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Books > Arts & Architecture > Performing arts > Films, cinema > Film theory & criticism
This open access study of the film Grendel Grendel Grendel,
directed by Alexander Stitt, presents it as a masterpiece of
animation and design which has attained a national and
international cult status since its release in 1981. The film,
based on the novel, Grendel, by John Gardner, is a loose adaptation
of the Beowulf legend, but told from the point of view of the
monster, Grendel. Grendel Grendel Grendel is a mature, intelligent,
irreverent and quite unique animated film - it is a movie, both in
terms of content and of an aesthetic that was well ahead of its
time. Along with a brief overview of Australian animation and a
contextualization of where this animated feature fits within the
broader continuum of Australian (and global) film history, Dan
Torre and Lienors Torre provide an intriguing analysis of this
significant Australian animated feature. The ebook editions of this
book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on
bloomsburycollections.com.
Ingmar Bergman's rich legacy as film director and writer of
classics such as The Seventh Seal, Scenes From a Marriage, and
Fanny and Alexander has attracted scholars not only in film studies
but also of literature, theater, gender, philosophy, religion,
sociology, musicology, and more. Less known, however, is Bergman
from the perspective of production studies, including all the
choices, practices, and routines involved in what goes on behind
the scenes. For instance, what about Bergman's collaborations and
conflicts with film producers? What about his work with musicians
at the opera, technicians in the television studio, and actors on
the film set. What about Bergman and MeToo? In order to throw light
on these issues, art practitioners such as film directors Ang Lee
and Margarethe von Trotta, film and opera director Atom Egoyan, and
film producer and screenwriter James Schamus are brought together
with academics such as philosopher and film scholar Paisley
Livingston, musicologist Alexis Luko, and playwright and
performance studies scholar Allan Havis to discuss Bergman's work
from their unique perspectives. In addition, Ingmar Bergman at the
Crossroads provides, for the first time, in-depth interviews with
Bergman's longtime collaborators Katinka Farago and Mans
Reutersward, who both have first-hand experience of working
intimately as producers in film and television with Bergman,
covering more than 5 decades. In an open exchange between
individual and institutional perspectives, this book bridges the
often-rigid boundaries between theoreticians and practitioners, in
turn pointing Bergman studies in new directions.
Stars and Silhouettes traces the history of the cameo as it emerged
in twentieth-century cinema. Although the cameo has existed in film
culture for over a century, Joceline Andersen explains that this
role cannot be strictly defined because it exists as a
constellation of interactions between duration and recognition,
dependent on who is watching and when. Even audiences of the
twenty-first century who are inundated by the lives of movie stars
and habituated to images of their personal friends on screens
continue to find cameos surprising and engaging. Cameos reveal the
links between our obsession with celebrity and our desire to
participate in the powerful cultural industries within contemporary
society. Chapter 1 begins with the cameo's precedents in visual
culture and the portrait in particular-from the Vitagraph
executives in the 1910s to the emergence of actors as movie stars
shortly after. Chapter 2 explores the fan-centric desire for
behind-the-scenes visions of Hollywood that accounted for the
success of cameo-laden, Hollywood-set films that autocratic studios
used to make their glamorous line-up of stars as visible as
possible. Chapter 3 traces the development of the cameo in comedy,
where cameos began to show not only glimpses of celebrities at
their best but also of celebrities at their worst. Chapter 4
examines how the television guest spot became an important way for
stars and studios to market both their films and stars from other
media in trades that reflected an increasingly integrated
mediascape. In Chapter 5, Andersen examines auteur cameos and the
cameo as a sign of authorship. Director cameos reaffirm the fan's
interest in the film not just as a stage for actors but as a forum
for the visibility of the director. Cameos create a participatory
space for viewers, where recognizing those singled out among extras
and small roles allows fans to demonstrate their knowledge. Stars
and Silhouettes belongs on the shelf of every scholar, student, and
reader interested in film history and star studies.
