Drive in Cinema: Essays on Film, Theory and Politics - Softcover

Léger, Marc James

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1783204850 ISBN 13: 9781783204854

Publisher: Intellect Ltd, 2015

Synopsis

Drive in Cinema presents Žižek-influenced studies of films made by some of the most influential filmmakers of our time, including Jean-Luc Godard, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Werner Herzog, Alexander Kluge, William Klein, Vera Chytilova, Jim Jarmusch, Hal Hartley, and Harmony Korine. Working with radical theory and Lacanian ethics, Léger draws surprising connections between art, film, and politics, taking his analysis beyond the academic obsession with cultural representation and filmic technique and instead revealing film's potential as an emancipatory force.

About this title

About the Author:

Marc James Léger is an independent scholar living in Montreal. He is the author of Brave New Avant Garde (2012) and The Neoliberal Undead (2013) as well as editor of The Idea of the Avant Garde-And What It Means Today (2014).

Review:

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 Death 

About this edition

• Publisher: Intellect Ltd
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 1783204850
• ISBN 13: 9781783204854
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 308