Widefilm Widescreen
Film & Media Studies Reference Text Widefilm Widescreen is a comprehensive chronological technical history of large format presentation and widescreen cinema from 1833 to 2023. From optical toys to Cinemascope, IMAX and beyond, this book features cameras, projectors, movie memorabilia, charts, techical specs, and screen scans, screen aspect ratios. Includes sections on 3D, 4D, Special Venue, Theme Parks, Immersive environments. bibliography, appendix, Index.n
You'll Shoot Your Eye Out!
For the first time, author Quentin Schultze, who taught storytelling with screenwriter Jean Shepherd, reveals the "secret" parables that Shepherd included in his screenplay for A Christmas Story. Now you won't need a decoder ring to learn why the Old Man's leg lamp is his "trophy wife," why the bully is named "Scut," why there is a "Bumpus" in all of us, why Mom and the kids give a "Bronx cheer" after singing "Jingle Bells" in the Olds, and so much more. Take a fun-loving and insightful romp through the 20 life lessons in the Christmas classic, based exclusively on the author's friendship with Shepherd. Includes trivia questions, line drawings, and a special appendix on Shepherd's 7-step process for telling humorous stories; perfect for teachers, pastors, writers, leaders, and the like. P.S. Turn on your leg lamp to read this amazing book at night!
Romancing Yesenia
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. This book follows the production, transnational circulation, and reception of the highest grossing film in the history of Soviet exhibition, the 1971 Mexican romance Yesenia. The film adaptation of a telenovela based on a wildly popular graphic novel set during the Second Franco-Mexican War became a surprise hit in the USSR, selling more than ninety million tickets in the first year of its Soviet release alone. Drawing on years of archival research, renowned film scholar Masha Salazkina takes Yesenia's unprecedented popularity as an entry point into a wide-ranging exploration of the cultures of Mexico and the Soviet Union in the 1970s and of the ways in which popular culture circulated globally. Paying particular attention to the shifting landscape of sexual politics, Romancing "Yesenia" argues for the enduring importance and ideological ambiguities of melodramatic forms in global popular media.
Edgar G. Ulmer
Edgar G. Ulmer is perhaps best known today for Detour, often considered the epitome of a certain noir style that transcends its B-list origins. But in his lifetime he never achieved the celebrity of fellow Austrian and German 矇migr矇 directors like Billy Wilder, Otto Preminger, Fred Zinnemann, and Robert Siodmak, and spent most of his career as an itinerant filmmaker earning modest paychecks for films frequently overlooked or forgotten. In this fascinating account of a career spent on the margins of Hollywood, Noah Isenberg sheds new light on little-known details of Ulmer's personal life and his wide-ranging, eclectic films: features aimed at minority audiences, horror and sci-fi flicks, genre pictures made in the United States and abroad. As he follows the twists and turns of Ulmer's fortunes, Isenberg shows that Ulmer's unconventional path was in many ways more typical than that of his more illustrious colleagues, advancing a new understanding of low-budget filmmaking in the studio era and beyond.
The Political Gesture in Pedro Costa's Films
This book offers a new reading of the work of Portuguese filmmaker Pedro Costa. It provides a formal and detailed analysis of his films to suggest that Costa's formal procedures generate a contingency of meaning. The book proposes that Costa's films suggest a critical thinking posited through the materiality of the cinematic medium that is capable of exposing the limits of filmic representation itself. In addition, the author argues that Costa's political gesture derives from the articulation of the intrinsic elements of the filmic medium rather than the depiction of a social reality.
Fall of Eagles
This is a reference book on the thirteen-part TV seriesl Fall of Eagles, produced in 1974. The book includes all episodes in original transmission date order, complete cast listings, numerous photographs, directorial credits, and a story synopsis for each episode.
Voluptuous Terrors, Volume 4
Classic Italian film poster art is renowned as being among the most accomplished, creative and dynamic of its kind. From the post-war period through to the 1980s, Italian artists consistently produced posters with sumptuously stunning designs and imagery - not least in the cult and exploitation genres, for which compositions almost invariably included curvaceous female figures in jeopardy, juxtaposed with the iconography of fantasy and terror.VOLUPTUOUS TERRORS 4 collects 120 film posters by a wide range of acclaimed Italian artists, created for both indigenous and foreign-language film productions. Classic exploitation, pulp horror, science fiction, Eurospy, crime, mondo and giallo movies all figure in full-color, full-page reproductions showcasing some of the world's most innovative and seductive poster design.
New Media Technology and Motion Pictures
The motion picture industry is dependent on technology. It is therefore important for scholars and students of film, media, and communication to understand how film audiences and practitioners engage with technology. A critical aspect of scholarly work is to document and interpret these technologies as they emerge, and to provide a detailed understanding of how their use is changing due to social, political, environmental, and cultural factors. The scholars and practitioners that contribute to this volume adopt a diverse range of theoretical and methodological perspectives in order to bridge the philosophical and epistemological differences that often create silos of media studies research. Authors explore topics such as; DIY production, equity and representation in Hollywood, the rise of mobile vertical screens, advancements in the cinematic experience, the relationships between traditional and new media, and social justice filmmaking. The impact of online social movements on the motion picture industry, and the dynamic interaction between makers and audiences, emerge as key areas of inquiry.
