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Books > Arts & Architecture > Performing arts > Films, cinema
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.
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 the last quarter of the twentieth century a considerable number
of Spanish films were involved in the task of essaying the nation,
that is, of attempting to make it or make it over, of trying to
reshape a national identity inexorably dictated by General
Francisco Franco up to his death. The book explores four major
issues in this regard: 1) the filmic negotiations of the borders of
the nation, focusing particularly on the debated and controversial
development of Basque cinema vis-a-vis the films produced in the
rest of Spain; 2) the persistence of the old obsession with
violence, thought of as an inescapable native trait, in a large
amount of post-dictatorial films; 3) the newfound insatiable
appetite for cinematic travelling, for going out and coming in
through all possible variations of the road and travel movie
genres; 4) and the vindication of the mother qua a benign emblem of
the land and its people, of the nation. There is a narrative in
Spanish cinema, taken as a collective discourse, which ties
together these four cinematic topoi and proposes a nation whose
specificity must be precisely its impurity-difference within as
essence-a hybrid nation located in temporal and spatial rendezvous
of past and present, tradition and novelty, centre and margin,
inside and outside, on and beyond.
A filmmaker whose work exhibits a wide range of styles and
approaches, Louis Malle (1932-1995) was the only French director of
his generation to enjoy a significant career in both France and the
United States. Although Malle began his career alongside members of
the French New Wave like Francois Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, and
Claude Chabrol, he never associated himself with that group. Malle
is perhaps best known for his willingness to take on such difficult
or controversial topics as suicide, incest, child prostitution, and
collaboration with the Nazis during World War II. His filmography
includes narrative films like Zazie dans le Metro, Murmur of the
Heart, Atlantic City, My Dinner with Andre, and Au revoir les
enfants, as well as several major documentaries. In the late 1970s,
Malle moved to the United States, where he worked primarily outside
of the Hollywood studio system. The films of his American period
display his keen outsider's eye, which allowed him to observe
diverse aspects of American life in settings that ranged from
turn-of-the-century New Orleans to present-day Atlantic City and
the Texas Gulf Coast. Louis Malle: Interviews covers the entirety
of Malle's career and features seventeen interviews, the majority
of which are translated into English here for the first time. As
the collection demonstrates, Malle was an extremely intelligent and
articulate filmmaker who thought deeply about his own choices as a
director, the ideological implications of those choices, and the
often-controversial themes treated in his films. The interviews
address such topics as Malle's approach to casting and directing
actors, his attitude toward provocative subject matter and
censorship, his understanding of the relationship between
documentary and fiction film, and the differences between the film
industries in France and the US. Malle also discusses his
sometimes-challenging work with such actors as Brigitte Bardot,
Pierre Blaise, and Brooke Shields, and sheds new light on the
making of his films.
The World of The Dark Crystal invites fans to delve into the
creation and lore of the Jim Henson classic through the evocative
illustrations of Brian Froud, concept designer on the original
film. Since its original release in 1982, Jim Henson's brilliant
film The Dark Crystal has gone on to become a beloved cult classic.
The World of Dark Crystal--the original companion art book to the
film--was created by Henson and internationally renowned artist
Brian Froud to showcase the gorgeous conceptual artwork created for
the film and delve deeper into the lore that underpins Thra, the
magical world at the heart of the film. Now, for the first time in
over a decade, The World of Dark Crystal is back in print,
featuring an abundance of striking art and all of the bonus
material from the 2003 Collector's Edition. Also included in this
exclusive volume is a fascinating essay by Froud on the creative
process behind the making of the film and a facsimile of a booklet
presented to the film's early backers--a gorgeous overview of the
story so rare only a few original copies exist. Beautiful,
imaginative, and powerful, The World of The Dark Crystal celebrates
the landmark fantasy film that continues to win new fans more than
three decades after its release.
In defiance of the alleged "death of romantic comedy," After
"Happily Ever After": Romantic Comedy in the Post-Romantic Age
edited by Maria San Filippo attests to rom-com's continuing
vitality in new modes and forms that reimagine and rejuvenate the
genre in ideologically, artistically, and commercially innovative
ways. No longer the idyllic fairy tale, today's romantic comedies
ponder the realities and complexities of intimacy, fortifying the
genre's gift for imagining human connection through love and
laughter. It has often been observed that the rom-com's "happily
ever after" trope enables the genre to avoid addressing the
challenges of coupled life. This volume's contributors confront how
recent rom-coms contend with a "post-romantic age" of romantic
disillusionment and seismically shifting emotional and relational
bonds. Fifteen chapters contemplate the resurgence of the "radical
romantic comedy" and uncoupling comedy, new approaches in genre
hybridity and serial narrative, and how recent rom-coms deal with
divisive topical issues and contemporary sexual mores from
reproductive politics and marriage equality to hook-up culture and
technology-enabled sex. Rom-coms remain underappreciated and
underexamined-and still largely defined within Hollywood's
parameters of culturally normative coupling and its persistent
marginalization of racial and sexual minorities. Making the case
for taking romantic comedy seriously, this volume employs critical
perspectives drawn from feminist, queer, postcolonial, and race
studies to critique the genre's homogeneity and social and sexual
conservatism, recognizing innovative works inclusive of LGBTQ
people, people of color, and the differently aged and abled.
Encompassing a rich range of screen media from the last decade,
After "Happily Ever After" celebrates works that disrupt and
subvert rom-com fantasy and formula so as to open audience's eyes
along with our hearts. This volume is intended for all readers with
an interest in film, media, and gender studies.
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