Film history, theory or criticism Books

Book SynopsisProvides an aesthetic and historical overview of and new critical insights into Paul Wegener's great 1920 film, recognized at the time as a breakthrough in German cinema. Actor and director Paul Wegener released his 1920 silent film The Golem, How He Came into the World in the aftermath of Germany's defeat in World War I. The film's innovative cinematography, lighting effects, modernist architectural design, and thrilling plot all led contemporaneous viewers and critics to pronounce that Germany had finally succeeded on the film front if not on the battlefield. The Golem, How He Came into the World, Wegener's third golem film, narrates how Rabbi Loew, here an astrologer and sorcerer as well as a spiritual leader, forms and animates an artificial clay anthropoid in order to save the Prague Jewish community from an edict of expulsion. Maya Barzilai situates the 1920 film in the historical and social context of post-World War I Germany, taking into consideration Wegener's violent and traumatic service on the Western front. She closely analyzes the film's expressive sculptural aesthetic, enhanced through poetic cinematography, arguing that Wegener's animation of cinema also served a postwar ethical purpose: revealing the human face of the golem and offering a redemptive escape from the the film's Christian-Jewish conflict through nature on the one hand and Zionism on the other.Table of ContentsIntroduction: The Ethics of Animation How Wegener Came to the Golem Light and Clay: A Sculptural Aesthetic Poelzig's "Golem City" Cinematic Jewishness The Clay of War Combat at Court The Face of Things Epilogue: The Afterlives of The Golem, How He Came into the World Credits Notes

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Book SynopsisRevisits Herzog's classic film from a decisively contemporary standpoint, bringing into play the development of his filmmaking career. When it was released in 1982, Werner Herzog's Fitzcarraldo was widely criticized for its demanding use of human and natural resources as well as its director's uncompromising aesthetic vision. Critics and scholars saw little difference between the film's protagonist's obsession with hauling a ship over a mountain in the Amazon and Herzog's own mode of cinematic production and storytelling. And yet Fitzcarraldo stands out as one of the defining moments of New German Cinema and, as the years pass, continues to raise new questions about the relation of film and society, art and nature, progress and subjectivity, the known and the unknown. This book revisits Herzog's taleof operatic entrepreneurialism from a decisively contemporary standpoint. It draws on recent writing on the Anthropocene to probe the relationship of art, civilization, and the natural world in Fitzcarraldo. It discusses the role of opera and music in Herzog's Amazon spectacle. And it brings into play the development of Herzog's own career as a filmmaker over the last few decades to offer a fresh look at this by-now classical contribution to twentieth-century German film art. Lutz Koepnick is Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Professor of German, Cinema and Media Arts at Vanderbilt University.Trade ReviewIn the course of his sensitive and subtle investigation Koepnick brings into play numerous terms and concepts . . . in order to do justice to the complexity and relevance of Herzog's now-mythical film. -- Jörn Glasenapp * MEDIENwissenschaft *[A]fter considering the author's fresh perspectives on the intersections among music, philosophy, art, politics, ownership, and authorship, the reader will look forward to (re)watching Fitzcarraldo with eyes wide open not only to appreciate its cinematic feats but also, as Koepnick suggests, "to reflect on the conditions and limits of happiness." -- Jeanne Schueller * MONATSHEFTE *Lutz Koepnick explores Fitzcarraldo by attempting to strip away the historical sediments of shared knowledge about the film and its auteur, Werner Herzog, and asks what the film itself shows and knows. . . . [T]he book takes an incisive look at the perspective that the film and filmmaker have both on Germanness and humanity's place in a global ecology. . . . [Koepnick] offers a fresh perspective on the film . . . . -- Noah Soltau * GERMAN STUDIES REVIEW *

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Book SynopsisA guide through the many aspects of Wenders's groundbreaking film, employing archival research to bring out new insights into its making and its meanings. Filmed in 1986/87 in still-divided Berlin, Wim Wenders's Wings of Desire is both a utopian fairy tale and a fascinating time capsule of that late Cold War moment. Together with legendary French cinematographer Henri Alekan(who had worked on Jean Cocteau's La Belle et la Bête of 1946, among many other films) and Austrian author Peter Handke (with whom he had collaborated before), Wenders created a multilayered filmic poem of dazzling complexity: the skies over Berlin are populated with angels bearing witness to its inhabitants' everyday concerns. One falls in love with a beautiful young woman, a trapeze artist in a traveling circus, and decides to forfeit his immortality. Wenders's groundbreaking film has been hailed as a paean to love, a rumination on the continued presence in Berlin of the troubled German history, as well as an homage to the life-affirming power of the cinematic imagination.Christian Rogowski guides the reader through the film's many aspects, using archival research to bring out new insights into its making and its meanings. Christian Rogowski is G. Armour Craig Professor in Language andLiterature in the Department of German at Amherst College.Trade Review[Rogowski] is able to name what it is that makes the film so original, provocative, and daring. . . . Rogowski's book is among the best writing on Wenders's "transcendental 'buddy movie.'" -- Jörn Glasenapp * MEDIENwissenschaft *[A] careful treatment . . . . Throughout this volume, criticisms of Wings of Desire are acknowledged yet the reader is convincingly reminded of its many strengths. -- Jeanne Schueller * MONATSHEFTE *Christian Rogowski examines Wim Wenders's [film] through the lens of its status as a problematic icon of international cinema. . . . Rogowski supports his central argument that Wings of Desire is a philosophical and aesthetic treatise on the human condition with references to Wenders's other films; contemporary works of German, French, and American film; and a deep examination of the film's unique history, steeped in interdisciplinary collaboration, poetry, and music. -- Noah Soltau * GERMAN STUDIES REVIEW *

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Book SynopsisOffers not only a close reading but also a film-historical contextualization of Phoenix, constituting the most significant and thorough study of Petzold's film to date. Christian Petzold's Phoenix (2014), a masterpiece from one of Germany's leading contemporary filmmakers, portrays a death-camp survivor's return to occupied Berlin just after the war has come to an end. Nelly, played by German film star Nina Hoss, returns badly wounded, her face covered in bandages, hoping that her German husband will still love her. Johnny fails to recognize her and instead offers her a role in an intricate criminal scheme. Petzold's film, which he scripted together with his frequent collaborator Harun Farocki, was an international success that has been widely compared with works by Alfred Hitchcock and Rainer Werner Fassbinder. This study explores the film's unique array of influences including the vast range of films, novels, and memoirs on which its screenwriters drew. Its central argument concerns the film's integration of a long history of German-Jewish works and ideas-its attempt to confront its audience with a neglected tradition that included figures as diverse as Peter Lorre, Fred Zinnemann, and Hannah Arendt. Offering a close reading of the film's themes, compositions, and music alongside a film-historical contextualization, this book constitutes the most significant and thorough study of Phoenix to date. Brad Prager is Professor of German and Film Studies at the University of Missouri.Trade Review[This book] made a big impression on me. The author sets off on a search for... filmic influences on the director Christian Petzold and his co-author Harun Farocki... . [R]eads suspensefully and enhances one's perception of Christian Petzold's film. * HHPRINZLER.DE *[Prager's book] serves as a well-informed introduction to the complex system of cultural references in the film and as an inspiration for further analyses (beyond the context of the Berlin School). -- Eileen Rositzka * FILMBLATT *There is no question: in Brad Prager Phoenix has found an ideal interpreter. . . . With crystal-clear argumentation, Prager's splendidly written book shows that this is . . . a very good film, and possibly one of Petzold's best. . . . Prager's book, first-rate in every respect, delivers an outstanding argument for the film having a firm place in the cinematic canon of the Federal Republic. -- Jörn Glasenapp * MEDIENwissenschaft *Prager's analysis of Phoenix leaves no stone unturned. . . . . [He] simultaneously unpacks key scenes throughout the film and highlights compelling parallels between Phoenix and other films that inspired [it]. -- Jeanne Schueller * MONATSHEFTE *Brad Prager's deep engagement with Christian Petzold's Phoenix situates the film within a broader émigré and exile tradition surrounding the examination of postwar German and German-Jewish identity and engaging with Germany's Nazi past. . . . Prager takes pains to connect Petzold and [his collaborator Harun] Farocki's work with the specifically German-Jewish work that informs it. He shows readers how they intersect thematically and aesthetically and emphasizes the meaning and nuance these other works bring to the film. -- Noah Soltau * GERMAN STUDIES REVIEW *

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Book SynopsisExplores Haneke's historically complex film as a reflection on purity, ideology, violence, and child-rearing. White ribbons and black pedagogy - Michael Haneke's award-winning film The White Ribbon (2009) is a multilayered reflection on purity, ideology, violence, and child rearing. In this tense black-and-white whodunit, mysterious events occur in a small town on the German-Polish border in 1913-14. A tripwire fells the doctor's horse; a farmhand's wife falls through the floor of a shed; a barn goes up in flames; the baron's son is terribly beaten; a girls takes claims to clairvoyance; a mentally disabled boy is tortured and maimed. While the film unfolds on the eve of the First World War, the violence evokes other historical moments: the breakup of the multi ethnic Austro-Hungarian Empire, the rise of National Socialism, the emergence of 1960s German terrorism, and religious fundamentalism post 9/11. Fatima Naqvi's book looks at Haneke's technique of combining various histories in the digital era. It also reflects on the guise of literariness and historical authenticity in which the director clothes this fictional film. It meditates on the film's inscription techniques and its ability to appeal to international audiences. Naqvi shows that The White Ribbon bespeaks a certain historical "translatability" into historical and aesthetic contexts outside of Germany-in marked contrast to the historical specificity it conveys on a surface level.Trade ReviewNaqvi hopes to counter the impression some critics were left with: that . . . the film . . . argues that no one is responsible for Nazi violence. She argues convincingly that Haneke's specific indictment of Enlightenment conceptions of pedagogy and their nineteenth-century practices do in fact point to a culprit. [Those practices] "made German systems of hypocrisy, collusion, and oppression possible across generations" (78), and Haneke's specific aesthetic paradigms and film techniques make that argument clear. -- Noah Soltau * GERMAN STUDIES REVIEW *Table of ContentsIntroduction Literariness Inscriptions Black Pedagogy Working Through Working Through Women's Meta-Commentary Germanness An Ecology of Images The Unresolved Mystery Coda Credits Notes

