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Books > Arts & Architecture > Performing arts
Whether on the big screen or small, films featuring the American
Civil War are among the most classic and controversial in motion
picture history. From D. W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation (1915) to
Free State of Jones (2016), the war has provided the setting,
ideologies, and character archetypes for cinematic narratives of
morality, race, gender, and nation, as well as serving as
historical education for a century of Americans. In The American
Civil War on Film and TV: Blue and Gray in Black and White and
Color, Douglas Brode, Shea T. Brode, and Cynthia J. Miller bring
together nineteen essays by a diverse array of scholars across the
disciplines to explore these issues. The essays included here span
a wide range of films, from the silent era to the present day,
including Buster Keaton's The General (1926), Red Badge of Courage
(1951), Glory (1989), Gettysburg (1993), and Cold Mountain (2003),
as well as television mini-series The Blue and The Gray (1982) and
John Jakes' acclaimed North and South trilogy (1985-86). As an
accessible volume to dedicated to a critical conversation about the
Civil War on film, The American Civil War on Film and TV will
appeal to not only to scholars of film, military history, American
history, and cultural history, but to fans of war films and period
films, as well.
This is an open access book. This edited collection aims to
document the effects of Covid-19 on film festivals and to theorize
film festivals in the age of social distancing. To some extent,
this crisis begs us to consider what happens when festivals can't
happen; while films have found new (temporary) channels of
distribution (most often in the forms of digital releases), the
festival format appears particularly vulnerable in pandemic times.
Imperfect measures, such as the move to a digital format, cannot
recapture the communal experience at the very core of festivals.
Given the global nature of the pandemic and the diversity of the
festival phenomenon, this book features a wide range of case
studies and analytical frameworks. With contributors including
established scholars and frontline festival workers, the book is
conceived as both a theoretical endeavour and a practical
exploration of festival organizing in pandemic times.
Argentine Cinema: From Noir to Neo-Noir examines the phenomenon of
Argentine film noir. Beginning with definitions of film noir and
its international iterations, the book presents a history of the
development of film noir and neo-noir in Argentina (from the 1940s
to the present), as well as a technical, aesthetic, and
socio-historical analysis of such recent Argentine neo-noir films
as The Aura, The Secret in Their Eyes, and The German Doctor. It
considers the question of inscription of such classic noirs as
Double Indemnity and The Third Man and looks forward to future
scholarly work on other Latin American noir and neo-noir films,
especially those produced in Mexico and Brazil.
The second book in Cornelia Funke's internationally celebrated
trilogy - magical, thrilling and mesmerising. 'I don't think I've
ever read anything that conveys so well the joys, terrors and
pitfalls of reading' Diana Wynne Jones Although a year has passed,
not a day goes by without Meggie thinking of the extraordinary
events of Inkheart, and the story whose characters strode out of
the pages, and changed her life for ever. But for Dustfinger, the
fire-eater, torn from his world of words, the need to return has
become desperate. When he finds a crooked storyteller with the
magical ability to read him back, he sets in motion a dangerous
reversal that sees the characters of Inkheart transported to a
charmed Inkworld, about to be fought over by rival rebels and
princes ... A thrilling and magical series about stories and the
imagination they inspire Book 1, Inkheart, is now a major movie
starring Andy Serkis, Paul Bettany and Brendan Fraser! The
adventure continues in book 3, Inkdeath Cornelia Funke is the
critically-acclaimed, internationally bestselling author of Dragon
Rider and The Thief Lord
Lois Weber (1879-1939) was one of early Hollywood's most successful
screenwriter-directors. A one-time Church Army worker who preached
from street corners, Weber began working in the American film
industry as an actress around 1908 but quickly ascended to the
positions of screenwriter and director. She wrote, directed,
starred in, edited, and titled hundreds of movies during her career
and is believed to be the first woman to direct a feature film. At
the height of her influence, Weber used her medium to address
pressing social issues such as birth control, abortion, capital
punishment, poverty, and drug abuse. She gained international fame
in 1915 with her controversial Hypocrites, a complex film that
featured full female nudity as part of its important moral lesson.
Her most famous film, Where Are My Children?, was the Universal
studio's biggest box-office hit the following year and played to
enthusiastic audiences around the globe. These productions and many
others contributed to her standing as a truly world-class
filmmaker. Despite her many successes, Weber was pushed out of the
business in the 1930s as a result of Hollywood's institutionalized
sexism. Shoved into the corners of film history, she remained a
largely forgotten figure for decades. Lois Weber: Interviews
restores her long-muted voice by reprinting more than sixty items
in which she expressed her views on a range of filmic subjects. The
volume includes interviews, articles that Weber wrote, the text of
a speech she gave, and reconstructed conversations with her
Hollywood coworkers. Lois Weber: Interviews provides key insights
into one of our first great writer-directors, her many films, and
the changing business in which she worked.
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