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University of California Press

Film Manifestos and Global Cinema Cultures

A Critical Anthology
by Scott MacKenzie (Editor)
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Price: $95.00 / £80.00
Publication Date: Mar 2014
Edition: 1st Edition
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Pages: 680
ISBN: 9780520276741
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CHAPTER 1

The Avant-Garde(s)

Without a doubt the most prevalent type of film manifesto comes from the cinematic avant-garde. This makes a great deal of sense, as manifestos-whether political, aesthetic, or both-can be seen in the first instance as a form of avant-garde writing, calling into being a new future. From the early twentieth century onward, film manifestos played a formative role in the way in which the avant-garde was understood. This chapter begins with the "The Futurist Cinema Manifesto" from 1916, a key early film manifesto made all the more relevant because of the disappearance of most futurist cinema films through loss and neglect. The various Russian formalist and surrealist statements all point to the way in which avant-garde practices allowed for filmmakers to conceptualize the cinema as a tool to release the unconscious, or allow for revolutionary transformation, moving away from the realist principles that the cinema embodies so well.

László Moholy-Nagy's "Open Letter" calls for a cinema determined not by capital but by artistic vision. This is a refrain that filmmakers will return to again and again throughout this book. Cinema determined by artistic vision is also the theme of Mary Ellen Bute's "Light*Form*Movement*Sound" and Jim Davis's "The Only Dynamic Art." Both artists, working in "Absolute Film," experiment with the cinema's capacity to capture light, and in their manifestos they argue that the cinema ought to be used to enhance and explore new ways of seeing.

In a different vein the French Situationist Guy Debord argues that the image had replaced the more traditional commodity at the heart of capitalism. In his 1968 manifesto and film Society of the Spectacle he states: "The spectacle is not a collection of images; it is a social relation between people that is mediated by images." In the three manifestos Debord authored or coauthored contained herein, we see the development of his notion of situations; indeed, it is present in his first film manifesto, and his first published work, "Prolegomena for All Future Cinema." Debord's thought is picked up by a new generation of American avant-garde and experimental filmmakers in the 1990s. Far more concerned with the image "detritus" that surrounds and at times bombards contemporary culture, filmmakers like Peggy A[h]wesh, Craig Baldwin, and Keith Sanborn produced works that recycled the detritus images of contemporary culture into found footage films. Sanborn himself wrote one of the key avant-garde film manifestos of the time, "Modern, All Too Modern," modeled on the writings of Debord.

Other movements were far more polysemic than the surrealists, the Lettristes, and the Situationists. A key example is the New American Cinema movement of the late 1950s and early 1960s. The differences among George Kuchar's "8mm Film Manifesto," Stan Brakhage's Metaphors on Vision, Hollis Frampton's manifesto on metahistory, and the far more structural writings of Keewatin Dewdney on the "flicker film" speak to the heterogeneity of the American underground. Yet what united these filmmakers and their manifestos was a profound concern with alternative ways of seeing. And underlying this concern, despite the subsequent claims that some of these manifestos were apolitical and ahistorical, was the conviction that different ways of seeing the cinema meant different ways for spectators to see the world, perhaps even the world as it was and not how they, through indoctrination and ideology, thought they saw it. Indeed, the opening lines of Metaphors on Vision point to this in a dramatic formulation: "Imagine an eye unruled by man-made laws of perspective, an eye unprejudiced by compositional logic, an eye which does not respond to the name of everything but which must know each object encountered in life through an adventure of perception. How many colors are there in a field of grass to the crawling baby unaware of 'Green'? How many rainbows can light create for the untutored eye?" Here Brakhage is not speaking of the cinema but of perception itself; cinema, therefore, is just a medium through which to rediscover the process of seeing.

Nick Zedd's "Cinema of Transgression" manifesto points toward the third wave of avant-garde and experimental filmmaking in the United States and demonstrates the profound influence of the punk aesthetic on experimental film in New York during the 1980s. If punk is a rebellion against older, corporatized forms of music and art, the "Let's Set the Record Straight" manifesto, issued at the International Film Congress in Toronto in 1989, points to the large schism that had developed between the old guard of the avant-garde and the new generation of American and Canadian experimental filmmakers. In contrast, Jonas Mekas's "Anti-100 Years of Cinema" manifesto derides the celebrations of the cinema's first century that nevertheless neglect the avant-garde, old and new.

