Greek Weird Wave: A Cinema of Biopolitics Dimitris Papanikolaou 9781474436328

Examines political engagement in recent films of the Greek New Wave Shortlisted for the 2022 Keeley Book Prize Offers an up to date account of 21st century Greek filmmaking Provides a theoretically informed analysis that proposes new terms and a fresh viewpoint Proposes the Greek Weird Wave as a paradigmatic cinema movement, which points to a much larger development of biopolitical realism in World Cinema Listen to author Dimitris Papanikolaou discuss the book on the Archipelago podcast What relates the early films of Yorgos Lanthimos with Vasilis Kekatos's 2019 Cannes triumph The Distance Between Us and the Sky? What is the lasting legacy of Panos Koutras's 2009 trans narrative Strella: A Woman's Way in today's gender and sexual identity activism in Greece? What was the role of cultural collectives in the formation of a 'weird history' of Greek cinema? And how did cinema and other cultural forms respond to a sense of Crisis and an ever expansive management of life that we have now learnt to call biopolitics? This book uses such questions in order to establish a cinematic and cultural history of Greece during the last difficult decade in an engaged and highly original manner. It focuses on key films from the post-2009 'New' or 'Weird Wave' of Greek cinema, proposing the Greek Weird Wave as a paradigmatic cinema movement of biopolitical realism. At once representing, reframing and reimagining the present, the Greek Weird Wave points to a much larger development in World Cinema. "

About the Author
Dr Dimitris Papanikolaou is Associate Professor of Modern Greek Studies and Fellow of St Cross College at the University of Oxford.

Reviews
"[Papanikolaou] brings together pieces of an informal Greek cinematic archive, collects unnoticed information, and weaves the threads that connect people, practices, technologies of survival, gestures and spaces, inside and outside the cinematic or artistic context; it is this auto-ethnographical participative approach that makes this book so valuable, and also so enjoyable to read. [...] And yes, it is a weird book, as funny, brilliant, provocative, personal and political, biting and moving, as the films of this wave are. " -Anna Poupou, National & Kapodistrian University of Athens



Book Information
ISBN 9781474436328
Author Dimitris Papanikolaou
Format Paperback
Page Count 224
Imprint Edinburgh University Press
Publisher Edinburgh University Press