Film and the Anarchist Imagination

by Richard Porton

Bearded bomb-throwers, self-indulgent nihilists, dangerous subversives—these characteristic clichés of anarchists in the popular imagination are often reproduced in the cinema. In Film and the Anarchist Imagination , the first comprehensive survey of anarchism in film, Richard Porton deconstructs such stereotypes while offering an authoritative account of films featuring anarchist characters and motifs.

From the early cinema of Griffith and René Clair, to the work of Godard, Lina Wertmüller, Lizzie Borden and Ken Loach, Porton analyzes portrayals of anarchism in film, presenting commentaries and critiques of such classics as Zéro de Conduite , Tout Va Bien , and Love and Anarchy . In addition, he provides an excellent guide to the complex traditions of anarchist thought, from Bakunin and Kropotkin to Emma Goldman and Murray Bookchin, disclosing a rich historical legacy that encompasses the Paris Commune, the Haymarket martyrs, the anarcho-syndicalists of the Spanish Civil War, as well as more familiar contemporary avatars like the Situationists and the enragés of May 1968.

Genres: Politics, Film, Art, History, Theory, Anarchism

320 pages, Paperback

First published August 17, 1999

Reviews

[Asa · Rating 4 out of 5]

a fascinating topic admittedly not done in the most fascinating way...

Here anarchism, and its heroes are portrayed in film...
... some knowledge of anarchism necessary to get something out of this. Please note that this is not a book of anarchist films. You will notice that few films pass Porton's approval.
One finds out again how powerful propaganda is, and how out of touch it is from the historical reality of anarchism: the ridiculous stereotypes here can be quite revealing (of our collective imaginations!).
Unique, I am not aware of any other book like this, despite its dryness.

[Stevphen Shukaitis · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is at that same time quite good, and also disappointing. Good in the sense that it covers a lot of material, particularly in regards to older films, which I haven't come across. So now I have a quite substantial list of interesting films to track down and watch (for instance the first one I looked for is Rene Clair's A Nous la Liberte, which I had not heard of before, but is a brilliant comedy-operetta about work refusal, factories, etc). Porton makes a number of interesting points about particular films, aesthetics, politics and their conjunction. The main letdown is the book is not really about the anarchist imagination per se, as much as the role that anarchists have played in the popular imagination as embodied in the form of film. Not surprisingly in societies hostile to anarchist thought this often comes across as clichéd, reductive, and silly portrayals of anarchism and anarchists. Bearded bombe throwers and the like (although I suppose now that is being replaced by the image of the black pajama block). This is not so surprising, although I suppose in am academic context since I think that Porton is the first to write about such that makes it a good contribution to knowledge. What would strike me as more interesting would be to explore the relation between anarchist approaches to representation, aesthetics and knowledge as they operate within film, and whether the form is conducive to the fostering of anarchistic imaginaries and relations. In other words to take anarchism as an approach rather than an object of study, which is what I thought the book would be trying to do given the title. Porton does this somewhat and draws out some interesting tensions and questions at places, for instance in discussion of pro-work / anti-work tensions within different strains of anarchist thought (although I'd wish he would have done this more often). So overall it's quite a good book, although I kept wishing that those moments would occur more frequently, that it would be a work anarchist imagination rather than on the imagination constructed of anarchism.

[Direncan · Rating 3 out of 5]

türkçe çevirisi Agora Kitaplığından çıkmış ve Osman Akınhay tarafından çevrilmiş. Orjinal dilinin nasıl olduğunu bilemiyorum ama sanırım çevirmene fazla süre tanınmamış olmalı ki metin çok da anlaşılır değil. Ayrıca son 100 sayfada kitabın geneline hakim olan yazım hatalarının 3 katına çıktığını düşünürsek bana pek özenilmeden baskıya verilmiş gibi geldi. Metinin genel problemi ise değindiği konular hakkında çok derin bir bilgi sunmadan (sanırım bildiğimizi varsayıyor) örnek filmlere geçmesi ve bu filmleri anlatması. Burada da sıkıntı filmin anlatımı 5 sayfa kadar ver tutunca kitap daha ziyade izlediğiniz filmleri özetlemekle yetinmiş oluyor. Güzel yanı ise izlemediğiniz filmlerle ilgili bir liste tutabilecek olmanız. O yüzden yönlendirme adına işe yarayabilir.

[Adrian · Rating 2 out of 5]

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