The Self-Sustaining Filmmaker
This book provides guidance on how to build an independent, financially sustainable filmmaking career through channels such as crowdsourcing, crowdfunding, and community filmmaking concepts.
Transnational German Film at the End of Neoliberalism
Posits a new, aesthetically and politically radical, transnational German cinema - "transnational" also in the sense of concerns with migration, the movement of capital across borders, and globalization. This book makes a bold claim that, since around 2015, a new, transnational German cinema has arisen that is aesthetically and politically radical. "Transnational" here denotes not merely international co-productions but extends to theme and form in the films' concerns with movements of people and capital across borders and with globalization. The volume analyzes key films ranging in genre and mode from dramas and comedies, including the "New German Discourse Comedy," to documentaries and installations. The essays illuminate a shift beyond neoliberal stasis and a renewed embrace of political filmmaking that confronts realities of the present. Analyzing works by a diverse array of filmmakers - including Fatih Akın, Irene von Alberti, Amel Alzakout and Khaled Abdulwahed, Forensic Architecture, Ruth Beckermann, Nils B繹kamp, Susanne Heinrich, Gerd Kroske, Burhan Qurbani, Christian Petzold, Mario Pfeifer, Julian Radlmaier, Maria Speth, Tatjana Turanskyj, and Monika Treut - the contributions provide a broad yet in-depth look at contemporary German film. Through formal innovation as well as explicitly political storytelling, this cinema, the essays argue, points beyond political crises, social precarity, and the impasses of the present, sometimes with imagination and fantasy and often by embracing collectivity and resistance. Edited by Claudia Breger and Olivia Landry. Contributors: Hester Baer, Angelica Fenner, Randall Halle, Lutz Koepnick, Angelos Koutsourakis, Richard Langston, Priscilla Layne, Ervin Malakaj, Gozde Naiboglu, and Fatima Naqvi.
Building Communities of Trust
Drawing upon a combination of ethnographic research and media and communication theory, Building Communities of Trust: Creative Work for Social Change offers pathways to building trust in a range of situations and communities.
Christoph Schlingensief's Realist Theater
This book is the first study of the prolific German filmmaker, performance artist and TV host Christoph Schlingensief (1960-2010) that identifies him as a practitioner of realism in the theatre and lays out how theatrical realism can offer an aesthetic frame sturdy enough to hold together his experiments across media and genres.
50 Oscar Nights
An exclusive look behind the scenes of the Academy Awards as top stars and filmmakers discuss their Oscar wins and tell never-before-told tales of Hollywood's biggest night, in a collection of original interviews with Turner Classic Movies host and entertainment media journalist Dave Karger. For almost a century, movie fans have been riveted by the Academy Awards and the stars who have won Oscars. 50 Oscar Nights takes readers behind the scenes of Hollywood's most storied awards show through new and exclusive interviews with dozens of A-list actors, filmmakers, and craftspeople spanning sixty years of the Oscars. Here these artists reflect on their winning work and recount all the details of how they got ready, how they felt when they heard their name and got up on stage to accept their award, what they wore, how the entire experience impacted their life, and more. Some interviews bring to light fun stories like why Hilary Swank decided to celebrate her Academy Award at the Astro Burger in West Hollywood, or insight into the work as Elton John explains why he was convinced he won his Best Original Song award for the wrong tune. Other interviews illuminate why for some honorees, such as Julia Roberts, John Legend, and Octavia Spencer, the day remains a life highlight to be treasured, while for Marlee Matlin, Mira Sorvino, and Barry Jenkins, complex emotions cloud what most think would be a purely celebratory moment. Filled with more than 150 photos of red-carpet moments, emotional acceptances, and after-party play, 50 Oscar Nights is both a stunning record of cinema glamour and a must-read for any movie lover. Full list of interviewees: Nicole Kidman, Elton John, Jennifer Hudson, Steven Spielberg, Jane Fonda, Barry Jenkins, Halle Berry, J. K. Simmons, Julia Roberts, John Legend, Rita Moreno, Martin Scorsese, Marlee Matlin, Dustin Hoffman, Hannah Beachler, Cameron Crowe, Mira Sorvino, Kevin O'Connell, Sally Field, Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez, Eddie Redmayne, Lee Grant, Louis Gossett Jr., Hilary Swank, Clint Eastwood, Jessica Yu, Michael Douglas, Catherine Martin, Francis Ford Coppola, Allison Janney, Mel Brooks, Emma Thompson, Peter Jackson, Marcia Gay Harden, Mark Bridges, Sofia Coppola, Joel Grey, Glen Hansard and Mark矇ta Irglov獺, Olivia Colman, Rob Epstein, Whoopi Goldberg, Alan Menken, Melissa Etheridge, Sissy Spacek, Keith Carradine, Estelle Parsons, Geoffrey Fletcher, Octavia Spencer, Aaron Sorkin, Meryl Streep
Moving Pictures
A fascinating look at the history of film and television animation in the United States, from the animated comic strips of the early 1900s to the proliferation of animation companies and hit films of the present.
