Ivan Dixon's 1973 film, The Spook Who Sat by the Door, captures the intensity of social and political upheaval during a volatile period in American history. Based on Sam Greenlee's novel by the same name, the film is a searing portrayal of an American Black underclass brought to the brink of revolution. This series of critical essays situates the film in its social, political, and cinematic contexts and presents a wealth of related materials, including an extensive interview with Sam Greenlee, the original United Artists' press kit, numerous stills from the film, and the original screenplay. This fascinating examination of a revolutionary work foregrounds issues of race, class, and social inequality that continue to incite protests and drive political debate.

This text is the iconoclastic and controversial filmmaker Derek Jarman's candid journals from 1989 to 1990. The journals include Jarman's love of gardening and flowers while he was growing sicker from AIDS.

In the course of a decades-spanning career as a filmmaker, Terrence Malick has carved out a distinctive cinematic aesthetic. Central to this style is the use of sound. James Wierzbicki offers the first comprehensive study of Malick's soundtracks, arguing that they create a distinctive sonic style throughout his oeuvre and exploring how that style functions. Considering voice, noise, and music as elements in the soundtrack, this concise book enriches our understanding of one of our most philosophical filmmakers, and of the interplay between the sonic and visual elements in film.

The Bloomsbury Handbook to Sofia Coppola offers the first comprehensive overview of the director's impressive oeuvre. It includes individual chapters on her films, including The Virgin Suicides (1999), Lost in Translation (2003), Marie Antoinette (2006), Somewhere (2010), The Bling Ring (2013), The Beguiled (2017), and On the Rocks (2020). While focused on her films, contributors also consider Coppola's shorter works for television, commercials and music videos, as well as explorations of the distinct elements of her signature style: cinematography, production/costume design, music, and editing. Additional chapters provide insights into the influences on her work, its popular and scholarly reception, and interpretations of key themes and issues. The international team of contributors includes leading scholars of film, music, fashion, celebrity and gender studies, visual and material culture, reception studies, as well as industry professionals. Their interdisciplinary insights capture the complexities of Coppola's work and its cultural significance.

KinoSputniks closely analyse some key films from the history of Russian and Soviet cinema. Written by international experts in the field, they are intended for film enthusiasts and students, combining scholarship with an accessible style of writing. This KinoSputnik on Andrei Tarkovsky's debut feature Ivan's Childhood examines the production, context and reception of the film, whilst offering a detailed reading of its key themes. Through a close examination of its intricate narrative structure, unique stylistic approach and deep philosophical underpinnings, this KinoSputnik provides a thorough analysis of a truly remarkable debut film, from an artist now considered a towering figure of Russian culture. Primary readership will be among film studies students and film enthusiasts. A list of all books in the series is here on the Intellect website on the series page KinoSputnik

Ivan Dixon's 1973 film, The Spook Who Sat by the Door, captures the intensity of social and political upheaval during a volatile period in American history. Based on Sam Greenlee's novel by the same name, the film is a searing portrayal of an American Black underclass brought to the brink of revolution. This series of critical essays situates the film in its social, political, and cinematic contexts and presents a wealth of related materials, including an extensive interview with Sam Greenlee, the original United Artists' press kit, numerous stills from the film, and the original screenplay. This fascinating examination of a revolutionary work foregrounds issues of race, class, and social inequality that continue to incite protests and drive political debate.

