The interconnections between histories and memories of the Holocaust, colonialism and extreme violence in post-war French and Francophone fiction and film provide the central focus of this book. It proposes a new model of 'palimpsestic memory', which the author defines as the condensation of different spatio-temporal traces, to describe these interconnections and defines the poetics and the politics of this composite form. In doing so it is argued that a poetics dependent on tropes and techniques, such as metaphor, allegory and montage, establishes connections across space and time which oblige us to perceive cultural memory not in terms of its singular attachment to a particular event or bound to specific ethno-cultural or national communities but as a dynamic process of transfer between different moments of racialized violence and between different cultural communities. The structure of the book allows for both the theoretical elaboration of this paradigm for cultural memory and individual case-studies of novels and films.

Born in 1916 in La Jolla, California, Gregory Peck took up acting in college on a lark that would lead to a career. In his early years, he appeared in a series of summer stock engagements and Broadway shows. He became a star within a year after arriving in Hollywood during World War II, and he won an Academy Award nomination for his second film. From the 1940s to the present, he has played some of film's most memorable and admired characters. This volume provides complete information about Gregory Peck's work in film, television, radio, and the stage. Entries are included for all of his performances, with each entry providing cast and credit information, a plot summary, excerpts from reviews, and critical commentary. A biography and chronology highlight significant events in his life, while a listing of his honors and awards summarizes the recognition he has received over the years. For researchers seeking additional information, the book includes descriptions of special collections holding material related to Peck's work, along with an extensive bibliography of books and articles.

Indian cinematic traditions have always relied on eclectic ways of figuration that combine signs and affects of desire and abomination. That is, incarnations often emerge at critical interfaces between good/bad, Indian/western, self/other, virtue/vice, myth/reality, and so on. Such figures are products of discontinuous assembling processes that cut through dyadic arrangements and pass the same character/body/identity via different, often contradictory, moral economies and sign systems. These many-armed, complex modes of figuration carry a special tenacity in Indian cinema for many reasons, but perhaps most importantly because the template of classical realist narration usually has had limited authority over its proceedings. Perpetually caught between the home and the world, between elation and agony, such cinematic entities carry in them the diverse, contending energies of the overall assembling arena of Indian modernity itself. The essays in this volume consider the issue of figuration in the broadest sense, including formations that are supra-individual, animalistic, divine and machinic.

Examining Brazilian and Argentine cinema of the last fifteen years, this volume charts the emergence of a new concern with the real, bringing together contributions from leading film scholars and critics from Latin America, Europe, and the United States. Comparing 'New Argentine Cinema" and the Brazilian 'Retomada, ' the contributors read across the boundaries between documentary and fiction and trace new modes of deploying performance and re-enactment, found footage, and the interplay between film and television and theater. They shed light on similarities between and variations in different Latin American national cinemas' filmic discourses and production contexts and map these findings onto the larger context of current film theory.

Unlike previous studies of the Soviet avant-garde during the silent era, which have regarded the works of the period as manifestations of directorial vision, this study emphasizes the collaborative principle at the heart of avant-garde filmmaking units and draws attention to the crucial role of camera operators in creating the visual style of the films, especially on the poetics of composition and lighting. In the Soviet Union of the 1920s and early 1930s, owing to the fetishization of the camera as an embodiment of modern technology, the cameraman was an iconic figure whose creative contribution was encouraged and respected. Drawing upon the film literature of the period, Philip Cavendish describes the culture of the camera operator, charts developments in the art of camera operation, and studies the mechanics of key director-cameraman partnerships. He offers detailed analysis of Soviet avant-garde films and draws comparisons between the visual aesthetics of these works and the modernist experiments taking place in the other spheres of the visual arts.

Catastrophes and crises are exceptions. They are disruptions of order. In various ways and to different degrees, they change and subvert what we regard as normal. They may occur on a personal level in the form of traumatic or stressful situations, on a social level in the form of unstable political, financial or religious situations, or on a global level in the form of environmental states of emergency. The main assumption in this book is that, in contrast to the directness of any given catastrophe and its obvious physical, economical and psychological consequences our understanding of catastrophes and crises is shaped by our cultural imagination. No matter in which eruptive and traumatizing form we encounter them, our collective repertoire of symbolic forms, historical sensibilities, modes of representation, and patterns of imagination determine how we identify, analyze and deal with catastrophes and crises.This book presents a series of articles investigating how we address and interpret catastrophes and crises in film, literature, art and theory, ranging from Voltaire's eighteenth-century Europe, haunted by revolutions and earthquakes, to the 1994 genocide in Rwanda to the bleak, prophetic landscapes of Cormac McCarthy.

