Cuban film media, late socialism, and the public sphere : imperfect aesthetics / Nicholas Balaisis.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Balaisis, Nicholas, author.

Series:

Global cinema

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Motion pictures--Cuba.

Motion pictures.

Socialism and motion pictures.

Motion picture industry.

Cuba.

Motion picture industry--Cuba.

Socialism and motion pictures--Cuba.

Motion pictures--Aesthetics.

Physical Description:

xii, 201 pages : illustrations (some color) ; 22 cm.

Place of Publication:

New York, NY : Palgrave Macmillan, [2016]

Summary:

This book maps the aesthetic experience of late socialism through Cuban film and media practice. It shows how economic and material scarcity as well as political uncertainty is expressed aesthetically in films from the period following the collapse of the Soviet Union, a characteristic described as imperfect aesthetics. The films examined in the book draw attention to the unique temporal experience of late socialism, a period marked both by rapid change and frustrating stasis, nostalgia for Cuba's past and anxiousness about its future. Aesthetic modes such as melodrama and irony, and stylistic elements such as direct address and the long take, communicate the temporal experience of late socialism in Cuba, where new global traffic and a globalizing economy co-exist with iconic socialist features of the Cuban revolution. Film aesthetics constitute an important public dimension within this context, serving as a site of political and cultural critique amidst political uncertainty. In examining large-scale international co-productions as well as regional film collectives and amateur media making, the book traces the aesthetic continuities between contemporary film practices and those of the immediate post-revolutionary period, showing how the Cuban revolution continues to be an important touchstone for contemporary Cuban filmmakers in the face of new and imminent change. .

Contents:

Acknowledgments; Contents; List of Figures

Chapter 1: Imperfect Cinema and Making Do; Imperfect Aesthetics; Imperfect Aesthetics and the Public Sphere; Notes

Chapter 2: Late Socialism, the Special Period, and Film and Media Practice; Temporalities of Late Socialism; Modernization and Late Socialism; Creative Adaptations to the Global, or, Modernity's Long Durée; Notes

Chapter 3: Mourning the Revolution: Melodrama and Temporality in Late Socialist Narrative Cinema; Cinematic Publicness and the Special Period; Collective "Loss of Coherency": Melodrama and Late Socialism

Melodrama after the Soviet Union: Miel para OshúnIdeology and the Maternal Melodrama; Too Late for Revolution: The Temporality of Late Socialism; The Global Force of Melodrama; Conclusions: Melodrama as Ideological Refuge; Notes

Chapter 4: Localizing the Global: Transnational Filmmaking at EICTV; Introduction; The School of Three Worlds; Rural immersion and Experiential Filmmaking in the Sierra Maestra; Indexing the Post-Soviet in Rural Cuba; Sigue luchando-Subsistence and the Muted National; From Three Worlds to Every World: Expanding Cuba's Cinematic Gaze; Global Views of Late Socialism

Surveillance, Propaganda, InertiaTemporality and the Labor of Making Do; Conclusions; Notes

Chapter 5: Negotiated Endurance: Rural Film Production and Improvised Cinema at Televisión Serrana; Introduction; Audio-Visual Production in the Late Socialist Period: TVS; Interrogating the Local in TVS films; Talking Heads and Direct Address; Broken Cinema and Repair Tactics: Mobile Cinema in the 2000s; Delays, Repairs and Improvisation: mobile cinema after the Soviet collapse; Bodies, Materiality and "Re-making" Modernity; Como Por primera vez and the Residual New Man

Conclusions: Alternative Modernities and Negotiated Endurance Notes

Chapter 6: One Must Invent: Tactical Aesthetics and Imperfect Design; Ernesto Oroza and Technological Disobedience; The Rhetoric of Industry and Invention within the Revolution; Improvised Communications: Radio and Internet Hacks; Micro Politics in the Home; Film Theory Beyond Film: On Imperfect Design; From Critical Spectators to Critical Designers; "Worker Build Your Machine": Exporting Technological Disobedience; Cuban Hacks as Film Study; Novelty and New (Old) Media Technologies; Cuba Calling; Conclusions; Notes

Chapter 7: Afterword ; Notes; Index.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9781137590367

113759036X

OCLC:

953843097

Publisher Number:

99971565799