Though it is often neglected in cinema scholarship, screen performance is a crucial element in the ideological and emotional impact of films. More Than a Method: Trends and Traditions in Contemporary Film Performance features twelve essays that analyze performance in post-1950s film, addressing distinct questions about the working relationships between actors and directors and discussing the interplay between performance and cinematic techniques. The authors explain the context for performance analysis as they address an international array of film genres, actors, and directors including Alfred Hitchcock, Gus Van Sant, Robert Bresson, Michelangelo Antonioni, Robert Altman, John Cassavetes, John Sayles, Neil Jordan, Tomas Gutierrez Alea, Stanley Kubrick, Jim Carrey, and John Woo. More Than a Method provides the reader with a historical perspective on film performance theory and explains the relevance of analyzing acting. The essays are divided into three sections: modernism, neonaturalism, and postmodern film performance, each opening with a descriptive discussion of screen acting and the ways dramatic characters are constructed. The authors clearly define terms relating to acting and acting styles and provide brief overviews of the significant themes and predominant visual styles of each director. The volume's essays share a focus on the art and craft of acting, each emphasizing performance as it is presented on-screen, challenging the idea that the best (or only) way to categorize performance is by training or working method. Through dynamic and sophisticated analyses of a wide range of acting styles and choices, More Than a Method fills an important gap in today's film scholarship.

This volume offers readers a comprehensive survey of the varied contributions feminist scholars have been making to film study over the past two decades. In its scope, "Multiple Voices in Feminist Film Criticism" presents the range of theoretical, critical, and educational directions open to feminist students of film, and encourages readers to participate in assessing and shaping the critical context in which films are produced and received. The editors have included a variety of perspectives informed by psychoanalytic, linguistic, historical, Marxist, textual, and postcolonial discourses. Along with highlighting the diversity of feminist film scholarship, this pluralist approach recognizes differences among women and is attentive to issues of race, class, nationality, ethnicity, and sexuality. Combining original and previously published essays, this work includes re-assessments of individual films, of genres and cycles, of narrative and filmic conventions, and of spectator positioning and response. In addition to this extensive collection of theory and criticism, the editors have added course files that explore the rationale for feminist film courses and show how films and critical readings can be presented in a meaningful way.

Nominated for both an Academy Award for scriptwriting and a National Book Award, John Sayles has written screenplays, teleplays, short stories, and novels and has worked as a script doctor for a virtual who's who of Hollywood film and television talent. He has acted in films and on stage and even directed a music video for Bruce Springsteen.

In making movies, Sayles has handled subjects as diverse as seventies activists in "The Return of the Secaucus Seven" (1980); a 1920s Appalachian miners' strike in "Matewan" (1987); the 1919 Black Sox scandal in "Eight Men Out" (1988); the Selkies of Ireland in "The Secret of Roan Inish" (1994); and Latin American guerilla warfare in "Men with Guns" (1997).

Conducted over a period of twenty years, these interviews span Sayles's career as a writer, director, and sometimes actor. Whether he is interviewed in "The Progressive," "Film Comment," "Sight and Sound," or Rod Serling's "The Twilight Zone Magazine," Sayles is always direct and candid. In each conversation, he cuts to the core of the film business and to the meat of what he is trying to accomplish as an artist.

Known for his fiercely independent vision, his authentic characters, and his provocative observations on the human condition, Sayles demonstrates in these interviews what an endurably original director and artist he is. As he tells "Sight and Sound," "First of all, I'm not afraid of failure. I don't get upset if people don't like it. I'm doing it because I'm interested. . . "Return of the Secaucus Seven"] was the start, because even if I hadn't got it released, at least I've made a movie I wanted to make."

Diane Carson is Professor of Film Studies at St. Louis Community College at Meramec and Adjunct Professor of Film at Webster University, both in St. Louis, Missouri. A film critic for "Riverfront Times" and KDHX in St. Louis, she is also the editor of "Multiple Voices in Feminist Film Criticism."

His name is synonymous with ""independent film,"" and for more than twenty-five years filmmaker John Sayles has tackled issues ranging from race and sexuality to the abuses of capitalism and American culture, aspiring to a type of realism that Hollywood can rarely portray. This collection offers unprecedented coverage of Sayles's craft and content, as it employs a rich variety of critical methods to explore the full scope of his work. Together the essays afford a deeper understanding not only of the individual films - including his 1980 ""The Return of the Secaucus Seven"" (named to the National Registry) and the recent ""Limbo and Men with Guns"" - but also of Sayles's unusual place in American cinema and his influence worldwide. The focus of Sayles's films is frequently on peoples' lives, not on stories with tidy endings, and often a main goal is to alert viewers of their complicity in the problems at hand. One might assume his style to be content driven, but closer inspection reveals a mix of styles from documentary to postmodern. In this anthology, international scholars address these and many other aspects of Sayles's filmmaking as they explore individual works. Their methodological approaches include historical and industry analysis as well as psychoanalysis and postcolonial theory, to name a few. ""Sayles Talk"" is both an in-depth and wide-ranging tribute to the ""father"" of independent film. In this volume, readers can find discussions of Sayles's films together with a comprehensive introduction to his film practice, an annotated list of existing literature on Sayles, and information on resources for further inquiry into his fiction, film, and television work. Film students as well as seasoned critics will turn to this book time and again to enrich their understanding of one of America's great cinematic innovators and his legacy.

This timely volume addresses those who teach and study multicultural         topics. Rather than offering a Band-Aid approach to curricular offerings,         the contributors demonstrate inclusive, innovative ways to integrate multicultural         issues and media into existing courses.       In "Struggling for America's Soul: A Search for Some Common Ground         in the Multicultural Debate," Lester Friedman leads off the volume         with an analysis of the value and necessity of multicultural approaches         for today's students and for society at large. The essays that follow         provide a wealth of material for organizing courses, including week-by-week         syllabi detailing specific writing assignments, bibliographical information         on readings, and sources for films and videos. The contributors, who teach         at institutions ranging from community colleges through major research         universities, describe their experiences teaching students of various         ages, backgrounds, and interests.       Shared Differences will be of value to all who use media as a         tool in their teaching, whether in history, literature, or the social         sciences, as well as to those who teach film and video production.