The continued interest in the social and cultural life of the former Warsaw pact countries - looking at but also beyond their socialist pasts - encompasses a desire to know more about their national cinemas. Yet, despite the increasing consumption of films from these countries - via DVD, VOD platforms and other alternative channels - there is a lack of comprehensive information on this key aspect of visual culture. This important book rectifies the glaring gap and provides both a history and a contemporary account of East Central European cinema in the pre-WW2, socialist, and post-socialist periods. Demonstrating how at different historical moments popular cinema fulfilled various roles, for example in the capacity of nation-building, and adapted to the changing markets of a morphing political landscape, chapters bring together experts in the field for the definitive analysis of mainstream cinema in the region.Celebrating the unique contribution of films from Hungary, the Czech Republic/Czechoslovakia and Poland, from the award-winning Cosy Dens to cult favourite Lemonade Joe, and from 1960s Polish Westerns to Hollywood-influenced Hungarian movies, the book addresses the major themes of popular cinema. By looking closely at genre, stardom, cinema exhibition, production strategies and the relationship between the popular and the national, it charts the remarkable evolution and transformation of popular cinema over time.

The internationally acclaimed films Persepolis and Waltz with Bashir only hinted at the vibrant animation culture that exists within the Middle East and North Africa. In spite of censorship, oppression and war, animation studios have thrived in recent years - in Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Morocco, Palestine, Syria and Turkey - giving rise to a whole new generation of entrepreneurs and artists. The success of animation in the Middle East is in part a product of a changing cultural climate, which is increasingly calling for art that reflects politics. Equally, the professionalization and popularization of film festivals and the emergence of animation studios and private initiatives are the results of a growing consumer culture, in which family-friendly entertainment is big business. Animation in the Middle East uncovers the history and politics that have defined the practice and study of animation in the Middle East, and explores the innovative visions of contemporary animators in the region.

For eighty years, Pinewood Studios has made dreams a reality. Billions of people across the globe, of all ages, from all walks of life have read six words on cinema or television screens: 'Made at Pinewood Studios, London, England'. From hosting super spies and superheroes, Pinewood has been home to a galaxy far, far away, helping create the movies that have made audiences laugh and cry in equal measure. Some of the most glittering careers on both sides of the camera have been launched behind the iconic gates of Pinewood. From James Bond to Star Wars, the modern age of Marvel and the re-imagining of the Disney classics, Pinewood Studios and Shepperton Studios have played host to the greatest and most cherished movies of all time. Complete with many exclusive behind-the-scenes images from those classic movies, this beautiful new book offers insight, anecdotes and interviews with some of the producers, directors and acting talent who have worked at the studios, including Ridley Scott, Barbara Broccoli, Tim Burton and Sir Roger Moore.

Art cinema occupies a space in the film landscape that is accorded a particular kind of value. From films that claim the status of harsh realism to others which embody aspects of the tradition of modernism or the poetic, art cinema encompasses a variety of work from across the globe. But how is art cinema positioned in the film marketplace, or by critics and in academic analysis? Exactly what kinds of cultural value are attributed to films of this type and how can this be explained? This book offers a unique analysis of how such processes work, including the broader cultural basis of the appeal of art cinema to particular audiences. Geoff King argues that there is no single definition of art cinema, but a number of distinct and recurrent tendencies are identified. At one end of the spectrum are films accorded the most 'heavyweight' status, offering the greatest challenges to viewers. Others mix aspects of art cinema with more accessible dimensions such as uses of popular genre frameworks and 'exploitation' elements involving explicit sex and violence. Including case studies of key figures such as Michael Haneke, Pedro Almodovar and Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, this is a crucial contribution to understanding both art cinema itself and the discourses through which its value is established.

