Henry Brandt (1921-1998) was a legendary figure in Swiss postwar film-making, a photographer and a pioneer of the "nouveau cinema suisse." His second film Les Nomades du soleil, an ethnographic documentary shot in 1953-54 about a nomadic people in Niger, earned him international renown. At the 1964 Swiss national exhibition Expo 64 in Lausanne, Brandt left his mark on the memory of an entire generation: his five short films La Suisse s'interroge questioned the countries affluent Swiss society in a hitherto unknown form and were the initial spark for the sociologically incisive film-making in francophone Switzerland that later gave rise to masterpieces by Alain Tanner and Claude Goretta. This first monograph on Henry Brandt spans the entire oeuvre of this versatile cinematographer, which includes numerous documentaries, photo reportages, and TV productions. The essays investigate Brandt's works and provide insights into his efforts to combine the description of the local with the exploration of the distant. The book highlights that Henry Brandt's commissioned work as well as his own independent productions are critical testimonies to global inequality and thus more relevant today than ever. Text in French.

Role Models is a wild and witty self-portrait of John Waters, America's 'Pope of Trash', told through intimate profiles of his favourite personalities - some famous, some unknown, some criminal, some surprisingly middle of the road. From Esther Martin, owner of the scariest bar in Baltimore, to the playwright Tennessee Williams; from the atheist leader Madalyn Murray O'Hair to the insane martyr Saint Catherine of Siena; from the English novelist Denton Welch to the timelessly appealing singer Johnny Mathis - these are the extreme figures who helped John Waters form his own brand of neurotic happiness. A paean to the power of subversive inspiration that delights, amuses and happily horrifies in equal measure...

For over four decades, Martin Scorsese has been the chronicler of an obsessive society, where material possessions and physical comfort are valued, where the pursuit of individual improvement is rewarded and where male prerogative is respected and preserved.

Scorsese has often described his films as sociology and he has a point: his storytelling condenses complex information into comprehensible narratives about society. In this sense, he has been a guide through a dark world of nineteenth century crypto-fascism to a fetishistic twentieth century in which goods, fame, money and power are held to have magical power.

Author of "Tyson: Nurture of the Beast" and "Beckham," Ellis Cashmore turns his attention to arguably the most influential living film- maker to explore how Scorsese envisions America. Greed, manhood, the city and romantic love feature on Scorsese's landscape of secular materialism. They are among the themes Cashmore argues have driven and inform Scorsese's work. This is America, as seen through the eyes of Martin Scorsese and it is a deeply unpleasant place.

Cashmore's book discloses how, collectively, Scorsese's films present an image of America. It's an image assembled from the perspectives of obsessive people, whether burned-out paramedics, compulsive entrepreneurs, tortured lovers, or celebrity-fixated comedians. It's collected from pool halls, taxicabs, boxing rings and jazz clubs. It's an image that's specific, yet ubiquitous. It is "Martin Scorsese's America."

ReFocus: The Films of Rachid Bouchareb is the first book-length study of the internationally recognized director's films. Bouchareb was one of France's first filmmakers of North African descent and his career as a director and producer now spans over 35 years. Remarkably varied in their themes, formal elements and narrative settings, Bouchareb's work has engaged with and reflected on a variety of crucial social, political and historical issues; from the role of colonial troops in the French army during the Second World War, to terrorism in contemporary Europe. This volume examines Bouchareb's films from an interdisciplinary perspective, exploring key influences on his output and considering new theoretical approaches to his filmmaking.

Let us rejoice in the genius that is Kevin Smith! This fun and photo-filled biography celebrates the life, films, and fans of the director responsible for such indie cult classics as Clerks, Mallrats, Chasing Amy, and Dogma. Movie-industry veteran David Gati has compiled and edited this humorous and insightful look at Smith's nearly 30-year moviemaking journey. Through Smith's own uncensored stories-taken from podcasts, Q&As, and documentaries-we get to know him as a person, the struggles he's been through, and the people he's worked with. Gati presents a visual facet to these narrative gems in the form of fan art from around the world, along with on-set stills, candid personal photos, and memorabilia. This scrapbook celebration shows how films affect and reflect pop culture, and explores the cultural phenomenon of fandom. The result is not only a tribute to Smith but also a testimony to his amazing and loyal fans.

In Cinema, If You Please, Murray Pomerance explores our ways of watching film in light of socially organized forms of pleasure that date back to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Wedding the notion of pleasure in film viewing to the history of pleasure in the West, the book considers pleasure gardens and promenading; the history of oil painting and its display; the passion for travel and exposure to the exotic and strange; and forms of musical repetition and restatement. With in-depth studies of films like Vertigo, The Passenger, A Matter of Life and Death, Clouds of Sils Maria, Personal Shopper, Call Me By Your Name and Blow-Up, this ground-breaking book draws the reader into the past and the present at once, joining an understanding of personal and visual delight to their cultural and historical roots.