King Vidor in Focus
King Vidor (1894-1982) had the longest career of any Hollywood director, and his works include some of the most dramatic, sublime moments in the history of American cinema. Regarded by many film historians as one of the greatest of silent era filmmakers--especially for masterworks The Big Parade, The Crowd, and Show People--Vidor is nonetheless one of the most underrated of Hollywood's "old masters" in terms of his overall career. His sound era films include Hallelujah, Street Scene, The Champ, The Stranger's Return, Our Daily Bread, Stella Dallas, The Citadel, Northwest Passage, Duel in the Sun, Beyond the Forest, The Fountainhead, Ruby Gentry and War and Peace. He also helped to establish the Screen Directors Guild and served as its first president. This book charts the ways in which Vidor's vast, complex body of work ranges over diverse genres and styles while also expressing his recurring personal interests in spirituality (especially Christian Science), aesthetics, metaphysics, social realism, and the myth of America. The first book since 1988 to give a comprehensive view of Vidor's career, it discusses his artistic evolution in a way that appeals to the general reader as well as to the film scholar.
Phantom Limbs
phantom limb /ˈfan(t)əm'lim/ n. an often painful sensation of the presence of a limb that has been amputated.Wasn't there going to be a faithful film adaptation of Resident Evil in the late 90s? Did you know that Mike Flanagan was going to do a spinoff of The Shining after completing Doctor Sleep? Whatever happened to the rumored sequel to Texas Chainsaw 3D?Based on the popular Bloody Disgusting web column of the same name, Phantom Limbs takes a look at intended yet unproduced horror sequels and remakes - extensions to genre films we love, appendages to horror franchises that we adore - that were sadly lopped off before making it beyond the planning stages. Here, writer Jason Jenkins chats with the creators of these unmade extremities to gain their unique insights into these follow-ups that never were, with the discussions standing as hopefully illuminating but undoubtedly painful reminders of what might have been.This inaugural volume features twenty-five chapters covering such projects as: Jigsaw's Twisted Tales by Marcus Dunstan & Patrick MeltonHellraiser by Todd Farmer & Patrick LussierHallorann by Mike FlanaganThirst by Mick GarrisThe People Under the Stairs by F. Javier GutierrezThe Plantation by Adam Marcus & Debra SullivanResident Evil by Alan B. McElroyTexas Chainsaw II by Scott MilamThe Hitcher by Jeffrey ReddickZero.Dark.Thirty by Stephen Suscoand many more!
The Ballad of Jack and Rose
From the award-winning writer-director of The Private Lives of Pippa Lee, a riveting drama about the complexities of living the simple life. More than twenty years ago, Jack Slavin (Daniel Day-Lewis) walked away from the mainstream to live a more deliberate life. But the island commune he began in hopes of a better future has long since imploded, and he is now one of its final residents. Jack's only companion is his sixteen-year-old daughter, Rose (Camilla Belle), whom he has carefully sheltered from the outside world. Now, beset by terminal illness, encroaching developers, and Rose's emerging womanhood, Jack faces troubling questions about the days ahead. In an attempt to provide his daughter with the kind of family she's never known, Jack invites Kathleen (Catherine Keener), the woman he's been secretly seeing on the mainland, and her sons to live with them. But Rose feels betrayed rather than comforted, and lashes out with a willful retribution that places her innocence on the battlefield and Kathleen's safety in danger. His carefully constructed world thrown into chaos, Jack finds himself trapped between two headstrong women and forced to take action. With The Ballad of Jack and Rose, the award-winning filmmaker Rebecca Miller has created a startling family drama. Miller's screenplay, introduced by the author and accompanied by stills from the film, is a powerful, poetic work, primed to be savored page by page.
Phantom Limbs
phantom limb /ˈfan(t)əm'lim/ n. an often painful sensation of the presence of a limb that has been amputated.Wasn't there going to be a faithful film adaptation of Resident Evil in the late 90s? Did you know that Mike Flanagan was going to do a spinoff of The Shining after completing Doctor Sleep? Whatever happened to the rumored sequel to Texas Chainsaw 3D?Based on the popular Bloody Disgusting web column of the same name, Phantom Limbs takes a look at intended yet unproduced horror sequels and remakes - extensions to genre films we love, appendages to horror franchises that we adore - that were sadly lopped off before making it beyond the planning stages. Here, writer Jason Jenkins chats with the creators of these unmade extremities to gain their unique insights into these follow-ups that never were, with the discussions standing as hopefully illuminating but undoubtedly painful reminders of what might have been.This inaugural volume features twenty-five chapters covering such projects as: Jigsaw's Twisted Tales by Marcus Dunstan & Patrick MeltonHellraiser by Todd Farmer & Patrick LussierHallorann by Mike FlanaganThirst by Mick GarrisThe People Under the Stairs by F. Javier GutierrezThe Plantation by Adam Marcus & Debra SullivanResident Evil by Alan B. McElroyTexas Chainsaw II by Scott MilamThe Hitcher by Jeffrey ReddickZero.Dark.Thirty by Stephen Suscoand many more!
