Umfang:
1 online resource (xiv, 224 pages)
,
illustrations; digital, PDF file(s)
ISBN:
9781526111371
Inhalt:
'This is the first comprehensive study of Jean Epstein’s fiction and documentary films, film theory, and writings on poetry and homosexuality. Until now no general introduction to this very influential filmmaker, thinker and writer was available in English. The book unfolds the intellectual trajectory of Epstein, describes and comments on his most famous films and little-known documentaries, both silent and sound works, and defines the key terms and concepts of his philosophy of cinema. Wall-Romana argues that Epstein is among the most transformational thinkers of modernity in that he brought together, before Walter Benjamin, moving images, technology, embodiment and affect, philosophy and literature.After an introduction retracing Epstein’s life and place in cinema history, the first chapter shows the links between his early career in medicine, his early writings (on poetry, cinema and ‘lyrosophy’), and his conceptions of photogénie as embodied viewing. The next two chapters examine his best-known film work situated at the intersection of avant-garde and melodrama, and bring a new focus on the interplay of technics, failed romance, and queer themes and figures. The following three chapters take up his metaphysical Brittany cycle of the 1920s, his documentary committed to the Front Populaire, and his overall philosophy of the cinema. The conclusion explores the surprisingly Epsteinian dimension of some recent cinema, such as films by Soderbergh and Ang Lee, or the wuxia genre.Jean Epstein: Corporeal cinema and film philosophy is aimed at students, lecturers, and scholars of silent cinema, film theory, French studies, queer studies, poetry studies, and media and digital studies in their turn towards embodiment and affect' --Back cover
Inhalt:
If cinema can be approached as poetry and philosophy, it is because of Jean Epstein. Cocteau, Buñuel (who was his assistant), Hitchcock, Pasolini and Godard, and theoreticians Kracauer, Deleuze and Rancière are directly influenced by Epstein’s pioneering film work, writings, and concepts. This book is the first in English to examine his oeuvre comprehensively.An avant-garde artist and an anti-elitist intellectual, Epstein wanted to craft moments of pure transformative cinema. Using familiar genres – melodramas and documentaries – he hoped to heal viewers of all classes and hasten social utopia. A lover of cinema as cognitive and sensorial technology, and a poet of the screen, he pushed cinematography – as photogénie – towards the experimental sublime, through daring close-ups, rhythmic montage, slow motion, even reverse motion. Polish-born, half-Jewish, and the author of a treatise on homosexuality, Epstein has been unfairly relegated to the shadows of film history. This book restores him to the limelight of interwar world cinema, on a par with Renoir, Lang, Capra and Eisenstein
Anmerkung:
Includes bibliographical references, filmography and index
,
Series Editors’ Foreword --Introductio -- Epstein at the crossroads --chapter 1: From literary modernism to photogénie --chapter 2: Avant-garde working class melodramas --chapter 3: Technology, embodiment and homosexuality --chapter 4: Brittany, the edge of the modern world --chapter 5: Documentaries and sound films --chapter 6: ‘A young Spinoza’: philosophy of the cinema --Conclusion: Epstein as pioneer of corporeal cinema --Filmography --Select Bibliography --Index
Sprache:
Englisch
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