The European Cinema Reader is a comprehensive introduction to the theory and practice of national cinemas in Europe, bringing together classic writings by key filmmakers such as Sergei Eisenstein, Luis Buñuel and John Grierson, and critics from Andre Bazin to Peter Wollen. Contributors explore attempts to define European film culture and examine key issues of auteurism and the art house film, national cinemas, the relationship between European film and Hollywood, and issues of funding and distribution. Each section features an editor's introduction setting debates in their context, and the volume concludes with a comprehensive bibliography.

This indispensable collection offers 51 chapters, each focused on a distinct American independent film. Screening American Independent Film presents these films chronologically, addressing works from across more than a century (1915-2020), emphasizing the breadth and long duration of American Independent Cinema. The collection includes canonical examples as well as films that push against and expand the definitions of "independence." The titles run from micro-budget films through marketing-friendly indiewood projects, from auteur-driven films and festival darlings to B-movies, genre pics, and exploitation films. The chapters introduce students to different approaches within film studies from historical and contextual framing, industrial and institutional analysis, politics and ideology, genre and authorship, representation, film analysis, exhibition and reception, and technology. Written by leading international scholars and emerging talents in film studies, this volume is the first of its kind. Paying particular attention to issues of diversity and inclusion for both the participating scholars and the content and themes within the selected films, Screening American Independent Film is an essential resource for anyone teaching or studying American cinema.

Horror has been one of the most spectacular and controversial genres in both cinema and fiction - its wild excesses relished by some, vilified by many others. Often defiantly marginal, it nevertheless inhabits the very fabric of everyday life, providing us with ways of imagining and classifying our world; what is evil and what is good; what is monstrous and what is 'normal'; what can be seen and what should remain hidden.
The Horror Reader brings together 29 key articles to examine the enduring resonance of horror across culture. Spanning the history of horror in literature and film and discussing texts from Britain, the United States, Europe, the Caribbean and Hong Kong, it explores a diversity of horror forms from classic gothic literature like Frankenstein and Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, to contemporary serial killers, horror film fanzines and low-budget movies such as The Leech Woman and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
Themes addressed include:
* the fantastic * horror and psychoanalysis * monstrosities * different Frankensteins * vampires * queer horror * American gothic * splatter and splash films * race and ethnicity * lowbrow and low-budget horror * new regional horror.
The Reader opens with an introduction to 'the field of horror' by Ken Gelder, and each thematic section includes an introductory preface. There is also a comprehensive bibliography of horror literature.

In this book, the authors focus on the importance of relationship in psychotherapy. Relationships between people form the basis of our daily lives. We require this contact with others, the sense of respect and value it produces, the relational needs it fulfills. As we face the inevitable traumas of life, large and small, our ability to make full contact with others is often disrupted. As this reduction in contact increases, relational needs go unfulfilled, producing psychological dysfunction. Beyond Empathy offers therapists a methodology for assisting people in rediscovering their ability to maintain genuine, contactful relationships and thus, better psychological health.
The authors describe an integrative psychotherapy approach that draws from Rogers' client-centered therapy, Berne's transactional analysis, Perls' Gestalt therapy, Kohut's self psychology, and the work of British object-relations theorists. Written in a conversational style, the book introduces the theory behind the approach while using real life interchanges between therapists and clients to illustrate the concepts it presents.

Related link: Free Email Alerting

Since its foundation in 1951, the French film journal Cahiers du Cinema - perhaps, the most influential and probably the most interesting film journal ever published - has been a major source of ideas and controversy within film criticism and film-making. The fourth volume in this influential series of anthologies covers the vibrant and turbulent period from 1973 to 1978, in which the editorial make-up and policy of the journal changed radically, and issues of theory, history and politics dominated critical debate.
The anthology combines essays by critics such as Pascal Bonitzer, Serge Daney and These Giraud; round-table discussions; reviews of contemporary films from Star Wars and King Kong to Padre Padrone and Jeanne Dielman; and interviews with leading theorists including Marc Ferro and Michel Foucault, presenting a rich sampler of Cahiers' provocative and indispensable contribution to debates in film and cultural politics.

