Cinema and Unconventional Warfare in the Twentieth Century
Subtitle: Insurgency, Terrorism and Special Operations
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Published: 2018
Language: eng
Number of pages: 280
ISBN-13: 9781350055698
Subjects: War films; Film criticism
Description: Cinematic representations of unconventional warfare have received sporadic attention to date. However, this pattern has now begun to change with the rise of insurgency and counter-insurgency in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the growing importance of jihadist terrorism in the wake of 9/11. This ground-breaking study provides a much-needed examination of global unconventional warfare in 20th-century filmmaking, with case studies from the United States, Britain, France, Italy and Israel. Paul B. Rich examines Hollywood's treatment of counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency in the United States; British post-colonial insurgencies in Malaya and Kenya and British special operations in the Second World War; French filmmaking and the reluctance to deal with the bitter war in Algeria in the 1950s; Italian neorealism and its impact on films dealing with urban insurgency by Roberto Rossellini, Nanni Loy and Gillo Pontecorvo, and Israel and the upsurge of Palestinian terrorism. Whilst only a small number of films on these conflicts have been able to rise above stereotyping insurgents and terrorists - in some cases due to a pattern of screen orientalism - [this book] stresses the positive political gains to be derived from humanizing terrorists and terrorist movements, especially in the context of modern jihadist terrorism. -- Back cover.