How do we understand types of cinema that offer experiences of discomfort, awkwardness or disquieting uncertainty? This book examines a number of examples of such work at the heart of contemporary art and indie film. While the commercial mainstream tends to offer comforting viewing experiences - or moments of discomfort that exist largely to be overcome - The Cinema of Discomfort analyses films in which discomfort is offered in a sustained manner. Cinema of this kind confronts us with material such as distinctly uncomfortable sexual encounters. It invites us into uncertain relationships with awkward and sometimes unlikable characters. It presents us with challenging behaviour or what are presented as uncomfortable realities. It often refuses information on which to base judgments. More discomfortingly, cinema of this kind tends to provoke uncertainty at the level of what emotional responses we are encouraged to have towards difficult, sometimes controversial, characters or events. The Cinema of Discomfort examines a number of case-studies, including Palindromes by Todd Solondz (US) and Dogtooth from Yorgos Lanthimos (Greece), along with other examples from Austria, Sweden, the UK, the US and Germany. Offering close textual analysis of the manner in which discomfort is generated, it also asks how we should understand the appeal of such work to certain viewers and how the existence of films of this kind can be explained, as products of both their socio-cultural context and the more particular institutional realms of art and indie film.

Peter Jackson is one of the most acclaimed and influential contemporary film-makers. This is the first book to combine the examination of Jackson's career with an in-depth critical analysis of his films, thus providing readers with the most comprehensive study of the New Zealand film-maker's body of work. The first section of the book concentrates on Jackson's biography, surveying the evolution of his career from the director of cult slapstick movies such as Meet the Feebles (1989) and Braindead (1992) to an entrepreneur responsible for the foundation of companies such as Wingnut Films and Weta Workshop, and finally to producer and director of mega blockbuster projects such as The Lord of the Rings (2001-2003) and The Hobbit (2012-2013). The book further examines Jackson's work at the level of production, reception and textuality, along with key collaborative relationships and significant themes associated with Jackson's films. The examination of Peter Jackson's work and career ties into significant academic debates, including the relationship between national cinema and global Hollywood; the global dispersal of film production; the relationship between film authorship and industrial modes of production; the impact of the creative industries on the construction of national identity; and new developments in film technology.

This is the first book to examine the various uses of the Arthurian legend in Hollywood film, covering films from the 1920s to the present. The authors use five representational categories: intertextual collage (or "cult" film); melodrama, which focuses on the love triangle; conservative propaganda, pervasive during the Cold War; the Hollywood epic; and the postmodern quest, which commonly employs the grail portion of the legend. Arguing that filmmakers rely on the audience's rudimentary familiarity with the legend, the authors show that only certain features of the legend are activated at any particular time. This fascinating study shows us how the legend has been adapted and how through the popular medium of Hollywood films, the Arthurian legend has survived and flourished.

In this study of fandom at its most intense, Will Brooker examines the "Star Wars" phenomenon from the audience's perspective, and discovers that the saga exerts a powerful influence over the social, cultural and spiritual lives of those drawn into its myth. From a Boba Fett-loving police officer in Indiana to the webmistress of the "Star Wars chicks" site; from an 11-year-old boy in south London to a Baptist Church in South Carolina; from the director of "George Lucas in Love" to the custodians of the Jedi Hurtaholics Archive - Brooker unearths a seemingly endless array of fans who use and interpret the saga in a number of creative ways This book explores what it means to be a fan, examining the role of gender and generation in creating sub-communities within the larger group of Star Wars devotees. It discusses the films and stories created by thousands of fans around the world, and asks whether this apparently unstoppable creativity can be controlled by an organization that has - completely unintentionally - positioned itself in the role of the Empire and turned loyal fans into Rebels. Ultimately, the book serves as a testament to the extraordinary power of the "Star Wars" films

Since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, transnational European cinema has risen, not only in terms of production but also in terms of a growing focus on multiethnic themes within the European context. This shift from national to trans-European filmmaking has been profoundly influenced by such historical developments as the collapse of the Iron Curtain and the subsequent ongoing enlargement of the European Union. In European Cinema after the Wall: Screening East-West Mobility, Leen Engelen and Kris Van Heuckelom have brought together essays that critically examine representations of post-1989 migration from the former Eastern Bloc to Western Europe, uncovering an array of common tropes and narrative devices that characterize the influences and portrayals of immigration. Featuring essays by contributors from backgrounds as divergent as film studies, Slavic and Russian studies, comparative literature, sociology, contemporary history, and communication and media studies, this volume will appeal to scholars of film, European history, and those interested in the impact of migration, diaspora, and the global flow of cinematic culture.