Making a compelling argument for the continuing relevance of Brechtian film theory and cinema, this book offers new research and analysis of Brecht the film and media theorist, placing his scattered writings on the subject within the lively film theory debates that took place in Europe between the 1920s-1960s. Furthermore, Angelos Koutsourakis identifies key points of convergence between Brecht's 'unfinished project' and contemporary film and media theory. With case studies of films ranging from Robert Roberto Rossellini's Paisa to Bernardo Bertolucci's 1900 and Joshua Oppenheimer's The Act of Killing amongst others, this study challenges many existing preconceptions about Brecht's theoretical position and invites readers to discover new ways of apprehending and making use of Brecht in film studies.

In the summer of 1947, "Crossfire," a controversial thriller exposing American anti-Semitism, was a critical and box-office hit, and RKO producer Adrian Scott was at the pinnacle of his career. Within several months, however, Scott became infamous as a member of the Hollywood Ten, blacklisted for his refusal to cooperate with the House Un-American Activities Committee.

"Caught in the Crossfire: Adrian Scott and the Politics of Americanism in 1940s Hollywood" reconstructs the production and reception of Scott's major films, exploring the political and creative challenges faced by Hollywood radicals within the studio system and reassessing the relationship among film noir, antifascism, anticommunism, and the politics of Americanism.

In One-Man Band, the third volume in his epic survey of Orson Welles' life and work, Simon Callow again probes in comprehensive and penetrating detail into one of the most complex artists of the twentieth century, looking closely at the triumphs and failures of an ambitious one-man assault on one medium after another - theatre, radio, film, television, even, at one point, ballet - in each of which his radical and original approach opened up new directions and hitherto unglimpsed possibilities. The book begins with Welles' self-exile from America, and his realisation that he could only function happily as an independent film-maker, a one-man band; by 1964, he had filmed Othello, which took three years to complete, Mr Arkadin, the biggest conundrum in his output, and his masterpiece Chimes at Midnight, as well as Touch of Evil, his sole return to Hollywood and, like all too many of his films, wrested from his grasp and re-edited. Along the way he made inroads into the fledgling medium of television and a number of stage plays, including Moby-Dick, considered by theatre historians to be one of the seminal productions of the century. Meanwhile, his private life was as dramatic as his professional life. The book shows what it was like to be around Welles, and, with a precision rarely attempted before, what it was like to be him, in which lies the answer to the old riddle: whatever happened to Orson Welles?

In the late 1960s, the collapse of the classic Hollywood studio system led in part, and for less than a decade, to a production trend heavily influenced by the international art cinema. Reflecting a new self-consciousness in the US about the national film patrimony, this period is known as the Hollywood Renaissance. However, critical study of the period is generally associated with its so-called principal auteurs, slighting a number of established and emerging directors who were responsible for many of the era's most innovative and artistically successful releases. With contributions from leading film scholars, this book provides a revisionist account of this creative resurgence by discussing and memorializing twenty-four directors of note who have not yet been given a proper place in the larger history of the period. Including filmmakers such as Hal Ashby, John Frankenheimer, Mike Nichols, and Joan Micklin Silver, this more expansive approach to the auteurism of the late 1960s and 1970s seems not only appropriate but pressing -- a necessary element of the re-evaluation of 'Hollywood' with which cinema studies has been preoccupied under the challenges posed by the emergence and flourishing of new media.

In Westerns, women transmit complicated cultural coding about the nature of westward expansionism, heroism, family life, manliness and American femininity. As the genre changes and matures, depictions of women have transitioned from traditional to more modern roles. Frontier Feminine charts these significant shifts in the Western's transmission of gender values and expectations and aims to expand the critical arena in which Western film is situated by acknowledging the importance of women in this genre.

Now more than ever, the idea of Europe as grounded in a shared cultural heritage cannot be taken for granted. For all its diversity, complexity and internal tensions, Europe remains a powerful economic and political superstate. But it is one in crisis, where the postwar social democratic consensus has collapsed, the failings of neoliberalism have led to widespread austerity, and extremism, xenophobia and racism are on the rise. This collection of original essays considers filmmakers' engagements with pressing issues of the moment. Taking a long view of the crisis and considering geopolitical changes that took place towards the end of the 20th century, this book examines European cinema's response to the economic, political and social crises that afflict Europe in the present.

Discussing a variety of independent and experimental Italian films, this book gives voice to a critcically neglected form of Italian cinema. By examining the work of directors such as Marinella Pirelli, Mirko Locatelli and Cesrae Zavattini, the book defines, inspects and studies the cinematic panorama of Italy through a new lens. It thereby explores the character of independent films and their related practices within the Italian historical, cultural and cinematic landscape.

