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Alluring, nurturing, dangerous, and vulnerable the yamamba, or
Japanese mountain witch, has intrigued audiences for centuries.
What is it about the fusion of mountains with the solitary old
woman that produces such an enigmatic figure? And why does she
still call to us in this modern, scientific era? Co-editors Rebecca
Copeland and Linda C. Ehrlich first met the yamamba in the powerful
short story "The Smile of the Mountain Witch" by acclaimed woman
writer Oba Minako. The story revealed the compelling way creative
women can take charge of misogynistic tropes, invert them, and use
them to tell new stories of female empowerment. This unique
collection represents the creative and surprising ways artists and
scholars from North America and Japan have encountered the yamamba.
The Films of Kore-eda Hirokazu: An Elemental Cinema draws readers
into the first 13 feature films and 5 of the documentaries of
award-winning Japanese film director Kore-eda Hirokazu. With his
recent top prize at the Cannes Film Festival for Shoplifters,
Kore-eda is arguably Japan's greatest living director with an
international viewership. He approaches difficult subjects (child
abandonment, suicide, marginality) with a realistic and
compassionate eye.The lyrical tone of the writing of Japanese film
scholar Linda C. Ehrlich perfectly complements the understated, yet
powerful, tone of the films. From An Elemental Cinema, readers will
gain a special understanding of Kore-eda's films through a novel
connection to the natural elements as reflected in Japanese
traditional aesthetics.An Elemental Cinema presents Kore-eda's
oeuvre as a connected whole with overarching thematic concerns,
despite frequent generic experimentation. It also offers an example
of how the poetics of cinema can be practiced in writing, as well
as on the screen, and helps readers understand the films of this
contemporary director as works of art that relate to their own
lives.
To coincide with the recent DVD release of The Spirit of the
Beehive, this paperback collection of essays focuses on the work of
acclaimed Spanish director, Victor Erice. Originally published in
hardcover under the title An Open Window, this expanded edition
draws on original essays, reprints, and new translations from an
international group of writers. New to this edition are four essays
from noted film scholars-including editor Linda C. Ehrlich-as well
as three added essays from the filmmaker himself. Both the original
and new material provide a deeper appreciation of Erice's three
feature-length films-The Spirit of the Beehive [El espiritu de la
colmena] (1973), El Sur (1982), and Dream of Light [aka The Quince
Tree Sun, El sol del membrillo] (1992), as well as his shorter
works, including his most recent accomplishment, La morte rouge
(2006). This anthology examines the aesthetic, historical, and
sociological forces at work in Erice's films and includes an
extensive interview with the director. This broad array of writings
provides insight into not only three unforgettable films, but also
into twentieth-century Spanish society, as well as world cinema.
The Cinema of Victor Erice: An Open Window will serve as an
important resource to measure the career of this director who-along
with Bunuel, Saura, and Almodovar-has helped show the world the
creative range of Spanish cinema. With additional essays,
translations, and illustrations, this paperback edition explores
new avenues of expression pursued by one of the most poetic of
modern filmmakers.
The Films of Kore-eda Hirokazu: An Elemental Cinema draws readers
into the first 13 feature films and 5 of the documentaries of
award-winning Japanese film director Kore-eda Hirokazu. With his
recent top prize at the Cannes Film Festival for Shoplifters,
Kore-eda is arguably Japan's greatest living director with an
international viewership. He approaches difficult subjects (child
abandonment, suicide, marginality) with a realistic and
compassionate eye.The lyrical tone of the writing of Japanese film
scholar Linda C. Ehrlich perfectly complements the understated, yet
powerful, tone of the films. From An Elemental Cinema, readers will
gain a special understanding of Kore-eda's films through a novel
connection to the natural elements as reflected in Japanese
traditional aesthetics.An Elemental Cinema presents Kore-eda's
oeuvre as a connected whole with overarching thematic concerns,
despite frequent generic experimentation. It also offers an example
of how the poetics of cinema can be practiced in writing, as well
as on the screen, and helps readers understand the films of this
contemporary director as works of art that relate to their own
lives.
China and Japan both have traditional art forms that have been
highly developed and long studied. In these original essays, noted
film and art scholars explore how the spatial consciousness,
compositional techniques, and construction of images in these
traditional and modern art forms also inform filmmaking in the two
countries, so that film and art share the same culturally defined
"methods of seeing."
This first major study of the relationship between Chinese and
Japanese art and film brings together writers from the United
States, Europe, Australia, China, and Japan, including Japan's
well-known film critic Sato Tadao and Beijing Film Academy's Ni
Zhen, screenwriter of the Oscar-nominated film Raise the Red
Lantern. The essays discuss the influence of the traditional arts,
including scroll painting and printmaking, on Chinese and Japanese
cinema and demonstrate that national cinemas cannot be completely
understood without considering their indigenous traditions.
Through provocative essays by specialists in different aspects of
Japanese culture, this book provides an historical and analytical
survey of the presence of Goddesses in Japanese audiovisual culture
from its origins to the present day. It shows how these feminine
myths are represented in Japan; not only as beneficial or creative
deities, but also the archetypal strong or dominant woman that
sometimes overshadows masculine figures and heroes, or as
influential figures. Therefore, it analyzes this rich dialectic of
the feminine and how the audiovisual culture has represented it
thus far in film, TV series, and video games made in Japan. While
many theories have been proposed to explain the presence of
Goddesses in Japan, this book's focus on audiovisual culture
explores how this corpus challenges the traditional conceptions of
the feminine as related to Goddesses.
The 29 prose poems in Cinematic Reveries: Gestures, Stillness,
Water provide distinctive points of entry into a select group of
films through attention to evocative gestures, a sense of
stillness, and images of water. These original writings offer film
criticism in a new form, with a tone that is at once exploratory,
familiar, and elegiac. They explore the precious nature of water;
they point to gestures both eloquent and obscure. They offer us
moments of arrested motion as well as longer contemplative
sequences in films from Asia, Europe, New Zealand, and the U.S. To
cite a sentiment expressed by filmmaker Raul Ruiz in his Poetics of
Cinema 2, these are tributes to great films that "recognize [us]
like an old relative." The reader is encouraged to explore
Cinematic Reveries as a portrait of the cinema which is at times
lyrical, sometimes comic, and often tinged with pathos. This
celebration of the art film is richly illustrated, with suggestions
for further readings and viewings.
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