In this monumental work, Laurence Senelick and Sergei Ostrovsky offer a panoramic history of Soviet theater from the Bolshevik Revolution to the eventual collapse of the USSR. Making use of more than eighty years’ worth of archival documentation, the authors celebrate in words and pictures a vital, living art form that remained innovative and exciting, growing, adapting, and flourishing despite harsh, often illogical pressures inflicted upon its creators by a totalitarian government. It is the first comprehensive analysis of the subject ever to be published in the English language.

Whether it's the hum drum existence of Marion Crane and her illicit love affair, the psychotic antics of Norman Bates, the sudden irrational migration of birds, a crop duster swooping down on Roger Thornhill in the middle of nowhere, or Vincent Vega and Mia Wallace's unforgettable dance at Jack Rabbit Slim's - they are all cinematic moments that forever changed the psyche and viewing experience of American audiences. 100 Films That Changed the Twentieth Century tells the stories behind the most significant and influential films in American culture, movies that have had a profound influence on the literary, cinematic and popular culture of our time. Among the featured: All About Eve, The Apartment, Apocalypse Now, Birth of a Nation, Bonnie and Clyde, Citizen Kane, A Clockwork Orange, The Godfather, Gone With the Wind, It's a Wonderful Life, L.A. Confidential, The Maltese Falcon, Metropolis, 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Piano, Psycho, Pulp Fiction, Raging Bull, Silence of the Lambs, Star Wars, Schindler's List, and Taxi Driver .Arranged chronologically, the volume gives readers an opportunity to place the films within the context of the social and cultural historic dynamic of the time, making this an ideal source for student papers and reports. Each entry includes the filmmaker, actors, release information, a synopsis of the film, critics' reviews, awards, current availability, and then background on the making of the film in an artistic, economic, and technological context. Spanning all genres, including horror and drama, adventure, comedy, musicals, science fiction, and more, this volume is loaded with enough trivia and factoids to satisfy even the most die-hard movie buff. Also includedare other "Greatest Films" compilations from the National Society of Film Critics and noteworthy sources for comparative purposes. Guaranteed to inspire forays into film favorites as well as some very lively debate, this resource is essential reading for film lovers and students alike.

Applying Deleuze’s schizoanalytic techniques to film theory, Deleuze and the Gynesis of Horror demonstrates how an embodied approach to horror film analysis can help us understand how film affects its viewers and distinguish those films which reify static, hegemonic, “molar� beings from those which prompt fluid, nonbinary, “molecular� becomings. It does so by analyzing the politics of reproduction in contemporary films such as Ex Machina; Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; Mad Max: Fury Road; the Twilight saga; and the original Alien quadrilogy and its more recent prequels, Prometheus and Alien: Covenant. Author Sunny Hawkins argues that films which promote a “monstrous philosophy� of qualitative, affirmative difference as difference-in-itself, and which tend to be more molecular than molar in their expressions, can help us trace a “line of flight� from the gender binary in the real world. Deleuze and the Gynesis of Horror demonstrates how the techniques of horror film – editing, sound and visual effects, lighting and colour, camera movement – work in tandem with a film’s content to affect the viewer’s body in ways that disrupt the sense of self as a whole, unified subject with a stable, monolithic identity and, in some cases, can serve to breakdown the binary between self/Other, as we come to realize that we are none of us static, categorizable beings but are, as Henri Bergson said, “living things constantly becoming.�

This interdisciplinary collection explores how cinema calls into question its own frame of reference and, at the same time, how its form becomes the matter of its thought. Building on the axiom (cherished by philosophers of cinema from Epstein to Deleuze) that cinema is a medium that thinks in conjunction with its spectators, this book examines how various forms of the cinematic rethink and redraw the terrain of traditional disciplines, thereby enabling different modes of thought and practice. Areas under consideration by a range of leading academics and practitioners include architecture, science, writing in a visual field, event-theory and historiography.

Although we tend to accord our highest praise to films with strong messages, Hollywood is resolutely unserious in its goals, and closer perhaps to music than to literature in this regard. Thus, in order to appreciate Hollywood's classic movies, we have to understand them as the result of a style of filmmaking that justifies itself through the grace and beauty of its form. This beauty, when seen, challenges our notion of film as the poorer cousin of the high arts, or as worthwhile only when it serves a social purpose. "The Hidden Art of Hollywood" draws from a huge fund of recorded interviews with the directors, writers, cinematographers, set designers, producers, and actors who were a part of the studio process, in order to give the filmmakers themselves the chance to explain a very elusive phenomenon: the glancing beauty of the Hollywood film.

While the greatness of the classic Hollywood film is, for many of us, settled business, there are also a great number who have difficulty understanding why these films--which can often seem dated and unrealistic compared to modern fare--are taken as seriously as they are. Although we tend to accord our highest praise to films with strong and often didactic messages, Hollywood is resolutely unserious in its goals, and closer perhaps to music than to literature in this regard. Thus, in order to appreciate classic American movies, we have to understand them as the result of a style of filmmaking that justifies itself not through ideas or social relevance, but through the grace and beauty of its form.

