John Sayles is an inspiration to independent filmmakers in America and beyond, both for his engaged political filmmaking and as living proof that directors can survive and thrive without the need for mainstream financing. His 1980s films were the counter-punch to the special effects and blockbuster aesthetics of the Star Wars and Spielberg era, and this volume closely follows his career with analysis of all of his directed works. Through discussion of films such as Return of the Secaucus 7 (1980), The Brother from Another Planet (1984), Matewan (1987) and Sunshine State (2003), this study uncovers themes of racial and sexual otherness, capitalist excess and the erosion of community in his work. With new distribution channels now enabling independent cinema to reach a wider audience than ever before, this timely volume will be of interest to left-wing thinkers, guerrilla filmmakers and all aficionados of independent film.
Glyn Davis
Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story
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Banned by the Carpenter estate, Todd Haynes' experimental biopic Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story (which uses Barbie dolls to narrate the tragic life of the American singer) has become a cult hit because of both its controversy and its rarity. This study details the film's fascinating history: its production and initial reception, its journey through the courts, and its bootleg circulation among fans. It also explores Superstar's rich, provocative, and moving content, paying close attention to the film's aesthetics, generic form, and cultural position as a hybrid text.
Mark Cousins
Widescreen
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Cinema has undergone huge changes in the last decade: Asian filmmaking has been making the running; the ne'er do well genre, documentary, has broken through; digitalization and DVD has revived film history and is revolutionizing projection; world cinema has shifted in the direction of the real and the visually grainy; and animation has become more dominant that any time since Disney. Month by month, in the acclaimed journal Prospect , critic and filmmaker Mark Cousins has charted and contextualized these changes. Writing from Britain, Europe, Iran, India and Mexico, he has looked at the social trends and aesthetic implications of modern cinema's shifting sands. Widescreen: Watching. Real. People. Elsewhere is the result; a skeptical, passionate, eye-witness account of film today, argued originally and written with panache.
Mark Bould
Neo-Noir
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Neo-noir knows its past. It knows the rules of the game – and how to break them. From Point Blank (1998) to Oldboy (2003), from Get Carter (2000) to 36 Quai des Orfèvres (2004), from Catherine Tramell to Max Payne, neo-noir is a transnational global phenomenon. This wide-ranging collection maps out the terrain, combining genre, stylistic and textual analysis with Marxist, feminist, psychoanalytic and industrial approaches. Essays discuss works from the US, UK, France, Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong and New Zealand; key figures, such as David Lynch, the Coen Brothers, Quentin Tarantino and Sharon Stone; major conventions, such as the femme fatale, paranoia, anxiety, the city and the threat to the self; and the use of sound and colour.
Paul St. George
Sequences
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This volume explores a form of contemporary art that uses sequences of images to explore ideas of space, time, movement, and duration. "Chronophotographers" first explored these ideas at the end of the nineteenth century. At the beginning of the twenty-first, artists have found that sequences offer new opportunities for exploring the aesthetics at the intersection of time and space. This book contains a number of illustrated essays by international critics and theorists and discusses the work of a wide range of artists engaged in contemporary chronophotography.
Timothy Shary
Teen Movies
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Teen Movies: American Youth on Screen is a detailed look at the depiction of teens on film and its impact throughout film's history. Timothy Shary looks at the development of the teen movie – the rebellion, the romance, the sex and the horror – up to contemporary portrayals of ever-changing youth. Films studied include Rebel Without a Cause (1955), Splendor in the Grass (1961), Carrie (1976), The Breakfast Club (1985), and American Pie (1999).
Mark Bould
The Cinema of John Sayles
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John Sayles is an inspiration to independent filmmakers in America and beyond, both for his engaged political filmmaking and as living proof that directors can survive and thrive without the need for mainstream financing. His 1980s films were the counter-punch to the special effects and blockbuster aesthetics of the Star Wars and Spielberg era, and this volume closely follows his career with analysis of all of his directed works. Through discussion of films such as Return of the Secaucus 7 (1980), The Brother from Another Planet (1984), Matewan (1987) and Sunshine State (2003), this study uncovers themes of racial and sexual otherness, capitalist excess and the erosion of community in his work. With new distribution channels now enabling independent cinema to reach a wider audience than ever before, this timely volume will be of interest to left-wing thinkers, guerrilla filmmakers and all aficionados of independent film.
Ian Christie
The Art of Film
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John Box had one of the most productive design careers in British cinema, winning a record four Academy Awards and four BAFTAs. He shot to fame with Lawrence of Arabia (1962)., and directors ranging from David Lean and Carol Reed to Michael Mann and Norman Jewison have all valued his abilit to bring "a vocabulary of life" to the challenges of each film. Whether he was recreating 1930s China in The Inn of the Sixth Happiness (1958), recapturing revolutionary Russia in Dr Zhivago (1965), projecting the future in Rollerball (1975), or imaging a mythic past in First Knight (1995), Box shaped screen worlds across five decades, helping to establish the traditions of British production design that are still followed today. Based on interviews with John Box and the full co-operation of many of his key collaborators, this lavish, 4-color book shares Box's solutions to design problems and provides unique insight into the production designer's collaborative role in the business of filmmaking.
Jim Barratt
Bad Taste
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And now for something completely different... a low-budget comedy gore film from New Zealand, influenced as much by the work of Monty Python and Buster Keaton as by the splatter masters, like Sam Raimi and George A. Romero. Composed by the gifted hands of Peter Jackson and his collaborators, Bad Taste is a steady-earning cult classic that launched the career of the world's highest-paid filmmaker. This book recounts the fascinating story of the film's unconventional, homemade production and its unexpected success at the Cannes Film Festival. It concludes with an examation of the work's global cult appeal and status as a pioneering work of "splatstick."
Mark Cousins
Widescreen
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$26.00
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Cinema has undergone huge changes in the last decade: Asian filmmaking has been making the running; the ne'er do well genre, documentary, has broken through; digitalization and DVD has revived film history and is revolutionizing projection; world cinema has shifted in the direction of the real and the visually grainy; and animation has become more dominant that any time since Disney. Month by month, in the acclaimed journal Prospect , critic and filmmaker Mark Cousins has charted and contextualized these changes. Writing from Britain, Europe, Iran, India and Mexico, he has looked at the social trends and aesthetic implications of modern cinema's shifting sands. Widescreen: Watching. Real. People. Elsewhere is the result; a skeptical, passionate, eye-witness account of film today, argued originally and written with panache.
Dan North
Performing Illusions
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$29.00
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The camera supposedly never lies, yet film's ability to frame, cut and reconstruct all that passed before its lens made cinema the pre-eminent medium of visual illusion and revelation from the early twentieth century onwards. This volume examines film's creative history of special effects and trickery, encompassing everything from George Méliès' first trick films to the modern CGI era. Evaluating movements towards the use of computer-generated 'synthespians' in films such as Final Fantasy: the Spirits Within (2001), this title suggests that cinematic effects should be understood not as attempts to perfectly mimic real life, but as constructions of substitute realities, situating them in the cultural lineage of the stage performers and illusionists and of the nineteenth century. With analyses of films such as Destination Moon (1950), Spider-Man (2002) and the King Kong films (1933 and 2006), this new volume provides an insight into cinema's capacity to perform illusions.
Keith Beattie
Documentary Display
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Not all documentary films and videos are sober depictions of the real world. Documentary representations can present expressive, entertaining and spectacular images. This book examines such innovative approaches as they occur within the process of "documentary display"a practice which emphasizes the visual attractions of documentary representation. Works of documentary display explore modes of exhibitionistic "showing" in which sensation is frequently the vehicle of cognition and knowledge. Such a display is analyzed within the popular and prominent forms of found-footage film, "rockumentary", the city film, nonfiction surf film and video and certain views of natural science topics. This accessible and informed study, with its focus on entertaining, popular, spectacular and sensational forms of representation, makes an important contribution to theoretical analyses of documentary film and video.
Rod Stoneman
Chavez: The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
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The Revolution Will Not Be Televised is a powerful film about the charismatic and controversial Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez. It charts the attempt to overthrow him in April 2002 and provides an eyewitness account of his extraordinary return to power some forty-eight hours later. This book, which includes a DVD of this electrifying documentary, not only sheds light on contemporary politics in Latin America but also focuses on important issues in documentary filmmaking.
Mike Chopra-Gant
Cinema and History
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With its unparalleled capacity for realism, cinema seems uniquely positioned to bring history to life for a mass audience. Whether retelling stories about past events or reflecting more contemporary issues, cinema has been arguably the primary source of historical knowledge for many people from its earliest years right up to the present. This volume examines some of the key historical issues raised by popular film, including what film might tell us about the past, the reliability of movies as sources of historical knowledge, and how film might compare to more "serious" works of history. Combining historical methods with insights from linguistics and film studies, Cinema and History discusses the historical resonance of films such as Lawrence of Arabia (1962), Gangs of New York (2002) and United 93 (2006), and investigates the parameters and limitations of fiction film as a way to access history.
