New Rural Cinema : Landscape, Community and Poverty in Recent US Indie Films

Tim Lindemann

ISBN 10: 3110779234 / ISBN 13: 9783110779233

Published by De Gruyter, 2024

About this Item

Neuware - In the past decade, spanning from the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis to the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, rural poverty in the United States has risen dramatically. The impact of the pandemic is set to intensify these inequalities as the decades of neoliberal dismantling of public healthcare and other social institutions leave inhabitants of impoverished rural areas particularly vulnerable.Even before this current exacerbation, representations of rural landscape in American cinema have sought to spatially visualize the country's social inequalities and focus on the victims of poverty and marginalization. The films discussed in this monograph, Ballast (2008), Winter's Bone (2010), Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012), and Leave No Trace (2018), address deep rural poverty in a complex manner and facilitate an interactive, social understanding of landscape.New Rural Cinema suggest a novel way of looking at landscape in cinema that responds to and guides its readers through this recent development in American Independent film. It views the chosen films as expressions of a growing awareness of the dire inequality caused by neoliberal capitalism in the United States and the role landscape plays both in its mechanisms of social exclusion as well as in its collective contestation.

Seller Inventory # 9783110779233

Bibliographic Details

• Title: New Rural Cinema : Landscape, Community and Poverty in Recent US Indie Films
• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Publication Date: 2024
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 3110779234
• ISBN 13: 9783110779233
• Binding: Buch
• Condition: Neu
• Dimensions: 240W x 235H x 160D millimeters 240 millimeters width by 235 millimeters height by 160 millimeters depth
• Weight: 471 grams

About this title

Synopsis

In the past decade, spanning from the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis to the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, rural poverty in the United States has risen dramatically. The impact of the pandemic is set to intensify these inequalities as the decades of neoliberal dismantling of public healthcare and other social institutions leave inhabitants of impoverished rural areas particularly vulnerable.
Even before this current exacerbation, representations of rural landscape in American cinema have sought to spatially visualize the country’s social inequalities and focus on the victims of poverty and marginalization. The films discussed in this monograph, Ballast (2008), Winter’s Bone (2010), Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012), and Leave No Trace (2018), address deep rural poverty in a complex manner and facilitate an interactive, social understanding of landscape.
New Rural Cinema suggest a novel way of looking at landscape in cinema that responds to and guides its readers through this recent development in American Independent film. It views the chosen films as expressions of a growing awareness of the dire inequality caused by neoliberal capitalism in the United States and the role landscape plays both in its mechanisms of social exclusion as well as in its collective contestation.

About the Author

Tim Lindemann, Queen Mary, University of London, London, UK.