Sidney Poitier remains one of the most recognizable black men in the world. Widely celebrated but at times criticized for the roles he played during a career that spanned 60 years, there can be no comprehensive discussion of black men in American film, and no serious analysis of 20th century American film history that excludes him. Poitier Revisited offers a fresh interrogation of the social, cultural and political significance of the Poitier oeuvre. The contributions explore the broad spectrum of critical issues summoned up by Poitier's iconic work as actor, director and filmmaker. Despite his stature, Poitier has actually been under-examined in film criticism generally. This work reconsiders his pivotal role in film and American race relations, by arguing persuasively, that even in this supposedly 'post-racial' moment of Barack Obama, the struggles, aspirations, anxieties, and tensions Poitier's films explored are every bit as relevant today as when they were first made.

As our world becomes more globalized, documentary film and television tell more cosmopolitan stories of the world's social, political, and cultural situation. Ib Bondebjerg examines how global challenges are reflected and represented in documentaries from the United States, the United Kingdom, and Scandinavia after 2001. The documentaries deal with the war on terror, the globalization of politics, migration, the multicultural challenge, and climate change.
"Engaging with Reality" is framed by theories of globalization and delves into the development of a new global media culture. It also deals with theories of documentary genres and their social and cultural functions. It discusses cosmopolitanism and the role and forms of documentary in a new digital and global media culture. It will be essential reading for those looking to better understand documentary and the new transnational approach to modern media culture.

Elesin Oba, the King's Horseman, has a single destiny. When the King dies, he must commit ritual suicide and lead his King's favourite horse and dog through the passage to the world of the ancestors. A British Colonial Officer, Pilkings, intervenes to prevent the death and arrests Elesin. The play is a set text for NEAB GCSE, NEAB A Level and NEAB A/S Level. 'A masterpiece of 20th century drama' - Guardian "A transfixing work of modern world drama" (Independent); "clearly a masterpiece. . . he achieves the full impact of Greek tragedy" (Irving Wardle, Independent on Sunday); "the action of the play is as inevitable and eloquent as in Antigone: a clash of values and cultures so fundamental that tragedy issues: a tragedy for each individual, each tribe" (Michael Schmidt, Daily Telegraph)

Initially branching out of the European contradance tradition, the danzon first emerged as a distinct form of music and dance among black performers in nineteenth-century Cuba. By the early twentieth-century, it had exploded in popularity throughout the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean basin. A fundamentally hybrid music and dance complex, it reflects the fusion of European and African elements and had a strong influence on the development of later Latin dance traditions as well as early jazz in New Orleans. Danzon: Circum-Caribbean Dialogues in Music and Dance studies the emergence, hemisphere-wide influence, and historical and contemporary significance of this music and dance phenomenon.
Co-authors Alejandro L. Madrid and Robin D. Moore take an ethnomusicological, historical, and critical approach to the processes of appropriation of the danzon in new contexts, its changing meanings over time, and its relationship to other musical forms. Delving into its long history of controversial popularization, stylistic development, glorification, decay, and rebirth in a continuous transnational dialogue between Cuba and Mexico as well as New Orleans, the authors explore the production, consumption, and transformation of this Afro-diasporic performance complex in relation to global and local ideological discourses. By focusing on interactions across this entire region as well as specific local scenes, Madrid and Moore underscore the extent of cultural movement and exchange within the Americas during the late nineteenth and early twentieth-centuries, and are thereby able to analyze the danzon, the dance scenes it has generated, and the various discourses of identification surrounding it as elements in broader regional processes. Danzon is a significant addition to the literature on Latin American music, dance, and expressive culture; it is essential reading for scholars, students, and fans of this music alike."

Grief is all around us. At the heart of the brightly coloured, vividly characterised, joyful films of Studio Ghibli, they are wracked with loss - of innocence, of love, of the connection to our world and of that world itself. Now Go enters these emotional waters to interrogate not only how Studio Ghibli navigates grief so well, but how that informs our own understanding of grief's manifold faces.