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Book SynopsisOffers not only an analytical study of the films of Herzog, perhaps the most famous living German filmmaker, but also a new reading of Romanticism's impact beyond the nineteenth century and in the present. Werner Herzog (b. 1942) is perhaps the most famous living German filmmaker, but his films have never been read in the context of German cultural history. And while there is a surfeit of film reviews, interviews, and scholarly articles on Herzog and his work, there are very few books devoted to his films, and none addressing his entire career to date. Until now. Forgotten Dreams offers not only an analytical study of Herzog's films but also a new reading of Romanticism's impact beyond the nineteenth century. It argues that his films re-envision and help us better understand a critical stream in Romanticism, and places the films in conversation with other filmmakers, authors, and philosophers in order to illuminate that critical stream. The result is a lively reconnection with Romantic themes and convictions that have been partly forgotten in the midst of Germany's postwar rejection of much of Romantic thought, yet are still operative in German culture today. The film analyses will interest scholars of film, German Studies, and Romanticism as well as a broader public interested in Herzog's films and contemporary German cultural debates. The book will also appeal to those interested in the ongoing renegotiation - by Western and other cultures - of relationships between reason and passion, civilization and wild nature, knowledge and belief. Laurie Ruth Johnson is Professor of German, Comparative and World Literature, and Criticism and Interpretive Theory at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.Trade Review[A] worthy addition to any interdisciplinary study of Herzog's films - and the influence of alternative German romanticism as well as formal romanticism on moviemaking . . . . [A]n impressive unravelling of Werner Herzog's valuable contribution to cinema through a viewpoint not previously attempted, shining a light on some intriguing cultural influences and their effects on this fascinating filmmaker. * FILM IRELAND *Laurie Johnson's book expands Herzog criticism in important aspects. * HANS-HELMUT-PRINZLER.DE *Johnson . . . offers a new perspective on the romanticism/Herzog connection. . . . Forgotten Dreams is an in-depth analysis of certain romantic tendencies and how one might read Herzog's films as visual and - to a lesser degree - aural representations of the same. [The book] is an engaging contribution to the philosophical and cultural history of German Romanticism . . . [and shows] how this movement may yield insights into film analysis and history. It is also a worthy resource for Herzog scholars for its discussion of his lesser-known films. Literary, cultural, and film scholars will find many valuable insights in Laurie Ruth Johnson's interdisciplinary study. * MONATSHEFTE *Table of ContentsList of Illustrations Acknowledgments List of Abbreviations Introduction: Werner Herzog's Films and the Other Discourse of Romanticism Image and Knowledge Surface and Depth Beauty and Sublimity Man and Animal Sound and Silence Conclusion: Herzog's Romantic Cinema Notes Bibliography

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Book SynopsisExamines key contemporary Austrian literary texts, films, and memorials that treat Nazism and the Holocaust for what they reveal about the country's contemporary politics of memory. 2018 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title The process of coming to terms with its National Socialist past has been a long and difficult one in Austria. It is only over the past thirty years that the country's view of its role during the Third Reich has shifted decisively from that of victimhood to complicity, prompted by the Waldheim affair of 1986-1988. Austria's writers, filmmakers, and artists have been at the center of this process, holding upa mirror to the country's present and drawing attention to a still disturbing past. Katya Krylova's book undertakes close readings of key contemporary Austrian literary texts, films, and memorials that treat the legacy of Nazism and the Holocaust. The analysis focuses on texts by Robert Schindel, Elfriede Jelinek, and Anna Mitgutsch, documentary films by Ruth Beckermann and by Margareta Heinrich and Eduard Erne, as well as recent memorial projects inVienna, examining what these reveal about the evolving memory culture in contemporary Austria. Aimed at a broad readership, the book will be a key reference point for university teachers, undergraduates, and postgraduates engagedin scholarship on contemporary Austrian literature, film, and visual culture, and for general readers interested in confrontations with the National Socialist past in the Austrian context. KATYA KRYLOVA is Lecturer in German, Film and Visual Culture at the University of Aberdeen, UK. The Long Shadow of the Past is her second book.Trade ReviewA fresh overview of the difficult legacy of Austria's WWII-past in more recent works of literary and visual art and in the surge of memorials in the urban space. -- Heide Kunzelmann * JOURNAL OF CONTEMPORARY EUROPEAN STUDIES *Krylova's excellent and well-written study illuminates an important historical, social, and cultural era in Austria for all cultural studies students and scholars, while also motivating scholars and teachers of Austrian culture to a greater engagement with Austria's post-Holocaust legacy. -- Laura McLary * STUDIES IN 20TH- AND 21ST-CENTURY LITERATURE *[The book's] strengths [are] attention to historical detail accompanied by careful explanations of the issues at stake that will appeal to both experts and readers unfamiliar with the particular Austrian context. . . . [O]ften succeeds at highlighting quite compelling connections between . . . disparate works. . . . [W]ill be of interest to teachers and scholars of Austria, memory studies, and memorial culture. -- Jack Davis * MONATSHEFTE *Krylova masterfully handles [her] subject matter . . . . On aesthetics, history, and politics after 1986, she appears to have read everything. . . . [She] devotes [her] final chapter to memorials and memorial projects . . . . A fascinating study of these memorials, and post-Waldheim artistic engagement in Austria, [this book] is also a tribute to the artists who continue to find new ways to make the past an irritation to the present. -- Michael Burri * AUSTRIAN HISTORY YEARBOOK *2018 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title * . *Informative and readable, the book is of both scholarly and general appeal. -- Andrea Capovilla * AUSTRIAN STUDIES *Krylova's essays are thoroughly researched, lucidly written, and should be of interest to students of cultural studies and history. -- Edward T. Larkin * GERMAN STUDIES REVIEW *Katya Krylova's excellent new book was completed between the [Austrian] presidential and national polls [of 2016 and 2017]. . . . Krylova's introduction gives an excellent overview of the diverse strands of activity; her five chapters offer detailed analyses of particular works. . . . Krylova is able to develop a fascinating narrative. -- Joachim Whaley * JOURNAL OF EUROPEAN STUDIES *[A] fascinating study . . . . [A] must read for all scholars interested in Austrian literature, film, and culture. -- Joseph W. Moser * GEGENWARTSLITERATUR *Timely. -- Áine McMurtry * MODERN LANGUAGE REVIEW *Krylova's carefully researched The Long Shadow of the Past is a must-read for Austrian memory study scholars. It captures profoundly interconnected worlds of memory, trauma, and repression of the past with politics, culture, history, and family histories; it recognizes both progress and setbacks in Austria's reckoning with its past; and it invites an open dialogue about cultural memory. -- Eva Kuttenberg * JOURNAL OF AUSTRIAN STUDIES *Krylova has produced a timely, informative, engaging, and well-written treatise on Austria's ongoing memory struggles. [It] would be informative and digestible reading for students in a course on the topic, and should be of interest to all scholars concerned with how Austria and other nations confront the long shadow of the past. -- Sharon Weiner * GERMAN QUARTERLY *Krylova's book is a timely and welcome addition to various fields of study, among them, memory studies, Holocaust studies and Austrian cultural studies. Krylova's analyses demonstrate what happens when trauma and repressed national history continue unresolved. -- Nicole Calian * THE INDEPENDENT SCHOLAR *This is a well-considered study of Austrian Holocaust denial and the ways in which film, literature, and memorial images have led the nation toward a complete understanding of its share of guilt in the events of WWII. . . . Highly recommended. -- E.G. Wickersham * CHOICE *Krylova skillfully weaves together the historical context with pertinent case studies. . . . [C]omprehensive . . . a welcome addition to academic and personal libraries. Krylova provides a valuable resource for those unfamiliar with the political events and the texts and at the same time points to directions for fruitful future research. -- Jacqueline Vansant * COLLOQUIA GERMANICA *Table of ContentsIntroduction: Confrontations with the Past Melancholy Journeys to the Past: The Films of Ruth Beckermann Reconstructing a Home: Nostalgia in Anna Mitgutsch's Haus der Kindheit Silencing the Past: Margarete Heinrich's and Eduard Erne's Totschweigen and Elfriede Jelinek's Rechnitz (Der Wurgeengel) Historicizing the Waldheim Affair: Robert Schindel's Der Kalte Missing Images: Memorials and Memorial Projects in Contemporary Vienna Conclusion: Living with Shadows Notes Bibliography

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Book SynopsisBy exploring the concept of the "tender gaze" in German film, theater, and literature, this volume's contributors illustrate how perspective-taking in works of art fosters empathy and prosocial behaviors. The gaze, understood as a way of looking at others that involves contemplation and the operation of power, has an extensive history of iterations such as the male gaze (Mulvey), the oppositional gaze (hooks), and the postcolonial gaze (Said). This essay collection develops a supplemental theory of what Muriel Cormican has coined the "tender gaze" and traces its occurrence in German film, theater, and literature. More than qualifying the primarily voyeuristic, narcissistic, and sexist impetus of the male gaze, the tender gaze also allows for a differentiated understanding of the role identification plays in reception, and it highlights various means of eliciting a sociopolitical critique in works of art. Emphasizing the humanizing potential of the tender gaze, the contributors argue that far from simply exciting emotional contagion, affect in art promotes an altruistic, rational, and fundamentally ethical relationship to the other. The tender gaze elucidates how perspective-taking operates in art to foster empathy and prosocial behaviors. Though the contributors identify instances of the tender gaze in artistic production since the early nineteenth century, they focus on its pervasiveness in contemporary works, corresponding to twenty-first-century concerns with implicit bias and racism.Table of ContentsIntroduction: The Tender Gaze - Muriel Cormican and Jennifer Marston William 1: Toward a Theory of the Tender Gaze: Affect, Critical Insight, and Empathy in Contemporary German Cinema - Muriel Cormican 2: The Tender Gaze, Embodied Politics, and Perspective-Taking in German Postdramatic Theater - Jennifer Marston William 3: Face to Face: Race, Gender, and the Gaze in Mo Asumang's Die Arier - Nancy Nenno 4: "Risse, hinter denen man einen Kern entdeckt, der so ähnlich ist wie die Herzen von uns allen": The Tender Gaze in Umut Dağ's Risse im Beton - Nikhil Sathe 5: Looking through the Eyes of Empathy: Encouraging a Culture of Caring and Compassion in Doris Dörrie's Keiner liebt mich - Erika Nelson Mukherjee 6: The Tender and Transgressive Beast Within: Escape Narratives in Films by Krebitz, Stuber, and Speckenbach - Mary-Elizabeth O'Brien 7: Looking at Looking in Margarethe von Trotta's Das Versprechen - John Blair 8: A Queer Phenomenology of Gender in Maren Ade's Alle Anderen and Toni Erdmann - Gary Schmidt 9: Rilke's "Schauen" - Lorna Martens 10: Pity Stares or Tender Gaze? Seeing Disability in Nineteenth-Century Austrian and German Literature - Anna-Rebecca Nowicki 11: The Sociohistorical and Gendered Implications of Gazing Tenderly in Ludwig Tieck's "Liebeszauber" - Joseph Rockelmann 12: Mothering, Animals, and the Surveillance State in the Anthropocene: An Ecofeminist Reading of Birgit Vanderbeke's Die Frau mit dem Hund - Christina Weiler Notes on the Contributors Index

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Book SynopsisExamines the creation, context, and significance of the first and only East German feature film about homosexuality. It took forty years for East Germany's state-run studios, DEFA, to produce a feature film about homosexuality: Coming Out. The film's story seems radically ordinary today: a young teacher, Philipp, is gay but cannot accept the truth about his sexuality. He starts a relationship with a fellow teacher, Tanja, but falls in love with a man he meets, Matthias, whose confidence in his own self-understanding is alluring for him as well as a challenge. Acclaimed director Heiner Carow created a film that shows the difficulties, both internalized and external, that queer people faced in East Germany. In a quirk of history, Coming Out premiered in German theaters on November 9, 1989, the very night on which the Berlin Wall was opened, which meant the film was initially overshadowed, to say the least, by the earthshaking political events. Yet it remains a popular film and is regularly screened around the world, including prominently at queer film festivals. Kyle Frackman's book examines the film in both the late East German context of its creation and the international context of its reception. This book is openly available in digital formats under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC.Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Heiner Carow and Film's Revolutionary Potential Homosexuality in East Germany The Distress of Coming Out Melodrama and Its Excesses Romance and the Love Story Philipp and Tanja's Courtship Queer Exploration Change and Upheaval A New Beginning Coming Out and Reconciling Identities Acceptance Release, Reception, and Legacy Credits Notes

