National Treasure Hunt
"I'm going to steal the Declaration of Independence." These eight treasonous words delivered with intense earnestness by Nicolas Cage would launch a pop culture phenomenon in National Treasure (2004) and its sequel, National Treasure 2: Book of Secrets (2007). Years after the films were box office hits, quotes and sentiments from the two-part franchise are frequently referenced in response to both the most joyous and most scathing moments in recent history. But even so, the films have been heavily criticized for purportedly "crazy" storylines, forcing National Treasure enthusiasts to defend their fandom against those who think it merely a guilty pleasure.But what if the majority of National Treasure's plot points were inspired by real figures and events, its heists drew upon actual techniques in science and technology, and production choices were made with the hope that viewers would better remember both triumphs and failures of history? In this book, franchise experts Aubrey Paris and Emily Black, hosts of the National Treasure Hunt podcast, set the record straight, taking a scene-by-scene approach to prove that National Treasure, like protagonist Benjamin Franklin Gates, is not crazy, but rather one step short. Their analyses unearth lesser-known stories from history while considering the ethics of character decisions, assessing comparisons with similar film franchises, interpreting key deleted scenes, and revealing behind-the-scenes secrets from filming. The result is a more complete understanding of the franchise, one that might just turn National Treasure skeptics into begrudging admirers. In the end, don't we all want to know what's on page forty-seven? National Treasure experts Aubrey Paris and Emily Black, hosts of the National Treasure Hunt podcast, bring their expertise to their first book.
Acting for Animators
Ed Hooks' essential acting guidebook for animators has been fully revised and updated in this fifth edition, capturing some of the vast changes that have affected the animation industry in recent years. Written specifically for animation professionals instead of stage and movie actors, this book provides an essential primer for creating empathetic and dynamic character performance and, in the process, shows how the strongest storytelling structure works.Hooks applies classical acting theory - from Aristotle to Stanislavsky and beyond - to animation, as well as explaining scene structure, character development and the connections between thinking, emotion and physical action. Theory presented here applies to any and all character animation regardless of style or animation technique. Whether your project is stop-motion, 2D, 3D or a blend of techniques, audiences are audiences are audiences, and they have shown up at the theater or cinema so they can experience and enjoy your story.New to this fifth edition: Four new scene-by-scene acting analyses of animated feature films: Flee, Soul, Porco Rosso and The Triplets of Belleville A comprehensive and updated section titled "Classroom Notes" which includes a segment on experimental animation, a brief history of acting training for actors and guidance on Motion and Performance Capture technology Updated online database of Hooks' previous film analyses, all in one place Acting for Animators is essential reading for all students and teachers of animation courses.
When Music Takes Over in Film
This open access collection deals with musical moments in film as one of the most pivotal and compelling issues of current film music research. Musical moments as defined by Amy Herzog occur when a musical number inverts the normal relationship between the image track and the soundtrack in a film in such a way that what we see is determined by what we hear. As one potential approach, this definition provokes a variety of perspectives to investigate the disruptive potential of these moments and numbers as a creative device in the production of audiovisual narratives. In this sense, the book responds to a need for an anthology that introduces students as well as scholars of cinema, musicology, media studies and cultural studies more broadly, to recent discourses in film music scholarship. The volume includes contributions by early career researchers as well as by established experts in the fields of musicology, film studies, media studies, and cultural studies, promoting cross-disciplinary collaboration in film music research.
Stunning Backdrop
Alberta's magnificent landscape has served as a popular location for filmmakers since the dawn of the movie industry. For film pioneers, Alberta embodied the myth of the Great Northwest, a primeval mountain wilderness and the last western frontier. In turn, Canadian entrepreneurs were eager for American studios to drape Alberta landscape across the backdrop of their movies, an advertisement without equal. A Stunning Backdrop is the untold story of six rollicking decades of filmmaking in Alberta. Mary Graham draws on twelve years of exhaustive research to reveal a film history like no other, illuminating the deep importance of the province to Hollywood. She explores the often friendly partnerships between American filmmakers and Indigenous communities, particularly the Stoney Nakoda, that provided economic opportunities and, in many cases, allowed them to retain religious and cultural practices banned by the Canadian government. Beautifully illustrated with archival photography and featuring century-old set stills alongside photographs of the locations as they appear today, by Jean Becq, Solomon Chiniquay, Jeff Wallace, George Webber, and Paul Zizka, A Stunning Backdrop is the fascinating, often surprising, always unconventional story of film in a province whose rugged, compelling, multifarious, terribly beautiful landscape continues to inspire filmmakers and audiences around the world.
Raffles
This is a reference book on the 1977 TV series Raffles, starring Anthony Valentine. All episodes are included, as well as the 1975 pilot film. They are presented in order of original transmission dates, along with complete cast listings, numerous photographs, directorial credits, and a story synopsis for each episode. Also include are four cinema-released film: the 1930 Raffles starring Ronald Colman, the 1932 Return of Raffles starring George Barraud, the 1939 Raffles starring David Niven, and a 1958 Mexican-made film.