Ernest Mathijs
The Cinema of David Cronenberg
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David Cronenberg as moved from the depths of low-budget exploitation horror to become one of North America's most respected movie directors. Since the early 1970s, the soft-spoken 'Baron of Blood' has attracted widespread controversies with a steady stream of shocks - sec-crazed parasites in Shivers (1975), exploding heads in Scanners (1981), revolutionary flesh technology in Videodrome (1983), mutating bugs in The Fly (1986), car crash scars in Crash (1996), and psychopathic bursts of gunfire in A History of Violence (2005). This new study provides an overview of Cronenberg's films in the light of their international reception, placing them firmly in the cultures they influenced. It also highlights often-ignored works, such as the race movie Fast Company (1979), and includes a chapter on the latest film Eastern Promises (2007). Amidst bans and boos, Cronenberg has developed a consistent cult following for his chronicles of humankind's struggle with its ever-changing environment, bugged by technology and changing social roles - becoming a hero of contemporary culture.
Guest editor Mette Hjort
Dekalog 1
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Released in 2003, Lars von Trier and Jorgen Leth's collaborative film has been received as one of the most intriguing and significant cinematic works of recent times. The film comprises five episodes, each a re-creation of Leth's classic film The Perfect Human (1967), but with five different creative constraints, or 'obstructions'. This first issue in the Dekalog series brings together writers from diverse disciplinary and national backgrounds. Together the essays present a case for seeing The Five Obstructions as a philosophically compelling cinematic work that tests our understanding of key psychological, aesthetic and ethical issues: the role that other people play in facilitating self-understanding; creativity and its relation to constraint; individual style as an artistic problem; filmmaking as a form of play; the pragmatic effects of nesting works within works; and the ethical limitations of aestheticism. An interview with Jrgen Leth helps to clarify aspects of the films context of production, including von Trier's manifesto-like call for works situated at the very boundary of fiction and non-fiction.
James Leggott
Contemporary British Cinema
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This volume offers a detailed and comprehensive analysis of British film culture from 1997 to the present. Using a wide range of films from the Blair era and beyond as case studiesfrom from Notting Hill (1999) and Billy Elliot (2000) to 28 Days Later (2002) and The Queen (2006)it examines the ways in which recent British filmmaking might be regarded as distinctive, relevant and successful.
Daniel C. Shaw
Film and Philosophy
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This introductory volume presents an overview of the philosophy of film, a burgeoning sub-discipline of Aesthetics. It offers a sampling of paradigmatic instances of philosophers and philosophical film theorists discussing the movies in a fashion that takes cinema as seriously as any other Fine Art, leaving little doubt that doing philosophy of film is a serious intellectual enterprise.
Andrew Webber and Emma Wilson
Cities in Transition
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The city is one of the greatest unsung heroes in cinema – a modernist inspiration for silent classics such as Metropolis (1926) and a dense urban jungle in The Matrix (1999) – yet there have been few attempts to grasp the cultural and aesthetic nature of its role in film. This volume is an ambitious collection of writings and photo-essays discussing this complex yet enduring relationship, and how early cinema, digital technology and changing urban geographies have all impacted upon notions and representations of the modern city. Amongst the films discussed are Peeping Tom (1960), Performance (1970), Sans Soleil (1983) and Amores perros (2000). Contributions come from the fields of film studies, cultural theory, architecture and design, as well as filmmakers Patrick Keiller and Chris Petit.
Edited by Peter Hames
The Cinema of Jan Svankmajer
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The Cinema of Jan Svankmajer explores the legacy of this legendary Czech surrealist filmmaker, a key influence on directors such as Terry Gilliam and Tim Burton, and one of the greatest animators in cinema history. This updated second edition – still the only full-length study of his workfeatures contributions from scholars and colleagues within the Czech Surrealist movement, as well as a new chapter on Svankmajer's feature films and an extended interview with Svankmajer himself. This volume is required reading for all budding animators and disciples of surrealism.
Dan North
Performing Illusions
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$100.00
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The camera supposedly never lies, yet film's ability to frame, cut and reconstruct all that passed before its lens made cinema the pre-eminent medium of visual illusion and revelation from the early twentieth century onwards. This volume examines film's creative history of special effects and trickery, encompassing everything from George Méliès' first trick films to the modern CGI era. Evaluating movements towards the use of computer-generated 'synthespians' in films such as Final Fantasy: the Spirits Within (2001), this title suggests that cinematic effects should be understood not as attempts to perfectly mimic real life, but as constructions of substitute realities, situating them in the cultural lineage of the stage performers and illusionists and of the nineteenth century. With analyses of films such as Destination Moon (1950), Spider-Man (2002) and the King Kong films (1933 and 2006), this new volume provides an insight into cinema's capacity to perform illusions.
Libby Saxton
Haunted Images
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Haunted Images takes a close look at a range of treatments of the Holocaust in film, using sustained textual analysis to radically rethink film as a witness to history. Questioning the legitimacy of persistent claims that the Holocaust remains 'unrepresentable', this volume seeks to redefine the singular challenges this event presents to filmmakers, suggesting that filmic representations address the Holocaust as much through what they leave unseen – through silences and ellipses – as through what they visualise directly. Discussing films such as Kapo (1960), Shoah (1985) and Histoire(s) du cinéma (1997), this important new study provides a compelling reading of how European cinema has responded to the particular problems that the Holocaust presents to filmmakers, and suggests compelling fresh insights into the relationship between visual art, cultural trauma and the power of the image.
Ian Roberts
German Expressionist Cinema
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Before Hollywood's golden age, German expressionist film was arguably the most important cinematic movement in the medium's history. These 'symphonies of... iridescent movement' of Weimar cinema provide some of cinema's most iconic images, and its vivid contrasts and dark spaces constitute a major influence on Hollywood classics such as Citizen Kane (1941) and Sunset Boulevard (1950). This volume also offers insights into the technical and thematic developments of the Weimar film. Covering classics such as The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari (1920) and Nosferatu (1922) as well as under-appreciated examples such as Asphalt (1929), this volume forms an essential introduction to one of cinema's most historically important movements.
Libby Saxton
Haunted Images
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Haunted Images takes a close look at a range of treatments of the Holocaust in film, using sustained textual analysis to radically rethink film as a witness to history. Questioning the legitimacy of persistent claims that the Holocaust remains 'unrepresentable', this volume seeks to redefine the singular challenges this event presents to filmmakers, suggesting that filmic representations address the Holocaust as much through what they leave unseen – through silences and ellipses – as through what they visualise directly. Discussing films such as Kapo (1960), Shoah (1985) and Histoire(s) du cinéma (1997), this important new study provides a compelling reading of how European cinema has responded to the particular problems that the Holocaust presents to filmmakers, and suggests compelling fresh insights into the relationship between visual art, cultural trauma and the power of the image.
Timothy Boon
Films of Fact
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Britain has long been recognised for its proud contribution to documentary cinema, yet its long tradition of scientific and medical documentaries remains underrepresented in the literature on nonfiction film. Films of Fact is the first in-depth history of the genre, which began with amateur hobbyists in the early twentieth century, played a key role in government postwar health programmes, and became a treasured part of popular culture with BBC2's Horizon and the programming of Channel 4. Central to the narrative is Paul Rotha, a pioneering advocate of science broadcasting of the postwar period, and a figure second only to John Grierson in British documentary history, who helped nurture the collaborative ethos and practices that make scientific and medical documentaries a unique subgenre of documentary cinema. Written by a specialist scientific scholar, Films of Fact is a landmark text on a crucial yet rarely discussed aspect of British popular culture. Discussed are films such as World of Plenty (1943) and Land of Promise (1945) and television programmes such as Horizon (1964 onwards) and Crucible: Science and Society (1982).
Edited by Peter Hames
The Cinema of Jan Svankmajer
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$95.00
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The Cinema of Jan Svankmajer explores the legacy of this legendary Czech surrealist filmmaker, a key influence on directors such as Terry Gilliam and Tim Burton, and one of the greatest animators in cinema history. This updated second edition – still the only full-length study of his workfeatures contributions from scholars and colleagues within the Czech Surrealist movement, as well as a new chapter on Svankmajer's feature films and an extended interview with Svankmajer himself. This volume is required reading for all budding animators and disciples of surrealism.