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Book SynopsisA view of a long-neglected classic of Weimar cinema - now restored and widely available - as both a gripping narrative of infidelity and jealousy and a film inherently about film. Artur Robison's Warning Shadows - in German simply Schatten, shadows - premiered in 1923 to critical acclaim. This story of a fateful dinner party at which a flirtatious wife, her jealous husband, and their guests are entertained by a traveling illusionist who deals in shadow play and hypnosis was extolled by one critic as superior to Wegener's Golem, Lubitsch's Passion, even Murnau's Nosferatu and Wiene's The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. Yet where those films became mainstays of film history, Warning Shadows was long unknown: only recently, with the release of a restored version on DVD, has it begun to get its due. One of the few silent movies to eschew intertitles, it was an attempt to create a "pure film," drawing on the qualities of cinema that made it not an heir to literature or theater but a unique and autonomous art form. Staging a story of desire, adultery, and violence, Robison's film also engaged with discourses at the heart of Weimar culture, from changing gender norms to hysteria and hypnosis to the construction of spectatorship. Seen this way, Warning Shadows is both a gripping narrative of infidelity and jealousy and a film inherently about film.Table of ContentsIntroduction: A Little-Known Movie The Making of the Movie Defining Film: Art Form or Public Danger? A Film "Full of Eroticism" Projections within Projections The Illusionist: Magic, Control, and Art Spectators Become Actors Hypnotism: Therapy and Spectacle "This Magical Therapy" What Lies Beneath: Gender and Violence The Hypnotic Screen The Other Projection: The Chinese Shadow Play Conclusion: A More Complex History Credits Notes

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Book SynopsisExamines portrayals of plants and landscapes in recent German novels and films, addressing the contemporary forms of racism, nationalism, and social and ecological injustice that they expose. Plants, Places, and Power is a study of plants and landscapes in and beyond contemporary German-language literature and film. Stories and images of plants and landscapes in cultural productions are key sites for exposing the violent legacies of German colonialism and Nazism and for addressing contemporary forms of racism, nationalism, social and ecological injustice, and gender inequity. The novels and films discussed in this book address these key political issues in contemporary Europe and propose alternative ways for people to live together on this planet by formulating more inclusive and sustainable concepts of belonging. The book has two main objectives: to offer new approaches to contemporary literature and film from an intersectional, ecological perspective, and to form a canon. All of the works focused on, from Mo Asumang's documentary film Roots Germania (2007) through Faraz Shariat's Futur Drei (2020) and from Yōko Tawada's novel Das nackte Auge (2004) to Saša Stanišić's Herkunft (2019), are by female artists, artists of color, artists who have experienced forced displacement, and/or queer artists. In five chapters, Maria Stehle reads artworks in reference to ecological systems, develops forms of eco- and social criticism based on art, and intertwines ecological and critical thinking with questions of form, affect, and aesthetics.Table of ContentsPreface and Acknowledgments: People and Places Introduction: Living in Relation: Plants, Place-Making, and Social Justice 1: Landscapes: Infrastructures, Power Topographies, and Feral Gardens in Juli Zeh's Unterleuten (2016), Valeska Grisebach's Western (2017), and Anna Sofie Hartmann's Giraffe (2019) 2: Uncanny Gardens: Migration and Belonging in Dörte Hansen's Altes Land (2015) and Saša Stanišić's Herkunft (2019) 3: Trees, Roots, and Anti-Racism in Ilija Trojanow's Nach der Flucht (2017), Mo Asumang's Roots Germania (2007) and Die Arier (2014), and Elliot Blue's Home? (2018) 4: Defiant Flowers and Manufactured Happiness in Vera Chytilová's Daisies (1966), Pipilotti Rist's Pepperminta (2009), and Jessica Hausner's Little Joe: Glück ist ein Geschäft (2019) 5: Senses, Queer Interrelations, and Decolonial Geographies in Yōko Tawada's Das nackte Auge (2004), Shari Hagen's Auf den zweiten Blick (2012), and Faraz Shariat's Futur Drei (2020) Epilogue: Erasures and Different Stories Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisA penetrating new reading of Murnau's classic silent film that shows its transitional status, both historically and stylistically, while emphasizing its innovative camerawork and the ethical stakes of its story. An undisputed masterpiece of silent cinema, F. W. Murnau's The Last Laugh (1924) stars the larger-than-life Emil Jannings as a proud hotel porter who is demoted to lowly washroom attendant. One worker's misfortune becomes a tragic turning point in a social drama as much about the struggling Weimar Republic, which had just overcome several years of social, political, and economic instability, as about its working-class citizens. At once clinging to the symbols of the old order while helplessly thrust into an unforgiving modern world, Jannings's fallen porter embodies the contradictions of this transitional moment for the young democracy. Samuel Frederick shows us that Murnau's film is similarly transitional: born at the crossroads between the Expressionist style of the early 1920s and the emerging aesthetics of New Objectivity, it is both soberly realistic and oneirically distorted. With only one intertitle, The Last Laugh's flow of images is complemented by cinematographer Karl Freund's innovative mobile camera, which, "unchained" from the tripod, swims effortlessly through the film's different urban spaces. Here, inanimate objects become charged with potency and architecture is animated, conveying both allure and danger. Frederick's incisive analysis of the film foregrounds the visual dynamism of its technological and aesthetic experimentation while also pursuing the ethical implications of its central figure's downfall.Table of ContentsAcknowledgments The First Title Cards and the Last Man Germany at a Crossroads Activating Cinematic Space The Unchained Camera Intimations of Abstraction: The Dream Sequence "The Reality of Things" The Monstrousness of Shame The Doubled Ending Credits Notes

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Book SynopsisThis volume of new essays represents a collective, academic, and activist effort to interpret German literature and culture in the context of the international #MeToo movement, illustrating and interrogating the ways that "rape cultures" persist. Responding to the worldwide impact of the #MeToo movement, this volume investigates not only the ubiquity of sexual abuse and sexual violence but also the transhistorical and transnational failure to hold perpetrators accountable. From a range of disciplines, the collected essays engage current cultural and political discourses about systemic sexism, feminist theory and practice, and gender-based discrimination from an academic and activist perspective. The focus on national cultures of German-speaking Europe from the mid-eighteenth century to the present captures the persistence of normalized and institutionalized sexism, reframed through the lens of a contemporary political and social movement. German #MeToo argues that sexual violence is not a universal human constant. Rather, it is nurtured and sustained by the social, political, cultural, legal, and economic fabric of specific societies. The authors sustain and vary their exploration of #MeToo-related issues through considerations of rape, prostitution, sexual murder, the politics of consent, and victim-blaming as enacted in literary works by canonical and marginalized authors, the visual arts, the graphic novel, film, television, and theater. The analysis of rape myths - of discourses and practices in German history and culture that subtend and indemnify sexual violence - is a central subject of this edited volume. Throughout, German #MeToo challenges narratives of sex-based discrimination while emphasizing the strategies of resistance and the importance of telling one's own story.Table of ContentsIntroduction - Elisabeth Krimmer and Patricia Anne Simpson Part I. Histories 1: Eighteenth-Century #MeToo: Rape Culture and Victim Blaming in Heinrich Leopold Wagner's Die Kindermörderin (1776) - Lisa Wille 2: #MeToo: Prostitution and the Syntax of Sexuality around 1800 - Patricia Anne Simpson Part II. Dialogues across Time 3: "Immaculate Conception," the "Romance of Rape," and #MeToo: Kleistian Echoes in Kerstin Hensel and Julia Franck - Melissa Ann Sheedy 4: Female Sacrifice, Sexual Assault, and Dehumanization: Bourgeois Tragedy, Horror, and the Making of Jud Süß - Deborah Janson 5: "Na, wenn du mich erst fragst?": Reconsidering Affirmative Consent with Schnitzler, Schnitt, Habermas, and Rancière - Sonja Boos Part III. Sexual Violence, Warfare, and Genocide 6: War of the Vulva: The Women of Otto Dix's Lustmord Series - Jessica Davis 7: Death to the Patriarchal Theater! Charlotte Salomon's Graphic Testimony - Maureen Burdock 8: #MeToo and Wartime Rape: Looking Back and Moving Forward - Katherine Stone Part IV. The Institutions of #MeToo 9: Boarding-School Novels around 1900: The Relation of Male Fear of Women to Male-Male Seduction and Sexual Abuse in Hesse, Musil, and Walser - Niklas Straetker 10: Breaking the Silence about Sexualized Violence in Lilly Axtser's and Beate Teresa Hanika's Young Adult Fiction (YAF) - Anna Sator 11: "Eine gigantische Vergewaltigung": Rape as Subject in Roger Fritz's Mädchen mit Gewalt (1970) - Lisa Haegele 12: Elfriede Jelinek and Ingeborg Bachmann: Transformations of the Capitalist Patriarchy and Narrating Sexual Violence in the Twentieth Century - Aylin Bademsoy 13: Staging Consent and Threatened Masculinity: The Debate on #MeToo in Contemporary German Theater - Daniele Vecchiato Part V. #MeToo Across Cultural and National Borders 14: Patriarchy, Male Violence, and Disadvantaged Women: Representations of Muslims in the Crime Television Series Tatort - Sascha Gerhards 15: Fatih Akin's Head On: Challenging Mythologies of German Social Work in Gegen die Wand (2004) - Florian Gassner 16: Is a Prostitute Rapeable? Teresa Ruiz Rosas's Novel Nada que declarar in Dialogue with #MeToo - Kathrin Breuer Notes on the Contributors Index

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Book SynopsisHow an overlooked film industry became a cinematic forceThe first book in English dedicated to the study of Central American film, this volume explores the main trends, genres, and themes that define this emerging industry. The seven nations of the region have seen an unprecedented growth in film production during the twenty-first century with the creation of over 200 feature-length films compared with just one in the 1990s. This volume provides a needed overview of one of the least explored cinemas in the world. In these essays, various scholars of film and cultural studies from around the world provide insights into the continuities and discontinuities between twentieth- and twenty-first-century cinematic production on the isthmus. They discuss how political, social, and environmental factors, along with new production modes and aesthetics, have led to a corpus of films that delve into issues of the past and present such as postwar memory, failed revolutions, trauma, migration, popular culture, minority populations, and gender disparities. From Salvadoran documentaries to Costa Rican comedies and Panamanian sports films, the movies analyzed here demonstrate the region’s flourishing film industry and the diversity of approaches found within it. The Rise of Central American Film in the Twenty-First Century pays homage to an overlooked cultural phenomenon and shows the importance of regional cinema studies. A volume in the series Reframing Media, Technology, and Culture in Latin/o America, edited by Héctor Fernández L’Hoeste and Juan Carlos Rodríguez. Publication of this work made possible by a Sustaining the Humanities through the American Rescue Plan grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