The Queer Film Guide
Enjoy your night in with these movies that tell queer stories. Have you noticed something about every "100 Greatest Movies Ever Made" list? The people in those movies . . . they're almost all straight, white men. With so much incredible cinema to choose from, those lists only begin to peer into the cinematic and wider world. It's time to push past the gatekeepers of what makes a movie "great" or "culturally significant" and get a broader view of what's out there. Kyle Turner has selected 100 of cinema's greatest queer films that are often overlooked but foundational to the art form and the wider culture. Starting in early cinema with trailblazers like Making a Man of Her and Different from Others, the list progresses through the eras, from Hitchcock's Rope to cult classic The Rocky Horror Picture Show to today's fast-growing list of queer films, including Carol, The Duke of Burgundy, and Moonlight. From lesser-known names to Academy Award winners, The Queer Film Guide offers a fresh take on what defines great cinema, lending a voice to the diverse creators and characters who've shaped the art form.
Masters and Masterpieces of Iranian Cinema
The rise of Iranian cinema to world prominence over the last few decades is one of the most fascinating cultural stories of our time. There is scarcely an international film festival anywhere that does not honor the aesthetic and political explorations of Iranian artists. Masters & Masterpieces of Iranian Cinema celebrates this remarkable emergence. It focuses on twelve of the most important Iranian filmmakers of the past half-century-among them, such pioneers as Forugh Farrokhzad, Dariush Mehrjui, Abbas Kiarostami, and Jafar Panahi. In his examination of their lives and their greatest works, Hamid Dabashi explains how, despite the censorship of both the Pahlavi monarchy and the Islamic Republic, the creativity of these filmmakers has transcended national and cultural borders. His account traces the ascendancy of Iranian cinema in modern Iranian intellectual history and also probes its links to Persian poetry, fiction, art, and philosophy.In Europe and in North America, in Asia and in Latin America, in Australia and Africa, the thematic and narrative richness of Iranian cinema has met with tremendous acclaim. Indeed, its particular modes of realism-building on such cinematic antecedents as Italian, French, and German neorealism-have become truly transnational, contributing a new visual vocabulary to filmmaking everywhere. Masters & Masterpieces of Iranian Cinema studies the role that prominent film festivals have played in fostering the global success of Iranian cinema, and investigates the reception of these films within Iran, an intriguing story in its own right. This is a book that will reward not only the scholar and the film aficionado but also anyone interested in the cultural history of modern Iran.
Intersecting Aesthetics
Contributions by Cynthia Baron, Elizabeth Binggeli, Kimberly Nichele Brown, Priscilla Layne, Eric Pierson, Charlene Regester, Ellen C. Scott, Tanya L. Shields, and Judith E. Smith Intersecting Aesthetics: Literary Adaptations and Cinematic Representations of Blackness illuminates cultural and material trends that shaped Black film adaptations during the twentieth century. Contributors to this collection reveal how Black literary and filmic texts are sites of negotiation between dominant and resistant perspectives. Their work ultimately explores the effects racial perspectives have on film adaptations and how race-inflected cultural norms have influenced studio and independent film depictions. Several chapters analyze how self-censorship and industry censorship affect Black writing and the adaptations of Black stories in early to mid-twentieth-century America. Using archival material, contributors demonstrate the ways commercial obstacles have led Black writers and white-dominated studios to mask Black experiences. Other chapters document instances in which Black writers and directors navigate cultural norms and material realities to realize their visions in literary works, independent films, and studio productions. Through uncovering patterns in Black film adaptations, Intersecting Aesthetics reveals themes, aesthetic strategies, and cultural dynamics that rightfully belong to accounts of film adaptation. The volume considers travelogue and autobiography sources along with the fiction of Black authors H. G. de Lisser, Richard Wright, Ann Petry, Frank Yerby, and Walter Mosley. Contributors examine independent films The Love Wanga (1936) and The Devil's Daughter (1939); Melvin Van Peebles's first feature, The Story of a Three Day Pass (1967); and the Senegalese film Karmen Ge簿 (2001). They also explore studio-era films In This Our Life (1942), The Foxes of Harrow (1947), Lydia Bailey (1952), The Golden Hawk (1952), and The Saracen Blade (1954) and post-studio films The Learning Tree (1969), Shaft (1971), Lady Sings the Blues (1972), and Devil in a Blue Dress (1995).
Watching the World Die
During the 1980s, popular fear of World War III spurred moviemakers to produce dozens of nuclear threat films. Categories ranged from monster movies to post-apocalyptic adventures to realistic depictions of nuclear war and its immediate aftermath. Coverage of atomic angst films isn't new, but this is the first book to solely analyze 1980s nuclear threat movies as a group. Entries range from classics such as The Day After and WarGames to obscurities such as Desert Warrior and Massive Retaliation. Chronological coverage of the 121 films released between 1980 and 1990 includes production details, chapter notes, and critical commentaries.
Sluts on the Small Screen
Viewers spend years laughing, crying, celebrating, and mourning with their favorite TV characters, but when those characters are promiscuous women, different viewers may have very different reactions. Both sexual freedom and sexual shame run deep in the cultural waters, so as TV's promiscuous female characters navigate those choppy waters, what unfolds onscreen reflects--and ultimately shapes--perceptions of promiscuous women as liberated and adventurous, damaged and destructive, or even sick and gross. This work examines fifteen promiscuous female characters and identifies trends in those portrayals--from what motivates their promiscuity to the reproaches they face, the revelations they have, and the redemption it seems they must undergo as a result of their "slutty" ways. This book aims not to promote promiscuity but to fight against the stigmatization of promiscuous women, which is a fight against puritanical patriarchy that benefits everyone.
