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Intimate Animation
Through research and firsthand interviews with industry trailblazers as well as newer voices, this book looks deeply at the role animation has played in presenting elaborate and complex concepts relating to love and sexuality.
Anita Loos Rediscovered
Anita Loos (1888-1981) was one of Hollywood's most respected and prolific screenwriters, as well as an acclaimed novelist and playwright. This unique collection of previously unpublished film treatments, short stories, and one-act plays spans fifty years of her creative writing and showcases the breadth and depth of her talent. Beginning in 1912 with the stories she submitted from her San Diego home (some made into films by D. W. Griffith), through her collaboration with Colette on the play Gigi, Anita Loos wrote almost every day for the screen, stage, books, or magazines. Film scripts include San Francisco, The Women, and Red-Headed Woman. The list of stars for whom she created unforgettable roles includes Mary Pickford, Jean Harlow, Clark Gable, Audrey Hepburn, and Carol Channing. This collection has been selected by Anita's niece and close friend, the best-selling author Mary Anita Loos, together with the acclaimed film historian Cari Beauchamp. Their essays are laced throughout the volume, introducing each section and giving previously untold insights and behind-the-scenes stories about Anita--her life, her friendships, and her times.
Bunuel and Mexico
Though Luis Bu簽uel, one of the most important filmmakers of the twentieth century, spent his most productive years as a director in Mexico, film histories and criticism invariably pay little attention to his work during this period. The first book-length English-language study of Bu簽uel's Mexican films, this book explores a significant but neglected area of this filmmaker's distinguished career and thus fills a gap in our appreciation and understanding of both Bu簽uel's achievement and the history of Mexican film. Ernesto Acevedo-Mu簽oz considers Bu簽uel's Mexican films--made between 1947 and 1965--within the context of a national and nationalist film industry, comparing the filmmaker's employment of styles, genres, character types, themes, and techniques to those most characteristic of Mexican cinema. In this study Bu簽uel's films emerge as a link between the Classical Mexican cinema of the 1930s through the 1950s and the "new" Cinema of the 1960s, flourishing in a time of crisis for the national film industry and introducing some of the stylistic and conceptual changes that would revitalize Mexican cinema.
TV on Strike
TV on Strike examines the upheaval in the entertainment industry by telling the inside story of the first writers' strike--the hundred-day writers' strike that thwarted Hollywood in late 2007 and early 2008. The television industry's uneasy transition to the digital age was the driving force behind what seemed then to be the most significant labor dispute of the twenty-first century. Now, in 2024, we know it was only the first battle. The strike put a spotlight on how the advent of new media distribution platforms reshaped the traditional business models that governed the television industry for decades. The uncertainty that sent writers out into the streets of Los Angeles and New York with picket signs laid bare the depth of the divide between the media barons who rule the entertainment industry and the writers who are integral as the creators of movies and television shows. With both sides afraid of losing millions in future profits, a critical communication breakdown spurred a fierce battle with repercussions reverberated in the 2023 writers and actors strikes. The saga of the 2007-2008 Writers Guild of America strike is told through the eyes of the key players on both sides of the negotiating table and of the foot soldiers who surprised even themselves with the strength of their resolve to fight for their rights in the face of an ambiguous future. In the years since the strike ended, the rise of digital distribution platforms has continued to change the business landscape in ways that few could have predicted when Hollywood guilds were first feverishly trying to hammer out a contract template for a new era.
The Films of Walter Hill
This book is an academic study of the work of an important American director working primarily in the action genre. The book explores the ways in which Hill's filmography reveals his point of view and intensifies classical approaches to storytelling.
Autism in Film and Television
Global awareness of autism has skyrocketed since the 1980s, and popular culture has caught on, with film and television producers developing ever more material featuring autistic characters. Autism in Film and Television brings together more than a dozen essays on depictions of autism, exploring how autistic characters are signified in media and how the reception of these characters informs societal understandings of autism. Editors Murray Pomerance and R. Barton Palmer have assembled a pioneering examination of autism's portrayal in film and television. Contributors consider the various means by which autism has been expressed in films such as Phantom Thread, Mercury Rising, and Life Animated and in television and streaming programs including Atypical, The Bridge, Stranger Things, Star Trek: The Next Generation, and Community. Across media, the figure of the brilliant, accomplished, and "quirky" autist has proven especially appealing. Film and television have thus staked out a progressive position on neurodiversity by insisting on screen time for autism but have done so while frequently ignoring the true diversity of autistic experience. As a result, this volume is a welcome celebration of nonjudgmental approaches to disability, albeit one that is still freighted with stereotypes and elisions.
