Contemporary Cinema is a major study of key developments in the cinema over the last thirty years. It reworks Pasolini's landmark concept of 'the cinema of poetry' to look at the transformation of film form in its encounter with society, the sacred, the subjective and the presence of the camera. Poetic cinemas are seen as creating a distincitive match in their own cultures between critical social engagement and the delirium of form. In the 1970s,...