Murray Pomerance
A Family Affair
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The family unit has been a central theme in movies since the earliest days of the medium– whether as a locus of domestic bliss, a dysfunctional source of drama, a collection of comic personalities or an inferno of repressed feelings. This new anthology brings the subject into sharp focus, collecting a range of multidisciplinary perspectives that attempt to directly penetrate the questions raised by the role of the family onscreen. Discussing a wide range of contemporary and classic films, from House of Strangers (1949) and Mary Poppins (1964) to Superstar (1987), The Royal Tenenbaums (2001) and Brokeback Mountain (2005), this study addresses the nature of family values in cinema, and the 'family' nature of the Hollywood production system itself. With a wealth of historical background and contemporary analysis, this volume is a penetrating view of the oldest and most influential social institution as imagined for the screen.
Andrew Webber and Emma Wilson
Cities in Transition
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$100.00
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The city is one of the greatest unsung heroes in cinema – a modernist inspiration for silent classics such as Metropolis (1926) and a dense urban jungle in The Matrix (1999) – yet there have been few attempts to grasp the cultural and aesthetic nature of its role in film. This volume is an ambitious collection of writings and photo-essays discussing this complex yet enduring relationship, and how early cinema, digital technology and changing urban geographies have all impacted upon notions and representations of the modern city. Amongst the films discussed are Peeping Tom (1960), Performance (1970), Sans Soleil (1983) and Amores perros (2000). Contributions come from the fields of film studies, cultural theory, architecture and design, as well as filmmakers Patrick Keiller and Chris Petit.
Carole Zucker. Preface by Stephen Rea
The Cinema of Neil Jordan
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The most internationally renowned of Irish film directors, Neil Jordan's diverse work has spanned gothic horror (The Company of Wolves, 1984, and Interview with the Vampire, 1994), Irish history (Michael Collins, 1996), literary adaptation (The End of the Affair, 1999) and sexual identity (The Crying Game, 1992, and Breakfast on Pluto, 2005), while retaining a distinctive stylistic flair for fantasy and the carnivalesque. The Cinema of Neil Jordan discusses his entire output as part of the first comprehensive study of Jordan's career, looking beyond ideological and national concerns to view his films through the prism of Celtic folklore, fairy tales, the gothic, romanticism and postmodernism. Incorporating discussion of Jordan's award-winning literary work and benefiting from extensive access to Jordan's personal archives, this book explains the mythic and poetic impulses that suffuse the director's work.
Murray Pomerance
A Family Affair
Regular price
$100.00
Save $-100.00
The family unit has been a central theme in movies since the earliest days of the medium– whether as a locus of domestic bliss, a dysfunctional source of drama, a collection of comic personalities or an inferno of repressed feelings. This new anthology brings the subject into sharp focus, collecting a range of multidisciplinary perspectives that attempt to directly penetrate the questions raised by the role of the family onscreen. Discussing a wide range of contemporary and classic films, from House of Strangers (1949) and Mary Poppins (1964) to Superstar (1987), The Royal Tenenbaums (2001) and Brokeback Mountain (2005), this study addresses the nature of family values in cinema, and the 'family' nature of the Hollywood production system itself. With a wealth of historical background and contemporary analysis, this volume is a penetrating view of the oldest and most influential social institution as imagined for the screen.
Timothy Boon
Films of Fact
Regular price
$29.00
Save $-29.00
Britain has long been recognised for its proud contribution to documentary cinema, yet its long tradition of scientific and medical documentaries remains underrepresented in the literature on nonfiction film. Films of Fact is the first in-depth history of the genre, which began with amateur hobbyists in the early twentieth century, played a key role in government postwar health programmes, and became a treasured part of popular culture with BBC2's Horizon and the programming of Channel 4. Central to the narrative is Paul Rotha, a pioneering advocate of science broadcasting of the postwar period, and a figure second only to John Grierson in British documentary history, who helped nurture the collaborative ethos and practices that make scientific and medical documentaries a unique subgenre of documentary cinema. Written by a specialist scientific scholar, Films of Fact is a landmark text on a crucial yet rarely discussed aspect of British popular culture. Discussed are films such as World of Plenty (1943) and Land of Promise (1945) and television programmes such as Horizon (1964 onwards) and Crucible: Science and Society (1982).
Edited by Alan Grossman and Áine O'Brien
Projecting Migration
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Migration is a major global issue, increasingly determining who we are and how we define ourselves. Projecting Migration: Transcultural Documentary Practice is a groundbreaking book/DVD-ROM project that explores contemporary ethnographic narratives through the medium of film, photography, multimedia, and radio. The DVD contains media material from each of the essays while the text engages interprets migration through the medium of image and sound. Audio and visual imagination is a crucial component of cultural identity, and this collection marks a major cross-media, interdisciplinary contribution.
Carole Zucker. Preface by Stephen Rea
The Cinema of Neil Jordan
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$26.00
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The most internationally renowned of Irish film directors, Neil Jordan's diverse work has spanned gothic horror (The Company of Wolves, 1984, and Interview with the Vampire, 1994), Irish history (Michael Collins, 1996), literary adaptation (The End of the Affair, 1999) and sexual identity (The Crying Game, 1992, and Breakfast on Pluto, 2005), while retaining a distinctive stylistic flair for fantasy and the carnivalesque. The Cinema of Neil Jordan discusses his entire output as part of the first comprehensive study of Jordan's career, looking beyond ideological and national concerns to view his films through the prism of Celtic folklore, fairy tales, the gothic, romanticism and postmodernism. Incorporating discussion of Jordan's award-winning literary work and benefiting from extensive access to Jordan's personal archives, this book explains the mythic and poetic impulses that suffuse the director's work.
Maaret Koskinen
Ingmar Bergman Revisited
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Ingmar Bergman Revisited is a collection of new essays based on a major international symposium held in Stockholm in 2005 on the legacy of one of cinema's most towering figures. Moving beyond simple auteurist readings of Bergman as a cinematic artist, the writings here evaluate the theatrical and literary sides of Bergman's work to reconsider the achievements of the Swedish director, up to his last film Saraband (2003). Several essays result from research in Bergman's own personal archive, and amongst the subjects discussed are Bergman's stage adaptations of Shakespeare, his fascination with still photography and issues of identity, and the influence of philosophy and psychology on his work. With contributors including Thomas Elsaesser, Birgitta Steene and Janet Staiger, and a foreword written by Liv Ullmann, Ingmar Bergman Revisited forms a landmark study of one of Sweden's great cultural icons, emphasising how Bergman should be understood with reference to an eclectic range of his artistic interests.
Dorota Ostrowska
Reading the French New Wave
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One of the most important movements in cinema history, the French New Wave of directors such as Jean-Luc Godard and Alain Resnais not only revitalised French cinema, but permanently shifted cinema's aesthetic horizons by incorporating the narrative complexities of emerging modernist literature such as Alain Robbe-Grillet, Marguerite Duras and Jean Cayrol. This volume is the first title to comprehensively analyse these links between the New Wave and the New Novel, exploring intellectual figures such as Roland Barthes and Jorge Luis Borges, and their relationship with French cinema and its theorists, including Christian Metz and Noel Burch, as well as discussing groundbreaking films such as Hiroshima mon amour (1959) and L'Année dernière à Marienbad (1962). Examining these connections between the cinematic and the literary avant gardes, Reading the French New Wave locates France's filmmaking revolution as a part of a wider artistic reevaluation of the mid-twentieth century.
Edited by Maaret Koskinen. Foreword by Liv Ullman
Ingmar Bergman Revisited
Regular price
$100.00
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Ingmar Bergman Revisited is a collection of new essays based on a major international symposium held in Stockholm in 2005 on the legacy of one of cinema's most towering figures. Moving beyond simple auteurist readings of Bergman as a cinematic artist, the writings here evaluate the theatrical and literary sides of Bergman's work to reconsider the achievements of the Swedish director, up to his last film Saraband (2003). Several essays result from research in Bergman's own personal archive, and amongst the subjects discussed are Bergman's stage adaptations of Shakespeare, his fascination with still photography and issues of identity, and the influence of philosophy and psychology on his work. With contributors including Thomas Elsaesser, Birgitta Steene and Janet Staiger, and a foreword written by Liv Ullmann, Ingmar Bergman Revisited forms a landmark study of one of Sweden's great cultural icons, emphasising how Bergman should be understood with reference to an eclectic range of his artistic interests.
Dorota Ostrowska
Reading the French New Wave
Regular price
$100.00
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One of the most important movements in cinema history, the French New Wave of directors such as Jean-Luc Godard and Alain Resnais not only revitalised French cinema, but permanently shifted cinema's aesthetic horizons by incorporating the narrative complexities of emerging modernist literature such as Alain Robbe-Grillet, Marguerite Duras and Jean Cayrol. This volume is the first title to comprehensively analyse these links between the New Wave and the New Novel, exploring intellectual figures such as Roland Barthes and Jorge Luis Borges, and their relationship with French cinema and its theorists, including Christian Metz and Noel Burch, as well as discussing groundbreaking films such as Hiroshima mon amour (1959) and L'Année dernière à Marienbad (1962). Examining these connections between the cinematic and the literary avant gardes, Reading the French New Wave locates France's filmmaking revolution as a part of a wider artistic reevaluation of the mid-twentieth century.
