Cinema Against Spectacle
Technique and Ideology Revisited
Will be published approx. on 9. January 2015
Book
Paperback/Softback
346 pages
978-90-8964-554-8 (ISBN)
Description
Jean-Louis Comolli's six-part essay Technique and Ideologyhad a revolutionary effect on film theory and history when it first appeared in Cahiers du Cinema in 1971. In 2009, Comolli revisited his earlier text, arguing that the present age, marked by the total dominance of media-filtered spectacle over image production, makes the need for an 'emancipated, critical spectator' more pressing than ever. In this volume, Daniel Fairfax presents annotated translations of these two texts to provide an overview of Comolli's activity as both a theorist and a filmmaker.
Reviews / Votes
Hopefully this intelligent edition will make Comolli and his work more visible to contemporary readers, while also positing the development of a more 'scientific' ideological critique not just of individual films, but of cinema and the society of the spectacle as a whole. - William Brown in New Review of Film and Television StudiesMore details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Amsterdam
Netherlands
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Academic
Illustrations
Illustrations: 0 black and white; 35 full color.
Dimensions
Height: 234 mm
Width: 156 mm
Thickness: 19 mm
Weight
529 gr
ISBN-13
978-90-8964-554-8 (9789089645548)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Persons
Jean-Louis Comolli is a French writer, editor, and film director. He was editor of Cahiers du cinema in 1965-73. Daniel Fairfax is Assistant Professor of Film Studies at the Goethe-Universitaet Frankfurt and an editor of the online film journal Senses of Cinema.
Content
Preface (Philip Rosen) Introduction (Daniel Fairfax) Yes we were utopians; in a way, I still am...: Interview with Jean-Louis Comolli Cinema against Spectacle I. Opening the Window? II. Inventing the Cinema? III. Filming the Disaster? IV. Cutting the Figure? V. Changing the Spectator? Technique and Ideology Introduction I. On a Dual Origin The ideological place of the base apparatus Birth = deferral: the invention of the cinema II. Depth of Field: the Double Scene Bazin's surplus realism The work of transparency For a materialist history of the cinema For the first time... III. Primitive Depth of Field IV. Effacement of Depth/Advent of Speech V. Which Speech? Appendix I: Cinema/Ideology/Criticism Appendix II: Machines of the Visible Glossary of Terms, Publication History, Filmography, Bibliography,Translator's Notes, Index.