Only a few years after the 2013 Sundance Film Festival premiere of Blackfish - an independent documentary film that critiqued the treatment of orcas in captivity - visits to SeaWorld declined, major corporate sponsors pulled their support, and performing acts canceled appearances. The steady drumbeat of public criticism, negative media coverage, and unrelenting activism became known as the "Blackfish Effect." In 2016, SeaWorld announced a stunning corporate policy change - the end of its profitable orca shows. In an evolving networked era, social-issue documentaries like Blackfish are art for civic imagination and social critique. Today's documentaries interrogate topics like sexual assault in the U.S. military (The Invisible War), racial injustice (13th), government surveillance (Citizenfour), and more. Artistic nonfiction films are changing public conversations, influencing media agendas, mobilizing communities, and capturing the attention of policymakers - accessed by expanding audiences in a transforming media marketplace. In Story Movements: How Documentaries Empower People and Inspire Social Change, producer and scholar Caty Borum Chattoo explores how documentaries disrupt dominant cultural narratives through complex, creative, often investigative storytelling. Featuring original interviews with award-winning documentary filmmakers and field leaders, the book reveals the influence and motivations behind the vibrant, eye-opening stories of the contemporary documentary age.

The reality of transnational innovation and dissemination of new technologies, including digital media, has yet to make a dent in the deep-seated culturalism that insists on reinscribing a divide between the West and Japan. The Oxford Handbook of Japanese Cinema aims to counter this trend toward dichotomizing the West and Japan and to challenge the pervasive culturalism of today's film and media studies.
Featuring twenty essays, each authored by a leading researcher in the field, this volume addresses productive debates about where Japanese cinema is and where Japanese cinema is going at the period of crisis of national boundary under globalization. It reevaluates the position of Japanese cinema within the discipline of cinema and media studies and beyond, and situates Japanese cinema within the broader fields of transnational film history. Likewise, it examines the materiality of Japanese cinema, scrutinizes cinema's relationship to other media, and identifies the specific practices of film production and reception. As a whole, the volume fosters a dialogue between Japanese scholars of Japanese cinema, film scholars of Japanese cinema based in Anglo-American and European countries, film scholars of non-Japanese cinema, film archivists, film critics, and filmmakers familiar with film scholarship.
A comprehensive volume that grasps Japanese cinema under the rubric of the global and also fills the gap between Japanese and non-Japanese film studies and between theories and practices, The Oxford Handbook of Japanese Cinema challenges and responds to the major developments underfoot in this rapidly changing field.

In Hollywood Left and Right, Steven J. Ross tells a story that has escaped public attention: the emergence of Hollywood as a vital center of political life and the important role that movie stars have played in shaping the course of American politics.
Ever since the film industry relocated to Hollywood early in the twentieth century, it has had an outsized influence on American politics. Through compelling larger-than-life figures in American cinema--Charlie Chaplin, Louis B. Mayer, Edward G. Robinson, George Murphy, Ronald Reagan, Harry Belafonte, Jane Fonda, Charlton Heston, Warren Beatty, and Arnold Schwarzenegger--Hollywood Left and Right reveals how the film industry's engagement in politics has been longer, deeper, and more varied than most people would imagine. As shown in alternating chapters, the Left and the Right each gained ascendancy in Tinseltown at different times. From Chaplin, whose movies almost always displayed his leftist convictions, to Schwarzenegger's nearly seamless transition from action blockbusters to the California governor's mansion, Steven J. Ross traces the intersection of Hollywood and political activism from the early twentieth century to the present.
Hollywood Left and Right challenges the commonly held belief that Hollywood has always been a bastion of liberalism. The real story, as Ross shows in this passionate and entertaining work, is far more complicated. First, Hollywood has a longer history of conservatism than liberalism. Second, and most surprising, while the Hollywood Left was usually more vocal and visible, the Right had a greater impact on American political life, capturing a senate seat (Murphy), a governorship (Schwarzenegger), and the ultimate achievement, the Presidency (Reagan).

