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The Utopia of Film
Cinema and Its Futures in Godard, Kluge, and Tahimik
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Book Presentation:
The German filmmaker Alexander Kluge has long promoted cinema's relationship with the goals of human emancipation. Jean-Luc Godard and Filipino director Kidlat Tahimik also believe in cinema's ability to bring about what Theodor W. Adorno once called a "redeemed world." Situating the films of Godard, Tahimik, and Kluge within debates over social revolution, utopian ideals, and the unrealized potential of utopian thought and action, Christopher Pavsek showcases the strengths, weaknesses, and undeniable impact of their utopian visions on film's political evolution. He discusses Godard's Alphaville (1965) against Germany Year 90 Nine-Zero (1991) and JLG/JLG: Self-portrait in December (1994), and he conducts the first scholarly reading of Film Socialisme (2010). He considers Tahimik's virtually unknown masterpiece, I Am Furious Yellow (1981–1991), along with Perfumed Nightmare (1977) and Turumba (1983); and he constructs a dialogue between Kluge's Brutality in Stone (1961) and Yesterday Girl (1965) and his later The Assault of the Present on the Rest of Time (1985) and Fruits of Trust (2009).
About the Author:
Christopher Pavsek is associate professor of film in the School for the Contemporary Arts at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver. His films include The One and All (2002) and To Those Born After (2005), and he is the translator of Alexander Kluge's Learning Processes with a Deadly Outcome.
Press Reviews:
An impressive book people will read for all kinds of reasons, academic and otherwise, not least of which is its bold proposal that the future is unthinkable without cinema. Richard Dienst, author of Still Life in Real Time: Theory After Television
... Pavsek renews our faith in the utopian possibilities of truly political art. Patrick Reagan, Yale University, Screening the Past
See the publisher website: Columbia University Press
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