The McGurk Universe
This book reconsiders audiovisual culture through a focus on human perception, with recourse to ideas derived from recent neuroscience. It proceeds from the assumption that rather than simply working on a straightforward cognitive level audiovisual culture also functions more fundamentally on a physiological level, directly exploiting precise aspects of human perception. Vision and hearing are unified in a merged signal in the brain through being processed in the same areas. This is illustrated by the startling 'McGurk Effect', whereby the perception of spoken sound is changed by its accompanying image, and counterpart effects which demonstrate that what we see is affected by different sounds accompanying sounds. This blending of sound and images into a whole has become a universal aspect of culture, not only evident in films and television but also in video games and short Internet clips. Indeed, this aesthetic formation has become the dominant of this period. The McGurk Universe attends to how audiovisual culture engages with and mediates between physiological and psychological levels.
Demons of the Mind
In the 1960s, psychiatrists and other mental health professionals intervened in and influenced cinema culture in unprecedented ways, changing how films were conceived, produced, censored, exhibited and received by audiences. Drawing upon extensive archival research, Demons of the Mind provides the first interdisciplinary account of the complex contestations and cross-pollinations of the 'psy' sciences (psychiatry, psychoanalysis, psychology) and cinema in Britain and America during the defining 'long 1960s' period of the late-1950s to early-1970s. This interdisciplinary book incorporates expertise from film studies, history of science and medicine, and science communication. The originality of this book is not solely its interdisciplinarity and exploration beyond the narrow study of representational practices - typically the primary focus of other books on cinema and the psy professions. In large part, this book's originality rests on its investigation of situated practices and interplay between ideas, expertise and professionals that constitute the fields of mental health and media.
Visual Effects FoundationsCore Concepts, Techniques, and Workflows
In Visual Effects Foundations, celebrated visual effects veteran and VES member Noel Hooper offers a thorough explanation of the tools, techniques, and workflows aspiring visual effects artists and students require to create engaging visual effects and break into today's film, television, and wider entertainment industries. Accessible, full-color tutorials examine pre-production considerations, visual effects on set, imaging data, color management, lighting, integration concepts, postproduction workflows, career skills, and visual effects artistry. An extensive companion website features video demonstrations of the techniques described in the book, project materials, and instructor resources.
The Human Figure on Film
Offers a fresh approach to the problem of the human figure in an age of digital cinema.The Human Figure on Film asks what it is we look for when we look at human beings projected on a screen. People have appeared onscreen since film was invented. Nothing could be more common, and yet nothing confounds us more, than a filmed human being. Scholars and critics have attempted to reduce the mystery, creating methodologies that make this figure legible. Some of their efforts form the subject of this book.Each chapter is devoted to a single, central concept-the natural, the pictorial, the institutional, and the fictional-that viewers have used to make sense of what they see. Each concept, in turn, is tied to the work and methods of a particular kind of historical observer: the natural historian (Ray L. Birdwhistell), the aesthete or pictorialist (Victor O. Freeburg), the anthropologist of institutions (Hortense Powdermaker), and the critic of fiction (V. F. Perkins). All of these researchers have their own interests and criteria of understanding, ranging from a microscopic look at gestures to a broad view of characters. Using a combination of critical history, biography, and formal analysis, The Human Figure on Film offers a fresh approach to the problem of figuration in an age of digital cinema. It is, at once, a cross-section of the field of film studies, a handbook of methods, and an inquiry into the nature of inquiry itself.
Archival Film Curatorship
Archival Film Curatorship is the first book-length study that investigates film archives at the intersection of institutional histories, early and silent film historiography, and archival curatorship. It examines three institutions at the forefront of experimentation with film exhibition and curatorship. The Eye Film Museum in Amsterdam, the George Eastman Museum in Rochester, NY, and the National Fairground and Circus Archive in Sheffield, UK serve as exemplary sites of historical mediation between early and silent cinema and the digital age. A range of elements, from preservation protocols to technologies of display and from museum architectures to curatorial discourses in blogs, catalogs, and interviews, shape what the author innovatively theorizes as the archive's hermeneutic dispositif. Archival Film Curatorship offers film and preservation scholars a unique take on the shifting definitions, histories, and uses of the medium of film by those tasked with preserving and presenting it to new digital-age audiences.
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.
