Pavle Levi’s insightful and well-argued book, Disintegration in Frames: Aesthetics and Ideology in the Yugoslav and Post-Yugoslav Cinema examines the evolution of the national Yugoslav and regional post-Yugoslav cinema within its shifting political and cultural landscape – initially, in the context of individual expression under the repressive government of Josip Broz Tito, then subsequently, as […]
Tag: Film Criticism
DEFA East German Cinema, 1946-1992, edited by Seán Allan and John Sandford
DEFA East German Cinema, 1946-1992 retraces the unique achievements and continued relevance of the East German national film studio, Deutsche Film-AG (DEFA), from its origins as a Soviet-assembled group of experienced postwar filmmakers called filmaktiv tasked to draft a plan to revive the German film industry, to the sale of the studio to the French […]
Close Up – Iranian Cinema: Past, Present and Future by Hamid Dabashi
Hamid Dabashi presents a comprehensive, passionate, and insightful personal account on the evolution of Iranian art cinema in Close Up – Iranian Cinema: Past, Present and Future. By presenting the works of key films and filmmakers within the contextual framework of Iranian history – in particular, from the state-sponsored, forced modernization programs initiated by the […]
Cinema of the Other Europe: The Industry and Artistry of East Central European Film by Dina Iordanova
In Cinema of the Other Europe: The Industry and Artistry of East Central European Film, Dina Iordanova proposes a reframing of Eastern European cinema (and by extension, film culture studies) away from conventional, western-centric paradigms that tend to evaluate post World War II cinema from the “other Europe” within the context of cold war politics […]
Chris Marker: Memories of the Future by Catherine Lupton
I have always felt an indefinable kinship towards Chris Marker’s films that were not particularly related to the overt intellectuality of his work or his espousal of left-leaning ideals. However, it was not until the first chapter in Catherine Lupton’s book on the filmmaker, Chris Marker: Memories of the Future that this gravitation took on […]
BFI Modern Classics: A City of Sadness by Bérénice Reynaud
In the BFI Modern Classics publication, A City of Sadness, Bérénice Reynaud provides a comprehensive, articulate, and insightful critical analysis of Hou Hsiao-hsien’s seminal and artistically groundbreaking film on the once-taboo subject of the ‘hidden’ history of Taiwan, providing a compelling examination of the film through the intrinsic social context of a culturally broader Chinese […]