Name: Pasolini, Fassbinder and Europe
SKU: 1-4438-2378-3
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Pasolini, Fassbinder and Europe

Between Utopia and Nihilism

Edited By: Fabio Vighi

£39.99

This collection of essays compares the legacy of Pier Paolo Pasolini and Rainer Werner Fassbinder, two of Europe's last radical filmmakers. Their uncompromising films oscillate between utopia and nihilism, inviting us to reconsider lost questions.

The present collection of essays brings into dialogue Pier Paolo Pasolini (1922–1975) and Rainer Werner Fassbinder (1945–1982) by comparing their cultural and intellectual legacy. Pasolini…

The present collection of essays brings into dialogue Pier Paolo Pasolini (1922–1975) and Rainer Werner Fassbinder (1945–1982) by comparing their cultural and intellectual legacy. Pasolini and Fassbinder are amongst the last radical filmmakers to have emerged in Europe. Born in Italy and Germany, they inherited a traumatic social and political past which is reflected in their works through a number of similarly articulated and unresolved tensions: high and popular cultures, theatre, literature and cinema, ideology and narration, major and minor codes of expression. The essays in this book examine the uncompromising character of Pasolini’s and Fassbinder’s films. Constantly oscillating between utopia and nihilism, these works invite us to reconsider subjective and collective questions which from today’s perspective seem lost forever.

Fabio Vighi is Reader in European Cinema, School of European Studies, Cardiff University, Wales. His research interests range from psychoanalytic theory to film, political and critical theory. His latest books are On Žižek’s Dialectics: Surplus, Subtraction, Sublimation (Continuum, 2010), and Sexual Difference in European Cinema: the Curse of Enjoyment (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2009).

Alexis Nuselovici (Nouss) is Chair of Modern Cultural Studies, School of European Studies, Cardiff University, Wales. His research interests include theory of translation, European cultures, cultural hybridity and métissage, Holocaust literature. His more recent books are Plaidoyer pour un monde métis (Plea for a Métis World; Paris: Textuel, 2005) and Paul Celan. Les lieux d’un déplacement (Paul Celan: Sites of a Displacement; Lormont: Éditions Le Bord de l’Eau, 2010).