What does it mean to say Indian movies are melodramatic? How do film audiences engage with socio-political issues? What role has cinema played in the emergence of new economic forms, consumer cultures, and digital technologies in a globalizing India? "The Melodramatic Public" analyzes melodrama as a narrative architecture and expressive form which connects the public and the private, the personal and the political, in ways that draw film audiences into complex passages of historical change. Vasudevan explores film form and narrative strategy across a wide repertoire of film traditions, including popular classics and canonical art works. Topics include the contemporary global moment associated with the category "Bollywood," changes in state policy and industrial organization, and the impact of digital technologies, new economies of consumption, and wider export markets on Indian film culture.

This collection of twenty essays originally presented at the Eleventh International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts contains five parts: on fantasists and their work, contemporary fantastic theory and practice, studies in the British and European fantastic, studies in American fantasy and science fiction, and sex and techno-horror in fantastic literature and film.

What all the essays here have in common is that their authors are all aware of the tremendous latent power, for good and ill, of the fantastic text. We are given timely reminders of the dangers, as well as the appeal, of elves and how narrators in fantastic fictions take advantage of our desire to be part of a narrative community. We learn how some contemporary fantasists assimilate literary and scientific theory, while others seem in their fiction to require a new sociology to account for it.

While some film scores crash through theater speakers to claim their place in memory, others are more unassuming. Either way, a film's score is integral to successful world building. This book lifts the curtain on the elusive yet thrilling art form, examining the birth of the Hollywood film score, its turbulent evolution throughout the decades and the multidimensional challenges to musicians that lie ahead. The history of the film score is illuminated by extraordinary talents (like John Williams, Hans Zimmer and countless others). Beginning with vaudeville and silent cinema, chapters explore the wonders of early pioneers like Max Steiner and Bernard Herrmann, and continue through the careers of other soundtrack titans. Leading Hollywood film composers offer in this book fascinating perspectives on the art of film music composition, its ongoing relevance and its astonishing ability to enhance a filmmaker's vision.

Exploring the relevance of Jungian theory as it applies to science fiction, horror and fantasy films, this text demonstrates the remarkable correlation existing between Jung's major archetypes and recurring themes in various film genres. An introduction acquaints readers with basic Jungian theory archetypes before proceeding to film analysis. A diverse selection of movie and television summaries illustrate the relationship between a particular Jungian image and the examined films. Among the various Jungian patterns studied are the father archetype, the split between persona and shadow, the search for the grail, the alchemist traveler, and the development of the child archetype. From Star Wars and Planet of the Apes to Back to the Future and Indiana Jones, the interdependence of Jungian theory and film themes and contents unfold. Creative and innovative, this text unearths new Jungian territory that will appeal not only to psychology and film studies scholars and researchers, but also to those studying communication and literature.

Mark Nash's "Screen Theory Culture" demonstrates the influence of Screen magazine on structuralist and post-structuralist film studies. More current articles make connections between this body of work and the art of the contemporary moving image art work.

Famous for his painstaking attention to detail and for the craftsmanship and artistry he brought to his work, filmmaker Stanley Kubrick is by now long established as both the subject of an entire sub-field of scholarly inquiry, and as the object of all levels of cinema studies pedagogy. His oeuvre, developed over nearly 50 years, traverses an immensely broad variety of film genres and subjects and has long been studied and understood in terms of its narrative, thematic, and striking visual elements. However, unique and often startling encounters between music and the moving image are central trademarks of Kubrick's style; witness the powerful effects of Strauss's "Also Sprach Zarathustra" in 2001: A Space Odyssey and of Beethoven's 9th Symphony in A Clockwork Orange, each excerpt hand-picked by Kubrick himself. We'll Meet Again argues that some of the most compelling and understudied aspects of Stanley Kubrick's films are musically conceived. Author Kate McQuiston illustrates that, for Kubrick, music is neither post-production afterthought nor background nor incidental, but rather core to films' themes and meanings. The book is divided into three sections, the first of which identifies the building blocks in Kubrick's sonic world and illuminates the ways in which Kubrick uses them to substantiate his characters and to define character relationships. The second section delves into the effects of Kubrick's signature musical techniques, including the use of texture, recurrence, and inscription to render and reinforce psychological ideas and particular spectator responses. The third and final section presents case studies in which the history of the music Kubrick chooses plays a vital and dynamic role. Throughout the author's arguments, the book locates Kubrick as a force in music reception history by examining the relationship between his musical choices and popular culture.