Edited by Hannah Patterson
The Cinema of Terrence Malick
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With 2005's acclaimed and controversial The New World, one of cinema's most enigmatic filmmakers returned to the screen with only his fourth feature film in a career spanning thirty years. While Terrence Malick's work has always divided opinion, his poetic, transcendent filmic language has unquestionably redefined modern cinema, and with a new feature scheduled for 2008, contemporary cinema is finally catching up with his vision. This updated second edition of The Cinema of Terrence Malick: Poetic Visions of America charts the continuing growth of Malick's oeuvre, exploring identity, place, and existence in his films. Featuring two new original essays on his latest career landmark and extensive analysis of The Thin Red Line-Malick's haunting screen treatment of World War II-this is an essential study of a visionary poet of American cinema.
Jeffrey Weinstock
The Rocky Horror Picture Show
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Within just a few years, The Rocky Horror Picture Show grew from an oddball musical to a celebrated cinematic experience of midnight features and outrageous audience participation. This study tells the extraordinary story of the film from initial reception to eventual cult status. Uncovering the film's non-conformist sexual politics and glam-rock attitude, this volume explores its emphasis on the theatrical body (tattooed, cross-gendered, flamboyant), and its defiant queering of cinema history.
Edited by Frances Guerin and Roger Hallas
The Image and the Witness
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The Image and the Witness: Trauma, Memory and Visual Culture is a timely interdisciplinary collection of original essays concerning the ethical stakes of the image in our visually-saturated age. It explores the role of the material image in bearing witness to historical events and the visual representation of witnesses to collective trauma. In arguing for the agency of the image, this unique collection debates post-traumatic memory, documentary ethics, embodied vision, and the recycling of images. It discusses works by Chris Marker, Errol Morris, Derek Jarman, Doris Salcedo, Gerhard Richter, and Boris Mikhailov, along with images from popular culture, including websites and home movies.
Edited by Joram ten Brink. Preface by Michael Renov
Building Bridges
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Building Bridges: The Cinema of Jean Rouch is the first title to fully explore the work and legacy of French documentary-maker Jean Rouch. A figure as comfortable in front of the camera as behind it, Rouch created some of the most enduring sociological films about French and francophone African culture, and his playful documentaries make him the spiritual ancestor of filmmakers such as Nick Broomfield and Michael Moore, and a precursor to the world of Big Brother and reality TV. Based on a major inter-national conference, this study contains over twenty new essays from a global cast of filmmakers, film critics, academics and actors, including a number of Rouch's African-based collaborators, and discusses his massive contribution to ethnographic filmmaking with films such as Les Maitres fous (1955), Le Pyramide humaine (1961) and Chronique d'un été (1961). This collection is set to become a benchmark study of one of the most influential documentary presences of the last century.
Edited by Joram ten Brink. Preface by Michael Renov
Building Bridges
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Building Bridges: The Cinema of Jean Rouch is the first title to fully explore the work and legacy of French documentary-maker Jean Rouch. A figure as comfortable in front of the camera as behind it, Rouch created some of the most enduring sociological films about French and francophone African culture, and his playful documentaries make him the spiritual ancestor of filmmakers such as Nick Broomfield and Michael Moore, and a precursor to the world of Big Brother and reality TV. Based on a major inter-national conference, this study contains over twenty new essays from a global cast of filmmakers, film critics, academics and actors, including a number of Rouch's African-based collaborators, and discusses his massive contribution to ethnographic filmmaking with films such as Les Maitres fous (1955), Le Pyramide humaine (1961) and Chronique d'un été (1961). This collection is set to become a benchmark study of one of the most influential documentary presences of the last century.
Duncan Reekie
Subversion
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Subversion: The Definitive History of Underground Cinema is the indispensable history of underground cinema, an untold story that includes the British independent and French avant-garde cinemas of the 1920s, the counterculture film movements of the 1960s, the microcinema resurgence of the 1990s, and beyond. Dispensing with simplistic "art versus commerce" discourses, Subversion not only discovers the cultural roots of underground filmmaking in bohemian cabarets of nineteenth-century Paris and the fairbooths of medieval London, but situates the underground as a radical and popular subculture separate from mainstream cinema and avant-garde film.
Edited by Hannah Patterson
The Cinema of Terrence Malick
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With 2005's acclaimed and controversial The New World, one of cinema's most enigmatic filmmakers returned to the screen with only his fourth feature film in a career spanning thirty years. While Terrence Malick's work has always divided opinion, his poetic, transcendent filmic language has unquestionably redefined modern cinema, and with a new feature scheduled for 2008, contemporary cinema is finally catching up with his vision. This updated second edition of The Cinema of Terrence Malick: Poetic Visions of America charts the continuing growth of Malick's oeuvre, exploring identity, place, and existence in his films. Featuring two new original essays on his latest career landmark and extensive analysis of The Thin Red Line-Malick's haunting screen treatment of World War II-this is an essential study of a visionary poet of American cinema.
Duncan Reekie
Subversion
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$95.00
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Subversion: The Definitive History of Underground Cinema is an indispensable history of underground cinema, an untold story that includes the British independent and French avant-garde cinemas of the 1920s, the counterculture film movements of the 1960s, the microcinema resurgence of the 1990s, and beyond. Dispensing with simplistic "art versus commerce" discourses, Subversion not only discovers the cultural roots of underground filmmaking in bohemian cabarets of nineteenth-century Paris and the fairbooths of medieval London, but situates the underground as a radical and popular subculture separate from mainstream cinema and avant-garde film.
Naomi Greene
The French New Wave
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The French New Wave was perhaps the biggest—and briefest—explosion in the history of world cinema, with more than hundred French directors shooting debut features between 1958 and 1964. Its aftershocks are still being felt today. Through the work of such directors as Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut, filmmakers came to be seen as outstanding artists rather than mere studio technicians, paving the way for contemporary cinematic auteurs such as Martin Scorsese, Pedro Almodóvar, and Luc Besson. This volume begins by tracing the social and cultural changes of postwar France that gave birth to the New Wave then examines in detail the careers of artists like Alain Renais and Jean-Luc Godard. The French New Wave: A New Look is a concise and accessible account of a crucial movement in film history.
Ethan de Seife
This Is Spinal Tap
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A documentary, a mockumentary, indeed a rockumentaryRob Reiner's phony road movie following the exploits of a fictitional heavy metal band has long been celebrated as a comedy landmark. This book is the first attempt to provide a sustained critical appraisal of the film's success, addressing general cinephiles and devoted Tapheads alike. The study considers the film within the context of cult cinema, real and mock documentaries, Hollywood comedies and musicals, and the history of rock music. This detailed stylistic and comic analysis offers new insights into the ardent Cult of Tap.
Frances Guerin
The Image and the Witness
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The Image and the Witness: Trauma, Memory and Visual Culture is a timely interdisciplinary collection of original essays concerning the ethical stakes of the image in our visually-saturated age. It explores the role of the material image in bearing witness to historical events and the visual representation of witnesses to collective trauma. In arguing for the agency of the image, this unique collection debates post-traumatic memory, documentary ethics, embodied vision, and the recycling of images. It discusses works by Chris Marker, Errol Morris, Derek Jarman, Doris Salcedo, Gerhard Richter, and Boris Mikhailov, along with images from popular culture, including websites and home movies.
Geoff King
Donnie Darko
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With its gothic tale of a troubled teen haunted by visions of a figure in a Halloween rabbit suit, Donnie Darko was among the first cult movie phenomena of the twenty-first century, making debut director Richard Kelly Hollywood hot property before he reached his thirtieth birthday. This study narrates the film's journey from box-office bemusement through word of mouth success to the recent director's cut of the film, and also discusses fans' reactions to the film's enigmatic conclusion, explaining how Donnie Darko gripped the imagination of Generation X teenagers across the world.
Brad Prager
The Cinema of Werner Herzog
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Werner Herzog is renowned for pushing the boundaries of conventional cinema, especially those between the fictional and the factual, the fantastic and the real. The Cinema of Werner Herzog: Aesthetic Ecstasy and Truth is the first study in twenty years devoted entirely to an analysis of Herzog's work. It explores the director's continuing search for what he has described as 'ecstatic truth,' drawing on over thirty-five films, from the epics Aguirre: Wrath of God (1972) and Fitzcarraldo (1982) to innovative documentaries like Fata Morgana (1971), Lessons of Darkness (1992), and Grizzly Man (2005). Special attention is paid to Herzog's signature style of cinematic composition, his "romantic" influences, and his fascination with madmen, colonialism, and war.
