The Red Years of Cahiers du cinéma (1968-1973): Volume II, Aesthetics and Ontology
The Red Years of Cahiers du cinéma (1968-1973): Volume II, Aesthetics and Ontology
by Daniel Fairfax
Amsterdam University Press, 2021 eISBN: 978-90-485-4391-5
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC
ABOUT THIS BOOK
The uprising which shook France in May 1968 also had a revolutionary effect on the country's most prominent film journal. Under editors Jean-Louis Comolli and Jean Narboni, Cahiers du cinéma embarked on a militant turn that would govern the journal's work over the next five years. With a Marxist orientation inspired by the thinking of Louis Althusser, Jacques Lacan and Roland Barthes, the "red years" of Cahiers du cinéma produced a theoretical outpouring that was formative for the establishment of film studies as an academic discipline in the 1970s, and is still of vital relevance for the contemporary audiovisual landscape. It was also the seminal experience for a generation of critics who have dedicated the following half-century to the task of critically responding to the cinema.
The Red Years of Cahiers du Cinéma (1968-1973) gives a historical overview of this period in the journal's history, combining biographical accounts of the critics who were involved with Cahiers in the post-1968 and theoretical explorations of the text they wrote.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Daniel Fairfax is Assistant Professor of Film Studies at the Goethe-Universität Frankfurt and an editor of the online film journal Senses of Cinema (www.sensesofcinema.com). His research specialises in French film theory in the post-1968 period.
REVIEWS
"Daniel Fairfax's book is an impressive work that casts new light in the history of the most important French film journal, Cahiers du cinema. Thanks to exemplary archival work, Fairfax highlights some of the most fateful episodes of the 1960s and 1970s, and re-establishes the coherent yet complex trajectory of the journal, from its cinephilic beginnings to its conversion to militant politics. It is an exemplary study: the outcome of true dedication, astute critical sensibility and a great passion for film." - Francesco Casetti, Yale University
"During its 'red years,' the core editors and contributors to Cahiers du cinéma rethought cinema in ways that have had lasting influence not only for contemporary film studies, but also in the history of Marxist and psychoanalytic theory. Daniel Fairfax now re-engages this moment with theoretical acumen, historical recontextualization and detailed primary research. This is an extraordinarily comprehensive work that not only yields a tremendous amount of information and theoretical nuance, but also offers new ways of understanding Cahiers in its Marxist phase." - Philip Rosen, Brown University
TABLE OF CONTENTS
The Red Years of Cahiers du Cinéma (1968-1973)
Volume I: Ideology and Politics
Introduction
Part I: Theories of Ideology
Chapter 1. "Cinéma/Idéologie/Critique": an Epistemological Break?
Chapter 2. Jean-Louis Comolli and Jean Narboni: Crossed Lives
Chapter 3. Décalages: "Young Mr. Lincoln de John Ford"
Chapter 4. "La Vicariance du Pouvoir" and the Battle of Othon
Chapter 5. "Technique et Idéologie" by Jean-Louis Comolli
Chapter 6. Afterlives of the Apparatus
Part II: Engagements with Politics
Chapter 7. The Radicalization of Cahiers du cinéma: 1963-1969
Chapter 8. Cahiers du cinéma and the Rapprochement with the PCF: 1969-1971
Chapter 9. Cahiers du cinéma's Turn to Maoism: 1971-1973
Chapter 10. Cahiers du cinéma and Jean-Luc Godard
Chapter 11. Cahiers du cinéma in the "Post-gauchiste" Era: 1973-1981
Chapter 12. Bernard Eisenschitz: Cinema, Communism and History
Chapter 13. Jean-Louis Comolli: A Theoretical Practice of Political Cinema.
The Red Years of Cahiers du Cinéma (1968-1973)
Volume II: Aesthetics and Ontology
Part III: Questions of Aesthetics
Chapter 14. Encounters with Structuralism
Chapter 15. Beyond Structuralism: Film Form and Écriture
Chapter 16. Re-reading Classical Cinema
Chapter 17. The Defense and Critique of Cinematic Modernism
Chapter 18. Encountering the World Through Cinema
Chapter 19. The Film Aesthetics of Jacques Aumont
Chapter 20. Two Ciné-fils: Pascal Kané and Serge Daney
Part IV: Encounters with Ontology
Chapter 21. The Bazinian Legacy
Chapter 22: Beyond the Suture: Jean-Pierre Oudart's Film Theory.
Chapter 23: Realism and Psychoanalysis in Pierre Baudry.
Chapter 24: Partial Vision: The Theory and Filmmaking of Pascal Bonitzer
Chapter 25. The Brain is the Screen: Cahiers du cinéma and Gilles Deleuze
Chapter 26. Film Ontology in the Age of "New" Media
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index