John David Rhodes places the city of Rome at the center of this original and in-depth examination of the work of Italian director Pier Paolo PasoliniOCobut itOCOs not the classical Rome you imagine. "Stupendous, Miserable City" situates Pasolini within the history of twentieth-century Roman urban development. The book focuses first on the Fascist period, when populations were moved out of the urban center and into public housing on the periphery of the city, called the "borgate, " and then turns to the progressive social housing experiments of the 1950s. These environments were the settings of most of PasoliniOCOs films of the early to mid-1960s.

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Discussing films such as "Accattone, Mamma Roma, "and "The Hawks and the Sparrows, "Rhodes shows how Pasolini used the "borgate "to critique Roman urban planning and neorealism and to draw attention to the contemptuous treatment of RomeOCOs poor. To Pasolini, the "borgate, "rich in human incident, linguistic difference, and squalor, OC were lifeOCOOCoand now his passion can be appreciated fully for the first time.

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Carefully tracing PasoliniOCOs surprising engagement with this part of Rome and looking beyond his films to explore the interrelatedness of all of PasoliniOCOs artistic output in the 1950s and 1960sOCoincluding his poetry, fiction, and journalismOCoRhodes opens up completely new ways of understanding PasoliniOCOs work and proves how connected Pasolini was to the political and social upheavals in Italy at the time.

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John David Rhodes is lecturer in literature and visual culture at the University of Sussex."

Meshes of the Afternoon (1943), filmed by Maya Deren and her then husband Alexader Hammid in their bungalow above Sunset Boulevard for a mere $274.90, is the most important film in the history of American avant-garde cinema. The artistic collaboration between Deren and Hammid finds its distorted reflection in the vision of the film's tormented female protagonist. Its focus - through a series of intricate and interlocking dream sequences - on female experience and the domestic sphere links Meshes to the Hollywood melodramas of the period, while its unsettling atmosphere of dread, death and doubles makes it a counter-cinematic cousin to film noir. The film has influenced not only the subsequent history of experimental film, but also on the work of Hollywood auteurs. It is a touchstone of women's film-making, of modern cinema and of modern art. John David Rhodes traces the film's history back into the lives of Maya Deren and Alexander Hammid, but in particular that of Deren. He reads the film as a culmination of Deren's abiding interest in modernism and her intense engagement in socialist politics. Rhodes argues that while the film remains a powerful point of reference for feminist film-makers and experimentalists, it is also an example of political art in the broadest terms. In his foreword to this new edition, Rhodes reflects upon the film's continuing importance for and influence upon feminist and avant-garde filmmaking.

The cinema of Michelangelo Antonioni (1912-2007) embodies--more than that of any other
director--the substance of European art cinema. Antonioni's films are intensely stylized, stylish,
demanding, beautiful, daring, frustrating, and gratifying. Antonioni died on 30 July 2007, eerily
the exact same day that his art cinema rival Ingmar Bergman also passed away. Antonioni's
death--perhaps too conveniently--seemed to mark a terminal point in film history. More
importantly, his death brought home immediately the need to reassess Antonioni's contribution
to world cinema. This collection of new essays by leading film scholars addresses Michelangelo Antonioni as a pre-eminent figure in European art cinema, explores his continuing influence and legacy, and engages with his ability to both interpret and shape ideas of modernity and modern cinema.

"Taking Place" argues that the relation between geographical location and the moving image is fundamental and that place grounds our experience of film and media. Its original essays analyze film, television, video, and installation art from diverse national and transnational contexts to rethink both the study of moving images and the theorization of place. Through its unprecedented--and at times even obsessive-- attention to actual places, this volume traces the tensions between the global and the local, the universal and the particular, that inhere in contemporary debates on global cinema, television, art, and media.

Contributors: Rosalind Galt, U of Sussex; Frances Guerin, U of Kent; Ji-hoon Kim; Hugh S. Manon, Clark U; Ara Osterweil, McGill U; Brian Price, U of Toronto; Linda Robinson, U of Wisconsin-Whitewater; Michael Siegel; Noa Steimatsky, U of Chicago; Meghan Sutherland, U of Toronto; Mark W. Turner, Kings College London; Aurora Wallace, New York U; Charles Wolfe, U of California, Santa Barbara.

"Taking Place" argues that the relation between geographical location and the moving image is fundamental and that place grounds our experience of film and media. Its original essays analyze film, television, video, and installation art from diverse national and transnational contexts to rethink both the study of moving images and the theorization of place. Through its unprecedented--and at times even obsessive-- attention to actual places, this volume traces the tensions between the global and the local, the universal and the particular, that inhere in contemporary debates on global cinema, television, art, and media.

Contributors: Rosalind Galt, U of Sussex; Frances Guerin, U of Kent; Ji-hoon Kim; Hugh S. Manon, Clark U; Ara Osterweil, McGill U; Brian Price, U of Toronto; Linda Robinson, U of Wisconsin-Whitewater; Michael Siegel; Noa Steimatsky, U of Chicago; Meghan Sutherland, U of Toronto; Mark W. Turner, Kings College London; Aurora Wallace, New York U; Charles Wolfe, U of California, Santa Barbara.

Much of our time at the movies is spent in other people’s homes. Cinema is, after all, often about everyday life. Spectacle of Property is the first book to address the question of the ubiquitous conjuncture of the moving image and its domestic architecture. Arguing that in cinema we pay to occupy spaces we cannot occupy, John David Rhodes explores how the house in cinema both structures and criticizes fantasies of property and ownership. Rhodes tells the story of the ambivalent but powerful pleasure we take in looking at private property onscreen, analyzing the security and ease the house promises along with the horrible anxieties it produces. He begins by laying out a theory of film spectatorship that proposes the concept of the “spectator-tenant,” with reference to films such as Gone with the Wind and The Magnificent Ambersons. The book continues with three chapters that are each occupied with a different architectural style and the films that make use of it: the bungalow, the modernist house, and the shingle style house. Rhodes considers a variety of canonical films rarely analyzed side by side, such as Psycho in relation to Grey Gardens and Meet Me in St. Louis. Among the other films discussed are Meshes of the Afternoon, Mildred Pierce, A Star Is Born, Killer of Sheep, and A Single Man. Bringing together film history, film theory, and architectural history as no book has to date, Spectacle of Property marks a new milestone in examining cinema’s relationship to realism while leaving us vastly more informed about, if less at home inside, the houses we occupy at the movies.