In 1914, the Ford Motor Company opened its Motion Picture
Laboratory, an in-house operation that produced motion pictures to
educate its workforce and promote its products. Just six years
later, Ford films had found their way into schools and newsreels,
travelogues, and even feature films in theaters across the country.
It is estimated that by 1961, the company's movies had captured an
audience of sixty-four million people. This study of Ford's
corporate film program traces its growth and rise in prominence in
corporate America. Drawing on nearly three hundred hours of
material produced between 1914 and 1954, Timothy Johnson chronicles
the history of Ford's filmmaking campaign and analyzes selected
films, visual and narrative techniques, and genres. He shows how
what began as a narrow educational initiative grew into a global
marketing strategy that presented a vision not just of Ford or
corporate culture but of American life more broadly. In these
films, Johnson uncovers a powerful rhetoric that Ford used to
influence American labor, corporate style, production practices,
road building, suburbanization, and consumer culture. The company's
early and continued success led other corporations to adopt similar
programs. Persuasive and thoroughly researched, Rhetoric, Inc.
documents the role that imagery and messaging played in the
formation of the modern American corporation and provides a glimpse
into the cultural turn to the economy as a source of entertainment,
value, and meaning.
More than a century after its emergence, classical Hollywood cinema
remains popular today with cinephiles and scholars alike. Resetting
the Scene: Classical Hollywood Revisited, edited by Philippa Gates
and Katherine Spring, showcases cutting-edge work by renowned
researchers of Hollywood filmmaking of the studio era and proposes
new directions for classical Hollywood studies in the twenty-first
century. Resetting the Scene includes twenty-six accessible
chapters and an extensive bibliography. In Part 1, Katherine
Spring's introduction and David Bordwell's chapter reflect on the
newest methods, technological resources, and archival discoveries
that have galvanized recent research of studio filmmaking. Part 2
brings together close analyses of film style both visual and sonic
with case studies of shot composition, cinematography, and film
music. Part 3 offers new approaches to genre, specifically the film
musical, the backstudio picture, and the B-film. Part 4 focuses on
industry operations, including the origins of Hollywood,
cross-promotion, production planning, and talent management. Part 5
offers novel perspectives on the representation of race, in regard
to censorship, musicals, film noir, and science fiction. Part 6
illuminates forgotten histories of women's labor in terms of
wartime propaganda, below-the-line work, and the evolution of star
persona. Part 7 explores the demise of the studio system but also
the endurance of classical norms in auteur cinema and screenwriting
in the post-classical era. Part 8 highlights new methods for
studying Hollywood cinema, including digital resources as tools for
writing history and analyzing films, and the intersection of film
studies with emergent fields like media industry studies. Intended
for scholars and students of Hollywood film history, Resetting the
Scene intersects with numerous fields consonant with film studies,
including star studies, media industry studies, and critical race
theory.
Reality, Magic, and Other Lies: Fairy-Tale Film Truths explores
connections and discontinuities between lies and truths in
fairy-tale films to directly address the current politics of fairy
tale and reality. Since the Enlightenment, notions of magic and
wonder have been relegated to the realm of the fanciful, with
science and reality understood as objective and true. But the
skepticism associated with postmodern thought and critiques from
diverse perspectives - including but not limited to anti-racist,
decolonial, disability, and feminist theorizing - renders this
binary distinction questionable. Further, the precise content of
magic and science has shifted through history and across location.
