brief book focued on Viridiana, the Buñuel's film that supposed a scandal at the Cannes Festival in 1961. The book analyzes the liturgic references and their perversion, from the Angelus to the Las Supper, from the atmosphere of Sonatas... more
brief book focued on Viridiana, the Buñuel's film that supposed a scandal at the Cannes Festival in 1961. The book analyzes the liturgic references and their perversion, from the Angelus to the Las Supper, from the atmosphere of Sonatas (Valle-Inclán) to the picaresque realism.
Videogiochi che diventano film, brani musicali riproposti in nuova veste, videoclip ispirati a opere pittoriche, opere d'arte costruite su altre opere d'arte, film come "Matrix" e "Kill Bill" esempi di prodotti realizzati a partire da... more
Videogiochi che diventano film, brani musicali riproposti in nuova veste, videoclip ispirati a opere pittoriche, opere d'arte costruite su altre opere d'arte, film come "Matrix" e "Kill Bill" esempi di prodotti realizzati a partire da giustapposizioni eterogenee e intrecci di generi. Questa raccolta propone una riflessione sulle nuove forme di testualità mediatica, con un'attenzione particolare alle "pratiche di replicabilità", che stanno alla base di molti "ibridi" trans-testuali non esauribili attraverso categorie di genere.
Beyonce calls Lemonade a “visual album.” There’s been buzz about the image of Beyonce smashing up cars, and a lot of talk about the autobiographical themes of the lyrics (lines like “better call Becky with the good hair” have been getting... more
Beyonce calls Lemonade a “visual album.” There’s been buzz about the image of Beyonce smashing up cars, and a lot of talk about the autobiographical themes of the lyrics (lines like “better call Becky with the good hair” have been getting attention for the way they call out Jay Z’s mistress). But this 65-minute film’s songs, text and sound design haven’t been talked about in relation to its images. Lemonade’s unusual form—a long-play music video—gives it the capacity to draw connections between the personal pain of infidelity and America’s terrible history of racism. Twelve video clips are linked by brief passages comprised of poetry, visual tableaux and sound collage. These interludes lean toward avant-garde aesthetics. One thing avant garde aesthetics and music video share is the capacity to hold several vantage points in suspension. In Lemonade this capacity allows the work to embody opposites: love and hate, engagement and alienation, forgiveness and revenge.
Screen Space Reconfigured is the first edited volume that critically and theoretically examines the many novel renderings of space brought to us by 21st century screens. Exploring key cases such as post-perspectival space, 3D, vertical... more
Screen Space Reconfigured is the first edited volume that critically and theoretically examines the many novel renderings of space brought to us by 21st century screens. Exploring key cases such as post-perspectival space, 3D, vertical framing, haptics, and layering, this volume takes stock of emerging forms of screen space and spatialities as they move from the margins to the centre of contemporary media practice. Recent years have seen a marked scholarly interest in spatial dimensions and conceptions of moving image culture, with some theorists claiming that a 'spatial turn' has taken place in media studies and screen practices alike. Yet this is the first book-length study dedicated to on-screen spatiality as such. Spanning mainstream cinema, experimental film, video art, mobile screens, and stadium entertainment, the volume includes contributions from such acclaimed authors as Giuliana Bruno and Tom Gunning as well as a younger generation of scholars.
Cinesonica: sounding film and video explores previously neglected and under-theorised aspects of film and video sound, drawing on detailed case study analyses of Hollywood cinema, art cinema, animated cartoons, and avant-garde film and... more
Cinesonica: sounding film and video explores previously neglected and under-theorised aspects of film and video sound, drawing on detailed case study analyses of Hollywood cinema, art cinema, animated cartoons, and avant-garde film and video. Adopting an interdisciplinary approach to the study of the soundtrack, and breaking away from the focus on narrative and signification that has tended to dominate the study of film sound, the book examines the way in which sound's materiality figures within audiovisual experience.
This paper compares two films of the 1970s, which constitute mile-stones of Greek avant-garde cinema: Modelo (1974) by Kostas Sfikas and Idées Fixes / Dies Irae (1977) by Antoinetta Angelidi. It uses these particular Greek cases as a... more
This paper compares two films of the 1970s, which constitute mile-stones of Greek avant-garde cinema: Modelo (1974) by Kostas Sfikas and Idées Fixes / Dies Irae (1977) by Antoinetta Angelidi. It uses these particular Greek cases as a starting point in order to examine wider issues partaking to the theory and practice of avant-garde cinema. It investigates the premise that avant-garde film-making combines form experimentation with political radicalism, enacting a politics of form. It attempts to explore certain strategies and techniques which may constitute such politics, and to see what a revolutionary text made in the language of cinema may be.
