Given its ubiquity in popular culture and its place in the hearts of generations of moviegoers, one wonders, after all this time, if there could be anything more we don't already know about "Casablanca." No matter how familiar the images, how memorable the lines, how timeless the story, the answer is, yes, there's a whole book worth of things most will be "shocked, shocked" to learn. "The Essential Casablanca" is brimming with amazing true stories, corrected myths, and particular particulars about the most popular movie in the history of cinema. It's not meant to provide a comprehensive nor com-plete academic reference, but rather an accessible distillation, a delightful confection in its own right, about a film that is one of the most beloved pieces of motion picture art and one that has resonated across nearly three-quarters of a century.

When the popularity of Western movies faded with the public, it opened the gate for a new sub-genre that blended the classic fundamentals with other elements. In Twistern: 50 Twisted Western Movie Reviews, a sub-genre is not only defined, but celebrated for its creativity, ingenuity and downright bizarreness. Hitch a ride on this wild wagon ride and prepare for the journey of your life

Catalog of an exhibition in the Gallerie im Einstein, Unter den Linden, in Berlin in 2011.

Resolutions 3 explores the wide-ranging implications of video art and video-based production in contemporary media culture. It is the third volume in a series composed of Resolution: A Critique of Video Art (1986) and Resolutions: Contemporary Video Practices (1996). While Resolution was one of the first critical texts on video art in the United States, Resolutions was one of the first books to address video as a medium across disciplines from theoretical, activist, and transnational perspectives. Resolutions 3 articulates this legacy as a challenge to reengage with the explosive viral reach of moving image-based content and its infiltration into and impact on culture and everyday life. The contributors to this work analyze what is now a fourth decade of video practices as marked within and outside the margins of art production, networked interventions, projected spectacle, museum entombment, or 24/7 streaming. Intending to broaden, contest, and amplify the mediated space that was defined by its two predecessors, this volume investigates the ever-changing state of video's deployment as examiner, tool, journal reportage, improvisation, witness, riff, leverage, and document. Contributors: Kathleen Ash-Milby, Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian; Myriam-Odile Blin, Rouen U, France; Nancy Buchanan, California Institute of the Arts; Derek A. Burrill, U of California, Riverside; Sean Cubitt, U of Melbourne; Faisal Devji, New York U; Jennifer Doyle, U of California, Riverside; Jennifer Friedlander, Pomona College; Kathy High, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute; Lucas Hilderbrand, U of California, Irvine; Nguyen Tan Hoang, Bryn Mawr College; Kathy Rae Huffman; Amelia Jones, McGill U; David Joselit, Yale U; Alexandra Juhasz, Pitzer College; Jessica Lawless, Santa Fe Community College; Hea Jeong Lee; Jesse Lerner, Pitzer College; Akira Mizuta Lippit, U of Southern California; Lionel Manga; Laurence A. Rickels, U of California, Santa Barbara; Kenneth Rogers, U of California, Riverside; Michael Rush, Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum, Michigan State U; Freya Schiwy, U of California, Riverside; Beverly R. Singer, U of New Mexico; Yvonne Spielmann, U of the West of Scotland; Catherine Taft, Getty Research Institute; Holly Willis, U of Southern California.

Cinema has been undergoing a profound technological shift: celluloid film is being replaced by digital media in the production, distribution, and reception of moving images. Concerned with the debate surrounding digital cinema's ontology and the interrelationship between cinema cultures, "From Light to Byte" investigates the very idea of change as it is expressed in the current technological transition. Markos Hadjioannou asks what is different in the way digital movies depict the world and engage with the individual and how we might best address the issue of technological shift within media archaeologies.

Hadjioannou turns to the technical basis of the image as his first point of departure, considering the creative and perceptual activities of moviemakers and viewers. Grounded in film history, film theory, and philosophy, he explores how the digital configures its engagement with reality and the individual while simultaneously replaying and destabilizing celluloid's own structures. He observes that, where film's photographic foundation encourages an existential association between individual and reality, digital representations are graphic renditions of mathematical codes whose causal relations are more difficult to trace.

Throughout this work Hadjioannou examines how the two technologies set themselves up with reference to reality, physicality, spatiality, and temporality, and he concludes that the question concerning digital cinema is ultimately one of ethical implications--a question, that is, of the individual's ability to respond to the image of the world.