***Listed in THE CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION's Weekly Book List, April 4, 2011*** Interview with the author: http: //dgeneratefilms.com/critical-essays/cinematalk-a-conversation-with-professor-guo-juin-hong-on-taiwan-cinema-1949-and-documentaries/ A groundbreaking study of Taiwan cinema, this is the first English language book that covers its entire history. Hong revises how Taiwan cinema is taught and studied by taking into account not only the auteurs of New Taiwan Cinema, but also the history of popular genre films before the 1980s. This work will be essential reading for students and scholars of Taiwan and Chinese-language cinemas and of great value to those interested in the larger context of East Asian cultural history as well as film and visual studies in general.

"Unhistorical Shakespeare" argues that the way in which we study history has significant bearing on what desire we study, and how we study it. Menon argues that our embrace of difference as the template for relating past and present produces a hetero temporality in which chronology determines identity. In turn, such an understanding of history fixes sexual identity as the domain of the present and relegates nebulous desire to a thing of the past. In contrast to this temporal-sexual reification, "Unhistorical Shakespeare" outlines the idea of homohistory, which questions the fundamental historicist assumptions of teleology, facticity, citation, origins, and authenticity to lay bare their investments in compulsory hetero temporality.

This book presents a new reading of film noir through psychoanalytic theory. In a field now dominated by Deleuzian and phenomenological approaches to film-philosophy, this book argues that, far from having passed, the time for Lacan in Film Studies is only just beginning. The chapters engage with Lacanian psychoanalysis to perform a meta-critical analysis of the writing on noir in the last seven decades and to present an original theory of criticism and historiography for the cinema. The book is also an act of mourning; for a lost past of the cinema, for a longstanding critical tradition and for film noir. It asks how we can talk about film noir when, in fact, film noir doesn't exist. The answer starts with Lacan and a refusal to relinquish psychoanalysis. Lacanian theories of retroactivity and ontology can be read together with film history, genre and narrative to show the ways in which theory and history, past and present, cinema and psychoanalysis are fundamentally knotted together. Tyrer also explores Lacan through particular noir films, such as Double Indemnity andThe Maltese Falcon - and demonstrates the possibilities for a Lacanian Film Studies (as one that engages fully with Lacan's entire body of work) that has hitherto not been realised.

An invaluable resource examining LGBTQIA+ portrayals in contemporary American film. The depictions of LGBTQIA+ characters in film have always varied immensely. However, the negative depictions often seem to outweigh the positive, perhaps because of the hurt they inspire or perhaps because they regrettably outnumber the positive films. The Encyclopedia of LGBTQIA+ Portrayals in American Film explores works from the past fifty years in order to not only discuss how LGBTQIA+ characters are portrayed in American film, but also how these portrayals affect viewers. Contributors to this valuable reference include film and media scholars, gender studies scholars, journalists, LGBTQIA+ advocates, and more, representing countries from around the world. This rich array of perspectives provide careful and critical examinations of more than 100 films, ranging from the ethical and compassionate to the deliberately cruel and destructive. Featuring films such as American Beauty, Batman v Superman, Fight Club, The Grand Budapest Hotel, Little Miss Sunshine, and Venom, this extensive volume informs and educates scholars and general readers alike, guiding them to see injustice more clearly and inspiring future generations to create art that is both inclusive and thoughtful.

