Perspectives in motion

Through a diverse range of case studies from Oceania, Asia, and Europe, and interdisciplinary approaches, Perspectives in Motion explores visual approaches to performance in global cultural contexts, offering new critical and ethnographic frameworks for understanding and experiencing practices ...

Hitler's dancers

The Nazis burned books and banned much modern art. However, few people know the fascinating story of German modern dance, which was the great exception. Modern expressive dance found favor with the regime and especially with the infamous Dr. Joseph Goebbels, the Minister of Propaganda. How mode...

Screening nature

The first comprehensive work that groups together concerns in the field of cinema and the environment with a specific emphasis on “posthuman cinema” An extensive resource for teachers, undergraduate students, and more advanced scholars on the intersections between film and the natural wo...

Cinema in service of the state

Comprehensive exploration of the postwar film cultures of both Czechoslovakia and the GDR. Situates these two national cinemas within the broader context of Eastern European film production as a whole. Uses a “stereoscopic” approach that traces their similarities and divergences to f...

Soho on screen

Transactions with the world

Offers a genuinely original critical approach to a well-covered chapter in film history. A mix of history, theory and critical analysis gives the book a real sense of diversity and variety. Attends to unusual and overlooked films of the New Hollywood period, as well as canonical main...

Puzzling stories

Many films and novels defy our ability to make sense of the plot. Puzzling Stories offers the first comprehensive, multidisciplinary, and trans-medial approach to the question of cognitive challenge in narrative art, bringing together psychological, philosophical, formal-historical, and empiric...

Aesthetics in performance

In various ways, the essays presented in this volume explore the structures and aesthetic possibilities of music, dance and dramatic representation in ritual and theatrical situations in a diversity of ethnographic contexts in Europe, the Americas, Africa and Asia. Each essay enters into a disc...

Theatre and war 1933-1945

On an April evening in 1934, on the River Arno in Florence, an air squadron, an infantry, a cavalry brigade, fifty trucks, four field and machine gun batteries, ten field radio stations, and six photoelectric units presented a piece of theatre. The mass spectacle, 18 BL involved over two thousa...

Marxism and film activism

This collection examines how filmmakers have tried to change the world by engaging in emancipatory politics in their work, and how audiences have received them. It presents a wide spectrum of case studies, covering both film and digital technology. Discussions range from the classic ...

Cinema and the environment in eastern europe

Cinema and the Environment in Eastern Europe traces from the 1970s through the post 1989 period how documentaries and filmmakers began to articulate alternative, aesthetically and ideologically provocative visions of the relationship between human and natural worlds.

Stories make the world

Examines the ideas and principles that guide the art of documentary storytelling. About the world as well as about nonfiction film. It explores subjects ranging from cosmology to architecture, environmental history to struggles for human rights. Looks at the process of transforming v...

The bressonians

In its methodology, the book combines an aesthetics of film authorship with a sociological approach. Takes into account the juridical dimension of film authorship. Provides an in-depth analysis of the work of renowned filmmakers Jean Eustache and Maurice Pialat, putting them in dialo...

Sentimental songs, melodrama and filmic narrative in bollywood’s golden age (1951–1963)

The way in which the spectator responds to the song and how narrative, lyrics, music, mise-en-scènes, all come together to accentuate sentimentality and melodrama in the Golden Age of Bollywood cinema (1951–1963) is the book’s key thematic concern.

Molière on stage

‘Molière on Stage’ takes the reader onstage, backstage and into the audience of Molière’s plays, and analyzes the performance of his works in both his own time and ours.

Horror and the horror film

‘Horror and the Horror Film’ is a vivid, compelling, insightful and well-written study of the horror film and its subgenres from 1896 to the present, concentrating on the nature of horror in reality and on film.

The films of adoor gopalakrishnan

The first comprehensive study of the feature films of India’s most distinguished contemporary filmmaker. This work offers a compelling analysis of the director’s treatment of guilt, redemption and hope within their socio-historical contexts.

Shots to the heart: for the love of film performance

This book continues the author’s project, begun in the 2017 monograph Gestures of Love, of exploring the place of film actors in an emotional and thoughtful reception of movies. Shots to the Heart aims to provide both concrete critical engagements with moments of performance as well as philosophi...

Bollywood and globalization

This book is a collection of incisive articles on the interactions between Indian Popular Cinema and the political and cultural ideologies of a new post-Global India.