Since Toy Story, its first feature in 1995, Pixar Animation Studios has produced a string of commercial and critical successes including Monsters, Inc.; WALL-E; Finding Nemo; The Incredibles; Cars; and Up. In nearly all of these films, male characters are prominently featured, usually as protagonists. Despite obvious surface differences, these figures often follow similar narratives toward domestic fulfillment and civic engagement. However, these characters are also hypermasculine types whose paths lead to postmodern social roles more revelatory of the current "crisis" that sociologists and others have noted in boy culture. In Pixar's Boy Stories: Masculinity in a Postmodern Age, Shannon R. Wooden and Ken Gillam examine how boys become men and how men measure up in films produced by the animation giant. Offering counterintuitive readings of boy culture, this book describes how the films quietly but forcefully reiterate traditional masculine norms in terms of what they praise and what they condemn. Whether toys or ants, monsters or cars, Pixar's males succeed or fail according to the "boy code," the relentlessly policed gender standards rampant in American boyhood. Structured thematically around major issues in contemporary boy culture, the book discusses conformity, hypermasculinity, social hierarchies, disability, bullying, and an implicit critique of postmodern parenting. Unprecedented in its focus on Pixar and boys in its films, this book offers a valuable perspective to current conversations about gender and cinema. Providing a critical discourse about masculine roles in animated features, Pixar's Boy Stories will be of interest to scholars of film, media, and gender studies and to parents.

South Korea is home to one of the most vibrant film industries in the world today, producing movies for a strong domestic market that are also drawing the attention of audiences worldwide. This book presents a comprehensive analysis of some of the most well-known and incendiary South Korean films of the millennial decade from nine major directors. Building his analysis on contemporary film theory and philosophy, as well as interviews and other primary sources, Steve Choe makes a case that these often violent films pose urgent ethical dilemmas central to life in the age of neoliberal globalization.

The major essays of the distinguished and prolific Australian-born film critic Adrian Martin have long been difficult to access, so this anthology, which collects highlights of his work in one volume, will be welcomed throughout film studies. Martin offers indepth analysis of many genres of films while providing a broad understanding of the history of cinema and the history of film criticism and culture. These vibrant, highly personal essays, written between 1982 and 2016, balance breadth across cinema theory with almost encyclopedic detail, ranging between aesthetics, cinephilia, film genre, criticism, philosophy, and cultural politics. Mysteries of Cinema circumscribes a special cultural period that began with the dream of critique as a form of poetic writing, and today arrives at collaborative experiments in audiovisual essays. Throughout these essays, Martin pursues a particular vision of what cinema has been, what it is, and what it still could be.

Challenging established views and assumptions about traditions and practices of filmmaking in the African diaspora, this three-volume set offers readers a researched critique on black film. Volume One of this landmark series on African cinema draws together foundational scholarship on its history and evolution. Beginning with the ideological project of colonial film to legitimize the economic exploitation and cultural hegemony of the African continent during imperial rule to its counter-historical formation and theorization. It comprises essays by film scholars and filmmakers alike, among them Roy Armes, Med Hondo, Fèrid Boughedir, Haile Gerima, Oliver Barlet, Teshome Gabriel, and David Murphy, including three distinct dossiers: a timeline of key dates in the history of African cinema; a comprehensive chronicle and account of the contributions by African women in cinema; and a homage and overview of Ousmane Sembène, the "Father" of African cinema.

Asian Popular Culture: New, Hybrid, and Alternate Media, edited by John A. Lent and Lorna Fitzsimmons, is an interdisciplinary study of popular culture practices in Asia, including regional and national studies of Japan, China, South Korea, and Australia. The contributors explore the evolution and intersection of popular forms (gaming, manga, anime, film, music, fiction, YouTube videos) and explicate the changing cultural meanings of these media in historical and contemporary contexts. At this study's core are the roles popular culture plays in the construction of national and regional identity. Common themes in this text include the impact of new information technology, whether it be on gaming in East Asia, music in 1960s' Japan, or candlelight vigils in South Korea; hybridity, of old and new versions of the Chinese game Weiqi, of online and hand-held gaming in South Korea and Japan that developed localized expressions, or of United States culture transplanted to Japan in post-World War II, leading to the current otaku (fan boy) culture; and the roles that nationalism and grassroots and alternative media of expression play in contemporary Asian popular culture. This is an essential study in understanding the role of popular culture in Asia's national and regional identity.