Mixed Feelings in France
While multicultural comedies criticise hegemonic whiteness and outdated stances on race relations, they simultaneously perpetuate the colonial aesthetic register by deploying a 罈republican gaze竄 - an ironic meta-narrative perspective on ethnic minorities. Ewelina Pepiak analyses how gender and ethnicity are represented in seven contemporary French comedies (2008-2018) including mixed-race couples, focusing on a trope of m矇tissage (biological and cultural mixing) and white femininity. As analyses of ethnic and gender representations remain scarce due to the slow emergence of postcolonial studies in France, this study adds significant insights to the postcolonial debate.
Rethinking the Cinematic Cold War
Historical consensus increasingly views the Cold War period as a multifaceted conflict which extended beyond the borders of the USSR and USA, encompassing both cultural and diplomatic history. Debate remains, however, about how best to balance the Cold War as a cultural event with the existence of Cold War culture. Rethinking the Cinematic Cold War provides a fresh reassessment of this period, highlighting how the convergence of geopolitical interests, cultural production and exchange, and technological and media history shaped a unique epoch. Consequently, this volume seeks to diagnose the role cinema played in expanding the ideological outlook of artists, audiences, and policymakers.
African Energy Worlds in Film and Media
Can you imagine a post-petroleum world? African Energy Worlds in Film and Media joins energy humanists committed to undoing our deep dependence on fossil fuels and advancing equitable energy transitions by advancing this vision with a spotlight on African perspectives.African cinema is a rich and varied medium for investigating the entanglements and social embeddedness of energy with global modernity and for imagining a world that leaves fossil fuels behind for unrealized green energy futures. African Energy Worlds in Film and Media shows us how African cinema makes sensible the energetic aspects of life in the ecological mesh that is planet Earth and grounds us in the everyday of the postcolonial, bringing attention to the enduring legacies of racism and colonialism that unevenly distribute energy-related violence and risk and amplifying Africans' demands for access to the energy networks that undergird modernity. With a focus on feature, documentary, and arthouse films, including canonical films by Ousmane Semb癡ne and Djbril Diop Mambety and new work by emergent directors Nelson Makengo and Djo Tunda Wa Munga, author Carmela Garritano examines how these stories depict an array of energy sources from mineral extraction to wind and the by-products of these energy processes, like plastic and electronic waste.Situated at the intersection of film studies, African studies, and energy humanities, African Energy Worlds in Film and Media analyzes the political, social, and economic dimensions of global energy forms and systems as represented in African cinema.
African Energy Worlds in Film and Media
Can you imagine a post-petroleum world? African Energy Worlds in Film and Media joins energy humanists committed to undoing our deep dependence on fossil fuels and advancing equitable energy transitions by advancing this vision with a spotlight on African perspectives.African cinema is a rich and varied medium for investigating the entanglements and social embeddedness of energy with global modernity and for imagining a world that leaves fossil fuels behind for unrealized green energy futures. African Energy Worlds in Film and Media shows us how African cinema makes sensible the energetic aspects of life in the ecological mesh that is planet Earth and grounds us in the everyday of the postcolonial, bringing attention to the enduring legacies of racism and colonialism that unevenly distribute energy-related violence and risk and amplifying Africans' demands for access to the energy networks that undergird modernity. With a focus on feature, documentary, and arthouse films, including canonical films by Ousmane Semb癡ne and Djbril Diop Mambety and new work by emergent directors Nelson Makengo and Djo Tunda Wa Munga, author Carmela Garritano examines how these stories depict an array of energy sources from mineral extraction to wind and the by-products of these energy processes, like plastic and electronic waste.Situated at the intersection of film studies, African studies, and energy humanities, African Energy Worlds in Film and Media analyzes the political, social, and economic dimensions of global energy forms and systems as represented in African cinema.