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Book SynopsisHow an overlooked film industry became a cinematic forceThe first book in English dedicated to the study of Central American film, this volume explores the main trends, genres, and themes that define this emerging industry. The seven nations of the region have seen an unprecedented growth in film production during the twenty-first century with the creation of over 200 feature-length films compared with just one in the 1990s. This volume provides a needed overview of one of the least explored cinemas in the world. In these essays, various scholars of film and cultural studies from around the world provide insights into the continuities and discontinuities between twentieth- and twenty-first-century cinematic production on the isthmus. They discuss how political, social, and environmental factors, along with new production modes and aesthetics, have led to a corpus of films that delve into issues of the past and present such as postwar memory, failed revolutions, trauma, migration, popular culture, minority populations, and gender disparities. From Salvadoran documentaries to Costa Rican comedies and Panamanian sports films, the movies analyzed here demonstrate the region’s flourishing film industry and the diversity of approaches found within it. The Rise of Central American Film in the Twenty-First Century pays homage to an overlooked cultural phenomenon and shows the importance of regional cinema studies. A volume in the series Reframing Media, Technology, and Culture in Latin/o America, edited by Héctor Fernández L’Hoeste and Juan Carlos Rodríguez. Publication of this work made possible by a Sustaining the Humanities through the American Rescue Plan grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

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Book SynopsisEarly Puerto Rican Cinema and Nation Building focuses on the processes of Puerto Rican national identity formation as seen through the historical development of cinema on the island between 1897 and 1940. Anchoring her work in archival sources in film technology, economy, and education, Naida García-Crespo argues that Puerto Rico’s position as a stateless nation allows for a fresh understanding of national cinema based on perceptions of productive cultural contributions rather than on citizenship or state structures. This book aims to contribute to recently expanding discussions of cultural networks by analyzing how Puerto Rican cinema navigates the problems arising from the connection and/or disjunction between nation and state. The author argues that Puerto Rico’s position as a stateless nation puts pressure on traditional conceptions of national cinema, which tend to rely on assumptions of state support or a bounded nation-state. She also contends that the cultural and business practices associated with early cinema reveal that transnationalism is an integral part of national identities and their development. García-Crespo shows throughout this book that the development and circulation of cinema in Puerto Rico illustrate how the “national” is built from transnational connections. Published by Bucknell University Press. Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press.Trade Review“Well-written and vigorously researched, this book will be of much value to scholars of the history of cinema, Puerto Rican history, sociology, and political science. It sheds new light on important aspects of Puerto Rico's early transition from a Spanish to a U.S. colony.” -- Margherita Tortora * Yale University *"Highly recommended." * Choice *"The book makes a substantial contribution to the study of early Puerto Rican cinema and culture. Serving as a counterweight to traditional national histories of early cinema, it would make a great addition to syllabi in global film courses as well." * Hispanic American Historical Review *"García-Crespo's professional, methodical approach is particularly to be emphasized....[A]n in-depth history of the film's beginnings in Puerto Rico." * Rezensionen Medienwissenschaft *"This book brings into conversation a wide array of disciplines, methodologies, and fields of study, a quality that makes Early Puerto Rican Cinema an excellent choice for both undergraduate and graduate courses. García-Crespo offers a significant contribution not only to the field of Puerto Rican studies but also to media, culture, and Caribbean studies. The monograph is an excellent companion to previous works." * Centro Journal *“Well‐written and vigorously researched, this book will be of much value to scholars of the history of cinema, Puerto Rican history, sociology, and political science. It sheds new light on important aspects of Puerto Rico's early transition from a Spanish to a U.S. colony.” -- Margherita Tortora * Yale University *"Highly recommended." * Choice *"The book makes a substantial contribution to the study of early Puerto Rican cinema and culture. Serving as a counterweight to traditional national histories of early cinema, it would make a great addition to syllabi in global film courses as well." * Hispanic American Historical Review *"García-Crespo's professional, methodical approach is particularly to be emphasized....[A]n in-depth history of the film's beginnings in Puerto Rico." * Rezensionen Medienwissenschaft *"This book brings into conversation a wide array of disciplines, methodologies, and fields of study, a quality that makes Early Puerto Rican Cinema an excellent choice for both undergraduate and graduate courses. García-Crespo offers a significant contribution not only to the field of Puerto Rican studies but also to media, culture, and Caribbean studies. The monograph is an excellent companion to previous works." * Centro Journal *Table of ContentsINTRODUCTION Established Frames and Images of Puerto Rican Cinema Conceptions of the Puerto Rican Nation… An Alternative Approach to the Study of Puerto Rican National Cinema This Study’s FrameworkCHAPTER ONE- Contexts for a National Cinema: Cultural, Political, and Economic Movements in Puerto Rico 1860-1952 Late Spanish Colonialism through 1898 Circumstances and Consequences of the U.S. Invasion Initial U.S. Congressional Rule and the Formation of Puerto Rican Identity Puerto Rican Conceptions of the Nation from 1930 OnwardCHAPTER TWO- Cinema Comes to Puerto Rico: Historical Uncertainties and Ambiguous Identities (1897-1909) Film Exhibition in Turn-of-the-Century Puerto Rico Rumors of War Footage Representing U.S. Colonial Puerto RicoCHAPTER THREE- Stateless Nationhood, Transnationalism and the Difficulties of Assigning Nationality: Rafael Colorado in Puerto Rican Historiography (1912-1916) Rafael Colorado, Film Exhibition, and the Transnational Circulation of Cultural Subjects Rafael Colorado as Cinematic Producer: Negotiating the Local and the Global Citizenship in a Stateless Nation: Constructing the Puerto Rican SubjectCHAPTER FOUR- In the Company of the Elites: The Discourses and Practices of the Tropical Film Company (1916-1917) Inconsistencies in the Received Histories of the Tropical Film Company The Educational/Cultural Project of the Tropical Film Company The Tropical Film Company’s Commercial Aims The End of the Beginning: The Tropical Film Company’s Demise and LegacyCHAPTER FIVE- Perilous Paradise: American Assignment and Appropriation of “Puerto Ricanness” (1917-1925) From Big Stick to Good Neighbor: Puerto Rico as Test Site for American Foreign Policy Fictional Puerto Rico and Colonial Angst Puerto Rico’s Commercial Production Model U.S. Cinema Falls in Love with the Tropics The MacManus/Pathé Productions Famous Player-Lasky/Paramount Comes to the Island Beyond Fiction: Other Aspects of the Puerto Rican Film Industry in the 1920sCHAPTER SIX- Making the Nation Profitable: Industry-Centered Transnational Approaches to Filmmaking (1923-1940) The Film Enthusiast: The Career of Juan E. Viguié Cajas Romance tropical: Re-making the Dream The Film Impresario: The Career of Rafael Ramos Cobián Mis dos amores: The Union of Hollywood and Latin America Los hijos mandan: The Separation of Hollywood and Latin America The End of an Era: The Local Government as ProducerCONCLUSION- Early Puerto Rican Cinema and Stateless Nation Building Finding the National in the Transnational ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS BIBLIOGRAPHY INDEX

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Book SynopsisPedro Almodóvar may have helped put queer Iberian cinema on the map, but there are multitudes of LGBTQ filmmakers from Catalonia, Portugal, Castile, Galicia, and the Basque Country who have made the Peninsula one of the world’s most vital sources for queer film. Together, they have produced a cinema whose expressions of queer desire have challenged the region’s conservative religious and family values, while intervening in vital debates about politics, history, and nation. Indiscreet Fantasies is a unique collection that offers in-depth analyses of fifteen different films produced in the region over the past fifty years, each by a different director, from Narciso Ibáñez Serrador’s La residencia (The House That Screamed, 1969) to João Pedro Rodrigues’s O ornitólogo (The Ornithologist, 2016). Contributors examine how queer Iberian cinema has responded to historical trauma—from the AIDS crisis to the repressive and homophobic Franco regime—and explore how these films demonstrate a fluid understanding of sexuality, gender, and national identity. The result will give readers a new appreciation for the cultural diversity of Iberia and the richness of its thought-provoking queer cinema. Published by Bucknell University Press. Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press. Trade Review"The editors of Indiscreet Fantasies have compiled a significant collection of essays that will be of interest to film scholars because they analyze cinema that sheds a new light on the representations of Iberian cultures and identities."— Isabel Estrada, author of El documental cinematográfico y televisivo contemporáneoTable of Contents List of Illustrations Introduction Andrés Lema-Hincapié and Conxita Domènech Part I: Into the Realm of Sexual Provocations Chapter 1: The Queer Gothic Regime of Narciso Ibáñez Serrador’s La residencia (1970) Ann Davies Chapter 2: A Queer Path to “Normal”: Pablo Berger’s Torremolinos 73 (2003) Meredith Lyn Jeffers Part II: Queer Intimacy—Within the Household Chapter 3: Turning Around Altogether: Gyrodynamics, Family Fantasies, and Spinnin’ (2007), by Eusebio Pastrana Nina L. Molinaro Chapter 4: Framing Queer Desire: The Construction of Teenage Sexuality in Krámpack (2000), by Cesc Gay Ana Corbalán Chapter 5: Bridging Sexualities: Polyamory, Art, and Temporary Space in Castillos de cartón (2009), by Salvador García Ruiz Jennifer Brady Part III: Queering Iberian Politics Chapter 6: Eloy de la Iglesia’s El diputado (1978): On the Margins of Spanish Democracy Lena Tahmassian Chapter 7: A Blatant Failure in Francoist Censorship: Jaime de Armiñán’s Mi querida señorita (1971) Conxita Domènech Chapter 8: Social Danger and Queer Nationalism in Ignacio Vilar’s A esmorga (2014) Darío Sánchez González Chapter 9: A Basque-Themed Film and the Performativity of Identity in Roberto Castón’s Ander (2009) Ibon Izurieta Part IV: Queer Catalonia—Destroying Essential Representations Chapter 10: The Barbarians’ Inheritance: Memory’s Brittleness and Tragic Lucidity in Ventura Pons’s Amic/Amat (1998) and Forasters (2008) Joan Ramon Resina Chapter 11: Intertextual Representations and Lesbian Desire in Marta Balletbò-Coll’s Sévigné (Júlia Berkowitz) (2004) María Teresa Vera-Rojas Chapter 12: “Com si fóssim la pesta”: Francoism and the Politics of Immunity in Agustí Villaronga’s Pa negre (2010) William Viestenz Part V: Burning Counterpoints with Religiosity Chapter 13: Bound and Cut: João Pedro Rodrigues’ O ornitólogo (2016) Kelly Moore Chapter 14: Queering Lisbon in Paulo Rocha’s A raíz do coração (2000): Santo António Festivities, Politics, and Drag Queens Rui Trindade Oliveira Chapter 15: Entre tinieblas (1983): Pedro Almodóvar, a Reformer of Catholicism? Andrés Lema-Hincapié Acknowledgments Bibliography Index Notes on Contributors