Pauline Greenhill offers the idea that fairy tales, particularly
through the medium of film, often address those distinctions by
making magic real and reality magical. Reality, Magic, and Other
Lies consists of an introduction, two sections, and a conclusion,
with the first section, "Studio, Director, and Writer Oeuvres",
addressing how fairy-tale films engage with and challenge
scientific or factual approaches to truth and reality, drawing on
films from the stop-motion animation company LAIKA, the independent
filmmaker Tarsem, and the storyteller and writer Fred Pellerin. The
second section, "Themes and Issues from Three Fairy Tales", shows
fairy-tale film magic exploring real-life issues and experiences
using the stories of "Hansel and Gretel", "The Juniper Tree\2, and
"Cinderella". The concluding section, "Moving Forward?" suggests
that the key to facing the reality of contemporary issues is to
invest in fairy tales as a guide, rather than a means of escape, by
gathering your community and never forgetting to believe. Reality,
Magic, and Other Lies-which will be of interest to film and
fairy-tale scholars and students-considers the ways in which fairy
tales in their mediated forms deconstruct the world and offer
alternative views for peaceful, appropriate, just, and
intersectionally multifaceted encounters with humans, non-human
animals, and the rest of the environment.
By exploring a range of films about American women, this book
offers readers an opportunity to engage in both history and film in
a new way, embracing representation, diversity, and historical
context. Throughout film history, stories of women achieving in
American history appear few and far between compared to the many
epic tales of male achievement. This book focuses largely on films
written by women and about women who tackled the humanist issues of
their day and mostly won. Films about women are important for all
viewers of all genders because they remind us that the American
Experience is not just male and white. This book examines 10 films,
featuring diverse depictions of women and women's history, and
encourages readers to discern how and where these films deviate
from historical accuracy. Covering films from the 1950s all the way
to the 2010s, this text is invaluable for students and general
readers who wish to interrogate the way women's history appears on
the big screen. Focuses on 10 films with an emphasis on racial and
class diversity Explores where storytelling and historical accuracy
diverge and clarifies the historical record around the events of
the films Organized chronologically, emphasizing the progression of
women's history as portrayed on film Accessible for general readers
as well as students
This book argues for a durational cinema that is distinct from slow
cinema, and outlines the history of its three main waves: the New
York avant-garde of the 1960s, the European art cinema in the years
after 1968, and the international cinema of gallery spaces as well
as film festivals since the 1990s. Figures studied include Andy
Warhol, Ken Jacobs, Chantal Akerman, Marguerite Duras, Claude
Lanzmann, James Benning, Kevin Jerome Everson, Lav Diaz, and Wang
Bing.Durational cinema is predominantly minimal, but has from the
beginning also included a more encompassing or encyclopedic kind of
filmmaking. Durational cinema is characteristically
representational, and converges on certain topics (the Holocaust,
deindustrialization, the experience of the working class and other
marginalized people), but has no one meaning, signifying
differently at different moments and in different hands. Warhol's
durational cinema of subtraction is quite different from Jacobs's
durational cinema of social disgust, while Lav Diaz' durational
sublime is quite different from Kevin Jerome Everson's unblinking
studies of African-American working people.
Focusing on films from Chile since 2000 and bringing together
scholars from South and North America, Chilean Cinema in the
Twenty-First-Century World is the first English-language book since
the 1970s to explore this small, yet significant, Latin American
cinema. The volume questions the concept of "national cinemas" by
examining how Chilean film dialogues with trends in genre-based,
political, and art-house cinema around the world, while remaining
true to local identities. Contributors place current Chilean cinema
in a historical context and expand the debate concerning the
artistic representation of recent political and economic
transformations in contemporary Chile. Chilean Cinema in the
Twenty-First-Century World opens up points of comparison between
Chile and the ways in which other national cinemas are negotiating
their place on the world stage. The book is divided into five
parts. "Mapping Theories of Chilean Cinema in the Worl"" examines
Chilean filmmakers at international film festivals, and political
and affective shifts in the contemporary Chilean documentary. "On
the Margins of Hollywood: Chilean Genre Flicks" explores on the
emergence of Chilean horror cinema and the performance of martial
arts in Chilean films. "Other Texts and Other Lands: Intermediality
and Adaptation Beyond Chile(an Cinema)" covers the intermedial
transfer from Chilean literature to transnational film and from
music video to film. "Migrations of Gender and Genre" contrasts
films depicting transgender people in Chile and beyond.
