Towards a Political Aesthetics of Cinema

"Delivered in a crisp translation, this ambitious book’s clarifying distance from the lasting accomplishments of apparatus theory goes far toward erasing any trace of oxymoron in its title. And in the emphasis of its subtitle — with the camera variously recognized as severed from the spaces it preserves only by rearticulating — cinema’s narrative inside emerges as the material effect of its outside: not just technically but culturally. Synthesized as never before across a deep field of previous theorization, the conditioning surround of the screen image, in politics as well as production, is studied rigorously by Lie, and often brilliantly, from the inside out — in powerful extrapolations earned across nimble readings of celluloid and digital cinematography from rear projection in Marnie to pixel tessellations in Miami Vice."
- Garrett Stewart, author of "Cinemachines: An Essay on Media and Method" (2020)

"Lie's book Towards a Political Aesthetics of Cinema fulfills the title's promise by re-reading and re-viewing theories and films to engender indeed a political aesthetics. Avoiding the sheer application of political theories on cinema Lie challenges some of the paradigms of modern film theory for their relevance for an aesthetic of cinema. In Lie's powerful understanding of cinema the off screen space in cinematic shots becomes a complex membrane between world and fiction. Intense shot analyses are the bearers of the argument that political aesthetics of cinema are based in the ways films are framing and deframing the world."
- Gertrud Koch