The Evolution of Electronic Dance Music establishes EDM's place on the map of popular music. The book accounts for various ambiguities, variations, transformations, and manifestations of EDM, pertaining to its generic fragmentation, large geographical spread, modes of consumption and, changes in technology. It focuses especially on its current state, its future, and its borders - between EDM and other forms of electronic music, as well as other forms of popular music. It accounts for the rise of EDM in places that are overlooked by the existing literature, such as Russia and Eastern Europe, and examines the multi-media and visual aspects such as the way EDM events music are staged and the specificity of EDM music videos. Divided into four parts - concepts, technology, celebrity, and consumption - this book takes a holistic look at the many sides of EDM culture.

Contrary to the assumption that Western and Eastern European economies and cinemas were very different from each other, they actually had much in common. After the Second World War both the East and the West adopted a mixed system, containing elements of both socialism and capitalism, and from the 1980s on the whole of Europe, albeit at an uneven speed, followed the neoliberal agenda. This book examines how the economic systems of the East and West impacted labor by focusing on the representation of work in European cinema. Using a Marxist perspective, it compares the situation of workers in Western and Eastern Europe as represented in both auteurist and popular films, including those of Tony Richardson, Lindsay Anderson, Jean-Luc Godard, Andrzej Wajda, DusanMakavejev, Jerzy Skolimowski, the Dardenne Brothers, Ulrich Seidl and many others.

Falco and Beyond is devoted to the most popular Austrian song-writer, singer and rapper of the twentieth century and one of the most successful European singers of all time. Falco was born in 1957, reached the peak of his popularity in the 1980s with songs such as "Der Kommissar," "Rock Me Amadeus" and "Jeanny," with mixed luck attempted to revive his career in the 1990s and died in a car crash in 1998. He sold over 30 million records worldwide and remains a successful posthumous artist. The book attempts to identify the most salient and contradictory features of Falco's art, such as linguistic inventiveness and dexterity, rapping and adopting a posture of a romantic artist. It argues that Falco's songs betray an apocalyptic imagination, picturing the image of an exhausted and unhappy world. It looks at Falco's career and his phenomenon in the context of international and Austrian music business and politics, and investigates how his popularity has been maintained after his death, by means such as records released posthumously, cover versions of his songs, mashup songs and videos, biographies and Falco fandom.

The North of England is regarded as a region economically and culturally lagging behind the South of England. However, this situation does not refer to popular music in which the North has had an influence which is comparable to that of London. Many bands and performers coming from the North, including the Beatles, the Animals, Herman's Hermit, the Smiths, the Happy Mondays, the Fall, Joy Division, New Order, Pulp and Oasis belong to most popular and influential pop-rock musicians in the world. The North has also been the home to some particular dance scenes including Northern Soul, the `Madchester' acid house, rave scenes and hip hop and grime scenes. This collection presents some of the less well known facets of popular music in the North of England, examining how popular music reflected on various aspects of the North, such as its economy and architecture and how it impacted on self- and external perception of the North. It assumes that understandings of the English North vary and its geography has more to do with imagined rather than empirical communities. The North can be seen as being defined against an England epitomised by London and as an area reflecting the most salient features of England as a whole. Specific chapters discuss topics such as the music scenes in Manchester, Liverpool, Hull and Sheffield, music festivals and careers of some musicians connected with the North such as MC Tunes and Bugzy Malone. Written in a jargon-free language, it should be of interest to everybody interested in music of the North.

Niemen Enigmatic is the fourth album in the career of Czeslaw Niemen, arguably one of the greatest Polish musicians of all time (from pop and rock to jazz-rock and avant-garde). The book asks how significant was this album? How enduring is its popularity? Has the popularity and meanings changed over time? It does this by unpacking its production, which was unprecedented in the history of the Polish popular music due to its large number of musicians with varied backgrounds, including progressive rock, mixing jazz, rock and soul with classical music. It also examines its appeal to different segments of Polish population, and failure to reach foreign audiences, despite Niemen himself privileging this album, especially its centrepiece, Bema pamieci zalobny rapsod (Mournful Rhapsody in Memoriam of Bem aka A Funeral Rhapsody in Memory of General Bem aka Mourner’s Rhapsody), in his attempt to make a career abroad.