Vienna appears in cinema as, among other things, a historical crossroads, a source of great music, and a site of world-famous architecture ranging from gothic cathedrals and baroque palaces to landmark modern structures. A panorama that encompasses all these perspectives, "World Film Locations: Vienna" sheds new light on the movies shot in the former imperial capital--and on the city itself.The first English-language book to explore Vienna's relationship with film beyond the waltz fantasies once shot in studios around the world, this volume shows how specific urban sites contribute to films that, in turn, play a role in our changing ideas about the city. In addition to reviews of key scenes from forty-six films from the silent era to the present, contributors explore such wide-ranging topics as the Austro-Hungarian Empire as cinematic myth; the Viennese film and Golden Age Hollywood; Jewish filmmakers and their take on lost cultural imagery; postwar nation building through film: and the startling "other Vienna" in the New Wave films of Michael Haneke, Barbara Albert, Ulrich Seidl, and Gotz Spielmann. Illuminating the rich multicultural cinematic history that eventually gave rise to the new Austrian films that began to capture international attention more than a decade ago, "World Film Locations: Vienna" will fascinate readers interested in film, art, architecture, literature, music, Jewish studies, or Central European history.

Popular styles of electronic dance music are pervasively mediated by technology, not only within production but also in performance. The most familiar performance format in this style, the DJ set, is created with turntables, headphones, twelve-inch vinyl records, and a mixing board. Going beyond simply playing other people's records, DJs select, combine, and manipulate different parts of records to form new compositions that differ substantially from their source materials. In recent years, the "laptop set" has become equally common; in this type of performance, musicians use computers and specialized software to transform and reconfigure their own precomposed sounds. Both types of performance are largely improvised, evolving in response to the demands of a particular situation through interaction with a dancing audience. Within performance, musicians make numerous spontaneous decisions about variables such as which sounds they will play, when they will play them, and how they will be combined with other sounds. Yet the elements that constitute these improvisations are also fixed in certain fundamental ways: performances are fashioned from patterns or tracks recorded beforehand, and in the case of DJ sets, these elements are also physical objects (vinyl records). In Playing with Something that Runs, author Mark J. Butler explores these improvised performances, revealing the ways in which musicians utilize seemingly invariable prerecorded elements to create dynamic, real-time improvisations. Based on extensive interviews with musicians in their studios, as well as in-depth studies of particular mediums of performance, including both DJ and laptop sets, Butler explores the ways in which technologies, both material and musical, are used in performance and improvisation in order to make these transformations possible. An illuminating look at the world of popular electronic-music performance, Playing with Something that Runs is an indispensable resource for electronic dance musicians and fans as well as scholars and students of popular music.

First published in 1984, Gerald Bordman's Oxford Companion to American Theatre is the standard one-volume source on our national theatre. Critics have hailed its "wealth of authoritative information" (Back Stage), its "fascinating picture of the volatile American stage" (The Guardian), and its "well-chosen, illuminating facts" (Newsday).
Now thoroughly revised, this distinguished volume once again provides an up-to-date guide to the American stage from its beginnings to the present. Completely updated by theater professor Thomas Hischak, the volume includes playwrights, plays, actors, directors, producers, songwriters, famous playhouses, dramatic movements, and much more. The book covers not only classic works (such as Death of a Salesman) but also many commercially successful plays (such as Getting Gertie's Garter), plus entries on foreign figures that have influenced our dramatic development (from Shakespeare to Beckett and Pinter). New entries include recent plays such as Angels in America and Six Degrees of Separation, performers such as Eric Bogosian and Bill Irwin, playwrights like David Henry Hwang and Wendy Wasserstein, and relevant developments and issues including AIDS in American theatre, theatrical producing by Disney, and the rise in solo performance.
Accessible and authoritative, this valuable A-Z reference is ideal not only for students and scholars of theater, but everyone with a passion for the stage.