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Book SynopsisThe first behind-the-scenes history of the organization behind the Academy Awards. For all the near-fanatic attention brought each year to the Academy Awards, the organization that dispenses those awards—the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences—has yet to be understood. To date, no one has ever produced a thorough account of the Academy’s birth and its awkward adolescence, and the few reports on those periods from outside have always had a glancing, cursory quality. Yet the story of the Academy’s creation and development is a critical piece of Hollywood’s history. Now that story is finally being told. Bruce Davis, executive director of the Academy for over twenty years, was given unprecedented access to its archives, and the result is a revealing and compelling story of the men and women, famous and infamous, who shaped one of the best-known organizations in the world. Davis writes about the Academy with as intimate a view of its workings, its awards, and its world-famous membership. Thorough and long overdue, The Academy and the Award fills a crucial gap in Hollywood history.Trade Review"A fond look at the genesis and growing pains of the world’s foremost film organization." * Kirkus *"The story of the first 50 years (1927–77) of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts is fascinating, and the Academy’s former executive director Davis (who worked there for 30 years) is the ideal person to write it… A book of wide appeal, starting but not ending with film buffs." * Library Journal *“Davis, whose book is subtitled ‘The Coming of Age of Oscar and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences,’ focuses on the organization’s formative years, ‘an early life that deserves a bildungsroman.’” * New York Times *“In this engrossing behind-the-scenes look at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the work it does during all five seasons—ahem, including awards—by a former Academy executive director, the real nights and bolts of how the Hollywood machine works is explained in insightful, and sometimes deliciously dishy detail.” * Town and Country *"That this Hollywood institution survived its first tumultuous decade is a tale which Davis recounts with wit and discernment. His erudition is icing on the cake: what could have been dry and academic is instead a highly readable book that can lay claim to being definitive." * Leonard Maltin's blog *"A tremendously in-depth history" * The Hollywood Reporter *"After serving as executive director of the Academy for over 20 years, Bruce Davis has penned the definitive history of the Academy Awards, from their awkward inception to the present. Davis was granted unprecedented access to the Academy archives for this compelling read about the way the Oscars work." * Yahoo News *"Film historians and others digging for a deeper vein of Oscar knowledge than mere trivia will turn up many nuggets in The Academy and the Award, which focuses on the initial three decades in the corporate life of the sword-wielding statuette. Oscar would be lucky to have as keen and even-handed a historian as Davis to explore its next era." * US News & World Report *“[Davis’s] academic background and years at the Academy made him the ideal writer for this invaluable book.” * Variety *“Authoritative doesn’t begin to describe the comprehensive Hollywood history Davis unfolds in The Academy and the Award. Not the usual breezy picture book, this is a meticulously researched and eye-opening account by a veteran member of The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences which, of course, hands out the Oscars every year. As the Academy nears its first century, surprisingly this is only the first truly in-depth history.” * Boston Herald *“The Academy’s history is inextricable from Hollywood’s, and The Academy and the Award is a vital contribution and necessary step to documenting the organization and the impact of its Academy Awards.” * Media Industries Journal *"If you happen to care about the history of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (at least in its first fifty years), you’ll have no shortage of reasons to read Bruce Davis’ forthcoming book, The Academy and the Award." * Deadline *“With a discerning eye and a wealth of experience, Bruce Davis transforms what could have been dry and academic into an erudite and witty saga. He buries a number of myths and rumors surrounding the Oscars, and reveals how the organization survived its chaotic early years. The Academy and the Award is a major contribution to Hollywood history—and a great read.” -- Leonard Maltin, film critic and historian“Wide ranging in his objective perspective, but always humanly intimate, Davis examines the in-house records of the Board of Governors, memos of its Presidents, and letters from the Academy’s more activist members, with much added flavoring and gossip. Davis’s seminal history of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences reads with all the honed stagecraft and drama of an Oscar nominated screenplay.” -- John Bailey, cinematographer; Academy President 2017-2019“In this entertaining, well-researched history, Bruce Davis traces how a marginal organization that teetered on the brink of bankruptcy for years became a major cultural institution that awards a coveted prize.” -- Charles Solomon, author of The Man Who Leapt Through Film“There are few people who know (and can explain) the inner machinations of The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, but if anyone can do it, Bruce Davis is that man. I am thrilled that there is finally a serious history of the organization and the people behind it, with names that you'll recognize and those you won't. This is the definitive history of the Academy: it deserves a place on one's shelf, or inside one's Kindle. Mr. Davis’s magnum opus is essential reading for any serious cinephile.” -- Robert Harris, Motion Picture Archivist“With the skill and wit of a great story teller, Bruce Davis transports us into the secret boardrooms filled with powerful moguls and charismatic stars, the screenwriters and directors, the cinematographers and visionary scientists who frame-by-frame crafted the movies into the art form we cherish today. Here is the fascinating tale of how the coveted golden statuette of Oscar almost wasn’t and came to be. How I wish I had known this history when I joined the Academy. Pure magic!” -- Kathy Bates, Oscar recipient, past Academy Governor“I recommend this book to everyone who loves the movies and the Oscars!” -- Walter Mirisch, Academy President 1973-1977“This wonderful book is often funny, sometimes shocking, and always incredibly informative as we get the inside story at the Academy, from its humble beginnings at the Biltmore, to its eventual phenomenal industry success.” -- Ed Begley, Jr., Actor, and three-term Academy Actors branch governor"The real issue for the Oscar telecast, according to the Academy’s 22-year executive director Bruce Davis, author of the just-published—and dead-on accurate—The Academy and the Award: The Coming of Age of Oscar and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, is the disparity between the top box-office movies and the movies that are winning Oscars.” * IndieWire *“This account by a former executive director of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is an interesting and detailed one. . . . How did the Oscar get its name? What exactly are the Jean Hersholt and Irving Thalberg awards? Almost as intriguing are the sections about the extremely short presidential term of Bette Davis (she had a cup of coffee in the role, leading only one board meeting) and an explanation of how the Oscar statuette was designed.” * Seattle Book Review *"An author with a deep affinity for and knowledge of movies and how they’re honored tells us all about Oscar. Davis keeps things both informative and entertaining with plenty of interesting factoids." * The Arts Fuse *“Bruce Davis' new book, The Academy and the Award, provides movie fans, film historians, and all those interested in American arts and culture with the first-ever comprehensive account of the history and evolution of the academy. . . . Davis is not only a supremely confident guide to the Oscars’ history but an engaging and entertaining narrator as well. His prose is consistently colorful and often novelistic in its vivid scene-setting and descriptive detail.” * Washington Examiner *“An erudite and witty look at the Academy’s history, The Academy and the Award is a vital chronicle of film history that will be sought after by American history aficionados and film fanatics alike. Davis has combined meticulous research with a dynamic narrative to reveal the compelling personalities of the actors, writers, directors, and filmmakers who comprised the Academy during its formative era.” * Public Libraries Online *“The text often put me in the moment . . . . Fleshing the early history is difficult from just organization records, but Davis presents an amazingly full picture of each era of the Academy.” * Marketing Movies *Table of ContentsIntroduction1. The Beginning: Unions, Censors and Scandals2. Academies. And Awards? 3. A Little Figure for Cedric Gibbons4. A System Evolves5. The Hays Incursion6. . . . And Sciences7. Academy Washed Up8. Better than Precious Ointment9. Frank Capra’s New Deal10. Honorary Awards11. Bette Davis and the War12. Post-War and Cold War13. Straining at the Leash14. Into the Modern Era15. Oscar Full-BlownEpilogueAcknowledgements

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Book SynopsisSalomania and the Representation of Race and Gender in Modern Erotic Dance situates the 1908 dance craze, which The New York Times called “Salomania,” as a crucial event and a turning point in the history of the modern business of erotic dance. Framing Salomania with reference to imperial ideologies of motherhood and race, it works toward better understanding the increasing value of the display of the undressed female body in the 19th and early 20th centuries.This study turns critical attention to cultures of maternity in the late 19th century, primarily with reference to the ways in which women are defined in relation to their genitals as patriarchal property and space and are valued according to reproduction as their primary labour. Erotic dance as it takes shape in the modern representation of Salome insists both that the mother is and is not visible in the body of the dancer, a contradiction this study characterizes as reproductive fetishism.Looking at a range of media, the study traces the modern figure of Salome through visual art, writing, early psychoanalysis and dance, from "hootchie kootch" to the performances dancer Maud Allan called “mimeo-dramatic” to mid-20th-century North American films such as Billy Wilder's Sunset Boulevard and Charles Lamont's Salome, Where She Danced to the 21st-century HBO series The Sopranos.Trade Review“Cecily Devereux’s Salomania and the Representation of Race and Gender in Modern Erotic Dance offers a wealth of new information. The book poignantly reveals the spectacle of middle-class whiteness behind the racialized Salome craze as well as the sexualized labour of the erotic dance industry. Drawing on an impressive corpus including dance, visual art, postcards, literature, and film, this beautifully illustrated book is a boon for scholars and all those interested in the Salome phenomenon.” – Irene Gammel, Toronto Metropolitan University, author of I Can Only Paint: The Story of Battlefield Artist Mary Riter Hamilton “In this deeply researched book, Cecily Devereux engages psychoanalytic theory to examine how the figure of Salome has been deployed as a reproductive fetish to affirm white heteropatriarchal imperialist objectives from the late nineteenth century to the present. Through insightful analyses of theatrical performances, novellas, films (Sunset Boulevard), and recent television shows (The Sopranos), Devereux situates longstanding fascination with the “daughter of Herodias” within the intertwined histories of erotic dance, white femininity, and Euro-imperial expansion. Timely and invigorating, Salomania and the Representation of Race and Gender in Modern Erotic Dance makes an exciting contribution to interdisciplinary feminist scholarship.” – Marlis Schweitzer, York University, author of Bloody Tyrants and Little Pickles: Stage Roles of Anglo-American Girls in the Nineteenth CenturyTable of Contents Introduction: Maud Allan and the Salome dance in 1908 1: Erotic dance and the culture of imperial motherhood 2: “Salomé, c’est moi”: male artists and the image of the dancer 3: Enter Herodias: the phallic mother and the reproductive fetish 4: On not seeing Salome in Sunset Boulevard 5: The fetish and the reproduction of whiteness from the Salome corpus to Salome, Where She Danced 6: “Pathmakers for Salome”: the danse du ventre, the hootchie kootch and “Little Egypt” 7: Oscar Wilde, Loie Fuller and Maud Allen 8: Salomania and the memetic moment Epilogue: Salomania’s legacies Works Cited Notes

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Book SynopsisThe documentaries produced by the National Film Board of Canada, an institution profoundly woven into Canada’s cultural fabric, not only influenced cinematic language, but their stunning portrayals of the landscape shaped our perception of the environment and our place in it. Screening Nature and Nation examines how Canadians have engaged with these films and how the depictions of the land and its people have reflected the prevailing attitudes of the times. In the years following the establishment of the NFB in 1939, author Michael Clemens demonstrates how production practices often supported the views of the government regarding the uses and limits of the environment. But, like most institutions, the films evolved, and by the beginning of the 1960s NFB documentaries began to express much broader social concerns. Certain filmmakers began to use their cameras as a means of challenging the dominant modes of thinking about the environment—not as a resource to be exploited but as a dynamic ecosystem. Films were produced that privileged Indigenous perspectives by focusing on the physical, cultural, and spiritual lives of the nation’s first people, offering audiences a glimpse into a social history they may have known little about. Many of the seminal films created in the 1960s and 1970s by the National Film Board of Canada would go on to be adored by audiences world-wide for their portrayal of the landscape and indigenous culture, as well as inspiring a burgeoning environmental activist movement.

