The Millennial Woman in Bollywood
With the turn of the century, slowly a change began to come over the women in mainstream Bollywood films. The female lead shed-off her cardboard role of the beloved and gained complexity that reconciled career, ambition, and personal fulfillment, along with an assertion of the right to be feminine. The present work studies this shift and traces the emergence of a new Bollywood brand - the millennial woman - that took its cue from a new globalized India where the educated working woman became more self-assertive and unapologetic about her life choices. Rao argues that contemporary popular cinema has sensed a change in the zeitgeist and worked it into trusted formulaic stories in small safe doses so that the audience continue to take home a feel-good factor without feeling threatened by it. While the success of early films like 'Chandni Bar' (2001), 'Page 3' (2005), and 'Fashion' (2008) with female protagonists emboldened filmmakers and their financiers to venture into a territory previously considered box office poison, the reinvention of the classics by a band of subversive and irreverent filmmakers such as Anurag Kashyap and Tigmanshu Dhulia gave a hospitable home to the new woman in 'Dev D' (2009) and 'Saheb, Biwi aur Gangster' (2011). The feisty, independent, and sometimes confused young woman who is comfortable with her sexuality has made her way (and comfortably settled) into the modern romance-comedy as well. With films like 'Kahaani' (2012), 'Queen' (2014), and 'Mary Kom' (2014), that had women protagonists driving the plot, the reins have been handed over to the female lead.
Voyages of Discovery
Frederick Wiseman is America's foremost chronicler of public institutions. His films have focused on city, state, and local governments; hospitals; asylums; creative organizations and museums; schools; libraries; and more. In recent years, Wiseman's work has reached a new level of popularity, with films such as In Jackson Heights (2015), Monrovia, Indiana (2018), and City Hall (2020) all earning widespread acclaim. Voyages of Discovery is the definitive account of Wiseman's career, offering a comprehensive analysis of the work of the leading documentary filmmaker in the United States. In this updated edition, Barry Keith Grant adds new material exploring the documentarian's works since the 1990s, discussing every film in Wiseman's remarkable sixty-year career. He examines the core concerns running across Wiseman's work from the early films, which focus on documenting institutional failure, through an expanding interest in cultural institutions and ideology, to a blossoming embrace of democracy in later films. He pays particular attention to Wiseman's strategies for involving and implicating the spectator in the institutional processes the films document. Grant also places Wiseman within the history of the documentary and other traditions of American art and considers the relationship between documentary film and authorship. Voyages of Discovery is an important book for anyone interested in Wiseman's work or how documentary film can reveal the fabric of our shared civic life.
The Age of Melodramatic Miniseries
Glamour, power, champagne breakfasts in satin sheets--welcome to television's most dazzling and overlooked genre: women-centric melodrama miniseries of the 1980s and 1990s. Decades before Real Housewives, rags-to-riches fantasies depicting strong women overcoming tragedy to take charge of their destinies were a big hit with TV audiences. Reflecting the "greed is good" ethos of the day and encoded with feminist messaging, these glitzy, often camp stories depicted statuesque superwomen facing off with square-jawed men in boardrooms and bedrooms. This book explores the shows that epitomized the prime-time soap era and gave us such memorable scenes as Stefanie Powers trading lovers with her twin sister, Joan Collins fighting Nazis in haute couture and Phoebe Cates demanding, "Which one of you bitches is my mother?"
The Best of The Best
In the 1990s, television sitcoms were at the height of their popularity, delivering beloved characters and laugh-out-loud humor that captured the hearts of audiences around the world. From the witty banter of Friends to the heartwarming family dynamic of Full House, the decade produced some of the most iconic and memorable sitcoms of all time. In this book, we take a trip down memory lane to revisit the shows that defined a generation. From the fashion and music to the unforgettable catchphrases and moments, we explore what made these shows so special and why they continue to resonate with audiences today. With interviews from cast members, behind-the-scenes stories, and a deep dive into the cultural impact of these sitcoms, this book is a must-read for anyone who grew up in the 90s or simply appreciates the art of a well-crafted sitcom. So grab a bowl of popcorn, sit back, and get ready to relive the golden era of television comedy.
This Shark, Swallow You Whole
One of the most influential thrillers in media history, Jaws first surfaced as a best-selling novel by first-time novelist Peter Benchley in 1974, followed by the 1975 feature film directed by Steven Spielberg at the beginning of his storied career. Jaws is often considered the first "blockbuster," and successive generations of filmmakers have cited it as formative in their own creative development. For nearly 50 years, critics and scholars have studied how and why this seemingly straightforward thriller holds such mass appeal. This book of original essays assembles a range of critical thought on the impact and legacy of the film, employing new perspectives--historical, cinematic, literary, scientific and environmental--while building on the insights of previous writers. While varying in focus, the essays in this volume all explore why Jaws was so successful in its time and how it remains a prominent storytelling influence well into the 21st century.
The Aesthetics and Politics of Cinematic Pedestrianism
This book offers a rich exploration of the cinematic aesthetics that filmmakers devised to reflect the corporeal and affective experience of walking in the city. Winner of the 2023 Best Book Award from the Amsterdam School of Cultural Analysis (ASCA).