La dénommée nouvelle vague Japonaise, comme la nouv elle vague Française et d’autres « cinémas nationaux », a contribué à exerc er le renouvellement du langage cinématographique dans les années soixante et soixa nte-dix. Cependant, le cas... more
La dénommée nouvelle vague Japonaise, comme la nouv elle vague Française et d’autres « cinémas nationaux », a contribué à exerc er le renouvellement du langage cinématographique dans les années soixante et soixa nte-dix. Cependant, le cas japonais est spécialement intéressant parce qu’il s era parfois simultané à ses homologues européens et parfois pionner dans le dév loppement de pratiques avantgardistes.
For those whose image of Viet Nam comes only from the reel projected by Hollywood, the version of that country that appears in Hong-An Truong's films may seem alien territory. Truong's colonial-era Viet Nam didn't exist by... more
For those whose image of Viet Nam comes only from the reel projected by Hollywood, the version of that country that appears in Hong-An Truong's films may seem alien territory. Truong's colonial-era Viet Nam didn't exist by that name, but was partitioned by the French into ...
Visualising Music explores alternative models of music-image relationship in film and video art, investigating how the boundaries of cinema can be challenged, both practically and theoretically, by a redefined audio-visual interaction.... more
Visualising Music explores alternative models of music-image relationship in film and video art, investigating how the boundaries of cinema can be challenged, both practically and theoretically, by a redefined audio-visual interaction. The first half of the book considers the significance of music in several types of non-Hollywood film, including the work of Werner Herzog and Derek Jarman. Building from here, the second half explores the expanded spaces of video installation art, with close reference to the immersive musical sites of Bill Viola.
Many early music theatre works, embraced topics similar to the neo-realist cinema, its audiovisual aesthetics were very different from the smooth textures and structural and immersive cohesion of narrative film. Mainstream film, including... more
Many early music theatre works, embraced topics similar to the neo-realist cinema, its audiovisual aesthetics were very different from the smooth textures and structural and immersive cohesion of narrative film. Mainstream film, including that in the neo-realist tradition operates through an audiovisual flow so tightly synchronised as to engender a filmic illusion of unity and realism through discrete editing that effaces its materiality, as can be seen in the paradoxical audiovisual flow of Bicycle Thieves. In attempting to embody and substantiate intolerance, then, the Boston Intolleranza privileged artistic collision by highlighting its media specificity; the edges of each discipline were left in full view, frayed and angular, enabling the ‘confrontation of selected realities’ desired by Josef Svoboda. While hyper-immersive gestures have become relatively normalised, when moving image technology first entered the musical stage during the 1960s, it operated as a radical interventi...
PREAMBLEThe analytical camera cannot itself be analyzed. This ironic proposition will be explained. The integral form and appearance of the apparatus are mysteries. It can only aid and abet seeing - it cannot be seen. The rational... more
PREAMBLEThe analytical camera cannot itself be analyzed. This ironic proposition will be explained. The integral form and appearance of the apparatus are mysteries. It can only aid and abet seeing - it cannot be seen. The rational individual would perhaps be forgiven for assuming that it does not exist. Perhaps the legend of this curious object has outstripped any practical raison d'etre it may have once laid claim to. The analytical camera has been described by its creators as "a camera with microscope features, more photographic than cinematographic." It is the result of an assemblage including an optical printer devised to render 9.5 mm film strips projectable, thus available to be studied by cinematic means. However, it can also accommodate 8 mm, 16 mm, and 35 mm. Because of its range and affinity for camouflage, the analytical camera is difficult to spot, let alone trap. It is not easy to approach it taxonomically, and not only taxonomically. No schematic of it ha...