In Ten Years with Guru Dutt: Abrar Alvi's Journey, Sathya Saran looks at the tumultuous yet incredibly fecund relationship between the mercurial director and his equally talented albeit unsung writer, a partnership that evolved over a decade till Guru Dutt's tragic death in 1964. Starting his career as a driver and chaperone to Guru Dutt's producer on the sets of Baaz, Abrar soon caught the attention of the director with his sharp ear for and understanding of film dialogue. With Aar Paar in 1954, Abrar rewrote the rules of dialogue-writing in Hindi cinema, till then marked by theatricality and artificiality. He followed it up with masterpieces like Mr and Mrs '55, Pyaasa and Kaagaz Ke Phool, before donning the director's mantle with great success in Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulam. Brimming with lively anecdotes - about how Abrar honed his skills by writing over 300 love letters; how an accident involving a buffalo led to the discovery of Waheeda Rehman; Guru Dutt's visit to a kotha to get the ambience right for Pyaasa - this acclaimed book is a warm and insightful look at two remarkable artistes who inspired each other to create movie magic.

Drawing on a wide range of archival sources, Andrew Shail traces the emergence of film stardom in Europe and North America in the early 20th century. Modifying and supplementing Richard deCordova's account of the birth of the US star system, Shail describes the complex set of economic circumstances that led film studios and actors to consent to the adoption of a star system. He then explores the film industry's turn, from 1908, to making character-based series films. He details how these characters both prefigured and precipitated the star system, demonstrating that series characters and the 'firmament' of film stars are functionally equivalent, and shows how openly fictional characters still provide the model for 'real' film stars.

As movies took the country by storm in the early twentieth century, Americans argued fiercely about whether municipal or state authorities should step in to control what people could watch when they went to movie theaters, which seemed to be springing up on every corner. Many who opposed the governmental regulation of film conceded that some entity-boards populated by trusted civic leaders, for example-needed to safeguard the public good. The National Board of Review of Motion Pictures (NB), a civic group founded in New York City in 1909, emerged as a national cultural chaperon well suited to protect this emerging form of expression from state incursions. Using the National Board's extensive files, Monitoring the Movies offers the first full-length study of the NB and its campaign against motion-picture censorship. Jennifer Fronc traces the NB's Progressive-era founding in New York; its evolving set of "standards" for directors, producers, municipal officers, and citizens; its "city plan," which called on citizens to report screenings of condemned movies to local officials; and the spread of the NB's influence into the urban South. Ultimately, Monitoring the Movies shows how Americans grappled with the issues that arose alongside the powerful new medium of film: the extent of the right to produce and consume images and the proper scope of government control over what citizens can see and show.

Recent critically and commercially acclaimed Latin American films such as XXY, Contracorriente, and Plan B create an affective and bodily connection with viewers that elicits in them an emotive and empathic relationship with queer identities. Referring to these films as New Maricon Cinema, Vinodh Venkatesh argues that they represent a distinct break from what he terms Maricon Cinema, or a cinema that deals with sex and gender difference through an ethically and visually disaffected position, exemplified in films such as Fresa y chocolate, No se lo digas a nadie, and El lugar sin limites. Covering feature films from Argentina, Chile, Cuba, Ecuador, Mexico, Peru, the United States, and Venezuela, New Maricon Cinema is the first study to contextualize and analyze recent homo-/trans-/intersexed-themed cinema in Latin America within a broader historical and aesthetic genealogy. Working with theories of affect, circulation, and orientations, Venkatesh examines key scenes in the work of auteurs such as Marco Berger, Javier Fuentes-Leon, and Julia Solomonoff and in films including Antes que anochezca and Y tu mama tambien to show how their use of an affective poetics situates and regenerates viewers in an ethically productive cinematic space. He further demonstrates that New Maricon Cinema has encouraged the production of "gay friendly" commercial films for popular audiences, which reflects wider sociocultural changes regarding gender difference and civil rights that are occurring in Latin America.

