University of Wales Press Utopia and Reality: Documentary, Activism and Imagined Worlds (New Dimensions in Science Fiction)

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. Review A welcome consideration of the utopian dimension of cinema, which goes beyond the usual description of fiction films that depict alternative societies (good and bad) to explore the utopian possibilities of documentary film. --- Emeritus Professor Peter Fitting, University of Toronto About the Author Simon Spiegel is a research associate at the Department of Film Studies of the University of Zurich, and Privatdozent at the University of Bayreuth. Andrea Reiter is a film scholar and documentary filmmaker. She has a doctorate in film studies from the University of Zurich. Marcy Goldberg is a film historian, university lecturer, editor and translator.