Greek Weird Wave: A Cinema of Biopolitics

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. See more