From early twentieth-century stag films to 1960s sexploitation pictures to the boom in 1970s "porno chic," adult cinema's vintage forms are now being reappraised by a new generation of historians, fans, preservationists, and home video entrepreneurs-all of whom depend on and help shape the archive of film history. But what is the present-day allure of these artifacts that have since become eroticized more for their "pastness" than the explicit acts they show? And what are the political implications of recovering these rare but still-visceral films from a less "enlightened," pre-feminist past? Drawing on media industry analysis, archival theory, and interviews with adult video personnel, David Church argues that vintage pornography retains its retrospective fascination precisely because these culturally denigrated texts have been so poorly preserved on political and aesthetic grounds. Through these films' ongoing moves from cultural emergence to concealment to rediscovery, the archive itself performs a "striptease," permitting tangible contact with these corporeally stimulating forms at a moment when the overall physicality of media objects is undergoing rapid transformation. Disposable Passions explores the historiographic lessons that vintage pornography can teach us about which materials our society chooses to keep, and how a long-neglected genre is primed for serious rediscovery as more than mere autoerotic fodder.

When the Fox Film Corporation merged with Twentieth Century Pictures in 1935, the company posed little threat to industry juggernauts such as Paramount and MGM. In the years that followed however, guided by executives Darryl F. Zanuck and Spyros Skouras, it soon emerged as one of the most important studios. Though working from separate offices in New York and Los Angeles and often of two different minds, the two men navigated Twentieth Century-Fox through the trials of the World War II boom, the birth of television, the Hollywood Blacklist, and more to an era of exceptional success, which included what was then the highest grossing movie of all time, The Sound of Music. Twentieth Century-Fox is a comprehensive examination of the studio's transformation during the Zanuck-Skouras era. Instead of limiting his scope to the Hollywood production studio, Lev also delves into the corporate strategies, distribution models, government relations, and technological innovations that were the responsibilities of the New York headquarters. Moving chronologically, he examines the corporate history before analyzing individual films produced by Twentieth Century-Fox during that period. Drawn largely from original archival research, Twentieth Century-Fox offers not only enlightening analyses and new insights into the films and the history of the company, but also affords the reader a unique perspective from which to view the evolution of the entire film industry.

Blair Miller tells the story of the motion picture industry as it developed in Jacksonville after the turn of the twentieth century. Almost Hollywood reveals the meteoric rise of Jacksonville in early silent films. Home to over thirty studios employing actors, directors, and stagehands, Jacksonville became touted as the "winter film capital of the world" by 1915. A myriad of factors contributed to Jacksonville's rise and then fall by the mid 1920s. What were the reasons why Jacksonville missed out as the next mecca for filmmaking? Blair Miller tells the story through primary sources from that remarkable period.

Producing Bollywood offers an unprecedented look inside the social and professional worlds of the Mumbai-based Hindi film industry and explains how it became "Bollywood," the global film phenomenon and potent symbol of India as a rising economic powerhouse. In this rich and entertaining ethnography Tejaswini Ganti examines the changes in Hindi film production from the 1990s until 2010, locating them in Hindi filmmakers' efforts to accrue symbolic capital, social respectability, and professional distinction, and to manage the commercial uncertainties of filmmaking. These efforts have been enabled by the neoliberal restructuring of the Indian state and economy since 1991. This restructuring has dramatically altered the country's media landscape, which quickly expanded to include satellite television and multiplex theaters. Ganti contends that the Hindi film industry's metamorphosis into Bollywood would not have been possible without the rise of neoliberal economic ideals in India. By describing dramatic transformations in the Hindi film industry's production culture, daily practices, and filmmaking ideologies during a decade of tremendous social and economic change in India, Ganti offers valuable new insights into the effects of neoliberalism on cultural production in a postcolonial setting.