It’s Forever Strictly Personal
It's Forever Strictly Personal concludes Eric Friedmann's journey through the movies during the eight year period of 1992 to 1999. While he and the rest of the world embraced blockbuster motion pictures like Jurassic Park, Mission: Impossible, Independence Day, Titanic and The Matrix, it was also alternative films like A River Runs Through It, Like Water For Chocolate, Pulp Fiction, The Usual Suspects and Life Is Beautiful that captured the attention of his adulthood, and forever reminded him of the endless possibilities of cinema.Eric's personal story about the movies is forever told with great memory and affection, for those who still remember when movies changed us, helped us to grow, and evolved into deep-rooted memories for all of us who loved sitting in front of the big screen and waited for the magic to unfold."Movies comfort us, teach us, and hopefully, try to answer the big questions of why in life" - Eric Friedmann So, are you ready to go back one last time...and remember?1
Everything I Know About Life I Learned From James Bond
Celebrate the heroic swagger of Agent 007 with the ultimate fan's guide to all things James Bond.For millions of American men who grew up in the 1950s and 60s, James Bond was the ultimate masculine icon. He was stylish, smart, and sophisticated. He was ready for adventure, unafraid of danger, and irresistible to women. In short, he was everything his young male fans wanted to be. In this volume, authors Bob Blackwood and John L. Flynn think back on the importance of James Bond in their lives, and the lessons they learned from his movies and novels. Covering everything from cars and clothes to how to order a martini, this is a loving celebration of the man they call "Bond, James Bond."
The Story of Disney: 100 Years of Wonder
The ultimate coffee table book for every Disney fan's collection! Dive into the enchanting world of Disney and relive the magic that has captivated generations. This beautifully crafted keepsake reflects on Disney's rich history and legacy with vibrant text, rare concept art, and hundreds of photographs. It's also the official companion book to Disney100: The Exhibition, now touring Kansas City, Missouri, in the United States and Seoul in South Korea! In 1923, Walt Disney and his brother Roy founded what we now know to be The Walt Disney Company. Walt's passion and vision has been--and continues to be--an inspiration. This magical compendium commemorates 100 years of Disney--the characters, the stories, the films, and the parks, all of which have touched the lives of generations of fans and encouraged a belief that dreams really can come true. Fans will delight at the treasures found inside: A wide range of Disney history, from the birth of Walt Disney all the way up to the latest park innovations.Wonderful photos and illustrations (including rare concept art), interviews, and detailed looks at the parks.Enchanting stories, behind-the-scenes secrets, and a peek inside the Walt Disney Archives collection.As the official companion to the touring exhibition by Walt Disney Archives and SC Exhibitions, this gorgeous coffee table book is a treasure trove for pop culture enthusiasts, artists, art collectors, and Disney fans. Searching for more ways to connect with the Disney films and parks? Explore these books from Disney Editions: Disney A to Z: The Official Encyclopedia, Sixth EditionWalt Disney: An American Original, Commemorative EditionThe Official Walt Disney Quote BookDirecting at Disney: The Original Directors of Walt's Animated Films A Portrait of Walt Disney World: 50 Years of The Most Magical Place on EarthMaps of the Disney Parks: Charting 60 Years from California to ShanghaiPoster Art of the Disney Parks, Second Edition
Voyages of Discovery
Frederick Wiseman is America's foremost chronicler of public institutions. His films have focused on city, state, and local governments; hospitals; asylums; creative organizations and museums; schools; libraries; and more. In recent years, Wiseman's work has reached a new level of popularity, with films such as In Jackson Heights (2015), Monrovia, Indiana (2018), and City Hall (2020) all earning widespread acclaim. Voyages of Discovery is the definitive account of Wiseman's career, offering a comprehensive analysis of the work of the leading documentary filmmaker in the United States. In this updated edition, Barry Keith Grant adds new material exploring the documentarian's works since the 1990s, discussing every film in Wiseman's remarkable sixty-year career. He examines the core concerns running across Wiseman's work from the early films, which focus on documenting institutional failure, through an expanding interest in cultural institutions and ideology, to a blossoming embrace of democracy in later films. He pays particular attention to Wiseman's strategies for involving and implicating the spectator in the institutional processes the films document. Grant also places Wiseman within the history of the documentary and other traditions of American art and considers the relationship between documentary film and authorship. Voyages of Discovery is an important book for anyone interested in Wiseman's work or how documentary film can reveal the fabric of our shared civic life.
UFO
This is a reference book on the 1970-71 TV series UFO. The book includes all 26 episodes, as well as six compilation films, anf the 1969 film Doppelganger. The book includes complete cast lists, directorial credits, numerous photographs, and a story synopsis for each episode.
Fierce Females on Television
Fierce Females on Television provides a fascinating deep-dive into how shows such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Charmed, Homeland, Orphan Black, and The Equalizer have changed the way women are portrayed on television and paved the way for the strong female characters we know and love today.
The Spirit and the Screen
The Spirit and the Screen explores pertinent pneumatological issues that arise in film and asks how Christian convictions and experiences of the Spirit might shape the way one thinks about films and film-making.
Fractured Fifties
The 1950s as a cultural concept has surged with astonishing force over the last half century. Cultural and political investment in the postwar era has been heavily determined by the desires, anxieties, ideologies, and technologies of the contexts in which they surface. In this book author Christine Sprengler explores how contextualizing factors shaped the 1950s in different ways, and how cinematic representations spearheaded, challenged, or intervened in our cultural memories of the era. Fractured Fifties: The Cinematic Periodization and Evolution of a Decade presents a two-pronged argument-- that cinema helped define the 1950s by contributing in considerable and meaningful ways to the process of periodization and subsequently a common conception of the decade, and that cinema itself has fractured our understanding of the 1950s. Fractured Fifties challenges a reductive and fairly cohesive set of tropes with a complex amalgam of representations that also intervene in debates about historiography, historicity, cultural memory, mediation, nostalgia, and periodization. Ultimately, Sprengler posits that cinema has complicated our sense of the 1950s, yielding in the process a series of 1950s types or kinds, (e.g., The Leave it to Beaver Fifties, The Jukebox Fifties, and The Cold War Fifties, The Retromediated Fifties) as well as a wealth of critical insights into myriad pasts, presents, and the evolving relationships between them.
