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Books > Arts & Architecture > Performing arts > Films, cinema
Examining post-1990s Indie cinema alongside more mainstream
films, Brereton explores the emergence of smart independent
sensibility and how films break the classic linear narratives that
have defined Hollywood and its alternative "art" cinema. The work
explores how bonus features on contemporary smart films speak to
new generational audiences.
The use of film and video is commonplace in contemporary theatre,
viewed by some as contaminating theatre's 'liveness', by others as
inevitable and desirable. After tracing the history of current
approaches back to early practitioners such as M li s, Painl v and
Piscator, "Staging the Screen" explores in detail recent
productions by Svoboda, the Wooster Group, Forkbeard Fantasy,
Forced Entertainment, Station House Opera, and Lepage. It charts
the impact of developing technologies and addresses critical issues
raised by multi-media and intermedia work.
Established in 1955, the Leipzig International Documentary Film
Festival became a central arena for staging the cultural politics
of the German Democratic Republic, both domestically and in
relation to West Germany and the rest of the world. Screened
Encounters represents the definitive history of this key event,
recounting the political and artistic exchanges it enabled from its
founding until German unification, and tracing the outsize
influence it exerted on international cultural relations during the
Cold War.
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.
"Cinema After Fascism "considers how postwar European films
glance ambivalently backward from the postwar period to the fascist
era and delves into issues of gender certainties and spectatorship.
In this period of film, familiar structures of epistemology and
historiography reappear as ghostly imprints on postwar celluloid,
and the remnants of fascist subjectivity walk the streets of
postwar cities. Through new perspectives on the films of Roberto
Rossellini, Billy Wilder, Carol Reed, Alain Resnais, and Marguerite
Duras, this book examines the ways in which filmmakers acknowledge
the fascist past. Siobhan S. Craig reveals that the attempts to
reconfigure the idioms of cinema are never fully naturalized and
remain highly precarious constructions.
This book pairs close readings of some of the classic writings of
existentialist philosophers with interpretations of films that
reveal striking parallels to each of those texts, demonstrating
their respective philosophies in action. Individual chapters
include significant excerpts from the original texts being
discussed and illustrated. Pairings cover Schopenhauer and Waking
Life, Stirner and Hud, Kierkegaard and Winter Light, Nietzsche and
The Fountainhead, Heidegger, Blade Runner and The Thin Red Line,
Camus, Leaving Las Vegas and Missing, Sartre, Husbands and Wives,
and Michael Collins, de Beauvoir and Revolutionary Road, and
Foucault and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Movies with Meaning
offers a clear and insightful examination of the relationships
between existential philosophers and film, providing both digests
of their most significant texts and cinematic illustrations of what
each had in mind. For the first time in one place, this book
analyses the implications for film of the perspectives of a wide
array of the most significant existentialist thinkers. Organized
chronologically, like most existentialism anthologies, this is an
ideal textbook for an intermediate level existentialism course, or
as a companion to a selection of primary texts.
"World Cinema's 'Dialogues' with Hollywood" looks at the way
Hollywood has interacted with a range of national and transnational
cinemas, from German Expressionism to Bollywood and Chinese film.
While Hollywood has had a profound impact upon the history of the
medium - suggesting that if there is 'dialogue' to be identified it
is one where Hollywood has done all the talking - it is impossible
to understand this history without examining the impact of World
Cinema's economic, aesthetic and political relationship with
Hollywood.
"Masculinity and Film Performance" is a lively and engaging study
of the complex relationship between masculinity and performance on
and off screen, focusing on the performance of "male angst" in
American film and popular culture during the 1990s and 2000s.
Building on theories of film acting, masculinity, performance, and
cultural studies, this book establishes a framework for studying
screen masculinity and provides close analysis of a range of
performers and performance styles. It also examines the specific
social, cultural, historical and political contexts that have
shaped and affected the performance of masculinity on screen, such
as the aging of the baby boom and the launch of Viagra onto the
marketplace, the "Iron John" and "Wild Man" phenomenon, and the
racially marked fatherhood crisis. Drawing from an array of
illuminating film and actor case studies, Donna Peberdy offers a
significant contribution to the emerging field of screen
performance studies.
First published in 2002, Marek Haltof's seminal volume was the
first comprehensive English-language study of Polish cinema,
providing a much-needed survey of one of Europe's most
distinguished-yet unjustly neglected-film cultures. Since then,
seismic changes have reshaped Polish society, European politics,
and the global film industry. This thoroughly revised and updated
edition takes stock of these dramatic shifts to provide an
essential account of Polish cinema from the nineteenth century to
today, covering such renowned figures as Kieslowski, Skolimowski,
and Wajda along with vastly expanded coverage of documentaries,
animation, and television, all set against the backdrop of an
ever-more transnational film culture.