The idea of cinephilia is a crucial one for students of the cinema, but it is often associated with a bygone arthouse era. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, corporatism, public relations and bottom-line accounting seem to govern mainstream film-making. Formula-driven Hollywood blockbusters dominate the world marketplace. In times like these can 'the love of cinema' still flourish? In fact contemporary cinema is stunningly varied and rich. From Taiwan and Iran to Brazil and the Baltic states, it is flourishing and constantly mutating. Directors like Abbas Kiarostami, Hou Hsiao-hsien and Tsai Ming-liang are making extraordinary films that are the equal of the great classics, previously unrecognised works from the past are being discovered, and new definitions and boundaries of genres are being formulated. Even when this work is not widely distributed it is seen at film festivals on every continent and available on DVD; and it is being discussed in a proliferating number of print and web publications. Those who follow and share such work, as contributors from around the world demonstrate in this book, are forming new kinds of critical communities that enable significant exchanges between cultures at a time when other forces seem bent on keeping them mutually isolated. In contrast to any talk of 'the death of cinema', Movie Mutations pronounces the art form alive, well, and still developing in new and unforeseen directions. In weaving together transnational discussions and debates, Movie Mutations shows why the idea of cinephilia is just as relevant today as it ever was.

Jeffrey Jacob ""J. J."" Abrams (b. 1966) decided to be a filmmaker at the age of eight after his grandfather took him on the back-lot tour of Universal Studios. Throughout his career, Abrams has dedicated his life to storytelling and worked tirelessly to become one of the best-known and most successful creators in Hollywood. The thirty interviews collected in this volume span Abrams's entire career, covering his many projects from television and film to video games and theater. The volume also includes a 1982 article about Abrams as a teen sensation whose short film High Voltage won the Audience Award at a local film festival and garnered the attention of Steven Spielberg. Beginning his career as a screenwriter on films like Regarding Henry and Armageddon, Abrams transitioned into a TV mogul with hit shows like Alias and Lost. Known for his imaginative work across several genres, from science fiction and horror to action and drama, Abrams's most successful films include Mission: Impossible III; Star Trek; and Star Wars: The Force Awakens, which went on to become the highest-grossing film of all time in the United States. His production company, Bad Robot, has produced innovative genre projects like Cloverfield and Westworld. Abrams also cowrote a novel with Doug Dorst called S., and, most recently, he produced the Broadway run of The Play That Went Wrong. In conversations with major publications and independent blogs, Abrams discusses his long-standing collaborations with others in the field, explains his affinity for mystery, and describes his approach to creating films like those he gravitated to as a child, revealing that the award-winning director-writer-producer is a fan before he is a filmmaker.

Czech animator Jan Svankmajer is one of the most distinctive and influential of contemporary filmmakers. As a leading member of the Prague Surrealist Group, his work is linked to a rich avant-garde tradition and an uncompromising moral stance that brought frequent tensions with the authorities in the normalization years following the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. Svankmajer's formative influences have been the pre-war surrealists, the Prague of Rudolf II, experimental theatre, folk puppetry and, above all, the political traumas of the past 50 years. Like his contemporaries--including playwright president Vaclav Havel, and, in exile, novelist Milan Kundera and filmmaker Milos Forman--Svankmajer's dominant life experiences have been the realities of the Stalinist system, both the explicit state terror of the 1950s and the Brezhnevist neo-Stalinism of the 1970s and the 1980s.

After training in puppetry and working in the Prague theatre, he made his first film in 1964. He directed a number of important films in the 1960s, including the live-action and Kafkaesque "Byt" ("The Flat," 1968) and "Zahrada" ("The Garden," 1968) and consolidated his international reputation with "Moznosti dialogu" ("Dimensions of Dialogue") in 1982. Since then, he has continued his highly visual and poetic approach in two feature-length films, "Neco z Alenky" ("Alice," 1987) and "Lekce Faust" ("Faust," 1994). As a filmmaker, Svankmajer is constantly exploring and analyzing his concern with power, fear and anxiety, confrontation and destruction, magic, the irrational and the absurd, and displays a bleak outlook on the possibilities for dialogue. In challenging accepted narrative, the bourgeoisie of realism (nezval), and the thematic and formal conventions of the mainstream media, Svankmajer's work is startlingly dynamic, subversive, and confrontational.

