Victor Perkins (1936-2016) was a foundational figure for the study of film both as a writer and as an educationalist and teacher who played a key role in establishing film within British higher education. Best known for his 1972 book Film as Film, Perkins has a worldwide reputation within film studies that has been enhanced in recent years by the interest among emerging scholars in the practices of detailed film criticism. His extensive writing in journals and edited collections, spanning sixty years, is less well known, despite its importance and quality, partly because much of it was published in small magazines with limited distribution. V. F. Perkins on Movies: Collected Shorter Film Criticism, edited by Douglas Pye, makes it possible to see his writing as a coherent body of work, developed over a long career, and to appreciate its great historical and cultural significance. Part 1 of the book covers Perkins's early articles from 1960 to 1972, showing the emergence of ways of thinking about criticism and movies that remained constant throughout his career. Perkins was one of a small group of British writers who pioneered the serious and systematic discussion of Hollywood cinema. Beginning at the University of Oxford in the pages of Oxford Opinion, and then in Movie, the journal they established in 1962, these writers mounted a sustained critique of established writing on film, arguing for a criticism rooted in the detailed decisions that make up the complex texture of a film. The work Perkins published in the 1980s and beyond, which makes up part 2 of this volume, was resolute in upholding his critical values. It elaborated his approach in studies of individual movies and their makers and also reflected on major critical and conceptual issues, while maintaining his lifelong commitment to writing accessibly in ordinary language. V. F. Perkins on Movies gives unimpeded access to one of the most distinctive and distinguished of critical voices and will be widely welcomed by academics, students of film, and informed film enthusiasts.

Winner of the MLA Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for Italian Studies 2016 Winner of the American Association for Italian Studies Book Prize 2016 This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. Written by one of Europe's leading critics, Ecocriticism and Italy reads the diverse landscapes of Italy in the cultural imagination. From death in Venice as a literary trope and petrochemical curse, through the volcanoes of Naples to wine, food and environmental violence in Piedmont, Serenella Iovino explores Italy as a text where ecology and imagination meet. Examining cases where justice, society and politics interlace with stories of land and life, pollution and redemption, the book argues that literature, art and criticism are able to transform the unexpressed voices of these suffering worlds into stories of resistance and practices of liberation.

Some of the most memorable movies of Hollywood's Golden Age were based on novels that never received the acclaim they deserved. No-one who saw Rod Steiger in The Pawnbroker could forget the actor's wrenching performance but does anyone remember the author of the book on which the film was based? The same can be said of Jane Fonda in They Shoot Horses, Don't They?, Greta Garbo in Susan Lenox, and Humphrey Bogart in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. This book retrieves these novels and re-evaluates the careers of the eight neglected novelists whose works inspired eight different directors - among them Stanley Kubrick, Sidney Lumet, John Huston and Sidney Pollack. Each chapter offers detailed analysis on both the original text and the resulting movie. Taken together, the double examination of novel and film raises some important questions about the nature and problems of cinematic adaptation.

In the last twenty years or so, numerous mainstream movies have drawn from the ideas and images of ancient thought to address the collapse of appearance and reality. These films have consistently featured the Gnostic currents that emerged from Plato: not only Gnosticism itself but also Cabbala and alchemy. Despite important differences, these traditions have provided filmmakers with ready-made ruminations on the relationship between surface and depth as well as with engaging plot lines and striking scenes. In films like "The Matrix" (1999) and "The Truman Show" (1998), Gnostic myths have offered speculations on the real as well as conspiracy theories. The Cabbalistic motif of golem-making has provided such movies as "A.I." (2001) and "Blade Runner" (1982) with mediations on the human and with parables of machines yearning for life. Pictures like "Dead Man" (1996) and "Altered States" (1980) have drawn on alchemical symbols to explore the possibilities of transmutation and to feature stories of the dead rising to life. Recent commercial Gnostic films are meditations on the conundrums of the post-modern age and the timeless soul. These pictures constitute archetypal sites for sacred contemplation. They create spaces akin to the caves of Eleusis or Lascaux, chambers where habits are annihilated and the ego is shattered. Maybe this spiritual attraction is the secret reason behind the recent abundance of Gnostic films. If so, then the dream factory is betraying its purpose. It is negating its deceptions and sales in the name of a bewildering reality that cannot be found. "Secret Cinema" explores these possibilities through engaging in three related activities. One, the book establishes the theoretical foundations and implications of the genre of Gnostic cinema. It develops these theoretical elements in the contexts of Gnosticism and the esoteric traditions emerging from it, Cabbala and alchemy. Two, in undertaking this work, Wilson considers several collateral issues. The book discusses the functions of genre, the relationships between cinema and psychology, the connections between the moving image and sacred power, the role of the cinematographic apparatus, and the romance of film. Three, the book is a broad meditation on the seductions of cinema. It is attuned to material attractions of the movies, those gorgeous lights and lurid shadows, but also the film's spiritual invitations, the gaps between the pictures, the empty spaces at the heart of life.