A Times Literary Supplement Book of the Year, chosen by Tom Stoppard "A revelation."-Marc Weingarten, Washington Post Acclaimed film director Billy Wilder's early writings-brilliantly translated into English for the first time Before Billy Wilder became the screenwriter and director of iconic films like Sunset Boulevard and Some Like It Hot, he worked as a freelance reporter, first in Vienna and then in Weimar Berlin. Billy Wilder on Assignment brings together more than fifty articles, translated into English for the first time, that Wilder (then known as "Billie") published in magazines and newspapers between September 1925 and November 1930. From a humorous account of Wilder's stint as a hired dancing companion in a posh Berlin hotel and his dispatches from the international film scene, to his astute profiles of writers, performers, and political figures, the collection offers fresh insights into the creative mind of one of Hollywood's most revered writer-directors. Wilder's early writings-a heady mix of cultural essays, interviews, and reviews-contain the same sparkling wit and intelligence as his later Hollywood screenplays, while also casting light into the dark corners of Vienna and Berlin between the wars. Wilder covered everything: big-city sensations, jazz performances, film and theater openings, dance, photography, and all manner of mass entertainment. And he wrote about the most colorful figures of the day, including Charlie Chaplin, Cornelius Vanderbilt, the Prince of Wales, actor Adolphe Menjou, director Erich von Stroheim, and the Tiller Girls dance troupe. Film historian Noah Isenberg's introduction and commentary place Wilder's pieces-brilliantly translated by Shelley Frisch-in historical and biographical context, and rare photos capture Wilder and his circle during these formative years. Filled with rich reportage and personal musings, Billy Wilder on Assignment showcases the burgeoning voice of a young journalist who would go on to become a great auteur.

Kieslowski's last films have indelibly marked the past decade. His cinema has renewed the representation of the human subject and emotion in film: space and luminous surface reveal the finest, most fragile impressions of states of mind and human consciousness. This study is the first to offer specific focus on Kies'lowski's last films, on his French-language cinema and its place within the broader context of French film-making. Engaging with Deleuze's discussions of the time-image, and recent work in trauma theory, Emma Wilson offers radical insights into the innovation in Kies'lowski's explorations of memory, temporality, loss and desire. A charged defence of Kies'lowski's work, Memory and Survival offers new readings of this cinema of blind chance and fleeting beauty.

Between 1959 and 1984, French film director Francois Truffaut was interviewed over three hundred times. Each interview offers critical insight into the genesis of Truffaut's films as he shares the sources of his inspiration, the choice of his themes, and the development of his screenplays. In addition, Truffaut discusses his relationships with collaborators, actors, and the circumstances surrounding the shooting of each film. These texts, originally assembled by Anne Gillain and published in French in 1988, are presented here in a montage arranged chronologically by film. This compilation includes an impressive array of reflections on cinema as an art form. Truffaut defines the aims and practices of the French New Wave, comparing their efforts to the films made by their predecessors and including comments that encompass the entire history of cinema. Truffaut on Cinema provides commentary on contemporary events, a wealth of biographical information, and Truffaut's own artistic itinerary.

With a sharp eye for social detail and the pressures of class inequality, Alfred Hitchcock brought to the American scene a perspicacity and analytical shrewdness unparalleled in American cinema. Murray Pomerance works from a basis in cultural analysis and a detailed knowledge of Alfred Hitchcock's films and production techniques to explore how America of the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s is revealed and critically commented upon in Hitchcock's work. Alfred Hitchcock's America is full of stunning details that bring new light to Hitchcock's method and works. The American "spirit of place," is seen here in light of the titanic American personality, American values in a consumer age, social class and American social form, and the characteristic American marriage. The book s analysis ranges across a wide array of films from Rebecca to Family Plot, and examines in depth the location sequences, characterological types, and complex social expectations that riddled American society while Hitchcock thrived there.

The art of Senegalese director Djibril Diop Mambety's cinema lies in the tension created between the visual narrative and the aural narrative. His work has been considered hugely influential, and his films bridge Western practices of filmmaking and oral traditions from West Africa. Mambety's film Touki Bouki is considered one of the foundational works of African cinema. Vlad Dima proposes a new reading of Mambety's entire filmography from the perspective of sound. Following recent analytical patterns in film studies that challenge the primacy of the visual, Dima claims that Mambety uses voices, noise, and silence as narrative tools that generate their own stories and sonic spaces. By turning an ear to cinema, Dima pushes African aesthetics to the foreground of artistic creativity and focuses on the critical importance of sound in world cinema.

Challenging the prevailing notion among cinephiles that the auteur is an isolated genius interested primarily in individualism, Colin Burnett positions Robert Bresson as one whose life's work confronts the cultural forces that helped shape it. Regarded as one of film history's most elusive figures, Bresson (1901-1999) carried himself as an auteur long before cultural magazines, like the famed Cahiers du cinema, advanced the term to describe such directors as Jacques Tati, Alfred Hitchcock, and Jean-Luc Godard. In this groundbreaking study, Burnett combines biography with cultural history to uncover the roots of the auteur in the alternative cultural marketplace of midcentury France.