Ingmar Bergman Out of Focus
Director Ingmar Bergman occupies a central place in the history of modern cinema. Credited with igniting a cinematic revolution, his ability to produce work which resonated with audiences globally has brought scholarly attention to the impact of Bergman's Swedish background on his oeuvre. Ingmar Bergman Out of Focus revises this question of Bergman's "familiarity" to produce a more expansive understanding of Bergman's cultural heritage. Considering the impact of Bergman's films on film festival organizers, critics, academics, and audiences all over the world, this volume illuminates how Bergman's film aesthetics simultaneously shaped modern culture and were themselves reshaped by the debates and concerns that preoccupied his viewers.
River Delta Futures
How are climate change, weather-related disasters, food and water insecurity, and energetic and infrastructural collapse narrated audiovisually in the most environmentally vulnerable areas of the Planet? This book addresses this and related questions by adopting a local and transdisciplinary perspective on river deltas from different areas of the world. River deltas have historically been hotspots for human civilizations, as populations settled in their fertile grounds seeking resources and opportunities for prosperity. Despite this, the terrains and livelihoods of those who rely on them are under threat from human exploitation, environmental degradation, and rapidly accelerating climate change. Inspired by the UN Sustainable Development Goals, this book provides a range of focused audiovisual analyses of deltaic spaces. Ranging across a variety of media, including documentary filmmaking, animation, photography, collaborative comic making, participatory visual art practices, soundwalking, and film analysis, it examines the role that contemporary audiovisual media play in forging global environmental imaginaries. In doing so, it adopts a transdisciplinary approach to the Blue Humanities from countries across the world, including Canada, Bolivia, Brazil, Greece, Nigeria, Senegal, India, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Thailand, and Vietnam.
The Metamodern Slasher Film
It is commonly proposed that since the mid-2000s, the slasher subgenre has been dominated by unoriginal remakes of "classics". Consequently, most original slasher films have been ignored by academics (and critics), leaving the field with a limited understanding of this highly popular subgenre. This book corrects that mischaracterisation by analysing contemporary slasher films that sincerely attempt to innovate within the subgenre. I argue that these films reflect broader cultural turns towards sincerity, optimism in the face of crisis, and an emphasis on felt experience that are indicative of a metamodern sensibility. This is the first book to use metamodernism to analyse film in a sustained way, and the first academic work to use metamodernism to examine horror. The Metamodern Slasher offers readers new ways to understand the slasher film, the horror genre, and also the cultural moment we find ourselves in.
Martin Scorsese
Discover the genius of Martin Scorsese - one of cinema's greatest storytellers.For over 50 years, Martin Scorsese has been one of cinema's most celebrated directors. From a Catholic kid in Manhattan to a legendary filmmaker, he's shaped Hollywood with masterpieces such as Taxi Driver, Goodfellas and The Irishman.But what makes a Scorsese film unique? His stories explore power, morality, and human nature, blending raw emotion with intellectual depth. Whether reinventing noir, musicals or crime dramas, his work captures the pulse of America and the Italian-American experience.This book dives into all 26 of his films, breaking down his signature themes, iconic collaborations with Robert De Niro and Leonardo DiCaprio, and his place in film history. A true movie fanatic and preservationist, Scorsese continues to push boundaries - proving that cinema isn't just entertainment, it's an art form.
Afrofuturism in Black Panther
Afrofuturism in Black Panther: Gender, Identity, and the Re-making of Blackness, through an interdisciplinary and intersectional analysis of Black Panther, discusses the importance of superheroes and the ways in which they are especially important to Black fans. Aside from its global box office success, Black Panther paves the way for future superhero narratives due to its underlying philosophy to base the story on a narrative that is reliant on Afro-futurism. The film's storyline, the book posits, leads viewers to think about relevant real-world social questions as it taps into the cultural zeitgeist in an indelible way. Contributors to this collection approach Black Panther not only as a film, but also as Afrofuturist imaginings of an African nation untouched by colonialism and antiblack racism: the film is a map to alternate states of being, an introduction to the African Diaspora, a treatise on liberation and racial justice, and an examination of identity. As they analyze each of these components, contributors pose the question: how can a film invite a reimagining of Blackness?
