Russia's provinces have long held a prominent place in the nation's cultural imagination. Lyudmila Parts looks at the contested place of the provinces in twenty-first-century Russian literature and popular culture, addressing notions of nationalism, authenticity, Orientalism, Occidentalism, and postimperial identity. Surveying a largely unexplored body of Russian journalism, literature, and film from the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, Parts finds that the harshest portrayals of the provinces arise within ""high"" culture. Popular culture, however, has increasingly turned from the newly prosperous, multiethnic, and westernized Moscow to celebrate the hinterlands as repositories of national traditions and moral strength. This change, she argues, has directed debate about Russia's identity away from its loss of imperial might and global prestige and toward a hermetic national identity based on the opposition of ""us vs. us"" rather than ""us vs. them."" She offers an intriguing analysis of the contemporary debate over what it means to be Russian and where ""true"" Russians reside.

Considered by critics to be Stanley Kubrick's masterpiece, "Barry Lyndon" has suffered from scholarly and popular neglect. Maria Pramaggiore argues that one key reason that this film remains unappreciated, even by Kubrick aficionados, is that its transnational and intermedial contexts have not been fully explored. Taking a novel approach, she looks at the film from a transnational perspective -- as a foreign production shot in Ireland and an adaptation of a British novel by an American director about an Irish subject. Pramaggiore argues that, in "Barry Lyndon," Kubrick develops his richest philosophical mediation on cinema's capacity to mediate the real and foregrounds film's relationship to other technologies of visuality, including painting, photography, and digital media. By combining extensive research into the film's source novel, production and reception with systematic textual analysis and an engagement with several key issues in contemporary academic debate, this work promises not only to make a huge impact in the field of Kubrick studies, but also in 1970s filmmaking, cultural history and transnational film practice.

Bertrand Tavernier (b. 1941) is widely considered to be the leading light in a generation of French filmmakers who launched their careers in the 1970s, in the wake of the New Wave. In just over forty years, he has directed twenty-two feature films in an eclectic range of genres, from intimate family portrait to historical drama and neo-Western. Beginning with his debut feature--L'Horloger de Saint-Paul (1974), which won the prestigious Louis Delluc prize--Tavernier has shown himself to be a public intellectual. Like his films, he is deeply engaged with the pressing issues facing France and the world: the consequences of war, colonialism and its continuing aftermath, the price of heroism, and the power of art. A voracious cinephile, he is immensely knowledgeable about world cinema and American film in particular. Tavernier's roots are in Lyon, the birthplace of the cinema. He founded and presides over the Institut Lumiere, which hosts retrospectives and an annual film festival in the factory where the Lumiere brothers made the first films. In this collection, containing numerous interviews translated from French and available in English for the first time, he discusses the arc of his career following in the lineage of the Lumiere brothers, in that his goal, like theirs, is to ""show the world to the world."" It is no surprise, then, that an interview with Tavernier is a treat. Beginning with discussions of his own films, the interviews in this volume cover a vast range of topics. At the core are his thoughts about the ways cinema can inspire the imagination and contribute to the broadest possible public conversation.

When a work of art shows an interest in its own status as a work of art-either by reference to itself or to other works-we have become accustomed to calling this move "meta." While scholars and critics have, for decades, acknowledged reflexivity in films, it is only in Metacinema, for the first time, that a group of leading and emerging film theorists join to enthusiastically debate the meanings and implications of the meta for cinema. In new essays on generative films, including Rear Window, 8 1/2, Holy Motors, Funny Games, Fight Club, and Clouds of Sils Maria, contributors chart, explore, and advance the ways in which metacinema is at once a mode of filmmaking and a heuristic for studying cinematic attributes. What results is not just an engagement with certain practices and concepts in widespread use in the movies (from Hollywood to global cinema, from documentary to the experimental and avant-garde), but also the development of a veritable and vital new genre of film studies. With more and more films expressing reflexivity, recursion, reference to other films, mise-en-abime, seriality, and exhibiting related intertextual and intermedial traits, the time is overdue for the kind of capacious yet nuanced critical study found in Metacinema.

