The cinema was the most popular form of entertainment during the Second World War. Film was a critically important medium for influencing opinion. Films, such as In Which We Serve and One of Our Aircraft is Missing, shaped the British people's perceptions of the conflict. British War Films, 1939-45 is an account of the feature films produced during the war, rather than government documentaries and official propaganda, making the book an important index of British morale and values at a time of desperate national crisis.

It is often suggested that there are 'secrets' to comedy or that it is 'lightning in a bottle', but the craft of comedy writing can be taught. While comedic tastes change, over time and from person to person, the core underpinning still depends on the comedic geniuses that have paved the way. Great comedy is built upon a strong foundation. In Writing the Comedy Movie, Marc Blake lays out - in an entertainingly readable style - the nuts and bolts of comedy screenwriting. His objective is to clarify the 'rules' of comedy: to contextualize comedy staples such as the double act, slapstick, gross-out, rom com, screwball, satire and parody and to introduce new ones such as the bromance or stoner comedy. He explains the underlying principles of comedy and comedy writing for the screen, along with providing analysis of leading examples of each subgenre.

Catastrophes and crises are exceptions. They are disruptions of order. In various ways and to different degrees, they change and subvert what we regard as normal. They may occur on a personal level in the form of traumatic or stressful situations, on a social level in the form of unstable political, financial or religious situations, or on a global level in the form of environmental states of emergency. The main assumption in this book is that, in contrast to the directness of any given catastrophe and its obvious physical, economical and psychological consequences our understanding of catastrophes and crises is shaped by our cultural imagination. No matter in which eruptive and traumatizing form we encounter them, our collective repertoire of symbolic forms, historical sensibilities, modes of representation, and patterns of imagination determine how we identify, analyze and deal with catastrophes and crises.This book presents a series of articles investigating how we address and interpret catastrophes and crises in film, literature, art and theory, ranging from Voltaire's eighteenth-century Europe, haunted by revolutions and earthquakes, to the 1994 genocide in Rwanda to the bleak, prophetic landscapes of Cormac McCarthy.

Since her film debut in 1930, Maureen O'Sullivan has consistently proven herself to be one of the most talented and versatile performers in the entertainment media. Her career has spanned 60 years, over which time she has appeared on stage and screen, on television and radio, and has even been a published author of a few short stories. This bio-bibliography explores every facet of O'Sullivan's distinguished career and illustrates the surprising depth and range that she exhibited and still continues to display in her fascinating career. Billips traces the entirety of the actress's professional life, from her film career at Fox in Song O' My Heart in 1930, including her six other films for the Fox studio, to her piece for RKO and Patrician/UA, to her portrayal of Jane in the Tarzan films of the early 1930s to her most recent appearance in 1987's Stranded, revealing an enormous talent. O'Sullivan's contributions to the performing arts have yet to be fully appreciated. Through separate chapters, focusing on different aspects of O'Sullivan's life, the book provides an impressive picture of the actress's multifaceted career. The biographical section primarily discusses her films and the characters she portrayed, while a career chronology offers an overview of her entire professional life, with credits in the various media serving to illustrate her constant activities. Four separate chapters chronicle O'Sullivan's film, radio, television, and stage appearances, with full cast and credits included for each entry, and cross references incorporated to lead the reader to other pertinent material in the book. A bibliographic section follows with film reviews, theater reviews, books and articles, and fan magazine stories each given their own chapters. An appendix reproduces in their entirety two short stories published by Maureen O'Sullivan in the Ladies' Home Journal, and an index concludes the work. This important reference tool will be a welcome resource for film fans and collectors and for courses in film history. It will also be a valuable addition to public, college, and university libraries.

"All students of the Great Man's'career will have to rely on this work. . . . Perhaps Gehring's greatest contributio here is his discussion of 23 sketches that Fields copyrighted that are now in the Library of Congress." Choice

This is the first collection of original critical essays devoted to exploring the misunderstood, neglected and frequently caricatured role played by the film producer. The editors' introduction provides a conceptual and methodological overview, arguing that the producer's complex and multifaceted role is crucial to a film's success or failure. The collection is divided into three sections where detailed individual essays explore a broad range of contrasting producers working in different historical, geographical, generic and industrial contexts. Rather than suggest there is a single type of producer, the collection analyses the rich variety of roles producers play, providing fascinating and informative insights into how the film industry actually works. This groundbreaking collection challenges several of the conventional orthodoxies of film studies, providing a new approach that will become required reading for scholars and students.

Examines the social and historical significance of women's contributions to American silent Film comedy. For many people the term ""silent comedy"" conjures up images of Charlie Chaplin's Little Tramp, Buster Keaton's Stoneface, or Harold Lloyd hanging precariously from the side of a skyscraper. Even people who have never seen a silent film can recognize these comedians at a glance. But what about the female comedians? Gale Henry, Louise Fazenda, Colleen Moore, Constance Talmadge-these and numerous others were wildly popular during the silent fi lm era, appearing in countless motion pictures and earning top salaries, and yet their names have been almost entirely forgotten. As a consequence, recovering their history is all the more compelling given that they laid the foundation for generations of funny women, from Lucille Ball to Carol Burnett to Tina Fey. These women constitute an essential and neglected sector of film history, reflecting a turning point in women's social and political history. Their talent and brave spirit continues to be felt today, and Comic Venus: Women and Comedy in American Silent Film seeks to provide a better understanding of women's experiences in the early twentieth century and to better understand and appreciate the unruly and boundary-breaking women who have followed. The diversity and breadth of archival materials explored in Comic Venus illuminate the social and historical period of comediennes and silent film. It is the first book to explore the overlooked contributions made by comediennes in American silent fi lm. Those with an interest in fi lm and representations of femininity in comedy will be fascinated by the analytical connections and thoroughly researched histories of these women and their groundbreaking movements in comedy and stage.

