This cutting edge collection brings together essays by leading film scholars and covers diverse topics such as propaganda, third cinema, 9/11 cinema, manifestos, festivals, documentary, human rights, eco-activism and animal rights.

It foregrounds the key debates, concepts, approaches and case studies that critique and explain the complex relationship between politics and film, covering cinema from around the world and including examples from film history as well as contemporary cinema.

It also explores the wider relationship between politics and entertainment, examines cinema's response to political and social transformations and the extent to which filmmaking, itself, is a political act.

Introduction

Claire Molloy and Yannis Tzioumakis

Part 1

Approaches to Film and Politics

Introduction

Philip Drake

Chapter 1

The Dialectics of Third Cinema

Mike Wayne

Chapter 2

Geopolitics and Cinema

Toby Miller

Chapter 3

Ecopolitics and Cinema

Sean Cubitt

Chapter 4

The Politics of Form: A Conceptual Introduction to 'Screen Theory'

Warren Buckland

Chapter 5

Revisiting the Political Economy of Film

Janet Wasko

Part 2

Film, Activism and Opposition

Introduction

Anthony Killick

Chapter 6

"New" New Latin American Cinema Manifestoes

Scott L. Baugh

Chapter 7

Animal Rights Films, Organized Violence, and the Politics of Sight

Anat Pick

Chapter 8

Reel News in the Digital Age: Framing Britain's Radical Video-activists

Steve Presence

Chapter 9

Film and the Politics of Working Class Representation: The Inside Film Project

Deirdre O'Neill

Chapter 10

Kony 2012: Anatomy of A Campaign Video and A Video Campaign

Leshu Torchin

Part 3

Film, Propaganda, Ideology and the State

Introduction

Claire Molloy

Chapter 11

Propaganda, Activism and Environmental Nostalgia

Claire Molloy

Chapter 12

Between "Information" and "Inspiration": The Office of War Information, Frank Capra's Why We Fight series and US World War II Propaganda

Gregory Frame

Chapter 13

Striving for the Maximum Appeal: Ideology and Propaganda in the Soviet Cinema of the 1920s and 1930s

Panayiota Mini

Chapter 14

'Victory doesn't always Look the Way other People Imagine It.' Post-conflict Cinema in Northern Ireland

Stephen Baker

Chapter 15

Film Policy and England: The Politics of Creativity

Paul Dave

Part 4

The Politics of Mobility

Introduction

Stephanie Hemelryk Donald

Chapter 16

Cosmopolitanism, Empathy and the Close-up

Dimitris Eleftheriotis

Chapter 17

Regurgitated Bodies: Presenting and Representing Trauma in The Act of Killing

Lúcia Nagib

Chapter 18

After Dispossession: Blackfella Films and the Politics of Radical Hope

Felicity Collins

Chapter 19

The Holocaust Documentary: Sense, Meaning and Redemptive Politics

Brad Prager

Chapter 20

A Bridge over Troubled Water? Loving Jews and Muslims in Two Recent Mediterranean Films

Yosefa Loshitsky

Part 5

Political Hollywood

Introduction

Brian Neve

Chapter 21

Social Apocalypse in Contemporary Hollywood Film

Douglas Kellner

Chapter 22

Reassertions of Hollywood Heroic Agency in the Iraq War Film

Geoff King

Chapter 23

Spectacle vs. Narrative: Action Political Movies in the New Millennium

Ian Scott

Chapter 24

Representing 9/11 in Hollywood cinema

Eleftheria Thanouli

Chapter 25

Reaganite Cinema: What a Feeling!

Gary Needham

Part 6

Alternative and Independent Film and Politics

Introduction

Yannis Tzioumakis

Chapter 26

Film Festivals: Mediating the Mainstream and Marginal Voices

Marijke de Valck

Chapter 27

Politics, 'Indie-Style': Political Filmmaking and Contemporary US Independent Cinema

Yannis Tzioumakis

Chapter 28

Dismantling the System from Within: The Early Films of Robert Altman and the Politics of Anti-Establishment

Jacqui Miller

Chapter 29

Ethical Time, Ethical History: Recent Israeli Film

Nurith Gertz

Chapter 30

The Way of Seeming

Rob Nilsson

Part 7

The Politics of Cine-geographies

Introduction

Ewa Mazierska

Chapter 31

African Cinema in an Age of Postcolonialism and Globalization

Kenneth Harrow

Chapter 32

Nationalist Geopolitics and Film Tourism in India's Hindi Cinema

Peter C. Pugsley

Chapter 33

Political Cinema in Latin America: From Nation-building to Cultural Translation

Armida de la Garza

Chapter 34

European Cinema: Spectator- or Spect-actor-driven Policies

Petar Mitric and Katharine Sarikakis

Chapter 35

Minor Cinema - The Case of Wales

Ruth McElroy

Part 8

The Politics of Documentary

Introduction

John Corner

Chapter 36

21st Century Political Documentary in the United States

Betsy A. McLane

Chapter 37

Documenting Dissent: Political Documentary in the People's Republic of China

Luke Robinson

Chapter 38

Politics and Independence: Documentary in Greece during the Crisis

Lydia Papadimitriou

Chapter 39

Secret City (2012) A Reception Diary

Michael Chanan and Lee Salter

Chapter 40

Interactive Documentary: Film and Politics in the Digital Era

James Lyons

Yannis Tzioumakis is Senior Lecturer in Communication and Media Studies at the University of Liverpool. He is the author and editor of six books, most recently of Hollywood's Indies: Classics Divisions, Specialty Labels and the American Film Market (2012). He is also co-editor of the 'Hollywood Centenary' and the 'Cinema and Youth Cultures' book series (both for Routledge).

Claire Molloy is Professor of Film, Television and Digital Media, and Director of the Centre for Human Animal Studies at Edge Hill University. Her recent publications include the books Memento (2010), Popular Media and Animals (2011), Beyond Human: From Animality to Transhumanism (2012) and American Independent Cinema: indie, indiewood and beyond (2013).