Catherine Russell demystifies the canon of great Japanese cinema, treating it with fewer auteurist and Orientalist assumptions than many other scholars and critics. Catherine Russell's highly accessible book approaches Japanese cinema as an industry closely modeled on Hollywood, focusing on the classical period - those years in which the studio system dominated all film production in Japan, from roughly 1930 to 1960. Respectful and thoroughly informed about the aesthetics and critical values of the Japanese canon, Russell is also critical of some of its ideological tendencies, and her analyses provide new insights on class and gender dynamics. Russell demonstrates how Japanese classical cinema has had enormous influence on other Asian cinemas, especially in TV broadcast form, and she highlights the importance of the accounting for the industrial production context when discussing these films. Including studies of landmark films by Ozu, Kurosawa and other directors, this book provides a perfect introduction to a crucial and often misunderstood Japanese cultural output. With a critical approach that highlights the "everydayness" of Japanese studio-era cinema, Catherine Russell demystifies the canon of great Japanese cinema, treating it with fewer auteurist and Orientalist assumptions than many other scholars and critics.

This is a sweeping study of world cinema, illustrating how its creative peaks stem from the urge to reveal otherwise hidden political and social dimensions of reality. "World Cinema and the Ethics of Realism" is a highly original study. It breaks away from the binary divisions which underpin most of film theory, and challenges traditional views of cinematic realism, drawing instead on the filmmaker's commitment to truth and to film's material bond with the real. Nagib conducts comparative case studies drawn from a wide range of realist trends, including the Japanese New Wave, the nouvelle vague, the Cinema Novo, the New German Cinema, the Inuit Indigenous Cinema, the Taiwan New Cinema and the New Brazilian Cinema. She reveals that these creative peaks are animated by the desire to reveal concealed or unknown political, social, psychological or mystical dimensions of reality - as observed in the various cycles of new waves and new cinemas across film history and geography. "World Cinema and the Ethics of Realism" is groundbreaking scholarship that surveys and defines World Cinema not as the opposite of Hollywood, but in positive terms; and draws upon the work of Badiou and Ranciere to take film theory in a bold new direction.

A Kansas City Star 2008 Notable Book

Since the early days of Hollywood film, portrayals of interracial romance and of individuals of mixed racial and ethnic heritage have served to highlight and challenge fault lines within Hollywood and the nation&#8217s racial categories and borders. Mixed Race Hollywood is a pioneering compilation of essays on mixed-race romance, individuals, families, and stars in U.S. film and media culture.

Situated at the cutting-edge juncture of ethnic studies and media studies, this collection addresses early mixed-race film characters, Blaxploitation, mixed race in children&#8217s television programming, and the "outing" of mixed-race stars on the Internet, among other issues and contemporary trends in mixed-race representation. The contributors explore this history and current trends from a wide range of disciplinary perspectives in order to better understand the evolving conception of race and ethnicity in contemporary culture.

Showcasing gorgeous concept art from Hayao Miyazaki’s animated film My Neighbor Totoro, this paperback journal provides note-taking inspiration for Studio Ghibli and Totoro fans of all ages. Incudes full-color artwork on the front and back covers, spot illustrations throughout―plus 4 full spreads of concept art.

My Neighbor Totoro © 1988 Studio Ghibli

While scholars recognize both museums and films as sites where historical knowledge and cultural memory are created, the convergence between their methods of constructing the past has only recently been acknowledged. The essays in Exhibiting the German Past examine a range of films, museums, and experiences which blend the two, considering how authentic objects and cinematic techniques are increasingly used in similar ways by both visual media and museums. This is the first collection to focus on the museum-film connection in German-language culture and the first to approach the issue using the concept of "musealization," a process that, because it engages the cultural destruction wrought by modernization, offers new means of constructing historical knowledge and shaping collective memory within and beyond the museum's walls. Featuring a wide range of valuable case studies, Exhibiting the German Past offers a unique perspective on the developing relationship between museums and visual media.

Once heralded and defined by the likes of Francois Truffaut and Andrew Sarris as a romantic figure of aesthetic individualism, the auteur is reinvestigated here through a novel approach. Bringing established as well as emergent figures of world art cinema to the fore, The Global Auteur shows how politics and philosophy are present in the works of these important filmmakers. They can be still seen leading a fight that their glorious predecessors seemed to have abandoned in the face of global capitalism and the market economy. Yet, as the contributors show, a new world calls for a new cinema, and thus for new auteurs. Covering a range of global auteurs such as Lars von Trier, Lav Diaz, Lee Chang-dong and Abderrahmane Sissako, The Global Auteur provides a much-needed reassessment of the film auteur for the global age.