Hollywood is often characterized as a stronghold of left-liberal ideals. In "Reel Power," Matthew Alford shows it is in fact deeply complicit in serving the interests of the most regressive U.S. corporate and political forces. Films like "Transformers," "Terminator: Salvation" and "Black Hawk Down" are constructed with Defense Department assistance as explicit cheerleaders for the U.S. military, but Matthew Alford also emphasizes how so-called radical films like "Three Kings," "Hotel Rwanda" and "Avatar" present watered-down alternative visions of American politics that serve a similar function. "Reel Power" is the first book to examine the internal workings of contemporary Hollywood as a politicized industry as well as scores of films across all genres. No matter what the progressive impulses of some celebrities and artists, Alford shows how they are part of a system that is hard-wired to encourage American global supremacy and frequently the use of state violence.

This expanded and revised edition explores and updates the cultural politics of the Walt Disney Company and how its ever-expanding list of products, services, and media function as teaching machines that shape children's culture into a largely commercial endeavor. The Disney conglomerate remains an important case study for understanding both the widening influence of free-market fundamentalism in the new millennium and the ways in which messages of powerful corporations have been appropriated and increasingly resisted in global contexts. New in this edition is a discussion of Disney's shift in its marketing strategies towards targeting tweens and teens, as Disney promises to provide (via participation in consumer culture) the tools through which young people construct and support their identities, values, and knowledge of the world. The updated chapters from the highly acclaimed first edition are complimented with two new chapters, "Globalizing the Disney Empire" and "Disney, Militarization, and the National Security State After 9/11," which extend the analysis of Disney's effects on young people to a consideration of the political and economic dimensions of Disney as a U.S.-based megacorporation, linking the importance of critical reception on an individual scale to a broader conception of democratic global community.

Is television dead? The classic television era of the 1950s and 1960s, characterized by limited choices of programs broadcast on over the air channels to families as if they were seated around a hearth - and to a nation as if gathered around a campfire - has indeed ended. That early stage of "sharedness" and "scarcity" gave way to the television of "plenty," when satellite and cable and competition reigned, choice was suddenly expanded, and every room in the home had its own television set. And now television offers infinite choices where we can view what we like; when we like; where we like; on a variety of screens, telephones, and Web sites. Some researchers assert that television is not dead but has merely moved from a "collectivist" to an "individualist" phase. Throughout the drastic evolution of this media, thousands of studies have examined the short-term effects of television, such as the evaluation of persuasion campaigns. Yet there is scant research on the overreaching sociological impacts of television and its centrality to Western culture over the past 60 years. This compelling volume of The ANNALS is the first collection of rigorous articles devoted to studying ways in which television has impacted our values, ideologies, institutions, social structure, and culture. Focusing on classic television, these leading experts in media studies delve into the effects on social institutions (namely family and politics) and its effects on values and everyday behavior. These seminal articles lay the groundwork for innovative studies of the numerous ways that television has impacted democracy; social integration (nation and family); trust and suspiciousness; materialism; and identity (social and physical). Students and researchers will find a wealth of inspiration for new research projects. It is a must-have resource for social scientists interested in media studies.

United Artists was a unique motion picture company in the history of Hollywood. Founded by Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, and director D.W. Griffith--four of the greatest names of the silent era--United Artists functioned as a distribution company for independent producers. In this lively and detailed history of United Artists from 1919 through 1951, film scholar Tino Balio chronicles the company's struggle for survival, its rise to prominence as the Tiffany of the industry, and its near extinction in the 1940s.
This edition is updated with a new introduction by Balio that places in relief UA's operations for those readers who may be unfamiliar with film industry practices and adds new perspective to the company's place within Hollywood.

In this second volume of Tino Balio's history of United Artists, he examines the turnaround of the company in the hands of Arthur Krim and Robert Benjamin in the 1950s, when United Artists devised a successful strategy based on the financing and distribution of independent production that transformed the company into an industry leader. Drawing on corporate records and interviews, Balio follows United Artists through its merger with Transamerica in the 1960s and its sale to MGM after the financial debacle of the film "Heaven's Gate." With its attention to the role of film as both an art form and an economic institution, "United Artists: The Company That Changed the Film Industry" is an indispensable study of one company's fortunes from the 1950s to the 1980s and a clear-eyed analysis of the film industry as a whole.
This edition includes an expanded introduction that examines the history of United Artists from 1978 to 2008, as well as an account of Arthur Krim's attempt to mirror UA's success at Orion Pictures from 1978 to 1991.

