More than any other event of the 1930s, the migration of thousands of jobless and dispossessed Americans from the Dust Bowl states to the "promised land" of California evokes the hardships and despair of the Great Depression. In this innovative new study, Charles Shindo shows how the public memory of that migration has been dominated not by academic historians but by a handful of artists and would-be reformers.

Shindo examines the images of Dust Bowl migrants in photography, fiction, film, and song and marks off the various distances between these representations and the realities of migrant lives. He shows how photographer Dorothea Lange, novelist John Steinbeck, Hollywood filmmaker John Ford, and folksinger Woody Guthrie, as well as folklorists and government reformers, sympathized with the migrants' plight but also appropriated that experience to further their own aesthetic and ideological agendas.

The haunted look of Lange's "Migrant Mother" and other photos, the powerful story of the Joad family in Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, Ford's poetic cinematic adaptation of that novel, and the gritty plainfolk lyrics of Guthrie's Dust Bowl Ballads have all combined to portray the migrants as the quintessential victims of the Great Depression. Shindo, however, contends that these artists failed to fully grasp the realities of "Okie" culture and seemed far more concerned with promoting views and agendas that the migrants themselves might have found inaccurate or unappealing.

Shindo's study shows us how art can dominate history in the popular mind and illuminates the ways in which artists blend aesthetics and politics to make a personal statement about the human condition. His book not only increases our understanding of a tragic era in American history but also expands the scope of current histories of the American West to include cultural representations and their importance.

A fun, opinionated, illustrated look at Westerns—with great photographs from great movies This unique compendium of short essays about, and evocative photos from, the 100 greatest Western movies of all time is the authoritative new resource on the subject—and the ideal illustrated gift book for all cowboy enthusiasts and cinema fans. Beyond being eminently browseable and lavishly illustrated, the book—compiled by the editors of the popular Western magazine American Cowboy—is sure to generate hot debate over its “top 100� list, and it covers plenty of movies that appeal to a wide variety of ages and tastes—from The Ox-Bow Incident, High Noon, and Shane to The Wild Bunch, High Plains Drifter, and Unforgiven. Each essay makes the case for why the selected movie belongs in the top 100—and included are five movies you've never heard of but should immediately put high on your list. The introduction sets forth the criteria for the selections while also presenting a short history of the genre.

An unprecedented close textual analysis of numerous films within their contemporary cultural context. This book engages with representations of social crisis in Argentine fictional cinema between 1998 and 2005, a period when Argentina experienced a deep economic crisis that brought about significant changes in politics, culture, society and the arts. It focuses on the ways in which cinema interpreted and represented both contemporary and long-established issues within national and social discourse, while re-assessing notions of national identity, culture and class. Despite a growing body of scholarship on Argentine film published in English over the past few years, the role of more conventional films aimed at the public at large remains underexplored. By combining close textual analysis of films with the study of their cultural context, this book argues that fictional cinema at large addressed predominantly middle-class audiences, offering both reflective and divergent views on social reality that enriched the cultural arena in which Argentineans could reflect on their past, their daily life, and their relationship with the other. In this sense cinema helped Argentine people to learn to live in democracy.

Over the course of seven years and 180 episodes, The Golden Girls altered the television landscape. For the first time in history, Americans (and, later, the rest of the world) were watching sexagenarians—and one octogenarian—leading active, vital lives. These were older women who had careers, families, lovers, and adventures, far from the matronly television characters of the past. In The Golden Girls: A Cultural History, Bernadette Giacomazzo shows why this iconic sitcom is more than just comedy gold. She examines how, between all the laughs and the tales of St. Olaf, these women tackled tough issues of the time—issues that continue to resonate in the twenty-first century. From sexual harassment, ageism, and PTSD to AIDS, inter-racial relationships, and homosexuality, Dorothy, Rose, Blanche, and Sophia weren’t afraid to take on topics which were once considered taboo. This first-ever cultural history of The Golden Girls explores how the show forever changed the world’s perception of what it means to grow older, and showed us the healing power of friendship, community, and sisterhood. It gave the voiceless a new voice and unveiled all the possibilities of what “family� can mean—no matter one’s race, religion, creed, or sexual orientation.

