Film history, theory or criticism Books

Book SynopsisThe Lost Cinema of Mexico is the first volume to challenge the dismissal of Mexican filmmaking during the 1960s through 1980s, an era long considered a low-budget departure from the artistic quality and international acclaim of the nation's earlier Golden Age. This pivotal collection examines the critical implications of discovering, uncovering, and recovering forgotten or ignored films.This largely unexamined era of film reveals shifts in Mexican culture, economics, and societal norms as state-sponsored revolutionary nationalism faltered. During this time, movies were widely embraced by the public as a way to make sense of the rapidly changing realities and values connected to Mexico's modernization. These essays shine a light on many genres that thrived in these decades: rock churros, campy luchador movies, countercultural superocheros, Black melodramas, family films, and chili westerns.Redefining a time usually seen as a cinematic "crisis," this volume offers a new model of the film auteur shaped by productive tension between highbrow aesthetics, industry shortages, and national audiences. It also traces connections from these Mexican films to Latinx, Latin American, and Hollywood cinema at large.

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Book SynopsisThe film-making partnership of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger was one of the most remarkable and visionary in cinema. They made an extraordinary range of films, from The Spy in Black and The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp to A Canterbury Tale and The Red Shoes. With champions like Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola, and revived critical interest worldwide, they now find new generations of admirers. This illuminating new book looks closely at these classic films to explore their complex relationship to national identity, and their interest in exile, borderlands, utopias, escapism, art and fantasy. Moor reveals for example how the visual imagery of the films of the Second World War question current cinematic styles and how post war films like The Red Shoes and The Tales of Hoffman are in their highly expressive use of design, music and dance utterly international in character.Trade Review'Powell and Pressburger made beautiful, deviant and mongrel films that are famously un-pindownable. Moor's book challenges this belief in their rootlessness and shows how they fit into the movie genres, social history, empire, gender, nation, literature and iconography. He's particularly good on the postwar films, and brilliant on David Niven.' Mark Cousins 'Andrew Moor does full justice to the richness of their great films of the 1940s, and relates them in fascinating ways to the events of this pivotal decade in twentieth-century British history.' Charles Barr 'Essential reading for anyone engaging with the work of Powell and Pressburger.' Screen 'Eclectic and intellectually stimulating. - This book is clearly a labour of love, but that only adds to its worth and readability.' Historical Journal of Film and Television ' - A valuable text for both students and academics that is pertinent for study relating to postmodernism, cultural geography, postcolonial studies, gender studies, film studies, and the affect/effect of cinematic spaces on the spectator.' Journal of Popular Film and Television

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Book SynopsisThe Twilight saga, a series of five films adapted from Stephanie Meyer's four vampire novels, has been a sensation, both at the box office and through the attention it has won from its predominantly teenaged fans. This series has also been the subject of criticism and sometimes derision - often from critics and on occasion even from fans. However, it also offers rich opportunities for analytic and critical attention, which the contributors to Screening Twilight demonstrate with energy and style. Through examining Twilight, the book unpacks how this popular group of films work as cinematic texts, what they have to say about cinema and culture today, and how fans may seek to re-read or subvert these messages. The chapters addressTwilight in the context of the vampire and myth, in terms of genre and reception, identity, gender and sexuality, and through re-viewing the series fandom. Screening Twilight is also a revelation of how a popular cinematic phenomenon like Twilight rewards close attention from contemporary critical scholars of cinema and culture.Trade Review'Harman and Clayton have gathered together a dynamic mix of writers who tackle the series in all its complexities [ - ] This book is a must-read.' Stacey Abbott, Reader in Film and Television Studies, University of Roehampton 'Screening Twilight [ - ] examines not only the texts but also how fans and critics have responded to them and it opens up a lively discussion of the cultural significance of this new twist in the vampire tale. In short, this is a terrific book.' Milly Williams, Senior Lecturer in Film and TV Studies, Brunel UniversityTable of Contents1. Mute Monsters and Vocal [Fan] Critics: Genre and Reception Guilty Pleasures: Twilight, snark and ironic fandom Francesca Haig 'Cue the Shrieking Virgins'?: The Critical Reception of the Twilight Saga Mark Jankovich The Twilight Saga: Genre and Reception Nia Edwards-Behi 2. Werewolves, Lions and Lambs: Creating and Subverting the Myth Why Twilight Sucks And Edward Doesn’t: Contemporary Vampires and the Sentimental Tradition Judith Kohlenberger The Lore of the Wild Dr Caroline Ruddell Northwest Small Town Gothic: Location and Space in the Twilight Films Dr Ian Conrich 3. Romancing the Tomb: Gender and Sexuality My distaste for Forks’: Twilight, oral gratification and self-denial Ruth O’Donnell Of Masochistic Lions and Stupid Lambs: The Ambiguous Nature of Sexuality and Sexual Awakening in Twilight Marion Rana 'Venus in Fangs': Negotiating Masochism in Twilight Mark Adams 4. The Politics of Pallor: Post-colonialism and Racial Whiteness The Cullens: The Mimicry of the Post-Colonial Vampire Simon Bacon Racial Whiteness and Twilight Ewan Kirkland 5. Slash and Burn: Deviating Fandom and Re-writing the Text Twilight’s Queer Communities: Family and Fandom R. Justin Hunt, : Projected Interactivity and All Human Twilight Fanfic Brigid Cherry Normal Female Interest in Vampires and Werewolves Bonking: Slash and the Reconstruction of Meaning Bethan Jones Index