In the late 1950s, Mike Nichols (1931-2014) and Elaine May (b. 1932) soared to superstar status as a sketch comedy duo in live shows and television. After their 1962 breakup, both went on to long and distinguished careers in other areas of show business - mostly separately, but sporadically together again. In Nichols and May: Interviews, twenty-seven interviews and profiles ranging over more than five decades tell their stories in their own words. Nichols quickly became an A-list stage and film director, while May, like many women in her field, often found herself thwarted in her attempts to make her distinctive voice heard in projects she could control herself. Yet, in recent years, Nichols's work as a filmmaker has been perhaps unfairly devalued, while May's accomplishments, particularly as a screenwriter and director, have become more appreciated, leading to her present widespread acceptance as a groundbreaking female artist and a creative genius of and for our time. Nichols gave numerous interviews during his career, and editor Robert E. Kapsis culled hundreds of potential selections to include in this volume the most revealing and those that focus on his filmmaking career. May, however, was a reluctant interview subject at best. She often subverted the whole interview process, producing instead a hilarious parody or even a comedy sketch - with or without the cooperation of the sometimes-oblivious interviewer. With its contrasting selection of interviews conventional and oddball, this volume is an important contribution to the study of the careers of Nichols and May.

Post-War Hollywood Cinema is an accessible and comprehensive history of the American film industry, from 1946 to 1962. Drew Casper chronicles the restructuring of Hollywood cinema against the backdrop of the major political, economic, and social changes taking place after World War II.
The most complete of its kind, this innovative book looks at a broad range of topics as it examines the cultural history, business practices, new technologies, censorship standards, emerging genres, and styles of postwar cinema. In-depth discussions of important and often-neglected films illustrate the culture/filmmaking interface, and demonstrate the triumphs and failures of Hollywood's new methods. Casper also includes valuable footnotes and a select bibliography.
An ideal text for students of time-specific and broad survey courses, as well as for the home viewer devotee, Post-War Hollywood is an entertaining resource for readers studying this unique period of the American film industry.

This is a unique collection of essays exploring the treatment of rape in the 'art cinema' genre - this is an interdisciplinary, groundbreaking study. Art cinema has always had an aura of the erotic, with the term being at times a euphemism for European films that were more explicit than their American counterparts. This focus on sexuality, whether buried or explicit, has meant a recurrence of the theme of rape, nearly as ubiquitous as in mainstream film. This anthology explores the representation of rape in art cinema. Its aim is to highlight the prevalence and multiple functions of rape in this prestigious mode of filmmaking as well as to question the meaning of its ubiquity and versatility. "Rape in Art Cinema" brings together well-known critics alongside emerging voices and is international in scope, with contributors from Canada, the U.S. and Britain analyzing Japanese, French, American, Spanish and Danish films. It is also interdisciplinary in approach: scholars from philosophy, film studies, religion and literature come together to investigate the representation of rape in some of cinema's most cherished films.

The definitive account of the motion picture phenomenon, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial: The Ultimate Visual History is a must-have for fans of the beloved Steven Spielberg classic. Documenting the complete history of E.T., the book explores Spielberg's initial inspiration for the story, the challenging shoot, and the record-breaking success, as well as the film's endurance, examining the merchandising it inspired and the reasons E.T. holds a permanent place in the hearts of movie fans the world over. E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial: The Ultimate Visual History features exclusive interviews with key members of the creative team, including cast and crew. Filled with visual treasures, the book also includes rare and never-before-seen imagery from the Amblin Entertainment archives, including on-set photography, concept art, and storyboards, plus a wealth of removable insert items, such as annotated script pages, studio memos, preliminary sketches, and more. The perfect tribute to a film that defines movie magic, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial: The Ultimate Visual History is the final word on a modern masterpiece.

By the time Stagecoach made John Wayne a silver-screen star in 1939, the thirty-one-year-old was already a veteran of more than sixty films, having twirled six-guns and foiled cattle rustlers in B Westerns for five studios. By the 1950s he was Hollywood's most popular actor-an Academy Award nominee destined to become an American icon. This biography reveals the story of his early life, illustrated with rare archival images.