Martin Scorsese (b. 1942) has long been considered one of America's greatest cinematic storytellers. Over the last fifty years he has created some of the most iconic moments in American film, never afraid to confront controversial issues with passion. While few of his films are directly autobiographical, his upbringing in New York's Little Italy, the childhood asthma that kept him from playing sports, and his early desire to enter the priesthood all helped form his sensibilities and later shaped his distinct style. Community, religion, violence?these themes drive a Scorsese picture, and whether he examines the violence that bursts forth in the hand of Travis Bickle or the passion of Jesus Christ, Scorsese's mastery of the history, art, and craft of filmmaking is undeniable. This collection was originally edited by the late Peter Brunette in 1999 and is now revised and extensively updated by Robert Ribera. It traces Scorsese's evolution from the earliest days of the New American Cinema, his work with Roger Corman, and his days at New York University's film program to his efforts to preserve the legacy of cinema, his documentary work, and his recent string of successes. Among new movies discussed are The Departed, Hugo, and The Wolf of Wall Street, and the documentaries No Direction Home and The Blues. Scorsese stands out as a director, producer, scholar, preservationist, and icon. His work both behind the camera and in the service of its history are a cornerstone of American and world cinemas. In these interviews, Scorsese takes us from Elizabeth Street to the heights of Hollywood and all the journeys in between.

Guillermo del Toro is a complete and intimate study of the life and work of one of modern cinema's most truly unique directors, whose distinct aesthetic and imagination are unmatched in contemporary film. Widely regarded as one of the most imaginative directors working in cinema today, Guillermo del Toro has built up a body of work that has enthralled movie fans with its dark beauty and edge-of-the-seat set pieces. In this book, acclaimed author Ian Nathan charts the progression of a career that has produced some of contemporary cinema's most revered scenes and idiosyncratic characters. This detailed examination looks at how the strands of del Toro's career have woven together to create one of modern cinema's most ground-breaking bodies of work. Delving deep into del Toro's psyche, the book starts by examining his beginnings in Mexico, the creative but isolated child surrounded by ornate catholicism and monster magazines, filming stop motion battles between his toys on a Super-8 film camera. It follows him to film school, where we learn of his influences, from Kafka to Bunuel, and explores his 1993 debut Cronos, the independent horror debut which draws on the religious and occult themes which would recur throughout del Toro's work. It goes on to cover his development as a director with 1997's Mimic, his blockbuster success with the Hellboy films and goes on to study the films which have cemented his status as a legendary auteur, Oscar award winners Pan's Labrynth and The Shape of Water, as well as his sci-fi masterpiece Pacific Rim, as well as looking at his exciting upcoming projects Nightmare Alley and Pinocchio. An enlightening look into the mind of an auteur blessed with a singular creative vision, Guillermo del Toro analyses the processes, themes and narratives that have come to be recognised as distinctly del Toro, from practical effects to an obsession with folklore and paganism. It looks into the narrative techniques, stylistic flourishes and creative decisions which have made him a true master of modern cinema. Presented in a slipcase with 8-page gatefold section, with scores of illuminating photographs of the director at work on set as well as iconic stills from his films and examples of his influences, this stunning package will delight all Guillermo del Toro devotees and movie lovers in general. Unauthorised and Unofficial.

Reception studies have made film audiences increasingly visible, while surveys track trends and policymakers gather information about audience preferences and demographics. But little attention has been paid to the specific contextual relationships and interactions between films and individuals that generate and sustain audiences. This monograph develops the idea of audiences as interactive and relational, introducing three innovative concepts: 'personal film journeys', five types of audience formations and five geographies of film provision. A major challenge of audience research is how to capture the richness of people's social and cultural engagement with film. To achieve this, the book uses an innovative mixed-methods research and computational ontology. It develops ground-breaking theory and concepts and an innovative methodology based on an extensive data-set derived from the under-researched area of British regional film audiences. -- .