The beauty of the Hollywood film challenges our notion of film as the poorer cousin of the high arts, or as worthwhile only when it serves a social purpose. In his effort to answer the many questions that classic American cinema suggests, author John Fawell considers previous criticism of Hollywood, but also draws from a huge fund of recorded interviews with the directors, writers, cinematographers, set designers, producers, and actors who were a part of the studio process, in order to give the filmmakers themselves the chance to explain a very elusive phenomenon: the glancing beauty of the Hollywood film. The films of certain great auteurs, including Charlie Chaplin, Ernst Lubitsch, Preston Sturges, Alfred Hitchcock, Billy Wilder, John Ford, and Orson Welles, receive particular attention here, but this book is organized by ideas rather than films or artists, and it draws from a wide array of Hollywood films, both successes and failures, to make its points.

Struggles for Recognition traces the emergence of melodrama in Latin American silent film and silent film culture. Juan Sebastián Ospina León draws on extensive archival research to reveal how melodrama visualized and shaped the social arena of urban modernity in early twentieth-century Latin America. Analyzing sociocultural contexts through film, this book demonstrates the ways in which melodrama was mobilized for both liberal and illiberal ends, revealing or concealing social inequities from Buenos Aires to Bogotá to Los Angeles. Ospina León critically engages Euro-American and Latin American scholarship seldom put into dialogue, offering an innovative theorization of melodrama relevant to scholars working within and across different national contexts.

“For Blue there are no boundaries or solutions.� —Derek Jarman Originally released as a feature film in 1993, the year before the acclaimed artist and filmmaker Derek Jarman’s death due to an AIDS-related illness, Blue is a daring and powerful work of art. The film - and this highly-anticipated book’s text - serve as iconoclastic responses to the lack of political engagement with the AIDS crisis. Written poetically and surrealistically, Jarman’s text moves through myriad scenes, some banal, others fantastical. Stories of quotidian life––getting coffee, reading the newspaper, and walking down the sidewalk––escalate to visions of Marco Polo, the Taj Mahal, or blue fighting yellow. Facing death and a cascade of pills, Jarman presents his illness in delirium and metaphors. He contemplates the physicality of emotions in lyrical prose as he grounds this story in the constant return to Blue - a color, a feeling, a funk. Michael Charlesworth’s compelling introduction brings Blue into conversation with Jarman’s visual paintings as never before.

The dancers profiled in First Position represent the pinnacle of their art over the last century. Author Toba Singer polled literally hundreds of dance critics, dance teachers and professors, and active and retired professional dancers to create a list that represents the best of the various styles of ballet from the last hundred years. The result is a collective biography that introduces the reader to both dancers with household names and those known mostly to ballet aficionados. Profiled dancers include Carlos Acosta, Alicia Alonso, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Erik Bruhn, Lazaro Carreno, Margot Fonteyn, Carla Fracci, Gelsey Kirkland, Li Cunxin, Muriel Maffre, Natalia Makarova, Arthur Mitchell, Rudolf Nureyev, Anna Pavlova, and Maya Plisetskaya. An introductory chapter addresses the audience for this work: ballet fans, professional dancers, aspiring dance students, and those new to ballet. It also touches on the contributions of dancers who, owing to limits of time and space, are not among the selected, but whose influence has nonetheless been lasting. Each of the fifteen chapters begins with a biographical portrait and includes discussions of the dancer's style and artistic background; associations with noted choreographers, composers, artistic directors, and dance partners; relationship with the audience; and critical reception. The author has utilized published and unpublished interviews and source material from dance archives in San Francisco, New York, Havana, and European cities that have served as centers of the ballet world over the last century. Each chapter features photographs and concludes with a list of works performed.

Blockbusters: A Reference Guide to Film Genres offers both film specialists and film fans an in-depth look at 12 popular genres of film. With a separate chapter dedicated to each of the 12 commonly acknowledged genres, the text provides readers with a list of defining characteristics for each genre; a focused analysis of the history of the genre with an understanding of the major influences responsible for its evolution, broken down by decades, era, or subgenre; and a bibliography of the major critical and historical sources available for further reading. Special attention is given to subvariations, or subgenres, within the principle categorizations, and the wide variety of cinematic examples cited draws upon the best and some of the most beloved examples of American cinema, with more obscure American and foreign examples also included. In cases where films overlap genres, easy to find chapter titles in boldface within the text indicate cross referencing, and a user-friendly index provides access to discussions of cited films within the text.

• Action/Adventure
• Comedy
• Costume
• Epic
• Film Noir
• Horror
• Musicals
• Science Fiction
• Suspense
• War
• Western
• Woman's Film

For more than 50 years, science fiction films have been among the most important and successful products of American cinema, and are worthy of study for that reason alone. On a deeper level, the genre has reflected important themes, concerns and developments in American society, so that a history of science fiction film also serves as a cultural history of America over the past half century. M. Keith Booker has selected fifteen of the most successful and innovative science fiction films of all time, and examined each of them at length—from cultural, technical and cinematic perspectives—to see where they came from and what they meant for the future of cinema and for America at large. From Invasion of the Body Snatchers to Star Wars, from Blade Runner to The Matrix, these landmark films have expressed our fears and dreams, our abilities and our deficiencies. In this deep-seeking investigation, we can all find something of ourselves that we recognize, as well as something that we've never recognized before. The focus on a fairly small number of landmark films allows detailed attention to genuinely original movies, including: Forbidden Planet, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Planet of the Apes, Star Wars, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Alien, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Blade Runner, The Terminator, Robocop, The Abyss, Independence Day, and The Matrix. This book is ideal for general readers interested in science fiction and film.