Film Festivals, Ideology and Italian Art Cinema
Film Festivals, Ideology and Italian Art Cinema is the first systematic study of the role ideology plays in film festivals' construction of dominant ideas about art cinema. Film festivals are considered the driving force of the film industry outside Hollywood, disseminating ideals of cinematic art and humanist politics. However, the question of what drives them remains highly contentious. In a rare consideration of the European competitive film festival circuit as a whole, this book analyses the shared economic, geopolitical and cultural histories that characterise 'European A festivals'. It offers, too, the first extensive analysis of such festivals' role in the canonisation of select Italian films, from Rome, Open City to The Great Beauty and Gomorrah. The book proposes a new approach to ideology critique, one that enables detailed examination of how film festivals construct ideas about not only contemporary art cinema, but assumptions about gender, race, colonialism and capitalism.
French Westerns
The production of films that may be called both 'French' and 'western' spans the history of cinema, and includes the films by celebrated stars and directors. However, with the exception of early silent production, French westerns are overlooked in studies of French cinema, of film genre and even of the 'transnational' western. French Westerns: The Frontier of Film Genre and French Cinema is the first scholarly monograph dedicated to these films. This study advances the recovery of popular European cinema, and adds new dimension to the understanding of the western genre. However, the purpose is not to stretch existing definitions of the genre or the national cinema to accommodate this production. Instead, these films expose and exploit the acts of imagination to which the logics of 'French Cinema' and 'Western' owe their coherence: acts that fail repeatedly, productively, and at times spectacularly.
Historical Media Memories of the Rwandan Genocide
The Rwandan genocide is the second most audio-visually recreated genocide after the Holocaust, with approximately 200 films and documentaries produced in 39 countries between 1994 and 2021. Historical Media Memories of the Rwandan Genocide studies the construction, the development, and the recreation of the transnational historical media memory of the genocide against the Tutsis in Rwanda in 1994. This is the first comprehensive work that traces the international media image and the creation of historical memories of the Rwandan genocide, starting with the day to day television news reporting in 1994, and continuing with analyzes of how the genocide has been used and recreated in film and documentaries on a global level as well on a national level, where Rwanda, as a nation, creates its own images of the genocide in film and television production in order to support a new national identity.
Mapping Taiwanese Cinema, 2008-20
What is the relationship between filmmaking and mapping? Accounting for the unique characteristics of Taiwan's cinema from 2008 to 2020, this book examines how filmmakers have depicted and imagined the island's diverse environments. Drawing on cinema, cartography, and cultural studies, Christopher Brown argues that by refocusing attention on how films are shaped through a process of construction, the tradition of film poetics enables us to think about Taiwanese cinema differently: as a form of mapping. Wide-ranging in scope and drawing on original interviews with contemporary filmmakers, the analysis appraises case studies including works of popular entertainment, genre cinema such as comedies and horror, films about indigenous communities, LGBTQ+ cinema, and arthouse work. By asking what it means to map an environment onscreen, the book offers new insights into a critically neglected, yet creatively dynamic, period in Taiwan's film history
Contemporary Thai Horror Film
This book focuses on the most significant and dominant characteristic of Thai cinema throughout its history: the Thai incarnation of the horror genre and the central role this plays in Thailand's film industry. Tracing the development of Thai cinema throughout wider contextual changes, the book explores the influence of audiences and viewing scenarios from previous decades upon this industry today. Most evident in the popular horror genre, close analysis of films demonstrates a specific style of Thai cinema as well as the wider social forces (both formal and thematic) that have shaped Thai cinema as a national industry. Looking at these films through a framework built from horror theory, this book questions our understanding of 'horror' as a generic category when we move outside of its traditional Euro-American origins and the voyeuristic viewing scenario often associated with the genre.
Vampires in Silent Cinema
Despite the enormous cultural impact of Nosferatu (1922) on modern entertainment, from cartoon parodies and collectible toys, the history of vampires in silent cinema is largely unknown. Vampires in Silent Cinema covers the subject from 1896-1931, reclaiming a large array of forgotten films while adding meaningfully to horror studies through the examination of thousands of primary sources.
Casablanca's Conscience
A new look at a beloved classic film that explores the philosophical dynamics of Casablanca Celebrating its eightieth anniversary this year, Casablanca remains one of the world's most endur-ingly favorite movies. It won three Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Adapted Screenplay. It is still commonly quoted: "We'll always have Paris" and "Here's looking at you, kid" And who can forget, "You must remember this...a kiss is just a kiss." Yet no one expected much to come of this little film, certainly not its blockbuster stars or even the studio producing it. So how did this hastily cranked-out 1940s film, despite its many limitations, become one of the greatest films ever made? How is it that year after year, decade after decade, it continues to appear in the lists of the greatest movies ever produced? And why do audiences still weep when Rick and Ilsa part? The answer, according to Casablanca's Conscience, is to paraphrase Rick, "It's true." Much has already been written about the film and the career-defining performances of Bogart and Bergman. Casablanca is an epic tale of love, betrayal, and sacrifice set against the backdrop of World War II. Yet decades later, it continues to capture the imagination of filmgoers. In Casablanca's Conscience, author Robert Weldon Whalen explains why it still resonates so deeply. Applying a new lens to an old classic, Whalen focuses on the film's timeless themes--Exile, Purgatory, Irony, Love, Resistance, and Memory. He then engages the fictional characters--Rick, Ilsa, and the others--against the philosophical and theological discourse of their real contemporaries, Hannah Arendt, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Albert Camus. The relationships between fictional and histori-cal persons illuminate both the film's era as well as perennial human concerns. Both the film and the work of the philosophers explore dimensions of the human experience, which, while extreme, are familiar to everyone. It's the themes that resonate with the viewer, that have sustained it as an evergreen classic all these years.