"Politicized Intimacies, Transnational Affects: Debating
(Post)memory and History" analyzes representations of Chile's
traumatic past in contemporary documentary and approaches mourning
as a politicized act in postdictatorship cultural production.
Intended for scholars, students, and researchers of film and Latin
American studies, Chilean Cinema in the Twenty-First-Century World
evaluates an active and emergent film movement that has yet to
receive sufficient attention in global cinema studies.
In September 1941, a handful of isolationist senators set out to
tarnish Hollywood for warmongering. The United States was largely
divided on the possibility of entering the European War, yet the
immigrant moguls in Hollywood were acutely aware of the conditions
in Europe. After Kristallnacht (the Night of Broken Glass), the
gloves came off. Warner Bros. released the first directly anti-Nazi
film in 1939 with Confessions of a Nazi Spy. Other studios followed
with such films as The Mortal Storm (MGM), Man Hunt (Fox), The Man
I Married (Fox), and The Great Dictator (United Artists). While
these films represented a small percentage of Hollywood's output,
senators took aim at the Jews in Hollywood who were supposedly
"agitating us for war" and launched an investigation that resulted
in Senate Resolution 152. The resolution was aimed at both radio
and movies that "have been extensively used for propaganda purposes
designed to influence the public mind in the direction of
participation in the European War". When the Senate approved a
subcommittee to investigate the intentions of these films, studio
bosses were ready and willing to stand up against the government to
defend their beloved industry. What followed was a complete
embarrassment of the United States Senate and a large victory for
Hollywood as well as freedom of speech. Many works of American film
history only skim the surface of the 1941 investigation of
Hollywood. In Hollywood Hates Hitler! Jew-Baiting, Anti-Nazism, and
the Senate Investigation into Warmongering in Motion Pictures,
author Chris Yogerst examines the years leading up to and through
the Senate Investigation into Motion Picture War Propaganda,
detailing the isolationist senators' relationship with the America
First movement. Through his use of primary documents and lengthy
congressional records, Yogerst paints a picture of the
investigation's daily events both on Capitol Hill and in the
national press.
In Film and Video Intermediality, Janna Houwen innovatively
rewrites the concept of medium specificity in order to answer the
questions "what is meant by video?" and "what is meant by film?"
How are these two media (to be) understood? How can film and video
be defined as distinct, specific media? In this era of mixed moving
media, it is vital to ask these questions precisely and especially
on the media of video and film. Mapping the specificity of film and
video is indispensable in analyzing and understanding the many
contemporary intermedial objects in which film and video are mixed
or combined.
The power of the moving image to conjure marvelous worlds has
usually been to understand it in terms of 'move magic'. On film, a
fascination for enchantment and wonder has transmuted older beliefs
in the supernatural into secular attractions. But this study is not
about the history of special effects or a history of magic. Rather,
it attempts to determine the influence and status of secular magic
on television within complex modes of delivery before discovering
interstices with film. Historically, the overriding concern on
television has been for secular magic that informs and empowers
rather than a fairytale effect that deceives and mystifies. Yet,
shifting notions of the real and the uncertainty associated with
the contemporary world has led to television developing many
different modes that have become capable of constant hybridization.
The dynamic interplay between certainty and indeterminacy is the
key to understanding secular magic on television and film and
exploring the interstices between them. Sexton ranges from the
real-time magic of street performers, such as David Blaine, Criss
Angel, and Dynamo, to Penn and Teller's comedy magic, to the
hypnotic acts of Derren Brown, before finally visiting the 2006
films The Illusionist and The Prestige. Each example charts how the
lack of clear distinctions between reality and illusion in modes of
representation and presentation disrupt older theoretical
oppositions. Secular Magic and the Moving Image not only
re-evaluates questions about modes and styles but raises further
questions about entertainment and how the relations between the
program maker and the audience resemble those between the conjuror
and spectator. By re-thinking these overlapping practices and
tensions and the marking of the indeterminacy of reality on media
screens, it becomes possible to revise our understanding of
inter-medial relations.
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