Swiss artist Silvie Defraoui, born in 1935, is a pioneer of video art and art education in Switzerland. Beginning in 1975, she worked in collaboration with her husband Chérif Defraoui (1932–1994). Together they developed the Archives du Futur, a reflection on images, their status, and potential for memory and the future. The two artists also founded the legendary Atelier Médias Mixtes at Geneva’s École supérieure des Beaux-Arts (now HEAD—Genève). Since 1995, Defraoui has pursued a practice using various forms of expression, including projection, installation, ceramics, and serigraphy. This book is part of the new On Words series that presents conversations with contemporary women artists. Through them, readers come to understand the sources from which they draw inspiration, the themes in their work, and their view of the world. Edited by Julie Enckell, Federica Martini, and Sarah Burkhalter and bringing together a wide range of viewpoints, the On Words series adds a new narrative to polyphonic art history as told by those who actively shape it. Text in English and French.

One of the most dynamic figures of the entertainment industry, Fred Astaire's career spanned most of the twentieth century. For some, he brings to mind the world of Broadway. For others, he represents the golden age of the movie musical, particularly because of his eleven-film collaboration with Ginger Rogers. Virtually all of his fans will long remember his effortlessly graceful dance routines. International dance giants have credited his work with inspiring their careers and giving them a model of excellence. His innovations as a choreographer, dance director, and creator of musical sequences forever changed the presentation of dance on film. Though he was always in the public spotlight, he treasured his family and cherished his privacy. For a star of such stature, he was remarkably free from scandal. This reference book is a complete guide to his life and career. The volume begins with a biography that traces his life from his birth in Omaha in 1899, to his professional debut in 1905, to his Broadway and Hollywood careers, to his death in 1987. A chronology then highlights the chief events of his life. The chapters that follow provide detailed information for his work on stage, film, radio, and television. Each chapter includes entries for individual performances, with entries providing cast and credit information, plot synopses, critical commentary, and excerpts from reviews. The volume also lists his recordings, unfulfilled projects, and other information. An extensive annotated bibliography concludes the work.

Donna Reed has been called "everyone's favorite mother" and her recognition as such has stood the test of time. But before she became known as the "ultimate mom" for her role on "The Donna Reed Show," Miss Reed was already a veteran film actress with almost forty films to her credit. Among these are her performances in "It's a Wonderful Life" and "From Here to Eternity." Her role in the latter garnered her a Best Supporting Actress Oscar. This book is a comprehensive reference to the life and work of Donna Reed for use by researchers as well as fans. Performing arts researcher Brenda Scott Royce has compiled a self-contained reference work to Donna Reed's career and life. A brief biography begins the book, followed by detailed examinations of Miss Reed's work in motion pictures, television, and radio. Also listed are media reviews of her work, a listing of awards and nominations, and a chronology of major events in her life. An annotated bibliography follows these sections, and it lists all articles and other items about Donna Reed that appeared in major magazines, fan magazines, books, and newspapers. The entries in each section are cross-referenced for easy referral by the reader. This bio-bibliography will be an important addition to libraries with a performing arts collection, students of media arts, and Donna Reed fans.

Alongside the upsurge in violence that came with the downfall of the Oslo era in the early 2000s, a new wave of documentaries emerged that centered on Palestinians’ and Mizrahim’s (Jews of Middle Eastern origins) historical and lived experiences of pain and oppression across Israel-Palestine and beyond. The documentaries challenge the systemic removal of self-represented Palestinian and Mizrahi pain from mainstream media and the public realm dominated by Israel. . This book explores how Palestinians and Mizrahim perform their long endured pain on screen. Analysing key documentary films from the first decade of the 2000s, Shirly Bahar offers a nuanced reading of the cinematic documentary corpus emerging from Israel-Palestine, as well Palestinians’ and Mizrahim’s different and unequal yet interrelated forms of oppression and racialization under Israeli rule. While pain sets them apart, the documentary representations of pain of Palestinians and Mizrahim invite us to consider reconnection by focusing on the very relational nature of pain.

For centuries, humankind has sought to know itself through an understanding of the body, in sickness and in health, inside and out. This fascination left in its wake a rich body of artworks that demonstrate not only the facts of the human body, but also the ways in which our ideas about the body and its proper representation have changed over time. At times both beautiful and repulsive, illustrated anatomy continues to hold our interest today, and is frequently referenced in popular culture. Anatomica brings together some of the most striking, fascinating and bizarre artworks from the 16th through to the 20th century, exploring human anatomy in one beautiful volume.

Drawing was Leonardo da Vinci s primary artistic activity. He used drawing to think, to explore the world around him and to develop his other artistic projects. His drawings are among the most diverse and technically accomplished in the entire history of art, and the Royal Collection holds by far the most important selection of these.