American History through Hollywood Film offers a new perspective on major issues in American history from the 1770s to the end of the twentieth century and explores how they have been represented in film. Melvyn Stokes examines how and why representation has changed over time, looking at the origins, underlying assumptions, production, and reception of an important cross-section of historical films. Chapters deal with key events in American history including the American Revolution, the Civil War and its legacy, the Great Depression, and the anti-communism of the Cold War era. Major themes such as ethnicity, slavery, Native Americans and Jewish immigrants are covered and a final chapter looks at the way the 1960s and 70s have been dealt with by Hollywood. This book is essential reading for anyone studying American history and the relationship between history and film.

This book presents the Great Depression through the lens of 13 films, beginning with movies made during the Depression and ending with films from the 21st century, and encourages readers to examine the various depictions of this period throughout history. The Great Depression on Film is a unique guide to how the Great Depression was represented and is remembered, making it an excellent resource for students or anyone interested in film history or U.S. history. Each film is set in a different sector of American life, focusing on such topics as white supremacy, political protest, segregation, environmental degradation, crime, religion, the class system, and popular culture in the U.S. during the 1930s. This book is indispensable for clearing away misconceptions fostered by the movies while acknowledging the power of film in shaping public memory. The book separates fact from fiction, detailing where the movies are accurate and where they depart from reality, and places them in the larger context of historical and social events. Eyewitness or journalistic accounts are referenced and quoted in the text to help readers differentiate between ideas, attitudes, and events presented in the films, as well as the historical facts which inspired those films. Provides readers with a history of the Great Depression as it played out in the lives of many classes and groups of people in the U.S. Presents a cultural overview of America during that critical time, going beyond politics to include popular music, entertainment, religion, literature, and sports Dives into an exemplary study of the difficulty in dramatizing history on film along with the way film images displace actual history in popular memory Gives a detailed overview of how Hollywood cinema represented and misrepresented life during the Depression

The relationship between theology and film has always been a complicated one. When film was invented at the end of the nineteenth century, it quickly gained its place in popular culture, far from the orthodoxies of the scholarly world and of the Church. For the better part of the twentieth century popular cinema was considered off limits for serious studies of Bible and culture. Recently, however, there has been a growing understanding of how the Bible is being used in popular culture-not as a historical document or as an authoritative canon, but as part of the cultural intertext. Cinema is a vivid example of the role and impact of the Bible in contemporary society. In this well-theorized collection of essays the issue is treated from several angles. Using the methodology of theology, the question of the alleged escapism of popular cinema is explored. Using the methodology of media studies, the impact of the media on religious communication is analysed. And, using the methodology of religious studies, the influence of the cinema in the creation of new religions, religious behaviour and religious institutions is investigated. In addition, the book offers fruitful analyses of the cinematic use of biblical themes such as Eden, salvation, Mary Magdalene and Jesus-as well as of the cinematic application of ethical themes such as truth-telling, personal growth, suffering, the accomplishment of good and the creating of meaning for human beings.

Examines and interrogates the concept of the 'uncanny', and the cultural contexts which allow such experiences of disorientation and alienation.This book includes translation of Ernst Jensch's seminal essay, On the Psychology of the Uncanny (1906) - first time this has been available in English. A timely collection - the term 'uncanny' has become confused in critical theory, and this book helps clarify what it means in contemporary culture. It has a broad appeal and illustrates the range and influence of the 'uncanny' in current research in the humanities and beyond (contributors work in a range of fields, from film studies, literary theory, to history and cultural studies).It includes well-known contributors such as Julian Wolfreys, David Punter and Roger Luckhurst.This book explores the sense in which the uncanny may be a distinctively modern experience, the way these unnerving feelings and unsettling encounters disturb the rational presumptions of the modern world view and the security of modern self-identity, just as the latter may themselves be implicated in the production of these experiences as uncanny.