Bound by modest budget constraints and dwarfed by Hollywood's output, British sci-fi cinema has enjoyed a checkered past, overlooked by critics. Yet the sci-fi genre has produced some of the best British films, from the pre-war classic "Things to Come" to "Alien" - made in Britain by a British director. This text redresses the balance, exploring the diverse strangeness of British sci-fi from literary adaptations like "1984" and "A Clockwork Orange" to the pulp fantasies and creature features far removed from the acceptable face of British cinema. Through case studies of key films like "The Day the Earth Caught Fire", contributors explore the unique themes and concerns of British sci-fi from the post-war boom years to more recent productions like "Hardware", and examine the use of different sources, from TV adaptations like "Dr Who and the Daleks", to the horror/sci-fi crossovers produced by the Hammer studio and John Wyndhams cult novels "Day of the Triffids" and "Village of the Damned". How did budget restrictions encourage the use of the invasion narrative in '50s films?;And how did films such as "The Day the Earth Stood Still" reflect fears about the decline of Britain's economi

Hollywood Confidential is the first truly in-depth look at the sexy, humorous, violent, and tragic history of the mob in Hollywood from the 1920s, when Joe Kennedy decided to buy a motion picture company, to the 1980s when the last vestiges of mob influence were revealed through investigations of former Screen Actors Guild President Ronald Reagan and his union backers. The revelations continue into the 1980s when the major studios were no longer important, the independents were on the rise, and it was no longer possible to buy, bribe, or blackmail in a meaningful way. There were deals and bad guys, but the mob as it existed was finished in Hollywood.

In this volume, Charlotte Brunsdon analyzes a wide range of contemporary film and television programmes, from British soap operas and crime series such as "Crossroads" and "Widows" to Hollywood movies such as "Working Girl" and "Pretty Woman".;As well as interpreting the pleasures and meanings that these programmes offer - particularly for women viewers - the book is concerned with the nature of media criticism, particularly feminist criticism, and the problematic aesthetics of popular culture. Why have feminist media critics been so interested in the soap opera viewer? What are the "race" politics of the TV crime series? What is meant by "quality" in television? And was the fuss about the erection of satellite dishes on British homes really about architectural values?;The book brings together Charlotte Brunsdon's key writings on film and television and its criticism, with new introductions which contextualise and update the arguments, and recent work on the "post-feminist girly" in recent Hollywood cinema. Brunsdon's focus is on the tastes and pleasures of the female consumer as she is produced by popular film an television - and by feminist criticism.

This indispensable collection offers 51 chapters, each focused on a distinct American independent film. Screening American Independent Film presents these films chronologically, addressing works from across more than a century (1915-2020), emphasizing the breadth and long duration of American Independent Cinema. The collection includes canonical examples as well as films that push against and expand the definitions of "independence." The titles run from micro-budget films through marketing-friendly indiewood projects, from auteur-driven films and festival darlings to B-movies, genre pics, and exploitation films. The chapters introduce students to different approaches within film studies from historical and contextual framing, industrial and institutional analysis, politics and ideology, genre and authorship, representation, film analysis, exhibition and reception, and technology. Written by leading international scholars and emerging talents in film studies, this volume is the first of its kind. Paying particular attention to issues of diversity and inclusion for both the participating scholars and the content and themes within the selected films, Screening American Independent Film is an essential resource for anyone teaching or studying American cinema.

The Cinematic City offers an innovative and thought-provoking insight into cityscape and screenscape and their inter-connection. Illustrated throughout with movie stills, a diverse selection of films (from 'Bladerunner' to 'Little Caesar'), genres, cities and historical periods are examined by leading names in the field. The key dimensions of film and urban theory are introduced before detailed analysis of the various cinematic forms which relate most significantly to the city. From early cinema and documentary film, to film noir, 'New Wave' and 'postmodern cinema', the contributors provide a wealth of empirical material and illustration whilst drawing on the theoretical insights of contemporary feminism, Benjamin, Baudrillard, Foucault, Lacan, and others. The Cinematic City shows how the city has been undeniably shaped by the cinematic form, and how cinema owes much of its nature to the historical development of urban space. Engaging with current theoretical debates, this is a book that is set to change the way in which we think about both the nature of the city and film. Contributors: Giuliana Bruno, Iain Chambers, Marcus Doel, David Clarke, Anthony Easthope, Elisabeth Mahoney, Will Straw, Stephen Ward, John Gold, James Hay, Rob Lapsley, Frank Krutnik

This book provides a compelling, multi-disciplinary examination of a landmark film and media event, Joker, 2019, which was met with simultaneous celebration and derision It breaks down Joker to explore its aesthetic and ideological representations within the social and cultural context in which it was released The book brings together an international team of scholars, providing a range of perspectives on a divisive film text This book will be of interest to scholars in several areas, such as screen studies, theatre and performance studies, psychology and psychoanalysis, geography, cultural studies, and sociology

Whether you realise it or not, you probably enjoy bad movies. If you've ever been amused by cheesy '80s action, or laughed at a shoddy horror movie monster then you've paddled in the so-bad-it's-good shallows. The deep waters beyond can be intimidating, teeming as they are with dreck. But among the unmentionables are some of the most ridiculous and enjoyable movies ever made, you just need to know where to look. Exposing good-bad action movies, science fiction and fantasy, horror - and the rest - The Bad Movie Bible includes films such as Batman & Robin, The Room, Troll 2, Miami Connection, Nick Fury: Agent of Shield, Black Devil Doll From Hell, and Hell Comes to Frogtown. The Bad Movie Bible is the first in the series of light-hearted movie bibles, analysing and eulogising cinematic subcultures.

