The Routledge Companion to Cinema and Politics brings together forty essays by leading film scholars and filmmakers in order to discuss the complex relationship between cinema and politics.
Organised into eight parts - Approaches to Cinema and Politics; Cinema, Activism and Opposition; Film, Propaganda, Ideology and the State; The Politics of Mobility; Political Hollywood; Alternative and Independent Film and Politics; The Politics of Cine-geographies and The Politics of Documentary - this collection covers a broad range of topics, including: Third Cinema, cinema after 9/11, eco-activism, human rights, independent Chinese documentary, film festivals, manifestoes, film policies, film as a response to the post-2008 financial crisis, Soviet propaganda, the impact of neoliberalism on cinema, and many others.
This Companion foregrounds the key debates, concepts, approaches and case studies that critique and explain the complex relationship between politics and cinema, discussing films from around the world and including examples from film history as well as contemporary cinema. It also explores the wider relationship between politics and entertainment, examines cinema's response to political and social transformations and questions the extent to which filmmaking itself is a political act.
This cutting edge collection brings together essays by leading film scholars and covers diverse topics such as propaganda, third cinema, 9/11 cinema, manifestos, festivals, documentary, human rights, eco-activism and animal rights.
It foregrounds the key debates, concepts, approaches and case studies that critique and explain the complex relationship between politics and film, covering cinema from around the world and including examples from film history as well as contemporary cinema.
It also explores the wider relationship between politics and entertainment, examines cinema's response to political and social transformations and the extent to which filmmaking, itself, is a political act.
'With its epic scope, this daring book expands the equation of cinema and politics into a more dynamic, complex, multi-layered international terrain through the lenses of theories, activism, propaganda, ideology, the state, mobility, Hollywood, alternative film, documentaries, cine-geographies, digitalities, and practices. A staggering, field-defining achievement, The Routledge Companion to Cinema and Politics blasts open any reductionist correlation between the two terms with a necessary, urgent, and compelling polyphonic approach entailing multiple methodologies and theoretical locations. This important volume recalibrates the terms "cinema" and "political" by ruthlessly and brilliantly multiplying theories and arguments.'
Patricia R. Zimmermann, Professor of Screen Studies, Ithaca College, New York, USA
'Cinema could matter more for understanding politics than usually acknowledged, especially when one takes into account that it travels beyond national borders. After all, so many films are made out of political concerns. And so many political matters - migration, trafficking, trauma, genocide - are best tackled through the medium of cinema. This volume brings together essays by some of the finest writers who discuss film in a way that can be adopted across a range of disciplines, from political science and international relations through to sustainable development and tourism studies.'
Dina Iordanova, Professor of Global Cinema and Creative Cultures and Director of the Institute for Global Cinema and Creative Cultures, University of St Andrews, UK