Shooting Zodiac
From the New York Times Bestselling Author of 'Zodiac', 'Auto Focus' and 'Black Fire'. The amazing filmmakers behind the true crime classic Zodiac, and their pursuit to get it right, or not at all. DAVID FINCHER WAS AFTER THE TRUTH.WITHOUT IT, HE WOULD NOT SHOOT ZODIAC.For nearly two decades, Hollywood had been trying to make a movie of Zodiac, and for nearly two decades, it had failed.In 2003, producer Brad Fischer, and screenwriter Jamie Vanderbilt attempted the undoable, and set their sights on the one filmmaker they felt unequalled for the helm: director David Fincher (Se7en, Fight Club).Fincher's eye for detail, probing mind, and unrelenting quest for answers made him ideal. His personal connection to the case made him perfect.From Hollywood boardrooms to remote fog-shrouded crime scenes, they battle a huge script that refuses to be beaten, a case that refuses to be solved, and a running time and budget that threaten their film.Follow as they track down missing witnesses, gather the original investigators, visit the original crime scenes, discover boxes of Zodiac case files from an attic, unearth new clues, a videotape of the prime suspect's police interrogation, and a surviving victim who doesn't want to be found.To keep Fincher on board, and get their film greenlit, it will take cold leads, private eyes, new evidence, and most of all, perseverance."SOMETHING DRAWS THE GIRL'S attention," David Fincher said. The maverick director paused at the spot along the shore Captain Ken Narlow had indicated. Something was not right. Fincher looked down at the rocky ground and the steep slope of the rotting tree as if he had not seen them before. Without a word he wheeled and walked some distance around to the adjacent peninsula. The retired detectives watched the celebrated filmmaker follow the curve of land and circle to a little inlet on the other bank. His head was down as he took long, athletic strides. Suddenly, he knelt and studied the ground. He picked up a fistful of earth, let it drift between his fingers, and watched as the wind carried the reddish particles away. He looked up at the road high above where the victims' car had been found, then looked back at the tree. Next, he tossed a few rocks in the air and gazed to the center of the lake where it was a couple hundred feet deep. Fincher wondered what other mysteries might be buried there. Further up, underneath the dam at Devil's Gate, was the narrow point of Putah Creek. Fincher returned from his scouting trip and made an announcement. His voice was confident and clear, ringing out over the lake. "The other side of the little island out there is much more vertical than this side," he said. "I think that is the actual murder site." "Let's go over and take a look," Narlow said and started north with Jamie Vanderbilt. "I'm not one hundred percent convinced this is the place." When Narlow reached the other side of the inlet, he clapped a hand to his forehead and then hailed Fincher and the rest of the men across the water. "My God!" he hollered, "I took you to the wrong spot!" In that arcane way he had of penetrating to the heart of a riddle, Fincher had discerned the truth. He became quiet as he began working the puzzle of the open taxi door, the blood that should have been elsewhere, a bloody print that belonged to no one, and the shot nobody heard.
Screening Nature
Environmentalism and ecology are areas of rapid growth in academia and society at large. Screening Nature is the first comprehensive work that groups together the wide range of concerns in the field of cinema and the environment, and what could be termed "posthuman cinema." It comprises key readings that highlight the centrality of nature and nonhuman animals to the cinematic medium, and to the language and institution of film. The book offers a fresh and timely intervention into contemporary film theory through a focus on the nonhuman environment as principal register in many filmic texts. Screening Nature offers an extensive resource for teachers, undergraduate students, and more advanced scholars on the intersections between the natural world and the worlds of film. It emphasizes the cross-cultural and geographically diverse relevance of the topic of cinema ecology.
Rethinking Jewishness in Weimar Cinema
The burgeoning film industry in the Weimar Republic was, among other things, a major site of German-Jewish experience, one that provided a sphere for Jewish "outsiders" to shape mainstream culture. The chapters collected in this volume deploy new historical, theoretical, and methodological approaches to understanding the significant involvement of German Jews in Weimar cinema. Reflecting upon different conceptions of Jewishness - as religion, ethnicity, social role, cultural code, or text - these studies offer a wide-ranging exploration of an often overlooked aspect of German film history.
The Evolution of Horror in the Twenty-First Century
The Evolution of Horror in the Twenty-First Century explores the many aspects of the horror genre across thematics and media in the 2020s. Consisting of 21 original essays by experts in the field, this book examines how horror reveals the anxieties around our current cultural moment and how that might develop in the future.
The Rebirth of Utopia in 21st-Century Cinema
Thinking across the boundaries of utopian studies, film studies, and the sociology of globalisation, this book argues that 21st-century cinema illustrates the rebirth of utopia as an open method grounded in cosmopolitan worldviews and aspirations.
Refocus: The Films of William Wyler
In his forty-five-year career, William Wyler not only traversed the silent and the sound eras, but also connected classic Hollywood to "new Hollywood." The range of his films also spans a wide spectrum of genres: from westerns to adaptations of classic literature, from crime thrillers to rom-coms, and from controversial topics to musicals. His three Oscars for Best Director are an achievement surpassed only by John Ford. His life experience as one of Hollywood's early immigrant artists also speaks to the foreign influence on classic Hollywood. Yet despite his awards and commercial success, artistic recognition has mostly eluded Wyler. This volume of the ReFocus series attempts to analyze this Wyler paradox and also seeks to contextualize and theorize selections from Wyler's canon and his relationship to American cinematic history and American culture. This collection has gathered contributions from international authors from extremely diverse backgrounds, and therefore differing perspectives on Wyler and his work.