Kuleshov on Film
Lev Kuleshov (1899-1970) was the first aesthetic theorist of the cinema. An outstanding figure in the "montage" school, he was a key influence on Eisenstein and Pudovkin. Kuleshov was the first to see clearly that montage--the assemblage and alternation of shots--was the very essence and structure of cinematic expression, often overriding the significance of the content of the shots themselves. Deriving his insights from close study of American films (particularly D. W. Griffith's), Kuleshov used his experience in prerevolutionary Russian films and his wartime efforts in Soviet documentaries to conduct experiments in film acting and montage. He developed an editing method later referred to as the "Kuleshov effect" that juxtaposed shots to evoke new meanings from the combinations. In one experiment, he intercut identical shots of an actor's neutral face with shots of a bowl of soup, a child in a coffin, and a sunny landscape to evoke different emotional responses from the audience. Kuleshov also "synthesized" a nonexistent woman from close-ups of different parts of several women and created artificial landscapes by intercutting shots of locations separated by great distances. Kuleshov taught at the Soviet film school and was a well-known director of features, and Kuleshov on Film contains essays on both the theoretical and practical sides of filmmaking. Influenced by Futurism, Russian Formalism, and structural linguistics, Kuleshov's analysis can now be seen as semiotic, presaging studies of film as a system of signs. As a Marxist and structuralist, Kuleshov examined form and content with a materialist approach. The translator's extensive introduction discusses Kuleshov's use of signs, typage, and other structuralist concepts and places him in the development of semiotic thought. It also provides intriguing biographical detail on Kuleshov's conflicts with advocates of "socialist realism," who attempted to stamp out the artistic and theoretical innovations of the early revolutionary years, and establishes Kuleshov's position as one of the great figures in the evolution of film. Kuleshov on Film is essential reading for everyone seriously concerned with the cinema. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1974.
Scriptwriting
Scriptwriting - 3 Manuscripts in 1 Book, Including: How to Write a Screenplay, How to Write Non-Fiction and How to Edit Writing1)HOW TO WRITE A SCREENPLAY: 7 Easy Steps to Master Screenwriting, Scriptwriting, Writing a Movie & Television Writing. How to develop a loglineLogistics of character developmentHow to write dialogueHow to establish an engaging plotTips to write the unexpectedCommon screenwriting mistakes to avoidHow to effectively revise your scriptHow to produce a first draftHow to catch and maintain the attention of producers, managers, and executivesAnd so much more! 2)HOW TO WRITE NON-FICTION: 7 Easy Steps to Master Creative Non-Fiction, Memoir Writing, Travel Writing & Essay Writing. YOU'LL LEARN: How to define your genre by understanding the scope of your contentHow to understand the subgenre in your content and how to reflect that in your titleHow to write effective books by using seven simple, but powerful secretsHow to ensure that you captivate your audiences through compelling writingHow to use sources effectively when producing non-fiction contentHow to avoid needless criticism by using effective and credible sourcesHow to ensure that your content is consistent with the narrative you want to portrayHow to produce high-quality content on a consistent basis while keeping things freshHow to ensure you have the right approach in your book while making sure you're addressing your audience properlyHow to make the most of the time and space you have to develop contentAnd so much more! 3)HOW TO EDIT WRITING: 7 Easy Steps to Master Writing Editing, Proofreading, Copy Editing, Spelling, Grammar & Punctuation.YOU'LL LEARN: The stages of editing: structural, line editing, and copy editing Necessary conversations to have between writers and editorsThe benefits of reading aloud to yourself and othersHow to separate the smaller elements into manageable chunksHow to maintain consistencyHow to keep readers engagedHow to isolate text in order to determine its purposeHow to engage more deeply with the text in front of youHow to critically evaluate dialogue and general flowHow to monitor pacing and organizationHow to edit in reverseAnd so much more! Master Screenwriting, Movie Scripting, TV Show Script Writing & Write Screenplays Today!
African Cinema
African cinema is experiencing a surge in LGBTQ+ narratives, driven by a growing "queer economy." This refers to the production, distribution, and consumption of films by and for queer audiences. Filmmakers are finding new avenues: independent funding models, online platforms, and film festivals focused on queer stories. This rise isn't just about representation; it's about economic empowerment. LGBTQ+ creators are building sustainable careers, challenging traditional narratives, and fostering community. While societal hurdles remain, African cinema is proving to be a powerful platform for queer voices to not only exist, but thrive
Margins Speak, Universality Rings
In the vibrant tapestry of music, two unique voices rise above the rest: Mouawad and Hage. Hailing from entirely different backgrounds, they come together in a captivating fusion that transcends borders and genres. Mouawad, with a voice seasoned by the rich heritage of Arabic music: URL arabic music instruments, weaves tales of passion and yearning. Her powerful vocals soar effortlessly, carrying the weight of tradition with a contemporary twist. Hage, on the other hand, brings a touch of the West, his voice imbued with the soulful essence of blues: URL the history of blues. He infuses his music with a raw energy that resonates with the deepest emotions. Together, Mouawad and Hage create a sound that is both familiar and unexpected. Their music is a bridge between cultures, a harmonious blend of Eastern melodies and Western rhythms. Their lyrics, often delivered in a blend of Arabic and English, speak of universal themes: love, loss, hope, and the enduring human spirit. Unbound Voices: Mouawad & Hage is more than just a musical collaboration; it's a testament to the power of unity. It's a celebration of diversity, a beautiful noise that breaks down barriers and unites hearts through the universal language of music.
Beyond the Pitch
Beyond the polished presentations and data-driven pitches, a hidden truth lurks in advertising: a disconnect between scientific rigor and creative output. While research informs strategy, the final act - crafting the ad itself - hinges on subjective inspiration. This disconnect mirrors the "art" of propaganda, using a scientific facade to mask the intuitive leap of creative ideation. Despite this reality, the industry often portrays itself as a bastion of scientific certainty to appease clients. However, award shows and industry texts celebrate the subjective power of the "big idea," revealing the true nature of the game. Failed commercials, defying supposedly scientific predictions, further expose the limitations of this fa癟ade. Ultimately, advertising walks a tightrope between creative intuition and the demands of a business-driven world
American Broadcasting and the First Amendment
Why have radio and television never been granted the same First Amendment freedoms that we have always accorded the printed word? In this fascinating work, Lucas A. Powe, Jr., examines the strange paradox governing our treatment of the two types of media. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1987.