This book provides an authoritative account of Leonardo s work and represents the full breadth of his interests including maps and botanical sketches, anatomical illustrations and studies of the face, scientific drawings and engineering designs.

During the summer of 2020, the space outside the Renwick Gallery-the Smithsonian American Art Museum's dedicated museum for contemporary craft and decorative arts-became home to a new discussion about racial justice on Black Lives Matter Plaza. The curators at the Renwick Gallery felt the need to align themselves with what was going on right outside the Gallery's door, the organizing rationale for understanding the objects presented in this volume, many of which are new acquisitions. The title is taken from Alicia Eggert's 2019-2020 eponymous neon work, and the 85 objects in the main plates section lead the reader from the idea of shelter, through layers of expanding spaces to the vast expanses of the universe. The volume looks at contemporary American craft "in the whirlwind of now" revealing possibilities for contemporary makers to respond to a more empathetic future.

In 2017, twenty-five years after its initial release, a new season of Twin Peaks shook the world of television. This new book is a detailed analysis of the third season of the television series and aims to elucidate some of the meanings of Twin Peaks: The Return and explain these in terms of philosophical, mythological and spiritual approaches.  It focuses on the third season of Twin Peaks but also refers to the first two seasons, and to the film, Fire Walk with Me. Divided into three sections, the book first examines the third season as expanded storytelling through the lens of Gene Youngblood's theory of synesthetic cinema, intertextuality, integrationist, and segregationist approaches in the realm of fiction, and focuses on the role of audio and visual superimpositions in The Return. It goes on to question the nature of the reality depicted in the seasons via scientific approaches, such as electromagnetism, time theory, and multiverses. The third and final section aims to transcend this vision by exploring the role of theosophy, the occult, and other spiritual sources. The author’s focus on the role of spirituality and science in Twin Peaks is what distinguishes this book from other works on the famous television series. The work of a scholar who is also a fan, the book should appeal to any hard-core Twin Peaks viewer.   Foreword by Matt Zoller Seitz, editor-at-large at RogerEbert.com, and the television critic for New York magazine. This will be essential reading for fans of Twin Peaks and academics writing about it. Also of interest for students with an interest in philosophy, religion, science or spiritualism in visual and popular culture.

This collection brings together many of the world’s leading scholars on race and film to re-consider the legacy and impact of D.W. Griffith’s deeply racist 1915 epic The Birth of a Nation. While this film is often cited, there is a considerable dearth of substantial research on its initial impact and global reach. These essays fill important gaps in the history of the film, including essential work on its sources, international reception, and African American responses. This book is a key text in the history of the most infamous and controversial film ever made and offers crucial new insights to scholars and students working in film history, African American history and the history of race relations.

An investigation into the manifestations of religious art in East Anglia and how they are connected to and inspired by their locations. The relationship between religious or spiritual artworks and the locality where such objects are made and used is the central question this volume addresses. While it is a well-known fact that religious artworks, objects and buildings can have a power or agency of their own (iconoclasm, the violent defacement of an object which paradoxically testifies to the fear and loathing it has generated, being an extreme example), the sources of this power are less well understood. It is this problem which the book seeks to begin to remedy, using East Anglia, an area of Britain with an exceptionally long history of religious diversity, as its prism. Case-studies are taken from prehistory right up to the twenty-first century, and from a variety of media, including wall-paintings, church architecture, and stained glass; famous sites examined include Seahenge and Sutton Hoo. Overall, the book shows how profoundly religious artworks are embedded in local communities, belief systems, histories and landscapes. T.A. Heslop is Professor of Visual Arts, Elizabeth Mellings a Post-doctoral Research Fellow, and Margit Thofner Senior Lecturer, at the School of World Art Studies, University of East Anglia. Contributors: Margit Thofner, T.A. Heslop, Elizabeth de Bièvre, Daphne Nash Briggs, Adrian Marsden, Timothy Pestell, Matthew Champion, Carole Hill, ElizabethRutledge, David King, John Peake, Nicola Whyte, Chris King, Francesca Vanke, Stefan Muthesius, Kate Hesketh-Harvey, Karl Bell, Elizabeth Mellings, Robert Wallis, Trevor Ashwin. Cover artwork: Glowing Embers (Seahenge), 2000. Painting by Susan Laughlin.