Hollywood’s Unofficial Film Corps
It has long been known that Hollywood was actively involved in shaping US public opinion during World War II. Less well documented are the ways in which Washington sought to work behind the scenes, subtly obliterating the boundaries between "studio" and "government" films. Michael Berkowitz studies the contributions of humorist and best-selling author Leo Rosten (The Joys of Yiddish, The Education of H*Y*M*A*N* K*A*P*L*A*N) and writer, producer, and screenwriter Budd Schulberg (On the Waterfront, A Face in the Crowd) in order to examine the elusive story of Jewish Hollywood's role in World War II. Hollywood's Unofficial Film Corps shows that Rosten, Schulberg, and others--including Garson Kanin, George Cukor, Stanley Kramer, and Jules Buck--created movies that were both entertaining and politically expeditious for US war aims. At the same time, in an effort to unify the American public, they avoided focusing on the fate of European Jews, even while addressing racism and antisemitism in the United States. Jewish themes were often downplayed, and Jewish directors, writers, and other contributors frequently went uncredited. As Berkowitz writes, "Rosten's cohort changed feature films forever." Thanks to his research, we now have a better understanding of how and why.
I Walked With a Zombie
I Walked with a Zombie (1943), Val Lewton's second feature for RKO Radio Pictures, was described by critic Robin Wood as 'perhaps the most delicate poetic fantasy in the American Cinema.' Following immediately in the wake of the groundbreaking Cat People (1942), Zombie pioneered an even more radical narrative approach yet proved to be the critical and commercial equal of its predecessor, cementing the reputation of both Lewton and his director, Jacques Tourneur.Despite the lurid, studio-imposed title, I Walked with a Zombie is a subtle and ambiguous visual poem that advanced a daring condemnation of slavery and colonialism at a time when such themes were being actively suppressed by government censors. Clive Dawson charts the complex development and production of the project, essential to understanding the concerns of the filmmakers in the context of wartime Hollywood, then analyses the film in detail, referencing a broad range of academic studies of the audio-visual text and distilling new insight into its layers of meaning. Finally, he explores the film's reception, and the influence it exerted on the horror genre and beyond. Extensive primary research has uncovered a wealth of previously unpublished new material that solves many unanswered questions and dispels various myths about this utterly unique film.
Nomadic Cinema
From In Borneo, the Land of the Head-Hunters to The Epic of Everest to Camping Among the Indians, the early twentieth century was the heyday of expedition filmmaking. As new technologies transformed global transportation and opened new avenues for documentation, and as imperialism and capitalism expanded their reach, Western filmmakers embarked on journeys to places they saw as exotic, seeking to capture both the monumental and the mundane. Their films portrayed far-flung locales, the hardships of travel, and the day-to-day lives of Indigenous people through a deeply colonial lens. Nomadic Cinema is a groundbreaking history of these films, analyzing them as visual records of colonialism that also offer new possibilities for recognizing Indigenous histories. Alison Griffiths examines expedition films made in Borneo, Central Asia, Tibet, Polynesia, and the American Southwest, reinterpreting them from decolonial perspectives to provide alternative accounts of exploration. She considers the individuals and institutions--including the American Museum of Natural History--responsible for creating the films, the spectators who sought them out, and the Indigenous intermediaries whose roles white explorers minimized. Ambitious and interdisciplinary, Nomadic Cinema ranges widely, from the roots of expedition films in medieval cartography and travel writing to still-emerging technologies of virtual and augmented reality. Highlighting the material conditions of filmmaking and the environmental footprint left by exploration, this book recovers Indigenous memory and sovereignty from within long-buried sources.