Historical Turns
Historical Turns reassesses Weimar cinema in light of the "crisis of historicism" widely diagnosed by German philosophers in the early twentieth century. Through bold new analyses of five legendary works of German silent cinema--The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Destiny, Rhythm 21, The Holy Mountain, and Metropolis--Nicholas Baer argues that films of the Weimar Republic lent vivid expression to the crisis of historical thinking. With their experiments in cinematic form and style, these modernist films revealed the capacity of the medium to engage with fundamental questions about the philosophy of history. Reconstructing the debates over historicism that unfolded during the initial decades of moving-image culture, Historical Turns proposes a more reflexive mode of historiography and expands the field of film and media philosophy. The book excavates a rich archive of ideas that illuminate our own moment of rapid media transformation and political, economic, and environmental crises around the globe.
From Havana to Hollywood
Centers Cuban cinema to explore how films produced in Havana or Hollywood differently represent Black resistance to slavery.From Havana to Hollywood examines the presence or absence of Black resistance to slavery in feature films produced in either Havana or Hollywood-including Gillo Pontecorvo's Burn!, neglected masterpieces by Cuban auteurs Tom獺s Guti矇rrez Alea and Sergio Giral, and Steve McQueen's Oscar-winning 12 Years a Slave. Philip Kaisary argues that, with rare exceptions, the representation of Black agency in Hollywood has always been, and remains, taboo. Contrastingly, Cuban cinema foregrounds Black agency, challenging the ways in which slavery has been misremembered and misunderstood in North America and Europe. With powerful, richly theorized readings, the book shows how Cuban cinema especially recreates the past to fuel visions of liberation and asks how the medium of film might contribute to a renewal of emancipatory politics today.
Global Cinema Studies in Landscape Allegory
Global Cinema Studies in Landscape Allegory explores the narrative and stylistic approaches to imbuing natural settings in audiovisual media with a psychological dimension - or, in other words, configuring a 'landscape' to function beyond its typical role as a backdrop - and the cultural contexts for this aesthetic impulse. Contributors argue that while audiovisual allegory can be understood as inherently avant-garde, certain kinds of stories - and the ways in which they are presented - can be categorized as a 'landscape allegory.' Focusing on the idea of a 'landscape' in the most concrete and literal form, contributions drawing from a global spectrum of cultural contexts work toward establishing a fuller and more culturally diverse understanding of landscape allegory in cinema.
Screening Ethnicity: Cinematographic Representations of Italian Americans in the United States
Literary Nonfiction. Film Studies. Remarkable for the variety and sophistication of the approaches that it brings to its subject matter, SCREENING ETHNICITY makes a powerful argument for the validity, indeed the necessity, of Italian American cinema as an object of study. By including the concepts of race, gender, and social class along with the more obvious themes of identity and ethnicity, this collection sheds new light on the careers of Frank Capra, Francis Ford Coppola, Michael Cimino, Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino, and the recently canonized David Chase, while calling attention to the achievements of such lesser known figures as Abel Ferrara, Stanley Tucci, Mariarosy Calleri, and Nancy Savoca. It comes as no suprise that there is so much smart thinking and writing contained in this book--Bill Tonelli, Rolling Stone.
Experimental Film and Queer Materiality
Often described as an art of abstraction and subjective introspection, experimental film is also invested in exploring daily objects and materials and in channeling, in the process, a peculiar perception of the modern everyday that this book calls queer materiality. Queer materiality designates the queer latency of modern material culture, which often inspired queer artists and filmmakers to envision wayward bodies and behaviors, and refers to the way in which sexual and social dissidence was embedded in the objects, technologies, substances, and spaces that make up the hardware of experience. This book studies a rich archive of queer material engagements in work by well-known filmmakers such as Andy Warhol, Barbara Hammer, Carolee Schneemann, and Jack Smith as well as under-recognized figures such as Tom Chomont, Jim Hubbard, Ashley Hans Scheirl, and Teo Hern獺ndez. Combining history, formal analysis, and theoretical reflection, author Juan A. Su獺rez shows how plastics, glitter, mechanical ensembles, urban ruins, garbage, amphetamine, film grain, and noise have been mobilized in the articulation of queerness for the screen. Experimental Film and Queer Materiality is an inquiry into the liveliness of matter and into the interface between sexuality and the material world.
My Affair with Art House Cinema
Phillip Lopate fell hard for the movies as an adolescent. As he matured into an acclaimed critic and essayist, his infatuation deepened into a lifelong passion. My Affair with Art House Cinema presents Lopate's selected essays and reviews from the last quarter century, inviting readers to experience films he found exhilarating, tantalizing, and beguiling--and sometimes disappointing or frustrating--through his keen eyes. In an essayist's sinuous prose style, Lopate captures the formal mastery, artistic imagination, and emotional intensity of art house essentials like Yasujirō Ozu's Late Spring, David Lynch's Mulholland Drive, and Andrei Tarkovsky's Solaris, as well as works by contemporary filmmakers such as Maren Ade, Hong Sang-soo, Hou Hsiao-hsien, Christian Petzold, Paolo Sorrentino, and Jafar Panahi. Essays explore Chantal Akerman's rigorous honesty, Ingmar Bergman's intimacy, Abbas Kiarostami's playfulness, Kenji Mizoguchi's visual style, and Frederick Wiseman's vision of the human condition. Lopate also reflects on the work of fellow critics, including Roger Ebert, Pauline Kael, and Jonathan Rosenbaum. His considered, at times contrarian critiques and celebrations will inspire readers to watch or rewatch these films. Above all, this book showcases Lopate's passionate advocacy for not only particular films and directors but also the joys and value of a filmgoing culture.