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Book SynopsisAlberta's magnificent landscape has served as a popular location for filmmakers since the dawn of the movie industry. For film pioneers, Alberta embodied the myth of the Great Northwest, a primeval mountain wilderness and the last western frontier. In turn, Canadian entrepreneurs were eager for American studios to drape Alberta landscape across the backdrop of their movies, an advertisement without equal.A Stunning Backdrop is the untold story of six rollicking decades of filmmaking in Alberta. Mary Graham draws on twelve years of exhaustive research to reveal a film history like no other, illuminating the deep importance of the province to Hollywood. She explores the often friendly partnerships between American filmmakers and Indigenous communities, particularly the Stoney Nakoda, that provided economic opportunities and, in many cases, allowed them to retain religious and cultural practices banned by the Canadian government.Beautifully illustrated with archival photography and featuring century-old set stills alongside photographs of the locations as they appear today, by Jean Becq, Solomon Chiniquay, Jeff Wallace, George Webber, and Paul Zizka, A Stunning Backdrop is the fascinating, often surprising, always unconventional story of film in a province whose rugged, compelling, multifarious, terribly beautiful landscape continues to inspire filmmakers and audiences around the world.Trade ReviewVery, Very Cool." - Historica Canadiana-A Cultural History of Canada"The book is well researched, and a beautifully illustrated one with great photographs, stills from productions, as well as more recent photos showcasing where some memorable movies were shot." - The Commentary"Graham, a writer and film historian, compiles her 12 years of research on Alberta's film industry in the first half of the 20th century" - The Winnipeg Free Press"Hollywood's biggest stars have spent a lot of quality time chewing the scenery around Banff and Jasper . . . While she covers all the bases, journalist-historian Mary Graham's primary focus is on the impact of the Stoney Nakoda people, who worked as guides, location scouts and actors, occasionally in ways that allowed them to preserve and celebrate their culture." - The National Post

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Book SynopsisAlberta's magnificent landscape has served as a popular location for filmmakers since the dawn of the movie industry. For film pioneers, Alberta embodied the myth of the Great Northwest, a primeval mountain wilderness and the last western frontier. In turn, Canadian entrepreneurs were eager for American studios to drape Alberta landscape across the backdrop of their movies, an advertisement without equal.A Stunning Backdrop is the untold story of six rollicking decades of filmmaking in Alberta. Mary Graham draws on twelve years of exhaustive research to reveal a film history like no other, illuminating the deep importance of the province to Hollywood. She explores the often friendly partnerships between American filmmakers and Indigenous communities, particularly the Stony Nakoda, that provided economic opportunities and, in many cases, allowed them to retain religious and cultural practices banned by the Canadian government.Beautifully illustrated with archival photography and featuring century-old set stills alongside photographs of the locations as they appear today, by Jean Becq, Solomon Chiniquay, Jeff Wallace, George Webber, and Paul Zizka, A Stunning Backdrop is the fascinating, often surprising, always unconventional story of film in a province whose rugged, compelling, multifarious, terribly beautiful landscape continues to inspire filmmakers and audiences around the world.

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Book SynopsisRobert Altman: In the American Grain examines the development of Altman's artistic method, from his earliest days in industrial film to his work as a TV director, feature film-maker and later return to television work.

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Book SynopsisThe Liverpool Companion to World Science Fiction Film offers critical insights into SF far beyond the more common Anglo-American narratives. Contributors take either a national or transnational approach, and stretch the geographic and conceptual boundaries of science fiction cinema. Recurrent themes include genre discussions, engagement with Hollywood, and the international subgenre of science fiction parody. Chapters contain a variety of perspectives and styles: from gender and race studies, to the eco-critical, and the post-colonial; from the avant-garde, to socialist realism, and the Hammer film. Edited by Sonja Fritzsche, the collection contains fourteen chapters written by specialists from around the world. Film traditions represented include Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Cameroon, China, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, India, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Poland, the United Kingdom, and the United States. There is also a chapter on digital shorts. From the dinosaur myth that became Godzilla to Brazilian science fiction comedy, from China’s Death Ray to Kenya’s Pumzi, this book will broaden the horizons of scholars and students of science fiction.Trade Review'A welcome and overdue addition to the critical discourse surrounding science fiction cinema. This book provides an important point of entry for those academics and students who wish to broaden their understanding of science fiction film as a global phenomenon rather than simply as a Hollywood or Anglophone practice.'Peter Wright, Edge Hill UniversityTable of Contents Introduction - Sonja Fritzsche PART I: AFRICA 1. The Environmental Dominant in Wanuri Kahiu’s Pumzi - Ritch Calvin PART II: ASIA 2. Death Ray on a Coral Island as China’s First Science Fiction Film - Jie Zhang 3. Indian Science Fiction Cinema: An Overview - Jessica Langer and Dominic Alessio 4. On the Monstrous Planet: or, How Godzilla Took a Roman Holiday - Takayuki Tatsumi, translated by Seth Jacobowitz PART III: EUROPE 5. Invaders, Launchpads and Hybrids: The Importance of Transmediality in British Science Fiction Film in the 1950s - Derek Johnston 6. Gender and Apocalypse in Eastern European Cinema - Jason Merrill 7. Casting for a Socialist Earth: Multicultural Whiteness in the East German/Polish Science-Fiction Film Silent Star (1960) - Evan Torner 8. Looking for French Science Fiction Cinema - Daniel Tron 9. Science Fiction Interventions in Irish Cinema - Katie Moylan 10. The Uncomfortable Relationship Between Science Fiction and Italy:Film, Humor, and Gender - Rafaella Boccolini PART IV: NORTH AMERICA 11. Are Black Women the Future of Man? The Role of Black Women in Political and Cultural Transformation in Science Fiction from the US and Cameroon - Robyn Citizen PART V: SOUTH AMERICA 12. Maradona on the Moon: Postcolonial Politics and Cultural Hybridity in Argentina’s Goodbye Dear Moon - Mariano Paz 13. Alert Limit! A Short History of Brazilian Science Fiction Film and Its Fight for Survival in a Rarefied Atmosphere - Alfredo Suppia PART VI: DIGITAL CINEMA 14. Digital Film and Audiences - Pawel Frelik Recommended Viewing

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Book SynopsisCritical discussion of cult cinema has often noted its tendency to straddle or ignore boundaries, to pull together different sets of conventions, narrative formulas, or character types for the almost surreal pleasure to be found in their sudden juxtapositions or narrative combination. With its own boundary-blurring nature—as both science and fiction, reality and fantasy—science fiction has played a key role in such cinematic cult formation. This volume examines that largely unexplored relationship, looking at how the sf film’s own double nature neatly matches up with a persistent double vision common to the cult film. It does so by bringing together an international array of scholars to address key questions about the intersections of sf and cult cinema: how different genre elements, directors, and stars contribute to cult formation; what role fan activities, including “con” participation, play in cult development; and how the occulted or “bad” sf cult film works. The volume pursues these questions by addressing a variety of such sf cult works, including Robot Monster (1953), Zardoz (1974), A Boy and His Dog (1975), Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989), Space Truckers (1996), Ghost in the Shell 2 (2004), and Iron Sky (2012). What these essays afford is a revealing vision of both the sf aspects of much cult film activity and the cultish aspects of the whole sf genre.Trade ReviewReviews 'Coherent, well-organised and covers the field effectively. There is a decent balance of the obvious (Blade Runner) and the obscure (Ghost in the Shell 2). The pieces are written by evident fans and are pitched at a level undergraduates would appreciate, while offering enough novelty and rigour to add something to the field. I can imagine the book would find its way onto modules on SF as well as cult film and fan studies generally.' Ian Hunter'Science Fiction, Double Feature is a thoroughly approachable text that would appeal most to anyone who is looking for greater insight into the often overlooked world of cult cinema and SF. The inclusion of twenty-first century examples along with earlier cinematic works makes for an intriguing mix that maintains interest from one chapter to the next, and will appeal to a broader reading audience than the usual academic essay collection.'British Society for Literature and ScienceTable of Contents I. Introduction: Science Fiction Double Feature (J. P. Telotte) II. The Multiple Texts of the SF/Cult Film 1. From “Multiverse” to “Abramsverse”: Blade Runner, Star Trek, Multiplicity, and the Authorizing of Cult/SF Worlds (Matt Hills) 2. The Coy Cult Text: The Man Who Wasn’t There as Noir SF (Mark Bould) 3. “It's Alive”: The Splattering of SF Films (Stacey Abbott) 4. Sean Connery Reconfigured: From Bond to Cult Science Fiction Figure (Gerald Duchovnay) 5.The Cult Film as Affective Technology: Anime and Oshii Mamoru’s Innocence (Sharalyn Orbaugh) III. SF Media and the Audience 6. Whedon, Browncoats, and the Big Damn Narrative: The Unified Meta-Myth of Firefly and Serenity (Rhonda Wilcox) 7. Iron Sky’s War Bonds: Cult SF Cinema and Crowdsourcing (Chuck Tryon) 8. Transnational Interactions: District 9, or Apaches in Johannesburg (Takayuki Tatsumi) 9. A Donut For Tom Paris: Identity and Belonging at European SF/Fantasy Conventions (Nicolle Lamerichs) IV. Occulting the Cult: The “Bad” SF Text 10. Robot Monster and the “Watchable . . . Terrible” Cult/SF Film (Telotte) 11. Science Fiction and the Cult of Ed Wood: Glen or Glenda?, Bride of the Monster, and Plan 9 from Outer Space (Rodney Hill) 12. Visual Pleasure, the Cult, and Paracinema (Sherryl Vint) 13. “Lack of Respect, Wrong Attitude, Failure to Obey Authority”: Dark Star and A Boy and His Dog as New Wave Cult SF (Rob Latham) 14. Capitalism, Camp, and Cult SF: Space Truckers as Satire (M. Keith Booker) 15. Bubba Ho-tep and the Seriously Silly Cult Film (Jeffrey Weinstock)

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Book SynopsisIn Allegories of the End of Capitalism, Milo Sweedler deconstructs the events of films Melancholia; Cosmopolis; Suffragette; Django Unchained; Elysium and Snowpiercer, the socio-political contexts they arise from and enter into, and their impact on contemporary culture and life. He examines how filmmakers from six different countries, across four continents, give narrative and audio-visual form to the frustration and anger that burst into public view in 2011, the ongoing class war between the super-rich and the rest of the world's population, and the insurrection that it yet to come.

