Secret Cinema: Gnostic Vision in Film - Image 1

£95.00

Continuum Secret Cinema: Gnostic Vision in Film

Name: Secret Cinema: Gnostic Vision in Film
Brand: Continuum
Price: 95.0 GBP
Availability: InStock

History & Criticism

Price History & Forecast

Last 87 days • 87 data points (No recent data available)

Historical

Generating forecast...

Price Distribution

Price distribution over 87 days • 1 price levels

Days at Price

Price Analysis

Most common price: £95 (87 days, 100.0%)

Price range: £95 - £95

Price levels: 1 different prices over 87 days

Description

In the last twenty years or so, numerous mainstream movies have drawn from the ideas and images of ancient thought to address the collapse of appearance and reality. These films have consistently featured the Gnostic currents that emerged from Plato: not only Gnosticism itself but also Cabbala and alchemy. Despite important differences, these traditions have provided filmmakers with ready-made ruminations on the relationship between surface and depth as well as with engaging plot lines and striking scenes. In films like The Matrix (1999) and The Truman Show (1998), Gnostic myths have offered speculations on the real as well as conspiracy theories. The Cabbalistic motif of golem-making has provided such movies as A.I. (2001) and Blade Runner (1982) with mediations on the human and with parables of machines yearning for life. Pictures like Dead Man (1996) and Altered States (1980) have drawn on alchemical symbols to explore the possibilities of transmutation and to feature stories of the dead rising to life. Recent commercial Gnostic films are meditations on the conundrums of the post-modern age and the timeless soul. These pictures constitute archetypal sites for sacred contemplation. They create spaces akin to the caves of Eleusis or Lascaux, chambers where habits are annihilated and the ego is shattered. Maybe this spiritual attraction is the secret reason behind the recent abundance of Gnostic films. If so, then the dream factory is betraying its purpose. It is negating its deceptions and sales in the name of a bewildering reality that cannot be found. Secret Cinema explores these possibilities through engaging in three related activities. One, the book establishes the theoretical foundations and implications of the genre of Gnostic cinema. It develops these theoretical elements in the contexts of Gnosticism and the esoteric traditions emerging from it, Cabbala and alchemy. Two, in undertaking this work, Wilson considers several collateral issues. The book discusses the functions of genre, the relationships between cinema and psychology, the connections between the moving image and sacred power, the role of the cinematographic apparatus, and the romance of film. Three, the book is a broad meditation on the seductions of cinema. It is attuned to material attractions of the movies, those gorgeous lights and lurid shadows, but also the film's spiritual invitations, the gaps between the pictures, the empty spaces at the heart of life.

Product Specifications

Brand: Continuum
Format: hardcover
ASIN: 0826417965
Category: Books > Subjects > Arts & Photography > Film > History & Criticism
Domain: Amazon UK
Release Date: 01 December 2006
Listed Since: 23 January 2007

Barcode

No barcode data available

Continuum Secret Cinema: Gnostic Vision in Film

Price History & Forecast

Price Distribution

Price Analysis

Description

Product Specifications

Barcode

Similar Products You Might Like

Secrets of Cinema - 100 Movies That Are not What They Seem

Kabbalah: Jewish Mystical Tradition: The Tree of Life with Sephiroth, Tzimtzum, & Four Worlds and Their Connections to Kabbalistic Astrology, Angels ... Mysticism (Esoteric Religious Studies)

Surrealism and Cinema

The Sacred and the Cinema: Reconfiguring the 'Genuinely' Religious Film

Otherness in Hollywood Cinema

World Cinema and the Ethics of Realism

Darkness Calls: A Critical Investigation of Neo-Noir

Shadow Cinema: The Historical and Production Contexts of Unmade Films

Film Noir and the Cinema of Paranoia

Routledge World Cinema, Theology, and the Human - Film Studies

Post-cinema: Cinema in the Post-art Era - Amsterdam University Press

Global Art Cinema: New Theories and Histories

Science Fiction Cinema: Between Fantasy and Reality

On Film

The Palgrave Handbook of Asian Cinema

Queering the Migrant in Contemporary European Cinema - Routledge

The Other Hollywood Renaissance (Traditions in American Cinema)

Routledge Critical Flicker Fusion: Psychoanalysis at the Movies

Videographic Cinema: An Archaeology of Electronic Images and Imaginaries (Thinking Media)

Secret Violences: The Political Cinema of Michelangelo Antonioni, 1960-75

Post-war Cinema and Modernity: A Film Reader

H. G. Wells, Modernity, and the Movies

The Eisenstein Universe

The Metanarrative Hall of Mirrors: Reflex Action in Fiction and Film