Examining 40 cycles or themes and more than 1,000 silent films,
the author attempts to discern how the screen reflected
contemporary social, political, and national trends during the
silent years. The period has been divided into the early silent
years (1900-1919), with films of one or two reels dominating for
the first 15 years, and the later silent period (1920-1929), known
as the Golden Age of the Silents, in which feature-length films
dominated. One of the author's goals is to establish the success,
and sometimes the failure, of these films to capture the social and
political times of their release. Other film books approach the
dramas and comedies by genre, not by specific cycles, which makes
this work unique.
The book focuses on both short works and feature-length films
that are generally arranged chronologically under specific
chapters. Each entry lists the title, year of release, director,
and original source, if provided by the film. The major players are
often included within the plot summary and analysis. Remakes and
films with alternate titles are noted.
This is a clear and concise overview of and introduction to
Deleuze's theories of cinema. "Cinema After Deleuze" offers a clear
and lucid introduction to Deleuze's writings on cinema which will
appeal both to undergraduates and specialists in film studies and
philosophy. The book provides explanations of the many categories
and classifications found in Deleuze's two landmark books on cinema
and offers assessments of a range of films and directors, including
works by John Ford, Sergei Eisenstein, Alfred Hitchcock,
Michelangelo Antonioni and Alain Resnais. Richard Rushton also
discusses contemporary directors such as Steven Spielberg, Lars von
Trier, Martin Scorsese and Wong Kar-Wai in the light of Deleuze's
theories and in doing so brings Deleuze's Cinema books right up to
date. "Cinema After Deleuze" demonstrates why Deleuze is rightly
considered today to be one of the great theorists of cinema. The
book is essential reading for students in philosophy and film
studies alike. "The Deleuze Encounters" series provides students in
philosophy and related subjects with concise and accessible
introductions to the application of Deleuze's work in key areas of
study. Each book demonstrates how Deleuze's ideas and concepts can
enhance present work in a particular field.
Film theory is in crisis. The dominant psychoanalytical paradigm is
contested by cognitive models and post-theory. In the background is
a wider crisis in cultural studies, particularly as regards the
public role of the politically engaged intellectual.
In this major new study Slavoj Zizek challenges both
cognitivist-historicist accounts of cinema and conventional film
theory. Arguing that the reading of Lacan operative in the '70s and
'80s was particularly reductive, Zizek asserts that there is
"another Lacan," in reference to whom film theory, cultural
studies, and critical thought as such can be transformed and
revitalized. He supports and expands this argument with an
extensive reading of the work of Kieslowski and, in a substantial
appendix, with a discussion of the relationship between
Christianity, Gothicism and the "progressive digitalisation of our
life-world."
Mirror Images: Popular Culture and Education is the first
international and multidisciplinary effort to coalesce knowledge on
education and popular culture studied as broad phenomena and not as
a collection of case studies. In this volume, popular culture has
been thematically treated as it appears in a variety of media,
including movies, digital games, advertising, television, popular
songs, and the internet. The book considers education in both
formal and informal settings, and looks critically at the accepted
dichotomy between education and popular culture. It argues that
popular culture is capable of educating and that education shares
many characteristics with popular culture, and tries to overcome
these dichotomous relationships while also trying to clarify the
reciprocal effects between the two. The book calls disciplinary and
media boundaries into question in an effort to widen the
possibility of enlarging the vocabulary and the verbs of all that
stays unnamed by what is considered knowledge.
This book is the first in-depth cultural history of cinema's
polyvalent and often contradictory appropriations of Shakespearean
drama and performance traditions. The author argues that these
adapatations have helped shape multiple aspects of film, from
cinematic style to genre and narrative construction.
This is the first comprehensive study of Nobel Laureate Samuel
Beckett's innovative work for the screen. "Samuel Beckett's Plays
on Film and Television "provides meticulous analysis of every play
Beckett wrote, directed, or adapted for the screen. Herren studies
Beckett's use of "memory machines"--technological media for
channeling personal, cultural, philosophical, and artistic ghosts
from the past. Having conjured these ghosts, Beckett "decomposes"
them in order to recompose them for distinctly innovative use.
Herren traces this countraditional approach to tradition as
Beckett's signature style for film and television. The book
concludes with a consideration of the "Beckett on Film" project,
where Herren defends the vital need for creative freedom in future
productions of Beckett's plays. With this publication, the film and
television plays can now assume their rightful place alongside
Beckett's remarkable fiction and stage plays, collectively
constituting one of the most innovative artistic achievements of
the twentieth century.
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