This engaging book explores some of the most significant films to emerge from Latin America since 2000, an extraordinary period of international recognition for the region's cinema. Each chapter assesses an individual film, with some contributors considering the reasons for the unprecedented commercial and critical successes of movies such as City of God, The Motorcycle Diaries, Y tu mama tambien, and Nine Queens, while others examine why equally important films failed to break out on the international circuit. Written by leading specialists, the chapters not only offer textual analysis, but also trace the films' social context and production conditions, as well as critical national and transnational issues. Their well-rounded analyses provide a rich picture of the state of contemporary filmmaking in a range of Latin American countries. Nuanced and thought-provoking, the readings in this book will provide invaluable interpretations for students and scholars of Latin American film. Contributions by: Sarah Barrow, Nuala Finnegan, David William Foster, Miraim Haddu, Geoffrey Kantaris, Deborah Shaw, Lisa Shaw, Rob Stone, Else R. P. Vieira, and Claire Williams.

At the beginning of the 21st century, the US film industry had overtaken aeronautics and car industries to become one of the highest exporters of American products. Mark Wheeler's important new book provides both a political history of Hollywood and a reflection on the relationship between cinema and politics in America, from 1900 to the present day. Wheeler considers the interplay between the movies studios, state and national government and cultural policy and legislation, with case studies of the censorship that followed in the wake of the Hays Code 1930 and the investigations of the House Committee of Un-American Activities (HUAC) in the 1950s that led to the notorious blacklisting of alleged or known Communist sympathisers. His history of political constituencies within Hollywood ranges from the conservative right to the liberal and the communist left, from trades unionists to movie moguls. The book concludes with a look at the politics of show business, addressing links between Hollywood and political activism, films such as "The Candidate" and "Bulworth" that have themselves engaged with the political process, and considering the irony that despite the fact that Hollywood is perceived as a bastion of liberalism the two most famous actors-turned-politicians have been Ronald Reagan and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

This succinct overview explains conglomeration and regulation in the film and television industries, covering its history as well as the contemporary scene. Former producer William M. Kunz shows how the current structure of these industries has evolved and how this structure impacts the production and distribution of cultural products. Providing a critical view without taking a political stance, Kunz focuses on film and TV in order to give an in-depth portrait of these industries and their dynamic relationship to each other. Ideal as a supplement for a variety of media courses_such as media and society, policy, economics, and criticism_this student-friendly text includes synopses of key media regulations and policies, discussion questions, a glossary, and interesting sidebars.

Provides an up-to-date, insightful take on modern American cinema's relations with, and influence on Reagan's, Clinton's and both Bush's administrations. George W.Bush, Clinton and Ronald Reagan's relations are revealed with radical celebrities like Sean Penn, Tim Robbins, Susan Sarandon and Warren Beatty. It contains unique 'behind the scenes' stories and exclusive, revealing interviews with Hollywood celebrities. Described by Tony Garnett as 'an ambitious and refreshing book', "Hollywood's New Radicalism" is a timely and contentious account of the last twenty-five years of American cinema. Ben Dickenson tells the story of the corporate take-over of the movies in the 1970s, and the subsequent transformation of Hollywood into the dominant force in the global media industry. Writing from the intersection where politics, society and cinema meet, and using exclusive interviews with Hollywood personalities, he explores the radicalising effect of such changes on liberal filmmakers like Warren Beatty, Michael Moore and Sean Penn in the past decade. He demonstrates how left-wing messages smuggled their way into 1980s movies, found a fuller voice in independent American cinema during the 1990s and flirted with mainstream popularity at the start of the new millennium. Bringing the story up to and through the 2004 Presidential election, he reveals how important Hollywood figures have become key members of a vigorous left - wing opposition to George W. Bush's Presidency.