The post-traumatic theatre of grotowski and kantor

A historical and critical analysis of the post-traumatic theatre of Grotowski and Kantor, examining the ways they represent Auschwitz in their respective pivotal works ‘Akropolis’ and ‘Dead Class’.

Theatricality in the horror film

As is well known, the horror film generally presents a situation where normality is threatened by a monster. From this premise, ‘Theatricality in the Horror Film’ argues that scary movies often create their terrifying effects stylistically and structurally through a radical break with the realism...

American horror story and cult television

This collection of essays approaches the American Horror Story cult television series through a rich variety of critical perspectives within the broader field of television studies and its transections with other disciplines.

'grease is the word'

Bringing together a group of international scholars, ‘Grease Is the Word’ offers fresh insight into the impact and legacy of the cultural phenomenon that is Grease.

Tennessee williams, t-shirt modernism and the refashionings of theater

Tennessee Williams, T-shirt Modernism and the Refashionings of Theater engages the Williams we thought we knew, as he grew, developed, reconfigured himself into a playwright we didn’t, in his attempts to refashion himself amid the vortices of changing sexual mores, including the performance of ma...

Unhomely cinema

Representations of troubled and inhospitable domestic places are a common feature of many cinematic narratives. “Unhomely Cinema” explores how the unhomely nature of contemporary film narrative provides an insight into what it means to dwell in today’s global societies.

On the figure in general and the body in particular

A collection of wide-ranging essays written throughout the 1990s, On the Body in General and the Figure in Particular: Figurative Invention in Cinema covers an array of genres and styles to propose an original method of cinematic analysis and interpretation foregrounding film’s formal and plastic...

Screen writings

'Screen Writings: Partial Views of a Total Art, Classic to Contemporary' offers close readings of individual films intended to explain how moviemakers use the resources of the medium to pursue complex and significant humanistic goals.

Staging memory and materiality in eighteenth-century theatrical biography

“Staging Memory and Materiality in Eighteenth-Century Theatrical Biography” examines theatrical biography as a developing genre in eighteenth-century England. Drawing heavily on primary sources, then-contemporary reviews and archival material in the form of extra-illustrated or “scrapbooked” copi...

A cultural history of the bushranger legend in theatres and cinemas, 1828–2017

‘A Cultural History of the Bushranger Legend in Theatres and Cinemas, 1828–2017’ is a cultural history of the bushranger legend on stage and screen from colonial to contemporary Australia. It provides a detailed analysis of the mechanisms through which bushrangers became an indelible part of the ...

Kunqu masters on chinese theatrical performance

Kunqu is among the oldest and most refined traditions of the family of genres known as xiqu (music-drama or “Chinese opera”). This book consists of translated performer narrations that illuminate how one of the major Chinese theatrical forms has been taught and transmitted over the past century. 

From happy homemaker to desperate housewives

‘Motherhood and Popular Television’ is designed to introduce readers to key debates concerning the representations of motherhood and the maternal role in contemporary television programming.

Cinema at the margins

“Cinema at the Margins” is a collection that aims to highlight some of the lesser-known films and filmmakers of the past that are being marginalized and forgotten in today’s reductive popular memory of movie history.

Belarusian theatre and the 2020 pro-democracy protests

This book highlights the important creative work of Belarusian theatre and filmmakers seeking to raise awareness of the Pro-democracy movement and human rights abuses in Belarus and to build communities of care and mourning following the fraudulent 2020 presidential elections in Belarus.

The final curtain: the art of dying on stage

It is a book about dying, or, more accurately, about the representation of dying in the theatre. Its chief concern is how actors undertook to translate words and concepts into forms legible and significant to an audience. It deals with the ways in which playwrights wrote about death and attitudes...

Adoption reckonings

This book presents a new theater play, titled For Three Refrigerators and a Washing Machine, along with a thorough introduction that provides historical context and theoretical framing of the “historic” child adoptions from postwar Greece.

World cinema and the visual arts

‘World Cinema and the Visual Arts’ combines new analyses of two subjects of ongoing research in the field of humanities: cinema and the visual arts. The films analysed encompass a wide geographical base, and have been drawn from a diverse array of cultural traditions.

Cultural theory in the films of alfred hitchcock

This book considers several aspects of Alfred Hitchcock’s filmmaking from philosophical and social scientific points of view. Its principal aim is to place Hitchcock’s films in the context of debates in various philosophical and cultural traditions.