Provocation in Women’s Filmmaking
Critics regularly use the term "provocateur" to describe controversial film directors. Although most individuals who attract this term are men, there is a long and largely unexamined history of female auteurs who shock and unsettle their viewers. Provocation in Women's Filmmaking: Authorship and Art Cinema investigates how women directors participate in the tradition of provocative art cinema. Focusing on the post-millennium films of auteurs such as Lisa Aschan, Catherine Breillat, Jennifer Kent, Isabella Ekl繹f, Lucile Hadzihalilovic, Claire Denis, Anna Biller and Athina Rachel Tsangari, this book considers the aesthetics and strategies of women's provocative filmmaking in contemporary cinema. Challenging the gendering of provocation as a hyper-masculine mode of authorship, the book uncovers an enticing and complex array of divisive works by women.
Film Adaptations of Russian Classics
The volume examines several screen adaptations of works written by mid- and late nineteenth-century authors, who constitute the hallmark of the Russian cultural brand, finding favour with audiences in Russia and in the West. It considers reimagining of Goncharov, Turgenev, Dostoevsky, Chekhov and Tolstoy in different contexts.The book examines various types of adaptation, including transposition, commentary, and analogy. It focuses on established Russian and western filmmakers' dialogue with the classics taking place in the last 60 years. The book shows how the ideological and/or philosophical concerns of the day serve as a lens for a specific reading of the novel, the story, or the play. By foregrounding a synergetic literary-cinematic space, the book demonstrates how the director becomes a creative mediator between his audiences and the author, taking account of contemporary epistemological imperatives and the particularities of the reception by viewers.
Quiller
This is a reference book on the 1975 television series Quiller. The book includes all episodes in original date of transmission order, complete cast listings, numerous photographs, directorial credits, and a story synopsis for each episode. The 1966 film The Quiller Memorandum is also included.
Hollywood: The Oral History
The real story of Hollywood as told by such luminaries as Steven Spielberg, Frank Capra, Katharine Hepburn, Meryl Streep, Harold Lloyd, and nearly four hundred others, assembled from the American Film Institute's treasure trove of interviews, reveals a fresh history of the American movie industry from its beginnings to today. From the archives of the American Film Institute comes a unique picture of what it was like to work in Hollywood from its beginnings to its present day. Gleaned from nearly three thousand interviews, involving four hundred voices from the industry, Hollywood: The Oral History, lets a reader "listen in" on candid remarks from the biggest names in front of the camera--Bette Davis, Meryl Streep, Tom Hanks, Harold Lloyd--to the biggest behind it--Frank Capra, Steven Spielberg, Alfred Hitchcock, Jordan Peele, as well as the lesser known individuals that shaped what was heard and seen on screen: musicians, costumers, art directors, cinematographers, writers, sound men, editors, make-up artists, and even script timers, messengers, and publicists. The result is like a conversation among the gods and goddesses of film: lively, funny, insightful, historically accurate and, for the first time, authentically honest in its portrait of Hollywood. It's the insider's story. Legendary film scholar Jeanine Basinger and New York Times bestselling author Sam Wasson, both acclaimed storytellers in their own right, have undertaken the monumental task of digesting these tens of thousands of hours of talk and weaving it into a definitive portrait of workaday Hollywood.
Everything Is Sampled
Everything Is Sampled examines the shifting modes of production and circulation of African artistic forms since the 1980s, focusing on digital culture as the most currently decisive setting for these changes. Drawing on works of cinema, literature, music, and visual art, Akin Adesokan. addresses two main questions. First, given the various changes that the institutions producing African arts and letters have undergone in the past four decades, how have the representational impulses in these forms fared in comparison with those at work in pervasively digital cultures? Second, how might a long view of these artistic forms across media and in different settings affect our understanding of what counts as art, as text, as authorship? Immersed in digital culture, African artists today are acutely aware of the media-saturated circumstances in which they work and actively bridge them by making ethical choices to shape those circumstances. Through an innovative development and analysis of five modes of creative practice--curation, composition, adaptation, platform, and remix--Everything Is Sampled offers an absorbingly complex yet nuanced approach to appreciating the work of several generations of African writers, directors, and artists. No longer content to just fill a spot in the relay between the conception and distribution of a work, these artists are now also quick to view and reconfigure their works through different modes of creative practice.
Silent Film’s Last Hurrah
This is a history and critical appreciation of an unusually fertile period for the production of great or near-great silent films: late 1927 through early 1929, in the midst of the tumult and upheaval of Hollywood's transition from silent to sound. The book offers in-depth looks at several of the best of these films and discusses the gifted artists such as Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, and Lillian Gish who helped bring them to life, even as the art they had taken to remarkable heights was about to be obliterated. It depicts some of the silent medium's most talented filmmakers and their efforts--in the face of inescapable technological change--to give their dying art a rousing last hurrah.