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Book SynopsisHollywood is facing unprecedented challenges – and is changing rapidly and radically as a result. In this major new study of the contemporary film industry, leading film historian Tino Balio explores the impact of the Internet, declining DVD sales and changing consumer spending habits on the way Hollywood conducts its business. Today, the major studios play an insignificant role in the bottom lines of their conglomerate parents and have fled to safety, relying on big-budget tentpoles, franchises and family films to reach their target audiences. Comprehensive, compelling and filled with engaging case studies (TimeWarner, DreamWorks SKG, Spider Man, The Lord of the Rings, IMAX, Netflix, Miramax, Sony Pictures Classics, Lionsgate and Sundance), Hollywood in the New Millennium is a must-read for all students of film studies, cinema studies, media studies, communication studies, and radio and television.Table of ContentsIntroduction.- 1 Mergers and Acquisitions: The Quest for Synergy.- 2 Production: Tentpoles and Franchises.- 3 Distribution: Open Wide.- 4 Exhibition: Upgrading Moviegoing.- 5 Ancillary Markets: Shattered Windows.- 6 Independents: 'To the Rear and Back End'.- Conclusion.- References and Further Reading.- Index.

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Book Synopsis“Christopher Frayling’s Spaghetti Westerns is a particularly entertaining and enjoyably readable book. Frayling is obviously both a film buff and film critic, so he is able to appreciate Spaghetti Westerns as popular entertainments, to celebrate their cinematic stylishness, while simultaneously knowledgeably exploring their many social and political dimensions.” – Gary Crowdus, Cineaste “Unquestionably the single best book written about the Western.” – Journal of Popular Film and TelevisionTrade Review'The book is a major contribution to the understanding of film in society, and is as much fun as the movies it discusses' - Robert Reiner, New Society The Professor of Cultural History at the Royal College of Art has taken his chair in both hands. - Robert Hewison, Times Literary Supplement. 'An all-encompassing overview of the genre and its key contributors' - Howard Maxford, Film Review, 10th April 2006.

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Book SynopsisAt the outbreak of the Second World War, all cinemas in Britain were closed. Ten days later, they were opened again as a valuable way of boosting morale and a principal source of recreation for the nation at war. Feature films were not just escapist entertainment; they provided instruction and information, and over the next six years, some 300 feature films and thousands of short films and news reels were produced in what is now seen as British cinema's 'finest hour'. "Britain Can Take It" charts this momentous period through the eyes of thirteen key films. Aldgate and Richards make use of key resources, from scripts and box-office returns to official Home Office documents and censorship archives, to bring these films to vivid life. In telling their stories, the authors also recreate the society, the politics and war-time conditions in which they appeared and flourished. This new edition of "Britain Can Take It" features a new chapter on Launder and Gilliat's 1943 film on women factory workers, "Millions Like Us". It will be welcomed back by film scholars and historians, students and film lovers as essential reading.

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Book SynopsisAn anthology that analyses the use of music and sound in the popular genre of Horror cinema. Focusing on the post-War period, it analyses the role of music and sound in establishing and enhancing the senses of unease, suspense and shock crucial to the genre.