The story is now familiar. In the late 1960s humanity finally saw photographic evidence of the Earth in space for the first time. According to this narrative, the impact of such images in the consolidation of a planetary consciousness is yet to be matched. This book tells a different story. It argues that this narrative has failed to account for the vertiginous global imagination underpinning the media and film culture of the late nineteenth century and beyond. Panoramas, giant globes, world exhibitions, photography and stereography: all promoted and hinged on the idea of a world made whole and newly visible. When it emerged, cinema did not simply contribute to this effervescent globalism so much as become its most significant and enduring manifestation. Planetary Cinema proposes that an exploration of that media culture can help us understand contemporary planetary imaginaries in times of environmental collapse. Engaging with a variety of media, genres and texts, the book sits at the intersection of film/media history and theory/ philosophy, and it claims that we need this combined approach and expansive textual focus in order to understand the way we see the world.

Based on original archival research, Early Cinema, Modernity and Visual Culture: The Imaginary of the Balkans is the first study on early cinema in the region from a transnational and cross-cultural perspective. It investigates how the unique geopolitical positioning of the Balkan space and its multiculturality influenced and shaped visual culture and cinema. Countering Eurocentric modernity paradigms and reframing hierarchical relations between centres and peripheries, this book adopts an alternative methodology for interstitial spaces. By deploying the notion of the haptic, it establishes new connections between moving image artefacts and print media, early film practitioners, the socio-political context and cultural responses to the new visual medium.

In 1964, novelist/screenwriter Terry Southern met actress Gail Gerber on the set of ""The Loved One"". Though they were both married, there was an instant connection and they remained a couple until his death 30 years later. In her memoir, Gail recalls what life was like with 'the hippest guy on the planet' as they traveled from Los Angeles to New York to Europe and back again. She reveals what went on behind the scenes of Southern's movies including ""The Cincinnati Kid"", ""Barbarella"", and ""Easy Rider"". And she relives the 'highs' hanging out with The Rolling Stones and Peter Sellers in swinging '60s London to the lows, barely scraping by on a Berkshires farm during the '70s & '80s.

"Hermes in the Academy" commemorates the tenth anniversary of the Center for History of Hermetic Philosophy and related Currents (GHF) at the University of Amsterdam. The center devotes itself to the study of Western esotericism, which includes topics such as Hermetic philosophy, Christian kabbalah and occultism.
This volume shows how, over the past ten years, the GHF has developed into the leading international center for research and teaching in this domain.

Considering films as audio-visual creations opens new inroads into the cultural practice, politics, and aesthetics of the soundtrack. This book is critical and trans-disciplinary engagement with cinema in Italy that examines the national archive of film based on sound and listening using a holistic audio-visual approach to film politics and practices from the coming of sound to the screen in the Fascist era, through the work of post WWII neorealist directors, to art cinema directors such as Michelangelo Antonioni and Pier Paolo Pasolini. Sisto shifts the sensory paradigm of film history and analysis from the optical to the sonic, demonstrating how this translates into a shift of canonical narratives and interpretations. Listening functions as a fundamental critical tool that permits viewers to detect the interplay of technological productions, historical contingencies, and mediations which coalesce within the political and aesthetical track of sound at the movies.

A new and innovative approach to Latin American Studies which makes an important contribution to contemporary debates about cultural appropriation and the integration of immigrant communities Winner of the 2016-17 AHGBI/Spanish Embassy Publication Prize This book focuses on the contemporary production and consumption of Latin American culture in the UK through the lens of the !Viva! Film Festival in Manchester. It offers a comprehensive analysis of how the British press has used the framework of magical realism to interpret Latin America for readers and applies these findings to the festival in order to explore deeper questions of identity formation and cultural appropriation. The book traces the growth of Latin American communities in Britain; the popularity of Latin American literature, music, and film in many of the country's largest cities, including London and Manchester; and shows how people in Britain who do not have Latin American origins consume Latin American culture to reconcile issues of self-identity and cosmopolitanism. Imagining Latin America presents a new and innovative approach to Latin American Studies and makes an important contribution to contemporary debates about the cultural integration of immigrant communities and transnational exchange.

Children today are growing up in a world of global media, in which the voices of many cultures compete for attention. Increasing numbers of children are also citizens of the globe: they live in multicultural societies, many have migrated themselves and live within active diasporic and transnational networks. The authors offer a fresh perspective on the relationships between media, globalisation and contemporary childhood.

Frank Herbert's science fiction classic Dune will be seen like never before in the breathtaking film adaptation from acclaimed director Denis Villeneuve. Now fans can be part of the creative journey of bringing Herbert's seminal work to life with The Art and Making of Dune, the only official companion to the hugely anticipated movie event. This exploration of the filmmaking process documents the story of capturing Villeneuve's vision for Dune, from its stunning environmental and creature designs to intricate costume concepts and landmark digital effects. The Art and Making of Dune will also feature interviews with key cast and crew, including extensive insight from Villeneuve. The book will be illustrated with a wealth of concept art and other key visuals showcasing the design process behind the creation of this bold new vision. The Art and Making of Dune is an essential companion to Villeneuve's latest masterpiece.

Film Distribution in the Digital Age critically examines the evolution of the landscape of film distribution in recent years. In doing so, it argues that the interlocking ecosystem(s) of media dissemination must be considered holistically and culturally if we are to truly understand the transnational flows of cultural texts.