The final manifesto comes from Canada and points to the ways in which the avant-garde and experimental cinema is being reimagined through the development of alternative forms of pedagogy and the development of local ateliers. Philip Hoffman's Independent Imaging Retreat in Mount Forest, Ontario, foregrounds the artisanal aspect of experimental filmmaking and supports not only the screening of new avant-garde works but their production as well. Avant-garde cinema can only be truly understood through an understanding of the manifestos produced by artists, and these documents point to the controversial, visionary, and deeply political nature of the avant-garde.

The Futurist Cinema (Italy, 1916)

F. T. Marinetti, Bruno Corra, Emilio Settimelli, Arnaldo Ginna, Giacomo Balla, Remo Chiti

[First published in Italian in L'italia futurista, 15 November 1916. First published in English in R. W. Flint, Marinetti: Selected Writings (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1972).]

"The Futurist Cinema" manifesto argues for a total cinema, decrying the cinema of newsreels and documentaries as a shoddy subsection of the dramatic tradition. Thus, the writers call for a cinema of "polyexpressive symphony" that, through poetry and analogy, creates a cinema capable of a vast range of expression, while standing on its own as a distinctive art form. The futurists' critique of film's reliance on drama and its celebration of technology and the speed it brings to contemporary artistic practice foreshadows a line of attack present in many of the avant-garde manifestos to come.

The book, a wholly passéist means of preserving and communicating thought, has for a long time been fated to disappear like cathedrals, towers, crenellated walls, museums, and the paci

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About the Book

Film Manifestos and Global Cinema Cultures is the first book to collect manifestoes from the global history of cinema, providing the first historical and theoretical account of the role played by film manifestos in filmmaking and film culture. Focusing equally on political and aesthetic manifestoes, Scott MacKenzie uncovers a neglected, yet nevertheless central history of the cinema, exploring a series of documents that postulate ways in which to re-imagine the cinema and, in the process, re-imagine the world.

This volume collects the major European “waves” and figures (Eisenstein, Truffaut, Bergman, Free Cinema, Oberhausen, Dogme ‘95); Latin American Third Cinemas (Birri, Sanjinés, Espinosa, Solanas); radical art and the avant-garde (Buñuel, Brakhage, Deren, Mekas, Ono, Sanborn); and world cinemas (Iimura, Makhmalbaf, Sembene, Sen). It also contains previously untranslated manifestos co-written by figures including Bollaín, Debord, Hermosillo, Isou, Kieslowski, Painlevé, Straub, and many others. Thematic sections address documentary cinema, aesthetics, feminist and queer film cultures, pornography, film archives, Hollywood, and film and digital media. Also included are texts traditionally left out of the film manifestos canon, such as the Motion Picture Production Code and Pius XI's Vigilanti Cura, which nevertheless played a central role in film culture.

About the Author

Scott MacKenzie is Adjunct Professor of FiIm and Media Studies at Queen’s University in Ontario. He is co-editor of The Perils of Pedagogy: The Works of John Greyson (2013) and author of Screening Québec: Québécois Moving Images, National Identity and the Public Sphere (2004).
 

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction. “An Invention without a Future”
1. The Avant-Garde(s)
The Futurist Cinema (Italy, 1916)
F.T. Marinetti, Bruno Corra, et al.
Lenin Decree (USSR, 1919)
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
The ABCs of Cinema (France, 1917–1921)
Blaise Cendrars
WE: Variant of a Manifesto (USSR, 1922)
Dziga Vertov
The Method of Making Workers’ Films (USSR, 1925)
Sergei Eisenstein
Constructivism in the Cinema (USSR, 1928)
Alexei Gan
Preface: Un chien Andalou (France, 1928)
Luis Buñuel
Manifesto of the Surrealists Concerning L’Age d’or (France, 193)
The Surrealist Group
Manifesto on “Que Viva Mexico” (USA, 1933)
The Editors of Experimental Film
Spirit of Truth (France, 1933)
Le Corbusier
An Open Letter to the Film Industry and to All Who Are Interested in the Evolution of the Good Film (Hungary, 1934)
László Moholy-Nagy
Light*Form*Movement*Sound (USA, 1935)
Mary Ellen Bute
Prolegomena for All Future Cinema (France, 1952)
Guy Debord
No More Flat Feet! (France, 1952)
Lettriste International
The Lettristes Disavow the Insulters of Chaplin (France, 1952)
Jean-Isidore Isou, Maurice Lemaître, and Gabriel Pomerand
The Only Dynamic Art (USA, 1953)
Jim Davis
A Statement of Principles (USA, 1961)
Maya Deren
The First Statement of the New American Cinema Group (USA, 1961)
New American Cinema Group
Foundation for the Invention and Creation of Absurd Movies (USA, 1962)
Ron Rice
From Metaphors on Vision (USA, 1963)
Stan Brakhage
Kuchar 8mm Film Manifesto (USA, 1964)
George Kuchar
Film Andepandan [Independents] Manifesto (Japan, 1964)
Takahiko Iimura, Koichiro Ishizaki, et al.
Discontinuous Films (Canada, 1967)
Keewatin Dewdney
Hand-Made Films Manifesto (Australia, 1968)
Ubu Films, Thoms
Cinema Manifesto (Australia, 1971)
Arthur Cantrill and Corinne Cantrill
For a Metahistory of Film: Commonplace Notes and Hypotheses (USA, 1971)
Hollis Frampton
Elements of the Void (Greece, 1972)
Gregory Markopoulos
Small Gauge Manifesto (USA, 198)
JoAnn Elam and Chuck Kleinhans
Cinema of Transgression Manifesto (USA, 1985)
Nick Zedd
Modern, All Too Modern (USA, 1988)
Keith Sanborn
Open Letter to the Experimental Film Congress: Let’s Set the Record Straight (Canada, 1989)
Peggy Ahwesh, Caroline Avery, et al.
Anti-1 Years of Cinema Manifesto (USA, 1996)
Jonas Mekas
The Decalogue (Czech Republic, 1999)
Jan Švankmajer
Your Film Farm Manifesto on Process Cinema (Canada, 212)
Philip Hoffman