Edited by Gönül Dönmez-Colin. Preface by Abbas Kiarostami
The Cinema of North Africa and the Middle East
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$95.00
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The Cinema of North Africa and the Middle East contains twenty-four essays, each concerning an individual film from Morocco all the way to Iran. The volume explores not only the established film cultures of Turkey, Egypt, and Israel, but also the nascent cinemas of Palestine and Syria. Selected films include Cairo Station (Egypt, 1958), The Runner (Iran, 1989), Once Upon a Time, Beriut (Lebanon, 1994), Ten (Iran, 2002), and Uzak (Turkey, 2003). With a preface by Cannes Palme d'Or-winning director Abbas Kiarostami, The Cinema of North Africa and the Middle East unveils a diverse region of filmmaking.
Kirsten Moana Thompson
Crime Films
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$22.00
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Crime Films: Investigating the Scene analyzes the wide body of films that fall under the rubric of crime, from the gangster film to the film noir to classic whodunit television series like Law and Order and CSI. Ever since Edwin S. Porter's The Great Train Robbery in 1903, audiences have been fascinated by films about crime and the world as seen from both sides of the law. Crime Films approaches a crime scene from the standpoint of the criminal, the crime, and the crime-solver, revealing the master plan behind the world of crime on screen. The criminal underworld takes on many forms, and this volume delves into recent developments in erotic thrillers like Basic Instinct (1992) and neo-noirs like Body Heat (1981) and LA Confidential (1997). Also included are a number of close readings of enduring crime films, from The Silence of the Lambs (1991) to Seven (1995) as well as such television series as Hill Street Blues, Homicide, and CSI.
Brad Prager
The Cinema of Werner Herzog
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$95.00
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Werner Herzog is renowned for pushing the boundaries of conventional cinema, especially those between the fictional and the factual, the fantastic and the real. The Cinema of Werner Herzog: Aesthetic Ecstasy and Truth is the first study in twenty years devoted entirely to an analysis of Herzog's work. It explores the director's continuing search for what he has described as 'ecstatic truth,' drawing on over thirty-five films, from the epics Aguirre: Wrath of God (1972) and Fitzcarraldo (1982) to innovative documentaries like Fata Morgana (1971), Lessons of Darkness (1992), and Grizzly Man (2005). Special attention is paid to Herzog's signature style of cinematic composition, his "romantic" influences, and his fascination with madmen, colonialism, and war.
Edited by Graeme Harper and Rob Stone
The Unsilvered Screen
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$95.00
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Leading critics from the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia, Canada, and Japan offer fresh, provocative views of canonical Surrealist works from Buñuel, Jan Svankmajer, and David Lynch. They also offer lively analyses of surrealist aspects of contemporary Japanese, Russian, and British cinema, Disney animation, digital cinema, and documentary, exploring the vibrant effect and considerable legacy of surrealism on film.
Dave Saunders
Direct Cinema
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Direct Cinema is the first comprehensive study of the "direct cinema" movement of 1960s America. Through the inquisitiveness of filmmakers such as Robert Drew, D.A. Pennebaker, and Frederick Wiseman-and predicated on innovations such as portable cameras and synchronized sound-direct cinema intimately documented presidential campaigns through the revelers of Woodstock and the dispossessed subjects of Wiseman's "reality fictions". This volume recovers these vastly influential yet politically underappreciated films, suggesting they represented a resurgence of America's home-grown philosophical tradition inextricably bound up in the artistic and political impulses of the 1960s.
Birgit Beumers
The Cinema of Russia and the Former Soviet Union
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$95.00
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This volume explores the cinema of the former Soviet Union and contemporary Russia, ranging from the pre-Revolutionary period to the present day. It offers an insight into the development of Soviet film, from 'the most important of all arts' as a propaganda tool to a means of entertainment in the Stalin era, from the rise of its 'dissident' art-house cinema in the 1960s through the glasnost era with its broken taboos to recent Russian blockbusters. Films have been chosen to represent both the classics of Russian and Soviet cinema as well as those films that had a more localised success and remain to date part of Russia's cultural reference system. The volume also covers a range of national film industries of the former Soviet Union in chapters on the greatest films and directors of Ukrainian, Kazakh, Georgian and Armenian cinematography. Films discussed include Strike (1925), Earth (1930), Ivan's Childhood (1962), Mother and Son (1997) and Brother (1997).
Carolyn Jess-Cooke
Shakespeare on Film
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Since the birth of Shakespearean cinema in 1899, there have been close to 500 film adaptations of the Bard's work in which he has been taken to outer space, downtown Mumbai, and feudal Japan. Exploring this astonishing array from early cinema to the present, Shakespeare on Film: Such Things as Dreams are Made of analyzes Shakespearean cinema in four major contexts: performance, adaptation, film style, and popularization, interpreting his unique ability to penetrate cultures, mindsets, and languages across the world. The volume reveals Shakespeare's continuing currency in contemporary culture and critically examines the dialogues between cultures, mediums, and historical periods.
Edited by Gönül Dönmez-Colin. Preface by Abbas Kiarostami
The Cinema of North Africa and the Middle East
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$32.00
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The Cinema of North Africa and the Middle East contains twenty-four essays, each concerning an individual film from Morocco all the way to Iran. The volume explores not only the established film cultures of Turkey, Egypt, and Israel, but also the nascent cinemas of Palestine and Syria. Selected films include Cairo Station (Egypt, 1958), The Runner (Iran, 1989), Once Upon a Time, Beriut (Lebanon, 1994), Ten (Iran, 2002), and Uzak (Turkey, 2003). With a preface by Cannes Palme d'Or-winning director Abbas Kiarostami, The Cinema of North Africa and the Middle East unveils a diverse region of filmmaking.
Daniel Frampton
Filmosophy
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$25.00
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Filmosophy is a provocative new manifesto for a radically philosophical way of understanding cinema. It coalesces twentieth-century ideas of film as thought (from Hugo Münsterberg to Gilles Deleuze) into a practical theory of "film-thinking," arguing that film style conveys poetic ideas through a constant dramatic "intent" about the characters, spaces, and events of film. Discussing contemporary filmmakers such as Béla Tarr and the Dardenne brothers, this timely contribution to the study of film and philosophy will provoke debate among audiences and filmmakers alike.
FILMOSOPHY ® is a registered U.S. trademark owned by Valentin Stoilov (www.filmosophy.com) for educational services in the field of motion picture history theory and production. Mr. Stoilov is not the source or origin of this book and has not sponsored or endorsed it or its author.
Dave Saunders
Direct Cinema
Regular price
$27.00
Save $-27.00
Direct Cinema is the first comprehensive study of the "direct cinema" movement of 1960s America. Through the inquisitiveness of filmmakers such as Robert Drew, D.A. Pennebaker, and Frederick Wisemanand predicated on innovations such as portable cameras and synchronized sounddirect cinema intimately documented presidential campaigns through the revelers of Woodstock and the dispossessed subjects of Wiseman's "reality fictions". This volume recovers these vastly influential yet politically underappreciated films, suggesting they represented a resurgence of America's home-grown philosophical tradition inextricably bound up in the artistic and political impulses of the 1960s.
Graeme Harper
The Unsilvered Screen
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$26.00
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Leading critics from the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia, Canada, and Japan offer fresh, provocative views of canonical Surrealist works from Luis Buñuel, Jan Svankmajer, and David Lynch. They also offer lively analyses of surrealist aspects of contemporary Japanese, Russian, and British cinema, Disney animation, digital cinema, and documentary, exploring the vibrant effect and considerable legacy of surrealism on film.
Barry Keith Grant
Film Genre
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$23.00
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This is a concise evaluation of film genre, discussing genre theory and sample analyses of the western, science fiction, the musical, horror, comedy, and the thriller. It introduces the topic in an accessible way and includes sections on the principles of studying and understanding "the idea of genre"; genre and popular culture; the narrative and stylistic conventions of specific genres; the relations of genres to culture and history, race, gender, sexuality, class and national identity; and the complex relations between genre and authorship. Case studies include: 42nd Street, Pennies from Heaven, Red River, All That Heaven Allows, Night of the Living Dead, Die Hard, Little Big Man, Blue Steel, and Posse.
