This book demonstrates how social distress or anxiety is reflected, modified, and evolves through the medium of the motion picture. Tracing cinema from its earliest forms, the authors show how film is a perfect medium for generating and projecting dreams, fantasies, and nightmares, on the individual as well as the societal level.Arising at the same time as Freud s influential ideas, cinema has been intertwined with the wishes and fears of the greater culture and has served as a means of experiencing those feelings in a communal and taming environment. From Munsterberg s original pronouncements in the early 20th century about the psychology of cinema, through the pioneering films of Melies, the works of the German expressionists, to James Bond and today s superheroes this book weaves a narrative highlighting the importance of the social dream.It develops the idea that no art form goes beyond the ordinary process of consciousness in the same way as film, reflecting, as it does, the cognitive, emotional, and volitional aspects of human nature. "

Between the end of the Civil War (1949) and the colonels' military coup (1967) Greece underwent tremendous political, economic, and social transformations which influenced gender identities and relations. During the same period, Greece also witnessed an unparalleled bloom in cinema productions. Based on the recently established paradigm that cinema and popular culture viewed as social institutions can inform a historical study, this book explores the relationship between Greek cinema and the society within which it was created and viewed. The book's double analytical perspective on cinema and masculinity advances both the study of cinema and popular culture as historical sources, and of masculinity and gender relations as valid categories of historical analysis. Cinema as a medium of representation, not only managed to reflect on these issues, it also provided a whole new field for their interpretation. This is the first study to explore the dramatic transformation of masculinity and gender roles, as represented in Greek cinema during the turbulent 1950s and 1960s.

Martin Flanagan uses Bakhtins notions of dialogism, chronotope and polyphony to address fundamental questions about film form and reception, focusing particularly on the way cinematic narrative utilizes time and space in its very construction.

This book pairs close readings of some of the classic writings of existentialist philosophers with interpretations of films that reveal striking parallels to each of those texts, demonstrating their respective philosophies in action. Individual chapters include significant excerpts from the original texts being discussed and illustrated. Pairings cover Schopenhauer and Waking Life, Stirner and Hud, Kierkegaard and Winter Light, Nietzsche and The Fountainhead, Heidegger, Blade Runner and The Thin Red Line, Camus, Leaving Las Vegas and Missing, Sartre, Husbands and Wives, and Michael Collins, de Beauvoir and Revolutionary Road, and Foucault and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Movies with Meaning offers a clear and insightful examination of the relationships between existential philosophers and film, providing both digests of their most significant texts and cinematic illustrations of what each had in mind. For the first time in one place, this book analyses the implications for film of the perspectives of a wide array of the most significant existentialist thinkers. Organized chronologically, like most existentialism anthologies, this is an ideal textbook for an intermediate level existentialism course, or as a companion to a selection of primary texts.

Fully updated and expanded throughout, this second edition of Film Theory: The Basics provides an accessible introduction to the key theorists, concepts, and debates that have shaped the study of moving images. The book examines film theory from its emergence in the early twentieth century to its study in the present day, and explores why film has drawn special attention as a medium, as a form of representation, and as a focal point in the rise of modern visual culture. It also emphasizes how film theory has developed as a historically contingent discourse, one that has evolved and changed in conjunction with different social, political, and intellectual factors. This second edition offers a detailed account of new theoretical directions at the forefront of film studies in the twenty-first century, and draws additional attention to how theory engages with today's most pressing questions about digital technologies, the environment, and racial justice. Complete with questions for discussion and a glossary of both key terms and key theorists, this book in an invaluable resource for those new to film theory and for anyone else interested in the history and significance of critical thinking in relation to the moving image.

This book explores the idiosyncratic effects generated as fairytale and gothic horror join, clash or merge in cinema. Identifying long-held traditions that have inspired this topical phenomenon, the book features close analysis of classical through to contemporary films. It begins by tracing fairytale and gothic origins and evolutions, examining the diverse ways these have been embraced and developed by cinema horror. It moves on to investigate films close up, locating fairytale horror, motifs and themes and a distinctively cinematic gothic horror. At the book's core are recurring concerns including: the boundaries of the human; rational and irrational forces; fears and dreams; 'the uncanny' and transitions between the wilds and civilization. While chronology shapes the book, it is thematically driven, with an interest in the cultural and political functions of fairytale and gothic horror, and the levels of transgression or social conformity at the heart of the films.

The Internet is the most terrifying and most beautifully innovative invention of the twentieth century. Using film theory and close textual analysis, Tucker offers an explanation of the Internet and a brief history of its portrayal on film in order examine how it has shaped contemporary versions of self-identity, memory, and the human body.