This book offers insightful analysis of cultural representation in Japanese cinema of the early 21st century. The impact of transnational production practices on films such as Dolls (2002), Sukiyaki Western Django (2007), Tetsuo: The Bullet Man (2009), and 13 Assassins (2010) is considered through textual and empirical analysis. The author discusses contradictory forms of cultural representation - cultural concealment and cultural performance - and their relationship to both changing practices in the Japanese film industry and the global film market. Case studies take into account popular genres such as J Horror and jidaigeki period films, as well as the work of renowned filmmakers Takeshi Kitano, Takashi Miike, Shinya Tsukamoto and Kiyoshi Kurosawa.

This book provides an interdisciplinary and collaborative anthology that seeks to make a compelling and exciting analysis of contemporary Hollywood film texts (and the larger industry and society to which they are dialectically related) in light of Giroux's ideas about public pedagogy. Foreword by Lawrence Grossberg.

Catholic or Protestant, recusant or godly rebel, early modern women reinvented their spiritual and gendered spaces during the reformations in religion in England during the sixteenth century and beyond. These essays explore the ways in which some Englishwomen struggled to erase, rewrite, or reimagine their religious and gender identities.

This volume brings together a range of voices from across the global environmental media community to build a comparative international set of perspectives on 'green' film and television production. Through this, it provides a necessary intervention in environmental media studies that actively foregrounds media infrastructure, production, policy, and labour - that is, the management and practice of media production cultures. Due to its immense sociocultural influence and economic resources, the global screen media industry is at the forefront of raising awareness for the political and social issues resulting from accelerated environmental instability. However, the 21st century relationship between screen media and the environment has another face that demands urgent scrutiny. The advent of the digital age and the vast electrical and Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) infrastructures required to support digital production, distribution, and archiving has resulted in the rapid expansion and diversification of the industry's resource use, infrastructure construction, energy dependency, and consequent waste and emissions production. Addressing these structures is essential to alleviating their environmental and social impact and ensuring that the industry's rhetoric on environmental responsibility is reflected in its practice. As a mitigating counterbalance to the above trends, there has been a heightenedpush for sustainability measures along various lines of industry management, policy, and practice. These initiatives-including the cultural values they reflect, the political economies that form their logic, the managerial and marketing tactics that orchestrate them, and the environmental realities of their implementation-form the central object of inquiry for this collection.

It is often suggested that there are 'secrets' to comedy or that it is 'lightning in a bottle', but the craft of comedy writing can be taught. While comedic tastes change, over time and from person to person, the core underpinning still depends on the comedic geniuses that have paved the way. Great comedy is built upon a strong foundation. In Writing the Comedy Movie, Marc Blake lays out - in an entertainingly readable style - the nuts and bolts of comedy screenwriting. His objective is to clarify the 'rules' of comedy: to contextualize comedy staples such as the double act, slapstick, gross-out, rom com, screwball, satire and parody and to introduce new ones such as the bromance or stoner comedy. He explains the underlying principles of comedy and comedy writing for the screen, along with providing analysis of leading examples of each subgenre.

The life and career of Henry Fonda, one of Hollywood's greatest stars, are detailed in this bio-bibliography that places equal emphasis on the actor's professional and private lives. The reference provides a complete and detailed guide to Fonda's films, television, theater, radio, recordings, awards, video releases, and a comprehensive bibliography. A detailed index makes it easy to look up every significant actor and filmmaker with whom Fonda worked. Also included are filmographies of Jane and Peter Fonda.

Examines the social and historical significance of women's contributions to American silent Film comedy. For many people the term ""silent comedy"" conjures up images of Charlie Chaplin's Little Tramp, Buster Keaton's Stoneface, or Harold Lloyd hanging precariously from the side of a skyscraper. Even people who have never seen a silent film can recognize these comedians at a glance. But what about the female comedians? Gale Henry, Louise Fazenda, Colleen Moore, Constance Talmadge-these and numerous others were wildly popular during the silent fi lm era, appearing in countless motion pictures and earning top salaries, and yet their names have been almost entirely forgotten. As a consequence, recovering their history is all the more compelling given that they laid the foundation for generations of funny women, from Lucille Ball to Carol Burnett to Tina Fey. These women constitute an essential and neglected sector of film history, reflecting a turning point in women's social and political history. Their talent and brave spirit continues to be felt today, and Comic Venus: Women and Comedy in American Silent Film seeks to provide a better understanding of women's experiences in the early twentieth century and to better understand and appreciate the unruly and boundary-breaking women who have followed. The diversity and breadth of archival materials explored in Comic Venus illuminate the social and historical period of comediennes and silent film. It is the first book to explore the overlooked contributions made by comediennes in American silent fi lm. Those with an interest in fi lm and representations of femininity in comedy will be fascinated by the analytical connections and thoroughly researched histories of these women and their groundbreaking movements in comedy and stage.