Edited by Birgit Beumers. Preface by Sergei Bodrov
The Cinema of Russia and the Former Soviet Union
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$32.00
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This volume explores the cinema of the former Soviet Union and contemporary Russia, ranging from the pre-Revolutionary period to the present day. It offers an insight into the development of Soviet film, from 'the most important of all arts' as a propaganda tool to a means of entertainment in the Stalin era, from the rise of its 'dissident' art-house cinema in the 1960s through the glasnost era with its broken taboos to recent Russian blockbusters. Films have been chosen to represent both the classics of Russian and Soviet cinema as well as those films that had a more localised success and remain to date part of Russia's cultural reference system. The volume also covers a range of national film industries of the former Soviet Union in chapters on the greatest films and directors of Ukrainian, Kazakh, Georgian and Armenian cinematography. Films discussed include Strike (1925), Earth (1930), Ivan's Childhood (1962), Mother and Son (1997) and Brother (1997).
Edited by Geoff Mayer and Keith Beattie. Preface by John Hughes.
The Cinema of Australia and New Zealand
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From The Story of the Kelly Gang in 1906 to the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Australia and New Zealand have made a unique impact on international cinema. This book celebrates the commercially successful narrative feature films produced by these cultures as well as key documentaries, shorts, and independent films. It also invokes issues involving national identity, race, history, and the ability of two small film cultures to survive the economic and cultural threat of Hollywood. Chapters on well known films and directors, such as The Year of Living Dangerously (Peter Weir, 1982), The Piano (Jane Campion, 1993), Fellowship of the Ring (Peter Jackson, 2001), and Rabbit Proof Fence (Philip Noyce, 2002), are included with less popular but equally important films and filmmakers, such as Jedda (Charles Chauvel, 1955), They're a Weird Mob (Michael Powell, 1966), Vigil (Vincent Ward, 1984), and The Goddess of 1967 (Clara Law, 2000).
Edited by Ernest Mathijs
Lord of the Rings
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Much more than a successful film trilogy, Lord of the Rings has become an unparalleled media phenomenon. Through its impact on regional as well as global industries, and stretching from a British origin over Hollywood to a New Zealand appropriation it has challenged our thinking about the commercial contexts of popular culture. Lord of the Rings: Popular Culture in Global Context brings together leading scholars in the fields of media and film studies to explore the various strategies and implications underlying the global presence of Lord of the Rings. Chapters address how the trilogy has been planned and received as a media business; how it was received by critics and fans, and how spin-offs, franchises, associated media, and indeed the text itself have been affected by its success and appeal. The book covers different national contexts and presents a lively and diverse combination of textual, historical and empirical study.
Edited by Geoff Mayer and Keith Beattie. Preface by John Hughes.
The Cinema of Australia and New Zealand
Regular price
$32.00
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From The Story of the Kelly Gang in 1906 to the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Australia and New Zealand have made a unique impact on international cinema. This book celebrates the commercially successful narrative feature films produced by these cultures as well as key documentaries, shorts, and independent films. It also invokes issues involving national identity, race, history, and the ability of two small film cultures to survive the economic and cultural threat of Hollywood. Chapters on well known films and directors, such as The Year of Living Dangerously (Peter Weir, 1982), The Piano (Jane Campion, 1993), Fellowship of the Ring (Peter Jackson, 2001), and Rabbit Proof Fence (Philip Noyce, 2002), are included with less popular but equally important films and filmmakers, such as Jedda (Charles Chauvel, 1955), They're a Weird Mob (Michael Powell, 1966), Vigil (Vincent Ward, 1984), and The Goddess of 1967 (Clara Law, 2000).
Tamar Jeffers McDonald
Romantic Comedy
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Romantic Comedy offers an introduction to the analysis of a popular but overlooked film genre. The book provides an overview of Hollywood's romantic comedy conventions, examining iconography, narrative patterns, and ideology. Chapters discuss important subgroupings within the genre: screwball sex comedy and the radical romantic comedy of the 1970s. A final chapter traces the lasting influence of these earlier forms within current romantic comedies. Films include: Pillow Talk (1959), Annie Hall (1977), and You've Got Mail (1998).
Jason Wood
Talking Movies
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$26.00
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Talking Movies is a collection of interviews with audacious and respected contemporary filmmakers. Selected directors represent figures whose work has defined how images are processed and appreciated by modern audiences. The book offers a truly international perspective, including global pioneers who frankly discuss their craft and the social, political, and technological forces that inform it: Laurent Cantet, Robert Guédiguian, Cédric Kahn, and Bertrand Tavernier (France); David Gordon Green, Hal Hartley, and Richard Linklater (USA); Alejandro González Iñárritu and Carlos Reygadas (Mexico); Stephen Frears and Andrew Kötting (UK); Nuri Bilge Ceylan (Turkey); Atom Egoyan (Canada); Suzanne Bier (Denmark); Tran Anh Hung (Vietnam); Samira Makhmalbaf (Iran); Elia Suleiman (Palestine); and Lucrecia Martel (Argentina).
Michele Aaron
Spectatorship
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$23.00
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This book cuts a lucid path through the debate on spectatorship. It revisits the classics of Hollywood; explores films beyond the mainstream, such as Dogme 95; and shows how cinema makes a spectacle of the everyday while turning the spectacular into something commonplace. It also muses on the consequences of our sharing in or witnessing the private or intimate acts of others and our enjoyment of events that often represent a gross break with legal and social mores.
Edited by Lester Friedman
Fires Were Started
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$95.00
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Fires Were Started is a provocative analysis of the responses of British film to the policies and political ideology of the Conservative governments of Margaret Thatcher and it represents an original and stimulating contribution to our knowledge of British cinema. This second edition includes revised and updated contributions from some of the leading scholars of British cinema, including Thomas Elsaesser, Peter Wollen and Manthia Diawara. The book discuss prominent filmmakers such as Peter Greenaway, Derek Jarman, Ken Russell, Nicolas Roeg and Stephen Frears, it also explores some lesser known but equally important territory such as the work of Black British filmmakers, the Leeds Animation Workshop and Channel 4's Film on Four. Films discussed include Distant Voices, Still Lives, My Beautiful Launderette, Chariots of Fire and Drowning by Numbers.
James Morrison
The Cinema of Todd Haynes
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Todd Haynes has emerged from the trenches of independent American film in the 1990s to become one of the twenty-first century's most audacious filmmakers. In a series of smart, informative essays, this book traces his career from its roots in New Queer Cinema to the Oscar-nominated Far from Heaven (2002). Along the way, it covers such landmark films as Poison (1991), Safe (1995), and Velvet Goldmine (1998). Contributors look at these films from a variety of angles, including his debts to the avant-garde and such noted precursors as Rainer Werner Fassbinder; his adventurous uses of melodrama; and his incisive portrayals of contemporary life.
Stephen Keane
Disaster Movies
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Stephen Keane's history of the disaster genre offers a detailed analysis of films such as The Towering Inferno, Independence Day, Titanic, and The Day After Tomorrow. He looks at the ways in which disaster movies can be read in relation to both contextual considerations and the increasing commercial demands of contemporary Hollywood. In this second edition, he adds new material regarding cinematic representations of disaster in the wake of 9/11 and an analysis of disaster movies in light of recent natural disasters. Keane continually reworks this previously unexplored genre.
James Morrison
The Cinema of Todd Haynes
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$95.00
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Todd Haynes has emerged from the trenches of independent American film in the 1990s to become one of the twenty-first century's most audacious filmmakers. In a series of smart, informative essays, this book traces his career from its roots in New Queer Cinema to the Oscar-nominated Far from Heaven (2002). Along the way, it covers such landmark films as Poison (1991), Safe (1995), and Velvet Goldmine (1998). Contributors look at these films from a variety of angles, including his debts to the avant-garde and such noted precursors as Rainer Werner Fassbinder; his adventurous uses of melodrama; and his incisive portrayals of contemporary life.
Nigel Morris
The Cinema of Steven Spielberg
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$95.00
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Cinema's most successful director is a commercial and cultural force demanding serious consideration. Not just triumphant marketing, this international popularity is partly a function of the movies themselves. Polarised critical attitudes largely overlook this, and evidence either unquestioning adulation or vilificationoften vitriolicfor epitomising contemporary Hollywood. Detailed textual analyses reveal that alongside conventional commercial appeal, Spielberg's movies function consistently as a self-reflexive commentary on cinema. Rather than straightforwardly consumed realism or fantasy, they invite divergent readings and self-conscious spectatorship which contradict assumptions about their ideological tendencies. Exercising powerful emotional appeal, their ambiguities are profitably advantageous in maximising audiences and generating media attention.
Tamara L. Falicov
The Cinematic Tango
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$95.00
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The Cinematic Tango explores the cultural politics of over sixty years of filmmaking in Argentina. From the 1940s when film was a successful studio product to the 1980s post-dictatorship period when national cinema was utilized as a public relations tool, Tamara L. Falicov explores how national culture on film has been shaped, articulated, and debated. She provides in-depth analysis of Argentina's contemporary period, when financial incentives led to the production of commercial "blockbusters" as well as new opportunities for first-time directors, sparking a surge of low-budget, independent filmmaking.
