The Film Theory in Practice series fills a gaping hole in the world of film theory. By marrying the explanation of a film theory with the interpretation of a film, the volumes provide discrete examples of how film theory can serve as the basis for textual analysis. Realist Film Theory and Bicycle Thieves offers a concise introduction to realist film theory in jargon-free language and shows how this theory can be deployed to interpret Vittorio De Sica’s 1948 Italian neo realist masterpiece Bicycle Thieves. Hilary Neroni explores the original realist film theorists from the 1940s: André Bazin, Siegfried Kracauer, and Cesare Zavattini, among others. But rather than seeing realist film theory as simply a theory of the past to be moved beyond, the book argues that the prevalence of realism in many different forms within practice and theory suggests the importance of updating this original realist film theory with an understanding of realism that would sustain its viability. Throughout the book, Neroni analyzes neorealist film movements—such as Italian Neorealism, Parallel Cinema of India, and the Iranian New Wave—that challenge mainstream realism with a more radical form that exposes the social order instead of hiding it. Her in-depth investigation of Bicycle Thieves provides a realist methodology that reveals the radicality of its combination of realist techniques, a melodramatic story, and humanist values.

Putting Deleuze and Guattari’s concepts to wide-ranging use, leading trans theorists and activists develop innovative ways of thinking about trans identities, and the processes involved in liberating desires from the gendered ego. The first volume of its kind covers a broad mix of subjects including transecology, corporalities of betweenness, black transversality, toxic masculinity, and transvestism. Led by the overarching concept of schizonalaysis and responding to the need to move beyond the hetero-patriarchy currently dominating both progressive and regressive discourse, Ciara Cremin outlines the potential for radical departure from the status quo concerning gender identity, sex, bodies, and politics. Arguing that trans people are at the forefront of debates on gendered dichotomies as a result of becoming something other than their assigned gender, Cremin and her contributors theorise the possibility of a society which does not rely on gendered forms of oppression for its existence. Deleuze, Guattari and the Schizoanalysis of Trans Studies is an essential, ground-breaking resource for theorists, activists and students interested in trans theory today.

WINNER of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies (SCMS) Best First Book Award 2023 Limit Cinema explores how contemporary global cinema represents the relationship between humans and nature. During the 21st century this relationship has become increasingly fraught due to proliferating social and environmental crises; recent films from Lars von Trier’s Melancholia (2011) to Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (2010) address these problems by reflecting or renegotiating the terms of our engagement with the natural world. In this spirit, this book proposes a new film philosophy for the Anthropocene. It argues that certain contemporary films attempt to transgress the limits of human experience, and that such ‘limit cinema’ has the potential to help us rethink our relationship with nature. Posing a new and timely alternative to the process philosophies that have become orthodox in the fields of film philosophy and ecocriticism, Limit Cinema revitalizes the philosophy of Georges Bataille and puts forward a new reading of his notion of transgression in the context of our current environmental crisis. To that end, Limit Cinema brings Bataille into conversation with more recent discussions in the humanities that seek less anthropocentric modes of thought, including posthumanism, speculative realism, and other theories associated with the nonhuman turn. The problems at stake are global in scale, and the book therefore engages with cinema from a range of national and cultural contexts. From Ben Wheatley’s psychological thrillers to Nettie Wild’s eco-documentaries, limit cinema pushes against the boundaries of thought and encourages an ethical engagement with perspectives beyond the human.