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Book SynopsisThis is a hugely important collection of essays on Deleuze and Cinema from an international panel of experts. In 1971, Deleuze and Guattari's collaborative work, "Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia" caused an international sensation by fusing Marx with a radically rewritten Freud to produce a new approach to critical thinking they provocatively called schizoanalysis. "Deleuze and the Schizoanalysis of Cinema" explores the possibilities of using this concept to interrogate cinematic works in both the Hollywood and non-Hollywood tradition. It attempts to define what a schizoanalysis of cinema might be and interrogates a variety of ways in which a schizoanalysis might be applied.This collection opens up a fresh field of inquiry for Deleuze scholars and poses an exciting challenge to cinema studies in general. Featuring some of the most important cinema studies scholars working on Deleuze and Guattari today, "Deleuze and the Schizoanalysis of Cinema" is a cutting edge collection that will set the agenda for future work in this area.Trade Review"The eleven essays collected in this book produce a series of inventive digressions and displacements, or better, new social series that put cinema in play with the great critical project of Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Through the broader cultural arguments of Guattari and Deleuze, Deleuze and the Schizoanalysis of Cinema opens up new discursive spaces for investigating cinema through the linked domains of politics and desire." - Professor D.N. Rodowick, Harvard University, USA"Working across cinematic genre, documentary and national cinemas this volume's ten essays align Gilles Deleuze's Cinema I & II with his wider theoretical writings. Indicative of this approach - an approach itself signalled in Buchanan's introductory essay - is Joe Hughes' chapter which returns the schizoanalysis of the volume's title to the philosopher's earlier works. Elsewhere, co-editor MacCormack's contribution builds upon the groundwork in her earlier Cinesexuality, evolving an ethical erotics of spectatorship" - Flux Magazine -- Tim HuntleyTable of ContentsIntroduction: Five Theses of Actually Existing Schizoanalysis of Cinema, Ian Buchanan (Cardiff University, UK); 1. Schizoanalysis and the Phenomenology of Cinema, Joe Hughes (University of Edinburgh, UK); 2. Schizoanalysis and the Cinema of the Brain, Gregg Lambert (Syracuse University, USA); 3. Losing Face, Gregory Flaxman (University of North Carolina, USA) and Elena Oxman (University of North Carolina, USA); 4. Disorientation, Duration and Tarkovsky, Mark Riley (Roehampton University, UK); 5. Suspended Gestures: Schizoanalysis, Affect and the Face in Cinema, Amy Herzog (CUNY, USA); 6. Schizoanalysis, Spectacle and the Spaghetti Western, David Martin-Jones (University of St Andrews, UK); 7. Cinemas of Minor Frenchness, Bill Marshall (University of Glasgow, UK); 8. Delirium Cinema or Machines of the Invisible?, Patricia Pisters (University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands); 9. Off Your Face: Schizoanalysis, Faciality and Cinema, Anna Powell (Manchester Metropolitan University, UK); 10. An Ethics of Spectatorship: Love, Death and Cinema, Patricia MacCormack (Anglia Ruskin University, UK).

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Book SynopsisIn a film business increasingly transnational in its production arrangements and global in its scope, what space is there for culturally English filmmaking? In this groundbreaking book, Andrew Higson demonstrates how a variety of Englishnesses have appeared on screen since 1990, and surveys the genres and production modes that have captured those representations. He looks at the industrial circumstances of the film business in the UK, government film policy and the emergence of the UK Film Council. He examines several contemporary 'English' dramas that embody the transnationalism of contemporary cinema, from 'Notting Hill' to 'The Constant Gardener'. He surveys the array of contemporary fiction that has been re-worked for the big screen, and the pervasive - and successful - Jane Austen adaptation business. Finally, he considers the period's diverse films about the English past, including big-budget, Hollywood-led action-adventure films about medieval heroes, intimate costume dramas of the modern past, such as 'Pride and Prejudice', and films about the very recent past, such as 'This is England'.Table of ContentsIntroduction Chapter One Film production in the UK in the 1990s and 2000s Chapter Two Film policy and national cinema: cultural value and economic value Chapter Three English cinema, transnationalism and globalisation Chapter Four English literature, the contemporary novel and the cinema Chapter Five Jane Austen: “The hottest scriptwriter in Hollywood” Chapter Six The Austen screen franchise in the 2000s Chapter Seven Intimate and epic versions of the English past Chapter Eight Blurring boundaries: historical myopia and period authenticity Conclusion Filmography Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisThis innovative book is about the place of world cinema in the cultural imaginary. It also repositions world cinema in a wider discursive space than is usually the case and treats it as an object of theoretical enquiry, rather than as a commercial label. The editors and distinguished group of contributors offer a range of approaches and case studies whose organizing principle is the developing idea of polycentrism as applied to cinema. They refine and redefine key concepts in film studies, including identification and identity, narrative and realism, allegory and the national project, auteurism and the popular, art and genre. They re-evaluate how cinema shapes and responds to the philosophical, cultural and political effects of transnationalism and cosmopolitanism in the age of the moving image, and explore the interconnectedness of films produced worldwide, as well as the links between cinema and other visual cultural forms. The contributors include: John Caughie, Felicia Chan, Tiago de Luca, Rajinder Dudrah, Song Hwee Lim, Laura Mulvey, Lucia Nagib, Geoffrey Nowell-Smith, Chris Perriam, Ashish Rajadhyaksha, Paul Julian Smith, and Ismail Xavier.Trade Review'This excellent collection reenergizes the study of world cinemas with its rigorous commitment to rethinking established theoretical concerns and ideas. This book is an indispensable reference for anyone interested in what the state of film theory is today.' - Professor Tim Bergfelder, University of Southampton; 'Theorizing World Cinema develops a polycentric approach to Film Studies that is truly groundbreaking.' - Professor Mette Hjort, Lingnan University, Hong Kong; 'The editors have brought together an impressive list of scholars, whose contributions offer compelling perspectives on film theory today, as it faces the challenges of a post-medium cinema and increasingly focuses on the experience of embodied and situated spectators.' - Professor Thomas Elsaesser, University of AmsterdamTable of ContentsList of Illustrations (to be provided) Notes on Contributors Acknowledgements Introduction Part I: The National Project 1. John Caughie ‘Morvern Callar, Art Cinema and the ‘Monstrous Archive’” 2. Ismail Xavier ‘On Film and Cathedrals: Monumental Art, National Allegories and Cultural Warfare’ 3. Ashish Rajadhyaksha ‘A Theory of Cinema that Can Account for Indian Cinema’ Part II: The Transnational Project 4. Paul Julian Smith ‘Transnational Cinemas: The Cases of Mexico, Argentina and Brazil’ 5. Chris Perriam ‘Eduardo Noriega’s Transnational Projections’ 6. Felicia Chan ‘From world cinema to World Cinema: Wong Kar-wai’s Ashes of Time and Ashes of Time Redux’ Part III: The Diasporic Project 7. Rajinder Dudrah ‘Beyond World Cinema? The Dialectics of Diasporic Cinema’ 8. Song Hwee Lim ‘Speaking in Tongues: Ang Lee, Accented Cinema, Hollywood’ Part 4: The Realist Project 9. Geoffrey Nowell-Smith ‘From Realism to Neorealism’ 10. Lúcia Nagib ‘Oshima, Corporeal Realism and the Eroticized Apparatus’ 11. Tiago de Luca ‘Realism of the Senses: A Tendency in World Cinema’ 12. Laura Mulvey ‘Rear Projection and the Paradoxes of Hollywood Realism’ Index

