The Altering Eye: Contemporary International Cinema by Robert P. Kolker


The Altering Eye: Contemporary International Cinema
Title : The Altering Eye: Contemporary International Cinema
Author :
Rating :
ISBN : 0195033027
ISBN-10 : 9780195033021
Language : English
Format Type : Paperback
Number of Pages : 448
Publication : First published April 7, 1983

Most filmmakers, especially in the United States, have chosen not to upset their audiences. But since World War II, an alternative cinema has emerged on a significant scale, particularly in Europe and Latin America- a cinema that challenges rather than soothes, that questions assumptions rather than reinforces them. This kind of film-'made in a spirit of resistance, rebellion and refusal'-is the focus of this important and stimulating study.

The Altering Eye: Contemporary International Cinema Reviews

  • Michael

    An extremely useful book from someone whose aesthetic I share almost not at all -- well, we both like Bunuel but Kolker's dismissals of the "obscurantists" I love (Fellini, Ingmar Bergman, Herzog) kept *nearly* having me put the book down...except that his treatment of (leftist) international film from Italian Neorealism to the early eighties proved to be such a great way of organizing so many films that I've been thinking about for so many years (and, long ago, sometimes teaching). If you can forgive Kolker for believing that "serious cinema" and "Brechtian cinema" are pretty much the same thing (the sort of dimestore eighties American Marxism is something of an enjoyably nostalgic set-piece in its own right), you might find this a lovely touchstone, too. The passionate love he has for Godard and Fassbinder (to a lesser extent, Pasolini) I don't entirely share but nevertheless got quite and rather pleasantly caught up in. Terrific fun revisiting those films in this way -- even for someone who would require equally devout company to actually sit down and *watch* them again.

  • SyphilisVictim

    not bad

  • Ilyas

    writing's a bit dry