Clerks
This study of Kevin Smith's debut film breaks new ground by exploring how Clerks sits at the intersection of political and cultural trends relevant to alternative youth cultures in the early 1990s.Clerks (1994) was born of and appeals to a specific youth subculture, with the multimedia 'View Askewniverse' developing out of the film's initial release. Drawing on existing texts and movements such as Richard Linklater's Slacker (1991), Douglas Coupland's novel Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture and alternative rock subcultures that had developed during and since the 1980s, the film presents a comedic take on working as a young person in 1990s America in a manner that was praised for its authenticity. Filmed on a miniscule budget, the roughness of the film's aesthetic, combined with a hard rock soundtrack comprised of mostly independent bands, convinced many that it could speak for young Americans, much more than polished, corporate Hollywood productions. The book situates the film within this wider cultural movement and cultural zeitgeist and explores the role of working-class youth and employment in the years following Reaganomics and its consequences, as well as providing insight into the film's presentation of consumption and of its representation of masculinity and sexuality.Clear, concise and comprehensive, the book is ideal for students, scholars and those with an interest in youth cinema, American independent film, Cult Film, Subcultures and Counterculture, as well as both Film and American Studies more broadly.
Trans New Wave Cinema
This book presents a critical cultural study of the Trans New Wave as a cinematic genre and explores its emergence in the twenty first century.
Australian Genre Film
Australian Genre Film interrogates key genres at the core of Australia's so-called new golden age of genre cinema, establishing the foundation on which more sustained research on film genre in Australian cinema can develop. The book examines what characterises Australian cinema and its output in this new golden age, as contributors ask to what extent Australian genre film draws on widely understood (and largely Hollywood-based) conventions, as compared to culturally specific conventions of genre storytelling. As such, this book offers a comprehensive and up-to-date survey of Australian genre film, undertaken through original analyses of 13 significant Australian genres: action, biopics, comedy, crime, horror, musical, road movie, romance, science fiction, teen, thriller, war, and the Western.This book will be a cornerstone work for the burgeoning field of Australian film genre studies and a must-read for academics; researchers; undergraduate students; postgraduate students; and general readers interested in film studies, media studies, cultural studies, Australian studies, and sociology.
Hollis Frampton
Hollis Frampton was an American filmmaker, photographer, and theorist who bridged the experimental film and contemporary art worlds in the 1960s and 1970s. Best known for avant-garde films including Zorns Lemma (1970) and (nostalgia) (1971), Frampton spent his later years working on the unfinished epic Magellan, a monumental cycle that used the metaphor of Ferdinand Magellan's circumnavigation of the world to rethink the natures and meanings of history, modernity, and cinema. Frampton's career was cut short by cancer at age 48, with his vast ambitions for the project left incomplete. This book is a groundbreaking and comprehensive account of this remarkable figure's work in its totality, from Frampton's earliest films through Magellan. Michael Zryd explores the connections linking Frampton's art and thought to other media forms, histories, and cultural frameworks. He foregrounds Frampton's notion of the "infinite cinema," which redefined the parameters of the medium to encompass all forms of moving image and sound media across the past and future of cinematic possibility. Zryd analyzes Frampton's ambivalent relationship with modernism and the Enlightenment, showing how the artist navigated between attraction to radical artistic investigation and awareness of this tradition's implication in colonialism and other oppressive power structures. Shedding new light on Frampton's project of exploring and critiquing how cinema attempts to capture and understand the world, this book also considers his significance for contemporary art.
Consent Culture and Teen Films
Teen films of the 1980s were notorious for treating consent as irrelevant, with scenes of boys spying in girls' locker rooms and tricking girls into sex. While contemporary movies now routinely prioritize consent, ensure date rape is no longer a joke, and celebrate girls' desires, sexual consent remains a problematic and often elusive ideal in teen films.In Consent Culture and Teen Films, Michele Meek traces the history of adolescent sexuality in US cinema and examines how several films from the 2000s, including Blockers, To All the Boys I've Loved Before, The Kissing Booth, and Alex Strangelove, take consent into account. Yet, at the same time, Meek reveals that teen films expose how affirmative consent ("yes means yes") fails to protect youth from unwanted and unpleasant sexual encounters. By highlighting ambiguous sexual interactions in teen films-such as girls' failure to obtain consent from boys, queer teens subjected to conversion therapy camps, and youth manipulated into sexual relationships with adults-Meek unravels some of consent's intricacies rather than relying on oversimplification.By exposing affirmative consent in teen films as gendered, heteronormative, and cis-centered, Consent Culture and Teen Films suggests we must continue building a more inclusive consent framework that normalizes youth sexual desire and agency with all its complexities and ambivalences.
Italian Film in the Present Tense
For observers of the European film scene, Federico Fellini's death in 1993 came to stand for the demise of Italian cinema as a whole. Exploring an eclectic sampling of works from the new millennium, Italian Film in the Present Tense confronts this narrative of decline with strong evidence to the contrary.Millicent Marcus highlights Italian cinema's new sources of industrial strength, its re-placement of the Rome-centred studio system with regional film commissions, its contemporary breakthroughs on the aesthetic front, and its vital engagement with the changing economic and socio-political circumstances in twenty-first-century Italian life. Examining works that stand out for their formal brilliance and their moral urgency, the book presents a series of fourteen case studies, featuring analyses of such renowned films as Il Divo, Gomorrah, The Great Beauty, We Have a Pope, The Mafia Only Kills in the Summer, and Fire at Sea, along with lesser-known works deserving of serious critical scrutiny. In doing so, Italian Film in the Present Tense contests the widely held perception of a medium languishing in its "post-Fellini" moment, and instead acknowledges the ethical persistence and forward-looking currents of Italian cinema in the present tense.