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Book SynopsisLenin, Stalin, Trotsky, Hitler and Goebbels all regarded cinema as their most important weapon for mass political propaganda. This revised and expanded edition of "Film Propaganda" examines the ways in which cinema was used for political purposes by two of the most highly politicised societies in twentieth-century European history. "Film Propaganda" is still to date the only book in English to compare these two cinemas and examine both in depth. Richard Taylor demonstrates how cinema was brought under political control in each country and goes on to explore the themes and stereotypes projected by the feature films that were produced. In so doing, he highlights the means used by the authorities to condition and control the filmgoer as individual spectator and as member of a mass audience. This process is examined in greater depth in a series of detailed analyses of films selected for their particular political significance, including "October", "Alexander Nevsky", "Triumph of the Will", "The Wandering Jew" and, new to this edition, the 1949 Stalin cult film, "The Fall of Berlin". Also new to this edition are appendices with details of films viewed by Hitler and Goebbels, which were captured by the Red Army from Berlin 's ruins in 1945 and were considered by Stalin for release during the film famine years after the war.

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Book SynopsisThe KINO Russian Cinema series has been expanding to provide students and general readers with readable, companion handbooks to important and interesting films of Russian cinema from its beginnings to the late 1990s. This volume investigates the production, context and reception of the film "Battleship Potemkin", the people who made it, and the film itself, including its place in Russian and World cinema.

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Book Synopsis"Get Carter" is now widely acknowledged as the finest British gangster film of all time. Released in 1971, the film fell out of fashion until the cultural changes of the 1990s gave a new currency to its pessimistic vision of a doomed male within a decaying social order. Before its re-release in 1999, Mike Hodges' fusion of the crime genre with social realism received surprisingly little critical attention. Steve Chibnall's book now gives "Get Carter" the consideration it demands. With the co-operation of Hodges and access to rare documents, including an early draft of the script, Chibnall places the film in its social context, describes its making, discusses its characteristics, scene by scene, and charts its changing status since the 1970s.Trade Review'Chibnall's account and analysis of the film's history is well due... his evocation of the time and his detailed research do both himself and the film proud... this book is an undoubted gem, insightful and thorough. Chibnall's Get Carter is a fascinating celebration of a vital, iconic British movie. A readable, inclusive tone is quickly established...' -Graeme Cole, Kamera Magazine 'A model of the genre... Chibnall brilliantly sketches the atmosphere of corruption and decadence that succeeded the burning out of the Sixties in Britain. He also provides an illuminating summary of the John Poulton/ T. Dan Smith scandal and an account of the lucrative trade in obscene publications- two elements crucial to Mike Hodges's movie.' -Chris Wood, The TimesTable of ContentsIllustrations /vi Acknowledgements /vii Foreword by Mike Hodges /viii Film Credits 1 1 Carter in Context 3 2 From London Luxury to Terminal Beach 48 3 Death and Resurrection 90 Appendix: Scene Breakdown and Shooting Schedule 117 Notes 127 Select Bibliography 136

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