Cinematic Modernism and Contemporary Film
Cinema was the most important new artistic medium of the twentieth century and modernism was the most important new aesthetic movement across the arts in the twentieth century. However, what exactly is the relationship between cinema and modernism? Cinematic Modernism and Contemporary Filmexplores how in the early twentieth century cinema came to be seen as one of the new technologies which epitomised modernity and how cinema itself reflected ideas, hopes and fears concerning modern life. Howard Finn examines the emergence of a new 'international style' of cinema, combining a poetic aesthetic of the image with genre-based fictional narrative and documentary realism. He provides concise accounts of how theorists such as Andr矇 Bazin, Siegfried Kracauer, Gilles Deleuze and Jacques Ranci癡re have discussed this cinematic aesthetic, clarifying debates over terms such as 'realism', 'classical' and 'avant-garde' as well as recent controversies over terms such as 'slow cinema' and 'vernacular modernism'. He further argues the influence of modernism through close readings of many contemporary films, including films by Abbas Kiarostami, B矇la Tarr, Jia Zhangke, and Angela Schanelec.Drawing on a broad range of examples, including Soviet montage, Italian neorealism, postwar new waves and the 'new cinema' of Taiwan and Iran, this book explores the cultural significance of modernism and its lasting influence over cinema.
Subjectivity and Decolonisation in the Post-Independence Novel and Film
The decades following the independences from colonialism saw a pioneering generation of realist novels and films emerge across Africa and South Asia. They told stories of people living through national circumstances fast diverging from the promises of decolonisation. Subjectivity and Decolonisation in the Post-Independence Novel and Film explores how post-independence texts critique their own political conditions by choosing to narrate a different, but related, problem - that which Ngugi wa Thiong'o once called 'decolonising the mind'. Guided by the psycho-political thought of Frantz Fanon, who maps a dialectical relationship between decolonisation and the self, this book considers how eight well known and less studied works from the 1950s-1980s. Together, they help us understand how the transformation of subjectivities is a materially consequential process that sits squarely within the broader, unfinished project that is decolonisation.
Shadows in a Phantom Eye, Volume 10 (1932-1933)
Since the late 19th century, film has been the ultimate medium by which to express and illuminate the darker, wilder recesses of man's imagination. An alchemical convergence of magic lantern experiments and new photographic technology led to the production of the very first moving images, including visual captures of magic, mystery, violence, cruelty, crime, sex, nudity, devilry and death.SHADOWS IN A PHANTOM EYE is an extensive and unprecedented 15-volume book series that reveals a flickering carnival of attractions and aberrations, from the ground-breaking motion capture experiments conceived by Eadweard Muybridge in 1872 to the shocking documentary footage of atrocity, destruction and horror which emerged from the ruins of war-torn Europe in the late 1940s. This is the ultimate multi-volume guide for those wishing to explore an alternative global history of the moving image in its inaugural decades - a history that reveals a wild, often disturbing and provocative world which includes Hollywood but also stretches far, far beyond.SHADOWS IN A PHANTOM EYE Volume 10 covers the period 1932 through 1933, a period when Hollywood film production reached its zenith of permissiveness for crime and horror themes of violence, sadism and perversity whilst flaunting new levels of exposed female flesh, sexual innuendo, debauchery and degradation on screen. This "pre-code" culture was also reflected in animated cartoons and newsreels, and underpinned by a clandestine national network of unregulated roadshows where the most salacious and shocking material could be seen on a nightly basis. This volume references more than 900 films from all countries and reproduces over 300 rare photographic images and illustrations, many newly unearthed from international film archives and never before published.
Writing a TV Movie
Award-winning screenwriter and author Roslyn Muir offers clear and simple advice for beginners and experts alike on how to master the popular TV movie genre with a focus on the thriller and rom-com. Writing a TV Movie is an exceptional resource for screenwriters, instructors, and industry professionals. Learn the unique 9-act structure of the TV movie used by Hallmark, Lifetime, Netflix, and others. Understand how to write the script, get it to producers, and start your screenwriting career. Bonus content includes interviews and writing tips from produced TV movie screenwriters: Melissa Cassera, Carley Smale, Kraig Wenman, Keith Shaw, Kelly Peters, and Amy Taylor.
Finding Birt Acres
Apparently from Virginia, Birt Acres appeared out of nowhere in Britain aged 35, without a trace of his former life. Yet immediately he became a prominent figure in the late Victorian photographic world. He soon teamed up with Robert Paul to make a moving picture camera and then shot the first commercial films in Britain in spring 1895, in parallel with the work of the Lumi癡re brothers in France, before repeating this in Germany. His innovations included being the first to establish a dedicated venue for watching films, to give a Royal Command Performance of moving pictures, to create screen advertising, and to design a home movie camera. A disdain for showbusiness led to Acres squandering the commercial opportunities he created, and initiated the erasure of his remarkable story. From early in the twentieth century, film historians have consistently underestimated and undervalued his achievements. In this book, for the first time, we see a detailed and compelling portrait of Birt Acres, with substantial new research on his early work in moving pictures and on the careers of his associates, leading directly to new interpretations of the importance of this elusive pioneer. It draws on a wealth of fresh sources, with a massively expanded filmography supporting this re-evaluation. Written by three specialists in early film history, this volume significantly revises the received story of Birt Acres, at the same time casting new light on the beginnings of cinema in Britain.