Introduced one hundred years ago, film has since become part of our lives. For the past century, however, the experience offered by fiction films has remained a mystery. Questions such as why adult viewers cry and shiver, and why they care at all about fictional characters -- while aware that they contemplate an entirely staged scene -- are still unresolved. In addition, it is unknown why spectators find some film experiences entertaining that have a clearly aversive nature outside the cinema. These and other questions make the psychological status of "emotions" allegedly induced by the fiction film highly problematic.
Earlier attempts to answer these questions have been limited to a few genre studies. In recent years, film criticism and the theory of film structure have made use of psychoanalytic concepts which have proven insufficient in accounting for the diversity of film induced affect. In contrast, academic psychology -- during the century of its existence -- has made extensive study of emotional responses provoked by viewing fiction film, but has taken the role of film as a natural stimulus completely for granted. The present volume bridges the gap between critical theories of film on the one hand, and recent psychological theory and research of human emotion on the other, in an attempt to explain the emotions provoked by fiction film.
This book integrates insights on the narrative structure of fiction film including its themes, plot structure, and characters with recent knowledge on the cognitive processing of natural events, and narrative and person information. It develops a theoretical framework for systematically describing emotion in the film viewer. The question whether or not film produces genuine emotion is answered by comparing affect in the viewer with emotion in the real world experienced by persons witnessing events that have personal significance to them. Current understanding of the psychology of emotions provides the basis for identifying critical features of the fiction film that trigger the general emotion system. Individual emotions are classified according to their position in the affect structure of a film -- a larger system of emotions produced by one particular film as a whole. Along the way, a series of problematic issues is dealt with, notably the "reality" of the emotional stimulus in film, the "identification" of the viewer with protagonists on screen, and the necessity of the viewer's cooperation in arriving at a genuine emotion. Finally, it is argued that film-produced emotions are genuine emotions in response to an artificial stimulus. Film can be regarded as a fine-tuned machine for a continuous stream of emotions that are entertaining after all.
The work paves the way for understanding and, in principle, predicting emotions in the film viewer using existing psychological instruments of investigation. Dealing with the problems of film-induced affect and rendering them accessible to formal modeling and experimental method serves a wider interest of understanding aesthetic emotion -- the feelings that man-made products, and especially works of art, can evoke in the beholder.

Illuminating the dark side of the American century, The Monster Show uncovers the surprising links between horror entertainment and the great social crises of our time, as well as horror's function as a pop-cultural counterpart to surrealism, expressionism, and other twentieth-century artistic movements.

Skal explores a broad landscape of cultural expression—from painting, photography, and theater to television, comic books, and novels. Ultimately focusing on film, he examines the many ways in which this medium has played out the traumas of two world wars and the Depression; the nightmare visions of invasion and mind control engendered by the Cold War; the preoccupation with demon children and mutants that took hold as thalidomide, birth control, and abortion changed the reproductive landscape; the vogue in body-transforming special effects that paralleled the development of the plastic surgery industry; the link between the AIDS epidemic and a renewed fascination with vampires; and much more. With a new Afterword by the author that looks at horror's popular renaissance in the last decade, The Monster Show is a thought-provoking inquiry into America's obsession with the macabre.

While films such as Rambo, Thelma and Louise and Basic Instinct have operated as major points of cultural reference in recent years, popular action cinema remains neglected within contemporary film criticism.
Spectacular Bodies unravels the complexities and pleasures of a genre often dismissed as `obvious' in both its pleasure and its politics, arguing that these controversial films should be analysed and understood within a cinematic as well as a political context.
Yvonne Tasker argues that today's action cinema not only responds to the shifts in gendered, sexual and racial identities which took place during the 1980s, but reflects the influences of other media such as the new video culture. Her detailed discussion of the homoeroticism surrounding the muscleman hero, the symbolic centrality of blackness within the crime narrative, and the changing status of women within the genre, addresses the constitution of these identities through the shifting categories of gender, class, race, sex, sexuality and nation. Spectacular Bodies also examines the ambivalence of supposedly secure categories of popular cinema, questioning the existing terms of film criticism in this area and addressing the complex pleasures of this neglected form.