The Literary Life of Pictures
This book offers a theory of ekphrasis--the literary description of an artwork--from the perspective of Visual Culture studies. A theory of ekphrasis must take into account not only the rhetorical strategies articulated in the description of artworks, but also the complex interplay that holds together the pictures that are described, the gazes that rest on them, and the dispositives that mediate them. It is therefore a matter of linking the study of the verbal rhetoric with the dynamics that are established between the author, the reader, and the visual artworks, real or fictive, as well as the performative aspects of description and the mediascapes that, from time to time, condition the gaze and the visual experience of the authors and the readers. This book proposes thus to consider both the intradiegetic aspects of description and the extradiegetic ones that condition its verbal texture. Following the rhetorics of ekphrasis throughout the Western tradition, from its origins in Philostratus, its reappraisal by Johann Joachim Winckelmann, to the twentieth-century avant-garde, this book shows how ekphrastic techniques are historically determined by the relationship between pictures, gazes, and dispositives.
You Are My Happy Ending
From its modest beginnings to its massive Emmy sweep, You Are My Happy Ending tells the story of how Schitt's Creek became the surprise hit that changed the way we think about LGBTQ relationships.
Yippee Ki-Yay Motherf*cker!
"Come out to the coast, we'll get together, have a few laughs."That line, one of many quotable moments from Die Hard, was an on the spot insertion during filming by actor Bruce Willis and director John McTiernan. That's just one of numerous ad lib or almost accidental elements added to the film which make it such a memorable modern classic.When Die Hard premiered in July 1988 John McClane didn't just become a fly in Hans Gruber's ointment, he heralded in a new era of action movies, inspired countless knock-off action movies best described as "Die Hard in a" or "Die Hard on a" copycats, and created a franchise that spanned five decades (if you include the 2020 Die Hard battery commercial). Even thirty-five years later it continues to inspire heated annual debates regarding the film's status as a Christmas movie.This guide, lovingly researched by a die-hard (pun completely intended) fan of the 1988 action-adventure blockbuster collects trivia, behind-the-scenes stories of the movie, the script, the actors, and the books and other written material that Die Hard and several of the follow-on films in the franchise were based on or inspired by.This guide, lovingly researched by a die-hard (pun completely intended) fan of the 1988 action-adventure blockbuster collects trivia, behind-the-scenes stories of the movie, the script, the actors, and the books and other written material that Die Hard and several of the follow-on films in the franchise were based on or inspired by.If you're a fan of Die Hard, then you're going to love Yippee Ki-Yay, Motherf*cker! Welcome to the party, pal!
Bloody Women
Bloody Women: Women Directors of Horror is the first book-length exploration of female creators at the cutting edge of contemporary horror, turning out some of its most inspired and twisted offerings.
Screenwriters Advice
This book looks at the most important part of the filmmaking process from the point of view of those who grind away at a keyboard or notepad trying to bring new ideas and perspectives to an increasingly diversified world. Using The Guerilla Film Makers Handbook's tried and true Q&A style, with selected screenwriters, creating an engaging and easily digestible conversational feel, this book chronicles story theory, formatting, business issues and the creative process itself. Whether you're a seasoned scribe or an inexperienced writer, this book will give you perspectives and tips to get your creative juices flowing and make your story happen.
Cinema and Secularism
Cinema and Secularism is the first collection to make the relationship between cinema and secularism thematic, utilizing a number of different methodological approaches to examine their identification and differentiation across film theory, film aesthetics, film history, and throughout global cinema. The emergence of moving images and the history of cinema historically coincide with the emergence of secularism as a concept and discourse. More than historically coinciding, however, cinema and secularism would seem to have-and many contemporary theorists and critics seem to assume-a more intrinsic, almost ontological connection to each other. While early film theorists and critics explicitly addressed questions about secularism, religion, and cinema, once the study of film was professionalized and secularized in the Western academy in both film studies and religious studies, explicit and critical attention to the relationship between cinema and secularism rapidly declined. Indeed, if one canvases film scholarship today, one will find barely any works dedicated to thinking critically about the relationship between cinema and secularism. Extending the recent "secular turn" in the humanities and social sciences, Cinema and Secularism provokes critical reflection on its titular concepts. Making contributions to theory, philosophy, criticism, and history, the chapters in this pioneering volume collectively interrogate the assumption that cinema is secular, how secularism is conceived and related to cinema differently in different film cultures, and whether the world is disenchanted or enchanted in cinema. Coming from intellectually diverse backgrounds in film studies, religious studies, and philosophy, the interdisciplinary contributors to this book cover films and traditions of thought from America, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, South Asia, and East Asia. In these ways, Cinema and Secularism opens new areas of inquiry in the study of film and contributes to the ongoing interrogation of secularism more broadly.