Intersecting Aesthetics
Contributions by Cynthia Baron, Elizabeth Binggeli, Kimberly Nichele Brown, Priscilla Layne, Eric Pierson, Charlene Regester, Ellen C. Scott, Tanya L. Shields, and Judith E. Smith Intersecting Aesthetics: Literary Adaptations and Cinematic Representations of Blackness illuminates cultural and material trends that shaped Black film adaptations during the twentieth century. Contributors to this collection reveal how Black literary and filmic texts are sites of negotiation between dominant and resistant perspectives. Their work ultimately explores the effects racial perspectives have on film adaptations and how race-inflected cultural norms have influenced studio and independent film depictions. Several chapters analyze how self-censorship and industry censorship affect Black writing and the adaptations of Black stories in early to mid-twentieth-century America. Using archival material, contributors demonstrate the ways commercial obstacles have led Black writers and white-dominated studios to mask Black experiences. Other chapters document instances in which Black writers and directors navigate cultural norms and material realities to realize their visions in literary works, independent films, and studio productions. Through uncovering patterns in Black film adaptations, Intersecting Aesthetics reveals themes, aesthetic strategies, and cultural dynamics that rightfully belong to accounts of film adaptation. The volume considers travelogue and autobiography sources along with the fiction of Black authors H. G. de Lisser, Richard Wright, Ann Petry, Frank Yerby, and Walter Mosley. Contributors examine independent films The Love Wanga (1936) and The Devil's Daughter (1939); Melvin Van Peebles's first feature, The Story of a Three Day Pass (1967); and the Senegalese film Karmen Ge簿 (2001). They also explore studio-era films In This Our Life (1942), The Foxes of Harrow (1947), Lydia Bailey (1952), The Golden Hawk (1952), and The Saracen Blade (1954) and post-studio films The Learning Tree (1969), Shaft (1971), Lady Sings the Blues (1972), and Devil in a Blue Dress (1995).
The Coen Brothers and American Roots Music
For more than three decades, Joel and Ethan Coen have produced some of the most memorable and influential American roots music soundtracks in film history. From Raising Arizona (1987) to O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000) to Inside Llewyn Davis (2013), the Coens, along with musical archivist and producer T-Bone Burnett, have curated half-forgotten yet unforgettable genres, artists and songs from America's cultural past for new audiences. This book is the first devoted to giving a full account of this rich cinematic legacy.
Science Fiction Film
By presenting a new political framework, the book looks at the sci-fi film genre's important critical role in a post-political world, deepening and elucidating our understanding of the post-political present and hence reopening the political imagination to possible future trajectories beyond the horizon of the present. Opening a debate about the political dimension of science fiction films, this book uses Carl Schmitt's thought to provide a new theoretical approach to American cinematic sci-fi since the late 1970s. Drawing on Schmitt's notion of the state of exception and its basis in the unpredictability of tomorrow, it looks at the political ramifications when the moment of the future finally arrives. With analysis of films such as Alien, Blade Runner and Minority Report, Eli Park Sorensen explores how power reconfigures itself to ensure the survival of the state, what 'society' means, who 'we, the people' are, and whether it will still be possible to retain a sphere of liberal, individual rights after the transformative event of the future.
Refocus: The Films of Fran癟ois Ozon
A queer auteur who plays with generic conventions, Fran癟ois Ozon is one of France's most prolific and best known international directors, who has built a filmography that not only engages in the representation of non-normative sexualities, kinship and violence, but also makes room for social outcasts and marginalised communities. This edited collection brings together renowned and emergent scholars to investigate further questions of minority, queerness, (queer) intertextuality and gender representations, as well as secrecy, transgression and intimacy in his films, offering the most up-to-date study of Fran癟ois Ozon's cinema.
Fassbinder Thousands of Mirrors
A kaleidoscopic study of Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Melodrama, biography, cold war thriller, drug memoir, essay in fragments, and mystery, Thousands of Mirrors is cult critic Ian Penman's long-awaited first full-length book: a kaleidoscopic study of Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Written over a short period "in the spirit" of RWF, who would often get films made in a matter of weeks or months, Thousands of Mirrors presents the filmmaker as Penman's equivalent of what Baudelaire was to Benjamin: an urban poet in the turbulent, seeds-sown, messy era just before everything changed. Beautifully written and extraordinarily compelling, echoing the fragmentary works of Roland Barthes and Emil Cioran, Eduardo Galeano and Alexander Kluge, this story has everything: sex, drugs, art, the city, cinema, and revolution.
Entering the Frame
Entering the Frame is the first complete study of the cinema of Yervant Gianikian and Angela Ricci Lucchi, pioneers of archival and found-footage films that testify to war, genocide and colonialism in the twentieth century. It explores their early performance-based 竄scented films罈 of the 1970s, before focusing on the historical films, such as From the Pole to the Equator, for which they are best known. The book analyses how Gianikian and Ricci Lucchi manipulate rare footage through re-photographing, hand-tinting and altering film speeds, to produce work of an other-worldly quality.Retrospectives of the films of Gianikian and Ricci Lucchi at the Jeu de Paume in Paris (2006) and at MoMA in New York (2009) have signalled international recognition at the highest level, as have appraisals by leading scholars of cinema such as Scott MacDonald and Raymond Bellour. Their work is unusual in attracting different audiences, and in relating art practices to wider ethical, historical and political issues. Gianikian and Ricci Lucchi have transformed old documentary footage into works that resonate in debates about postcolonialism as well as about the documentary form, the corporeality of the viewing experience and the metamorphoses of cinema.The volume includes a preface by the cultural historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Professor of Italian and History at New York University.