Stephanie Dennison
Remapping World Cinema
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With films such as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000), The Motorcycle Diaries (2004), Oldboy (2003) and Good Bye Lenin! (2003), the state and popularity of world cinema has rarely been healthier. Remapping World Cinema explores many of the key critical and theoretical approaches and debates, including race, stardom, post-colonialism as well as national cinemas' relationship with Hollywood. Covering a broad scope, the book examines the cinemas of Africa, East Asia, India, Latin, Central and South America as well as the various territories of Europe.
Geetha Ramanathan
Feminist Auteurs
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$95.00
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Feminist Auteurs examines a rich and diverse body of work that has received insufficient attention both in film studies and in feminist theory on film. Looking at individual films within the context of feminist film as a genre, Ramanathan examines film from diverse cultural traditions, while paying close attention to what might be regarded as feminist in different cultural contexts. The films chosen expand our ideas of feminism covering as they do film from Africa, Latin America, Europe, Asia and the US. Full-length interpretations of twenty-four films, both older and contemporary, including Vagabond, India Song, Bhaji on the Beach, Chocolat, and Daughters of the Dust lay out a complete and powerful framework for reading women's film.
Nigel Morris
The Cinema of Steven Spielberg
Regular price
$26.00
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Cinema's most successful director is a commercial and cultural force demanding serious consideration. Not just triumphant marketing, this international popularity is partly a function of the movies themselves. Polarised critical attitudes largely overlook this, and evidence either unquestioning adulation or vilificationoften vitriolicfor epitomising contemporary Hollywood. Detailed textual analyses reveal that alongside conventional commercial appeal, Spielberg's movies function consistently as a self-reflexive commentary on cinema. Rather than straightforwardly consumed realism or fantasy, they invite divergent readings and self-conscious spectatorship which contradict assumptions about their ideological tendencies. Exercising powerful emotional appeal, their ambiguities are profitably advantageous in maximising audiences and generating media attention.
Edited by Ernest Mathijs
Lord of the Rings
Regular price
$95.00
Save $-95.00
Much more than a successful film trilogy, Lord of the Rings has become an unparalleled media phenomenon. Through its impact on regional as well as global industries, and stretching from a British origin over Hollywood to a New Zealand appropriation it has challenged our thinking about the commercial contexts of popular culture. Lord of the Rings: Popular Culture in Global Context brings together leading scholars in the fields of media and film studies to explore the various strategies and implications underlying the global presence of Lord of the Rings. Chapters address how the trilogy has been planned and received as a media business; how it was received by critics and fans, and how spin-offs, franchises, associated media, and indeed the text itself have been affected by its success and appeal. The book covers different national contexts and presents a lively and diverse combination of textual, historical and empirical study.
Geetha Ramanathan
Feminist Auteurs
Regular price
$26.00
Save $-26.00
Feminist Auteurs examines a rich and diverse body of work that has received insufficient attention both in film studies and in feminist theory on film. Looking at individual films within the context of feminist film as a genre, Ramanathan examines film from diverse cultural traditions, while paying close attention to what might be regarded as feminist in different cultural contexts. The films chosen expand our ideas of feminism covering as they do film from Africa, Latin America, Europe, Asia and the US. Full-length interpretations of twenty-four films, both older and contemporary, including Vagabond, India Song, Bhaji on the Beach, Chocolat, and Daughters of the Dust lay out a complete and powerful framework for reading women's film.
Daniel Frampton
Filmosophy
Regular price
$95.00
Save $-95.00
Filmosophy is a provocative new manifesto for a radically philosophical way of understanding cinema. It coalesces twentieth-century ideas of film as thought (from Hugo Münsterberg to Gilles Deleuze) into a practical theory of "film-thinking," arguing that film style conveys poetic ideas through a constant dramatic "intent" about the characters, spaces, and events of film. Discussing contemporary filmmakers such as Béla Tarr and the Dardenne brothers, this timely contribution to the study of film and philosophy will provoke debate among audiences and filmmakers alike.
FILMOSOPHY ® is a registered U.S. trademark owned by Valentin Stoilov (www.filmosophy.com) for educational services in the field of motion picture history theory and production. Mr. Stoilov is not the source or origin of this book and has not sponsored or endorsed it or its author.
Jason Wood
Talking Movies
Regular price
$95.00
Save $-95.00
Talking Movies is a collection of interviews with audacious and respected contemporary filmmakers. Selected directors represent figures whose work has defined how images are processed and appreciated by modern audiences. The book offers a truly international perspective, including global pioneers who frankly discuss their craft and the social, political, and technological forces that inform it: Laurent Cantet, Robert Guédiguian, Cédric Kahn, and Bertrand Tavernier (France); David Gordon Green, Hal Hartley, and Richard Linklater (USA); Alejandro González Iñárritu and Carlos Reygadas (Mexico); Stephen Frears and Andrew Kötting (UK); Nuri Bilge Ceylan (Turkey); Atom Egoyan (Canada); Suzanne Bier (Denmark); Tran Anh Hung (Vietnam); Samira Makhmalbaf (Iran); Elia Suleiman (Palestine); and Lucrecia Martel (Argentina).
Edited by Lester Friedman
Fires Were Started
Regular price
$26.00
Save $-26.00
Fires Were Started is a provocative analysis of the responses of British film to the policies and political ideology of the Conservative governments of Margaret Thatcher and it represents an original and stimulating contribution to our knowledge of British cinema. This second edition includes revised and updated contributions from some of the leading scholars of British cinema, including Thomas Elsaesser, Peter Wollen and Manthia Diawara. The book discuss prominent filmmakers such as Peter Greenaway, Derek Jarman, Ken Russell, Nicolas Roeg and Stephen Frears, it also explores some lesser known but equally important territory such as the work of Black British filmmakers, the Leeds Animation Workshop and Channel 4's Film on Four. Films discussed include Distant Voices, Still Lives, My Beautiful Launderette, Chariots of Fire and Drowning by Numbers.
Ewa Mazierska and Laura Rascaroli
Crossing New Europe
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$95.00
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Although a long-established and influential genre, this is the first comprehensive study of the European road cinema. Crossing New Europe investigates this tradition, its relationship with the American road movie and its aesthetic forms. This movement examines such crucial issues as individual and national identity crises, and phenomena such as displacement, diaspora, exile, migration, nomadism, and tourism in postmodern, post-Berlin Wall Europe. Drawing on the work of Said, Hall, Shields, Urry, Bauman, Deleuze and Guattari and other critical theorists, Crossing New Europe adopts a broad interpretation of "Europe" and discusses directors and films who have long been associated with the road movie, such as Wim Wenders (Alice in the Cities, Lisbon Story) and Aki Kaurismäki (Leningrad Cowboys Go America!), and other more recent contributions such as Run Lola Run, Dear Diary and The Last Resort.
Tamara L. Falicov
The Cinematic Tango
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The Cinematic Tango explores the cultural politics of over sixty years of filmmaking in Argentina. From the 1940s when film was a successful studio product to the 1980s post-dictatorship period when national cinema was utilized as a public relations tool, Tamara L. Falicov explores how national culture on film has been shaped, articulated, and debated. She provides in-depth analysis of Argentina's contemporary period, when financial incentives led to the production of commercial "blockbusters" as well as new opportunities for first-time directors, sparking a surge of low-budget, independent filmmaking.
Edited by Jerry White. Preface by Atom Egoyan
The Cinema of Canada
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Often overlooked and overshadowed by its North American cousin, Canadian cinema has nevertheless produced some mesmerising films and directors, including Atom Egoyan, Robert Lepage and Denys Arcand. The Cinema of Canada contains 24 essays, each on a different film and divides itself into three distinct categories: English-Canadian cinema; Québec cinema; Aboriginal cinema. In so doing, it provides a fascinating historical account of the development of film and documentary traditions across the diverse national and regional communities in Canada. Among the many important films discussed are Le Déclin de l'empire américain (1988), I've Heard the Mermaids Singing (1988), Exotica (1994), Le Confessionale (1995) and Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner (2001).
Guy Westwell
War Cinema
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An introduction to and overview of the Hollywood war movie, a linchpin in American cultural imagination. The book considers the history of this genre, one of continuing significance, from All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) to We Were Soldiers (2002). Guy Westwell focuses in particular on representations of the Vietnam War (Apocalypse Now [1979], Rambo [1985] and Platoon [1986]) and the more recent return to and reexamination of the Second World War (Saving Private Ryan [1998]).