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Book SynopsisPost-Migratory Cultures in Postcolonial France offers a critical assessment of the ways in which French writers, filmmakers, musicians and other artists descended from immigrants from former colonial territories bring their specificity to bear on the bounds and applicability of French republicanism, “Frenchness” and national identity, and contemporary cultural production in France. In mobilizing a range of approaches and methodologies pertinent to their specialist fields of inquiry, contributors to this volume share in the common objective of elucidating the cultural productions of what we are calling post-migratory (second- and third-generation) postcolonial minorities.The volume provides a lens through which to query the dimensions of postcoloniality and transnationalism in relation to post-migratory postcolonial minorities in France and identifies points of convergence and conversation among them in the range of their cultural production. The cultural practitioners considered query traditional French high culture and its pathways and institutions; some emerge as autodidacts, introducing new forms of authorship and activism; they inflect French cultural production with different ‘accents’, some experimental and even avant-garde in nature. As the volume contributors show, though post-migratory postcolonial minorities sometimes express dis-settlement, they also provide an incisive view of social identities in France today and their own compelling visions for the future.Table of ContentsI. Introduction: The Post-Migratory PostcolonialKathryn Kleppinger and Laura ReeckII. Generations and DesignationsDifference-Conscious Critical Media Engagement and the Communitarian QuestionJennifer FredetteBanlieue Writers: The Struggle for Literary Recognition through Collective MobilisationKaoutar HarchiFrancophone and Post-Migratory Afropeans Within and Beyond France TodayChristopher HogarthIII. Postmemory, or telling the past to the presentUn cinéma sans image: Palimpsestic Memory and the Lost History of Cambodian FilmLeslie BarnesVietnam by Removes: Storytelling and Postmemory in Minh Tran HuyCatherine H. NguyenMoving Beyond the Legacies of War in Second-Generation Harki NarrativesSusan IrelandIV. Urban Cultures/IdentitiesRedefining Frenchness through Urban Music and Literature: The Case of Rapper-Writers Abd Al Malik and DisizStève Puig‘Double discours’: Critiques of Racism and Islamophobia in French RapChong J. Bretillon‘Beyond Ethnicity’ or a Return to Type?: Bande de filles /Girlhood (Sciamma, 2014) and the Politics of Blackness in Contemporary French CinemaWill HigbeeV. Imaginings in Visual LanguagesSomebody or Anybody? Hip hop Choreography and the Cultural EconomyFelicia McCarrenMixed Couples in Contemporary French Cinema: Exploring New Representations of Diversity and Difference on the Big ScreenLeslie Kealhofer-Kemp‘Nos ancêtres n’étaient pas tous des Gaulois’: Post-migration and bande dessinéIlaria VitaliIdentity and ‘Difference’ in French Art: El Seed’s Calligraffiti from Street to WebSiobhán ShiltonVI. Afterword: A Long Road to TravelAlec G. Hargreaves and Mark McKinney

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Book SynopsisLove on the Dole (1933), the iconic novel about 1930s British working-class life, has a significant place in British cultural history. Its author, Walter Greenwood, went from unemployed Salford man to best-selling writer, and the novel has never been out of print. The 1935 stage adaptation was said to have been seen by three million people by 1940, including the King and Queen. Greenwood proposed a film adaption in 1936, but the story was pronounced too `sordid' and depressing' by the British Board of Film Censors. However, in 1940 the Ministry of Information decided that this story of pre-war economic and social failure should be filmed as a contribution to the `people's war'. It was widely regarded as one of the best British wartime productions - and all three versions of Love on the Dole were frequently referenced during wartime debate about how a reconstructed post-war society should make a repetition of the 1930s impossible. This study explores in detail what made this important text so influential, analyses the considerable differences between the novel, play and film versions and places the public response to Love on the Dole in its full historical context. It examines Greenwood's whole literary career and his continuing success until the 1960s: casting new light on his subsequent novels, plays and non-fiction works, few of which have received critical attention.Trade Review'A fascinating, comprehensive and vital study. It rehabilitates Greenwood as an artist, it analyses 1930s' culture, and it provides some engaging reflections on the history of Salford.' Dr Claire Warden, Reader in Drama, De Montfort UniversityTable of ContentsAcknowledgements Introduction 1. Love on the Dole: Novel 2. Love on the Dole: Play and Film 3. Walter Greenwood: Life and Writings Conclusion Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisCosta Rica is a country known internationally for its eco-credentials, dazzling coastlines, and reputation as one of the happiest and most peaceful nations on earth. Beneath this façade, however, lies an exclusionary rhetoric of nationalism bound up in the concept of the tico, as many Costa Ricans refer to themselves. Beginning by considering the very idea of national identity and what this constitutes, this book explores the nature of the idealised tico identity, demonstrating the ways in which it has assumed a white supremacist, Central Valley-centric, patriarchal, heteronormative stance based on colonial ideals. Chapters two and three then go on to consider the literature and films produced that stand in opposition to this normative image of who or what is tico and their creation as vehicles of soft power which aim to question social norms. This book explores protest literature from the 1970s by Quince Duncan, Carmen Naranjo, and Alfonso Chase who narrate their experiences from the margins of society by virtue of their identity as Afro-Costa Rican, feminist, and homosexual authors. Cinema from the twenty-first century is then analysed to demonstrate the nuanced position chosen by national directors Esteban Ramírez, Paz Fábrega, Jurgen Ureña, and Patricia Velásquez to challenge the dominant nation-image as they reinscribe youth culture, a female consciousness, trans identity, and Afro-Costa Rica onto the fabric of the nation.Trade Review‘Throughout the book, Harvey-Kattou offers clear, concise readings on film and literature to articulate new models of Costa Rican belonging and national identity.’ Stephanie M. Pridgeon, Bulletin of Spanish StudiesTable of ContentsContentsIntroductionChapter One: The Creation of Tiquicidad and Theories of National IdentityChapter Two: Coded Messages: Costa Rican Protest Literature 1970–1985Chapter Three: Reflecting the Nation: Costa Rican Cinema in the Twenty–First CenturyConclusion

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Book SynopsisAn Open Access edition of this book is available on the Liverpool University Press website and through Knowledge Unlatched.Disability and the Posthuman is the first study to analyse cultural representations and deployments of disability as they interact with posthumanist theories of technology and embodiment. Working across a wide range of texts, many new to critical enquiry, in contemporary writing, film and cultural practice from North America, Europe, the Middle East and Japan, it covers a diverse range of topics, including: contemporary cultural theory and aesthetics; design, engineering and gender; the visualisation of prosthetic technologies in the representation of war and conflict; and depictions of work, time and sleep. While noting the potential limitations of posthumanist assessments of the technologized body, the study argues that there are exciting, productive possibilities and subversive potentials in the dialogue between disability and posthumanism as they generate dissident crossings of cultural spaces. Such intersections cover both fictional/imagined and material/grounded examples of disability and look to a future in which the development of technology and complex embodiment of disability presence align to produce sustainable yet radical creative and critical voices. Trade Review‘Alas, I have no space to say more than that this is a beautifully produced book both as an aesthetic object and as a thought-provoking text. Together with its compelling scholarship, the reading experience of Murray’s Disability and the Posthuman could scarcely be bettered.’Margrit Shildrick, Lambda'Murray makes a strong case that to understand modern film, literature, and contemporary society, people who have not thought much about disability studies should do so ... Murray's book provides many helpful ideas for this exploration.' Arthur Blaser, Disability Studies Quarterly

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Book SynopsisAn Open Access edition of this book is available on the Liverpool University Press website and through Knowledge Unlatched.Disability and the Posthuman is the first study to analyse cultural representations and deployments of disability as they interact with posthumanist theories of technology and embodiment. Working across a wide range of texts, many new to critical enquiry, in contemporary writing, film and cultural practice from North America, Europe, the Middle East and Japan, it covers a diverse range of topics, including: contemporary cultural theory and aesthetics; design, engineering and gender; the visualisation of prosthetic technologies in the representation of war and conflict; and depictions of work, time and sleep. While noting the potential limitations of posthumanist assessments of the technologized body, the study argues that there are exciting, productive possibilities and subversive potentials in the dialogue between disability and posthumanism as they generate dissident crossings of cultural spaces. Such intersections cover both fictional/imagined and material/grounded examples of disability and look to a future in which the development of technology and complex embodiment of disability presence align to produce sustainable yet radical creative and critical voices. Trade Review‘Alas, I have no space to say more than that this is a beautifully produced book both as an aesthetic object and as a thought-provoking text. Together with its compelling scholarship, the reading experience of Murray’s Disability and the Posthuman could scarcely be bettered.’Margrit Shildrick, Lambda'Murray makes a strong case that to understand modern film, literature, and contemporary society, people who have not thought much about disability studies should do so ... Murray's book provides many helpful ideas for this exploration.' Arthur Blaser, Disability Studies Quarterly

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Book SynopsisOver recent decades concerns at the increased scarcity and precarity of salaried employment have dominated political struggles, theoretical debates and cultural representations in France. This study argues that such concerns are evidence of a profound shift in contemporary French economy, culture and society. Engaging with work in political economy and sociology, the book sketches a new interpretative framework, the better to understand the nature and implications of these profound changes. It examines the challenges such changes have posed to fundamental French republican values, arguing they have opened up a rift between older notions of French republican citizenship and the precarious forms of subjectivity characteristic of post-Fordist labour. The book traces the symptoms of this rift in a range of cinematic and literary representations of the contemporary workplace, as these depict the dilemmas faced, the trajectories followed, and the geographical regions inhabited by French workers of different ages, sexes, social classes, and ethnicities.Trade Review“This is a well-written and clearly argued treatment of the implications of a post-Fordist regime of economic management on employment in France, as seen through literary and filmic representations."Nick Parsons, Cardiff UniversityTable of ContentsIntroductionPART ONE: THEORETICAL PRELIMINARIESChapter One: The Crisis of Fordism. Symptoms and DiagnosesChapter Two: Modulating Work and WelfarePART TWO: CHARACTER TYPES, TRAJECTORIES, UNEVEN GEOGRAPHIESChapter Three: Modulated masculinitiesChapter Four: Femmes FortesChapter Five: Doomed YouthChapter Six: Sans PapiersConclusionBibliography

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Book SynopsisThis film analysis textbook contains sixteen essays on historically significant, artistically superior films released between 1922 and 1982. Written for college, high school, and university students, the essays cover central issues raised in todays cinema courses and provide students with practical models to help them improve their own writing and analytical skills. This film casebook is geographically diverse, with eight countries represented: Italy, France, the United States, Russia, Germany, Great Britain, Japan, and India. The essays, sophisticated yet not overly technical or jargon-heavy, are perfect introductions to their respective films as well as important contributions to the field of film studies in general. The books critical apparatus features credits, images, and bibliographies for all films discussed, filmographies for the directors, a glossary of film terms, the elements of film analysis, a chronology of film theory and criticism, topics for writing and discussion, a bibliography of film criticism, and a comprehensive index. Understanding Film: A Viewers Guide bucks the trend of current film analysis texts (few of which contain actual film analyses) by promoting analysis of the chosen films alongside the methods and techniques of film analysis. It has been prepared as a primary text for courses in film analysis, and a supplementary text for courses such as Introduction to Film or Film Appreciation; History of Film or Survey of Cinema; and Film Directors or Film Style and Imagination.