This book examines the interface between Polish popular music and screen media against the background of Polish history, cinema, and popular culture and situates that interface in a local as well as global context. It looks at Polish musicals, biographical films about musicians, documentary films and, finally, music videos. The author draws attention to the immense popularity of musical comedies in Polish interwar cinema, the enduring appeal of musical genres during the period of state socialism, despite their low status in film criticism, and the re-birth of musicals in the 2010s. Mazierska also discusses the most important stars, directors and authors of songs presented in Polish films, and points to the effect of technological changes on inception and transformation of music-centred genres of screen media, including the effect of YouTube on their growth and preservation. The book is informed by the question of how parochial and universal is Polish popular music and its screen representation.

Third Cinema, World Cinema and Marxism offers an analysis of Third Cinema and World Cinema from the perspective of Marxism. Its starting point is an observation that of all cinematic phenomena none is as intimately related to Marxism as Third Cinema, which decries neoliberalism, the capitalist system, and the Hollywood model of cinema as mere entertainment to make money. This is largely to do with the fact that both Marxism and Third Cinema are preoccupied with inequalities resulting from capital accumulation, of which colonialism is the most extreme manifestation. Third Cinema also defines cinematic modes in terms of representing interest of different classes, with First Cinema expressing imperialist, capitalist, bourgeois ideas, Second Cinema the aspirations of the middle stratum, the petit bourgeoisie and Third Cinema is a democratic, popular cinema.

Polish estrada music dominated Polish popular music throughout the state socialist period but gained little attention from popular music scholars because it was regarded as being of low quality and politically conformist. Ewa Mazierska carefully examines these assumptions, considering those institutions which catered for the needs of estrada artists and their fans, the presence of estrada in different media and the careers and styles of the leading stars, such as Mieczysław Fogg, Irena Santor, Violetta Villas, Anna German, Jerzy Połomski, Maryla Rodowicz, Zdzisława Sośnicka, Zbigniew Wodecki and Krzysztof Krawczyk. Mazierska also discusses the memory and legacy of estrada music in the post-communist period. The book draws on Poland’s cultural and political history and the history of Polish popular music and media, including television and radio. Mazierska engages with concepts such as genre, stardom and authenticity in order to capture the essence of Polish estrada music and to provide a comparison with popular music produced in other countries.

This collection presents a number of films and television programmes set in the North of England in an investigation of how northern identity imbricates with class, race, gender, rural and urban identities. Heading North considers famous screen images of the North, such as Coronation Street and Kes (1969), but the main purpose is to examine its lesser known facets. From Mitchell and Kenyon's 'Factory Gate' films to recent horror series In the Flesh, the authors analyse how the dominant narrative of the North of England as an 'oppressed region' subordinated to the economically and politically powerful South of England is challenged. The book discusses the relationship between the North of England and the rest of the world and should be of interest to students of British cinema and television, as well as to those broadly interested in its history and culture.

This book explores popular music in Eastern Europe during the period of state socialism, in countries such as Poland, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Romania, Czechoslovakia, the GDR, Estonia and Albania. It discusses the policy concerning music, the greatest Eastern European stars, such as Karel Gott, Czeslaw Niemen and Omega, as well as DJs and the music press. By conducting original research, including interviews and examining archival material, the authors take issue with certain assumptions prevailing in the existing studies on popular music in Eastern Europe, namely that it was largely based on imitation of western music and that this music had a distinctly anti-communist flavour. Instead, they argue that self-colonisation was accompanied with creating an original idiom, and that the state not only fought the artists, but also supported them. The collection also draws attention to the foreign successes of Eastern European stars, both within the socialist bloc and outside of it. v>

In Theses on Feuerbach, Marx writes, “The philosophers have only interpreted the world differently; the point is to change it.� This collection examines how filmmakers have tried to change the world by engaging in emancipatory politics through their work, and how audiences have received them. It presents a wide spectrum of case studies, covering both film and digital technology, with examples from throughout cinematic history and around the world, including Soviet Russia, Palestine, South America, and France. Discussions range from the classic Marxist cinema of Aleksandr Medvedkin, Chris Marker, and Jean-Luc Godard, to recent media such as 5 Broken Cameras (2010), the phenomena of video-blogging, and bicycle activism films.
  

Popular Polish Electronic Music, 1970-2020 offers a cultural history of popular Polish electronic music, from its beginning in the late 1960s/early 1970s up to the present day, in the context of Polish economic, social and political history, and the history of popular music in this country. From the perspective of production, scene, industry and consumption, the volume considers the issue of access to electronic instruments in the 1970s and 1980s, and the variety of inspirations, such as progressive rock and folk music, that have contributed to the development of Polish electronic music as it is known today. The widespread contribution of Polish electronic music to film is also considered. This is a valuable resource for scholars and researchers of electronic music, popular music and (Eastern) European music and culture.