Since the beginning of the conflict in 2003, more than 300,000 lives have been lost in Darfur. Players of the video game Darfur Is Dying learn this sobering fact and more as they work to ensure the survival of a virtual refugee camp. The video game not only puts players in the position of a struggling refugee, it shows them how they can take action in the real world. Creating the Witness examines the role of film and the Internet in creating virtual witnesses to genocide over the last one hundred years. The book asks, how do visual media work to produce witnesses-audiences who are drawn into action? The argument is a detailed critique of the notion that there is a seamless trajectory from observing an atrocity to acting in order to intervene. According to Leshu Torchin, it is not enough to have a camera; images of genocide require an ideological framework to reinforce the messages the images are meant to convey. Torchin presents wide-ranging examples of witnessing and genocide, including the Armenian genocide, the Holocaust (engaging film as witness in the context of the Nuremburg trials), and the international human rights organization WITNESS and its sustained efforts to use video to publicize human rights advocacy and compel action. From a historical and comparative approach, Torchin's broad survey of media and the social practices around it investigates the development of popular understandings of genocide to achieve recognition and response-both political and judicial-ultimately calling on viewers to act on behalf of human rights.

Over the course of his career Werner Herzog, known for such visionary masterpieces as Aguirre: The Wrath of God (1972) and The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (1974), has directed almost sixty films, roughly half of which are documentaries. And yet, in a statement delivered during a public appearance in 1999, the filmmaker declared: "There are deeper strata of truth in cinema, and there is such a thing as poetic, ecstatic truth. It is mysterious and elusive, and can be reached only through fabrication and imagination and stylization." Ferocious Reality is the first book to ask how this conviction, so hostile to the traditional tenets of documentary, can inform the work of one of the world's most provocative documentarians. Herzog, whose Cave of Forgotten Dreams was perhaps the most celebrated documentary of 2010, may be the most influential filmmaker missing from major studies and histories of documentary. Examining such notable films as Lessons of Darkness (1992) and Grizzly Man (2005), Eric Ames shows how Herzog dismisses documentary as a mode of filmmaking in order to creatively intervene and participate in it. In close, contextualized analysis of more than twenty-five films spanning Herzog's career, Ames makes a case for exploring documentary films in terms of performance and explains what it means to do so. Thus his book expands the field of cinema studies even as it offers an invaluable new perspective on a little studied but integral part of Werner Herzog's extraordinary oeuvre.

Peter Forgacs, based in Budapest, is best known for his award-winning films built on home movies from the 1930s to the 1960s that document ordinary lives soon to intersect with offscreen historical events. "Cinema's Alchemist" offers a sustained exploration of the imagination and skill with which Forgacs reshapes such film footage, originally intended for private and personal viewing, into extraordinary films dedicated to remembering the past in ways that matter for our future.

Contributors: Whitney Davis, U of California, Berkeley; Laszlo F. Foldenyi, U of Theatre, Film and Television, Budapest; Marsha Kinder, U of Southern California; Tamas Koranyi; Scott MacDonald, Hamilton College; Tyrus Miller, U of California, Santa Cruz; Roger Odin, U of Paris III Sorbonne-Nouvelle; Catherine Portuges, U of Massachusetts Amherst; Michael S. Roth, Wesleyan U; Kaja Silverman, U of Pennsylvania; Ernst van Alphen, Leiden U, the Netherlands; Malin Wahlberg, Stockholm U.

238-page narrative on screenwriting composed from two years of discussions with over 30 contributors in a 'private office' hosted by Francis Ford Coppola's Zoetrope.com virtual studio. Distinctive format offers practical advice along with recognition of unique problems facing writers. An indispensable resource for professional motion picture writers, intermediate and advanced students of screenwriting, film school instructors, producers, and rewrite consultants. The book focuses on five vital components of screenplay art: writing as a career and workplace experience, audience-protagonist bonding, scene cards, story development, and marketing to indie producers. Screenplay Form and Structure provides fresh ideas and genuine dialogue about how stories work and why some are universally hailed as film classics. This tightly edited volume contains dozens of clear, practical tutorials. Subject Index cites 45 classic and recent movies, academic research, and probing Q&A by industry-savvy workshop participants. Many of the participants are working pros, others just starting out, with a few novelists and academics thrown in for spice. "A necessary addition to any screenwriting library, covers all the stuff that the others don't and does it in a witty, conversational style that's great fun to read." - Richard Krevolin, Writer/Director "Unique discussion format makes for an original read... A worthwhile read for serious screenwriting students." - Angela Guess, LA Screenwriter Blog

Catalog of an exhibit of Wally Gilbert's recent abstract graphic work held at the Los Angeles Center for Digital Art. These images feature strong colors and striking black and white designs.