Julian Hochberg and Virginia Brooks argue in "Movies in the Mind's Eye" that the apparent movement of motion pictures should be understood as a mental process described by cognitive theory and gestalt psychology. This argument is a... more
Julian Hochberg and Virginia Brooks argue in "Movies in the Mind's Eye" that the apparent movement of motion pictures should be understood as a mental process described by cognitive theory and gestalt psychology. This argument is a reconfiguration of the traditional, physiological model that makes the motion an effect of ocular physiology. In place of this model, they propose that the movement we see when watching a movie—whether in the form of a film or a video tape—is more than simply the illusion of motion: it is perceptually as real as any other visual motion we perceive. The difference between this motion and other motion resides in its empirical status independent of observation, not in our subjective perception. Their transformation of the conceptualization of "motion pictures" has implications for our understanding of motion in painting. So-called "painterly motion" is historically one of the most important effects employed in old master p...
En la primera mitad del siglo xx , los filosofos de la Escuela de Frankfurt desarrollaron una teoria estetica para comprender el cine y su relacion con el contexto social del capitalismo tardio. De manera fragmentaria, Walter Benjamin,... more
En la primera mitad del siglo xx , los filosofos de la Escuela de Frankfurt desarrollaron una teoria estetica para comprender el cine y su relacion con el contexto social del capitalismo tardio. De manera fragmentaria, Walter Benjamin, Siegfried Kracauer y Theodor W. Adorno aportaron elementos fundamentales para esta teoria, produciendo un cuerpo conceptual de gran riqueza, y muy consecuente con la postura epistemologica y etica de este grupo de pensadores. Este ensayo propone una lectura que relaciona a los tres autores, para una consideracion, mas amplia de una teoria del cine desde la perspectiva de la Teoria Critica.
The aim of this chapter is to provide a one in-depth analysis of the film "Medea 2" (2006) directed by Javier Aguirre and starred by Esperanza Roy. Based on Seneca's "Medea", the film is a prototype of the... more
The aim of this chapter is to provide a one in-depth analysis of the film "Medea 2" (2006) directed by Javier Aguirre and starred by Esperanza Roy. Based on Seneca's "Medea", the film is a prototype of the "Anticine" created by Javier Aguirre. First, this chapter discusses why Aguirre chooses Seneca's "Medea", instead of the Euripidean, to further develop the analysis of the film itself.
Fil: Zylberman, Lior Alejandro. Universidad Nacional de Tres de Febrero. Centro de Estudios Sobre Genocidio; Argentina. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Arquitectura y Urbanismo; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones... more
Fil: Zylberman, Lior Alejandro. Universidad Nacional de Tres de Febrero. Centro de Estudios Sobre Genocidio; Argentina. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Arquitectura y Urbanismo; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Cientificas y Tecnicas; Argentina
"http://www.berghahnbooks.com/title.php?rowtag=CamporaSubjective "Subjective Realist Cinema looks at the fragmented narratives and multiple realities of a wide range of films that depict subjective experience and employ “subjective realist” narration, including recent examples such as Mulholland Drive, Memento, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. The author proposes that an understanding of the narrative structures of these films, particularly their use of mixed and multiple realities, enhances viewers’ enjoyment and comprehension of such films, and that such comprehension offers a key to understanding contemporary filmmaking. Contents Acknowledgements Introduction Three Periods of Narrative Experimentation Multiform Narrative Subjective Realism Chapter 1. Complex Narratives The New Hollywood and The Smart Film New Hollywood Narration Fragmented Narratives Multi-strand Narratives Multiform Narratives Brazil Puzzle Films Chapter 2. Two Trajectories of the Cinema of Attractions The Narrative Trajectory: Realism and Spectacle The Avant-garde Trajectory: Realism and Defamiliarization Chapter 3. Subjective Realism and Multiform Narrative Subjective Realism Vertigo The Fantastic Wild Strawberries Chapter 4. Mulholland Drive Expressionism and the Uncanny Three Views As Surrealist or Trance Film As Fragmented Subjective Realist Film As Supernatural Film It Is All An Illusion Chapter 5. Memento The Four Strands Unreliable Narration Disrupted Expectations Subjective Realism Chapter 6. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind The Philosophy of Eternal Sunshine Temporal Inversions Subjective Realism Sonic Metalepsis The Marvelous Real Conclusion Filmography Bibliography Index"""
This collection of fourteen essays provides a rich and detailed history of the relationship between and music and image in documentary films, exploring the often overlooked role of music in the genre and its subsequent impact on an... more
This collection of fourteen essays provides a rich and detailed history of the relationship between and music and image in documentary films, exploring the often overlooked role of music in the genre and its subsequent impact on an audience’s perception of reality and fiction. Exploring examples of documentary films which make use of soundtrack music, from an interdisciplinary perspective, Music and Sound in Documentary Film is the first in-depth treatment on the use of music in the nonfiction film and will appeal to scholars and students working in the intersection of music and film and media studies.