A Companion to Steven Spielberg provides an authoritative collection of essays exploring the achievements and legacy of one of the most influential film directors of the modern era. * Offers comprehensive coverage of Spielberg s directorial output, from early works including Duel, The Sugarland Express, and Jaws, to recent films * Explores Spielberg s contribution to the development of visual effects and computer games, as well as the critical and popular reception of his films * Topics include in-depth analyses of Spielberg s themes, style, and filming techniques; commercial and cultural significance of the Spielberg brand and his parallel career as a producer; and collaborative projects with artists and composers * Brings together an international team of renowned scholars and emergent voices, balancing multiple perspectives and critical approaches * Creates a timely and illuminating resource which acknowledges the ambiguity and complexity of Spielberg s work, and reflects its increasing importance to film scholarship

Expanding on a burgeoning area in contemporary film studies that explores visual and aural absences and interstices in film narrative, this book explores silences in the soundtrack not ambient silence or so-called 'room tone' but complete sound drop-outs, as if the film projector had broken down, thereby jolting the audience out of their passive relationship to the screen, forcing them to become aware of their surroundings and the material apparatus of film as a mechanical device.Drawing on Deleuze and Guattari's concept of Chaoids, which are various organizations of chaos through the different disciplines of science, philosophy and art, this book uses silence to pursue a variety of vectors that open up the surface plane of art (in this case cinema) to discover different philosophical (and by extension, political) singularities and multiplicities.

Named one of TIME magazine's 100 Greatest Men of the Century, Bruce Lee's impact and influence has only grown since his untimely death in 1973. Part of the seven-volume Bruce Lee Library, this installment of the famed martial artistAes private notebooks allows his legions of fans to learn more about the man whose groundbreaking action films sparked a worldwide interest in the Asian martial arts. Bruce Lee Artist of Life explores the development of Lee's thoughts about Gung Fu (Kung Fu), philosophy, psychology, poetry, Jeet Kune Do, acting, and self-knowledge. Edited by John Little, a leading authority on Lee's life and work, the book includes a selection of letters that eloquently demonstrate how Lee incorporated his thought into actions and advice to others. Although Lee rose to stardom through his physical prowess and practice of jeet kune do;the system of fighting he founded;Lee was also a voracious and engaged reader who wrote extensively, synthesizing Eastern and Western thought into a unique personal philosophy of self-discovery. Martial arts practitioners and fans alike eagerly anticipate each new volume of the Library and its trove of rare letters, essays, and poems for the light it sheds on this legendary figure.Bruce Lee was known as an amazing martial artist, but he was also a profound thinker. He left behind seven volumes of writing on everything from quantum physics to philosophy. ; John Blake, CNN

Emmanuel Levinas's ethical philosophy has had a significant influence on film theory in recent years. Proposing a relationship between Levinasian ethics and film style, and bringing it into a productive dialogue with theories of performativity, this book explores this influence through three directorial bodies of work: those of the Dardenne Brothers, Barbet Schroeder and Paul Schrader. Discussing a range of films - including the Dardennes' Le Fils and The Kid with a Bike, Schroeder's Maitresse and Reversal of Fortune and Schrader's American Gigolo and The Comfort of Strangers - Edward Lamberti demonstrates how film styles can perform a Levinasian ethics.

Known as the 'Georgian Socrates' of Soviet philosophy, Merab Mamardashvili was a defining personality of the late-Soviet intelligentsia. In the 1970s and 1980s, he taught required courses in philosophy at Russia's two leading film schools, helping to educate a generation of internationally prolific directors. Exploring Mamardashvili's extensive philosophical output, as well as a range of recent Russian films, Alyssa DeBlasio reveals the intellectual affinities amongst directors of the Mamardashvili generation - including Alexander Sokurov, Andrey Zvyagintsev and Alexei Balabanov. This multidisciplinary study offers an innovative way to think about film, philosophy and the philosophical potential of the moving image.