Hollis Frampton
Hollis Frampton was an American filmmaker, photographer, and theorist who bridged the experimental film and contemporary art worlds in the 1960s and 1970s. Best known for avant-garde films including Zorns Lemma (1970) and (nostalgia) (1971), Frampton spent his later years working on the unfinished epic Magellan, a monumental cycle that used the metaphor of Ferdinand Magellan's circumnavigation of the world to rethink the natures and meanings of history, modernity, and cinema. Frampton's career was cut short by cancer at age 48, with his vast ambitions for the project left incomplete. This book is a groundbreaking and comprehensive account of this remarkable figure's work in its totality, from Frampton's earliest films through Magellan. Michael Zryd explores the connections linking Frampton's art and thought to other media forms, histories, and cultural frameworks. He foregrounds Frampton's notion of the "infinite cinema," which redefined the parameters of the medium to encompass all forms of moving image and sound media across the past and future of cinematic possibility. Zryd analyzes Frampton's ambivalent relationship with modernism and the Enlightenment, showing how the artist navigated between attraction to radical artistic investigation and awareness of this tradition's implication in colonialism and other oppressive power structures. Shedding new light on Frampton's project of exploring and critiquing how cinema attempts to capture and understand the world, this book also considers his significance for contemporary art.
Histories of Children’s Television Around the World
The book puts together for the first time valuable updated information that looks at children's television from its early days up to the current digital age, with its vast digital media offerings and availability. It offers new insights about a central children's media culture and focuses on non-Anglo-American television histories. Thus, readers interested in understanding past to present, local and global processes in children's television, would be able to find it in one book. Scholars, students, and professionals working in the field of children, as well as everyone concerned with children's culture will find a great diversity of knowledge about the cultural, social, political, and economic contexts of programs with which they and their children have grown up. This edited book is based on a collective effort of researchers and professionals dedicated to compiling the stories of children's television around the world. With 12 national chapters, the book includes historical accounts of children's television from the following countries: Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Ecuador, Germany, India, Israel, Italy, Kenia, Netherlands, and the United States. It provides an exploration of each individual country, revealing striking similarities and differences which are discussed in depth in the final chapter. Looking at the global field through local eyes--its main texts and active players (broadcasters, producers, and creators, as well as regulators and policy makers), their ideologies, financial prospects, and perceptions of childhood--offers a macro-level evaluation of an entire cultural field. This is a valuable picture, as it also provides a contextualized perspective for reflection in any micro-analysis of specific programs.
Consent Culture and Teen Films
Teen films of the 1980s were notorious for treating consent as irrelevant, with scenes of boys spying in girls' locker rooms and tricking girls into sex. While contemporary movies now routinely prioritize consent, ensure date rape is no longer a joke, and celebrate girls' desires, sexual consent remains a problematic and often elusive ideal in teen films.In Consent Culture and Teen Films, Michele Meek traces the history of adolescent sexuality in US cinema and examines how several films from the 2000s, including Blockers, To All the Boys I've Loved Before, The Kissing Booth, and Alex Strangelove, take consent into account. Yet, at the same time, Meek reveals that teen films expose how affirmative consent ("yes means yes") fails to protect youth from unwanted and unpleasant sexual encounters. By highlighting ambiguous sexual interactions in teen films-such as girls' failure to obtain consent from boys, queer teens subjected to conversion therapy camps, and youth manipulated into sexual relationships with adults-Meek unravels some of consent's intricacies rather than relying on oversimplification.By exposing affirmative consent in teen films as gendered, heteronormative, and cis-centered, Consent Culture and Teen Films suggests we must continue building a more inclusive consent framework that normalizes youth sexual desire and agency with all its complexities and ambivalences.
Writing Screenplays That Sell
"No one is better than Michael Hauge at finding what is most authentic in every moment of a story...." Will Smith, actor"In the field of teaching screenwriting, Michael Hauge is indeed a master." The Freelance Screenwriter's ForumA bestseller for 20 years, Hauge's unique 'six step' approach to screenwriting cuts through nonsense, striking the perfect balance between commercial advice, artistic encouragement and lucid examples from hundreds of great films. Never losing sight of the fundamental purpose of a script: emotional impact, Hauge's engaging and inspiring book takes you on a journey through story concept, character development, theme, structure and scenes. Screenwriting is an art, but Hague's book is unashamedly commercial with advice on how to submit a manuscript, select an agent and market yourself.Updates to this edition include a new, masterful analysis of Avatar's script, new scripts examples, a new chapter on breaking the rules - succussful scripts that don't follow the traditional Hollywood model and online marketing tools for screenwriters.
Second Lives
A history of prestige television through the rise of the "black-market melodrama." In Second Lives, Michael Szalay defines a new television genre that has driven the breathtaking ascent of TV as a cultural force over the last two decades: the black-market melodrama. Exemplified by the likes of The Sopranos and Breaking Bad, the genre moves between a family's everyday life and its secret second life, which may involve illegal business, espionage, or even an alternate reality. Second lives allow characters (and audiences) to escape what feels like endless work into a revanchist vision of the white middle class family. But there is for this grimly resigned genre no meaningful way back to the Fordist family wage for which it longs. In fact, Szalay argues, black-market melodramas lament the very economic transformations that untethered TV viewing from the daily rhythms of the nine-to-five job and led, ultimately, to prestige TV.