This collection of fourteen essays provides a rich and detailed history of the relationship between and music and image in documentary films, exploring the often overlooked role of music in the genre and its subsequent impact on an... more
This collection of fourteen essays provides a rich and detailed history of the relationship between and music and image in documentary films, exploring the often overlooked role of music in the genre and its subsequent impact on an audience’s perception of reality and fiction. Exploring examples of documentary films which make use of soundtrack music, from an interdisciplinary perspective, Music and Sound in Documentary Film is the first in-depth treatment on the use of music in the nonfiction film and will appeal to scholars and students working in the intersection of music and film and media studies.
Working beyond mainstream practice, Derek Jarman creates films that are unusually musical. Caravaggio, a biography of the artist, is a case in point. Jarman's collaboration with composer Simon Fischer Turner from the start of the... more
Working beyond mainstream practice, Derek Jarman creates films that are unusually musical. Caravaggio, a biography of the artist, is a case in point. Jarman's collaboration with composer Simon Fischer Turner from the start of the filmmaking process enables music to ...
This article explores Warhol and Nico’s relationship with Europe through their formative years and subsequent collaboration in Warhol’s underground and experimental filmmaking. In the 1950s Warhol was a commercial artist in New York,... more
This article explores Warhol and Nico’s relationship with Europe through their formative years and subsequent collaboration in Warhol’s underground and experimental filmmaking. In the 1950s Warhol was a commercial artist in New York, circulating in a gay milieu, and his work often conveyed Europe and a European sensibility in its illustration of ‘all things Europe’, but especially fashion. Nico was a fashion model and frequently seen in European fashion magazines before landing a few film roles, including a small part in La dolce vita (Fellini, 1960) and a featuring role in the French erotic film Strip-Tease (Poitrenaud, 1962). Nico moved to New York and found her way to Warhol’s art studio and social scene known as The Factory. At The Factory Nico joined the art-rock group The Velvet Underground at Warhol’s insistence and featured in several films Warhol made between 1966 and 1967, including Chelsea Girls (Warhol, 1966) and a number of portrait films called Screen Tests (Warhol, 19...
... Piedra, papel y tijera: el collage en el cine documental. Imagen de portada del libro Piedra, papel y tijera. Información General. Autores: Sonia García López ( coord. ... págs. 65-82. "Guernica", de Alain... more
... Piedra, papel y tijera: el collage en el cine documental. Imagen de portada del libro Piedra, papel y tijera. Información General. Autores: Sonia García López ( coord. ... págs. 65-82. "Guernica", de Alain Resnais, el "collage" y la memoria: un arte de la revelación. Nancy Berthier. ...
... view of avant-garde film, and perhaps will also make a re-evaluation of the purposes ofavant-garde film criticism seem ... A Film Quarterly^ of Theory, Criticismand Practice' ... FORD "The Birth of a Style"... more
... view of avant-garde film, and perhaps will also make a re-evaluation of the purposes ofavant-garde film criticism seem ... A Film Quarterly^ of Theory, Criticismand Practice' ... FORD "The Birth of a Style" by Jean MitrytfWilliam Siska on "Realism and Ro-mance in the Films of John ...
El cine de vanguardia es un medio privilegiado para estudiar la experiencia temporal moderna porque es un complejo compendio de tiempos y discontinuidades. Y a su vez, la temporalidad es clave para definir y estudiar la vanguardia... more
El cine de vanguardia es un medio privilegiado para estudiar la experiencia temporal moderna porque es un complejo compendio de tiempos y discontinuidades. Y a su vez, la temporalidad es clave para definir y estudiar la vanguardia cinematográfica. En ella se unen el interés por la exploración del movimiento, los experimentos con la imagen, la desafección narrativa y la afección por lo real. Propone también la subversión del campo fílmico (y, por veces, social). Los cineastas de vanguardia no construían un discurso temporal alternativo pero sí se dotaban de un cuerpo coherente de revuelta basado en la exploración de esas temporalidades diversas. Trataron también de establecer la imagen como método, de deconstruir la racionalización instrumental del dominio visual y propusieron que de la variedad de discursos temporales en convivencia emanaba una nueva forma de historia y de imagen. Este artículo es un ensayo sobre el método de análisis de la temporalidad en la vanguardia.
