![]() |
![]() |
Your cart is empty |
||
Books > Arts & Architecture > Performing arts > Films, cinema > Film theory & criticism
How does film affect the way we understand crises of the body and mind and how does it manifest other kinds of crises levelled at the spectator? This book offers vital scholarly analysis of the embodied nature of film viewing and the ways in which film deals with the question of loss, the healing body and its material registering of trauma.
"A New Guide to Italian Cinema,"" "with co-author Carlo Celli, is a complete reworking and update of Marga Cottino-Jones' popular "A Student's Guide to Italian Film "(1983, 1993). This guide retains earlier editions' interest in renowned films and directors but is also attentive to popular cinema, the films which actually achieved box office success among the Italian public. The "Guide" introduces the Italian cinema not just as a 20th century phenomenon but as an expression of the deeper roots of Italy's historic, cultural and literary past. Chapters offer historical timelines and commentary on political and cultural events and trends, followed by discussion of the Italian cinema industry and key films. Appendices offer guides to writing about film, statistical data of Italian box office history and short biographies and filmographies of important directors. The aim of the book is to provide the cinephile, student, teacher, or fan with a guide where points of interest may be identified and studied with clarity.
This study investigates the overlaps between political discourse and literary and cinematic fiction, arguing that both are informed by, and contribute to, the cultural imaginary of terrorism. Whenever mass-mediated acts of terrorism occur, they tend to trigger a proliferation of threat scenarios not only in the realm of literature and film but also in the statements of policymakers, security experts, and journalists. In the process, the discursive boundary between the factual and the speculative can become difficult to discern. To elucidate this phenomenon, this book proposes that terror is a halfway house between the real and the imaginary. For what characterizes terrorism is less the single act of violence than it is the fact that this act is perceived to be the beginning, or part, of a potential series, and that further acts are expected to occur. As turn-of-the-century writers such as Stevenson and Conrad were the first to point out, this gives terror a fantastical dimension, a fact reinforced by the clandestine nature of both terrorist and counter-terrorist operations. Supported by contextual readings of selected texts and films from The Dynamiter and The Secret Agent through late-Victorian science fiction to post-9/11 novels and cinema, this study explores the complex interplay between actual incidents of political violence, the surrounding discourse, and fictional engagement with the issue to show how terrorism becomes an object of fantasy. Drawing on research from a variety of disciplines, The Cultural Imaginary of Terrorism will be a valuable resource for those with interests in the areas of Literature and Film, Terrorism Studies, Peace and Conflict Studies, Trauma Studies, and Cultural Studies.
Genre, Gender, Race, and World Cinema is an innovative anthology that introduces the study of film theory using the four topics of genre, gender, race, and world cinema, to encourage critical discussion. * A major anthology geared towards course use, which covers key concepts in film studies through analysis of important films from American, Asian, European and African cinema * Combines formal, historical, cultural, and theoretical approaches to study * Analyzes how film represents and influences individual and societal constructs of identity * Uses selected readings to introduce inter-textual relations between the readings and the films they discuss * Contains section introductions that map the themes and histories of each topic, and raise theoretical issues specific to each
Scholarly approaches to the relationship between literature and film, ranging from the traditional focus upon fidelity to more recent issues of intertextuality, all contain a significant blind spot: a lack of theoretical and methodological attention to adaptation as an historical and transnational phenomenon. This book argues for a historically informed approach to American popular culture that reconfigures the classically defined adaptation phenomenon as a form of transnational reception. Focusing on several case studies- including the films Sense and Sensibility (1995) and The Portrait of a Lady (1997), and the classics The Third Man (1949) and The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)-the author demonstrates the ways adapted literary works function as social and cultural events in history and how these become important sites of cultural negotiation and struggle.