This collection examines Blackpool, Britain's first and largest working-class seaside resort as a location for the production and consumption of British film and popular music, and the meaning of 'Blackpool' in films and songs. It examines representation of Blackpool in films such as Hindle Wakes, A Taste of Honey, Bhaji on the Beach, Away, Bob's Weekend, The Harry Hill Movie and Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, linking it to the concepts of heterotopia, purgatory, fantasy, simulacra and the carnivalesque. It also presents music in Blackpool through the history of its venues and examines development of punk and grime music in this seaside town. The authors argue that Blackpool in filmic and musical texts often stands for British culture, but increasingly for culture which is remembered or imagined rather than present and real.

Popular Polish Electronic Music, 1970-2020 offers a cultural history of popular Polish electronic music, from its beginning in the late 1960s/early 1970s up to the present day, in the context of Polish economic, social and political history, and the history of popular music in this country. From the perspective of production, scene, industry and consumption, the volume considers the issue of access to electronic instruments in the 1970s and 1980s, and the variety of inspirations, such as progressive rock and folk music, that have contributed to the development of Polish electronic music as it is known today. The widespread contribution of Polish electronic music to film is also considered. This is a valuable resource for scholars and researchers of electronic music, popular music and (Eastern) European music and culture.

Jerzy Skolimowski is one of the most original Polish directors and one of only a handful who has gained genuine recognition abroad. This is the first monograph, written in English, to be devoted to his cinema. It covers Skolimowski's career from his early successes in Poland, such as Identification Marks: None and Barrier, through his emigre films, Deep End, Moonlighting and The Lightship, to his return to Poland where, in 2008, he made the internationally acclaimed Four Nights with Anna.

Ewa Mazierska addresses the main features of Skolimowski's films, such as their affinity to autobiographism and surrealism, while discussing their characters, narratives, visual style, soundtracks, and the uses of literature. She draws on a wide range of cinematic and literary texts, situating Skolimowski's work within the context of Polish and world cinema, and drawing parallels between his work and that of two directors, with whom he tends to be compared, Roman Pola ski and Jean-Luc Godard.

'Ewa Mazierska's monograph is the first book-length study of his Jerzy Skolimowski's] work, nearly half a century after his emergence as a one-man Polish New Wave ... Mazierska eschews a chronological survey in favour of five themed essays ... this approach allows her to make connections between outwardly disparate films and mount a convincing challenge to the received opinion that there are fundamental differences between his Polish and non-Polish output ... this is an important, desperately overdue book.' Sight & Sound

Ewa Mazierska is Professor of Contemporary Cinema, Department of Humanities, University of Central Lancashire. Her publications include Crossing New Europe: The European Road Movie (Wallflower Press, 2006), Dreams and Diaries: The Cinema of Nanni Moretti (Wallflower Press, 2004) and From Moscow to Madrid: Postmodern Cities, European Cinema (I.B. Tauris, 2003), all co-authored with Laura Rascaroli and Women in Polish Cinema (Berghahn Books, 2006), co-authored with El bieta Ostrowska."

This volume examines the transnational character of popular music since the Cold War era to the present. Bringing together the cross-disciplinary research of native scholars, Eastern European Popular Music in a Transnational Context expands our understanding of the movement of physical music, musicians and genres through the Iron Curtain and within the region of Eastern Europe. With case studies ranging from Goran Bregovic, Czeslaw Niemen, the reception of Leonard Cohen in Poland, the Estonian punk scene to the Intervision Song Contest, the book discusses how the production and reception of popular music in the region has always been heavily influenced by international trends and how varied strategies allowed performers and fans to acquire cosmopolitan identities. Cross-disciplinary in nature, the investigations are informed by political, social and cultural history, reception studies, sociology and marketing and are largely based on archival research and interviews.

This book covers the history of Polish cinema from 1989 up to the present in a broad political and cultural context, looking at both the film industry and film artistry. It considers the main ideas behind the institutional changes in the Polish film industry after the collapse of communism and assesses how these ideas were implemented. In discussing artistry, the focus is on the genres which dominated the Polish cinematic landscape after 1989 and the most important directors.

In Theses on Feuerbach, Marx writes, "The philosophers have only interpreted the world differently; the point is to change it." This collection examines how filmmakers have tried to change the world by engaging in emancipatory politics through their work, and how audiences have received them. It presents a wide spectrum of case studies, covering both film and digital technology, with examples from throughout cinematic history and around the world, including Soviet Russia, Palestine, South America, and France. Discussions range from the classic Marxist cinema of Aleksandr Medvedkin, Chris Marker, and Jean-Luc Godard, to recent media such as 5 Broken Cameras (2010), the phenomena of video-blogging, and bicycle activism films.