Cinema at the Shore
From Brigitte Bardot in her bikini at the Cannes Film Festival, to Fran癟ois Ozon's intimate portrayals of grief and loss, some of the most iconic and challenging moments in French cinema are associated with the beach. Cinema at the Shore argues that the Parisian cityscape is not the only significant definition of space in French cinema and instead explores the industrial, aesthetic and thematic relations of French cinema to the beach.Examining a range of films from the 1950s to the present day - including popular comedies by Jacques Tati and Patrice Leconte, the lively and ruminative documentaries of Agn癡s Varda, the classicism of Eric Rohmer, and the provocations of Catherine Breillat - this book showcases the dynamism and importance of the beach as a site for the reconfiguration of French cinematic identity itself. The beach offers a unique crystallization of our attitudes towards nature, culture, the body, space and time. In its constant mobility, its close, yet distinctive, relationship with nature, and its paradoxical centrality in the French cultural imaginary as a site of relaxation and holidays, the beachscape, re-framed and re-imaged by the camera, offers new ways of conceiving of the spatial politics of French cinema.
Fashion on the Red Carpet
The Academy Awards' red-carpet is the most prominent fashion show in media culture. Fashion on the Red Carpet investigates the historical liaison between Hollywood and fashion institutions, to describe how public relations campaigns and the media articulate fashion discourses around the Oscars. The power-shift towards television, the emergence of celebrity culture, the post-war reactivation of transatlantic trade, the growth of fashion journalism, and the increasing circulation of designer names in the media, are converging factors leading to the institutionalisation of the red-carpet as a fashion event in its own right.Departing from archival sources, and tracing discourses of fashion, stardom, and celebrity surrounding Hollywood and the Oscars, this fascinating book explains how the red-carpet became a marquee for the endorsement of high-end fashion brands.
Working Title Films
Working Title Films is arguably the most important production company in the history of British cinema. This wide-ranging book charts the creative and commercial history of Working Title, from its origins as an independent in the 1980s, to its integration into PolyGram Filmed Entertainment in the 1990s, and to its current status as a subsidiary of Universal since the 2000s. In doing so, the relationship between the film industries and cultures of Britain and Hollywood is examined through a consideration of the industrial structures, processes and practices which have defined the operation of the company. Moreover, it considers the ways in which these industrial transitions have produced distinct versions of Britain and Britishness onscreen - ranging from My Beautiful Laundrette and Wish You Were Here to Four Weddings and a Funeral and Notting Hill, and from Johnny English and Nanny McPhee to The Theory of Everything and Yesterday.Drawing on over 30 interviews with key personnel from Working Title, PolyGram Filmed Entertainment and Universal, the author examines not only how this remarkable company has evolved but also why it has evolved in the way that it has by situating its history within the ever-changing landscapes of the British and Hollywood film industries.
The Auditory Setting
The Auditory Setting introduces and investigates how narrative and a sense of place are constructed in film and media arts through the reproduction and mediation of site-specific environmental sounds, or 'ambience'. Although this sonic backdrop acts as the acoustically mediated space where a story or event can take place, there has been little academic study of sound's undervalued role in cinematic setting and production. Drawing on theories of narrative, diegesis, mimesis and presence, and following a varied number of relevant audio-visual works, this book is a ground-breaking exploration of human agency in mediating environmental sounds and the nature of the sonic experience in the Anthropocene.
Refocus: The Films of Shyam Benegal
The first edited collection of essays dedicated to Shyam Benegal's career and films.
Iconoclasm in European Cinema
Exploring anti-mimesis and image destruction in Western European films, Iconoclasm in European Cinema: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Image Destruction offers the first comprehensive study of philosophical iconoclasm in cinema. Drawing on continental philosophy of the image, medieval theology and recent developments in film ethics, it investigates the aesthetic and ethical significance of destroying certain film images, both literally (via damages to the filmstrip) and metaphorically (through blank screens, altered motion and disruptive sounds). Analysing the work of various filmmakers, the book considers iconoclastic gestures against the film image's ability to mimetically represent contents on the verge of the invisible and the ineffable. This book demonstrates that the overlooked issue of iconoclasm in film is essential for understanding contemporary attitudes towards images and argues that cinematic iconoclasm can encourage an ethics of (in)visibility by questioning the limits of our right to see and show something on a screen.
Danish and German Silent Cinema
The book examines how Danish and German film interacted with one another from 1910 through World War I till the advent of sound around 1930. The film businesses of the two countries were closely connected, and many film professionals crossed back and forth across national borders. The studies in this book include production and distribution history, censorship, celebrity studies, and aesthetic analysis. They contribute to European film and cultural history through extensive empirical investigation of films, persons and companies. The underlying perspective is that of entangled film history, an approach that stresses cross-border interchanges and mutual influences. Written by an international team of scholars, the book marks the conclusion of a four-year collective research project running alongside the stumfilm.dk initiative to digitise the entire Danish silent film heritage.