This bio-bibliography was designed to present a combined biographical, critical, and bibliographical portrait of the Marx Brothers. It examines their significance in film comedy in particular, and as popular culture figures in general. The book is divided into five sections, beginning with a biography which explores the public and private sides of the Marx Brothers. The second section is concerned with the influences of the Marx Brothers as icons of anti-establishment comedy, as contributors to developments in American comedy, as early examples of "saturation comedy," and as a crucial link between silent films and the "talkies." Three original articles, two by Groucho and one by Gummo, comprise part three. A bibliographical essay, which assesses key reference materials and research collections, is followed by two bibliographical checklists. Appendices containing a chronological biography with a timeline, a filmography, and a selected discography complete the work.
This is the first full-length exploration of the relationship between Gothic fiction and Modernism in fiction and film. The Gothic's fascination with images of the fragmented self is echoed in the Modernist concern with the psyche and the paranoia of the everyday. The contributors explore how the Gothic influences arange of writers including James Joyce, D. H. Lawrence, Virginia Woolf, May Sinclair, Elizabeth Bowen, and Djuna Barnes.
Can the stories people tell influence the way they see the world? This book seeks to address that question through a study of the viability of movie making as a critical pedagogy activity. Positioned at the intersection of education and communication for social change, it explores the relationship between the generation of subjective knowledge through storytelling and analysis, and systemic change. Central to the book is a case study from Nepal. By using video as the action element and analytical material of coursework, youth participants generated a new critical awareness, engendered by themes arising from group discussion. Through the analysis of these themes participants initiated an emergence known as conscientization. Led by two critical educators, participants used the production, screening, and analysis of their own movies to propel the course, or praxis, forward. This book seeks to inform the practice of critical pedagogy both practically and theoretically, and also offers a contribution to the fields of participatory action-research and communication for social change.
The Innocence of Memories is an important addition to the oeuvre of Nobel Prize-winning author Orhan Pamuk. Comprised of the screenplay of the acclaimed film by Grant Gee from 2015 (by the same name), a transcript of the author and filmmaker in conversation, and captivating colour stills, it is an essential volume for understanding Pamuk's work. Drawing on the themes from Pamuk's best-selling books, The Museum of Innocence, Istanbul and The Black Book, this book is both an accompaniment to the author's previous publications and a wonderfully revelatory exploration of Orhan Pamuk's key ideas about art, love, and memory.
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.
The essays in A Moving Picture Feast discuss every Hollywood film made from a Hemingway work and represent the most diverse response yet to the Hemingway-Hollywood relationship. The contributors examine the popular public image Hollywood created of Hemingway the man and offer a provocative look at the esthetic relationship between fiction and cinema. They criticize the films themselves as art, in many cases with scene-by-scene analysis, and explore the process by which films are adapted from novels and short stories. Their research includes inside decisions made by producers and directors that affected the final versions of specific films. With its valuable bibliography, listing nearly 400 articles, reviews, and screenplay typescripts, A Moving Picture Feast will be an important resource for film buffs as well as any student or scholar of Hemingway. Oliver's collection of 15 articles about film versions of Ernest Heminway's works conducts an interesting and worthwhile conversation about the possible relationships between art in one media and the work it inspires in another. "Choice" This collection of 15 chapters by Hemingway film scholars discusses every Hollywood film made from a Hemingway work and represents the most diverse response yet to the Hemingway-Hollywood relationship. The contributors go beyond discussing the failure of the film medium to be worthy of Hemingway to criticize the films themselves as art and in one case with scene-by-scene analysis. They explore the process by which films are adapted from novels and short stories. Their research includes inside decisions made by producers and directors that affected the final versions of specific films. Their analysis is of diverse subjects--from the dichotomy of Hemingway as private person and celebrity, to the prevailing film morality of revising original stories to fit Hollywood standards. This important addition to the small body of literature on Hemingway films will shed light on a neglected area of Hemingway studies. With its valuable bibliography listing nearly 400 titles--articles, reviews, and screenplay typescripts--"A Moving Picture Feast" will be an important resource for film buffs as well as for any student or scholar of Hemingway. The book is divided into three sections. The chapters in the first section explore the similarities and vast differences between Hemingway's style and general cinematic techniques. The contributors examine the popular public image Hollywood created of Hemingway and offer a provocative look at the esthetic relationship between fiction and cinema. The chapters in the second section examine the films made from Hemingway novels. One chapter compares three different versions of "To Have and Have Not"; another discusses Hemingway's extensive collaboration on the documentary film "The Spanish Earth." The third section examines the films made from the short stories. This section includes a compelling discussion of film noir and how this technique applies to the film versions of "The KillerS." Another chapter offers a fascinating comparison of the esthetics of the short stories of "In Our Time" and the classic D. W. Griffith film "The Birth of a Nation."
