FILM AND POLITICS, Edited book from the international scientific conference FILM AND POLITICS, March 2024, Institute for Political Studies, Belgrade, editor Ivan Matić and translator Dajana Lazarević.
A large number of scientific papers have been written in Serbia on the topic of creating and analyzing film art. Nevertheless, by reviewing the professional literature, we came to the conclusion that there are numerous topics that researchers have not covered to date, above all when it comes to politics on film. Film is a very powerful (if not the most powerful) means of implementing soft power. That means there is a real need in modern Serbian science to pay more attention to exactly that topic.
Since the dawn of modern cinema in the early twentieth century, film and politics have been inextricably linked. This link, however, has not always been apparent: Yet, as is made evident even by the number of articles dealing with the link between film and soft power in this edited book, cinema, even in its most abstract forms, has almost always had some form of ideological background or worldview and has typically sought to introduce political ideas into the minds of the audience without their direct awareness.
The first chapter of this edited book deals with apparently the ‘least’ political form of film: sci-fi and fantasy: these genres are typically set either many centuries into the future, or in distant, magical realms, but the inspiration behind them always goes back to our world and its goings-on. The second chapter is dedicated to the function of film as a tool of geopolitics and global strategy: here we explore how countries seek to further their goals through the soft power of film. Ideology is the centerpiece of the third chapter, with articles dealing with both the representations of various ideologies on the big screen, and the effects of said ideologies on the films made under their banner. The topic of the fourth chapter are political documentaries and filmmaking: here, our authors focus on the ‘most’ political on films as well as the process of filmmaking itself in its various political and ideological aspects. Finally, the final chapter deals with the relation between film and history, exploring various historical topics, eras, and personalities through the lens of cinema.