2. National and Transnational Cinemas
From “The Glass Eye” (Italy, 1933)
Leo Longanesi
The Archers’ Manifesto (UK, 1942)
Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger
What Is Wrong with Indian Films? (India, 1948)
Satyajit Ray
Buñuel the Poet (Mexico, 1951)
Octavio Paz
French Cinema Is Over (France, 1952)
Serge Berna, Guy Debord, et al.
Some Ideas on the Cinema (Italy, 1953)
Cesare Zavattini
A Certain Tendency in French Cinema (France, 1954)
François Truffaut
Salamanca Manifesto & Conclusions of the Congress of Salamanca (Spain, 1955)
Juan Antonio Bardem
Free Cinema Manifestos (UK, 1956–1959)
Committee for Free Cinema
The Oberhausen Manifesto (West Germany, 1962)
Alexander Kluge, Edgar Reitz, et al.
Untitled [Oberhausen 1965] (West Germany, 1965)
Jean-Marie Straub, Rodolf Thome, Dirk Alvermann, et al.
The Mannheim Declaration (West Germany, 1967)
Joseph von Sternberg, Alexander Kluge, et al.
Sitges Manifesto (Spain, 1967)
Manuel Revuelta, Antonio Artero, Joachin Jordà, and Julián Marcos
How to Make a Canadian Film (Canada, 1967)
Guy Glover
How to Not Make a Canadian Film (Canada, 1967)
Claude Jutra
From “The Estates General of the French Cinema, May 1968” (France, 1968)
Thierry Derocles, Michel Demoule, Claude Chabrol, and Marin Karmitz
Manifesto of the New Cinema Movement (India, 1968)
Arun Kaul and Mrinal Sen
What Is to Be Done? (France, 197)
Jean-Luc Godard
The Winnipeg Manifesto (Canada, 1974)
Denys Arcand, Colin Low, Don Shebib, et al.
Hamburg Declaration of German Filmmakers (West Germany, 1979)
Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Werner Herzog, Wim Wenders, et al.
Manifesto I (Denmark, 1984)
Lars von Trier
Manifesto II (Denmark, 1987)
Lars von Trier
Manifesto III: I Confess! (Denmark, 199)
Lars von Trier
The Cinema We Need (Canada, 1985)
R. Bruce Elder
Pathways to the Establishment of a Nigerian Film Industry (Nigeria, 1985)
Ola Balogun
Manifesto of 1988 (German Democratic Republic, 1988)
Young DEFA Filmmakers
In Praise of a Poor Cinema (Scotland, 1993)
Colin McArthur
Dogme ’95 Manifesto and Vow of Chastity (Denmark, 1995)
Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg
I Sinema Manifesto (Indonesia, 1999)
Dimas Djayadinigrat, Enison Sinaro, et al.