The author presents a cultural history of popular Viennese electronic music from 1990 to 2015, from the perspectives of production, scene and national and international reception. To illustrate this history in depth, a number of case studies of the most successful and distinguished musicians are explored, such as Kruder and Dorfmeister, Patrick Pulsinger, Tosca, Electric Indigo and Sofa Surfers. The author draws on research about electronic music, the relationship between music and the urban environment, the history of Austria and Vienna, music scenes and fandom, the digital shift , stardom in popular music (especially electronic music), as well as theories of postmodernism. Chapter 4 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 3.0 license. https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/tandfbis/rt-files/docs/Open+Access+Chapters/9781138713918_oachapter4.pdf Chapter 8 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 3.0 license. https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/tandfbis/rt-files/docs/Open+Access+Chapters/9781138713918_oachapter8.pdf

In this edited collection, an international ensemble of scholars examine what contemporary cinema tells us about neoliberal capitalism and cinema, exploring whether filmmakers are able to imagine progressive alternatives under capitalist conditions. Individual contributions discuss filmmaking practices, film distribution, textual characteristics and the reception of films made in different parts of the world. They engage with topics such as class struggle, debt, multiculturalism and the effect of neoliberalism on love and sexual behaviour. Written in accessible, jargon-free language, Contemporary Cinema and Neoliberal Ideology is an essential text for those interested in political filmmaking and the political meanings of films.

In this edited collection, an international ensemble of scholars examine what contemporary cinema tells us about neoliberal capitalism and cinema, exploring whether filmmakers are able to imagine progressive alternatives under capitalist conditions. Individual contributions discuss filmmaking practices, film distribution, textual characteristics and the reception of films made in different parts of the world. They engage with topics such as class struggle, debt, multiculturalism and the effect of neoliberalism on love and sexual behaviour. Written in accessible, jargon-free language, Contemporary Cinema and Neoliberal Ideology is an essential text for those interested in political filmmaking and the political meanings of films.

Polish film has long enjoyed an outstanding reputation but its best known protagonists tend to be male. This book points to the important role of women as key characters in Polish films, such as the enduring female figure in Polish culture, the "Polish Mother," female characters in socialist realistic cinema, women depicted in the films of the Polish School, Solidarity heroines, and women in the films from the postcommunist period. Not less important for the success of Polish cinema are Polish women filmmakers, four of whom are presented in this volume: Wanda Jakubowska, Agnieszka Holland, Barbara Sass and Dorota Kedzierzawska, whose work is examined.

Gender, especially masculinity, is a perspective rarely applied in discourses on cinema of Eastern/Central Europe. Masculinities in Polish, Czech and Slovak Cinema exposes an English-speaking audience to a large proportion of this region's cinema that previously remained unknown, focusing on the relationship between representation of masculinity and nationality in the films of two and later three countries: Poland, Czechoslovakia/the Czech Republic and Slovakia. The objective of the book is to discuss the main types of men populating Polish, Czech and Slovak films: that of soldier, father, heterosexual and homosexual lover, against a rich political, social and cultural background. Czech, Slovak and Polish cinema appear to provide excellent material for comparison as they were produced in neighbouring countries which for over forty years endured a similar political system - state socialism.

Like many Eastern European countries, Poland has seen a succession of divergent economic and political regimes over the last century, from prewar "embedded liberalism," through the state socialism of the Soviet era, to the present neoliberal moment. Its cinema has been inflected by these changing historical circumstances, both mirroring and resisting them. This volume is the first to analyze the entirety of the nation's film history-from the reemergence of an independent Poland in 1918 to the present day-through the lenses of political economy and social class, showing how Polish cinema documented ordinary life while bearing the hallmarks of specific ideologies.

Jerzy Skolimowski is one of the most original Polish directors and one of only a handful who has gained genuine recognition abroad. This is the first monograph, written in English, to be devoted to his cinema. It covers Skolimowski's career from his early successes in Poland, such as Identification Marks: None and Barrier, through his emigre films, Deep End, Moonlighting and The Lightship, to his return to Poland where, in 2008, he made the internationally acclaimed Four Nights with Anna. Ewa Mazierska addresses the main features of Skolimowski's films, such as their affinity to autobiographism and surrealism, while discussing their characters, narratives, visual style, soundtracks, and the uses of literature. She draws on a wide range of cinematic and literary texts, situating Skolimowski's work within the context of Polish and world cinema, and drawing parallels between his work and that of two directors, with whom he tends to be compared, Roman Polanski and Jean-Luc Godard.