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Books > Arts & Architecture > Performing arts > Films, cinema
In Black to Nature: Pastoral Return and African American Culture,
author Stefanie K. Dunning considers both popular and literary
texts that range from Beyonce's Lemonade to Jesmyn Ward's Salvage
the Bones. These key works restage Black women in relation to
nature. Dunning argues that depictions of protagonists who return
to pastoral settings contest the violent and racist history that
incentivized Black disavowal of the natural world. Dunning offers
an original theoretical paradigm for thinking through race and
nature by showing that diverse constructions of nature in these
texts are deployed as a means of rescrambling the teleology of the
Western progress narrative. In a series of fascinating close
readings of contemporary Black texts, she reveals how a range of
artists evoke nature to suggest that interbeing with nature signals
a call for what Jared Sexton calls ""the dream of Black
Studies""-abolition. Black to Nature thus offers nuanced readings
that advance an emerging body of critical and creative work at the
nexus of Blackness, gender, and nature. Written in a clear,
approachable, and multilayered style that aims to be as poignant as
nature itself, the volume offers a unique combination of
theoretical breadth, narrative beauty, and broader perspective that
suggests it will be a foundational text in a new critical turn
towards framing nature within a cultural studies context.
The Cinema of Sofia Coppola provides the first comprehensive
analysis of Coppola's oeuvre that situates her work broadly in
relation to contemporary artistic, social and cultural currents.
Suzanne Ferriss considers the central role of fashion - in its
various manifestations - to Coppola's films, exploring fashion's
primacy in every cinematic dimension: in film narrative;
production, costume and sound design; cinematography; marketing,
distribution and auteur branding. She also explores the theme of
celebrity, including Coppola's own director-star persona, and
argues that Coppola's auteur status rests on an original and
distinct visual style, derived from the filmmaker's complex
engagement with photography and painting. Ferriss analyzes each of
Coppola's six films, categorizing them in two groups: films where
fashion commands attention (Marie Antoinette, The Beguiled and The
Bling Ring) and those where clothing and material goods do not
stand out ostentatiously, but are essential in establishing
characters' identities and relationships (The Virgin Suicides, Lost
in Translation and Somewhere). Throughout, Ferriss draws on
approaches from scholarship on fashion, film, visual culture, art
history, celebrity and material culture to capture the complexities
of Coppola's engagement with fashion, culture and celebrity. The
Cinema of Sofia Coppola is beautifully illustrated with color
images from her films, as well as artworks and advertising
artefacts.
Coraline (Henry Selick, 2009) is stop-motion studio LAIKA's
feature-length debut based on the popular children's novel by
British author Neil Gaiman. Heralding a revival in global interest
in stop-motion animation, the film is both an international
cultural phenomenon and a breakthrough moment in the technological
evolution of the craft. This open access collection brings together
an international group of practitioners and scholars to examine
Coraline's place in animation history and culture, dissect its
politics, and unpack its role in the technological and aesthetic
development of its medium. More broadly, it celebrates stop motion
as a unique and enduring artform while embracing its capacity to
evolve in response to cultural, political, and technological
changes, as well as shifting critical and audience demands. Divided
into three sections, this volume's chapters situate Coraline within
an interconnected network of historical, industrial, discursive,
theoretical, and cultural contexts. They place the film in
conversation with the medium's aesthetic and technological history,
broader global intellectual and political traditions, and questions
of animation reception and spectatorship. In doing so, they invite
recognition - and appreciation - of the fact that Coraline occupies
many liminal spaces at once. It straddles the boundary between
children's entertainment and traditional 'adult' genres, such as
horror and thriller. It complicates a seemingly straight(forward)
depiction of normative family life with gestures of queer
resistance. Finally, it marks a pivotal point in stop-motion
animation's digital turn. Following the film's recent tenth
anniversary, the time is right to revisit its production history,
evaluate its cultural and industry impact, and celebrate its legacy
as contemporary stop-motion cinema's gifted child. As the first
book-length academic study of this contemporary animation classic,
this volume serves as an authoritative introduction and a primary
reference on the film for scholars, students, practitioners, and
animation fans. The ebook editions of this book are available open
access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on
bloomsburycollections.com.
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.
Producing for Film and Television offers a comprehensive overview
of the different stages of film production, from development of an
idea to delivery, distribution and festival entry. Written from the
producer's point of view, the book guides the reader through each
stage of the process, offering helpful tips, industry guidance and
example paperwork. Supported with over fifty illustrations and
photographs, this new book includes advice on copyright and working
with writers; pitching your idea; the roles within production
teams; post-production work and marketing and distribution. With
helpful information on industry terms and timeframes, this
essential guide is aimed at film students and aspiring producers
who want a greater understanding of the role of the independent
producer or is planning their own production, whether feature
length, short film or drama series.
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