The Aesthetics of Antifascist Film: Radical Projection

By Jennifer Lynde Barker

Through a series of detailed film case histories ranging from The Great Dictator to Hiroshima mon amour to The Lives of Others, The Aesthetics of Antifascist Film: Radical Projection explores the genesis and recurrence of antifascist aesthetics as it manifests in the WWII, Cold War and Post-Wall historical periods.

Emerging during a critical moment in film history-1930s/1940s Hollywood- cinematic antifascism was representative of the international nature of antifascist alliances, with the amalgam of film styles generated in migr Hollywood during the WWII period reflecting a dialogue between an urgent political commitment to antifascism and an equally intense commitment to aesthetic complexity. Opposed to a fascist aesthetics based on homogeneity, purity and spectacle, these antifascist films project a radical beauty of distortion, heterogeneity, fragmentation and loss. By juxtaposing documentation and the modernist techniques of surrealism and expressionism, the filmmakers were able to manifest a non-totalizing work of art that still had political impact.

Drawing on insights from film and cultural studies, aesthetic and ethical philosophy, and socio-political theory, this book argues that the artistic struggles with political commitment and modernist strategies of representation during the 1930s and 40s resulted in a distinctive, radical aesthetic form that represents an alternate strand of post-modernism.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1138695793
• ISBN13: 9781138695795
• Release Date: May 2016
• Publisher: Routledge
• Length: 286 Pages
• Weight: 0.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.0" x 9.0"