Lost Highway
This full-color deciphering of the 1997 cult classic Lost Highway features brand-new revealing interviews with Academy Award winner Patricia Arquette, Balthazar Getty, producer Deepak Nayar, director of photography Peter Deming, and more as it takes readers on a journey through the making of one of the most challenging works in the oeuvre of master filmmaker David Lynch.In 1997 David Lynch released Lost Highway starring Bill Pullman, Patricia Arquette, Balthazar Getty and Natasha Gregson Wagner. The film came and went and critics famously panned the film. While it did span a top 10 soundtrack, the film has largely been forgotten until now. In 2022, the film was remastered and rereleased. Film lovers, Lynch fans and critics started to take notice.Author Scott Ryan, Fire Walk With Me: Your Laura Disappeared, The Blue Rose magazine, has turned his interviewing sites on the cast and crew of Lost Highway to write maybe the first book ever to focus on this forgotten Lynch film. The book has interviews with Academy Award winner Patricia Arquette, Balthazar Getty, Producer Deepak Nayar, Production Assistant Sabrina S. Sutherland, DP Peter Deming, Camera man Scott Ressler, Actress Natasha Gregson Wagner and more. The book also covers the film, the script and the famous soundtrack by Angelo Badalamenti and Trent Reznor.
The Disney+ Kingdom
Debuting in 2019, Disney+ quickly became one of the most popular streaming services worldwide. With hubs for Disney, Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars and National Geographic, Disney+ not only provides "vault" content from these brands but also original films and television programming such as High School Musical: The Musical: The Series, The Mandalorian, The Mighty Ducks: Game Changers, Andor and The Imagineering Story. This collection of essays examines a variety of Disney+ exclusive content, exploring themes such as nostalgia, identity, representation and lived experience. Designed to appeal to both academics and the average Disney fan, it attempts to answer the question of whether its original streaming content is a plus or minus for the "Mouse House."
Discovering Kes
Whoever could have guessed that a Ken Loach film produced on a low budget, with no big stars, no sex, little violence, the wrong kind of bird and with a sad ending, could ever have resulted in a major classic, loved by millions. Such was the case with Kes, which resulted from the 1968 Barry Hines novel A Kestrel for a Knave.Kes was one of those rare films which concerned the working class and highlighted some of their life struggles and was enshrined in the life of Barnsley schoolboy, Billy Casper.The author was a falconer at the time, and now 55 years later Discovering Kesis a tribute to all things Kes from how the film came about, to its production, anecdotes, impact on society (then and now) and not least the tracking down of the filming and associated locations along with maps which enable like-minded people to follow in his footsteps.Contains an exclusive interview with director Ken Loach.
Looking Beyond Neoliberalism
Looking Beyond Neoliberalism explores how cinema is responding to the economic crisis that sprang to public attention in 2008 and continues to shape our politics and societies. Bringing French and francophone Belgian films into dialogue with carefully selected theories, O'Shaughnessy develops insights and an analytical framework that will become important resources for other scholars of contemporary cinema. This book explores cinema's capacity to register mutations in subjectivity, the material grounds for identity construction and the machinic dimension of neoliberal subjection. It also probes its capacity to imagine alternative economies and identities and an exit from neoliberal labour. By developing fresh insights into political cinema, this book provides engages with cinema's response to neoliberalism in crisis.
Moonlighting An Episode Guide
David Addison and Maddie Hayes are back. After years of being lost in legal troubles, the 1980s classic screwball detective series returned to the culture when HULU started streaming the series that starred Cybill Shepherd and Bruce Willis. Moonlighting podcasters Grace Chivell and Shawna Saari take readers through an episode by episode guide to keep track of every Bee that Bees, every chase scene that gets messy, every rhyme of its time, and every kiss between these two sexy leads. The book will bring all those pop culture references back to the forefront and will remind readers why they loved this series so much.Creator of the series Glenn Gordon Caron returns to write the foreword and the book is peppered with comments from executive producer Jay Daniel as well. Lock your family in the closet and read this tribute to one of the most beloved series of all time.
British Fantasy Cinema
In the period since 2001, cinema has witnessed a notable influx in fantasy film. Many constitute adaptations from British fantasy literature, often created and produced in the UK, and showcase domestic talent both in front and behind the screen. This includes massive box office hits such as the Harry Potter series (2001 - 2011) through to smaller scale and independent endeavours like Nanny McPhee (2005), MirrorMask (2005) and Franklyn (2008). However, such films have received minimal critical attention as British fantasy films. The reasons for this absence are manifold; leaving many films contested, ignored and omitted from established canons. This book re-addresses prevailing scholarship on the fantasy genre, national film production and representation on screen, providing readers with a revised appraisal of the contemporary film landscape. It delivers a fresh perspective across a broad range of films which all embrace the fantastic within British cinema.
Kafkaesque Cinema
For all its familiarity as a widely used term, "Kafkaesque cinema" remains an often-baffling concept that is poorly understood by film scholars. Taking a cue from Jorge Luis Borges' point that Kafka has modified our conception of past and future artists, and Andr矇 Bazin's suggestion that literary concepts and styles can exceed authors and "novels from which they emanate", this monograph proposes a comprehensive examination of Kafkaesque Cinema in order to understand it as part of a transnational cinematic tradition rooted in Kafka's critique of modernity, which, however, extends beyond the Bohemian author's work and his historical experiences. Drawing on a range of disciplines in the Humanities including film, literary, and theatre studies, critical theory, and history, Kafkaesque Cinema will be the first full-length study of the subject and will be a useful resource for scholars and students interested in film theory, World Cinema, World Literature, and politics and representation.
