In the late 19th century, modern psychology emerged as a discipline, shaking off metaphysical notions of the soul in favor of a more scientific, neurophysiological concept of the mind. Laboratories began to introduce instruments and procedures which examined bodily markers of psychological experiences, like muscle contractions and changes in vital signs. Along with these changes in the scientific realm came a newfound interest in physiological psychology within the arts - particularly with the new perception of artwork as stimuli, able to induce specific affective experiences. In Psychomotor Aesthetics, author Ana Hedberg Olenina explores the effects of physiological psychology on art at the turn of the 20th century. The book explores its influence on not only art scholars and theorists, wishing to understand the relationship between artistic experience and the internal processes of the mind, but also cultural producers more widely. Actors incorporated psychology into their film acting techniques, the Russian and American film industries started to evaluate audience members' physical reactions, and literary scholars began investigations into poets' and performers' articulation. Yet also looming over this newly emergent field were commercial advertisers and politicians, eager to use psychology to further their own mass appeal and assert control over audiences. Drawing from archival documents and a variety of cross-disciplinary sources, Psychomotor Aesthetics calls attention to the cultural resonance of theories behind emotional and cognitive experience - theories with implications for today's neuroaesthetics and neuromarketing.

This book "decodes" 1930s Hollywood movies and explains why they looked and behaved in the way they did. Organized through a series of related case studies, the book exposes Classical Hollywood movies to a detailed analysis of their historical, industrial and cultural contexts. In the process it utilizes industry data, aesthetic analysis and the insights of New Cinema History to explain why and how these movies assumed their familiar forms. The book represents the summation of Richard Maltby's four decades of scholarship in the field of Hollywood cinema. The essays presented here share an assumption that has increasingly informed the author's critical method over the years: that any historical understanding of the films of this period requires a deep contextualization in the social circumstances surrounding both their production and consumption. In this way, the book introduces an innovative, overarching research methodology that synthesizes branches of research that are typically employed in isolation, including production, distribution, reception, film aesthetics, and cultural and historical context. Of the book's nine chapters, three are presented here for the first time, and four have been substantially revised and extended from their original publication.

This first-of-its-kind compendium unites perspectives from artists, scholars, arts educators, policymakers and activists to investigate the complex system of values surrounding artistic-educational endeavors. Addressing a range of artistic domains, ranging from music and dance, to visual arts and storytelling, contributors offer an exploration and criticism of the conventions that govern our interactions with these practices. Artistic Citizenship focuses the responsibilities, and functions of amateur as well as professional artists in society, and introduces a novel set of ethics that are conventionally dismissed in discourses on the topic. The authors address the questions: How does the concept of citizenship relate to the arts? What socio-cultural, political, and ethical "goods" can artistic engagements create for people worldwide? Do particular artistic endeavors have distinctive potentials for nurturing artistic citizenship? What are the most effective strategies in the arts to institute change and/or resist local, national, and world problems? What responsibilities do artists and consumers of art have in order to facilitate the relationship between the arts and citizenship? How can artistic activities contribute to the eradication of various 'ism's? A substantial accompanying website features video clips of arts-in-action, videotaped interviews with scholars and practitioners in a variety of global sites, a blog, and supplementary resources about existing and emerging initiatives. Thoroughly researched and engagingly written, Artistic Citizenship is an essential text for artists, scholars, policy makers, educators, and students.