Abstract:
Avant-garde cinema is a privileged means to study the modern time experience because it is a complex compendium of times and discontinuities. At the same time, the temporality is a key element to define and study the 20’s cinematographic avant-garde. This cinema is characterized by the exploration of movement, the experiments with the image, its lack of interest in narrativity and its interest on the real. It also proposes a subversion of the filmic field (and sometimes, also the social field). Avant-garde filmmakers did not construct an alternative temporal discourse but they organized a coherent uprising corpus based on the exploration of those diverse temporalities. They established the image as a method, the deconstruction of the instrumental rationalization of the visual dominion and they proposed that a new type of history and image emanates from the coexistence of the variety of temporal discourses.
This paper is an essay on methods to study avant-garde temporality.
Description In the course of making nearly 400 films over the past 50 years," Stan Brakhage" became synonymous with independent American filmmaking, particularly its avant-garde component. This major collection of writings draws... more
Description In the course of making nearly 400 films over the past 50 years," Stan Brakhage" became synonymous with independent American filmmaking, particularly its avant-garde component. This major collection of writings draws primarily upon two long out-of-print ...
Cet article analyse l'activité de Benjamin Fondane dans le champ du cinéma en prenant comme point de départ l'idée utopique de la "langue universelle" et ses connexions avec le lyrisme. En effet, à la... more
Cet article analyse l'activité de Benjamin Fondane dans le champ du cinéma en prenant comme point de départ l'idée utopique de la "langue universelle" et ses connexions avec le lyrisme. En effet, à la fois dans ses articles théoriques et dans ses ciné-poèmes, Fondane essaie de mettre en avant la force lyrique du cinéma, ainsi que ses virtualités communicationnelles universelles. En cela, Fondane est très proche d'un certain esprit des avant-gardes et de la pratique de quelques-uns de ses contemporains, dont Antonin Artaud.
Working beyond mainstream practice, Derek Jarman creates films that are unusually musical. Caravaggio, a biography of the artist, is a case in point. Jarman’s collaboration with composer Simon Fischer Turner from the start of the... more
Working beyond mainstream practice, Derek Jarman creates films that are unusually musical. Caravaggio, a biography of the artist, is a case in point. Jarman’s collaboration with composer Simon Fischer Turner from the start of the filmmaking process enables music to assume a structural role, a procedure that turns common music-image interaction on its head in two ways. First, rather than strive for the audio-visual fusion common to many mainstream films, music and image are here uxtaposed. Second, as music becomes audible, the film’s illusion of realism is destroyed. This article explores how Jarman’s challenge to conventional filmmaking procedure can expose the fragility of reception history by comparing visual, literary, and musical versions of Caravaggio’s biography.
During my time as a Visiting Scholar at NYU, spring semester, 2008, I wrote a diary to remember all the shows I attended, all the filmmakers I met and some of my reflections. Occationally I met filmmaker and editor Grahame Weinbren to... more
During my time as a Visiting Scholar at NYU, spring semester, 2008, I wrote a diary to remember all the shows I attended, all the filmmakers I met and some of my reflections. Occationally I met filmmaker and editor Grahame Weinbren to share my experiences. He decided to publish an edited section of my diary in Millennium Film Journal. It is the most personal thing I've ever published, but I keep refering back to these experiences, and decided I want to share it here also. It's been a while...
Luis Bunuel left the shooting of 7be Fall of the House of Usher [La chute de la maison Usher, 1928], where he worked as an assistant to director Jean Epstein, because he thought the French cinema avant-garde and the way it worked were... more
Luis Bunuel left the shooting of 7be Fall of the House of Usher [La chute de la maison Usher, 1928], where he worked as an assistant to director Jean Epstein, because he thought the French cinema avant-garde and the way it worked were pretentious. The ongoing disagreements regarding the adaptation, and about how new cinema was meant to be, made him leave Epsteins project. But what Epstein intended by adapting The Fall ofthe House of Usher to film went beyond a mere translation of Romantic or crepuscular themes. Epstein combined a series of resources for creating a story from Edgar Allan Poe with a set of film images so that the resulting aesthetics adapted to the changes modernity had produced in the perceptive human system. With its background of poetic, pseudo-scientific, and philosophical influences, Poe s story helped Epstein build a film focused on the altered states of consciousness caused by modernity. Poe's influence also reveals something that surpasses adaptation, whic...