This essay collection offers a new approach to the representation of Paris on screen. Bringing together a wide range of renowned French and Anglophone specialists in film, television, history, architecture and literature, Alastair Phillips and Ginette Vincendeau introduce, challenge and extend ideas about the city as the locus of screen modernity. Through a range of concrete and historically-specific case studies, this unique text demonstrates how the cinematic city of Paris now constitutes a major archive of French cultural history and memory. This is an ideal resource for undergraduate and postgraduate students of Film, Media and Cultural Studies, French Studies, European or Transnational Studies, Visual Studies, and Urban Studies. Fresh and engaging, this fascinating text will also appeal to lovers of French cinema and the capital city that comprises its major home.
Indigeneity in Latin American Cinema explores how contemporary films (2000-2020) participate in the evolution and circulation of images and sounds that in many ways define how indigenous communities are imagined, at a local, regional and global scale. The volume reviews the diversity of portrayals from a chronological, geopolitical, linguistic, epistemic-ontological, transnational and intersectional, paradigm-changing and self-representational perspective, allocating one chapter to each theme. The corpus of this study consists of 68 fictional features directed by non-indigenous filmmakers, 31 cinematic works produced by indigenous directors/communities, and 22 Cine Regional (Regional Cinema) films. The book also draws upon a significant number of engravings, drawings, paintings, photographs and films, produced between 1493 and 2000, as primary sources for the historical review of the visual representations of indigeneity. Through content and close (textual) analysis, interviews with audiences, surveys and social media posts analysis, the author looks at the contexts in which Latin American films circulate in international festivals and the paradigm shifts introduced by self-representational cinema and Roma (Mexico, 2018). Conclusively, the author provides the foundations of histrionic indigeneity, a theory that explains how overtly histrionic proclivities play a significant role in depictions of an imagined indigenous Other in recent films.
Among professional storytellers whose works have been adapted for cinematic dramatization, mid-19th century English novelist Charles Dickens stands in a class of his own. In addition to his most well-known works such as A Christmas Carol and Oliver Twist, which are unrivaled for their sheer number of film adaptations, each of Dickens' other major works have been adapted for the screen multiple times, and many remain accessible for viewing on a variety of platforms. This book-by-book survey highlights the most popular adaptations of each Dickens book, spanning from the films of the silent era through the 21st century. The survey also includes a critical examination that compares the adaptations to the original texts. An analysis outlines the many connections between the fictional narratives and the novelist's own frequently misunderstood biography.
This book explores the ideas of the neglected English aesthetician
and art historian, Adrian Stokes. Stokes's Kleinian-based concepts
of carving and modelling are analyzed in relation to film, arguing
that they replace the traditional notions of realism and montage in
film theory and provide a set of aesthetics which encompasses
mainstream and "art" cinema. This Kleinian psychoanalytic approach
is applied to the films of Eisenstein, Rossellini, Hitchcock and
others.
A must-read for scholars of visuality, gender and sexuality.
Denisoff's study explores the ways in which gothic, sensation and
"noir" literature and cinema manipulated common notions of the
visual in order to challenge sex- and gender-based assumptions that
marginalized certain people and desires. Addressing authors and
directors such as Mary Braddon, Wilkie Collins, Oscar Wilde, Vernon
Lee, Virigina Woolf, Daphne du Maurier, Alfred Hitchcock, Otto
Preminger and Fritz Lang, this study shows that what a society gets
is often what it tries hardest not to see.
