This collection explores the politics and aesthetics of filmmaking across Europe in flux. It brings together scholars from Spain to Estonia, Hungary to Britain, in order to trace European filmmakers' diverse responses to the interlinked upheavals and emergencies of the past three decades.
'This timely collection showcases how contemporary European filmmakers have used film's unique capacity to grasp the permanent economic and political crisis that animates neoliberal capitalism in its most intimate, emotional dimensions. Going beyond the lively film readings that lend themselves to teaching European genre films, auteur cinema and documentary today, the book gives us a cinematic diagnosis of a shared structural condition of global anxiety.'
Anikó Imre, Associate Professor and Chair of Critical Studies in the School of Cinematic Arts, University of Southern California
Cinema of Crisis: Film and Contemporary Europe explores the politics and aesthetics of filmmaking across a continent in flux. This urgent and necessary collection brings together scholars from Spain to Estonia, Hungary to Britain, in order to trace European filmmakers' diverse responses to the interlinked upheavals and emergencies of the past three decades. Covering topics such as the collapse of the eastern bloc; deindustrialisation; the 2008 crash and the eurozone debt crisis; austerity and neoliberalism, as well as 'Fortress Europe' and the 'refugee crisis', this book investigates a range of audiovisual forms, including documentaries, the work of arthouse auteurs, and videos posted on YouTube. It engages in highly topical debates in political and aesthetic spheres, and explores key interfaces between the two.
Thomas Austin is Reader in Media and Film at the University of Sussex.
Angelos Koutsourakis is a University Academic Fellow in World Cinema at the University of Leeds.
Cover image: White God aka Feher Isten, Kornel Mundruczo, 2014 © Magnolia Pictures/Photofest
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edinburghuniversitypress.com
ISBN 978-1-4744-4850-5
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