Refocus: The Films of Nuri Bilge Ceylan
ReFocus: The Films of Nuri Bilge Ceylan brings together a cohort of expert scholars to analyse the films of Turkey's most renowned filmmaker. His self-reflexive films inspired by local incidents have reached global dimensions, and won awards at prestigious films festivals, including the Grand Prix, Best Director and Golden Palm at the Cannes Film Festival.This collection highlights Ceylan's aesthetics, auteurism and unique position within the film industry of Turkey and contemporary global cinema while focusing on his transnational style of filmmaking that also favours intertextual exchanges between his films, but also with other landmark works, merging photography, painting, and literature.
Diseased Cinema
American movies about infectious diseases have reflected and driven dominant cultural narratives during the past century. These movies - both real pandemics and imagined zombie outbreaks - have become wildly popular since the beginning of the 21st century. They have shifted from featuring a contained outbreak to an imagined containment of a known disease to a globalized, uncontainable pandemic of an unknown origin. Movie narratives have changed from identifying and solving social problems to a despair and acceptance of America's failure to fulfil its historic social contract. Movies reflect and drive developments in American capitalism that increasingly advocates for individuals and their families, rather than communities and the public good. Disease movies today minimize human differences and envisage a utopian new world order to advance the needs of contemporary American capitalism. These movie narratives shaped reactions to the outbreak of Covid and reinforced individual responsibility as the solution to end the pandemic.
Film Style in Indonesian Cinema, 1998-2018
Headline: Examines the use of cinematography and mise en sc癡ne in contemporary Indonesian cinemaBlurb: Film Style in Indonesian Cinema, 1998-2018 investigates the role of film style during the rebirth of Indonesian cinema following the collapse of General Suharto's New Order regime. Purnama argues that the renewal of Indonesian cinema was influenced by filmmakers who revamped the cinematic images of Indonesian film by foregrounding visual stylisation using cinematography and production design techniques. They transformed the aesthetic of Indonesian film to become stylistically complex with a pronounced degree of visual sophistication, offering local audiences pictorially appealing and engaging cinematic experiences.Through a close analysis of lighting, production design, and camera movement in contemporary films such as Sang Pencerah, Laskar Pelangi, and The Raid: Redemption, Purnama highlights the significance of film style and the art of film-making to the cinematographers and production designers who revitalised Indonesian cinema in the 21st Century. Key Features: The first scholarly work that considers Indonesian cinema as an artistic field with significant aesthetic values and artistic accomplishmentsUses theories of film style never applied to Indonesian films beforeDiscusses films from underrepresented groups, including women, LGBTQ and ethnic minority filmmakers Discusses Indonesian films that have been traditionally under-discussed in the field, including commercial genre films, exploitation films and short films Visually supported with 49 images from Indonesian filmsIncorporates the latest research on cinematography and production design Brings closer the critical study of Indonesian film and film practiceKeywords: film style; cinematography; lighting; camera movement; production design; Indonesian cinemaSubject: Film Studies
Refocus: The Films of Alejandro Jodorowsky
Known as the father of the "midnight cult movie" and co-founder of the avant-garde Panic movement in France, Alejandro Jodorowsky Prullansky defies all basic categorization. He is known as a provocateur, a performance artist, a visionary filmmaker, a controversial playwright, a philosopher, and a tarot reader, among other disparate classifications. These varied dimensions of artist and filmmaker converge seamlessly into his practice. He is recognized by audiences as a creator of controversial and mesmerizing films characterized by visual delirium, the injection of radical politics and mystical philosophy, and a post-surrealist aesthetics. ReFocus: The Films of Alejandro Jodorowsky pursues an interdisciplinary approach to analyze and contextualize Jodorowsky's films according to a variety of conceptual modalities: from occult and mystical orientations, to the political and decolonial aspects of his major films. This collection examines the formative metaphysical elaborations involved in Jodorowsky's earliest films, his pioneering of a truly unique independent film practice in Mexico, and his emergence and development as a visionary international filmmaker.
Portraits of Irish Art in Practice
This book mines the space where aesthetic expression meets lived experience for Irish artists Rita Duffy, Mair矇ad McClean, Paula McFetridge and Ursula Burke. Portrait essays woven with photographs, document each artist's coming of age in Ireland and Northern Ireland, in the context of her emerging practice. As individuals, their work considers infringements on human rights, systemic violence, gender roles and the negotiation of figurative and literal borders and boundaries. Together, they interrogate past and present conflict and emergence from conflict, locally and globally. Their critical work is threaded with hope in the context of past and present political fragmentation. Works considered include Rita Duffy's paintings, drawings and animation like Siege, The Emperor Has No Clothes and Anatomy of Hope; Mair矇ad McClean's films No More, Broadcast and Making Her Mark; Paula McFetridge's productions like convictions, staged at the Crumlin Road Courthouse, This is What We Sang, performed at the Belfast Synagogue and Belfast Quartered, A Love Story, a promenade through Belfast's LGBTQ+ underground; and Ursula Burke's sculptures like Bonfire, Blue Sphinx and Peach Caryatid, and embroidery like The Politicians Frieze.