3-D Cinema and Trauma
This book examines 3D cinema across the early 1950s, the early 1980s, and from 2009 to 2014, providing for the first time not only a connection between 3D cinema and historical trauma but also a consideration of 3D aesthetics from a cultural perspective. The main argument of the book is that 3D cinema possesses a privileged potential to engage with trauma. Exploring questions of representation, embodiment and temporality in 3-D cinema, the book takes an interdisciplinary approach, offering a compelling analysis to a combination of box office favorites and more obscure films, ranging across genres such as horror, erotica, fantasy, science fiction, and documentaries. Weaving theoretical discussions and film analysis this book renders complex theoretical frameworks such as Deleuze and trauma theory accessible.
Adapting Bridgerton
The beloved television show Bridgerton breaks racial barriers as it explores an alternate history in which biracial Queen Charlotte elevated people of color to dukes and earls, welcoming new perspectives in Regency London. Essays in this work examine in detail the hit Netflix series. Topics covered include Bridgerton's unique, racially conscious casting and its effect on common tropes and roles; the overt sexuality in the context of prim Jane Austen films and historical shows like Downton Abbey, Outlander, and recent nineteenth-century adaptations; dueling; art; manners; dress; social conventions; feminism; privilege; power; dreamcasting; colorism; and yes, the sex scenes.
Charlie Chaplin and the Nazis
Until recently, it was assumed that the Nazis agitated against Chaplin from 1931 to 1933, and then again from 1938, when his plan to make The Great Dictator became public. This book demonstrates that Nazi agitation against Chaplin was in fact a constant from 1926 through the Third Reich. When The Gold Rush was released in the Weimar Republic in 1926, the Nazis began to fight Chaplin, whom they alleged to be Jewish, and attempted to expose him as an intellectual property thief whose fame had faded. In early 1935, the film The Gold Rush was explicitly banned from German theaters. In 1936, the NSDAP Main Archives opened its own file on Chaplin, and the same year, he became entangled in the machinery of Nazi press control. German diplomats were active on a variety of international levels to create a mood against The Great Dictator. The Nazis' dehumanizing attacks continued until 1944, when an opportunity to capitalize on the Joan Barry scandal arose. This book paints a complicated picture of how the Nazis battled Chaplin as one of their most reviled foreign artists.
Hackers as Heroes in German Film and Television
This book examines German feature films and television series centered around the figure of the computer hacker as a hero, introducing the German hacker genre to the ongoing scholarly discussion of genre in German cinema. William Mahan argues that the genre reflects a history of youth resistance, a complex political landscape, and an obsession with Datenschutz (data protection) in the German context to make the hacker an archetypal character with both national and global cultural appeal. Ultimately, Mahan posits, the continued prevalence of the hacker over the last twenty-five years suggests that while remaining relevant, the figure has also evolved and become dynamic in connection to developing technologies. Scholars of film studies, German studies, and cultural studies will find this book of particular interest.
Art of the Cut
This is the second volume of the widely acclaimed Art of the Cut book published in 2017. This follow-up text expands on its predecessor with more than 360 interviews from the world's best editors (including nearly every Oscar-winner from the last 30 years).
Mobile Hollywood
A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press's Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. Contemporary film and television production is extraordinarily mobile. Filming large-scale studio productions in Atlanta, Budapest, London, Prague, or Australia's Gold Coast makes Hollywood jobs available to people and places far removed from Southern California--but it also requires individuals to uproot their lives as they travel around the world in pursuit of work. Drawing on interviews with a global contingent of film and television workers, Kevin Sanson weaves an analysis of the sheer scale and complexity of mobile production into a compelling account of the impact that mobility has had on job functions, working conditions, and personal lives. Mobile Hollywood captures how an expanded geography of production not only intensifies the often invisible pressures that production workers now face but also stretches the parameters of screen-media labor far beyond craftwork and creativity.
