Utopia and Reality
Documentary, Activism and Imagined Worlds
Language: English
Genre(s): Media Film and Theatre
Series: New Dimensions in Science Fiction
- March 2020 · 304pages · 216x138mm
- ·Hardback - 9781786835246
- · eBook - epub - 9781786835260
- · eBook - mobi - 9781786835277
- · eBook - pdf - 9781786835253
About The Book
Since publication of Thomas More‘s Utopia more than five hundred years ago, there has been a steady stream of literary works that depict a better world; positive utopias in film, however, have been scarce. There is a consensus that utopias in the Morean tradition are not suited to fiction film, and research has accordingly focused on dystopias. Starting from the insight that utopias are always a critical reaction to the deficits of the present, Utopia and Reality takes a different approach by looking into the under-researched area of propaganda and documentary films for depictions of better worlds. This volume brings together researchers from two fields that have so far seen little exchange – documentary studies and utopian scholarship – and covers a wide range of films from Soviet avant-garde to propaganda videos for the terror organisation ISIS, from political-activist to ecofeminist and interactive documentaries.
Endorsements
‘A welcome consideration of the utopian dimension of cinema, which goes beyond the usual description of fiction films that depict alternative societies (good and bad) to explore the utopian possibilities of documentary film.’
-Emeritus Professor Peter Fitting, University of Toronto
Contents
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations
Contributors
Acknowledgments
Andrea Reiter and Simon Spiegel
Introduction: Utopian Realities
Lyman Tower Sargent and Simon Spiegel
Reality and Utopia: A Conversation with Lyman Tower Sargent
Part 1: Tracing Utopia
Susanna Layh
Utopia Revisited: Reading Dziga Vertov’s Man with a Movie Camera in the Light of the Utopian Tradition
Peter Seyferth
Neither Fact Nor Fiction: Made in Secret as a Utopian Education in Desire
Simon Spiegel
The Utopia of the Caliphate: Reading ISIS Propaganda Videos as Utopian Texts
Part 2: Alternative Documentary Politics
Matthew Holtmeier
Living and Dying with Water: Indigenous Histories and Critical Bioregionalism in The Pearl Button
Andrea Reiter
Prospectivity in Political Documentaries
Chelsea Wessels
Practicing Hope: Ecofeminism, Documentary and Community Engagement
Part 3: New Forms of Documentary Activism
Daniel Schwartz, Klearjos Eduardo Papanicolaou, Alfredo Brillembourg, Hubert Klumpner
Trans-Utopia: Documenting Real and Imagined Cities
Dale Hudson
Post-Utopian Interventions by Students: Interactive Documentary and Micro-Revolutions
Jane M. Gaines
Documentary Dreams of Activism and the Arab Spring
List of Illustrations
About the Editor(s)
Simon Spiegel
Simon Spiegel is a research associate at the Department of Film Studies of the University of Zurich, and Privatdozent at the University of Bayreuth. He is project manager in the ERC Advanced Grant research project FilmColors.
Andrea Reiter
Andrea Reiter is a film scholar and documentary filmmaker. She has a doctorate in film studies from the University of Zurich.