El cine de vanguardia es un medio privilegiado para estudiar la experiencia temporal moderna porque es un complejo compendio de tiempos y discontinuidades. Y a su vez, la temporalidad es clave para definir y estudiar la vanguardia... more
El cine de vanguardia es un medio privilegiado para estudiar la experiencia temporal moderna porque es un complejo compendio de tiempos y discontinuidades. Y a su vez, la temporalidad es clave para definir y estudiar la vanguardia cinematográfica. En ella se unen el interés por la exploración del movimiento, los experimentos con la imagen, la desafección narrativa y la afección por lo real. Propone también la subversión del campo fílmico (y, por veces, social). Los cineastas de vanguardia no construían un discurso temporal alternativo pero sí se dotaban de un cuerpo coherente de revuelta basado en la exploración de esas temporalidades diversas. Trataron también de establecer la imagen como método, de deconstruir la racionalización instrumental del dominio visual y propusieron que de la variedad de discursos temporales en convivencia emanaba una nueva forma de historia y de imagen. Este artículo es un ensayo sobre el método de análisis de la temporalidad en la vanguardia. :Avant-gar...
This exegesis contextualises my feature-length film The Sultan and the Kings, a studio-based project produced for the Doctorate of Visual Arts. As a Kurdish émigré and filmmaker who left Iran in 1997, lived in Turkey for a couple of... more
This exegesis contextualises my feature-length film The Sultan and the Kings, a studio-based project produced for the Doctorate of Visual Arts. As a Kurdish émigré and filmmaker who left Iran in 1997, lived in Turkey for a couple of years, then emigrated to Australia in 2000, I studied film and also continued the filmmaking practice that I had begun in Iran in 1988. The exegesis examines the shortage of literature about Kurdish films, the misrepresentation of Kurdish filmmaking, the emergence of Kurdish cinema and the obstacles faced by it, as well as the emergence of Kurdish cinematic styles. By considering how my film relates to Kurdish cinema overall, what is referred to as the "cinema under oppression" and the "cinema of diaspora", this exegesis examines the development of a form of storytelling that I term digital docu-fiction, which blends elements of documentary, fiction and digital film manipulation. Through this form of practice, Kurdish filmmakers aim t...
This article explores the filmic relationship between music, text and image through an intertextual reading of Herzog's two Amazonian films, Aguirre: Wrath of God and Fitzcarraldo. When Aguirre and Fitzcarraldo encounter... more
This article explores the filmic relationship between music, text and image through an intertextual reading of Herzog's two Amazonian films, Aguirre: Wrath of God and Fitzcarraldo. When Aguirre and Fitzcarraldo encounter each other in the rainforest, 300 years apart, a complicated interplay of history and legend, truth and fiction, is initiated. Awash with magical occurrence, the forest has its own endlessly repeating soundtrack (written by Popul Vuh). The ability of both explorers to defend themselves from the forest depends on their relationship to this music: Aguirre, the earlier explorer, is deaf to the circular sound and attempts to overlay it with a written account of their journey. Fitzcarraldo, on the other hand, enters the forest equipped with a gramophone that plays Verdi arias; he comes with his own soundtrack. Comparison between the two journeys exposes the conventional uses of text/speech and music/song in film, to reveal music as the predominant driving force behind filmic narrative.
Der Kunstler und Theoretiker Guy Debord formuliert in den 1960er Jahren mit seinen Thesen von der ›Gesellschaft des Spektakels‹ eine radikale Gesellschaftskritik. Kritisiert werden mit dem Begriff Spektakel sozio-okonomische Zustande... more
Der Kunstler und Theoretiker Guy Debord formuliert in den 1960er Jahren mit seinen Thesen von der ›Gesellschaft des Spektakels‹ eine radikale Gesellschaftskritik. Kritisiert werden mit dem Begriff Spektakel sozio-okonomische Zustande (z.B. Entfremdung), die durch Bilder der Massenmedien (Kino und Fernsehen) vermittelt werden. Debord ist fuhrendes Mitglied der Situationistischen Internationale (SI), die in der ersten Ausgabe (1958) ihrer Zeitschrift Internationale situationniste (IS) eine ambivalente Haltung zum Kino einnimmt.