Employing innovations in media studies, southern cultural studies, and approaches to the global South, this collection of essays examines aspects of the southern imaginary in American cinema and offers fresh insight into the evolving field of southern film studies. In their introduction, Deborah Barker and Kathryn McKee argue that the southern imaginary in film is not contained by the boundaries of geography and genre; it is not an offshoot or subgenre of mainstream American film but is integral to the history and the development of American cinema. Ranging from the silent era to the present and considering Hollywood movies, documentaries, and independent films, the contributors incorporate the latest scholarship in a range of disciplines. The volume is divided into three sections: "Rereading the South" uses new critical perspectives to reassess classic Hollywood films; "Viewing the Civil Rights South" examines changing approaches to viewing race and class in the post-civil rights era; and "Crossing Borders" considers the influence of postmodernism, postcolonialism, and media studies on recent southern films. The contributors to American Cinema and the Southern Imaginary complicate the foundational term "southern," in some places stretching the traditional boundaries of regional identification until they all but disappear and in others limning a persistent and sometimes self-conscious performance of place that intensifies its power.

Comedy has been a feature of cinema since its inception. From mickey-moused accompaniments to slapstick scenes, ironic musical statements, clever musical allusions and jokes, well-worn sound effects, and even laugh tracks, sound has been integral to the development of the comedy on screen. This volume covers all aspects of sound (including dialogue) and music as they have been utilised in comedy film. The volume looks at various subsets of the 'comedy film' from the post-War period, including black comedy, romantic comedy, slapstick, dialogue comedy, parody and spoofs. This volume aims to explore the way in which music and sound articulate humour, create comedic situations and direct comedic identifications for viewer/listeners.

No other silent film director has been so extensively studied as D. W. Griffith. However, only a small group of his more than 500 films has been the subject of a systematic analysis and the vast majority of his other works stills await proper examination. For the first time in film studies, the complete creative output of Griffith - from Professional Jealousy (1907) to The Struggle (1931) - will be explored in this multi-volume collection of contributions from an international team of leading scholars in the field.

When asked to name the first ""militant"" Black characters in film, we might imagine Blaxploitation heroes like Sweetback or Shaft. Yet, as this groundbreaking new book shows, there was a much earlier cycle of films featuring militant Black men - many of which were sponsored by the U.S. government. Militant Visions examines how, from the 1940s to the 1970s, the cinematic figure of the black soldier helped change the ways American moviegoers saw Black men, for the first time presenting African Americans as vital and integrated members of the nation. Elizabeth Reich traces the figure across a wide variety of movie genres, from action blockbusters like Bataan to patriotic musicals like Stormy Weather. In the process, she reveals how the image of the proud and powerful African American serviceman was crafted by an unexpected alliance of government propagandists, civil rights activists, and Black filmmakers. Offering a nuanced reading of a figure that was simultaneously conservative and radical, Reich considers how the cinematic Black soldier lent a human face to ongoing debates about racial integration, Black internationalism, and American militarism. She reads the Black soldier in film as inherently transnational, shaped by the displacements of diaspora, Third World revolutionary philosophy, and a legacy of Black artistry and performance. Militant Visions thus not only presents a new history of how American cinema represented race, it also demonstrates how film images helped to make history, shaping the progress of the civil rights movement itself.

How phony and real were defined and undermined in late twentieth-century literature and film? The epithet 'phony' was omnipresent during the postwar period in the United States. It was an easy appellation for individuals who appeared cynically to conform to codes of behavior for social approbation or advancement. Yet Holly Golightly 'isn't a phony because she's a real phony', says her agent in Breakfast at Tiffany's. In exploring this remark, Abigail Cheever examines the ways in which social influence was thought to deform individuals in mid century American culture. How could a person both be and not be herself at the same time? The answer lies in the period's complicated attitude toward social influence. If being real means that one's performative self is in line with one's authentic self, to be a real phony is to lack an authentic self as a point of reference - to lack a self that is independent of the social world. According to Cheever, Holly Golightly 'is like a phony in that her beliefs are perfectly in accordance with social norms, but she is real insofar as those beliefs are all she has'. ""Real Phonies"" begins in the postwar period to examine the twinned phenomena of phoniness and authenticity across the second half of the twentieth century - from adolescents like Holly Golightly and Holden Caulfield to sports agents like Jerry Maguire. Countering the critical assumption that, with the emergence of postmodernity, the ideal of 'authentic self' disappeared, Cheever argues that concern with the authenticity of persons proliferated throughout the past half-century despite a significant ambiguity over what that self might look like. Cheever's analysis is structured around five key kinds of characters: adolescents, the insane, serial killers, and the figures of the assimilated Jew and the 'company man'. In particular, she finds a preoccupation in these works not so much with faked conformity but with the frightening notion of real uniformity - the notion that Holly, and others like her, could each genuinely be the same as everyone else.