Harun Farocki
Harun Farocki was one of the world's most celebrated experimental filmmakers at the time of his death in 2014. In a career spanning over fifty years, the German artist produced more than one hundred works, including political cinema, nonfiction film and video, and art installations, which have been exhibited globally. After his early politically engaged films in Super 8 and 16 mm, Farocki spent many years making independent films and commissions for German public television. In the last phase of his career, he transitioned to creating digital and multichannel installations. He also collaborated with the director Christian Petzold on a dozen films. In addition to his prolific media-making career, Farocki was an incisive critic and editor. This groundbreaking book is an incisive and comprehensive analysis of Farocki's oeuvre, shedding new light on his media experimentation and writings across platforms and venues. Nora M. Alter examines how Farocki's work investigates film and media images: their history, nature, manipulation, changing function, and strategic use. Focusing on interconnected ideas surrounding labor, critique, and war, she shows how his politically committed art is informed by pedagogical strategies that drive viewers to perceive how the media world they inhabit functions. Alter also argues that Farocki's career provides a lens on the history of avant-garde and experimental filmmaking amid shifts in materials and exhibition platforms. Tracing the transformations of Farocki's artistic practice and thought, this book offers new insight into the body of work of one of the most significant media makers of the late twentieth century.
Harun Farocki
Harun Farocki was one of the world's most celebrated experimental filmmakers at the time of his death in 2014. In a career spanning over fifty years, the German artist produced more than one hundred works, including political cinema, nonfiction film and video, and art installations, which have been exhibited globally. After his early politically engaged films in Super 8 and 16 mm, Farocki spent many years making independent films and commissions for German public television. In the last phase of his career, he transitioned to creating digital and multichannel installations. He also collaborated with the director Christian Petzold on a dozen films. In addition to his prolific media-making career, Farocki was an incisive critic and editor. This groundbreaking book is an incisive and comprehensive analysis of Farocki's oeuvre, shedding new light on his media experimentation and writings across platforms and venues. Nora M. Alter examines how Farocki's work investigates film and media images: their history, nature, manipulation, changing function, and strategic use. Focusing on interconnected ideas surrounding labor, critique, and war, she shows how his politically committed art is informed by pedagogical strategies that drive viewers to perceive how the media world they inhabit functions. Alter also argues that Farocki's career provides a lens on the history of avant-garde and experimental filmmaking amid shifts in materials and exhibition platforms. Tracing the transformations of Farocki's artistic practice and thought, this book offers new insight into the body of work of one of the most significant media makers of the late twentieth century.
Haunted Histories and Troubled Pasts
Haunted Histories and Troubled Pasts speaks to how a transnational array of recent screen entertainments participate, through horror, in public discourses of history, the social and creative work of reshaping popular understanding of our world through the lens of the past.Contemporary film and television - and popular screen cultures more generally - are distinguished by their many and varied engagements with history, including participation in worldwide movements to reconcile past losses and injuries with present legacies. The chapters in this collection address themselves to 21st-century screen horror's participation in this widespread fascination with and concern for the historical - its recurrent reimagining of the relation between the past and present, which is part of its inheritance from the Gothic. They are concerned with the historical work of horror's spectral occupations, its visceral threats of violence and its capacity for exploring repressed social identities, as well as the ruptures and impositions of colonization and nationhood.Trauma is a key theme in this book, examined through themes of war and genocide, ghostly invasions, institutionalized abuse, apocalyptic threat and environmental destruction. These persistent, fearful reimaginings of the past can take many lurid - sometimes tritely generic - forms. Together, these chapters explore and reflect upon horror's ability to speak through them to the unspoken of history, to push the boundaries and probe the fault-lines and ideological impositions of received historical narratives - while reminding us that history and the historical imagination persist as sites of contention.
Midnight Marquee #82
Issue number 82 of the longest running horror film fanzine, edited by Gary J. Svehla, presents its 60th issue. From 1963 to 2023 the mag has been publishing issues by Svehla. After finding Famous Monsters in the local drug store, Svehla began his own little fanzine called Gore Creatures in 1963 at the age of 13. Well, 60 years later he is still putting out the mag, now Midnight Marquee, always ahead of the fanzine pack in keeping up with technology. Svehla always tries to find new takes and ideas for his articles.This issue contains: THE RAVEN Poe, Lugosi, Karloff, and Universal Pictures by Nathalie YafetTHE INVISIBLE RAY is Radium X: "You Die!" by Nathalie YafetTED BILLINGS [1882-1947] Another Forgotten Face by Jim CoughlinTHE SMILING GHOST A Brief Re-Evaluation by Alan WarrenWIZARD OF OZ Potholes in the Yellow Brick Road by Anthony AmbrosiaTERROR IN THE MIDNIGHT SUN BECOMES INVASION OF THE ANIMAL PEOPLE Giant Space Monster Invades Lapland by Barry AtkinsonCURSE OF THE FLY AND THE PROJECTED MAN A Double Bill of Teleportation Terrors by Barry AtkinsonHORROR OF DRACULA, BRIDES OF DRACULA, AND DRACULA- PRINCE OF DARKNESS Terence Fisher and The Vampire Mythologyby Gary J. SvehlaTHE SADIST Limping, Giggling, and a Bottle of Pop by Christopher GulloMidnight Marquee Book Review by Gary J. SvehlaMidnight Marquee Movie Review by Gary J. SvehlaFinal Mutterings by Gary J. Svehla
Shadows in a Phantom Eye, Volume 9 (1930-1931)
Since the late 19th century, film has been the ultimate medium by which to express and illuminate the darker, wilder recesses of man's imagination. An alchemical convergence of magic lantern experiments and new photographic technology led to the production of the very first moving images, including visual captures of magic, mystery, violence, cruelty, crime, sex, nudity, devilry and death.SHADOWS IN A PHANTOM EYE is an extensive and unprecedented 15-volume book series that reveals a flickering carnival of attractions and aberrations, from the ground-breaking motion capture experiments conceived by Eadweard Muybridge in 1872 to the shocking documentary footage of atrocity, destruction and horror which emerged from the ruins of war-torn Europe in the late 1940s. This is the ultimate multi-volume guide for those wishing to explore an alternative global history of the moving image in its inaugural decades - a history that reveals a wild, often disturbing and provocative world which includes Hollywood but also stretches far, far beyond.SHADOWS IN A PHANTOM EYE Volume 9 covers the period 1930-1931, when Universal launched its iconic horror film series with the classics Dracula and Frankenstein, alongside the rise of violent gangster movies like Scarface and Public Enemy, as well as a plethora of exotic jungle narratives both real and fake, from Africa Speaks to Ingagi.This volume references around 650 films from all countries and reproduces more than 300 rare photographic images, posters and illustrations, many newly unearthed from international film archives and never before published.