Religious Communication Association's Book of the Year
Hollywood and Christianity often seem to be at war. Indeed, there is a long list of movies that have attracted religious condemnation, from Gone with the Wind with its notorious "damn," to The Life of Brian and The Last Temptation of Christ. But the reality, writes William Romanowski, has been far more complicated--and remarkable.
In Reforming Hollywood, Romanowski, a leading historian of popular culture, explores the long and varied efforts of Protestants to influence the film industry. He shows how a broad spectrum of religious forces have played a role in Hollywood, from Presbyterians and Episcopalians to fundamentalists and evangelicals. Drawing on personal interviews and previously untouched sources, he describes how mainline church leaders lobbied filmmakers to promote the nation's moral health and, perhaps surprisingly, how they have by and large opposed government censorship, preferring instead self-regulation by both the industry and individual conscience. "It is this human choice," noted one Protestant leader, "that is the basis of our religion." Tensions with Catholics, too, have loomed large--many Protestant clergy feared the influence of the Legion of Decency more than Hollywood's corrupting power. Romanowski shows that the rise of the evangelical movement in the 1970s radically altered the picture, in contradictory ways. Even as born-again clergy denounced "Hollywood elites," major studios noted the emergence of a lucrative evangelical market. 20th Century-Fox formed FoxFaith to go after the "Passion dollar," and Disney took on evangelical Philip Anschutz as a partner to bring The Chronicles of Narnia to the big screen.
William Romanowski is an award-winning commentator on the intersection of religion and popular culture. Reforming Hollywood is his most revealing, provocative, and groundbreaking work on this vital area of American society.

The film theories of Jean Epstein, Dziga Vertov, Bela Balazs, and Siegfried Kracauer have long been studied separately from each other. In Doubting Vision, film scholar Malcolm Turvey argues that their work constitutes a distinct, hitherto neglected tradition, which he calls revelationism, and which differs in important ways from modernism and realism. For these four theorists and filmmakers, the cinema is an art of mass enlightenment because it escapes the limits of human sight and reveals the true nature of reality. Turvey provides a detailed exegesis of this tradition, pointing to its sources in Romanticism, the philosophy of Henri Bergson, modern science, and other intellectual currents. He also shows how profoundly it has influenced contemporary film theory by examining the work of psychoanalytical-semiotic theorists of the 1970s, Stanley Cavell, the modern-day followers of Kracauer and Walter Benjamin, and Gilles Deleuze.
Throughout, Turvey offers a trenchant critique of revelationism and its descendants. Combining the close analysis of theoretical texts with the philosophical method of conceptual clarification pioneered by the later Wittgenstein, he shows how the arguments theorists and filmmakers have made about human vision and the cinema's revelatory powers often traffic in conceptual confusion. Having identified and extricated these confusions, Turvey builds on the work of Epstein, Vertov, Balazs, and Kracauer as well as contemporary philosophers of film to clarify some legitimate senses in which the cinema is a revelatory art using examples from the films of filmmakers such as Alfred Hitchcock and Jacques Tati.

"A History of Visual Culture" is a history of ideas. The recent explosion of interest in visual culture suggests the phenomenon is very recent. But visual culture has a history. Knowledge began to be systematically grounded in observation and display from the Enlightenment. Since them, from the age of industrialization and colonialism to today's globalized world, visual culture has continued to shape our ways of thinking and of interpreting the world. Carefully structured to cover a wide history and geography, "A History of Visual Culture" is divided into themed sections: Revolt and Revolution; Science and Empiricism; Gaze and Spectacle; Acquisition, Display, and Desire; Conquest, Colonialism, and Globalization; Image and Reality; Media and Visual Technologies. Each section presents a carefully selected range of case studies from across the last 250 years, designed to illustrate how all kinds of visual media have shaped our technology, aesthetics, politics and culture.

Transatlantic Crossings is a major study of the distribution and exhibition of British films in the USA. Charting the cross-cultural reception of many British films, Sarah Street draws on a wide range of sources including studio records, film posters, press books and statistics. While the power of Hollywood made it difficult for films that crossed the Atlantic, Street's research demonstrates that some strategies were more successful than others. She considers which British films made an impact and analyzes conditions that facilitated a positive reception from critics, censors, exhibitors and audiences. Case studies include Nell Gwyn (1926), The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933), The Ghost Goes West (1935), Henry V (1946), Black Narcissus (1947), The Red Shoes (1948), Ealing comedies, The Horror of Dracula (1958), Tom Jones (1963), A Hard Day's Night (1964), Goldfinger (1964), The Remains of the Day (1993), Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994) and Trainspotting (1996). Against a background of the economic history of the British and Hollywood film industries, Transatlantic Crossings considers the many fascinating questions surrounding the history of British films in the USA, their relevance to wider issues of Anglo-American relations and to notions of "Britishness" on screen.

ANDREI TARKOVSKY: POCKET GUIDE

A new pocket guide to Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky (1932-1986), director of seven feature films, including Mirror, Andrei Roublyov, Solaris and The Sacrifice. This book explores every aspect of Andrei Tarkovsky's output, including scripts, budget, production, shooting, editing, camera, sound, music, acting, themes, symbols, motifs, and spirituality. Tarkovsky's films are analyzed in depth, with scene-by-scene discussions. Fully illustrated.