Screening Nostalgia provides a cogent summary of the history of America's love affair with nostalgia as well as offering useful examples of how to mobilize nostalgia in critically sophisticated ways. The text is engaging and accessible and should have wide appeal, particularly among scholars and students of film and American cultural history." . Southwest Journal of Cultures

"In this fascinating in-depth study of the impact of nostalgia on contemporary American cinema, Christine Sprengler unpicks the history of the concept and explores its significance in theory and practice. She offers a lucid analysis of the development of nostalgia in American society and culture, navigating a path through the key debates and aligning herself with recent attempts to recuperate its critical potential. This journey opens up the myriad permutations of nostalgia across visual and material culture and their interface with cinema, with the 1950s emerging as a privileged moment. Four case studies (Sin City, Far From Heaven, The Aviator and The Good German) analyse the ways in which aspects of visual design such as props, costume and colour contribute to the nostalgic aesthetic, allowing for both critical distance and emotion. Written with verve, style and impressive attention to detail, Screening Nostalgia is an invaluable addition to existing scholarship. It is also essential reading for anyone interested in the ways in which we access the past through cinema." . Pam Cook, Professor Emerita in Film, University of Southampton"

In this collection of essays, a range of scholars from different disciplines look through the prism of technology at the much-debated notion of cultural memory, analyzing how the past is shaped or unsettled by cultural texts including visual art, literature, cinema, photographs and souvenirs.

What are the political and aesthetic dimensions of video art, documentary, and global cinema in contemporary image culture? Here, Lynes makes visible how sites of political struggle, exploitation, and armed conflict can be theorized and interpreted through a feminist politics of location, attentive to the frictions and flows within transnational circuits of exchange. Prismatic Media, Transnational Circuits traces how formal modes of experimentation provide prismatic visions of sites of political struggle - multiple, mediated points of view - and thus open space for complex and emancipatory relations among cultural producers, activists, and viewers in a globalized present.

Still Modernism offers a critique of the modernist imperative to embrace motion, speed, and mobility. In the context of the rise of kinetic technologies and the invention of motion pictures, it claims that stillness is nonetheless an essential tactic of modernist innovation. More specifically, the book looks at the ways in which photographic stillness emerges as a counterpoint to motion and to film, asserting its own clear visibility against the blur of kinesis. Photographic stillness becomes a means to resist the ephemerality of motion and to get at and articulate something real or essential by way of its fixed limits. Combining art history, film studies and literary studies, Louise Hornby reveals how photographers, filmmakers, and writers, even at their most kinetic, did not surrender attention to points of stillness. Rather, the still image, understood through photography, establishes itself as a mode of resistance and provides a formal response to various modernist efforts to see better, to attend more closely, and to remove the fetters of subjectivity and experience. Still Modernism brings together a series of canonical texts, films and photographs, the selection of which reinforces the central claim that stillness does not lurk at the margins of modernism, but was constitutive of its very foundations. In a series of comparisons drawing from literary and visual objects, Hornby argues that still photography allows film to access its own diffuse images of motion; photography's duplicative form provides a serial structure for modernist efforts to represent the face; its iterative structure articulates the jerky rhythms of experimental narrative as perambulation; and its processes of development allow for the world to emerge independent of the human observer. Casting new light on the relationship between photography and film, Hornby situates the struggle between the still and the kinetic at the center of modernist culture.

This anthology explores the recurring trope of the dead or absent mother in Western cultural productions. Across historical periods and genres, this dialogue has been employed to articulate and debate questions of politics and religion, social and cultural change as well as issues of power and authority within the family. Astroem seeks to investigate the many functions and meanings of the dialogue by covering extensive material from the 1200s to 2014 including hagiography, romances, folktales, plays, novels, children's literature and graphic novels, as well as film and television. This is achieved by looking at the discourse both as products of the time and culture that produced the various narratives, and as part of an on-going cultural conversation that spans the centuries, resulting in an innovative text that will be of great interest to all scholars of gender, feminist and media studies.