The detective, as a preeminent figure in all forms of American popular culture, has become the subject of a variety of theoretical exploration. By investigating that figure, these essays demonstrate how the genre embodies all the contradictions of American society and the ways in which literature and the media attempt to handle those contradictions. Issues of class, gender, and race; the interaction of film and literature; and generic evolution are fundamental to any understanding of the American detective in all of his or her forms. Beginning with essays about Raymond Chandler's treatment of women, Part I concentrates on writers of the genre whose detectives embody aspects of American culture in the 20th century. Through examination of the work of Elmore Leonard, Chester Himes, Sue Grafton, and others, these essays look at the influence of film on literature, how ethnicity affects the genre's conventions, and gender issues. Part II looks closely at specific detectives in the media and demonstrates how the film detective has gone from one who upholds the moral order to one who contributes to the continuation of evil. A study of television detectives confirms the necessity of formula and variation to sustain a detective over many seasons.

A comprehensive history of how the conflicts and balances of power in the Maoist revolutionary campaigns from 1951 to 1979 complicated and diversified the meanings of films, this book offers a discursive study of the development of early PRC cinema.

Exploring the dead/alive figure in such films as" The Ring," "American Beauty," ""and" The Elephant Man," Vincent Hausmann charts the spectacular reduction of psychic life and assesses calls for shoring up psychic/social spaces that transfer bodily drives to language. Drawing on expansive histories of cinema--including its relation to scientific/medical visual culture's tracking of the human/animal body, psychoanalysis, phenomenology, and sexuality studies, the book demonstrates that conceptions of psychic (re)animation remain interwoven with notions of cinematic motion, and emerge, embedded, in narratives of relations among analog and digital arts/technologies.

This collection focuses on children and adolescents in Latin American and Spanish cinema from 1960 to the present as witnesses and objects of the spectatorial gaze. The carefully chosen essays survey the representation of the past and the definition of gender and class identity as experienced by young protagonists in films. This volume offers an interdisciplinary approach to the study of Latin American and Spanish film as well as gender studies. Some of the questions addressed in this collection are: what do children and adolescents in Latin American and Spanish film see and how are they seen?

This book looks at a wide range of fiction and film texts, from the 1950s to the present, in order to analyse the ways in which masculinity has been represented in popular culture in Britain and the United States. It covers numerous genres, including spy fiction, science fiction, the Western and police thrillers. Each chapter focuses on key forms of masculinity found in each genre, such as the 'double agent', the 'rogue cop' and the 'citizen-soldier'. Brian Baker takes a broad, contextual approach, placing a detailed discussion of key texts and issues concerning masculinity in their historical and cultural context. Written in a clear, accessible way, it explores the changing representation of men over the last fifty years.

This book is thorough, well organized, and useful. It establishes background on the Australian understanding of the American dream, Austalian photography, image, and subject matter, and American influence on Australian cinema. Brief chapters summarize film theory, applicable mass communication theory, and financial practices of the Australian motion picture industry. Choice . . . presents an examination of major movies made in Australia in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The author argues that part of the reason for the success of Australian cinema in recent years may lie with America's identification with a simpler culture, an almost `wild west' atmosphere. To explore his thesis the author first offers a short history of the Australian cinema, and then a theory of film as mass communication. Communication Booknotes Lewis introduces Australian films from the 1920's and 30's and then focuses on thirty films produced between 1975 and 1987. He suggests that part of the reason for Australia's film success may lie in America's identification with a simpler culture and the portrayal of wild west type territory which is often found in Australian films. He also points out that various aspects of American culture have seeped into Australian culture and now appear in their films, making them more appealing to an American audience. He concludes this insightful study with a projection analysis for the future of Australian cinema. With its up-to-date content and analytical approach, this book will be valuable to anyone concerned with mass communication and society, cinema studies, media, or U.S.-Australian relations.

This book discusses British cinema's representation of the Great War during the 1920s. It argues that popular cinematic representations of the war offered surviving audiences a language through which to interpret their recent experience, and traces the ways in which those interpretations changed during the decade.

Movie audiences seem drawn, almost compelled, toward tales of the horrific and the repulsive. Partly because horror continues to evolve radically - every time the genre itself is deemed dead, it seems to come up with another twist - it has been one of the most often-dissected genres. Here, author Kendall Phillips selects ten of the most popular and influential films of the genre - including Dracula, Night of the Living Dead, Halloween, The Silence of the Lambs, and Scream, each of which has become a film landmark and spawned countless imitators, and all having implications that transcend their cinematic influence and achievement. By tracing the production history, contemporary audience response, and lasting cultural influence of each picture, Phillips offers a unique new approach to thinking about our attraction to horror films, and the ways in which they reflect both our cultural and individual fears. Though stylistically and thematically very different, all of these movies have scared millions of eager moviegoers. This book tries to figure out why.

(Applause Books). William Goldman, who holds two Academy Awards for his screenwriting ( Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and All the President's Men ), and is author of the perennial best seller Adventures in the Screen Trade, scrutinizes the Hollywood movie scene of the past decade in this engaging collection. With the film-world-savvy and razor-sharp commentary for which he is known, he provides an insider's take on today's movie world as he takes a look at "the big picture" on Hollywood, screenwriting, and the future of American cinema. Paperback.