The Conjuring
In 2013 an apparently simple, back-to-basics scary movie transformed horror cinema for the rest of the decade. Based on the allegedly true story of the Perron family haunting and subsequent investigation by ghost hunters Ed and Lorraine Warren, The Conjuring has to-date spawned six sequels and prequels, making up a Conjuring 'universe' that has taken over a billion dollars around the world. The New York Times called The Conjuring 'a fantastically effective haunted-house movie' which, following his earlier film Insidious, established director James Wan as a force in horror cinema. In this Devil's Advocates, horror scholar Kevin Wetmore examines what elements in the film are truly terrifying, how the filmmakers' claims of being based on a true story hold up against the actual history of the haunting and the Warrens, and the relationship between The Conjuring and the many films in its universe. Along the way this book also considers how games, toys and dolls play an important role in the series, offers a critique of gender roles in the films, and asks the question, what is actually 'conjured' in The Conjuring? The delightful result is an in-depth, close reading of a film that uses standard horror tropes masterfully to create a truly scary film.
Shadow of a Doubt
Shadow of a Doubt (1943) was British-born Alfred Hitchcock's sixth American film and the one that he at various times identified as his favourite and his best. It seems likely that one of the reasons he liked Shadow so much is that is an extraordinarily well-ordered narrative system, a meticulous cause and effect chain that melds its various scenes and sequences together to form a unified narrative that is highly effective in building suspense and cultivating identification with characters. This scrupulously organized film operates as a masterclass on principles of narrative design while generating resonant commentary on the nature of family life.This book redresses the deficit of sustained critical attention paid to Shadow even in the large corpus of Hitchcock scholarship. Analysing the film's narrative system, issues of genre, authorship, social history, homesickness and 'family values', Diane Negra shows how the film's impeccable narrative structure is wedded to radical ideological content, linking the film's terrors to the punishing effects of looking beyond conventional family and gender roles. This book understands Shadow as an unconventionally female-centred Hitchcock text and a milestone film that marks the director's emergent engagement with the pathologies of violence in American life and opens a window into the placement of femininity in World War II consensus culture and more broadly into the politics of mid-century gender and family life.
Seconds
Seconds (1966) is John Frankenheimer's criminally overlooked monolith of paranoia, part science fiction, part body horror, part noir thriller cum black comedy, a film found at the intersection of the post-McCarthy mindset, European art cinema, the suburban identity nightmares of The Twilight Zone and the mid-life crises of masculinity aroused by 1960s counterculture. Arguably the bleakest mainstream Hollywood film ever made, it was famously booed at its Cannes unveiling and was a box office failure upon release. And while the film's critical reception has gradually turned to acknowledge its significance in the scheme of American cinema, throughout the wider science fiction film community, it remains surprisingly under appreciated. This Constellation sets out to shed light on the film's many attributes, from its stylistic significance to its political commentary, countering the critical dismissal of a film suffering from 'personality disorder' to suggest that, instead, Seconds turned its inner identity crisis from a vice into a virtue. In the spirit of the finest science fiction, Seconds is both emblematic of the time in which it was made and perpetually relevant to new audiences as a portent of things to come - or, for that matter, a startling reveal of the hidden here and now.
Scrooge
This Devil's Advocate explores the cinematic wonders of Brian Desmond Hurst's much loved 1951 adaptation of A Christmas Carol, Scrooge, through the prism of horror cinema, arguing that the film has less in common with cosy festive tradition than it does with terror cinema like James Whale's Bride of Frankenstein, Robert Weine's The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, and F.W. Murnau's Faust. Beginning with Charles Dickens himself, a prolific writer of ghost stories, with A Christmas Carol being but one of many, Colin Fleming then considers earlier cinematic adaptations including 1935's folk-horror-like Scrooge, before offering a full account of the Hurst/Sim version, stressing what must always be kept at the forefront of our minds: this is a ghost story.
