World Cinema and the Ethics of Realism

World Cinema and the Ethics of Realism is a highly original study. It breaks away from the binary divisions which underpin most of film theory, and challenges traditional views of cinematic realism, drawing instead on the filmmaker's commitment to truth and to film's material bond with the real. Nagib conducts comparative case studies drawn from a wide range of realist trends, including the Japanese New Wave, the nouvelle vague, the Cinema Novo, the New German Cinema, the Inuit Indigenous Cinema, the Taiwan New Cinema and the New Brazilian Cinema. She reveals that these creative peaks are animated by the desire to reveal concealed or unknown political, social, psychological or mystical dimensions of reality - as observed in the various cycles of new waves and new cinemas across film history and geography. World Cinema and the Ethics of Realism is groundbreaking scholarship that surveys and defines World Cinema not as the opposite of Hollywood, but in positive terms; and draws upon the work of Badiou and Ranciere to take film theory in a bold new direction.

Lcia Nagib is Centenary Professor of World Cinemas at the University of Leeds.