Nomadic Cinema
From In Borneo, the Land of the Head-Hunters to The Epic of Everest to Camping Among the Indians, the early twentieth century was the heyday of expedition filmmaking. As new technologies transformed global transportation and opened new avenues for documentation, and as imperialism and capitalism expanded their reach, Western filmmakers embarked on journeys to places they saw as exotic, seeking to capture both the monumental and the mundane. Their films portrayed far-flung locales, the hardships of travel, and the day-to-day lives of Indigenous people through a deeply colonial lens. Nomadic Cinema is a groundbreaking history of these films, analyzing them as visual records of colonialism that also offer new possibilities for recognizing Indigenous histories. Alison Griffiths examines expedition films made in Borneo, Central Asia, Tibet, Polynesia, and the American Southwest, reinterpreting them from decolonial perspectives to provide alternative accounts of exploration. She considers the individuals and institutions--including the American Museum of Natural History--responsible for creating the films, the spectators who sought them out, and the Indigenous intermediaries whose roles white explorers minimized. Ambitious and interdisciplinary, Nomadic Cinema ranges widely, from the roots of expedition films in medieval cartography and travel writing to still-emerging technologies of virtual and augmented reality. Highlighting the material conditions of filmmaking and the environmental footprint left by exploration, this book recovers Indigenous memory and sovereignty from within long-buried sources.
Movies and the Church of Baseball
Christian religious imagery and symbolism has a long history in American baseball cinema, from The Busher (1919) to Angels in the Outfield(1994) and present-day movies. This book examines The Natural, Field of Dreams, Bull Durham and other films, exploring the frequency of Christian imagery and themes in the American baseball movie. From Babe Ruth's performance of a miracle to help a disabled boy walk again in The Babe Ruth Story to Shoeless Joe Jackson's question to Ray Kinsella--"Is this heaven?"--in Field of Dreams, Christian themes and American baseball film are inextricably linked. This discussion encompasses symbolic imagery in mainstream film, Christian baseball movies directed by Christian filmmakers promoting their faith messages and images of America as a prelapsarian paradise before "The Fall."
Sixties Shockers
This comprehensive filmography provides critical analyses and behind-the-scenes stories for 600 horror, science fiction and fantasy films from the 1960s. During those tumultuous years horror cinema flourished, proving as innovative and unpredictable as the decade itself. Representative titles include Night of the Living Dead, The Haunting, Carnival of Souls, Repulsion, The Masque of the Red Death, Targets and The Conqueror Worm. An historical overview chronicles the explosive growth of horror films during this era, as well as the emergence of such dynamic directorial talents as Roman Polanski, George Romero, Francis Ford Coppola and Peter Bogdanovich.
The Third Sex
Winner of the 2022 Peter Lang Emerging Scholars Competition in Media & Communication. Thailand, the "land of smiles," is often seen as a "gay paradise." But how does Thai culture understand sexuality? This book moves beyond Western frameworks to explore non-normative genders like kathoey, gay, tom, and dee. Through historical context and film analysis, it challenges assumptions, embraces Thai nuances, and offers a deeper understanding of the "third sex" concept. Examining historical texts and contemporary films, the book sheds light on the experiences of individuals with non-normative genders-their challenges, triumphs, and contributions to Thai society. This book offers critical insights into the complexities of gender and sexuality in Thai cultures, challenging readers to broaden their perspectives. Essential reading for anyone interested in gender studies, sexuality, queer studies, film, and Thai culture.
The Prop
What are film props? What do they do? This book answers these questions by a close attention to those material objects that are used to construct cinematic worlds. The term "prop" is short for property. This truncated term's etymology belies the expansiveness of the concept and indicates the micro and macro scales at which the prop operates. Props are the material--often literal--furniture of cinema's diegetic reality. Props are also narrative agents: think of the animacy of objects in Jean Epstein's account of photog矇nie, the crystal egg in Risky Business, or the domestic bric-?-brac of Sirk's melodramas. The prop is central to production design and the construction of mise-en-sc癡ne. And yet, the prop has rarely--almost never--been taken as an object of analysis and theorization in its own right. This book begins by tracing the prop's curious but unacknowledged role in film theory, before proceeding to a series of theoretical speculations and close readings that bring the prop into focus. Analyses of scenes of "prop mastery" demonstrate the labor that props perform and enable, as well as the interpretive work they make possible. Across a variety of genres, modes, and historical contexts--studio filmmaking, art cinema, adult and avant-garde films--The Prop introduces readers to the notion of "prop value," a quality that puts the prop in proximity to the capitalist commodity, but also provides an ironic distance from the commodity's subjection to exchange value. Gorfinkel and Rhodes argue that the prop is nothing less than a condensation of how labor, subjection, value, and instrumentality underwrite the very conditions of cinema.