Austria Made in Hollywood
Considers over sixty Hollywood films set in Austria, examining the film industry, the influence of domestic factors on images of a foreign country, and the persistence of clich矇s. Maria von Trapp, watching the final scene of The Sound of Music for the first time as "her" family escaped into Switzerland, exclaimed, "Don't they know geography in Hollywood? Salzburg does not border on Switzerland!" Hadshe thought about the beginning of the film, which transports viewers to "Salzburg, Austria in the last Golden Days of the Thirties," when the country was in fact suffering from extreme political and social unrest, she might haveasked, "Don't they know history either?" In The Sound of Music as well as in Hollywood's many other "Austria" films, the projections on the screen resemble reflections in a funhouse mirror. Elements of a "real" place with a"real" history inhabited by "real" people can be found in the fractured distortions, which have both drawn from and contributed to the general public's perceptions of the country and its citizens. Austria Made in Hollywood focuses on films set in an identifiable Austria, examining them through the lenses of the historical contexts on both sides of the Atlantic and the prism of the ever-changing domestic film industry. The study chronicles theprotean screen images of Austria and Austrians that set them apart both from European projections of Austria and from Hollywood incarnations of other European nations and nationals. It explores explicit and implicit cultural commentaries on domestic and foreign issues inserted in the Austrian stories while considering the many, sometimes conflicting forces that shaped the films.
Second Lives
A history of prestige television through the rise of the "black-market melodrama." In Second Lives, Michael Szalay defines a new television genre that has driven the breathtaking ascent of TV as a cultural force over the last two decades: the black-market melodrama. Exemplified by the likes of The Sopranos and Breaking Bad, the genre moves between a family's everyday life and its secret second life, which may involve illegal business, espionage, or even an alternate reality. Second lives allow characters (and audiences) to escape what feels like endless work into a revanchist vision of the white middle class family. But there is for this grimly resigned genre no meaningful way back to the Fordist family wage for which it longs. In fact, Szalay argues, black-market melodramas lament the very economic transformations that untethered TV viewing from the daily rhythms of the nine-to-five job and led, ultimately, to prestige TV.
A Hero Will Endure
This volume adds to previous historical and political studies about 'Gladiator' with essays about the movie's relation to pop culture and contemporary discourses. It not only relates 'Gladiator' to traditional cinema aspects such as heroism, music, acting, studio culture, and visual effects, but it also connects the film to sports, religion, and the environment, expanding the ways in which the film can be evaluated by modern audiences. The volume can be read by individuals or in classroom settings, especially as a recommended text for students studying the ancient world in film.
The Cinema of Paul Thomas Anderson
Paul Thomas Anderson's evolution from a brash, self-anointed "Indiewood" auteur to one of his generation's most distinctive voices has been one of the most remarkable career trajectories in recent film history. From early efforts to emulate his cinematic heroes to his increasingly singular late films, Anderson has created a body of work that balances the familiar and the strange, history and myth: viewers feel perpetually off balance, unsure of whether to expect a pitch-black joke or a moment of piercing emotional resonance. This book provides the most complete account of Anderson's career to date, encompassing his varied side projects and unproduced material; his personal and professional relationships with directors such as Jonathan Demme, Robert Altman, and Robert Downey Sr.; and his work as a director of music videos for Fiona Apple, Joanna Newsom, and Haim. Ethan Warren explores Anderson's recurring thematic preoccupations--the fraught dynamics of gender and religious faith, biological and found families, and his native San Fernando Valley--as well as his screenwriting methods and his relationship to his influences. Warren argues that Anderson's films conjure up an alternate American history that exaggerates and elides verifiable facts in search of a heightened truth marked by a deeper level of emotional hyperrealism. This book is at once an unconventional primer on Anderson's films and a provocative reframing of what makes his work so essential.
White Lens on Brown Skin
From the earliest accounts of contact with Europeans, Polynesians have been perceived as sensual and sexual beings. By the late 1800s, publications, lectures and stage plays about the Pacific became popular across Europe, and often contained exotic and erotic components. This book details the fusion of truth and fiction in the representation of Pacific Islanders, focusing on the sexualization of Polynesians in American cinema and other forms of mass communications and commercial entertainment. With messaging almost subliminal to American audiences, the Hollywood media machine produced hundreds of tropical film titles with images of revealing grass skirts, scanty sarongs, female toplessness and glistening exposed male pectorals. This critical filmography demonstrates how the concept of "sex sells," especially when applied on a large scale, shaped American social views on Polynesian people and their culture. Chapters document this phenomenon and an annotated filmography of sexualized tropes and several appendices conclude the book, including a glossary of Polynesian terms and a film index.
Sexual Diversity in Young Cuban Cinema
This book explores how young Cuban filmmakers have expanded the range of sexual subjectivities on screen. It analyzes cine joven (films made by young directors) from the late 1980s to the early 2020s, film reviews, articles, and materials from the Cinematheque of Cuba's archive to illustrate the confluence of sexuality, cinema, and discourses of youth. While sexual and cinematic cultures have their own unique relation to the public sphere, state institutions, and transnational flows, this book explores tensions, debates, and expressions that unite them. In an investigation of how young filmmakers employ queer strategies of self-making to bring sexual diversity to the screen, Margaret G. Frohlich shows us how cine joven takes part in the socialization of power in Cuba.
Now about All These Women in the Swedish Film Industry
In the aftermath of the MeToo movement, during an ongoing pandemic, and in the midst of repeated demands for a 50/50 split between men and women in above-the-line positions, this book analyzes and interrogates the politics of gender focusing on the Swedish film industry, often considered to be the most "gender equal" film industry worldwide. While this gender equality (with a considerable proportion of women behind the camera) is much due to policies carried out of the state funded Swedish Film Institute, women filmmakers in Sweden still struggle with the same problems as do women in other national film industries. These problems entail having smaller production and distribution budgets than men and working in an environment involving recurring scandals of gender discrimination and sexual harassment. This open access book looks behind the statistics and explores the often complex cultural, legal, and political conditions under which women have entered a male-dominated industry and discusses women's strategies and efforts to promote change while providing evidence on how women's presence has challenged the industry by provoking critical reactions and introducing new ways to portray women on screen. Using a wide range of different sources (e.g. archival material, laws, contracts, films, biographical materials, and interviews), the book tells the history of the rise of gender equality efforts undertaken by the Swedish Film Institute and investigates women's possibilities to manage the rights to their work. It offers compelling portraits of pioneering women who have worked in or in relation to the industry and looks at the experiences of women currently working in the film industry.The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by?rebro universitet.
