Book Review: Beyond romantic resistance: Anti-capitalist aesthetics in narrative cinema

Kitchen’s Film, Negation and Freedom offers a compelling analysis of Romanticism’s political legacy in cinema, but its conceptual and historical scope remains limited by the absence of feminist perspectives. Engaging with the historiography of women’s cinema and the gendered aesthetics of film production would not only enrich Kitchen’s framework but also expand the possibilities for understanding cinematic resistance in more inclusive and transformative ways. While Kitchen’s study contributes meaningfully to debates on cinema and critique, it remains incomplete without engaging the gendered politics of film history and theory. A feminist intervention would not only recover marginalized voices but also reframe the very terms of artistic and political negation.