Andrei Tarkovsky is one of the most fascinating of filmmakers. He is supremely romantic, an old-fashioned, traditional artist - at home in the company Leonardo da Vinci, Pieter Brueghel, Aleksandr Pushkin, Fyodor Dostoievsky andByzantine icon painters. Tarkovsky is a magician, no question, but argues for demystification (even while films celebrate mystery). His films are full of magical events, dreams, memory sequences, multiple viewpoints, multiple time zones and bizarre occurrences.

As genre films, Andrei Tarkovsky's movies are some of the most accomplished in cinema. As science fiction films, Stalker and Solaris have no superiors, and very few peers. Only the greatest sci-fi films can match them: Metropolis, King Kong, Close Encounters of the Third Kind and 2001: A Space Odyssey. Tarkovsky happily and methodically rewrote the rules of the sci-fi genre: Stalker and Solaris are definitely not routine genre outings. They don't have the monsters, the aliens, the visual effects, the battles, the laser guns, the stunts and action set-pieces of regular science fiction movies.

No one could deny that Andrei Roublyov is one of the greatest historical films to explore the Middle Ages, up there with The Seventh Seal, El Cid, The Navigator and Pier Paolo Pasolini's 'Life' trilogy. If you judge Andrei Roublyov in terms of historical accuracy, epic spectacle, serious themes, or cinematic poetry, it comes out at the top. Finally, in the religious film genre, The Sacrifice and Nostalghia are among the finest in cinema, the equals of the best of Ingmar Bergman, Luis Bunuel, Robert Bresson and Carl-Theodor Dreyer. The text for this new edition has been updated and revised.

Includes illustrations, bibliography and notes. ISBN 978186171834.

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What makes a film a teen film? And why, when it represents such powerful and enduring ideas about youth and adolescence, is teen film usually viewed as culturally insignificant? Teen film is usually discussed as a representation of the changing American teenager, highlighting the institutions of high school and the nuclear family and experiments in sexual development and identity formation. But not every film featuring these components is a teen film, and not every teen film is American. Arguing that teen film is always a story about becoming a citizen and a subject, "Teen Film" presents a new history of the genre, surveys the existing body of scholarship, and introduces key critical tools for discussing teen film. Surveying a wide range of films including "The Wild One," "Heathers," "Donnie Darko" and "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," the book's central focus is on what kind of adolescence teen film represents, and on teen film's capacity to produce new and influential images of adolescence.

The Film Theory in Practice series fills a gaping hole in the world of film theory. By marrying the explanation of a film theory with the interpretation of a film, the volumes provide discrete examples of how film theory can serve as the basis for textual analysis. Feminist Film Theory and Cleo from 5 to 7 offers a concise introduction to feminist film theory in jargon-free language and shows how this theory can be deployed to interpret Agnes Varda's critically acclaimed 1962 film Cleo from 5 to 7. Hilary Neroni employs the methodology of looking for a feminist alternative among female-oriented films. Through three key concepts-identification, framing the woman's body, and the female auteur-Neroni lays bare the debates and approaches within the vibrant history of feminist film theory, providing a point of entry to feminist film theory from its inception to today. Picking up one of the currents in feminist film theory - that of looking for feminist alternatives among female-oriented films - Neroni traces feminist responses to the contradictions inherent in most representations of women in film, and she details how their responses have intervened in changing what we see on the screen.

Analyzing Film: A Student Casebook is a film textbook containing fifteen essays about sixteen historically and artistically significant films made between 1920 and 1990. This casebook is geographically diverse, with sixteen countries represented: Germany, Russia, Spain, France, the United States, Denmark, Japan, India, England, Italy, Sweden, Czechoslovakia, Cuba, Hungary, Australia, and China. The essays in Analyzing Film are clear and readable-sophisticated and weighty, yet not overly technical or jargon-heavy. The book's critical apparatus features credits, images, and bibliographies for all films discussed, filmographies for all the directors, a chronology of film theory and criticism, a glossary of film terms, a guide to film analysis, and a list of topics for writing and discussion, together with a comprehensive index.

Taking its cue from Deleuze's definition of minor cinema as one which engages in a creative act of becoming, this collection explores the multifarious ways that music has been used in the cinemas of various countries in Australasia, Africa, Latin America and even in Europe that have hitherto received little attention, with a focus on the role it has played creating, problematizing, and sometimes contesting, the nation. Deleuze's lens suits these cinemas because they are precisely not like Hollywood, and the key issue is national identity."Film Music in 'Minor' National Cinemas "addresses the relationships between film music and the national cinemas beyond Hollywood and the European countries that comprise most of the literature in the field. Broad in scope, it includes chapters that analyze the contribution of specific composers and songwriters to their national cinemas, and the way music works in films dealing with national narratives or issues; the role of music in the shaping of national stars and specific use of genres; audience reception of films on national music traditions; and the use of music in emerging digital video industries.