The Lola film is a distinct subgenre of the woman's film in which woman's claim to pleasure is entertained without recourse to the figure of the femme fatale. Lola embodies a recognizable set of characteristics through which over time a select group of directors, actors, and audiences have responded in ways that do not succumb to the imperatives of gender. There are over thirty-five Lola films, starting with Marlene Dietrich in The Blue Angel: many are German, others are French, American, British, Italian, and Spanish, but her claim has also resonated in Argentina, China, Egypt, Mexico, Thailand, and the Philippines. Lola can be working class, lesbian, transgender, ethnic, suburban, or any combination. This book examines Lola as a specific and enduring aspect of the early twentieth-century "new woman": woman's forthright claim to pleasure on her own terms, liberated, if only as a cinematic fantasy, from the usual constraints of sex and gender.

The first part of a three-volume work devoted to mapping the transnational history of Australian film studies, Australian Film Theory and Criticism, Volume 1 provides an overview of the period between 1975 and 1990, during which the discipline first became established in the academy. Tracing critical positions, personnel, and institutions across this formative period, Noel King, Constantine Verevis and Deane Williams examine a multitude of books and journal articles published in Australia and distributed internationally though such processes as publication in overseas journals, translation and reprinting. At the same time, they offer important insights about the origins of Australian film theory and its relationship to such related disciplines as English and cultural studies. Ultimately, Australian Film Theory and Criticism, Volume 1 delineates the historical implications - and reveals the future possibilities - of establishing new directions of inquiry for film studies in Australia and internationally. Australian Film Theory and Criticism, Volume 2 and 3 are also now available from Intellect.

Cinema, literature, and television shape our collective political understanding. Their dramas enact and test political ideas, especially when they use the political myths widely available in popular forms such as epics, noirs, and satires. Popular Cinema as Political Theory explores mythmaking in popular genres, demonstrating how to see political arguments in the conventional characters, deeds, and settings that enable movies to entertain us. Analyzing favorites such as The Prestige, L.A. Confidential, Star Trek Into Darkness, No Country for Old Men, and O Brother, Where Art Thou?, John Nelson provides a provocative and original account of political lessons from summer blockbusters and cinematic masterpieces alike.

The first decade of the 21st century has seen a proliferation of North American and European films that focus on African politics and society. While once the continent was the setting for narratives of heroic ascendancy over self (The African Queen, 1951; The Snows of Kilimanjaro, 1952), military odds (Zulu, 1964; Khartoum, 1966) and nature (Mogambo, 1953; Hatari!,1962; Born Free, 1966; The Last Safari, 1967), this new wave of films portrays a continent blighted by transnational corruption (The Constant Gardener, 2005), genocide (Hotel Rwanda, 2004; Shooting Dogs, 2006), 'failed states' (Black Hawk Down, 2001), illicit transnational commerce (Blood Diamond, 2006) and the unfulfilled promises of decolonization (The Last King of Scotland, 2006). Conversely, where once Apartheid South Africa was a brutal foil for the romance of East Africa (Cry Freedom, 1987; A Dry White Season, 1989), South Africa now serves as a redeemed contrast to the rest of the continent (Red Dust, 2004; Invictus, 2009). Writing from the perspective of long-term engagement with the contexts in which the films are set, anthropologists and historians reflect on these films and assess the contemporary place Africa holds in the North American and European cinematic imagination.

Examining post-1990s Indie cinema alongside more mainstream films, Brereton explores the emergence of smart independent sensibility and how films break the classic linear narratives that have defined Hollywood and its alternative "art" cinema. The work explores how bonus features on contemporary smart films speak to new generational audiences.

A longstanding misconception surrounding the term French noir suggests that the post-war French thriller and film noir were a development of, or response to, a pre-existing American tradition. This book challenges this misconception, examining the complexity of this trans-Atlantic exchange and refocusing debate to include a Franco-French lineage.

Uncanny computer-generated animations of splashing waves, billowing smoke clouds, and characters' flowing hair have become a ubiquitous presence on screens of all types since the 1980s. This Open Access book charts the history of these digital moving images and the software tools that make them. Unpredictable Visual Effects uncovers an institutional and industrial history that saw media industries conducting more private R&D as Cold War federal funding began to wane in the late 1980s. In this context studios and media software companies took concepts used for studying and managing unpredictable systems like markets, weather, and fluids and turned them into tools for animation. Unpredictable Visual Effects theorizes how these animations are part of a paradigm of control evident across society, while at the same time exploring what they can teach us about the relationship between making and knowing.