This book offers a comprehensive film-by-film analysis of Spain's most famous living director, Pedro Almodovar. It shows how Almodovar's films draw on various national cinemas and genres, including Spanish cinema of the dictatorship, European art cinema, Hollywood melodrama and film noir. It also argues that Almodovar's work is a form of social critique, his films consistently engaging with and challenging stereotypes about traditional and contemporary Spain in order to address Spain's traumatic historical past and how it continues to inform the present. Drawing on scholarship in both English and Spanish, the book will be of interest to undergraduate and postgraduate students of film studies and Hispanic studies, scholars of contemporary cinema and general readers with a passion for the films of Pedro Almodovar. -- .

This compendium of original essays offers invaluable insights into the life and works of one of the most important and influential directors in the history of cinema, exploring his major films, philosophy, politics, and connections to other critics and directors. * Presents a compendium of original essays offering invaluable insights into the life and works of one of the most important and influential filmmakers in the history of cinema * Features contributions from an international cast of major film theorists and critics * Provides readers with both an in-depth reading of Godard s major films and a sense of his evolution from the New Wave to his later political periods * Brings fresh insights into the great director s biography, including reflections on his personal philosophy, politics, and connections to other critics and filmmakers * Explores many of the 80 features Godard made in nearly 60 years, and includes coverage of his recent work in video

This collection of critical essays offers an unrivalled and up-to-the-minute assessment of the prolific and resilient life and vision of one of cinema s greatest auteurs. * The first edited collection of essays on Fritz Lang s body of work in over thirty years * A comprehensive assessment of one of cinema s most influential figures * Brings together key scholars, including Tom Gunning and Chris Fujiwara, to share their latest insights * Features translated contributions from writers rarely rendered in English such as Nicole Brenez and Paolo Berletto * Offers multinational and multi-perspectival analysis of Lang s oeuvre, including all his key films

Written and directed by two white men and performed by an all-black cast, Nothing But a Man (Michael Roemer, 1964) tells the story of a drifter turned family man who struggles with the pressures of small-town life and the limitations placed on him and his community in the Deep South, an area long fraught with racism. Though unmistakably about race and civil rights, the film makes no direct reference to the civil rights movement. Despite this intentional absence, contemporary audiences were acutely aware of the social context for the film's indictment of white prejudice in America. To help frame and situate the film in the context of black film studies, the book gathers primary and secondary resources, including the original screenplay, essays on the film, statements by the filmmakers, and interviews with Robert M. Young, the film's producer and cinematographer, and Khalil Gibran Muhammad, the Director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.

Written and directed by two white men and performed by an all-black cast, Nothing But a Man (Michael Roemer, 1964) tells the story of a drifter turned family man who struggles with the pressures of small-town life and the limitations placed on him and his community in the Deep South, an area long fraught with racism. Though unmistakably about race and civil rights, the film makes no direct reference to the civil rights movement. Despite this intentional absence, contemporary audiences were acutely aware of the social context for the film's indictment of white prejudice in America. To help frame and situate the film in the context of black film studies, the book gathers primary and secondary resources, including the original screenplay, essays on the film, statements by the filmmakers, and interviews with Robert M. Young, the film's producer and cinematographer, and Khalil Gibran Muhammad, the Director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. Joseph Cornell is one of the most significant American artists of the 20th century. His work is highly visible in the world's most prestigious galleries, including the Tate Modern and MOMA. His famous boxes and his collage work have been admired and widely studied. However, Cornell also produced an extraordinary body of film work, a serious contribution to 20th-century avant-garde cinema, and this has been much less examined. In this book, Michael Piggott makes the case for the significance of Joseph Cornell's films. This is an important contribution to our knowledge of 20th-century culture for scholars and students of film and art history and American studies and for all those interested in pop culture, celebrity and fandom.

Ever since his first feature film I Killed My Mother premiered at Cannes, every film from the 29-year-old director Xavier Dolan has generated significant critical interest. A recipient of numerous awards, Dolan has recently taken his career to an international level with The Death and Life of John F. Donovan. As the first book-length study about Dolan, with case studies of key films like Mommy (2014), Tom at the Farm (2013) and It's Only the End of the World (2016), this volume explores the global reach of small national and subnational cinemas. In particular, it uses Dolan's cinema as a departure point to reconsider the position of Quebec film and cultural imaginary within a global cinematic culture, as well as the intersections between national, millennial and queer filmmaking.