Mythopoetic Cinema: On the Ruins of European Identity

Kriss Ravetto-Biagioli

Published by Columbia University Press 2017

Mythopoetic Cinema

On the Ruins of European Identity

Kriss Ravetto-Biagioli

https://doi.org/10.7312/rave18218

Overview
Contents

About this book

Mythopoetic Cinema explores how contemporary European filmmakers question the constant need to provide new identities, a new Europe, and with it a new European cinema after the fall of the Soviet Union. Kriss Ravetto-Biagioli analyzes how filmmakers question the ability of the moving image to challenge conventional ways of understanding history.

Author / Editor information

Kriss Ravetto-Biagioli is professor of cinema and digital media and of science and technology studies at the University of California, Davis. She is the author of The Unmaking of Fascist Aesthetics (2001).

Reviews

Tom Conley, Abbott Lawrence Lowell Professor, Harvard University:
Drawing attention to central European cinema of the last three decades, Ravetto-Biagioli explores films that are without happy resolution—disquieting and perplexing productions in which ethics, aesthetics, and politics are tightly knit. Through refreshingly close analysis of works of four very different artists, she shows how the ideology of European ‘identity,’ a myth of selfhood and appurtenance to a nation or community, is questioned and becomes fractured and pulverized. Along the way the reader marvels at the care and detail Ravetto-Biagioli brings to the works she analyzes. Mythopoetic Cinema is a study that will endure.

Gil Anidjar, Columbia University:
Borrowing a phrase she herself coined, one must acknowledge that Ravetto-Biagioli has written a ‘vertiginous history’ of the moving image. Just as she did in The Unmaking of Fascist Aesthetics, she guides us through unfamiliar perspectives, unrehearsed practices, audacious gestures, and remarkable works where cinema unthinks our certainties. An exquisite treat of great courage and clear-sightedness, Mythopoetic Cinema shows how Sokurov, Angelopoulos, Abramović, and Godard challenge the imagined, institutional, and philosophical construction of Europe in the aftermath of extraordinary, enduring violence. Ravetto-Biagioli’s readings are simply astonishing for their thoughtfulness and for the capacious vision and interpretative hospitality they offer. A vertiginous history, indeed.

Larry Wolff, Julius Silver Professor of History at New York University and author of Inventing Eastern Europe:
This brilliant book follows European cinema into the depths of the European psyche, illuminating the mental map of Europe, rethinking the modern mythology of Europe, and exploring especially the significance of Eastern Europe for the cultural crisis of European identity that attended the conclusion of the Cold War and still traumatizes the continent in the early twenty-first century.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
CONTENTS Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	ix
INTRODUCTION Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
1. FLOATING ON THE BORDERS OF EUROPE Aleksandr Sokurov’s Russian Ark Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	25
2. O MEGALEXANDROS Falling In and Out of Dreams Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	65
3. IN BALKAN Marina Abramović and the Politics of the Suffering Body Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	125
4. NOTRE MUSIQUE On the Ruins of the Divine Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	169
EPILOGUE Th e Politics of Confrontation Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	221
NOTES Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	237
BIBLIOGRAPHY Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	277
INDEX Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	305

Language: English
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Audience: Professional and scholarly;
Pages
- Main content: 352
Illustrations
- Illustrations: 36
- Other: 36 b&w images

eBook

Published: September 25, 2017
ISBN: 9780231544108