3. Third Cinemas, Colonialism, Decolonization, and Postcolonialism
Manifesto of the New Cinema Group (Mexico, 1961)
El grupo nuevo cine
Cinema and Underdevelopment (Argentina, 1962)
Fernando Birri
The Aesthetics of Hunger (Brazil, 1965)
Glauber Rocha
For an Imperfect Cinema (Cuba, 1969)
Julio García Espinosa
Towards a Third Cinema: Notes and Experiences for the Development of a Cinema of Liberation in the Third World (Argentina, 1969)
Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino
Film Makers and the Popular Government Political Manifesto (Chile, 197)
Comité de cine de la unidad popular
Consciousness of a Need (Uruguay, 197)
Mario Handler
Militant Cinema: An Internal Category of Third Cinema (Argentina, 1971)
Octavio Getino and Fernando Solanas
For Colombia 1971: Militancy and Cinema (Colombia, 1971)
Carlos Alvarez
The Cinema: Another Face of Colonised Québec (Canada, 1971)
Association professionnelle des cinéastes du Québec
8 Millimeters versus 8 Millions (Mexico, 1972)
Jaime Humberto Hermosillo, Arturo Ripstein, Paul Leduc, et al.
Manifesto of the Palestinian Cinema Group (Palestine, 1973)
Palestinian Cinema Group
Resolutions of the Third World Filmmakers Meeting (Algeria, 1973)
Fernando Birri, Ousmane Sembene, Jorge Silva, et al.
The Luz e Ação Manifesto (Brazil, 1973)
Carlos Diegues, Glauber Rocha, et al.
Problems of Form and Content in Revolutionary Cinema (Bolivia, 1976)
Jorge Sanjinés
Manifesto of the National Front of Cinematographers (Mexico, 1975)
Paul Leduc, Jorge Fons, et al.
The Algiers Charter on African Cinema (Algeria, 1975)
FEPACI (Fédération panafricaine des cinéastes)
Declaration of Principles and Goals of the Nicaraguan Institute of Cinema (Nicaragua, 1979)
Nicaraguan Institute of Cinema
What Is the Cinema for Us? (Mauritania, 1979)
Med Hondo
Niamey Manifesto of African Filmmakers (Niger, 1982)
FEPACI (Fédération panafricaine des cinéastes)
Black Independent Filmmaking: A Statement by the Black Audio Film Collective (UK, 1983)
John Akomfrah
From Birth Certificate of the International School of Cinema and Television in San Antonio de Los Baños, Cuba, Nicknamed the School of Three Worlds (Cuba, 1986)
Fernando Birri
FeCAViP Manifesto (France, 199)
Federation of Caribbean Audiovisual Professionals
Final Communique of the First Frontline Film Festival and Workshop (Zimbabwe, 199)
SADCC (South African Development Coordination Conference)
Pocha Manifesto #1 (USA, 1994)
Sandra Peña-Sarmiento
Poor Cinema Manifesto (Cuba, 24)
Humberto Solás
Jollywood Manifesto (Haiti, 28)
Ciné Institute
The Toronto Declaration: No Celebration of Occupation (Canada, 29)
John Greyson, Naomi Klein, et al.

4. Gender, Feminist, Queer, Sexuality, and Porn Manifestos
Woman’s Place in Photoplay Production (USA, 1914)
Alice Guy-Blaché
Hands Off Love (France, 1927)
Maxime Alexandre, Louis Aragon, et al.
The Perfect Filmic Appositeness of Maria Montez (USA, 1962)
Jack Smith
On Film No. 4 (In Taking the Bottoms of 365 Saints of Our Time) (UK, 1967)
Yoko Ono
Statement (USA, 1969)
Kenneth Anger
Wet Dream Film Festival Manifesto (The Netherlands, 197)
S.E.L.F. (Sexual Egalitarianism and Libertarian Fraternity)
Women’s Cinema as Counter-Cinema (UK, 1973)
Claire Johnston
Manifesto for a Non-sexist Cinema (Canada, 1974)
FECIP (Fédération européenne du cinéma progressiste)
Womanifesto (USA, 1975)
Feminists in the Media
Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema (UK, 1975)
Laura Mulvey
An Egret in the Porno Swamp: Notes of Sex in the Cinema (Sweden, 1977)
Vilgot Sjöman
For the Self-Expression of the Arab Woman (France, 1978)
Heiny Srour, Salma Baccar, and Magda Wassef
Manifesto of the Women Filmmakers (West Germany, 1979)
Verband der Filmarbeiterinnen
Wimmin’s Fire Brigade Communiqué (Canada, 1982)
Wimmin’s Fire Brigade
Thoughts on Women’s Cinema: Eating Words, Voicing Struggles (USA, 1986)
Yvonne Rainer
The Post Porn Modernist Manifesto (USA, 1989)
Annie Sprinkle, Veronica Vera, et al.
Statement of African Women Professionals of Cinema, Television and Video (Burkina Faso, 1991)
FEPACI (Fédération panafricaine des cinéastes)
Puzzy Power Manifesto: Thoughts on Women and Pornography (Denmark, 1998)
Vibeke Windeløv, Lene Børglum, et al.
Cinema with Tits (Spain, 1998)
Icíar Bollaín
My Porn Manifesto (France, 22)
Ovidie
No More Mr. Nice Gay: A Manifesto (USA, 29)
Todd Verow
Barefoot Filmmaking Manifesto (UK, 29)
Sally Potter
Dirty Diaries Manifesto (Sweden, 29)
Mia Engberg