This is a clear and concise overview of and introduction to Deleuze's theories of cinema. "Cinema After Deleuze" offers a clear and lucid introduction to Deleuze's writings on cinema which will appeal both to undergraduates and specialists in film studies and philosophy. The book provides explanations of the many categories and classifications found in Deleuze's two landmark books on cinema and offers assessments of a range of films and directors, including works by John Ford, Sergei Eisenstein, Alfred Hitchcock, Michelangelo Antonioni and Alain Resnais. Richard Rushton also discusses contemporary directors such as Steven Spielberg, Lars von Trier, Martin Scorsese and Wong Kar-Wai in the light of Deleuze's theories and in doing so brings Deleuze's Cinema books right up to date. "Cinema After Deleuze" demonstrates why Deleuze is rightly considered today to be one of the great theorists of cinema. The book is essential reading for students in philosophy and film studies alike. "The Deleuze Encounters" series provides students in philosophy and related subjects with concise and accessible introductions to the application of Deleuze's work in key areas of study. Each book demonstrates how Deleuze's ideas and concepts can enhance present work in a particular field.

This book interrogates the relation between film spectatorship and film theory in order to criticise some of the disciplinary and authoritarian assumptions of 1970s apparatus theory, without dismissing its core political concerns. Theory, in this perspective, should not be seen as a practice distinct from spectatorship but rather as an integral aspect of the spectator's gaze. Combining Jacques Ranciere's emancipated spectator with Judith Butler's queer theory of subjectivity, Spectatorship and Film Theory foregrounds the contingent, embodied and dialogic aspects of our experience of film. Erratic and always a step beyond the grasp of disciplinary discourse, this singular work rejects the notion of the spectator as a fixed position, and instead presents it as a field of tensions-a "wayward" history of encounters.

This book connects the invention of masochism by turn-of-the-century sexologist Richard von Krafft-Ebing and writer Leopold von Sacher-Masoch to its contemporary appropriation by gay and lesbian filmmakers. Krafft-Ebing conceived of masochism as a literary perversion and as a gendered affliction. Mennel compares central texts by Sacher-Masoch with Monika Treut's film "Seduction: The Cruel Woman" and Kutlug Ataman's film "Lola and Billy the Kid," negotiating contemporary feminist theory and queer studies organized around gender and sexuality, on the one hand, and the fetish and masquerade, on the other.

What makes an Italian film Italian, a French film French? Are Hollywood films really American? This study reveals how centralization, common language and narrative convention express the cultural heritages within the national cinemas of nine countries (China, Finland, France, India, Iran, Italy, Mexico, Ukraine, and the United States). The goal is to bring critical theory and artistic expression back into equilibrium with a method that demonstrates how popular cinema truly can explain the world, ""one country at a time.

In 1999, the first new "Star Wars" movie in sixteen years came to theater screens worldwide. Leading up to the release of the film, the hype and media coverage reached epic proportions. "The Phantom Menace" graced every cover from Vanity Fair to Newsweek to Entertainment Weekly. Fans began camping in line for more than a month in Los Angeles just to be first to see the new film."Anticipation" tells the real-life story of a movie that faced expectations unlike those of any other film in history, but had the advantage of years of anticipation and excitement from eager fans and the public. "The Phantom Menace" deserves a place in film history not only as the most anticipated film ever made, but also for its place as the first film presented to the public with digital projection technology, its status as one of the highest grossing films ever made, and the unbelievable devotion of thousands of fans who demonstrated the great meaning movies can have to people of all ages and social backgrounds.

This unique book investigates the tug-of-war between the free market economy and authoritative state regulation in Chinese culture after 1989. Contextualizing close textual readings of cinematic and television texts, both officially sanctioned and independently made, Wing Shan Ho illuminates the complex process in which cultural producers and consumers negotiate with both the state and the market in articulating new forms of subjectivity. Ho examines the types of Chinese subjects that the state applauds and aggrandizes in contrast to those that it condemns and attempts to eliminate. Her focus on the socialist spirit exposes inherent contradictions in the current Chinese project of nation-building. This comparative study shines a harsh light on these cultural products and on much more: the confluence between commerce and politics and popular culture, the interaction between state and individuals in popular culture, and the complexity of governmentality in an era of globalization.

"Masculinity and Film Performance" is a lively and engaging study of the complex relationship between masculinity and performance on and off screen, focusing on the performance of "male angst" in American film and popular culture during the 1990s and 2000s. Building on theories of film acting, masculinity, performance, and cultural studies, this book establishes a framework for studying screen masculinity and provides close analysis of a range of performers and performance styles. It also examines the specific social, cultural, historical and political contexts that have shaped and affected the performance of masculinity on screen, such as the aging of the baby boom and the launch of Viagra onto the marketplace, the "Iron John" and "Wild Man" phenomenon, and the racially marked fatherhood crisis. Drawing from an array of illuminating film and actor case studies, Donna Peberdy offers a significant contribution to the emerging field of screen performance studies.