Utopia and Reality: Documentary, Activism and Imagined Words

Description

Since publication of Thomas More‘s Utopia more than five hundred years ago, there has been a steady stream of literary works that depict a better world; positive utopias in film, however, have been scarce. There is a consensus that utopias in the Morean tradition are not suited to fiction film, and research has accordingly focused on dystopias. Starting from the insight that utopias are always a critical reaction to the deficits of the present, Utopia and Reality takes a different approach by looking into the under-researched area of propaganda and documentary films for depictions of better worlds. This volume brings together researchers from two fields that have so far seen little exchange – documentary studies and utopian scholarship – and covers a wide range of films from Soviet avant-garde to propaganda videos for the terror organisation ISIS, from political-activist to ecofeminist and interactive documentaries. Cover Title Page Copyright Page Series Editors’ Preface Contents Illustrations Contributors Acknowledgements Introduction: Utopian Realities 1. Reality and Utopia: A Conversation with Lyman Tower Sargent Part 1: Tracing Utopia 2. Utopia Revisited: Reading Dziga Vertov’s Man with a Movie Camera in the Light of the Utopian Tradition 3. Neither Fact Nor Fiction: Made in Secret as a Utopian Education in Desire 4. The Utopia of the Caliphate: Reading ISIS Propaganda Videos as Utopian Texts Part 2: Alternative Documentary Politics 5. Living and Dying with Water: Indigenous Histories and Critical Bioregionalism in The Pearl Button 6. Prospectivity in Political Documentaries 7. Practising Hope: Ecofeminism, Documentary and Community Engagement Part 3: New Forms of Documentary Activism 8. Trans-utopia: Documenting Real and Imagined Cities 9. Post-utopian Interventions by Students: Interactive Documentary and Micro-revolutions 10. Documentary Dreams of Activism and the Arab Spring Index Back Cover