The Prop
What are film props? What do they do? This book answers these questions by a close attention to those material objects that are used to construct cinematic worlds. The term "prop" is short for property. This truncated term's etymology belies the expansiveness of the concept and indicates the micro and macro scales at which the prop operates. Props are the material--often literal--furniture of cinema's diegetic reality. Props are also narrative agents: think of the animacy of objects in Jean Epstein's account of photog矇nie, the crystal egg in Risky Business, or the domestic bric-?-brac of Sirk's melodramas. The prop is central to production design and the construction of mise-en-sc癡ne. And yet, the prop has rarely--almost never--been taken as an object of analysis and theorization in its own right. This book begins by tracing the prop's curious but unacknowledged role in film theory, before proceeding to a series of theoretical speculations and close readings that bring the prop into focus. Analyses of scenes of "prop mastery" demonstrate the labor that props perform and enable, as well as the interpretive work they make possible. Across a variety of genres, modes, and historical contexts--studio filmmaking, art cinema, adult and avant-garde films--The Prop introduces readers to the notion of "prop value," a quality that puts the prop in proximity to the capitalist commodity, but also provides an ironic distance from the commodity's subjection to exchange value. Gorfinkel and Rhodes argue that the prop is nothing less than a condensation of how labor, subjection, value, and instrumentality underwrite the very conditions of cinema.
How to Score in Hollywood
How to Score in Hollywood reveals the secrets to a movie's success and profitability. Entertainment research expert Kevin Goetz shares how smart, data-driven decisions--from development to release--help filmmakers minimize risks and maximize returns. How to Score in Hollywood reveals the secrets to a movie's success and profitability. Entertainment research expert Kevin Goetz, founder and CEO of Screen Engine, draws on almost four decades of experience to show how strategic decisions--from development to release--help minimize risks and maximize returns. Armed with audience insights and data-driven strategies, Goetz demonstrates how every film should make money when made and marketed for the right price. Key insights include: - Recognizing what constitutes a big idea and developing it thoughtfully to set the foundation for success. - Identifying the reason why a movie should exist and what it uniquely brings to the marketplace that will inspire interest and excitement to see it. - Crafting films with a specific audience in mind and aligning production and marketing budgets to fit the size of its potential. - Understanding how digital entertainment has reshaped audience behavior and perceptions of what makes a movie "theater-worthy." - Elevating both the concept and execution to ensure a film stands out in a crowded and competitive marketplace. - Understand and embrace the challenges of genre-blending films, or "feathered fish," with a clear-eyed approach, tackling complexities head-on instead of avoiding them. - Using test audience feedback to guide the film's development all the way through postproduction, identifying danger signs along the way, and increasing the chances of success. And much more! For industry executives, filmmakers, film students, and film enthusiasts, How to Score in Hollywood offers a unique behind-the-scenes look at the important processes that shape what consumers are offered to watch. From the initial greenlight to the final cut, Goetz explores the critical balance between creativity and commerce in filmmaking, highlighting the vital role of research at every stage to create films that resonate with audiences while also turning a profit. Filled with entertaining personal experiences, industry stories, and actionable advice, Goetz illustrates how research, budget, and marketability influence a film's financial outcome. Whether discussing low-budget indie hits or big-budget blockbusters, How to Score in Hollywood is an invaluable resource for those seeking to understand the art, science, and business of how movies are made, marketed, and released.
Scream with Me
NATIONAL BESTSELLER! "Convincing and illuminating." --The Atlantic A compelling, intelligent, and timely exploration of the horror genre from one of Columbia University's most popular professors, shedding light on how classic horror films demonstrate larger cultural attitudes about women's rights, bodily autonomy, and more. In May of 2022, Columbia University's Dr. Eleanor Johnson watched along with her students as the Supreme Court reversed Roe v. Wade. At the same time, her class was studying the 1968 horror film Rosemary's Baby and Johnson had a sudden epiphany: horror cinema engages directly with the combustive politics of women's rights and offer a light through the darkness and an outlet to scream. With a voice as persuasive as it is insightful, Johnson reveals how classics like Rosemary's Baby, The Exorcist, and The Shining expose and critique issues of reproductive control, domestic violence, and patriarchal oppression. Scream with Me weaves these iconic films into the fabric of American feminism, revealing that true horror often lies not in the supernatural, but in the familiar confines of the home, exposing the deep-seated fears and realities of women's lives. While on the one hand a joyful celebration of seminal and beloved horror films, Scream with Me is also an unflinching and timely recognition of the power of this genre to shape and reflect cultural dialogues about gender and power.