Crime dramas have been a staple of the television landscape since the advent of the medium. Along with comedies and soap operas, the police procedural made an easy transition from radio to TV, and starting with Dragnet in 1952, quickly became one of the most popular genres. Crime television has proven to be a fascinating reflection of changes and developments in the culture at large. In the '50s and early '60s, the square-jawed, just-the-facts detectives of The Untouchables and The FBI put police work in the best light possible. As the '60s gave way to the '70s, however, the depictions gained more subtle shading, and The Streets of San Francisco, The Rockford Files, and Baretta offered conflicted heroes in more complex worlds. This trend has of course continued in more recent decades, with Steven Bochco's dramas seeking a new realism through frank depictions of language and sexuality on television. In chronicling these developments and illustrating how the genre has reflected our ideas of crime and crime solving through the decades, author Douglas Snauffer provides essential reading for any fan. This work provides a comprehensive history of detective and police shows on television, with, among other elements, production histories of seminal programs, and interviews with some of the most important writers and producers of crime television. Besides the shows listed above, this volume will also discuss such programs as: Peter Gunn, The Mod Squad, Hawaii Five-O, Columbo, Starsky and Hutch, Charlie's Angels, Magnum P.I., Miami Vice, T.J. Hooker, Remington Steele, Cagney and Lacey, Murder, She Wrote, The Commish, Homicide: Life on the Street, Monk, and many more.

Manoel de Oliveira is the only filmmaker whose career spans from the silent era to the digital age, and yet there is little written in English about his extensive filmography. This volume, the first to discuss Oliveira's later works in English, fills this incredible gap in scholarship on the director with fresh and original analysis of over 50 of Oliveira's films, ranging from 1963's Rite of Spring to 2009's Eccentricities of a Blonde-haired Girl. Organized by tropes and topics, rather than chronological order of release, The Cinema of Manoel de Oliveira creates a unique lens through which to consider the director and the ways in which his work links cinema, literature, and other artforms. Hajnal Király sheds new light on Oliveira's filmography with new readings of his work in relation to 20th and 21st century history.

We are imprisoned in circadian rhythms, as well as in our life reviews that follow chronological and causal links. For the majority of us our lives are vectors directed toward aims that we strive to reach and delimited by our birth and death. Nevertheless, we can still experience fleeting moments during which we forget the past and the future, as well as the very flow of time. During these intense emotions, we burst out laughing or crying, or we scream with pleasure, or we are mesmerized by a work of art or just by eyes staring at us. Similarly, when we watch a film, the screening time has a well defined beginning and end, and screening and diegetic time and their relations, together with narrative and stylistic techniques, determine a time within the time of our life with its own rules and exceptions. Through the close analysis of Stanley Kubrick’s, Adrian Lyne’s, Michael Bay’s and Quentin Tarantino’s oeuvres, this book discusses the overall ‘dominating’ time of their films and the moments during which this ‘ruling’ time is disrupted and we momentarily forget the run toward the diegetic future – suspense – or the past – curiosity and surprise. It is in these very moments, as well as in our own lives, that the prison of time, through which the film is constructed and that is constructed by the film itself, crumbles displaying our role as spectators, our deepest relations with the film.

An unparalleled exploration of films set in Ancient Rome, from the silent Cleopatra to the modern rendition of Ben-Hur. No sooner had the dazzling new technology of cinema been invented near the end of the 19th century than filmmakers immediately turned to ancient history for inspiration. Nero, Cleopatra, Caesar, and more all found their way to the silver screen and would return again and again in the decades that followed. But just how accurate were these depictions of Ancient Rome? In Ancient Rome on the Silver Screen: Myth versus Reality, Gregory S. Aldrete and Graham Sumner provide a fascinating examination of 50 films set in Ancient Rome, analyzing each for its historical accuracy of plot, characters, costumes and sets. They also divulge insights into the process of making each movie and the challenges the filmmakers faced in bringing the Roman world to vivid cinematic life. Beginning with the classics from the dawn of cinema, through the great golden age of sword-and-sandals flicks in the 1950s, to the dramatic epics of the modern day, Aldrete and Sumner test the authenticity of Hollywood’s version of history. Featuring remarkable custom-made paintings depicting characters as they appeared in film and how they should have appeared if they were historically correct, Ancient Rome on the Silver Screen delivers an invaluable perspective of film and history. This unique collaboration between professional illustrator and award-winning Roman historian offers a deeper understanding of modern cinema and brings Roman history to life.