cinema

The way nightlife has been affected by the recent Covid-19 restrictions invites us to think back on the value and features of the night as we have known it for most of our lives. A pioneer in the burgeoning field of night studies, Will Straw sheds light on the history of the night and the issues related to its loss.

Books & Ideas is slowing down for the summer. In the meantime, here is our weekly selection of reviews published over the past year.

Hollywood cinema tends to represent climate change in catastrophist and sensationalistic movies. By contrast, a new type of ecological cinema emerges in which the issue of sustainability is taken into account not only as a theme, but also within the film production process.

Ken Loach’s latest film, which won the Palme d’Or prize at the Cannes Film Festival, charts the struggles of a carpenter trying to get state welfare after suffering a heart attack. I, Daniel Blake offers an accurate depiction of the dehumanisation suffered by the most destitute in a United Kingdom undermined by de-industrialisation and inequality.

We should not be misled by the The Revenant’s hyperrealism: Iñárritu’s film is a brilliant filmmaker’s ego trip more than it is an accurate depiction of the trapper’s role in conquering the American West. Despite its meticulous reconstruction of living conditions at the time, the film is teeming with clichés and approximations.

Israeli filmmaker Amos Gitaï discusses the relationship between cinema and literature, memory, space, and language. In particular, he tells us about his screen adaptation of Jérôme Clément’s autobiographical novel, which portrays the story of a son’s quest in search of his Jewish mother’s painful past.

2012, Terminator, Blade Runner, Melancholia. There is no shortage of films portraying the end of the world; in fact, they are becoming ever more successful. But what is their real meaning? Are they pure entertainment, allowing us to play with the idea that everything could stop from one day to the next? Peter Szendy believes that we should be taking them very seriously, because they express the fundamental nature of cinema itself – and because they tell us, in their own way, what a world is.

How do images shape our worldview ? What do their study bring to our understanding of society ? Through interviews, essays and reviews this dossier shows how the close study of still or moving images has become central to the social sciences. From anthropology to history or literature, taking into account the overwhelming presence of visual representation yields unexpected and original information about human, social and political relationships.