1st Edition
Contemporary Cinema and Neoliberal Ideology
In this edited collection, an international ensemble of scholars examine what contemporary cinema tells us about neoliberal capitalism and cinema, exploring whether filmmakers are able to imagine progressive alternatives under capitalist conditions. Individual contributions discuss filmmaking practices, film distribution, textual characteristics and the reception of films made in different parts of the world. They engage with topics such as class struggle, debt, multiculturalism and the effect of neoliberalism on love and sexual behaviour. Written in accessible, jargon-free language, Contemporary Cinema and Neoliberal Ideology is an essential text for those interested in political filmmaking and the political meanings of films.
Contents
Introduction
Ewa Mazierska
Part 1
Political Economy of Neoliberalism and Its Discontents
Chapter 1
Team Loach and Sixteen Films: Authorship, Collaboration, Leadership (and Football)
David Archibald
Chapter 2
US Independent Cinema and the Capitalist Mode of Production: Complicating Discourses of Independence and Oppositionality
Kevan Feshami
Chapter 3
The Lure of Becoming Cinema: The Role of the Internet in Amateur and Independent Filmmaking
William Brown
Chapter 4
Svetlana Baskova’s Response to Russian national neoliberalism in For Marx…
Lars Kristensen
Part 2
Neoliberal Winners and Losers
Chapter 5
The Rise of the Entrepreneur in Jia Zhangke’s Words of a Journey
Corey Kai Nelson Schultz
Chapter 6
Capitalist Realism in European Films about Debt
Ewa Mazierska
Chapter 7
Bypass, Obscure Forces and Ontological Anxiety
Paul Dave
Chapter 8
Aggressive Prosperity, Violent Austerity in Standing Aside, Watching
Rosa Barotsi
Chapter 9
Multiplexing Marx in Contemporary American Cinema
Doru Pop
Part 3
Love and Sexual Identities under Neoliberalism
Chapter 10
Hedges of Manhattan: The Disquieting Charm of the Haute Bourgeoisie in Jonathan Demme’s Rachel Getting Married
Constantin Parvulescu
Chapter 11
Corporations of Feelings: Romantic Comedy in the Age of Neoliberalism
Elżbieta Ostrowska
Chapter 12
Why Is Everyone Not Falling in Love? Love, Sex and Neoliberalism in Film Adaptations of Bret Eason Ellis Works
Kamila Rymajdo
Chapter 13
Cinema, Sex Tourism and Globalisation in American and European Cinema
Martin O’Shaughnessy
Chapter 14
Polymorphous Consumption: Eytan Fox’s The Bubble as Gated Community
Bruce Williams
Biography
Ewa Mazierska is Professor of Film Studies at the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Central Lancashire. She published over twenty monographs and edited collections on film and popular music. Mazierska (with Kristensen) has also organised two conferences entitled 'Marx at the Movies', once in 2012 and again in 2015, which were devoted to the interface between the moving image and Marxism.
Lars Kristensen is Senior Lecturer in Media Arts, Aesthetics and Narration at the University of Skövde, Sweden, where he teaches moving image theory to game developers. His research focuses on Russian and Eastern European filmmaking as well as bicycle cinema, post-critique and theories of game and play. His publications have appeared in Studies in Eastern European Cinema, Games and Culture, Journal of Gaming and Virtual Worlds and Thesis Eleven.
"A polemical but also nuanced exploration of practices and representations of neoliberalism in contemporary cinema, the collection offers clarity, depth and specificity both in its conceptual framing and the case studies included. From Loach to American Independent Cinema, Greece to China, and amateur films to romcoms, the range and variety of contexts examined, and approaches adopted, will render the book into a key resource for the study of ideology and/in cinema."
—Dr. Lydia Papadimitriou, Reader in Film Studies, Liverpool John Moores University