This volume brings together perspectives from multimodal stylistics and adaptation studies for a unified theoretical analysis of adaptations of the work of Alice Munro, demonstrating the affordances of the approach in furthering interdisciplinary research at the intersection of these fields The book considers films and television programmes as complex multimodal stylistic systems in and of themselves in order to pave the way for a clearer understanding of screen adaptations as expressions of modal, medial, and aesthetic change. In focusing on Munro, Francesconi draws attention to a writer whose body of work has been adapted widely across television and film for an international market over several decades, offering a diachronic overview and insights into the confluence of socio-cultural contexts, audiences, and dynamics of production and distribution across adaptations. The volume complements this perspective with a microanalysis of the adaptations themselves, exploring the varied creative use of audio-visual dimensions, including sound, light, and movement. The book seeks to overcome simplified fidelity-based understandings of screen adaptations more broadly, showcasing creative multi-layered approaches to a creator's oeuvre to effect true transformation across media and modes. The volume will be of interest to scholars in multimodality, adaptation studies, film studies, and comparative literature.

This volume includes twenty-five interdisciplinary essays on Paul Bowles's literary and musical work. The legendary author - a North-American expatriate writer and composer, and a cult figure who, according to Norman Mailer "... let in the murder, the drugs, the incest, the death of the square, the end of civilization" - and his artistic output, are explored here by leading contemporary scholars. They seek alternative and multiple perspectives of his work through the dynamics of music and literature, avant-garde film and the No wave scene, torture studies and security, Islamic studies, modernism and surrealism. Following the international conference "Do You Bowles?" held in Lisbon, in 2010, which celebrated Paul Bowles's 100th birthday, this collection shows how Bowles's work engages creatively with his predecessors and a variety of perspectives, by rethinking modes of consciousness and of artistic and cross-cultural potential that still inspire todays' artists and scholars, both as a writer as well as a composer. The editor set up a webpage dedicated to the book: http://www.doyoubowles.org/

This exciting new title investigates the explosion of Shakespeare films during the 1990s and beyond. It reflects upon the contexts determining the production of different cinematic ventures, and it provides an innovative understanding of Shakespeare's constitution as a guardian of enshrined values and a figure associated with play and reinvention. Linking fluctuating "Shakespeares" with the growth of a global marketplace, the dissolution of national borders and technological advances, this book produces a fresh awareness of our contemporary cultural moment.

This book examines major British and American missionary films during the Golden Age of Hollywood to explore the significance of race, gender, and spirituality in relation to the lives of the missionaries portrayed in film during the middle third of the twentieth century. Film both influences and reflects culture, and racial, gender, and religious identities are some of the most debated issues globally today. In the movies explored in this book, missionary interactions with various people groups reflect the historical changes which took place during this time.

The magical places that were brought to life for the blockbuster Harry Potter films make up the backbone of J.K. Rowling's wizarding world. This book grants a complete, unprecedented look at the process of adapting those locations for the films. Detailed profiles of each environment pair never-before-seen concept art, behind-the-scenes photos and film stills with text highlighting filmmaking secrets from the Warner Brothers archives.

Over the course of the past two decades, horror cinema around the globe has become increasingly preoccupied with the concept of loss. Grief in Contemporary Horror Cinema: Screening Loss examines the theme of grief as it represented both indie and mainstream films, including works such as Jennifer Kent's watershed film The Babadook, Juan Antonio Bayona's award-sweeping El orfanato, Ari Aster's genre-straddling Midsommar, and Lars von Trier's visually stunning Melancholia. Analyzing depictions of grief ranging from the intimate grief of a small family to the collective grief of an entire nation, the essays illustrate how these works serve to provide unity, catharsis, and-sometimes-healing.

The Female Gaze in Documentary Film - an International Perspective makes a timely contribution to the recent rise in interest in the status, presence, achievements and issues for women in contemporary screen industries. It examines the works, contributions and participation of female documentary directors globally. The central preoccupation of the book is to consider what might constitute a 'female gaze', an inquiry that has had a long history in filmmaking, film theory and women's art. It fills a gap in the literature which to date has not substantially examined the work of female documentary directors. Moreover, research on sex, gender and the gaze has infrequently been the subject of scholarship on documentary film, particularly in comparison to narrative film or television drama. A distinctive feature of the book is that it is based on interviews with significant female documentarians from Europe, Asia and North America.