Eisenstein's reputation has long been secure as creator of the Soviet cinema's earliest and most enduring classics, and as a pioneer theorist and teacher. Yet the English-speaking world has not kept pace with a rising tide of Eisenstein scholarship further enriched by new publications emerging from the former Soviet Union.
"Eisenstein Rediscovered" presents the first true East-West symposium on Eisenstein with an unparalleled diversity of views and methodologies. Scholars from ten countries examine the vast legacy he bequeathed, and offer important new perspectives for reinterpreting Russian culture of the Soviet period. They explore how much Eisenstein owed to the Symbolist culture of his youth; how his involvement in theatre has been undervalued; what role he played in both the artistic and philosophical avant-gardes of the '20s; and how both Pushkin and the English Elizabethans shaped his later concept of tragedy. Including two newly discovered texts by Eisenstein which are translated for the first time, this collection makes extensive use of material only recently available. The new' Eisenstein that emerges is a far more eclectic and engaging figure than is traditionally perceived.

Transgressive both in its narrative and in its filmmaking, Trouble Every Day (2001) envisions the monster inside, unspeakable urges and an overwhelming need for complete incorporation. A plant discovered in the South American jungle produces in its test subjects a terrible, unnatural and uncontrollable hunger. Vicious, all-consuming desire begets excessive violence and a turn to cannibalism, which situates Trouble Every Day into a tradition of challenging cinema, a film maudit that pushes the boundaries of what can be shown on screen. But while it is certainly an unflinching film, it is deserving of reassessment as part of Clare Denis' filmography as well as a broader cinematic lineage. Focusing on close textual analysis, this book delves into the surfeit of visual, literary, and non-fiction references that shape Trouble Every Day while thwarting attempts to firmly situate it. It considers its place in a lineage of films that push the boundary of taste and representation, aligned as much with Un Chien andalou (1929) as the New French Extremity. It also considers the film's relationship to such sub-genres as classic monster movies, video nasties, mad science, gothic, vampire, body horror, and Italo-exploitation cannibal films, and directors such as Abel Ferrara, Brian de Palma, Jean Renoir and Jacques Tourneau. Drawing on a range of disciplines, including art, philosophy and phenomenology, this study explores how Trouble Every Day elicits a visceral response to a cinematic experience that beguiles and violates.

While popular European cinema is strongly linked with the dominant American version of popular film, it cannot be read simply as Hollywood in foreign dress. The styles, stars and genres of popular European cinema - Swedish melodramas, Italian horror movies, French musicals - all have their own conventions, superfically similar to Hollywood and yet certainly distinct from it. The popular cinema of Europe has been surprisingly little studied as both art and social document. "Popular European Cinema" seeks to fill this gap and to illuminate two compelling contemporary issues: the nature of the "popular" and the "new Europe". The book examines the reasons why films that are most popular with audiences in any one European country are seldom successful elsewhere. Audiences themselves represent diverse class, gender and ethnic identities that complicate the question of national cinema, not least with recent developments in formerly communist Eastern Europe and post-colonialist Western Europe. This book should be of interest to undergraduates in film and cultural studies courses.

Guillermo del Toro's cult masterpiece, Pan's Labyrinth (2006), won a total of 76 awards and is one of the most commercially successful Spanish-language films ever made. Blending the world of monstrous fairytales with the actual horrors of post-Civil War Spain, the film's commingling of real and fantasy worlds speaks profoundly to our times. Immersing herself in the nightmarish world that del Toro has so minutely orchestrated, Mar Diestro-Dopido explores the cultural and historical contexts surrounding the film. Examining del Toro's ground-breaking use of mythology, and how the film addresses ideas of memory and forgetting, she highlights the techniques, themes and cultural references that combine in Pan's Labyrinth to spawn an uncontainable plurality of meanings, which only multiply on contact with the viewer. This special edition features an exclusive interview with del Toro and original cover artwork by Santiago Caruso.

This volume brings together seminal articles from the years 1969-1972, when Cahiers du Cinema writers were elaborating a major materialist account of the history, theory and criticism of cinema.

