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The Major Realist Film TheoristsA Critical Anthology

Edited by Ian Aitken

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£100.00

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About this book

A critical re-examination of four major realist film theorists

From the 1910s to the emergence of structuralism and post-structuralism in the 1960s, the writings of John Grierson, Siegfried Kracauer, André Bazin and Georg Lukács dominated realist film theory. In this critical anthology, the first collection to address their work in one volume, a wide range of international scholars explore the interconnections between their ideas and help generate new understandings of this important, if neglected, field. Challenging preconceptions about ‘classical’ theory and the nature of realist representation, and in the process demonstrating how this body of work can be seen as a cohesive theoretical model, this invaluable collection will help return the realist paradigm of film theory to the forefront of academic enquiry.

Contributors include
  • Ian Aitken, Hong Kong Baptist University
  • Scott Anthony, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
  • Gary Evans, University of Ottawa
  • Tara Forrest, University of Technology, Sydney
  • Ramona Fotiade, University of Glasgow
  • Angelos Koutsourakis, University of Queensland
  • Henry K. Miller, Cambridge University
  • Seung-hoon Jeong, New York University, Abu Dhabi
  • Pierre Sorlin, Sorbonne University, Paris
  • Temenuga Trifonova, York University, Toronto
  • Tyson Wils, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia
  • Xu Yaping, China University of Political Science and Law
Table of contents
Introduction; Chapter One: Displaced Vision: The Politics of Realism in Kracauer and Kluge, Tara Forrest; Chapter Two: The Rhetoric of Madness in Realist Film Theory, Temenuga Trifonova; Phenomenology, Theology, and ‘Physical Reality’: The Film Theory Realism of Siegfried Kracauer, Tyson Wils; ‘Montage, My Fine Care’: Realism, Surrealism and Postmodernism after Bazin, Ramona Fotiade; Multiple Indexicality and Multiple Realism in André Bazin, Seung-hoon Jeong; André Bazin, or the Ambiguity of Reality, Pierre Sorlin; Realism is to Think Historically: Overlapping Elements in Lukácsian and Brechtian Theories of Realism, Angelos Koutsourakis; The Moving-Image Redemption of Orality and Lukács’ early Writing on the Cinema, Apple Xu Yaping; The ‘Naturalist’ Treatment of Film in The Specificity of the Aesthetic (Georg Lukács, 1963), and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (Alexander Solzhenitsyn 1962, Caspar Wrede, 1970), Ian Aitken; The Documentary Version of Film History, Henry K. Miller; The Grierson Testament, 1969-1971, Gary Evans; John Grierson: From the poster movement to the informational state, Scott Anthony; Contributors
About the author

Ian Aitken

Ian Aitken was a chair professor, and is now an Emeritus Professor, affiliated to Hong Kong Baptist University. His areas of expertise lie in British documentary film studies, the British official film in South-East Asia, and theories of cinematic realism. His most recent book publications include World, Time Film (Edinburgh University Press, 2026), Cinematic Realism (2020), The Major Realist Film Theorists (ed.), The British Official Film in South-East Asia (2016), and The Colonial Documentary Film in South and South-East Asia (2016).