraves dela, evidenciar a disputa entre a representacao critica da modernidade - pautada pelos pressupostos do cinema politico - e a defesa de uma imagem urbana utopica, baseada na nocao de capitalidade e levada a cabo por processos de modernizacao.

Cine y vanguardia en Argentina

The concepts of avant-garde and political cinema cross each other until lose their limits in the critical years of the late 60´s and early 70´s. If we define artistic avant-garde as a position ahead of every cultural hegemony of those time, we understand that Argentinean cinema of that period generated two absolutely revolutionary sets of artworks: Solanas and Gleyzer´s films caused the admiration and compression of the European intellectuals and, two decades later, inspired a new generation of film-makers who take on the production of documentaries confronting the 90´s neoliberalism.

Politics of Cinema in Hashemite Iraq

Abstract Hashemite Iraq was better integrated into the global cinema that other Arab countries. Baghdad audiences loved film noir, and the US succeeded in displacing the UK as a source of newsreels, as well. During the Cold War’s first decade, Hollywood continued to pump inexpensive productions and aged celluloid through Iraq, including films made under US government contracts. Local viewers responded thoughtfully to such films, engaging themes such as responsibility and guilt. Against this general background, specific allegations that testing of weapons delivery systems for germ warfare continued after the end of the Korean War, are assessed in the light that public health authorities reported a series of outbreaks of meningitis among audiences in Baghdad cinemas.

Zawieszenie wzroku w czasie

W jaki sposób spojrzenie na ekran może konstytuować doświadczenie widza? Na ile, jako oglądający, jesteśmy różni od samych siebie, a na ile do nich podobni? W jaki sposób stajemy się zaangażowani i kiedy kino wywołuje nas do odpowiedzi? Rainer Werner Fassbinder rzuca wyzwanie oku widza, wywracając na opak przyzwyczajenia percepcyjne, interpretacyjne i skłaniając do zmiany w rozumieniu pojęcia kina zaangażowanego czy politycznego.

Establishing a national identity from above: Film production and wholesome movies in south Korea, 1966–1979

ABSTRACTPolitical regulation on cinema had been the greatest barrier to the development of Korean cinema since its inception in the early twentieth century. Especially by the end of the 1970s, authoritarian rule elaborately designed the film industry to follow the official aesthetic doctrine defined by the state agencies. This article examines the relationship between official rhetoric of political legitimacy and Korean cinema during the years between 1966 and 1979, focusing on the mechanisms regarding the production of wholesome movies that encouraged particular ways of interpreting the world.

‘영화쓰기(Cinécriture)’의 영도(零度) - 창작과 비평, 경계의 사이 혹은 월경 / Cine-Writing Degree Zero: Between and Beyond Boundaries in Creation and Criticism

A trans-boundary between creation and criticism: Such an unprecedented consilience is found only in the field of film. This article traces the epic chronicle of convergence between these two different worlds. This genealogy of crossing borders started with the origin of textuality research, “All films can be read”, the main view by early film semiologists. Also, French film critic/director Alexandre Astruc’s notion of “La Camera-Stylo” (camera-pen) was used as an important catalyst in improving trans-boundary movements. Especially the unique aesthetics of “ecriture” (writing) and “grammatographe” by Roland Barthes can be appropriated for the core concept of boundary-crossing because these metaphors traverse a lot of borders, e.g., texts and images. More specifically, Barthes emphasized in Le degree zeri de l’ecriture (Writing Degree Zero) that zero-degree writing can trigger far-reaching, transparent border-crossing, and this is the task of the grammatographer, a scholar who performatively writes the writing of a picture. After that, the term ecriture was extended to the compound word “cinecriture”(cine-writing)by Agnes Varda. At the same time, Nouveau Roman writers worked in cooperation with directors, including Marguerite Duras and Alain Resnais, such that the distance between film and text narrowed. In addition, film journals ? Cahiers du Cinema, Positif, and Filmkritik ? were actually a functioning open space tearing down the boundaries between creationand criticism. Meanwhile, a group of essay filmmakers of the time enriched the conceptual layers of the so-called “Filmkritik-Style” film, using commentaries. Ultimately, these great strandswere dramatically intertwined through German critic/director Harun Farocki. He belongs to the counterculture 68 generation of artists who pursued social revolution through the creation of a more subversive and political avant-garde cinema and the criticism it produced. During and after this period of upheaval, he consistently presented the practices of self-criticism and self-reflexivity in his works to explore trans-bordering degree zero. As an extraordinary role-model for cross-boundary work, he also transcended the boundaries between film and contemporary art and between activism and pure art, as well as between textual critic and visual critic.

The Cinematic Practice of a “cinéaste ordinaire”: Abdellatif Kechiche and French Political Cinema

This essay analyzes Kechiche's film, La Graine et le mulet, in terms of auteur theory and French political cinema. It argues that the problematic category of “Beur cinema” too readily essentializes the cinematic practice of an auteur like Abdellatif Kechiche. It provides compelling arguments as to why Kechiche should be regarded as an important French auteur who reflects on contemporary issues that affect the working people of France, those of Maghrebian descent included. La Graine et le mulet is as much about France's place in a globalized economy as about the anxieties of different communities that must compete for the scare jobs or resources when these jobs are in short supply.

GAY MARTYRS, JEWISH SAINTS AND INFATUATED YESHIVA BOYS IN THE NEW ISRAELI RELIGIOUS QUEER CINEMA

Popular mainstream cinema often sensationalizes, stigmatizes, and even ridicules religions, faiths, congregations, and the religiously observant. The (mis)representation of religious communities is sometimes even more negative in films that centre on religious gay men, lesbians, bisexuals and transgender people, and their presumably homophobic congregations. This article offers an initial exploration of a new kind of Israeli film at the beginning of the third millennium, defined here as the New Israeli Religious Queer Cinema. These films, mostly created by religious filmmakers who are members of sexual minorities, are intended to promote tolerance and greater acceptance of homosexuality by the Jewish Orthodox communities in Israel. This research, particularly focused on Chaim Elbaum's acclaimed short film And Thou Shalt Love (2008) [Ve'ahavta], examines the cinematic attempts to reduce hostility towards sexual minorities among religious believers, and problematizes the portrayal of the young protagonist's angst and this new cinema's politics of martyrdom and victimhood. The article also analyses the creation of a sort of Jewish version of Saint Sebastian, the ancient Christian martyr who is often perceived as a gay icon, and this new cinema's genuine attempts to explore homoerotic subtleties in Jewish tradition.

A People of Seers: The Political Aesthetics of Postwar Cinema Revisited

What are the politics of Gilles Deleuze's study of cinematic modernity? In film studies, the discipline that formally assumes cinema as its object, Deleuze's concepts have been used to explore the processes by which national identities have been historically constructed and deconstructed through aesthetic means as well as the political stances of particular films to the narratives through which particular national identities are still being written. Alternatively they have been used to explore how cinema invents discourses that function as the basis for collective enunciations of minorities that find themselves precariously positioned at the peripheries of national cultures. In both cases, the understanding of the political in Deleuze's studies has been reduced to the struggles between nations and their minorities. This paper argues in contrast that understanding and fulfilling the political potential of his works requires analyzing the importance of his account of the rupture between classical and modern cinema for his political concept of “a people.” The concepts of peoples, nations, and minorities are not the same, and it is to the detriment of film studies that its understanding of politics has by and large been reducible to the latter two. This article seeks to move beyond the impoverished state of the debate on Deleuze and “political cinema” by exploring how his works trace the changing relation of cinema to the historical development of a post-national politics of people-production, and especially his account of what it names “a people of seers.”