The Elephant of Silence
"A poem is an act of faith because the poet believes in it," contends John Wall Barger in The Elephant of Silence, a collection of essays exploring forms of knowing (and not knowing) that awaken a poetic mind. By considering poetry, film, and the intersections among aesthetic moments and our lives, Barger illuminates the foundations of poetic craft but also probes how to be alive, creative, and open in the world. Each piece investigates unanswerable questions and indefinable words: Lorca's duende, Nabokov's poshlost, Bashō's underglimmer, Huizinga's ludic, Tarkovsky's Zona. Influenced by poets such as Gl羹ck and Ruefle, and filmmakers such as Kubrick and Lynch, Barger writes--first always sharing his own personal life stories--on the nature of perception, experience, and the human mind. With lyric eloquence and disarming candor, The Elephant of Silence tackles how to live an imaginative life, how to gravitate toward the silence from which art comes, and how the mystical is also the everyday.
Filmmaking in Academia
Evaluating the existing position of film as research, Filmmaking in Academia offers clear guidance and practical advice from the planning and conception of research films to the making, evaluation, dissemination and impact of practice-based research.
Stories Between Tears and Laughter
While histories of Czech cinema often highlight the quality of Czechoslovak New Wave films made in the 1960s, post-socialist Czech cinema receives little attention. Through a methodology of historical reception, Stories between Tears and Laughter explores how attitudes towards post-socialist Czech cinema have shifted from viewing it as radical "art cinema" and more towards popular cinema. By analyzing publicity materials, reviews, and articles, Richard Vojvoda offers a new perspective on the notions of cultural value and quality that have been shaping the history of post-socialist Czech cinema.
The Archival Afterlives of Philippine Cinema
Drawing on cultural policy, queer and feminist theory, materialist media studies, and postcolonial historiography, Bliss Cua Lim analyzes the crisis-ridden history of Philippine film archiving--a history of lost films, limited access, and collapsed archives. Rather than denigrate underfunded Philippine audiovisual archives in contrast to institutions in the global North, The Archival Afterlives of Philippine Cinema shows how archival practices of making do can inspire alternative theoretical and historical approaches to cinema. Lim examines formal state and corporate archives, analyzing restorations of the last nitrate film and a star-studded lesbian classic as well as archiving under the Marcos dictatorship. She also foregrounds informal archival efforts: a cinephilic video store specializing in vintage Tagalog classics; a microcuratorial initiative for experimental films; and guerilla screenings for rural Visayan audiences. Throughout, Lim centers the improvisational creativity of audiovisual archivists, collectors, advocates, and amateurs who embrace imperfect access in the face of inhospitable conditions.
Dark Cinema
Experience the Terrifying Journey of Horror Movies Through the AgesStep into the haunting world of "Dark Cinema: The Evolution of Scare Tactics in Hollywood", a chilling exploration and thought-provoking analysis of the horror genre in film. With each suspense-riddled chapter, you'll delve into a different era and unravel the intricate craftsmanship that goes into invoking fear on the silver screen.This gripping book takes you back to the silent era, when the first pioneers of horror rendered audiences speechless. Imagine being present at the birth of the Golden Age of Hollywood Monsters, diving deep into the macabre brilliance of Universal's iconic creatures and Hitchcock's mastery in psychological horror. As you transition from the eerie black and white frames to technicolor terror, you'll gain newfound respect for the artists behind the grotesque makeup and spine-chilling special effects that still inspire awe today."Dark Cinema" gives you an exclusive seat at the most controversial turn of horror - the rise of psycho-social themes influenced by societal upheaval and moral panic. From the rise of slasher films to heart-pounding psychological thrillers, witness how filmmakers pushed the envelope to redefine what it means to be scared.As you reach more recent times, you'll explore the authenticity that the new millennium's horror genre strives for. With the birth of found footage films to the remakes, reboots, and emerging technologies, get a candid look into modern horror's strive for reality that chaotically blends nostalgia with novelty.Fancy a hair-raising adventure? Allow the evolution of scare tactics in "Dark Cinema" to pull back the curtain on an iconic genre interwoven with our shared cultural anxieties and darkest fears - making for an unforgettable journey. Ready to face your fears?
The Archival Afterlives of Philippine Cinema
Drawing on cultural policy, queer and feminist theory, materialist media studies, and postcolonial historiography, Bliss Cua Lim analyzes the crisis-ridden history of Philippine film archiving-a history of lost films, limited access, and collapsed archives. Rather than denigrate underfunded Philippine audiovisual archives in contrast to institutions in the global North, The Archival Afterlives of Philippine Cinema shows how archival practices of making do can inspire alternative theoretical and historical approaches to cinema. Lim examines formal state and corporate archives, analyzing restorations of the last nitrate film and a star-studded lesbian classic as well as archiving under the Marcos dictatorship. She also foregrounds informal archival efforts: a cinephilic video store specializing in vintage Tagalog classics; a microcuratorial initiative for experimental films; and guerilla screenings for rural Visayan audiences. Throughout, Lim centers the improvisational creativity of audiovisual archivists, collectors, advocates, and amateurs who embrace imperfect access in the face of inhospitable conditions.
Conversations with Women Showrunners
Featuring over forty interviews with America's leading showrunners, this book provides unique perspectives and insights into the TV industry, demystifying the craft, backbone, skill, strategies, challenges, and persistence it takes to succeed in Hollywood and internationally.
