Recycled Culture in Contemporary Art and Film
The Uses of Nostalgia

This study explores works of art and film that resist the pull of the past.

Vera Dika (Author)

9780521016315, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 9 June 2003

254 pages, 35 b/w illus.
24.7 x 13.3 x 1.6 cm, 0.36 kg

The reuse of images, plots and genres from film history has become prominent in contemporary culture. In this study, Vera Dika explores this phenomenon from a broad range of critical perspectives, examining works of art and film that resist the pull of the past. Dika provides an in-depth analysis of works in several media, including performance, photography, Punk film, and examples from mainstream American and European cinema. Proclaiming the renewed importance of the image and of genre, she investigates works as diverse as Cindy Sherman's Untitled Film Stills, Amos Poe's The Foreigner, Terence Malick's Badlands, and Francis Ford Coppola's One from the Heart. Her study positions avant-garde art work within the context of contemporary mainstream film practice, as well as in relationship to their historical moment.

1. The returned image
2. Art and film: New York City in the late 1970s: Jack Goldstein, Robert Longo, Cindy Sherman, Amos Poe
3. Generic returns - the dream has ended: Badlands, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Shootist, The Last Waltz
4. Re-considering the nostalgia film: American Graffiti, The Conformist, Rocky Horror Picture Show
5. A return to the 1950s - the dangers in Utopia: Grease, Last Exit to Brooklyn
6. Coppola and Scorsese - authorial views: Apocalypse Now, One From the Heart, The Last Temptation of Christ
7. To destroy the sign: Gus Van Sant's Psycho, Geronimo, JFK.

Subject Areas: Films, cinema [APF]