Hollywood Blackout
A Hollywood history told from the perspective of those that fought for diversity, inclusion and acknowledgement On 29 February 1940, African American actor Hattie McDaniel became the first person of color, and the first Black woman, to win an Academy Award. The moment marked the beginning of Hollywood's reluctant move toward diversity and inclusion. Since then, minorities and women have struggled to attain Academy Awards recognition within a system designed to discriminate against them. For the first time, Hollywood Blackout reveals the untold story of their tumultuous journey from exclusion to inclusion; from segregation to celebration. Author Ben Arogundade interweaves the experiences of Black actors and filmmakers with those of Asians, Latinos, South Asians, indigenous peoples and women. Throughout the decades their progression to the Oscars podium has been galvanized by defiant boycotts, civil rights protests and social media activism such as #OscarsSoWhite. Whether you are a film fan, history lover or diversity advocate, Hollywood Blackout is the quintessential choice for all those who wish to know the real story of Hollywood, the Oscars and the talents who fought to make change.
The Seduction of Space
A bold and far-reaching new study of French queer cinema reimagines the relationship between sexuality and space Spatiality has long been a crucial and potent lens for understanding French culture and aesthetics. While canonical greats of French cinema such as Jean-Luc Godard, Agn癡s Varda, and Louis Malle invoked the notion of fl璽nerie to explore ideas of modernism, spatial exploration, and urban sociality, Jules O'Dwyer demonstrates how a more recent generation of French queer filmmakers continues to engage with--and contest--this legacy by focusing attention on the cognate practice of cruising. Through the work of Jacques Nolot, S矇bastien Lifshitz, Christophe Honor矇, Vincent Dieutre, Alain Guiraudie, and others, The Seduction of Space draws film theory, queer studies, and spatial inquiry into close proximity to examine the politics of cruising and the gendering of space. Making the case that cinema not only documents the queer spaces of the past but continues to produce them, O'Dwyer maps the relationships between sex and spatiality as he takes up such varied topics as public sex in the porn theater, racial eroticization in the banlieue, and the ecocritical valences of rural cruising. Foregrounding the crucial role that spatiality plays in shaping the parameters of France's visual cultures and political imaginary, The Seduction of Space is both an urgent queer reconceptualization of this tradition and a clarion call for film scholars to tarry with the politics of sexuality in all its messiness. Retail e-book files for this title are screen-reader friendly with images accompanied by short alt text and/or extended descriptions.
The Seduction of Space
A bold and far-reaching new study of French queer cinema reimagines the relationship between sexuality and space Spatiality has long been a crucial and potent lens for understanding French culture and aesthetics. While canonical greats of French cinema such as Jean-Luc Godard, Agn癡s Varda, and Louis Malle invoked the notion of fl璽nerie to explore ideas of modernism, spatial exploration, and urban sociality, Jules O'Dwyer demonstrates how a more recent generation of French queer filmmakers continues to engage with--and contest--this legacy by focusing attention on the cognate practice of cruising. Through the work of Jacques Nolot, S矇bastien Lifshitz, Christophe Honor矇, Vincent Dieutre, Alain Guiraudie, and others, The Seduction of Space draws film theory, queer studies, and spatial inquiry into close proximity to examine the politics of cruising and the gendering of space. Making the case that cinema not only documents the queer spaces of the past but continues to produce them, O'Dwyer maps the relationships between sex and spatiality as he takes up such varied topics as public sex in the porn theater, racial eroticization in the banlieue, and the ecocritical valences of rural cruising. Foregrounding the crucial role that spatiality plays in shaping the parameters of France's visual cultures and political imaginary, The Seduction of Space is both an urgent queer reconceptualization of this tradition and a clarion call for film scholars to tarry with the politics of sexuality in all its messiness. Retail e-book files for this title are screen-reader friendly with images accompanied by short alt text and/or extended descriptions.
