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Drive in Cinema

Essays on Film, Theory and Politics

Marc James Léger author

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Intellect

Published:15th Sep '15

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Drive in Cinema cover

Drive in Cinema offers Žižek-influenced studies of films made by some of the most engaging and influential filmmakers of our time, from avant-garde directors Jean-Luc Godard, Werner Herzog, Alexander Kluge, Pier Paolo Pasolini and Vera Chytilová, to independent filmmakers William Klein, Oliver Ressler, Hal Hartley, Olivier Assayas, Vincent Gallo, Jim Jarmusch and Harmony Korine. These essays in critical cultural theory present interdisciplinary perspectives on the relations between art, film and politics. How does filmic symbolization mediate intersubjective social exchange? What are the possibilities for avant-gardism today and how does this correspond to what we know about cultural production after capitalism’s real subsumption of labour? How have various filmmakers communicated radical ideas through film as a popular medium? Drive in Cinema pursues Lacanian ethics to avenues beyond the academic obsession with cultural representation and cinematic technique. It will be of interest to anyone who is concerned with film’s potential as an emancipatory force.

'Marc James Léger's Drive in Cinema is a vivid and compelling account from the front lines of post-avant-garde and popular cinema, bringing into view a politics of cinematic form in the wake of the long drawn out crisis of revolutionary film since the 1970s. If one wanted to distinguish today's neoliberal moment of film criticism from the 1970s - the partisan professionalized radical film theory of Screen, etc - this is where you'll find it.' 

-- John Roberts, author of Revolutionary Time and the Avant-Garde

'Marc James Léger's Drive in Cinema is precisely what we need in film theory today. More than just a reading of cinema, it attends to the urgent necessity of thinking film and art beyond the more common formalist varieties that continue to dominate, and to the urgency of emancipatory politics in the new age of austerity. The essays collected here demonstrate with brilliance why Léger is one of our leading writers on avant-garde art and culture. A pleasure to read!' 

-- Matthew Flisfeder, author of The Symbolic, the Sublime, and Slavoj Žižek's Theory of Film

'Drive in Cinema is concerned broadly with artists and filmmakers who exemplify the 'triple A' of avant-gardism: the antagonist, activist and agonist relationships between everyday life, art, theory and politics. This original and challenging contribution, an extremely readable and well-researched text, will be recognized by readers and filmmakers alike as a powerful intervention into the space of cinematic studies.' 

-- Bruce Barber, author of Trans/Actions: Art, Film and D

ISBN: 9781783204854

Dimensions: 229mm x 178mm x 16mm

Weight: 494g

308 pages