Surrealism and Film After 1945
This is the first volume to focus on the diverse permutations of international surrealist cinema after the canonical interwar period. The collection features eleven original contributions by prominent scholars such as Tom Gunning, Michael L繹wy, Gavin Parkinson and Michael Richardson, alongside other leading and emerging researchers. An introductory chapter offers a historical overview as well as a theoretical framework for specific methodological approaches. The collection demonstrates that renowned figures such as Leonora Carrington, Maya Deren, Alejandro Jodorowsky and Jan Svankmajer took part in shaping a vibrant and distinctive surrealist film culture following the Second World War. Addressing highly influential films and directors related to international surrealism during the second half of the twentieth century, it expands the purview of both surrealism and film studies by situating surrealism as a major force in postwar cinema.
The Dark Interval
Invoking key concepts from the philosophical writings of Gilles Deleuze and Giorgio Agamben, The Dark Interval examines a subtle but distinct iconography of passivity, stillness and profound self-affection that recurs across noir films of every era. In doing so, it identifies the emergence of a specific cinematic figure - the 'intervallic' noir protagonist exposed to the redemptive force of his or her own passion. Significantly, the book contextualises the iconography of film noir in relation to prior art-historical visual traditions, in particular earlier representations of melancholia and the saturnine, locating noir against a much broader canvas than has been the norm. Examining central noir films of the classic and modern era (The Killers, The Man Who Wasn't There) as well as films at the peripheries of noir (from Jacques Tourneur's Cat People to Wong Kar Wai's 2046), the book locates a series of iconographic gestures, performance traditions and affective tonalities at once specific to noir and yet resonant with a deeper cultural and philosophical heritage. It is a meditation that uniquely grapples with the look and the feel of noir, and which dares to detect a unique quality of 'beatitude' that runs through a certain strain of noir films. In doing so, it illuminates why film noir remains one of the most provocative and affecting visual milieus of our time.
From Blitz to Glitz
Jess Conrad is a name that will be instantly recognisable to anyone familiar with 1960s pop culture. Emerging from the decade as one of Britain's most versatile stars, Jess has sung on hit records, starred in cult movies, headlined stage shows... and hasn't stopped ever since!In this fascinating autobiography we are given unparalleled access to Jess's entire life story, from his childhood in London during the Blitz to his time as a Teddy Boy on the wrong side of the tracks, from being discovered by legendary music producer Jack Good to his work with peers such as Billy Fury and Cliff Richard, from starring in dozens of movies to wowing live theatre audiences all over the world... and so much more!Even in his eighties, Jess Conrad OBE remains one of the entertainment world's most sought-after figures, recently starring in ITV's hit reality series Last Laugh in Vegas, featuring on the BBC's much-loved quiz show Pointless and playing Batman actor Adam West in a critically-acclaimed biopic. As he has done throughout his life, Jess continues to raise funds for numerous good causes and was even voted 'King Rat' - the head of charitable showbiz institution The Grand Order of Water Rats, an organisation that has counted Laurel & Hardy, Bob Hope and Charlie Chaplin amongst its members. With anecdotes that will have you crying out with laughter and amazing revelations about some of the world's biggest stars that will surely leave you open-mouthed, From Blitz to Glitz is one of the year's must-read biographies. Co-written with TV producer and long-time friend Simon Withington, this is one book that you won't be able to put down.
Public Information Films
In the years after the First World War the British government had to adapt its communication policy to connect with the new mass electorate. This book examines the government's own Film Units and their slow development of the Public Information Film. By reviewing the entire film catalogue produced by the Empire Marketing Board, the General Post Office and Crown Film Units, particular themes are identified which not only reflect the demands of the Units' sponsors but also the anxieties and concerns of the 1930s and 1940s. The impact of the films is explored through the contemporary reaction of the audiences to them. By the time the Crown Film Unit was closed in 1952 a style of Public Information Film had been developed and continued into the 1970s.
Home Screens
How do film and television makers around the world depict public housing? Why is public housing so often chosen as the backdrop for drama, horror, social critique, rebellion, violence, artistic creativity, explorations of race relations and political intrigue? Home Screens answers these questions by examining the ways in which socialized housing projects around the world are represented on screen. The volume brings together a diverse group of interdisciplinary scholars, who explore documentary and fictional portrayals of the architecture of public housing, and the communities that inhabit it, ranging from the 1950s to the present. Examining international film and media texts such as Die Architekten (1990), Swagger (2016), Cooley High (1975), Mee-Pok Man (1995), Treme (2010-2013), Mamma Roma (1962), The Pruitt-Igoe Myth (2011), and Below the Lion Rock (1972-1976), essays within this book consider public and private attitudes toward socialised housing, explaining how onscreen representations shape perceptions of these ubiquitous, often-stigmatized urban locations.
