Film Manifestos and Global Cinema Cultures: A Critical Anthology

by Scott MacKenzie (Editor)

Film Manifestos and Global Cinema Cultures is the first book to collect manifestoes from the global history of cinema, providing the first historical and theoretical account of the role played by film manifestos in filmmaking and film culture. Focusing equally on political and aesthetic manifestoes, Scott MacKenzie uncovers a neglected, yet nevertheless central history of the cinema, exploring a series of documents that postulate ways in which to re-imagine the cinema and, in the process, re-imagine the world.

This volume collects the major European “waves” and figures (Eisenstein, Truffaut, Bergman, Free Cinema, Oberhausen, Dogme ‘95); Latin American Third Cinemas (Birri, Sanjinés, Espinosa, Solanas); radical art and the avant-garde (Buñuel, Brakhage, Deren, Mekas, Ono, Sanborn); and world cinemas (Iimura, Makhmalbaf, Sembene, Sen). It also contains previously untranslated manifestos co-written by figures including Bollaín, Debord, Hermosillo, Isou, Kieslowski, Painlevé, Straub, and many others. Thematic sections address documentary cinema, aesthetics, feminist and queer film cultures, pornography, film archives, Hollywood, and film and digital media. Also included are texts traditionally left out of the film manifestos canon, such as the Motion Picture Production Code and Pius XI's Vigilanti Cura , which nevertheless played a central role in film culture.

Genres: Film, Nonfiction

680 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2014

Reviews

[Elijah]

What a fascinating way to survey film history. I appreciate how MacKenzie arranged the manifestos thematically. His perspective shines though, and that's okay - I prefer a clear perspective to a hidden one. I am, as always I find, most encouraged by the same voices I've long been encouraged by. I do wish there were more Japanese voices in this text. I wonder if manifesto writing just isn't part of that culture. That being said, I've read plenty of manifesto-ish things written by Miyazaki and Kurosawa, so...

Great book!

[LSC-University Park SLRC]

Read it through Lone Star College's EBSCO Ebook Collection.