A01=Rob Stone
American
Author_Rob Stone
Category=ATFA
Cinema
eq_art-fashion-photography
eq_bestseller
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
Film
forthcoming
Independent
Philosophy
Transcendentalism
Product details
- ISBN 9781399539128
- Dimensions: 156 x 234mm
- Publication Date: 30 Nov 2026
- Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Hardback
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Imagined Life: American Independent Cinema and Transcendentalism examines the prevailing characteristics of American independent cinema and explores its longstanding debt to the Transcendentalists. This nineteenth-century New England group, led by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau and Margaret Fuller, subscribed to an idealistic philosophy based upon an intuitive and imaginative understanding that knowledge transcends logic and empiricism.
By analysing a range of American independent films, this book reveals a vital nexus operating in contemporary America between this uniquely North American philosophy and quintessentially American film.
Just as the Transcendentalists strategised immersion, observation and reflection and sought empathy as the key to meaning, which came when adherents acquired trust in themselves to comprehend what was morally right, so this volume argues that this same strategy informs and characterises the creative praxes prevalent in recent and contemporary American independent cinema. To the extent that American independent cinema continues to provide a forum for marginalised identities, whether these be racial, sexual, political or even philosophical, this study demonstrates that the conscience of America is sustained and strengthened in independent films that embody Transcendentalist ideas and praxes.
Rob Stone is Emeritus Professor in Film Studies at the University of Birmingham. His research interests are in the dynamics of World Cinema, Hispanic cinemas and American independent cinema, with particular emphasis on the relations between aesthetics, politics, and philosophy. His publications include The Cinema of Richard Linklater: Walk, Don’t Run (2013; 2nd edition 2018) and Lady Bird: Self-Determination for a New Century (2022). He also co-edits The Routledge Companion to World Cinema (2017; 2nd edition 2027) and is a filmmaker and video essayist.