The Little Guide to Audrey Hepburn
Audrey Hepburn was one of the most admired and emulated women of the twentieth century, an Oscar-winning actress, a model and humanitarian. But Hepburn also had huge sadness in her life: two failed marriages, a broken engagement, and the crushing disappointment that occupied her triumph in My Fair Lady. Chronicling Hepburn's life, from her nearly dying in Hitler's occupied Europe, to her conquering, in just one year, the New York stage and the Hollywood screen, this fascinating tribute illustrates and illuminates all things Audrey Hepburn. While trapped in the Netherlands at the end of WW2, Audrey and her family received critical food and medical relief from UNICEF - an act of charity she never forgot, as later in life, Hepburn devoted much of her time to UNICEF, becoming a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador. From her early years as an ing矇nue to her status as an icon of elegance, in her Oscar-winning performance for Roman Holiday and the career high of Breakfast at Tiffany's, Hepburn's star quality resonates across the globe - even so long after her death. Few stars before or since are as beloved as Audrey Hepburn and The Little Guide to Audrey Hepburn details why. 'My appearance is accessible to everyone. With hair tied in a bun, big sunglasses and black dress, every woman can look like me.' Audrey Hepburn 'For beautiful eyes, look for the good in others; for beautiful lips, speak only words of kindness; and for poise, walk with the knowledge that you are never alone.' Audrey Hepburn 'Remember, if you ever need a helping hand, it's at the end of your arm. As you get older, remember you have another hand: The first is to help yourself, the second is to help others.' Audrey Hepburn
Notes from the Road
Named to Kirkus Review's List of "Best Indie Books of 2023""A documentarian revisits the funkiest musical byways in this scintillating memoir...A vibrant, entertaining panorama of music-making and the picaresque struggle to capture it on film." -Kirkus* Starred ReviewIn Notes from the Road: A Filmmaker's Journey through American Music, Mugge describes the genesis of his twenty-five key music films, the methods employed in making them, and the experiences shared by him, his crews, and his subjects. This retrospection is organized not so much chronologically as thematically, in order to reveal connective tissue among efforts made over multiple decades.As William Reynolds Ferris writes in the foreword to the book, "Mugge both thrills and exhausts us as he describes the process of making his films. He shifts his camera lens deftly from classical music to bluegrass to jazz to Tex-Mex to gospel to reggae to Hawaiian slack-key guitar. A gifted filmmaker and a fine writer, Mugge introduces us to musicians, record producers, and his trusted film crew, which at times includes his wife, Diana. This book offers an intimate view of his struggles as a filmmaker and his determination to capture our nation's music on film."Notes from the Road is a fascinating exploration of the visual documentation of musical creation-a separate and distinct form of documentary filmmaking, as practiced by one of its chief proponents. The resulting "notes from the road" provide a lyrical introduction to his personal musical odyssey.
Notes from the Road
Named to Kirkus Review's List of "Best Indie Books of 2023""A documentarian revisits the funkiest musical byways in this scintillating memoir...A vibrant, entertaining panorama of music-making and the picaresque struggle to capture it on film." -Kirkus* Starred ReviewIn Notes from the Road: A Filmmaker's Journey through American Music, Mugge describes the genesis of his twenty-five key music films, the methods employed in making them, and the experiences shared by him, his crews, and his subjects. This retrospection is organized not so much chronologically as thematically, in order to reveal connective tissue among efforts made over multiple decades.As William Reynolds Ferris writes in the foreword to the book, "Mugge both thrills and exhausts us as he describes the process of making his films. He shifts his camera lens deftly from classical music to bluegrass to jazz to Tex-Mex to gospel to reggae to Hawaiian slack-key guitar. A gifted filmmaker and a fine writer, Mugge introduces us to musicians, record producers, and his trusted film crew, which at times includes his wife, Diana. This book offers an intimate view of his struggles as a filmmaker and his determination to capture our nation's music on film."Notes from the Road is a fascinating exploration of the visual documentation of musical creation-a separate and distinct form of documentary filmmaking, as practiced by one of its chief proponents. The resulting "notes from the road" provide a lyrical introduction to his personal musical odyssey.
The Post-Soul Cinema of Kasi Lemmons
In this edited volume, Kasi Lemmons, the first African-American woman auteur to solidly and steadily produce a full body of work in cinema--an oeuvre of quality, of note, of international recognition--will get the full film-studies treatment. This collection offers the first scholarly examination of Lemmons' films through various frameworks of film theory, illuminating her highly personal, unique, and rare vision. In Lemmons' worldview, the spiritual and the supernatural manifest in the natural, corporeal world. She subtly infuses her work with such images and narratives, owning her formalism, her modernist aesthetic, her cinematic preoccupations and her ontological leanings on race. Lemmons holds the varied experiences of African-American life before her lens--the ambitious bourgeoise, the spiritually lost, the ill and discarded, and the historically erased--and commits to capturing the nuances and differentiations, rather than perpetuating essentialized portrayals. This collection delves into Lemmons' iconoclastic drive and post-soul aesthetic as emanations of her attitudes toward personal agency, social agency, and social justice.