America Reflected offers eclectic film criticism and considerations of distinctive American voices from the ante-bellum era to the present.The much-loved Will Rogers reassured Americans that 19th-century pioneer values would survive in an age of machines, media, and political bunk. Deprecating changes of the post-WWI era, he proved-by his own example-that ordinary people could still practice neighborliness in an increasingly impersonal world. Benjamin Lee Whorf believed fervently that conflicts between science and religion could be resolved. All war films, even documentaries, are presented as interpretations that require additional interpretation by scholars-as well as media literacy on the part of audiences. Especially in the Vietnam chapters, Rollins taps his experiences as scholar, combat officer, and filmmaker-as well as his fervent commitment to America's fighting men and women. Other essays address questions of national vision: how do Harriet Beecher Stowe, Amy Lowell, John James Audubon, and Frederick Henry Hedge contribute to our understanding of the American spirit? Environmental issues are engaged in discussions of John James Audubon and the oil field films. America Reflected closes with a discussion of New Deal documentaries about the environment.Praise"From cowboy philosopher Will Rogers to popular perceptions of two world wars and Vietnam, from the history of language to the language of film and television, Peter Rollins has devoted his career to exploring the intriguing ways in which the creative impulse both shapes and reflectsAmerican culture. His observations are fresh, illuminating and of enduring value." John E. O'Connor, co-founder and long-term editor of Film & History: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Film and Television Studies "Even those who have known and admired Peter Rollin's acclaimed works will here find enlightening surprises. Epistemology, language theory, war's polemics, filmed history, and an array of significant creators of American culture are all elegantly displayed. This book will make you a wiser person and charm you while it does it." John Shelton Lawrence, Emeritus Professor of Philosophy, Morningside College."Two decades ago I was privileged to work on a book, America Observed, with Alistair Cooke. Now we have America Reflected by Peter Rollins, one of the most respected cultural historians working today. Not only does Rollins make good observations about our lives and times, his reflections on a diverse set of subjects helps us to see the meanings of our observations." Ronald A. Wells is Professor of History Emeritus at Calvin College, Michigan."In America Reflected, Rollins gathers together glimpses of our shared worlds, so that we may observe their interconnections across media, genres, and time. From down-home values and front-porch philosophy, to tales of wars and chronicles of lives, the subjects considered here are all part of the stories we tell about ourselves and our social worlds." Cynthia J. Miller, President, Literature/Film Association."Rollins examines the roles of language, satire, and film in reflecting the American consciousness through such diverse sources as Orestes Brownson, Benjamin Lee Whorf, Will Rogers, and Hollywood. Readers of America Reflected are in for a delightful voyage as they travel through American history and culture with Peter Rollins as their guide providing personal and scholarly insights into the shaping of the American mind." Ron Briley is the Assistant Schoolmaster, Sandia Preparatory School, Albuquerque, New Mexico, and editor, The Politics of Baseball: Essays on the Pastime and Power at Home and Abroad (2010).
Issues surrounding precarity, debility and vulnerability are now of central concern to philosophers as we try and navigate an increasingly uncertain world. Matthew R. McLennan delves into these subjects enthusiastically and sensitively, presenting a vision of the discipline of philosophy which is grounded in real, lived experience. Developing an invigorating, if at times painful, sense of the finitude and fragility of human life, Philosophy and Vulnerability provocatively marshals three disciplinary "nonphilosophers" to make its argument: French filmmaker and novelist Catherine Breillat, journalist and masterful cultural commentator Joan Didion and feminist poet and civil rights activist Audre Lorde. Through this encounter, this book suggests ways in which rigorous attention to difference and diversity must nourish a militant philosophical universalism in the future. |
![]() ![]() You may like...
Hugo Wolf and the Wagnerian Inheritance
Amanda Glauert
Hardcover
In Whose Place? - Confronting Vestiges…
Hilton Judin, Arianna Lissoni, …
Paperback
Essence Of Traditional Chinese Medicine
Wenjun Zhu, Yuan Lin, …
Hardcover
R2,423
Discovery Miles 24 230
Cellular and Molecular Aspects of the…
J.C. Pech, A. Latche, …
Hardcover
R5,947
Discovery Miles 59 470
|