A lavish hardback containing Orson Welles' Portfolio, much of which has never been seen before. Orson Welles, famous as an accomplished actor, writer, producer and visionary director, had originally aspired to become a musician or artist. Having studied at the Art Institute of Chicago for one summer, he continued to draw and paint throughout his life. The majority of his artwork, including costume and set designs and caricatures, has been unavailable to the public. Until now.

In 1978 animation director Yoshiyuki Tomino set forth to change the Japanese animation industry. For decades prior, Japanese science fiction had churned out numerous tales of semi-autonomous robots that would often come to the aide of humanity, but as someone who worked on a number of those works, Tomino came to the realization that he wanted to see a more realistic robot narrative. His vision was one where the robot while just slightly more human in appearance, was utilized more as a tool manipulated by man. With renowned artist Yoshikazu Yasuhiko by his side, and occasionally as his artistic rival, Tomino would change the way the whole world came to see Japanese animation and the broader toy and comics industries built around it. This evolution would be a war in its own right! Battles were fought in the offices of the animation studio! Conflicts were equally as heated in the recording booth!

Impassioned, witty and polemical, At Your Own Risk is Derek Jarman's defiant celebration of gay sexuality. In At Your Own Risk, Derek Jarman weaves poetry, prose, photographs and newspaper extracts into a rich tapestry of gay experience in the UK. The buttoned-up repression of the fifties and sixties makes way for liberation and free love in the seventies, only to be chased by the terror and pain of HIV/AIDS. This is Jarman at his passionate best, written when he was already ill with HIV and in the midst of the moral panic surrounding the AIDS crisis. Defiant and furious, he not only celebrates his own sexuality but skewers wider society for its brazen homophobia. Reissued here 25 years after Jarman's death, with an introduction by Straight Jacket author Matthew Todd, At Your Own Risk remains a singular work. It is a powerful reminder of how far we have come and how much further we have left to go. 'It blew my mind quite honestly !', It's A Sin star Olly Alexander via Twitter

Paul Schrader's unique relationship to the role of the author (as screenwriter, director and critic) has long informed his cinema, and raises complicated questions about the definition of the auteur. This volume of essays - one of the first collections to assess Schrader's contributions to directing, screenwriting and criticism - includes the first original appraisals of his much-lauded masterpiece First Reformed (2017), as well as a chapter-length interview with Schrader himself, conducted by the editors. Providing a comprehensive exploration of his groundbreaking achievements in cinema, the book considers Schrader's more overlooked films and provides new insights to their connection with his celebrated work in direction and screenwriting such as Taxi Driver (1976), Cat People (1982) and The Comfort of Strangers (1990).

Lino Brocka (1939-1991) was one of Asia and the Global South's most celebrated filmmakers. A versatile talent, he was at once a bankable director of genre movies, an internationally acclaimed auteur of social films, a pioneer of queer cinema, and an outspoken critic of Ferdinand Marcos's autocratic regime. Jose B. Capino examines the figuration of politics in the Filipino director's movies, illuminating their historical contexts, allegorical tropes, and social critiques. Combining eye-opening archival research with fresh interpretations of over fifteen of Brocka's major and minor works, Martial Law Melodrama does more than reveal the breadth of his political vision. It also offers a timely lesson about popular cinema's vital role in the struggle for democracy.

Hitchcock was a masterful director, popular with audiences of all ages and critically acclaimed both during and after his unusually long career. What may have been sensed by many viewers but not fully articulated until now is the extent to which his works subtly engage philosophical themes: What is evil, and how does it shield and reveal itself? Can we know what is inside the mind of another person? What is at stake when one knows the truth but cannot speak of it or cannot persuade others? How is Hitchcock's loving critique of humanity manifested in his films? Why are Hitchcock's works so often ambiguous? What is the hidden purpose and theory behind his use of humor? Hitchcock employs cinematic techniques-from camera angles and use of light to editing and sound-partly to convey suspense and drama but also to engage and advance philosophical issues, ranging from identity crises to moral ugliness. Roche unlocks Hitchcock's engagement with philosophical themes, and he does so in a way that appeals to both the novice and the seasoned philosopher, as well as enthusiastic admirers of Hitchcock's films.