Hailed as "absolutely the best reference book on its subject" by Newsweek, American Musical Theatre: A Chronicle covers more than 250 years of musical theatre in the United States, from a 1735 South Carolina production of Flora, or Hob in the Well to The Addams Family in 2010. Authors Gerald Bordman and Richard Norton write an engaging narrative blending history, critical analysis, and lively description to illustrate the transformation of American musical theatre through such incarnations as the ballad opera, revue, Golden Age musical, rock musical, Disney musical, and, with 2010's American Idiot, even the punk musical.
The Chronicle is arranged chronologically and is fully indexed according to names of shows, songs, and people involved, for easy searching and browsing. Chapters range from the "Prologue," which traces the origins of American musical theater to 1866, through several "intermissions" (for instance, "Broadway's Response to the Swing Era, 1937-1942") and up to "Act Seven," the theatre of the twenty-first century. This last chapter covers the dramatic changes in musical theatre since the last edition published-whereas Fosse, a choreography-heavy revue, won the 1999 Tony for Best Musical, the 2008 award went to In the Heights, which combines hip-hop, rap, meringue and salsa unlike any musical before it. Other groundbreaking and/or box-office-breaking shows covered for the first time include Avenue Q, The Producers, Billy Elliot, Jersey Boys, Monty Python's Spamalot, Wicked, Hairspray, Urinetown the Musical, and Spring Awakening.
Discussion of these shows incorporates plot synopses, names of principal players, descriptions of scenery and costumes, and critical reactions. In addition, short biographies interspersed throughout the text colorfully depict the creative minds that shaped the most influential musicals. Collectively, these elements create the most comprehensive, authoritative history of musical theatre in this country and make this an essential resource for students, scholars, performers, dramaturges, and musical enthusiasts.

This study explores the dynamic relations between cultural forms and political formations in some urban cultural movements. The analysis is based on a detailed study of the structure and development of the London Notting Hill Carnival, widely described as Europe's biggest street festival. Started in 1966 as a small-scale, multi-ethnic local festival, it grew into a massive West-Indian dominated affair that over the years occasioned violent confrontations between black youth and the police. The carnival developed and mobilized a homogenous and communal West-Indian culture that helped in the struggle against rampant racism. The celebration is contrasted with other carnival movements, such as California's 'Renaissance Pleasure Faire'. Analytically, this is a follow-up to Cohen's earlier studies of the relations between drama and politics in some urban religious, ethnic and elitist movements in Africa. The conclusion focuses on the processes underlying the transformation of rational political strategies into non-rational cultural forms.

Saffron-robed monks and long-haired gurus have become familiar characters on the American popular culture scene. Jane Iwamura examines the contemporary fascination with Eastern spirituality and provides a cultural history of the representation of Asian religions in American mass media. Encounters with monks, gurus, bhikkhus, sages, sifus, healers, and masters from a wide variety of ethnic backgrounds and religious traditions provided initial engagements with Asian spiritual traditions. Virtual Orientalism shows the evolution of these interactions, from direct engagements with specific individuals to mediated relations with a conventionalized icon: the Oriental Monk. Visually and psychically compelling, the Oriental Monk becomes for Americans a ''figure of translation''--a convenient symbol for alternative spiritualities and modes of being. Through the figure of the solitary Monk, who generously and purposefully shares his wisdom with the West, Asian religiosity is made manageable-psychologically, socially, and politically--for popular culture consumption. Iwamura's insightful study shows that though popular engagement with Asian religions in the United States has increased, the fact that much of this has taken virtual form makes stereotypical constructions of "the spiritual East" obdurate and especially difficult to challenge.