Motion picture audio is one of the least understood parts of filmmaking and is neglected by many film students and filmmakers alike. It's boring, scary, too technical and not considered important by most filmmakers. Until they get into the editing room and realize that by not paying attention to audio earlier they are screwed. Over the years tons of false information has spread through the independent film world, and most students and filmmakers don't want to deal with sound. If they do it is usually done incorrectly through ignorance and at a huge financial expense. This book is intended to shatter the myths and mysteries around film audio and give both students and experienced filmmakers the knowledge and tools so that their films will sound like they have come from the Hollywood studios without huge Hollywood budgets. I have assembled a lineup of some pretty amazing people in all areas of audio production for film and television. This group consists of location recordists, sound designers, picture editors, sound editors, re-recording mixers, and post-production supervisors. This all-star cast has won Oscars and Emmys in addition to awards from various film industries worldwide. In the book's interviews, Gary Rydstrom, Tom Johnson, Jim LeBrecht, Ron Eng, Harry B Miller III, Peter Kurland, Lee Haxall, Ken Karman, David A. Cohen and a host of others discuss their methods and secrets. Sound is an excellent carrier of emotion. And film is about emotion. - Gary Rydstrom, sound designer - Saving Private Ryan, Jurassic Park (winner of 7 Academy Awards) Sound is NOT the enemy - Lee Haxall, editor Crazy Stupid Love I'm capturing a performance, and that performance is only going to happen one time the way they want it, in the environment, with everybody in the mood. - Peter Kurland, location recordist - No Country For Old Men In my mind, dialog is king, if you can't understand what they're saying then the movie is a waste of time. - David A. Cohen, dialog editor - Lost In Translation A good dialog editor can figure out a way to make nearly every line of dialog usable. Milly Iatrou, dialog editor - Walk The Line I would rather see no music than music used improperly. - Ken Karman, music editor - Forrest Gump We're like the ugly evil stepchildren in the basement. - Jana Vance, foley artist - Toy Story When I look at a film or look at a script I think of what I'm gonna need to make that world. Jane Tattersall - sound effects editor - Naked Lunch I like off beat stuff, weird sounding films and subtle sound tracks as compared to bombastic. - Ron Eng, supervising sound editor - Mulholland Drive Sound is kind of invisible, but when it's wrong we know it immediately. - Jim LeBrecht, sound designer - The Singing Detective Good sound goes unnoticed, bad sound ruins a film. - Dan Olmstead, re-recording mixer - Cecil B. Demented The rule of thumb for good sound is: does it tell or promote the emotional content of the scene, does it support and/or reveal the story. - Tom Johnson, re-recording mixer - Alice In Wonderland (winner of 2 Academy Awards) If you want to see what the future of storytelling looks like then check out Kelley Baker. Brian David Johnson, Futurist, filmmaker, author If you read only one book on sound, this is the one, and, after you've read it, you'll never, ever, ever say, "We'll fix it in post." William M. Akers, author of Your Screenplay Sucks

Little has been written about the Spanish film musical, a genre usually associated with the early Franco dictatorship and dismissed by critics as reactionary, escapist fare. A timely and valuable corrective, White Gypsies shows how the Spanish folkloric musical films of the 1940s and '50s are inextricably tied to anxious concerns about race-especially, but not only, Gypsiness. Focusing on the processes of identity formation in twentieth-century Spain-with multifaceted readings of the cinematic construction of class, gender, and sexuality-Eva Woods Peiro explores how these popular films allowed audiences to negotiate and imaginatively, at times problematically, resolve complex social contradictions. The intricate interweaving of race and modernity is particularly evident in her scrutiny of a striking popular phenomenon: how the musicals progressively whitened their stars, even as their story lines became increasingly Andalusianized and Gypsified. White Gypsies reveals how these imaginary individuals constituted a veritable cultural barometer of how racial thinking was projected and understood across a broad swath of popular Spanish cinema.

disentanglement

despite an infrastructure of concealed rituals
they appear
bats springing out of porcelain bells
two hands
are as vulnerable
as what they wish to save
(by Shabnam Piryaei)
Shabnam Piryaei was born in Iran and raised in the U.S. Her work has been published in several journals including The Florida Review, Runes: A Review of Poetry, Flashquake, and The Furnace Review. She has been awarded the Poets & Writers Amy Award for poetry, as well as an Elizabeth George Foundation grant. Currently she is developing three short films based on her writings.