The whole durn human comedy: life according to the coen brothers

A groundbreaking, incisive critical study of the Coen Bros., the quirky team of filmmaking brothers who delight in unsettling cinematic conventions and confounding audiences while raising disturbing questions about human nature.

Aesthetics and the cinematic narrative

‘Aesthetics and the Cinematic Narrative’ examines the manner in which disparate Aesthetic traditions inform the conception, creation and reception of cinematic narrative while placing film, as an art form, in a wider historical and aesthetic context.

Truth and storytelling

The book offers a guide for writers to better understand and confront the truths they want to reveal through narrative stories and how to find legitimacy in the fictional characters and situations they create.

The dancing body in renaissance choreography

The Dancing Body in Renaissance Choreography is a study of the theory of kinetic theatricality in the western European context. The dancing body of courtly social dance is analyzed in French and Italian dance treatises of the Renaissance through the intertexts of oratorical action, pedagogical di...

Australian theatre, modernism and patrick white

‘Australian Theatre, Modernism and Patrick White’ details the rejection of two Patrick White plays – ‘The Ham Funeral’ and ‘Night on Bald Mountain’ – by the Adelaide Festival of Arts in Australia in the early 1960s.

Antonio pietrangeli, the director of women

This book re-examines the films of Antonio Pietrangeli, one of the founding fathers of neorealism in the postwar period in Italy, from a feminist perspective. Of the ten full-length films completed by Antonio Pietrangeli, eight featured a female protagonist. This attention to the female subject i...

Challenging the narrative

Filmmaker McLaughlin addresses the need to create platforms for survivors of political violence to tell their stories in order to challenge marginalizing narratives and injustices and as a form of public acknowledgement and personal healing.

The “slumdog” phenomenon

Featuring a dynamic combination of landmark essays by leading critics and theorists, “The ‘Slumdog’ Phenomenon: A Critical Anthology” addresses multiple issues relating to “Slumdog Millionaire,” providing new ways of looking at this controversial film.

Stages of life

Four autobiographies of early twentieth-century actors and playwrights are presented in English translation, with substantive chapters on the Parsi theatre and strategies for reading autobiography in the Indian context.

The embodiment and transmission of ghanaian kete royal dance

This book is an Afrocentric exploration of the royal Indigenous dance known as the Kete dance-music, as an analytical path for reassessing African movement systems in the 21st century. It validates the agency of the Black dancing body as a critical element for the generation and use of Indigenous...

A history of three-dimensional cinema

A History of Three-Dimensional Cinema chronicles 3-D cinema from its origins in 19th-century stereoscopic photography through anaglyphic/digital stereoscopic cinema in the 20th century to the promise of Virtual Reality in the 21st century.

Performing the iranian state

This book discusses what it means to “perform the State,” what this action means in relation to the country of Iran and how these various performances are represented.

Finding queensland in australian cinema

'Finding Queensland in Australian Cinema' explores gender, race and place in selected Australian films in various phases of Australian cinema: from Charles Chauvel’s 'Jedda' (1955), to the ‘period’ films of the New Wave in the 1970s, to the Indigenous filmmakers since the 1990s, and the contempor...

Action!

‘Action!’ draws on the very best published and unpublished interviews of the ‘Bright Lights Film Journal’, and contains many gems, including the last ever interview given by Francois Truffaut, four months before he died.

Selected film essays and interviews

A collection of Bruce F. Kawin’s most engaging and important essays on film, accompanied by his interviews with Lillian Gish and Howard Hawks.

African cinema and urbanism

This work brings together theories and practices from the disciplines of urbanism, architecture and African cinema studies to examine, through African screen media, how African artists are bringing attention to issues of urban precarity, climate change, survival and growth, and creativity on the ...

Ballet

Ballet is a breathtaking photographic collection, celebrating the precision, athleticism and artistry of classical and contemporary ballet.Live performances allow us to admire ballet’s visual splendour from afar, but rarely are we given the opportunity to study dynamic poses, leaps and lifts in i...

The arab national project in youssef chahine’s cinema

A rigorous examination of the work of Egypt’s best-known filmmaker, new in paperbackThis book presents a comprehensive study of the work of Youssef Chahine. Its methodological approach, and more precisely, the discussion of the theme of Arab national unity from a post-colonial point of view, emph...