Trouble Every Day
Transgressive both in its narrative and in its filmmaking, Trouble Every Day (2001) envisions the monster inside, unspeakable urges and an overwhelming need for complete incorporation. A plant discovered in the South American jungle produces in its test subjects a terrible, unnatural and uncontrollable hunger. Vicious, all-consuming desire begets excessive violence and a turn to cannibalism, which situates Trouble Every Day into a tradition of challenging cinema, a film maudit that pushes the boundaries of what can be shown on screen. But while it is certainly an unflinching film, it is deserving of reassessment as part of Clare Denis' filmography as well as a broader cinematic lineage.Focusing on close textual analysis, this book delves into the surfeit of visual, literary, and non-fiction references that shape Trouble Every Day while thwarting attempts to firmly situate it. It considers its place in a lineage of films that push the boundary of taste and representation, aligned as much with Un Chien andalou (1929) as the New French Extremity. It also considers the film's relationship to such sub-genres as classic monster movies, video nasties, mad science, gothic, vampire, body horror, and Italo-exploitation cannibal films, and directors such as Abel Ferrara, Brian de Palma, Jean Renoir and Jacques Tourneau. Drawing on a range of disciplines, including art, philosophy and phenomenology, this study explores how Trouble Every Day elicits a visceral response to a cinematic experience that beguiles and violates.
The Cabin in the Woods
The Cabin in the Woods (2012), directed by Drew Goddard and co-authored by Goddard and Joss Whedon of Buffy-fame, was famously described by co-author Whedon as his 'loving hate letter' to horror. Interviews with Whedon reveal that his struggles with modern cinematic horror are not merely emotional, but intensely philosophical. This book is the first to read Cabin as a philosophical metatext that asks what horror offers audiences and why audiences accept. Like any good philosophy, the film offers no answers but raises questions: what 'choices' are possible in a pre-determined universe? How do we, the audience, see the victims of violence, and with what ethical consequences? And finally, the most fraught question of all: why do we keep looking?
Prevenge
Prevenge (2016) is an entertainingly dark 21st-century horror movie detailing the serial killing journey of heavily pregnant Ruth. It's a cleverly crafted narrative full of stark social commentary, traversing the delicate line between comedy and tragedy by fusing together a kitchen sink approach with a supernatural revenge plot. This book, as part of the Devil's Advocates series, examines how the film deconstructs the slasher mythology and the sexism therein, and upends stereotypical representations of the 'weak' woman and 'delicate' mother. With new exclusive input from writer, director and star Alice Lowe, the text also looks at the production's inception and development, assesses its debts to cult British cinema, and inspects its umbilical connections to Rosemary's Baby, Alien, Village of the Damned and many other 'Monstrous Child' silver screen features.
Peripheral Visions / Global Sounds
Galician audio/visual culture has experienced an unprecedented period of growth following the process of political and cultural devolution in post-Franco Spain. This creative explosion has occurred in a productive dialogue with global currents and with considerable projection beyond the geopolitical boundaries of the nation and the state, but these seismic changes are only beginning to be the subject of attention of cultural and media studies. This book examines contemporary audio/visual production in Galicia as privileged channels through which modern Galician cultural identities have been imagined, constructed and consumed, both at home and abroad. The cultural redefinition of Galicia in the global age is explored through different media texts (popular music, cinema, video) which cross established boundaries and deterritorialise new border zones where tradition and modernity dissolve, generating creative tensions between the urban and the rural, the local and the global, the real and the imagined. The book aims for the deperipheralization and deterritorialization of the Galician cultural map by overcoming long-established hegemonic exclusions, whether based on language, discipline, genre, gender, origins, or territorial demarcation, while aiming to disjoint the center/periphery dichotomy that has relegated Galician culture to the margins. In essence, it is an attempt to resituate Galicia and Galician studies out of the periphery and open them to the world.
Vivre ICI
Vivre Ici invites the reader on a journey through the vast viewing landscape of contemporary French documentary film, a genre that has experienced a renaissance in the past twenty years. The films explored are connected not just by a general interest in engaging the "real," but by a particular attention to French space and place. From farms and wild places to roads, schools, and urban edgelands, these films explore the spaces of the everyday and the human and non-human experiences that unfold within them. Through a critical approach that integrates phenomenology, film theory, eco-criticism and cultural history, Levine investigates the notion of documentary as experience. She asks how and why, in the contemporary media landscape, these films seek to avoid argumentation and instead, give the viewer a feeling of "being there." As a diverse collection of filmmakers, both well-known and lesser-known, explore the limits and possibilities of these places, a collage-like, incomplete, and fragmented vision of France as seen and felt through documentary cameras comes into view. Venturing beyond film analysis to examine the production climate for these films and their circulation in contemporary France, Levine explores the social and political consequences of these "films that matter" for the viewers who come into contact with them.
Dramatized Societies: Quality Television in Spain and Mexico
Over the last decade Spain and Mexico have both produced an extraordinary wealth of television drama. Drawing on both national practices of production and reception and international theories of textual analysis this book offers the first study of contemporary quality TV drama in two countries where television has displaced cinema as the creative medium that shapes the national narrative. As dramatized societies, Spain and Mexico are thus at once reflected and refracted by the new series on the small screen.
Cape Fear
Martin Scorsese's Cape Fear (1991) opens with a shot of water and climaxes on a raging river. Despite, or perhaps because of, the film's great commercial success, critical analysis of the film typically does not delve beneath the surface of Scorsese's first major box office hit. As it reaches its 30th anniversary, Cape Fear is now ripe for a full appraisal.The remake of J. Lee Thompson's 1962 Cape Fear was originally conceived as a straightforward thriller intended for Steven Spielberg. Author Rob Daniel investigates the fascinating ways Scorsese's style and preoccupations transform his version into a horror epic. The director's love of fear cinema, his Catholicism and filmmaking techniques shift Cape Fear into terrifying psychological and psychosexual waters. The analysis also examines the influence of Gothic literature and fairy tales, plus how academic approaches to genre aid an understanding of the film.