5. Militating Hollywood
Code to Govern the Making of Talking, Synchronized and Silent Motion Pictures (Motion Picture Production Code) (USA, 193)
Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America
Red Films: Soviets Spreading Doctrine in U.S. Theatres (USA, 1935)
William Randolph Hearst
Statement of Principles (USA, 1944)
Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals
Screen Guide for Americans (USA, 1947)
Ayn Rand
White Elephant Art vs. Termite Art (USA, 1962)
Manny Farber
Super Fly: A Summary of Objections by the Kuumba Workshop (USA, 1972)
Kuumba Workshop
The World Is Changing: Some Thoughts on Our Business (USA, 1991)
Jeffrey Katzenberg
Full Frontal Manifesto (USA, 21)
Steven Soderbergh

6. The Creative Treatment of Actuality
Towards a Social Cinema (France, 193)
Jean Vigo
From “First Principles of Documentary” (UK, 1932)
John Grierson
Manifesto on the Documentary Film (UK, 1933)
Oswell Blakeston
Declaration of the Group of Thirty (France, 1953)
Jean Painlevé, Jacques-Yves Cousteau, Alain Resnais, et al.
Initial Statement of the Newsreel (USA, 1967)
New York Newsreel
Nowsreel, or the Potentialities of a Political Cinema (USA, 197)
Robert Kramer, New York Newsreel
Documentary Filmmakers Make Their Case (Poland, 1971)
Bohdan Kosinski, Krzysztof Kieslowski, and Tomasz Zygadlo
The Asian Filmmakers at Yamagata YIDFF Manifesto (Japan, 1989)
Kidlat Tahimik, Stephen Teo, et al.
Minnesota Declaration: Truth and Fact in Documentary Cinema (Germany, 1999)
Werner Herzog
Defocus Manifesto (Denmark, 2)
Lars von Trier
Kill the Documentary as We Know It (USA, 22)
Jill Godmilow
Ethnographic Cinema (EC): A Manifesto{ths}/{ths}A Provocation (USA, 23)
Jay Ruby
Reality Cinema Manifesto (Russia, 25)
Vitaly Manskiy
Documentary Manifesto (USA, 28)
Albert Maysles
China Independent Film Festival Manifesto: Shamans * Animals (People’s Republic of China, 211)
By several documentary filmmakers who participated and also who did not participate in the festival

7. States, Dictatorships, the Comintern, and Theocracies
Capture the Film! Hints on the Use of, Out of the Use of, Proletarian Film Propaganda (USA, 1925)
Willi Münzenberg
The Legion of Decency Pledge (USA, 1938)
Archbishop John McNicholas
Creative Film (Germany, 1935)
Joseph Goebbels
Vigilanti Cura: On Motion Pictures (Vatican City, 1936)
Pope Pius XI
Four Cardinal Points of A Revolução de Maio (Portugal, 1937)
António Lopes Ribeiro
From On the Art of Cinema (North Korea, 1973)
Kim Jong-il