Increasingly over the past decade, fan credentials on the part of writers, directors, and producers have come to be seen as a guarantee of quality media making - the "fanboy auteur". Figures like Joss Whedon are both one of "us" and one of "them". This is a strategy of marketing and branding - it is a claim from the auteur himself or industry PR machines that the presence of an auteur who is also a fan means the product is worth consuming. Such claims that fan credentials guarantee quality are often contested, with fans and critics alike rejecting various auteur figures as the true leader of their respective franchises. That split, between assertions of fan and auteur status and acceptance (or not) of that status, is key to unravelling the fan auteur. In A Portrait of the Auteur as Fanboy: The Construction of Authorship in Transmedia Franchises, authors Anastasia Salter and Mel Stanfill examine this phenomenon through a series of case studies featuring fanboys. The volume discusses both popular fanboys, such as J.J. Abrams, Kevin Smith, and Joss Whedon, as well as fangirls like J.K. Rowling, E.L. James, and Patty Jenkins, and dissects how the fanboy-fangirl auteur dichotomy is constructed and defended by popular media and fans in online spaces, and how this discourse has played in maintaining the exclusionary status quo of geek culture. This book is particularly timely given current discourse, including such incidents as the controversy surrounding Joss Whedon's so-called feminism, the publication of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, and contestation over authorial voices in the DC cinematic universe, as well as broader conversations about toxic masculinity and sexual harassment in Hollywood.

This volume focuses on the singing voice in contemporary cinema from 1945 to the present day, and rather than being restricted to one particular genre, considers how the singing voice has helped define and/or confuse genre classification. Typically heard in song, the singing voice is arguably the most expressive of all musical instruments. This volume celebrates the ways in which singing features in film. This includes the singing voice as protagonist, as narrator, as communicator, as entertainer, and as comedic interlude. Whether the singing voice in film is personally expressive, reflexive and distant, or synchronized for entertainment, there is typically interplay between the voice and visual elements. Extending beyond the body of literature on 'the musical', the volume is not about musicals per se. Rather, The Singing Voice in Contemporary Cinema discusses the singing voice as a distinct genre that focuses on the conceptualization and synchronization of the singing voice in the post-War era. It explores the relationship between screen, singing, singer and song; it celebrates the intersection of the singing voice and popular culture. In doing so, the volume will cross multiple disciplines including vocal studies, film studies, film sound studies, and music production (vocal processing).

THE LORD OF THE RINGS MOVIES: POCKET GUIDE

A pocket guide to the Hollywood adaptions of J.R.R. Tolkien's fantasy epic The Lord of the Rings, released in 2001, 2002 and 2003. The book tells you everything you need to know about these very popular films, from writing the script through casting and financing, to shooting and performances, to visual effects, editing and theatrical distribution.

The pocket guide includes discussions of every single scene in the three movies, including the Special Extended Editions (some scenes are explored in great detail, as well as some key individual shots). There are sections on the all of the important differences between The Lord of the Ring book and the Hollywood movies (including numerous details), as well as a chapter exploring the additions and the omissions. Looks at behind the scenes stories, and also the critical response to the movies.

There are chapters on the visual effects, on the casting and key personnel of the movies, on the studio and the financing of the films, on the music and sound, and the marketing and release of the movies in 2001-2003 (including the home entertainment releases on DVD and video). There is also a chapter on the critical response to the movies.

There is also an appendix on other adaptions of J.R.R. Tolkien's books.

Jeremy Robinson has written many critical studies, including Steven Spielberg, Arthur Rimbaud, Jean-Luc Godard, Hayao Miyazaki, Ken Russell, Walerian Borowczyk, and The Sacred Cinema of Andrei Tarkovsky, plus literary monographs on: J.R.R. Tolkien; J.M.W. Turner; Samuel Beckett; Thomas Hardy; Arthur Rimbaud; Andre Gide; John Cowper Powys; Robert Graves; and Lawrence Durrell.

Includes bibliography, illustrations, appendices and notes. ISBN 9781861713780. 496 pages.

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Framing the Nation: Documentary Film in Interwar France argues that, between World Wars I and II, documentary film made a substantial contribution to the rewriting of the French national narrative to include rural France and the colonies. The book mines a significant body of virtually unknown films and manuscripts for their insight into revisions of French national identity in the aftermath of the Great War. From 1918 onwards, government institutions sought to advance social programs they believed were crucial to national regeneration. They turned to documentary film, a new form of mass communication, to do so.

Many scholars of French film state that the French made no significant contribution to documentary film prior to the Vichy period. Using until now overlooked films, Framing the Nation refutes this misconception and shows that the French were early and active believers in the uses of documentary film for social change - and these films reached audiences far beyond the confines of commercial cinema circuits in urban areas.