Film history identifies Italian neorealism as the exemplar of national cinema, a specifically domestic response to wartime atrocities. "Brutal Vision" challenges this orthodoxy by arguing that neorealist films--including such classics as "Rome, Open City; Paisan; Shoeshine; "and" Bicycle Thieves"--should be understood less as national products and more as complex agents of a postwar reorganization of global politics. For these films, cinema facilitates the liberal humanist sympathy required to usher in a new era of world stability.

In his readings of crucial films and newly discovered documents from the archives of neorealism's international distribution, Karl Schoonover reveals how these films used images of the imperiled body to reconstitute the concept of the human and to recalibrate the scale of human community. He traces how Italian neorealism emerges from and consolidates the transnational space of the North Atlantic, with scenarios of physical suffering dramatizing the geopolitical stakes of a newly global vision. Here we see how--in their views of injury, torture, and martyrdom--these films propose a new mode of spectating that answers the period's call for extranational witnesses, makes the imposition of limited sovereignty palatable, and underwrites a new visual politics of liberal compassion that Schoonover calls brutal humanism.

These films redefine moviegoing as a form of political action and place the filmgoer at the center of a postwar geopolitics of international aid. "Brutal Vision" interrogates the role of neorealism's famously heart-wrenching scenes in a new global order that requires its citizenry to invest emotionally in large-scale international aid packages, from the Marshall Plan to the liberal charity schemes of NGOs. The book fundamentally revises ideas of cinematic specificity, the human, and geopolitical scale that we inherit from neorealism and its postwar milieu--ideas that continue to set the terms for political filmmaking today.

Composer and cellist Kathy McTavish writes about her music and experimental film. This book features sequences of black and white photo images from the film "birdland," photographs of cello performance and includes a long poem, or score, for her unique fusion form. McTavish has received Jerome Foundation, American Composers Forum commissions and several awards from the Arrowhead Regional Arts Council.

"Political Matinee: Hollywood s Take on American Politics" is a fresh approach to teaching politics. This anthology presents readings on a broad array of topics related to American politics on film, including film history, film genres, and analysis of film. A guide for students to use when analyzing films for political content, this text covers timely topics such as political ideologies and institutions. Select readings also show readers how to effectively write about films.
With a mix of both contemporary and classic readings, Political Matinee provides a comprehensive selection of highly-relevant source materials. This is an ideal text for courses that examine the ways in which films depict politics in the United States, and it provides invaluable fodder for lively classroom instruction and discussion.
Richard Herrera is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Arizona State University, who specializes in American politics. He has been teaching American Politics and Film online and in the classroom for many years, as well as other courses in American politics and American political parties."

"The Right to Play Oneself" collects for the first time Thomas Waugh's essays on the politics, history, and aesthetics of documentary film, written between 1974 and 2008. The title, inspired by Walter Benjamin's and Joris Ivens's manifestos of "committed" documentary from the 19 0s, reflects the book's theme of the political potential of documentary for representing the democratic performance of citizens and artists.
Waugh analyzes an eclectic international selection of films and issues from the 1920s to the present day. The essays provide a transcultural focus, moving from documentaries of the industrialized societies of North America and Europe to those of 1980s India and addressing such canonical directors as Dziga Vertov, Emile de Antonio, Barbara Hammer, Rosa von Praunheim, and Anand Patwardhan. Woven through the volume is the relationship of the documentary with the history of the Left, including discussions of LGBT documentary pioneers and the firebrand collectives that changed the history of documentary, such as Challenge for Change and ACT UP's Women's Collective.
Together with the introduction by the author, Waugh's essays advance a defiantly and persuasively personal point of view on the history and significance of documentary film.

An Exhibition at the CJ Gallery, San Diego.

When inventor and movie studio pioneer Thomas Edison wanted to capture western magic on film in 1904, where did he send his crew?