Kenneth Lonergan's three films-You Can Count on Me (2000), Margaret (2011), and Manchester by the Sea (2016)-are rife with philosophical complexities. They challenge simple philosophical approaches to central issues of human behaviour. In particular, they ask questions about how to cope with suffering that one cannot overcome, the role that self- deception plays in people's lives and how to think about characters who do not embody simplistic moral ideas of virtue and vice. By philosophically engaging with these themes as they unfold in Lonergan's films, we are then able to formulate a more nuanced answer to the questions they pose. Kenneth Lonergan: Philosophical Filmmaker will draw from Lonergan's films and plays, along with the philosophical literature on the topics that they explore. The rich history of philosophical reflection surrounding these areas enables the reader to determine how the themes central to Lonergan's work have combined to create a rich cinematic oeuvre.

Intercultural Screen Adaptation offers a wide-ranging examination of how film and television adaptations (and non-adaptations) interact with the cultural, social and political environments of their national, transnational and post-national contexts. With screen adaptations examined from across Britain, Europe, South America and Asia, this book tests how examining the processes of adaptation across and within national frameworks challenges traditional debates around the concept of nation in film, media and cultural studies. With case studies of films such as Under the Skin (2013) and T2: Trainspotting (2017), as well as TV adaptations like War and Peace (2016) and Narcos (2015 - 2017), Intercultural Screen Adaptation offers readers an invigorating look at adaptations from a variety of critical perspectives, incorporating the uses of landscape, nostalgia and translation.

Paolo Sorrentino, director of Il Divo (2008) and The Great Beauty (2013) and creator of the HBO series The Young Pope (2016), has emerged as one of the most compelling figures in twenty-first-century European film. From his earliest productions to his more recent transnational works, Sorrentino has paid homage to Italy's cinematic past while telling stories of masculine characters whose sense of self seems to be on the brink of dissolution. Together with his usual collaborators (including cinematographer Luca Bigazzi and editor Cristiano Travagliolo) and actors (chief among them Toni Servillo), Sorrentino has produced an incisive depiction of the contemporary European condition by means of an often spectacular postclassical style that nevertheless continues postwar Italian film's tradition of political commitment. This book is a critical examination of Sorrentino's work, focusing on his emergence as a preeminent transnational auteur. Russell J. A. Kilbourn offers close readings of Sorrentino's feature films and television output from One Man Up (2001) to The Young Pope (2016) and Loro (2018), featuring in-depth analyses of the director's exuberant and intensified film style. Addressing the crucial themes of Sorrentino's output-including a masculine subject defined by a melancholic awareness of its own imminent demise, and a critique of the conventional cinematic representation of women-Kilbourn illuminates Sorrentino's ability to suffuse postmodern elegies for the humanist worldview with a sense of social awareness and responsibility. Kilbourn also foregrounds Sorrentino's contributions to the ongoing transformations of cinematic realism and the Italian and European art cinema traditions more broadly. The first English-language study of the acclaimed director's oeuvre, The Cinema of Paolo Sorrentino demonstrates why he is considered one of the most dynamic figures making films today.

"The Cinema of Robert Lepage" is the first critical study of one of the most striking artists of Quebecois and Canadian independent filmmaking. The book examines Lepage's creative methods of filmmaking in their cultural and social context and argues that his work cannot be seen separately from his oeuvre as a multidisciplinary artist. Further, this study demonstrates that like Jean Cocteau, Mike Leigh, and Alain Resnais, Lepage is a multifaceted artist who works with a group of actors on very personal themes, building his films, such as "Le Confessionnal" and "Possible Worlds," during months or years of a perpetual rehearsal process; thus it challenges the notions that Lepage should be considered only in the terms of Quebecois film tradition. The author explores such themes with Lepage in a new exclusive and detailed interview.

This collection showcases the best essays from the six issues of film studies' leading platform for Hitchcock scholarship. Contributions include works by Charles Barr, Thomas Elsaesser, Mark Rappaport, Michael Walker, and Slavoj Žižek, among others, covering Hitchcock's entire oeuvre, from his early silent films to his late American masterpieces. It contains an overview of Hitchcock criticism, a screenwriter's forum on "Working with Hitch," and early essays on film by both Hitchcock and Alma Reville.

Although film and media studies have widely engaged with the different aspects of social space, domestic space in film has rarely been studied in its multiple dimensions. Drawing on a broad range of theoretical disciplines - and with case studies of directors such as Chantal Akerman, Agnes Varda, Claire Denis, Todd Haynes, Amos Gitai, Martin Ritt, John Ford, Ila Beka and Louise Lemoine - this book goes beyond the representational approach to the analysis of domestic space in cinema, in order to look at it as a dispositif. Adopting this innovative two-fold approach that couples representation and dispositif, the home is studied as an architecture, as the place that embodies, defines and perpetuates the family history, as the milieu of gender and generational struggle, as well as the first site where manifestations of power unfold. All chapters contribute to explore, unpack the complexities and expand on the richness encapsulated in the notion of domesticity and dwelling in its fascinating relation to moving images.