Russ Meyer
Russ Meyer: Interviews offers a detailed look into the mind, life, and successful career of the maverick filmmaker Russ Meyer. Known for his audacious visual style and boundary-pushing content, Meyer (1922-2004) carved out a unique niche in the film industry with his provocative and often controversial works, including Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!; Beyond the Valley of the Dolls; and Vixen! In this volume, Meyer talks over the course of eighteen newspaper and magazine interviews--conducted between the late 1960s and early 1990s--about assignments in still- and motion-picture combat photography during World War II, learning all aspects of the filmmaking craft when he was shooting industrial films after the war, later stumbling into the business of photographing pin-up girls for magazines, and how that segued into his first forays in what would become the sexploitation movie market. Working with small budgets and small crews, Meyer became a skilled director and pitchman for his own work, hitting the road with reels of film in his car, going from town to town, getting them shown in small moviehouses, building an audience, making big profits, then using them to make his next film. The films were expertly photographed, inventively edited, and featured intriguing (and violent, carnal, and funny) storylines, and ticket sales numbers eventually caught the eyes of the Hollywood studio system, for which Meyer briefly worked, before once again striking out on his own with ever-more violent, sexual, and cartoonish features. Meyer made fortunes, he lost fortunes, then he made them again, and he was always game for getting involved in controversy, which was easy due to the content of his films. After his final theatrical feature--Beneath the Valley of the Ultra-Vixens--in 1979, Meyer reinvented himself as an entrepreneur by making his films available on the burgeoning home video market, leaving him a celebrated and very wealthy man.
Bad Sex
Bad Sex traces the evolution of representations of sex on screen, from earlier portrayals of sex as glamorous or taboo, to more complex depictions of often awkward or painful experiences and feelings. Jacqueline Gibbs, Billy Holzberg, and Aura Lehtonen examine the representation of sex and sexuality in contemporary English language drama and 'dramedy' shows like Fleabag (2016, 2019), Sex Education (2019-23), I May Destroy You (2020) and Euphoria (2019-), arguing that TV is where the politics of sexuality and gender is negotiated under the contemporary conditions of neoliberalism. Through a cultural analysis of key television shows, they identify this shift as driven by the diversification of representations of sex and sexuality, as women, trans and non-binary, Black and minority ethnic, working-class and disabled TV professionals carve some space in a traditionally white, middle-class, cis male dominated industry. In doing so, they explore the affective potential and limits of 'bad' sex on our screens and what these representations can tell us about sexual politics and gender cultures today.
Women and Global Documentary
In what innovative ways are women documentary filmmakers seeking to prioritize and promote political awareness, alternative modes of allyship, and advocacy for those most marginalized by patriarchy and global capitalism? Women and Global Documentary answers the urgent need to re-evaluate the significance of women's documentary practices, their contributions to feminist world-building, and to the state of documentary studies as a whole.Bringing together a range of diverse practitioners and authors, the volume analyzes alternative and emergent networks of documentary production and collaboration within a global context. The chapters investigate filmmaking practices from regions such as East Africa, Latin America, South Asia, East Asia, the Middle East, and North Africa. They also examine decolonial practices in the Global North based on Indigenous filmmaking and feminist documentary institutions such as Women Make Movies. In doing so, they assess the global, institutional, political, and artistic factors that have shaped women's documentary practices in the 21st century, and their implications for scholarly debates regarding women's authorship, political subjectivity, and documentary representation.
Passage Works
Passage Works is the first book-length English language critical analysis of the transdisciplinary work of the Austrian film-maker, writer, and artist Ruth Beckermann (b. 1952, Vienna). Beckermann's works interrogate identity and geography as formations of the intersections between the past and the contemporary. Taking as her central topics Austria and its history and politics, her own identity as a Jewish woman, and the contemporary global geopolitics of migration and displacement, Beckermann develops wider meditations in film, art, and writing on the persistence of European memory, and the meanings of Europe itself; on borders, migrations, and identities; on memories, traumas, and traditions; on the image as marker of presence and absence, repository of the traces of historical violence; and on the passage as metaphor for a range of physical, psychological, and ideological movements defining the complexities of contemporary cosmopolitan identities.
