Cinema, Memory, Modernity

Russell J.A. Kilbourn is Assistant Professor of English and Film Studies at Wilfrid Laurier University.

• Acknowledgments Introduction: Cinema, Memory, Modernity: The Return of Memory as Film 1: No Escape from Time: Memory and Redemption in the International Postwar Art Film 2: The ‘Crisis’ of Memory: ‘Traumatic Identity’ in the Contemporary Memory Film 3: ‘Global Memory’: Cinema as Lingua Franca and the Commodification of the Image 4: The Eye of History: Memory, Surveillance and Ethicality in the Contemporary Art Film 5: ‘Prosthetic Memory’ and Transnational Cinema: Globalized Identity and Narrative Recursivity in City of God Conclusion: Remembering to Forget: The Catachreses of Modernity Notes Bibliography Index

'Cinema, Memory Modernity: The Representation of Memory from the Art Film to TransnationalCinema is a detailed, insightful and, at times, brilliantly perceptive view of this difficult and expansive subject. Kilbourn's choices are certainly representative of memory in post-World War II cinema.[...] Kilbourn's analysis of memory in the cinema, an ongoing theoretical debate often full of incompatibilities and abstractions, is lucidly argued in relation to the ideas of the theorists with whom he either agrees or disagrees. This book provides an engaging read for those who are interested in this aspect of cinema, but will also appeal to scholars of modernity and philosophy at the same time.'Alphaville: Journal of Film and Screen Media'Cinema, Memory, Modernity alternates between mourning the passing of the ‘modern’ moment of art cinema and a feisty denunciation of a global post-modern malaise in which subjective meanings have become disguised as collectively globalized through an ever-present visuality. While the implications of this affective framework remain largely outside of the critical scope of the book, the text’s lament and yearning take the shape of a plethora of original theoretical observations and provocative analyses of specific films that make the book a very important addition to the study of memory at the intersection of film and modernity.' Adrián Pérez Melgosa, SUNY Stony Brook