"Magic Realism World Cinema And The Avant-Garde | Media & Cultural Studies

This book follows the hybrid and contradictory history of magic realism through the writings of three key figures – art historian Franz Roh novelist Alejo Carpentier and cultural critic Fredric Jameson – drawing links between their political aesthetic and philosophical ideas on art’s relationship to reality. Magic realism is vast in scope spanning almost a century and is often confused with neighbouring styles of literature or art most notably surrealism. The fascinating conditions of modernist Europe are complex and contradictory a spirit that magic realism has taken on as it travels far and wide. The filmmakers and writers in this book acknowledge the importance of feeling atmosphere and mood to subtly provoke and resist global capitalism. Theirs is the history of magic-realist cinema. The book explores this history through the modernist avant-garde in search of a new theory of cinematic magic realism. It uncovers a resistant geopolitical form of world cinema – moving from Europe through Latin America and the former Soviet Union to Thailand – that emerges from these ideas. This book is invaluable to any reader interested in world modernism(s) in relation to contemporary cinema and geopolitics. Its sustained analysis of film as a sensory intermedial medium is of interest to scholars working across the visual arts literature critical theory and film-philosophy. |Magic Realism World Cinema and the Avant-Garde | Media & Cultural Studies