This collection of original essays, written by scholars from disciplines across the humanities, addresses a wide range of questions about love through a focus on individual films, novels, plays, and works of philosophy. The essays touch on many varieties of love, including friendship, romantic love, parental love, and even the love of an author for her characters. How do social forces shape the types of love that can flourish and sustain themselves? What is the relationship between love and passion? Is love between human and nonhuman animals possible? What is the role of projection in love? These questions and more are explored through an investigation of works by authors ranging from Henrik Ibsen to Ian McEwan, from Rousseau to the Coen Brothers.

By the end of America s Golden Age of Magic, Chicago had taken center stage in front of an American audience drawn to the craft by the likes of Harry Houdini and Howard Thurston. Cashing in on a craze that rivaled big-band mania, magic shops and clubs sprang up everywhere across the Windy City, packed in customers and put down roots. Over the last century, for example, Magic, Inc. has outfitted magicians from Harry Blackstone Sr. to Penn and Teller to David Copperfield. Magic was an integral part of Chicago s culture, from its earliest venture into live television to the card sharps and hucksters lurking in its amusement parks and pool halls. David Witter keeps track of the shell game of Chicago s fascinating magic history from its vaudeville circuit to its contemporary resurgence.

In this groundbreaking book, acclaimed film music author Kevin Donnelly offers the first sustained theorization of synchronization in sound film. Donnelly addresses the manner in which the lock of the audio and the visual exerts a perceptible synergy, an aesthetic he dubs occult: a secret and esoteric effect that can dissipate in the face of an awareness of its existence. Drawing upon theories of sound from Sergei Eisenstein to Pierre Schaeffer to Michel Chion, the book investigates points of synchronization as something like repose, providing moments of comfort in a potentially threatening environment that can be fraught with sound and image stimuli. Correspondingly, lack of synchrony between sound and images is characterized as potentially disturbing for the viewer, a discomfort that signals moments of danger. From this perspective, the interplay between the two becomes the central dynamic of audio-visual culture more generally, which, as Donnelly argues, provides a starting point for a new understanding of audio/visual interactions. This fresh approach to the topic is discussed in theoretical and historical terms as well as elaborated through analysis of and reference to a broad selection of films and their soundtracks including, among others, Singin' in the Rain, Saw, Shanghai Express, and Assault on Precinct 13.

Is God Is is a modern myth about twin sisters who sojourn from the Dirty South to the California desert to exact righteous revenge. Winner of the 2016 Relentless Award, Aleshea Harris collides the ancient, the modern, the tragic, the Spaghetti Western, and Afropunk in this darkly funny and unapologetic world premiere.

The media play a key role in post-apartheid South Africa and is often positioned at the centre of debates around politics, identity and culture. Media, such as radio, are often said to also play a role in deepening democracy, while simultaneously holding the power to frame political events, shape public discourse and impact citizens' perceptions of reality. Broadcasting Democracy: Radio and Identity in South Africa provides an exciting look into the diverse world of South African radio, exploring how various radio formats and stations play a role in constructing post-apartheid identities. At the centre of the book is the argument that various types of radio stations represent autonomous systems of cultural activity, and are 'consumed' as such by listeners. In this sense, it argues that South African radio is 'broadcasting democracy'. Broadcasting Democracy will be of interest to media scholars and radio listeners alike.

The past twenty years have seen an extraordinary and exciting growth in Canadian theater. Today, 200 professional theater companies span the country and more than 10,000 published plays appear in bibliographies. The Oxford Companion to Canadian Theatre is the first reference book to document the growth and development of Canadian drama and theater in English and French--from its beginnings to the present day. The book offers 680 entries written by 155 contributors that provide biographies of actors, playwrights, directors, and designers; major theaters, including 19th-century theaters, and companies; major plays; and numerous miscellaneous subjects such as collective theater, design, directing, ethnic theater, musical theater, radio and television drama, and local theater. The result of almost four years' research, this authoritative reference offers a wealth of fascinating and important information, as well as over 200 beautiful illustrations.