Impure Cinema: Intermedial and Intercultural Approaches to Film

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Andre Bazin's famous article, 'Pour un cinema impur: defense de l'adaptation', was first translated into English simply as 'In Defence of Mixed Cinema', probably to avoid any uncomfortable sexual or racial resonances the word 'impure' might have. 'Impure Cinema' goes back to Bazin's original title precisely for its defence of impurity, applying it on the one hand to cinema's interbreeding with other arts and on the other to its ability to convey and promote cultural diversity. In contemporary progressive film criticism, ideas of purity, essence and origin have been superseded by favourable approaches to 'hybridization', 'transnationalism', 'multiculturalism' and cross-fertilizations of all sorts. 'Impure Cinema' builds on this idea in novel and exciting ways, as it draws on cinema's combination of intermedial and intercultural aspects as a means to bridge the divide between studies of aesthetics and culture. Film is revealed here as the location par excellence of media encounters, mutual questioning and self-dissolution into post-medium experiments.
Most importantly, the book argues, film's intermedial relations can only be properly understood if their cultural determinants are taken into account. Scholars and students of film, cinephiles and students of the arts will discover here unexpected connections across many artistic practices.

Reviews

'This well-conceived collection takes up Bazin's call for an impure cinema - Nagib and Jerslev have brought together contributors of both great experience and huge promise. This book allows us a less circumscribed and more joyous access to world cinema.' Stephanie Hemelryk Donald, ARC Professorial Future Fellow in Comparative Film and Cultural Studies, University of New South Wales 'Seizing the controversial implications of the concept of impurity, this book makes a major contribution to debates about how and why the cinema is always implicated in political landscapes.' Jackie Stacey, Professor of Media and Cultural Studies, University of Manchester 'Impure Cinema provides a much needed discussion of the relation between cinema and the other arts.' Torben Grodal, Professor of Film and Media Studies, University of Copenhagen

Author Bio

Lucia Nagib is Professor of Film at the University of Reading. Her books include Brazil on Screen: Cinema Novo, New Cinema, Utopia (I.B.Tauris, 2007) and World Cinema and the Ethics of Realism (2011). Her books as editor include The New Brazilian Cinema (I.B.Tauris, 2003), Realism and the Audiovisual Media (with Cecilia Mello, 2009), and Theorizing World Cinema (with Chris Perriam and Rajinder Dudrah, I.B.Tauris, 2011). She is series editor of Tauris's World Cinema Series. Anne Jerslev is Professor of Film and Media Studies at the University of Copenhagen. She is the author of books about David Lynch, cult films, youth and violent cinema, and media and intimacy. She is the editor of Realism and 'Reality' in Film and Media (2002) and, with Rune Gade, Performative Realism (2004).