Utopia and Reality
Documentary, Activism and Imagined Worlds
1st Edition
Published on 15. February 2020
304 pages
978-1-78683-526-0 (ISBN)
Description
Since publication of Thomas More's Utopia more than five hundred years ago, there has been a steady stream of literary works that depict a better world; positive utopias in film, however, have been scarce. There is a consensus that utopias in the Morean tradition are not suited to fiction film, and research has accordingly focused on dystopias. Starting from the insight that utopias are always a critical reaction to the deficits of the present, Utopia and Reality takes a different approach by looking into the under-researched area of propaganda and documentary films for depictions of better worlds. This volume brings together researchers from two fields that have so far seen little exchange - documentary studies and utopian scholarship - and covers a wide range of films from Soviet avant-garde to propaganda videos for the terror organisation ISIS, from political-activist to ecofeminist and interactive documentaries.
More details
Series
Edition
1. Auflage
Language
English
Place of publication
Wales
United Kingdom
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Illustrations
Not illustrated
File size
3,48 MB
ISBN-13
978-1-78683-526-0 (9781786835260)
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
Other editions
Additional editions
Simon Spiegel | Andrea Reiter | Marcy Goldberg
Utopia and Reality
Documentary, Activism and Imagined Worlds
Book
02/2020
University of Wales Press
€100.47
Shipment within 3-4 weeks
Persons
Simon Spiegel is a research associate at the Department of Film Studies of the University of Zurich, and Privatdozent at the University of Bayreuth. He is project manager in the ERC Advanced Grant research project FilmColors. Andrea Reiter is a film scholar and documentary filmmaker. Marcy Goldberg is a film historian, university lecturer, editor and translator.
Content
- Intro
- Title Page
- Copyright Page
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: Utopian Realities
- 1 Reality and Utopia: A Conversation with Lyman Tower Sargent
- Part 1: Tracing Utopia
- 2 Utopia Revisited: Reading Dziga Vertov's Man with a Movie Camera in the Light of the Utopian Tradition
- 3 Neither Fact nor Fiction: Made in Secret as a Utopian Education in Desire
- 4 The Utopia of the Caliphate: Reading ISIS Propaganda Videos as Utopian Texts
- Part 2: Alternative Documentary Politics
- 5 Living and Dying with Water: Indigenous Histories and Critical Bioregionalism in The Pearl Button
- 6 Prospectivity in Political Documentaries
- 7 Practising Hope: Ecofeminism, Documentary and Community Engagement
- Part 3: New Forms of Documentary Activism
- 8 Trans-utopia: Documenting Real and Imagined Cities
- 9 Post-utopian Interventions by Students: Interactive Documentary and Micro-revolutions
- 10 Documentary Dreams of Activism and the Arab Spring
- Notes
- Back Cover