History and Story in the American Political Thriller Film
This book explores the dramatic identity and design of the American political thriller, tracking the close correlation between the evolution of the genre and the history of the United States from the Cuban Missile Crisis to the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the ensuing War on Terror.
Challenging the Narrative
This book is a result of a ten-year follow-up to Telling Stories from Political Violence: A Filmmaker's Journey (2012). It Stays with You: Use of Force by UN Peacekeepers in Haiti (2018) addresses the impact of the use of lethal force in raids by the UN peacekeeping mission (MINUSTAH) on the marginalized neighborhood of BoisNeuf, in Port-au-Prince, that left scores of civilians dead, many more injured, and domestic properties destroyed. Right Now I Want to Scream: Police and Army Killings in Rio -the Brazil Haiti Connection (2020) continues the issue of the use of lethal force in the increasing militarisation of security operations by authorities on civilians. In 2022, the final film in the trilogy We Never Give Up was producedon living with the legacy of apartheid violence in South Africa. Produced by the Human Rights Media Centre in Cape Town, the trilogy tells the stories of those from a variety of backgrounds - torture victims, displacement, assassination attempts - over a period of 20 years. Finally, the Prison's Memory Archive is a collection of memories from the prisons during the political conflict known as the Troubles in the north of Ireland. In societies emerging out of, or still addressing, political violence, the need to create platforms for survivors to tell their stories as a form of public acknowledgement and personal healing is well documented. Some societies have created official forms, e.g. the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa, while others rely on community, or bottom-up, initiatives, e.g. Accounts of the Conflict in Ireland. Each society, each community, and each project is contingent on the nature of the violence and the needs of the communities who have suffered. The use of documentary film, or audiovisual recording, is one such method of creating a platform for such purposes. The role of participatory practices is an important element in how such filmmaking might address issues of trauma, memory, and injustice.
Film Directing: Shot by Shot - 25th Anniversary Edition
Shot by Shot is the world's go-to directing book, now newly updated for a special 25th Anniversary edition! The first edition sold over 250,000 copies, making it one of the bestselling books on film di-recting of all time. Aspiring directors, cinematographers, editors, and producers, many of whom are now working professionals, learned the craft of visual storytelling from Shot by Shot, the most com-plete source for preplanning the look of a movie. The book contains over 800 photos and illustrations, and is by far the most comprehensive look at shot design in print, containing storyboards from movies such as Citizen Kane, Blade Runner, Dead-pool, and Moonrise Kingdom. Also introduced is the concept of A, I, and L patterns as a way to sim-plify the hundreds of staging choices facing a director in every scene. Shot by Shot uniquely blends story analysis with compositional strategies, citing examples then il-lustrated with the storyboards used for the actual films. Throughout the book, various visual ap-proaches to short scenes are shown, exposing the directing processes of our most celebrated au-teurs ― including a meticulous, lavishly illustrated analysis of Steven Spielberg's scene design for Empire of the Sun.
The Infaplex
England 2001. Teddy (30) is a cool, average looking, ordinary guy with an energetic social life. Challenged daily by his friends, his life's never boring. It's a comfortable existence but not everything is as it seems... always preoccupied, reflecting and sometimes anxious, his view of the world is about to change. He receives an intriguing phone call from an old friend, who urges him to meet John, an anonymous entity, who unbeknown to Teddy will change his life forever. Nonchalant at first, Teddy's curiosity soon begins to draw him in. Who is John? And what is... The Instaplex?
Epic / Everyday
An exciting new strand in The Television Series, the 'Moments in Television' collections celebrate the power and artistry of television, whilst interrogating key critical concepts in television scholarship. Each 'Moments' book is organised around a provocative binary theme. Epic / everyday explores the presence within television of the epic and the everyday. It argues that attention to ideas of the epic and notions of the everyday can illuminate television programmes in new ways. The book explores an eclectic range of TV fictions, including Game of Thrones, Lost and Dr Who. Contributors from diverse perspectives come together to expand and enrich the kind of close analysis most commonly found in television aesthetics. Sustained, detailed programme analyses are sensitively framed within historical, technological, institutional, cultural, creative and art-historical contexts.
Refocus: The Films of Jane Campion
Jane Campion's work shines a spotlight on gender relations, often through complex female characters and an innovative approach to the screen representation of women functioning at the edges of society. Campion is vocal about the under-representation of women in the film industry more generally, though her commitment to the notion of feminism is tempered by an ambivalence towards the term. Despite this ambiguity, Campion's continued focus on women merits an exploration of her work through a feminist lens particularly in the wake of #MeToo, which has had a wide-ranging impact on the film industry.
Secret Violences
Although Michelangelo Antonioni became one of the icons of "modernist" cinema in 1960s, his position in the pantheon of great directors has never been quite secure. Unlike his famous contemporaries, such asIngmar Bergman and Luchino Visconti, whose essential contribution to the art of cinema is hardly ever questioned, Antonioni's work has been repeatedly denigrated from many angles for both aesthetic and political reasons. Though the historical importance of some of Antonioni's films as an incarnation of certain attitudes and problems characteristic of the 1960s and 70s is not denied, they are often considered pass矇, artificial and boring. Contesting prevalent readings, which focus on existential and psychological motifs involving anxiety and the malady of sentiments, this book offers a re-evaluation of Antonioni's most important films interpreted as political cinema engaged with issues which are still crucial in the 21st century. Far from being politically neutral, Antonioni's oblique and "abstract" approach makes possible the prising open and devaluation of the morally and politically constrictive "organic" narrative structures. HIs approach overthrows the primacy of character and plot, on the one hand, by showing them to be emanations of the spectral materiality of capital, and, on the other hand, by allowing for an opening into the utopian dimension, implying engagement in the rethinking of our attachments to the world.