This book speaks to the meanings and values that inhere in close relations, focusing on 'family' and 'kinship' but also looking beyond these categories. Multifaceted, diverse and subject to constant debate, close relations are ubiquitous in human lives on embodied as well as symbolic levels. Closely related to processes of power, legibility and recognition, close relations are surrounded by boundaries that both constrain and enable their practical, symbolical and legal formation. Carefully contextualising close relations in relation to different national contexts, but also in relation to gender, sexuality, race, religion and dis/ability, the volume points to the importance of and variations in how close relations are lived, understood and negotiated. Grounded in a number of academic areas and disciplines, ranging from legal studies, sociology and social work to literary studies and ethnology, this volume also highlights the value of using inter- and multidisciplinary scholarly approaches in research about close relations. Chapter 11 is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

Maggie Gunsberg examines popular genre cinema in Italy during the 1950s and 1960s, focusing on melodrama, "commedia all'italiana," peplum, horror and the spaghetti western. These genres are explored from a gender standpoint which takes into account the historical and socio-economic context of cinematic production and consumption. An interdisciplinary feminist approach informed by current film theory and other perspectives (psychoanalytic, materialist, deconstructive), leads to the analysis of genre-specific representations of femininity and masculinity as constructed by the formal properties of film.

In the context of changing constructs of home and of childhood since the mid-twentieth century, this book examines discourses of home and homeland in Irish children's fiction from 1990 to 2012, a time of dramatic change in Ireland spanning the rise and fall of the Celtic Tiger and of unprecedented growth in Irish children's literature. Close readings of selected texts by five award-winning authors are linked to social, intellectual and political changes in the period covered and draw on postcolonial, feminist, cultural and children's literature theory, highlighting the political and ideological dimensions of home and the value of children's literature as a lens through which to view culture and society as well as an imaginative space where young people can engage with complex ideas relevant to their lives and the world in which they live. Examining the works of O. R. Melling, Kate Thompson, Eoin Colfer, Siobhan Parkinson and Siobhan Dowd, Ciara Ni Bhroin argues that Irish children's literature changed at this time from being a vehicle that largely promoted hegemonic ideologies of home in post-independence Ireland to a site of resistance to complacent notions of home in Celtic Tiger Ireland.

Truffaut shot to fame in 1959 with his first film "Les 400 Coups," a semi-autobiographical narrative shot in the low-budget neo-realist style of the emerging "Nouvelle Vague." He went on to make twenty-three films in twenty-six years, films which have entertained, provoked debate and caused controversy. This fresh appraisal of his work provides a useful socio-political contextualization and gives an overview of his films and film-making methods, shedding new light on key aspects such as sexual politics, the construction of masculinity, the exploitation of genre and the tension throughout the films between the "absolute" and the "provisional."

Syria is now one of the most important countries in the world for the documentary film industry. Since the 1970s, Syrian cinema masters played a defining role in avant-garde filmmaking and political dissent against authoritarianism. After the outbreak of violence in 2011, an estimated 500,000 video clips were uploaded making it one of the first YouTubed revolutions in history. This book is the first history of documentary filmmaking in Syria. Based on extensive media ethnography and in-depth interviews with Syrian filmmakers in exile, the book offers an archival analysis of the documentary work by masters of Syrian cinema, such as Nabil Maleh, Ossama Mohammed, Mohammed Malas, Hala Al Abdallah, Hanna Ward, Ali Atassi and Omar Amiralay. Joshka Wessels traces how the works of these filmmakers became iconic for a new generation of filmmakers at the beginning of the 21st century and maps the radical change in the documentary landscape after the revolution of 2011. Special attention is paid to the late Syrian filmmaker and pro-democracy activist, Bassel Shehadeh, and the video-resistance from Aleppo and Raqqa against the regime of President Bashar al-Assad and the Islamic State. An essential resource for scholars of Syrian Studies, this book will also be highly relevant to the fields of media & conflict research, anthropology and political science.

