Marx at the Movies Revisiting History, Theory and Practice

by Mazierska, Ewa; Kristensen, Lars

• ISBN13: 9781137378606
• ISBN10: 1137378603
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2014-09-05
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

Marx and the Moving Image approaches cinema from a perspective that has been marginalised by mainstream film studies for over three decades. It argues that the supposed 'end of history', marked by the comprehensive triumph of capitalism and the 'end of cinema', calls for revisiting Marx's writings in order to analyse film theories, histories and practices. Particular attention is paid to subjects rarely explored by Marxist scholars, such as classical Hollywood cinema and amateur filmmaking, as well as to the use of humour, the problem of adaptation and translation, the relationship between sound and image and the use of music and silence in film. Beyond Marx, the contributors also refer to the works of authors such as Benjamin, Bloch, Adorno, Brecht, Rancière, Hardt and Negri, Sviták and Kosík.

Author Biography

Ewa Mazierska is Professor in Film Studies, at the School of Journalism and Digital Communication, University of Central Lancashire, UK. She has published nearly twenty monographs and edited collections on subjects such as Eastern European cinema, representation of history and work in film. Mazierska's work has been translated into over ten languages and she is a principal editor of the journal, Studies in Eastern European Cinema.

Lars Kristensen is Lecturer in Media, Aesthetics and Narration at University of Skövde, Sweden. His research focuses on representation in cinema, transnational and postcolonial filmmaking, bicycle cinema and intersections between game, film and fine art. He currently teaches moving image theories to game developers.

Table of Contents

List of Figures
Notes on Contributors
Introduction; Ewa Mazierska and Lars Kristensen
1. The Dialectical Image: Kant, Marx and Adorno; Mike Wayne
2. The Utopian Function of Film Music; Johan Siebers
3. Bloch on Film as Utopia: Terence Davies' Distant Voices, Still Lives; Ian Fraser
4. 'But Joe, it's 'Hour of Ecstasy'': A Materialist Revaluation of Fritz Lang's You and Me; Iris Luppa
5. Laughing Matters: Four Marxist Takes on Film Comedy; Jakob Ladegaard
6. Workerist Film Humour; Dennis Rothermel
7. Alienated Heroes: Marxism and the Czechoslovak New Wave; Peter Hames
8. The Work and Rights of the Documentary Protagonist; Silke Panse
9. Amateur Digital Filmmaking and Capitalism; William Brown
10. Citizen: Marx/Kane; John Hutnyk
11. The Meanings of History and the Uses of Translation in News from Ideological Antiquity - Marx/Eisenstein/The Capital (Video 2008) by Alexander Kluge; Ewa Mazierska
12. Marx for Children: Moor and the Ravens of London and Hans Röckle and the Devil; Martin Brady
Index