To Oklahoma's 101 Ranch near Ponca City. And when Francis Ford Coppola readied young actors Tom Cruise and Matt Dillon to portray teen class strife in the 1983 movie "The Outsiders," he took cast and crew to Tulsa, the setting of S. E. Hinton's acclaimed novel. From Edison to Coppola and beyond, Oklahoma has served as both backdrop and home base for cinematic productions. The only book to chronicle the history of made-in-Oklahoma films, John Wooley's "Shot in Oklahoma" explores the variety, spunk, and ingenuity of moviemaking in the Sooner State over more than a century.

Wooley's trek through cinematic history, buttressed by meticulous research and interviews, hits the big films readers have heard of--but maybe didn't realize were shot in the state--along with lesser-known offerings. We also get the films' intriguing backstories. For instance, President Theodore Roosevelt's fascination with a man purportedly able to catch a wolf in his hands led to "The Wolf Hunt," shot in the Wichita Mountains and screened in the White House in 1909. Over time, homegrown movies such as "Where the Red Fern Grows" (1974, 2003) have given way to feature films including "The Outsiders" and "Rain Man" (1988). Throughout this tale, Wooley draws attention to unsung aspects of state and cinematic history, including early all-black movies lensed in Oklahoma's African American towns and films starring American Indian leads.

With a nod to more recent Hollywood productions such as "Twister" (1996) and "Elizabethtown" (2005), Wooley ultimately explores how a low-budget slasher movie created in Oklahoma in the 1980s transformed the movie business worldwide. Punctuated with photographs and including a filmography of more than one hundred productions filmed in the state, "Shot in Oklahoma" offers movie lovers and historians alike an engaging ride through untold cinematic history.

In his signature book, award-winning television producer-director-writer & documentary filmmaker, Craig D. Forrest, provides a wealth of valuable production insights - a field manual of sorts - that include strategies, wisdom, tips and tactics meant to inspire your next digital film or video shoot to be truly professional, organized and effective. Craig's sage advice - both successes and failures - is drawn from a professional career of extensive world travel, diverse media projects and dangerous overseas assignments for leading networks, channels, agencies and groups scattered across the globe. Chapters include Story, Directing, Communication, Planning, Decision-Making, Clients/Talent, Interviewing, Camera, Sound, Lighting, Budget, Editing, Travel, Culture, Teamwork and Taboos. Each chapter also features insider knowledge provided by famous directors, savvy creative talent and notable filmmakers. Whether you're a novice or pro, their practical wisdom alone adds invaluable insight to a filmmaking book designed to be a production benchmark.

Documentary has once again emerged as one of the most vital cultural forms, whether seen in cinemas or inside the home, as digital, film, or video. In "Recording Reality, Desiring the Real," Elizabeth Cowie looks at the history of documentary and its contemporary forms, showing how it has been simultaneously understood as factual, as story, as art, and as political, addressing the seeming paradox between the pleasures of spectacle in the documentary and its project of informing and educating.
Cowie claims that, as a radical film form, documentary has been a way for filmmakers to acknowledge historical and contemporary realities by presenting images of these realities. If documentary is the desire to know reality through its images and sounds, she asks, what kind of speaking (and speaking about) emerges in documentary, and how are we engaged by it? In considering this and other questions, Cowie examines a range of noteworthy films, including Spike Lee's "When the Levees Broke," John Huston's "Let There Be Light," and Milica Tomic's "Portrait of My Mother.""
Recording Reality, Desiring the Real "stakes documentary's central place in cinema as both an art form and a form of social engagement, which together create a new understanding of spectatorship.

This work is the first thorough analysis of the creative oeuvre of the Quay Brothers. Known for their animation shorts that rely on puppetry, miniatures, and stop-motion techniques, their fiercely idiosyncratic films are fertile fields for Suzanne Buchan's engaging descriptions and provocative insights into the Quays' art-and into the art of independent puppet animation.
Buchan's aesthetic investigation stems from extensive access to the Quay Brothers' artistic practices and work, which spans animation and live-action film, stage design and illustration. She also draws on a long acquaintance with them and on interviews with collaborators essential to their productions, as well as archival sources. Discussions of their films' literary origins, space, puppets, montage, and the often-overlooked world of sound and music in animation shed new light on the expressive world that the Quay Brothers generate out of their materials to create the poetic alchemy of their films.
At once a biography of the Quays' artistic trajectory and a detailed examination of one of their best-known films, "Street of Crocodiles," this book goes further and provides interdisciplinary methodologies and tools for the analysis of animation.