Finalist, 2021 Wall Award The untold story behind one of America's greatest dramas In early 1957, a low-budget black-and-white movie opened across the United States. Consisting of little more than a dozen men arguing in a dingy room, it was a failure at the box office and soon faded from view. Today, 12 Angry Men is acclaimed as a movie classic, revered by the critics, beloved by the public, and widely performed as a stage play, touching audiences around the world. It is also a favorite of the legal profession for its portrayal of ordinary citizens reaching a just verdict and widely taught for its depiction of group dynamics and human relations. Few twentieth-century American dramatic works have had the acclaim and impact of 12 Angry Men. Reginald Rose and the Journey of "12 Angry Men" tells two stories: the life of a great writer and the journey of his most famous work, one that ultimately outshined its author. More than any writer in the Golden Age of Television, Reginald Rose took up vital social issues of the day-from racial prejudice to juvenile delinquency to civil liberties-and made them accessible to a wide audience. His 1960s series, The Defenders, was the finest drama of its age and set the standard for legal dramas. This book brings Reginald Rose's long and successful career, its origins and accomplishments, into view at long last. By placing 12 Angry Men in its historical and social context-the rise of television, the blacklist, and the struggle for civil rights-author Phil Rosenzweig traces the story of this brilliant courtroom drama, beginning with the chance experience that inspired Rose, to its performance on CBS's Westinghouse Studio One in 1954, to the feature film with Henry Fonda. The book describes Sidney Lumet's casting, the sudden death of one actor, and the contribution of cinematographer Boris Kaufman. It explores the various drafts of the drama, with characters modified and scenes added and deleted, with Rose settling on the shattering climax only days before filming began. Drawing on extensive research and brimming with insight, this book casts new light on one of America's great dramas-and about its author, a man of immense talent and courage. Author royalties will be donated equally to the Feerick Center for Social Justice at Fordham Law School and the Justice John Paul Stevens Jury Center at Chicago-Kent College of Law.

Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather (1972) marked a transition in American film-making, and its success - as a work of art, as a creative 'property' exploited by its studio, Paramount Pictures; and as a model for aspiring auteurist film-makers - changed Hollywood forever. Jon Lewis's study of The Godfather begins with a close look at the film's audacious visual style (the long, theatrical set pieces; the chiaroscuro lighting, the climactic montage paralleling a family baptism with a series of brutal murders). The analysis of visual style is paired with a discussion of the movie's principal themes: Vito and Michael's attempt to balance the obligations of business and family, their struggle with assimilation, the temptations and pitfalls of capitalist accumulation, and the larger drama of succession from father to son, from one generation to the next. The textual analysis precedes a production history that views The Godfather as a singularly important film in Hollywood's dramatic box-office turnaround in the early 1970s. And then, finally, the book takes a long hard look at the gangster himself both on screen and off. Hollywood publicity attending the gangster film from its inception in the silent era to the present has endeavoured to dull the distinction between the real and movie gangster, insisting that each film has been culled from the day's sordid headlines. Looking at the drama on screen and the production history behind the scenes, Lewis uncovers a series of real gangster backstories, revealing, finally, how millions of dollars of mob money may well have funded the film in the first place, and how, as things played out, The Godfather saved Paramount Studios and the rest of Hollywood as well.

Flashbacks in Film examines film flashback as a rich multimodal narrative device, analyzing the cognitive underpinnings of film flashbacks and the mechanisms that lead viewers to successfully comprehend them. Combining a cognitive film theory approach with the theoretical framework proposed by blending theory, which claims that human beings' general ability for conceptual integration underlies most of our daily activities, this book argues that flashbacks make sense to the viewer, as they are specifically designed for the viewer's cognitive understanding. Through a mixture of analysis and dozens of case studies, this book demonstrates that successful film flashbacks appeal to the spectator's natural perceptual and cognitive abilities, which spectators exercise daily. This book will serve as a valuable resource for scholars interested in film studies, media studies, and cognitive linguistics.

Australian Genre Film interrogates key genres at the core of Australia's so-called new golden age of genre cinema, establishing the foundation on which more sustained research on film genre in Australian cinema can develop. The book examines what characterises Australian cinema and its output in this new golden age, as contributors ask to what extent Australian genre film draws on widely understood (and largely Hollywood-based) conventions, as compared to culturally specific conventions of genre storytelling. As such, this book offers a comprehensive and up-to-date survey of Australian genre film, undertaken through original analyses of 13 significant Australian genres: action, biopics, comedy, crime, horror, musical, road movie, romance, science fiction, teen, thriller, war, and the Western. This book will be a cornerstone work for the burgeoning field of Australian film genre studies and a must-read for academics; researchers; undergraduate students; postgraduate students; and general readers interested in film studies, media studies, cultural studies, Australian studies, and sociology.