The Film Studio sheds new light on the evolution of global film production, highlighting the role of film studios worldwide. The authors explore the contemporary international production environment, alleging that global competition is best understood as an unequal and unstable partnership between the "design interest" of footloose producers and the "location interest" of local actors. Ben Goldsmith and Tom O'Regan identify various types of film studios and investigate the consequences for Hollywood, international film production, and the studio locations.

"This book represents a real addition to our shared knowledge of video, film, and media history, and I have no doubt that it will receive much acclaim. There is no [other] comprehensive history of the video industry, and Wasser's book offers just this in a clear and very useful manner." --Justin Wyatt, author of High Concept: Movies and Marketing in Hollywood A funny thing happened on the way to the movies. Instead of heading downtown to a first-run movie palace, or even to a suburban multiplex with the latest high-tech projection capabilities, many people's first stop is now the neighborhood video store. Indeed, video rentals and sales today generate more income than either theatrical releases or television reruns of movies. This pathfinding book chronicles the rise of home video as a mass medium and the sweeping changes it has caused throughout the film industry since the mid-1970s. Frederick Wasser discusses Hollywood's initial hostility to home video, which studio heads feared would lead to piracy and declining revenues, and shows how, paradoxically, video revitalized the film industry with huge infusions of cash that financed blockbuster movies and massive marketing campaigns to promote them. He also tracks the fallout from the video revolution in everything from changes in film production values to accommodate the small screen to the rise of media conglomerates and the loss of the diversity once provided by smaller studios and independent distributors.

Hollywood is currently one of the largest and most profitable sectors of the U.S. economy. In just a few decades, it has transformed itself from a dying company town into a merchandising emporium of movies, games, and licensed characters. It is quickly moving even further into cyberspace, virtual reality, and digital imaging. Aida Hozic writes of these enormous changes in the film industry from a novel perspective: by tracing shifts in spatial organization of film production from the enclosed worlds of old Hollywood studios through globally dispersed location shooting to digital production and distribution.

Hozic's fascinating tale of latter-day capitalism suggests that the physical reorganization of production across the American economy, but in Hollywood in particular alters material and conceptual boundaries between work and leisure, public and private, reality and fantasy. Particular economic regimes and forms of spatial organization have specific moral implications, and so the story of Hollywood's cultural production is partly a story of censorship and moral surveillance. Hozic's account of industrial change in Hollywood, and of its attempts at moral control over the production of fantasy, is an illuminating confrontation with the peculiar nature of Hollywood's political authority and of its complex power."

As World War II wound down in 1945 and the Cold War heated up, the skilled trades that made up the Conference of Studio Unions (CSU) began a tumultuous strike at the major Hollywood studios. This turmoil escalated further when the studios retaliated by locking out CSU in 1946. This labor unrest unleashed a fury of Red-baiting that allowed studio moguls to crush the union and seize control of the production process, with far-reaching consequences.

This engrossing book probes the motives and actions of all the players -- union activists, studio heads, mobsters, film stars, and Communist organizers -- to reveal the full story of the CSU strike and the resulting lockout of 1946. Gerald Horne draws extensively on primary materials and oral histories to document how limited a "threat" the Communist party actually posed in Hollywood, even as studio moguls successfully used the Red scare to undermine union clout, prevent film stars from supporting labor, and prove the moguls' own patriotism. Horne also discloses that, unnoticed amid the turmoil, organized crime entrenched itself in management and labor, gaining considerable control over both the "product" and the profits of Hollywood.

This research demonstrates that the CSU strike and lockout were a pivotal moment in Hollywood history, with vital consequences for everything from production values, to the kinds of stories told in films, to permanent shifts in the centers of power. Because this story has never been completely told before, this book will be important and fascinating reading for everyone interested in Hollywood filmmaking, labor and Cold War history, American cultural studies, southern California history, and Jewish studies.