The alphabet about nothing

From Babu Bhatt to Elaine, Newman to Kramer, The Alphabet About Nothing reviews an unforgettable cast of characters encountered by Jerry and his gang.Written and illustrated before a live studio audience, The Alphabet About Nothing teaches important lessons about something to young fans of the mo...

Why britain rocked

Why Britain Rocked: How Rock Became Roll and Took Over the World challenges the origins of ‘Beatlemania’ by travelling deep into Britain’s history to trace the events that led to Britain’s twentieth century musical explosion. With rigorous in-depth research, new discoveries and original insights ...

Balanchine and me

Born in St. Petersburg, Russia, in 1904, George Balanchine was the 20th century’s towering figure of classical ballet. Coming to America in 1933, Balanchine founded the School of American Ballet and the New York City Ballet, where he hired the Danish-born Peter Martins as a dancer and, later, as ...

Anything but dull

Anything But Dull: the Life and Art of Jeff Nuttall reveals the life lived and the art created by a visionary polymath whose generosity of spirit defined his character. From childhood traumas to revolutionary acts, through triumphs, defeats and resurrections Jeff Nuttall’s story is told here for ...

Approaches to the contemporary american theatre

In this engaging study, theatre scholar Robert J. Andreach argues, in what will be his final book, that the contemporary American theatre merits appreciation for dramatizing experiences in genres that jostle the audience into thinking about the experiences in new ways, based on five units of anal...

Dreaming of cinema

Video games, YouTube channels, Blu-ray discs, and other forms of "new" media have made theatrical cinema seem "old." A sense of "cinema lost" has accompanied the ascent of digital media, and many worry film's capacity to record the real is fundamentally changing. Yet the Surrealist movement never...

Storytelling in world cinemas

Storytelling in World Cinemas, Vol. 2: Contexts addresses the questions of what and why particular stories are told in films around the world, both in terms of the forms of storytelling used, and of the political, religious, historical, and social contexts informing cinematic storytelling. Drawin...

Suzuki seijun and postwar japanese cinema

William Carroll offers a new account of Suzuki Seijun’s career that highlights the intersections of film theory, film production, cinephile culture, and politics in 1960s Japan. This book presents both a major reinterpretation of Suzuki’s work and a new lens on postwar Japanese film culture and i...

The cinema of terrence malick

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 unques...

Contemporary romanian cinema

This book is the first to provide in-depth analyses of essential works in Romanian cinema ranging from the silent period to contemporary productions.

Hollywood’s copyright wars

Copyright law is important to every stage of media production and reception. It helps determine filmmakers' artistic decisions, Hollywood's corporate structure, and the varieties of media consumption. The rise of digital media and the internet has only expanded copyright's reach. Everyone from pr...

My affair with art house cinema

My Affair with Art House Cinema presents Phillip Lopate’s selected essays and reviews from the last quarter century, inviting readers to experience films he found exhilarating, tantalizing, and beguiling—and sometimes disappointing or frustrating—through his keen eyes.

Sentimental fabulations, contemporary chinese films

What is the sentimental? How can we understand it by way of the visual and narrative modes of signification specific to cinema and through the manners of social interaction and collective imagining specific to a particular culture in transition? What can the sentimental tell us about the precario...

Philosophers on film from bergson to badiou

Philosophers on Film from Bergson to Badiou is an anthology of writings on cinema and film by many of the major thinkers in continental philosophy. The book presents a selection of fundamental texts, each introduced by the editor, Christopher Kul-Want, who places the philosophers within a histori...

Hitchcock annual

Hitchcock Annual, volume 21, contains essays on textured characters in The Skin Game, hospitality in Dial M for Murder, sparse sonic set pieces in various Hitchcock films, and two detailed review essays on recent books on Hitchcock.

Hideous progeny

Twisted bodies, deformed faces, aberrant behavior, and abnormal desires characterized the hideous creatures of classic Hollywood horror, which thrilled audiences with their sheer grotesqueness. Most critics have interpreted these traits as symptoms of sexual repression or as metaphors for other k...

Bring me the head of alfredo garcia

In 1974, The Wall Street Journal called this movie "grotesque, sadistic, irrational, obscene, incompetent," while New York Magazine declared it "a catastrophe." Upon its initial release, Sam Peckinpah´s notorious work took a critical and commercial nosedive, but in later years, the work was heral...