Metacinema

When a work of art shows an interest in its own status as a work of art—either by reference to itself or to other works—we have become accustomed to calling this move “meta.” While scholars and critics have, for decades, referred to reflexivity in films, it is only here, for the first time, that a group of leading and emerging film theorists joins to directly and systematically address with clarity and rigor the meanings and implications of the meta for cinema. In ten new essays and a selection of vital canonical works, contributors chart, explore, and advance the ways in which metacinema is at once a mode of filmmaking and a heuristic for studying cinematic attributes. What we have here, then, is not just an engagement with certain practices and concepts in widespread use in the movies (from Hollywood to global cinema, from documentary to the experimental and avant-garde), but also the development of a veritable and vital new genre of film studies. Since metacinema has become an increasingly prominent cultural phenomenon—a kind of art and logic familiar to everyday experience around the world—its abundance and pervasiveness draws our attention. With more and more films expressing reflexivity, recursion, reference to other films, mise en abîme, seriality, and exhibiting related intertextual traits, the time is overdue for the kind of capacious yet nuanced critical study now in hand.