8. Archives, Museums, Festivals, and Cinematheques
A New Source of History: The Creation of a Depository for Historical Cinematography (Poland/France, 1898)
Boleslaw Matuszewski
The Film Prayer (USA, c. 192)
A. P. Hollis
The Film Society (UK, 1925)
Iris Barry
Filmliga Manifesto (The Netherlands, 1927)
Joris Ivens, Henrik Scholte, Men’no Ter Bbaak, et al.
Statement of Purposes (USA, 1948)
Amos Vogel, Cinema 16
The Importance of Film Archives (UK, 1948)
Ernest Lindgren
A Plea for a Canadian Film Archive (Canada, 1949)
Hye Bossin
Open Letter to Film-Makers of the World (USA, 1966)
Jonas Mekas
A Declaration from the Committee for the Defense of La Cinémathèque française (France, 1968)
Committee for the Defense of La Cinémathèque française
Filmmakers versus the Museum of Modern Art (USA, 1969)
Hollis Frampton, Ken Jacobs, and Michael Snow
Anthology Film Archives Manifesto (USA, 197)
P. Adams Sitney
Toward an Ethnographic Film Archive (USA, 1971)
Alan Lomax
Brooklyn Babylon Cinema Manifesto (USA, 1998)
Scott Miller Berry and Stephen Kent Jusick
Don’t Throw Film Away: The FIAF 7th Anniversary Manifesto (France, 28)
Hisashi Okajima and La fédération internationale des archives du film Manifesto Working Group
The Lindgren Manifesto: The Film Curator of the Future (Italy, 21)
Paolo Cherchi Usai
Film Festival Form: A Manifesto (UK, 212)
Mark Cousins

9. Sounds and Silence
A Statement on Sound (USSR, 1928)
Sergei Eisenstein, Vsevolod Pudovkin, and Grigori Alexandrov
A Rejection of the Talkies (USA, 1931)
Charlie Chaplin
A Dialogue on Sound: A Manifesto (UK, 1934)
Basil Wright and B. Vivian Braun
Amalfi Manifesto (Italy, 1967)
Michelangelo Antonioni, Bernardo Bertolucci, Pier Paolo Pasolini, et al.

10. The Digital Revolution
Culture: Intercom and Expanded Cinema: A Proposal and Manifesto (USA, 1966)
Stan VanDerBeek
The Digital Revolution and the Future Cinema (Iran, 2)
Samira Makhmalbaf
The Pluginmanifesto (UK, 21)
Ana Kronschnabl
Digital Dekalogo: A Manifesto for a Filmless Philippines (The Philippines, 23)
Khavn de la Cruz

11. Aesthetics and the Futures of the Cinema
The Birth of the Sixth Art (France, 1911)
Ricciotto Canudo
Memo from Walt Disney to Don Graham (USA, 1935)
Walt Disney
The Birth of a New Avant Garde: La caméra-stylo (France, 1948)
Alexandre Astruc
From Preface to Film (UK, 1954)
Raymond Williams
The Snakeskin (Sweden, 1965)
Ingmar Bergman
Manifesto (Italy, 1965)
Roberto Rossellini, Bernardo Bertolucci, Tinto Brass, et al.
Manifesto on the Release of La Chinoise (France, 1967)
Jean-Luc Godard
Direct Action Cinema Manifesto (USA, 1985)
Rob Nilsson
Remodernist Film Manifesto (USA, 28)
Jesse Richards
The Age of Amateur Cinema Will Return (People’s Republic of China, 21)
Jia Zhangke

Appendix. What Is a Manifesto Film?
Notes
Acknowledgments of Permissions
Index

Reviews

"Every so often, a book appears that instantly commands my attention as a work of inescapable importance. Film Manifestos and Global Cinema Cultures: A Critical Anthology is such a volume. . . .The most important film book of 2014."
— Film International
"Scott MacKenzie’s astonishingly broad and amazingly thorough assembly of some 180 manifestos, Film Manifestos and Global Cinema Cultures: A Critical Anthology, gives a vivid sense of the centrality of the manifesto to the breadth and scope of cinema as it exists today."
— Film Quarterly
"The most important film book of the year. . . . required reading for both students and lovers of cinema."
— CHOICE
'Film Manifestos and Global Cinema Cultures is a strikingly massive and inclusive anthology of film manifestos that is notable for its global comprehensiveness and sheer quantity of surprises."
— Canadian Journal of Film Studies
"This book offers an exciting and productive way of thinking about cinema, allowing the reader to become acquainted with a large range of important declarations on film and on its mission from across its history. This is a volume that every film scholar will want to have."
—Dana Polan, Professor of Cinema Studies, New York University

"Embracing the entire history of cinema, this work maps in detail territory barely explored hitherto, and is fully contextualized through historically informed and theoretically informative commentary that places the manifesto at the heart of film history and film culture. A hugely impressive achievement."
—Annette Kuhn, co-author of the Oxford Dictionary of Film Studies

"This is a galvanizing collection of hundreds of calls to arms for the cinema. It's an inspiring affirmation of the core vitality of this most important art across decades and throughout the world."
—Bill Nichols, author of Introduction to Documentary, 2nd edition, and Engaging Cinema