Edited by John Orr and Elzbieta Ostrowska
The Cinema of Roman Polanski
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Roman Polanski is a great maverick figure of world cinema who has lived a controversial and tragic life. Yet his notoriety has eclipsed the true importance of his long career, starting with his short films in the 1950s and continuing through to the recent Oliver Twist (2005). This collection highlights the bold and dazzling diversity of his work as well as recurrent themes and obsessions. Films discussed include Knife in the Water (1962), Repulsion (1965), Rosemary's Baby (1968), Chinatown (1974), Death and the Maiden (1994), and The Pianist (2002).
Ewout van der Knaap
Uncovering the Holocaust
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$27.00
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Nuit et Brouillard (Night and Fog, 1956) by Alain Resnais carried the impact of the Holocaust to the cinema screen and to societies across the world. This volume, which coincides with the fiftieth anniversary of the film's release, examines its representation of the Holocaust and documents its reception in different contexts, countries, and societies, as well as its continuing place in the cultural memory of the Holocaust. It comprises a comparative study of the place of the film in the debates around the actuality and the meaning of the Holocaust in France, Germany, Israel, the Netherlands, the UK, and the U.S. The film itself, from the director of Last Year in Marienband (1960), used footage from the liberation of the concentration camps (previously only used in newsreels) and integrated it with reflective and poetic material.
Paul Ward
Documentary
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$21.00
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In using case studies such as Touching the Void (2003) and the films of Nick Broomfield, this timely introduction to the growing field of documentary explores the definition and understanding of the form, as well as the relationship between documentary and drama, specifically the notion of reconstruction and reenactment. Paul Ward also discusses animated documentaries, the fertile genre of comedy, and feature-length contemporary works that have achieved widespread cinematic release.
Edited by Stephanie Dennison and Song Hwee Lim
Remapping World Cinema
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With films such as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000), The Motorcycle Diaries (2004), Oldboy (2003) and Good Bye Lenin! (2003), the state and popularity of world cinema has rarely been healthier. Remapping World Cinema explores many of the key critical and theoretical approaches and debates, including race, stardom, post-colonialism as well as national cinemas' relationship with Hollywood. Covering a broad scope, the book examines the cinemas of Africa, East Asia, India, Latin, Central and South America as well as the various territories of Europe.
Edited by John Orr and Elzbieta Ostrowska
The Cinema of Roman Polanski
Regular price
$26.00
Save $-26.00
Roman Polanski is a great maverick figure of world cinema who has lived a controversial and tragic life. Yet his notoriety has eclipsed the true importance of his long career, starting with his short films in the 1950s and continuing through to the recent Oliver Twist (2005). This collection highlights the bold and dazzling diversity of his work as well as recurrent themes and obsessions. Films discussed include Knife in the Water (1962), Repulsion (1965), Rosemary's Baby (1968), Chinatown (1974), Death and the Maiden (1994), and The Pianist (2002).
Ewout van der Knaap
Uncovering the Holocaust
Regular price
$95.00
Save $-95.00
Nuit et Brouillard (Night and Fog, 1956) by Alain Resnais carried the impact of the Holocaust to the cinema screen and to societies across the world. This volume, which coincides with the fiftieth anniversary of the film's release, examines its representation of the Holocaust and documents its reception in different contexts, countries, and societies, as well as its continuing place in the cultural memory of the Holocaust. It comprises a comparative study of the place of the film in the debates around the actuality and the meaning of the Holocaust in France, Germany, Israel, the Netherlands, the UK, and the U.S. The film itself, from the director of Last Year in Marienband (1960), used footage from the liberation of the concentration camps (previously only used in newsreels) and integrated it with reflective and poetic material.
Edited by Will Brooker
The Blade Runner Experience
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Since its release in 1982, Ridley Scott's Blade Runner, based on Philip K. Dick's novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, has remained a cult classic through its depiction of a futuristic Los Angeles; its complex, enigmatic plot; and its underlying questions about the nature of human identity. The Blade Runner Experience: The Legacy of a Science Fiction Classic examines the film in a broad context, examining its relationship to the original novel, the PC game, the series of sequels, and the many films influenced by its style and themes. It investigates Blade Runner online fandom and asks how the film's future city compares to the present-day Los Angeles, and it revisits the film to pose surprising new questions about its characters and their world.
Ewa Mazierska and Laura Rascaroli
Crossing New Europe
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Although a long-established and influential genre, this is the first comprehensive study of the European road cinema. Crossing New Europe investigates this tradition, its relationship with the American road movie and its aesthetic forms. This movement examines such crucial issues as individual and national identity crises, and phenomena such as displacement, diaspora, exile, migration, nomadism, and tourism in postmodern, post-Berlin Wall Europe. Drawing on the work of Said, Hall, Shields, Urry, Bauman, Deleuze and Guattari and other critical theorists, Crossing New Europe adopts a broad interpretation of "Europe" and discusses directors and films who have long been associated with the road movie, such as Wim Wenders (Alice in the Cities, Lisbon Story) and Aki Kaurismäki (Leningrad Cowboys Go America!), and other more recent contributions such as Run Lola Run, Dear Diary and The Last Resort.
Edited by Jerry White. Preface by Atom Egoyan
The Cinema of Canada
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$29.00
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Often overlooked and overshadowed by its North American cousin, Canadian cinema has nevertheless produced some mesmerising films and directors, including Atom Egoyan, Robert Lepage and Denys Arcand. The Cinema of Canada contains 24 essays, each on a different film and divides itself into three distinct categories: English-Canadian cinema; Québec cinema; Aboriginal cinema. In so doing, it provides a fascinating historical account of the development of film and documentary traditions across the diverse national and regional communities in Canada. Among the many important films discussed are Le Déclin de l'empire américain (1988), I've Heard the Mermaids Singing (1988), Exotica (1994), Le Confessionale (1995) and Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner (2001).
Tanya Krzywinska
Sex and the Cinema
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From the sanctioned to the forbidden, the suggestive to the blatant, evocations of sex have saturated cinema with a heady distillation of fleshly passions. Whether laced in the rapturous rhetorics of romance or seeking to pack a harder erotic punch, cinematic representations of sex and sexual desire have provided cinema with one of its major attractions. Sex and the Cinema traces the numerous factors and contexts – artistic, institutional, political and socio-cultural – that have shaped the way that sex appears in film. How does cinema mediate sex? Why is sex presented often in transgressive terms? What ideals and values inform its depictions? Given that cinematic representations of sex have perhaps caused more controversy than any others, Sex and the Cinema charts the cultural norms and contestations that are often diversely in play and explores forms and themes such as narrative, incest, romance, sado-masochism and 'real' sex. Films discussed include Don't Look Now, Intolerance, The Blue Angel, Now, Voyager, Basic Instinct, Written on the Wind, Evil Dead II, Emmanuelle, A Taste of Honey, and The Night Porter.
Tanya Krzywinska
Sex and the Cinema
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$95.00
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From the sanctioned to the forbidden, the suggestive to the blatant, evocations of sex have saturated cinema with a heady distillation of fleshly passions. Whether laced in the rapturous rhetorics of romance or seeking to pack a harder erotic punch, cinematic representations of sex and sexual desire have provided cinema with one of its major attractions. Sex and the Cinema traces the numerous factors and contexts – artistic, institutional, political and socio-cultural – that have shaped the way that sex appears in film. How does cinema mediate sex? Why is sex presented often in transgressive terms? What ideals and values inform its depictions? Given that cinematic representations of sex have perhaps caused more controversy than any others, Sex and the Cinema charts the cultural norms and contestations that are often diversely in play and explores forms and themes such as narrative, incest, romance, sado-masochism and 'real' sex. Films discussed include Don't Look Now, Intolerance, The Blue Angel, Now, Voyager, Basic Instinct, Written on the Wind, Evil Dead II, Emmanuelle, A Taste of Honey, and The Night Porter.
Mark Bould
Film Noir
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Film Noir explores the murky world of a genre responsible for many of film's most enduring images. Mark Bould discusses problems of definition and the often ambiguous nature of film noir and looks at modern films that could be called neo-noir. Iconic and enduring, film noir attracted great stars (Bogart, Bacall, Mitchum, Lancaster), many of the best directors of the era (Wilder, Lang, Preminger, Hawks, Siodmak, Welles) and this book is an indispensible guide to this popular genre.
Milly Williamson
The Lure of the Vampire
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The Lure of the Vampire: Gender, Fiction and Fandom from Bram Stoker to Buffy the Vampire Slayer explores the curiosity and fascination surrounding the enduring myth of Dracula and vampires. Over one hundred years after Bram Stoker's influential novel was published, an interest in vampires is still prevalent in popular culture. This is suggested by the recent popularity of such television shows as Buffy the Vampire Slayer and it's spin-off,Angel. Milly Williamson examines this phenomena and looks at the issues of gender pertaining to both vampires and their followers, the modern portrayal of vampires, the nature of identity and identification, and the fans themselves.