This book is an exploration of the changes in Russian cultural identity in the twenty years after the fall of the Soviet state. Through close readings of a select number of contemporary Russian films and television series, Irina Souch investigates how a variety of popular cultural tropes ranging from the patriarchal family to the country idyll survived the demise of Communism and maintained their power to inform the Russian people's self-image. She shows how these tropes continue to define attitudes towards political authority, economic disparity, ethnic and cultural difference, generational relations and gender. The author also introduces theories of identity developed in Russia at the same time, enabling these works to act as sites of productive dialogue with the more familiar discourses of Western scholarship.

Film is often conceived as a medium that is watched rather than experienced. Existing studies of film audiences, and of media reception more broadly, have revealed the complexity of viewing practices and cultures surrounding cinema-going and its exhibition spaces. Experiencing Cinema offers the first in-depth study of participant engagement with a range of experiential media forms derived from cinema culture. From sing-a-long screenings to theatrical extravaganzas, a broad spectrum of alternative film-going practices and immersive spaces are explored and analysed in this original audience study. Moving from intimate community gatherings to blockbuster urban venues, from isolated farmhouses to Olympic stadia, Experiencing Cinema considers the lure and value of these popular events. Often attracting a diverse, intergenerational range of participants, from early-adopter urban hipsters to DIY rural communities, the growing demand for participatory cinema within the contemporary marketplace is analysed alongside broader debates circulating around the move away from traditional tiered seating and increased audience mobility and the de-centring of the film text.

This Open Access book uses the concept of 'euphoria' to investigate when, why and how marginal gender, sex and sexuality groups have positive experiences of their diverse variations even within repressive and disordering contexts. Drawing on data from multiple online surveys including a study of 2,407 LGBTQ+ people and a study of 272 people with intersex variations, it names and offers a new ecological framework for understanding participants' influences on and barriers to euphorias, asserting the subversive possibilities of being euphorically queer, as opposed to euphoric and queer. The author argues that it is the particularities of negative internal, socio-cultural and institutional contexts for a marginal group or groups that contributes towards the possibilities that shape their potential euphoric feelings and experiences. Ultimately, she calls for a more expansive focus in gender and sexuality studies to show the complex effects of dysphoria and repression on the possibilities of pleasure and joy.This book will be of interest to scholars across Gender, Sexuality and Queer Studies.

Before Alien Covenant, David was stranded alone on the Engineers' planet and - left to his own dark devices - he began to push the boundaries of creation. Delve into this exclusive collection, containing two books, to gain an insight into the android's descent into madness. The in-universe sketchbook contains over two hundred illustrations from the set and will take you inside the mind of David. It features the complete arc of his journey from the studies of flora and fauna, to his more sinister experiments on creatures, and the disturbing demise of Dr Elizabeth Shaw. The companion book, Developing the Art of an Android, holds an interview with Dane Hallett and Matt Hatton - the artists behind all of the beautifully grotesque sketches. Alien Covenant: David's Drawings will satisfy every serious fan's hunger for details of the most intriguing character from the Alien prequels.

This thrilling interactive scrapbook takes readers on a tour of iconic spells and charms, from Expelliarmus to the Patronus Charm, and even the three Unforgivable Curses. Covering everything from protective enchantments and useful jinxes to dangerous spells, it transports us into the magical world of Harry and his friends. With detailed profiles of each spell, hex, charm or curse, and information about key enchantments seen in the films, this is the ultimate guide to the magic practised at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry and far beyond. Cast with the correct wand movement and incantation, the amazing spells seen throughout the Harry Potter films are conjured up in a way that is sure to delight wizards and Muggles alike. Gorgeously illustrated with dazzling concept art, behind-the-scenes photographs and fascinating reflections from actors and film-makers, the scrapbook gives readers a spellbinding insight into bringing charms and spells to the big screen.