Japanese Cult Cinema
Japanese Cult Cinema: Films from the Second Golden Age is a collection of film reviews and in-depth essays exploring some of the best from the mid-1990s to the early 2000s. During the period between the early 1990s and early 2000s the Japanese film industry enjoyed its biggest boom since the post-war era. Cult monster and horror films like Godzilla 2000, and Audition enjoyed successful releases overseas and Hollywood remakes. In her first book, Upton explores some of her favorite Japanese films and directors in the crime, kaiju and J-horror genres. In the essays, she digs deeper, using semiotic and feminist interpretations to explore notions of authorship, gender, and the adaptation process for some of the most interesting films to come out of this era including Ringu, Cure and Kikujiro.
Incomplete
This field-defining collection establishes unfinished film projects--abandoned, interrupted, lost, or open-ended--as rich and underappreciated resources for feminist film and media studies. In deeply researched and creatively conceived chapters, scholars join with film practitioners in approaching the unfinished film as an ideal site for revealing the lived experiences, practical conditions, and institutional realities of women's film production across historical periods and national borders. Incomplete recovers projects and practices marginalized in film industries and scholarship alike, while also showing how feminist filmmakers have cultivated incompletion as an aesthetic strategy. Objects of loss and of possibility, incomplete films raise profound historiographical and ethical questions about the always unfinished project of film history, film spectatorship, and film studies.
Incomplete
This field-defining collection establishes unfinished film projects--abandoned, interrupted, lost, or open-ended--as rich and underappreciated resources for feminist film and media studies. In deeply researched and creatively conceived chapters, scholars join with film practitioners in approaching the unfinished film as an ideal site for revealing the lived experiences, practical conditions, and institutional realities of women's film production across historical periods and national borders. Incomplete recovers projects and practices marginalized in film industries and scholarship alike, while also showing how feminist filmmakers have cultivated incompletion as an aesthetic strategy. Objects of loss and of possibility, incomplete films raise profound historiographical and ethical questions about the always unfinished project of film history, film spectatorship, and film studies.
On the Figure in General and the Body in Particular:
In this selection of essays written for a variety of publications and platforms throughout the 1990s (essays, program notes, conferences), Nicole Brenez sets out and applies the tenets of what she dubs the "figurative analysis" of cinema. As the title suggests, her two main interests could broadly be summarized as the "figure" (in general) and the "body" (in particular). An actor performing on screen is, of course, a body, but Brenez goes beyond psychological or purely dramatic considerations, studying how formal elements such as framing, lighting, and editing determine what a body is and an audience's perception of it as well as how cinematic devices can be used to create new bodies - as in the science fiction films of the 1990s that posit hybrid, post-human forms. At the same time, a body can also be a collective of individuals or even themes and motifs brought together via cinematic means. The term "figure" also has a broad and rich meaning in Brenez's work, informing concepts such as "figural analysis," "figural economy," "figurative invention," or pure "figuration." While glimpses of these concepts have appeared in scattered translations over the years, this collection represents the first comprehensive and expansive selection of her writings on cinema in English. Brenez is interested in the myriad of shapes that figures take in film: shadows, silhouettes, and contours, but also themes and motifs, and how these are visually and aurally manifested. She is especially interested in the ways in which an individual film produces these figures or figurative constellations. Laying out a methodology in the book's introduction (a letter to John Ford biographer Tag Gallagher), Brenez goes on to analyze and interpret the myriad of figures found in movies by filmmakers ranging from John Woo to Paul Sharits as well as classics by Orson Welles and Sergei Eisenstein. At once rigorous and open, the originality of the films Brenez studies and her very stimulating intuitions and connections, has produced one of the major studies of cinema of the late 20th century.
Goin' Crazy with Sam Peckinpah and All Our Friends
In this enthralling memoir we follow Evans and Peckinpah through conversations in bars, family gatherings, binges on drugs and alcohol, struggles with film producers and executives, and Peckinpah's abusive behavior--sometimes directed at Evans himself.
Breaking Into Factual TV
Successfully entering the TV industry can be difficult to navigate. Breaking into Factual TV will guide you through the process from how to get your first job to how to make it at the top. Written in a clear and accessible way, author Zenia Selby demystifies the TV industry for new entrants and covers all the key roles including runner, researcher, assistant producer, producer and director. Selby reveals what no one ever tells you when you start working at a TV production company - the chain of hierarchy, the most effective ways to network, and the best way to structure your work. The book will travel with you up your career ladder: as you progress from runner to researcher to producer to director, each section provides you with the blueprint you need to excel with every promotion and warns you of the pitfalls to avoid. Perspectives from industry professionals are provided throughout, with interviews with Mitchell Langcaster-James (The Only Way is Essex, QI, and Celebs Go Dating), Jeremy Turner (Edward Snowden: Whistleblower or Spy?, and Women in Prison), Alec Lindsell (Inside the Factory, and The One Show), and Sophie Smith (Albert: The Power Behind Victoria, and Digging for Britain) to offer insight into the reality of their roles. The book is ideal for emerging professionals and graduates of television courses looking to take their first step in the TV industry.
The New Avengers
This is a reference book on the TV series The New Avengers, starring Patrick MacNee, Joanna Lumley, and Gareth Hunt. It includes all episodes in original transmission date order, complete cast lists, numerous photographs, directorial credits, and a story synopsis for each episode.
Taiwan New Cinema at Film Festivals
Taiwan New Cinema (first wave, 1982-1989; second wave, 1990 onward) has a unique history regarding film festivals, particularly in the way these films are circulated at major European film festivals. It shares a common formalist concern about cinematic modernism with its Western counterparts, departing from previous modes of filmmaking that were preoccupied with nostalgically romanticizing China's image. Through utilising in-depth case studies of films by Taiwan-based directors: Tsai Ming-liang, Zhao Deyin and Hou Hsiao-hsien, Tsai discusses how Taiwan New Cinema represents a struggling configuration of the 'nation', brought forth by Taiwan's multilayered colonial and postcolonial histories. Taiwan New Cinema at Film Festivals presents the conditions that have led to the production of a national cinema, branding the auteur, and examines shifting representations of cultural identity in the context of globalization.
Failed Masculinities
Satyajit Ray belonged to a category of filmmakers and artists from newly independent countries whose work was used to define 'national culture'. Failed Masculinities: The Men in Satyajit Ray's Films argues that a study of his films will give us a purchase on the moral trajectory of India in its first few decades of independence, particularly through examination of his male characters and their narratives. Films discussed by Sanyal include the Apu Trilogy, Shakha Prasakha, Ghare Baire and Kapurush.
Sesame Street
In Sesame Street: A Transnational History, author Helle Strandgaard Jensen tells the story of how the American television show became a global brand. Jensen argues that because the show's domestic production was not financially viable from the beginning, Sesame Street became a commodity that its producers assertively marketed all over the world. Sesame Street: A Transnational History combines archival research from seven countries, bolstering an insightful analysis of how local reception and rejection of the show related to the global sales strategies and American ideals it was built upon. Contrary to the producers' oft-publicized claims of Sesame Street's universality, the show was heavily shaped by a fixed set of assumptions about childhood, education, and commercial entertainment. This made sales difficult as Sesame Street met both skepticism and direct hostility from foreign television producers who did not share these ideals. Drawing on insights from new histories about childhood, education, and transnational media, the book lays bare a cultural clash of international proportions rooted in divergent approaches to children's television. In doing so, it provides a reflective backdrop to the many ongoing debates about children's media. In contrasting the positive receptions and renunciations of Sesame Street, Jensen demonstrates that it was only after a substantial rethinking of Sesame Street's aims and business model that this program ended up on numerous broadcasting schedules by the mid-1970s. Along the way, this rethinking and the constant negotiations with potential international buyers created and shaped the business and corporate brand that paved the way for the Sesame Street we know today.
The Non-User-Friendly Guide For Aspiring TV Writers
Steven L. Sears has had a successful career in film and television encompassing over thirty years of involvement at all levels. From his beginnings as a staff writer on the hit NBC show THE A-TEAM, to Co-Executive Producer on the hit series XENA-WARRIOR PRINCESS for MCA/Universal, creator and Executive Producer of SHEENA for Sony/TriStar Television, and many pilot and development deals with the major studios and production companies, he has amassed a huge amount of experience and knowledge about the inner workings of the entertainment industry. In THE NON-USER-FRIENDLY GUIDE FOR ASPIRING TELEVISION WRITERS, he shares that experience and gives advice for those considering a career in television writing. Instead of the traditional academic and sterile approach, Steven answers questions from a personal, first person perspective. The questions have been culled from the real world, people seeking out his advice and looking for the experience that most books don't have. Some of what he writes about are hard and difficult facts to accept about the business. Other times it's his opinion based on his vast experience. But all of it is unsweetened and direct. Even if you don't like his answers, he will certainly make you think hard about your approach and choices when pursuing a career in an extremely difficult Industry. As a result, you will be better prepared to achieve the success that he has had. His style is accessible, personable and relaxed. "It's like having lunch with Steven and asking him questions about the business. Without having to watch him eat."
Chronology of Classic Horror Films
Author Donald Willis continues his insights into horror film history with his new tome on the 1940s. Yes, we had vampires and the Frankenstein Monster, mummies, a new villain-the Wolf Man, dark moody Val Lewton films and a slew of comic monster rallies.If the 1930s was Universal and monsters, the 1940s was RKO and mood-states of mind. The Palladists in The Seventh Victim, Kyra (Helene Thimig), inIsle of the Dead and (outside RKO) Count Fosco (Sydney Greenstreet) in TheWoman in White-all work on their victims psychologically-to the point of death.They wear down their chosen prey mentally. Meanwhile, Universal in the 1940s could be seen to have been spinning its wheels for about seven years, until the logical, comic outcome in 1948: Abbott andCostello Meet Frankenstein.