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Book SynopsisRobert Eggers' The Witch (2015) is one of the most critically acclaimed horror films of recent years, praised as a genre film of unusual depth which eschews jump scares in favour of a gradually and steadily building tension. Set in newly colonized New England in the early seventeenth century, the film’s deep historical and mythological background, as well as its complicated and interlocking character arcs, make for a film whose viewers will be well served by this Devil’s Advocate, the first stand-alone critical study of the film. As well as providing the historical and religious background necessary for a fuller appreciation, including an insight into the Puritan movement in New England Brandon Grafius situates the film within a number of horror sub-genres (such as folk horror) as well as its other literary and folkloric influences.Trade Review‘[…] The Witch is a well-researched and beautifully written monograph that provides a fascinating and in-depth study of a classic film in around a hundred pages.’ Darren Charles, Folk Horror Revival‘Grafius does a laudable job of balancing an exegesis of the film while placing it both within an established historical religious context and genre field. The book is enjoyable and accessible even to those who have not watched the film.’ Paul O'Connor, Journal of Religion & Film

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Book SynopsisWidely regarded as one of the foundational 'Unholy Trinity' of folk horror film, The Blood on Satan's Claw (1971) has been comparatively over-shadowed, if not maligned, when compared to Witchfinder General (1968) and The Wicker Man (1973). While those horror bedfellows are now accepted as classics of British cinema, Piers Haggard's film remains undervalued, ironically so, given that it was Haggard who coined the term 'folk horror' in relation to his film. In this Devil's Advocate, David Evans-Powell explores the place of the film in the wider context of the folk horror sub-genre; its use of a seventeenth-century setting (which it shares with contemporaries such as Witchfinder General and Cry of the Banshee) in contrast to the generic nineteenth-century locales of Hammer; the influences of contemporary counter-culture and youth movement on the film; the importance of localism and landscape; and the film as an expression of a wider contemporary crisis in English identity (which can also be perceived in Witchfinder General, and in contemporary TV serials such as Penda's Fen).Trade Review'It is an intriguing journey and one very well-written. The matter of film study and review can sometimes come across as too academic and dry, or too self-indulgent, saying more about the reviewer than the art under review, but Evans-Powell falls into neither of these traps. It is a fluid, informative and efficiently communicative read... it is accessible, and of interest to wider fans (and even detractors) of The Blood on Satan’s Claw.'Andy Paciorek, Horrified ‘Evans-Powell has written a powerful and fascinating monograph that is very readable. He manages to cram a lot of intriguing detail into such a short book yet it never feels as though the reader is overloaded with information, and it always feels relevant and interesting.’ Darren Charles, Folk Horror Revival‘Evans-Powell’s writing throughout this short volume is interesting and engaging as well as informative… It is clear that Evans-Powell is an extremely knowledgeable and insightful scholar.’ Marita Arvaniti, Fantastika Journal

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Book SynopsisReviled on its release, Peeping Tom (1960) all-but ended the career of director Michael Powell, previously one of Britain's most revered filmmakers. The story of a murderous cameraman and his compulsion to record his killings, Powell's film stunned the same critics who had acclaimed him for the work he'd made with writer-producer Emeric Pressburger (The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, 1943; A Matter of Life and Death, 1946), resulting in the film falling out of circulation almost as soon as it was released. It took the 1970s 'Movie Brat' generation to rehabilitate the director, and the film, which is now regarded as a masterpiece. In this Devil's Advocate, published to coincide with the film's 60th anniversary, Kiri Walden charts the origins, production and devastating critical reception of Peeping Tom, comparing it to the treatment meted out to its contemporary horror classic, Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (1960).

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Book SynopsisIn the fading atmosphere of the New Hollywood era, William Friedkin – the wunderkind director with an Academy Award for his cop drama, The French Connection (1971) who then scored an even bigger success with The Exorcist (1973) – began work on what would prove to be the most controversial film of his career: Cruising (1980). In the process he established a template for a sub-genre, the serial killer thriller, that would thrive long after his film had left theatres, having caused widespread offence among the very audience he'd hoped to appeal to, via a campaign mobilised by the counter-culture press. As such, Cruising can be read as a bitter farewell to the seventies and its cinema and industry. This Devil's Advocate dives deep into the phenomenon that is Cruising, examining its creative context and its protagonists, as well as examining its ongoing popularity as it turns 40 in 2020. Trade ReviewReviews'Eugenio Ercolani’s and Marcus Stiglegger’s book on William Friedkin’s Cruising is an important addition to the annals of scholarship and fandom devoted to this long neglected and underrated masterpiece of American cinema in the 1980s. Meticulously researched, it documents the gay culture that surrounds the film and its former controversial status, as well as the biographies and backgrounds of the key, creative people involved. Most importantly, it offers a new, open-minded interpretation of this wilfully fragmented and complex film.'Adrian Martin, film critic'This is the book we’ve all been waiting for! Everything we ever wanted to know about the inception and reception of Cruising, William Friedkin’s controversial plunge into the raunchy gay underbelly of pre-AIDS New York City, is all documented right here in this great book. Consummate cineastes Eugenio Ercolani and Marcus Stiglegger leave no stone unturned in this page-turner! It’s a must!'Sam Irvin, film & TV director'This academic treatise on William Friedkin's divisive 1980 murder mystery offers much to intrigue... [the authors] persuasively unpack its weirdly lingering pull.'Kevin Harley, Total Film

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Book SynopsisEx Machina (2014) impressed critics and audiences alike with its bold ideas and all-too-realistic depiction of the unexpected consequences of constructing a sentient being. In his feature directorial debut, Alex Garland uses efficient storytelling, a compelling narrative, and heady concepts to create a modern science fiction masterpiece that explores gender, scientific advancement, and the very concept of humanity, all in a compelling, suspenseful film. Artificial intelligence has long been a sci-fi staple, but here, Garland posits what would happen if, for once, humans, rather than AI, were the real villains. In exploring Ex Machina’s ideas about consciousness, embodiment, and masculinity, all through the lens of a misogynist mad scientist, Joshua Grimm argues the result is a fascinating, truly unique film that immediately established Garland as a breakout voice in the landscape of science fiction film.

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Book SynopsisJurassic Park (1993) is one of Steven Spielberg’s most beloved films. Over twenty-five years on from its original release, it has accrued four sequels, a legion of worldwide fans, and a wide range of merchandise covering everything from action figures and board games to comic books and video games. As such, the film is widely acknowledged as one of the most significant blockbusters of the 1990s, a position underlined by its pioneering use of CGI to resurrect the dinosaurs with more realism than ever before. However, there's much more to Jurassic Park than a simple special effects extravaganza. Spielberg’s career was in flux at the time of the film's release, and this contribution to the Constellations series explores this shift by analyzing the film in a number of ways. First, it considers how Spielberg blends science fiction and horror, and how the mix of those two genres affects the film and its message. Then it looks at what the film has to say about humanity's relationship with nature, its commentary on the bond between an audience and the fantasy of cinema, and, finally, its thoughts on the manifestation of violence and control in men. It does this through close analysis of key characters, story points, and scenes, and the film's place within the context of Spielberg's career as a whole.

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Book SynopsisFew filmmakers could even attempt the fearlessness of Andrei Tarkovsky’s cinema and his most ambitious work, Stalker (1977), is arguably the most thoughtful science-fiction film ever made. Stalker parallels its speculative elements with a harrowing narrative of human fragility and philosophy. It is as much a movie about the complexity of its characters as it is the mysteriousness of its labyrinthine landscape, the ambiguous Zone and its heart, the Room of Desire. It is at once a darkly nihilistic film, ominous and threatening, and yet also profoundly hopeful and at its core a story of true faith. This book attempts to unravel the film’s complexities, from its difficult production and through its many cinematic elements: its composition and cinematography, the many philosophies it engages with, its poetic and literary influences, along with the cultural and historical landscapes that cultivated it, and the enormity of its influence across the following generations. Stalker challenges us to engage with film in a different way: a poetic cinema that asks much more of you as a viewer than most. Most of all, to explore why this film—even forty years since its original release—still affects us as an audience as profoundly as ever.

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Book SynopsisIn the fading atmosphere of the New Hollywood era, William Friedkin – the wunderkind director with an Academy Award for his cop drama, The French Connection (1971) who then scored an even bigger success with The Exorcist (1973) – began work on what would prove to be the most controversial film of his career: Cruising (1980). In the process he established a template for a sub-genre, the serial killer thriller, that would thrive long after his film had left theatres, having caused widespread offence among the very audience he'd hoped to appeal to, via a campaign mobilised by the counter-culture press. As such, Cruising can be read as a bitter farewell to the seventies and its cinema and industry. This Devil's Advocate dives deep into the phenomenon that is Cruising, examining its creative context and its protagonists, as well as examining its ongoing popularity as it turns 40 in 2020. Trade ReviewReviews'Eugenio Ercolani’s and Marcus Stiglegger’s book on William Friedkin’s Cruising is an important addition to the annals of scholarship and fandom devoted to this long neglected and underrated masterpiece of American cinema in the 1980s. Meticulously researched, it documents the gay culture that surrounds the film and its former controversial status, as well as the biographies and backgrounds of the key, creative people involved. Most importantly, it offers a new, open-minded interpretation of this wilfully fragmented and complex film.'Adrian Martin, film critic'This is the book we’ve all been waiting for! Everything we ever wanted to know about the inception and reception of Cruising, William Friedkin’s controversial plunge into the raunchy gay underbelly of pre-AIDS New York City, is all documented right here in this great book. Consummate cineastes Eugenio Ercolani and Marcus Stiglegger leave no stone unturned in this page-turner! It’s a must!'Sam Irvin, film & TV director'This academic treatise on William Friedkin's divisive 1980 murder mystery offers much to intrigue... [the authors] persuasively unpack its weirdly lingering pull.'Kevin Harley, Total Film

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Book SynopsisCritical discussion of cult cinema has often noted its tendency to straddle or ignore boundaries, to pull together different sets of conventions, narrative formulas, or character types for the almost surreal pleasure to be found in their sudden juxtapositions or narrative combination. With its own boundary-blurring nature—as both science and fiction, reality and fantasy—science fiction has played a key role in such cinematic cult formation. This volume examines that largely unexplored relationship, looking at how the sf film’s own double nature neatly matches up with a persistent double vision common to the cult film. It does so by bringing together an international array of scholars to address key questions about the intersections of sf and cult cinema: how different genre elements, directors, and stars contribute to cult formation; what role fan activities, including “con” participation, play in cult development; and how the occulted or “bad” sf cult film works. The volume pursues these questions by addressing a variety of such sf cult works, including Robot Monster (1953), Zardoz (1974), A Boy and His Dog (1975), Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989), Space Truckers (1996), Ghost in the Shell 2 (2004), and Iron Sky (2012). What these essays afford is a revealing vision of both the sf aspects of much cult film activity and the cultish aspects of the whole sf genre.Trade ReviewReviews 'Coherent, well-organised and covers the field effectively. There is a decent balance of the obvious (Blade Runner) and the obscure (Ghost in the Shell 2). The pieces are written by evident fans and are pitched at a level undergraduates would appreciate, while offering enough novelty and rigour to add something to the field. I can imagine the book would find its way onto modules on SF as well as cult film and fan studies generally.' Ian Hunter'Science Fiction, Double Feature is a thoroughly approachable text that would appeal most to anyone who is looking for greater insight into the often overlooked world of cult cinema and SF. The inclusion of twenty-first century examples along with earlier cinematic works makes for an intriguing mix that maintains interest from one chapter to the next, and will appeal to a broader reading audience than the usual academic essay collection.'British Society for Literature and ScienceTable of Contents I. Introduction: Science Fiction Double Feature (J. P. Telotte) II. The Multiple Texts of the SF/Cult Film 1. From “Multiverse” to “Abramsverse”: Blade Runner, Star Trek, Multiplicity, and the Authorizing of Cult/SF Worlds (Matt Hills) 2. The Coy Cult Text: The Man Who Wasn’t There as Noir SF (Mark Bould) 3. “It's Alive”: The Splattering of SF Films (Stacey Abbott) 4. Sean Connery Reconfigured: From Bond to Cult Science Fiction Figure (Gerald Duchovnay) 5.The Cult Film as Affective Technology: Anime and Oshii Mamoru’s Innocence (Sharalyn Orbaugh) III. SF Media and the Audience 6. Whedon, Browncoats, and the Big Damn Narrative: The Unified Meta-Myth of Firefly and Serenity (Rhonda Wilcox) 7. Iron Sky’s War Bonds: Cult SF Cinema and Crowdsourcing (Chuck Tryon) 8. Transnational Interactions: District 9, or Apaches in Johannesburg (Takayuki Tatsumi) 9. A Donut For Tom Paris: Identity and Belonging at European SF/Fantasy Conventions (Nicolle Lamerichs) IV. Occulting the Cult: The “Bad” SF Text 10. Robot Monster and the “Watchable . . . Terrible” Cult/SF Film (Telotte) 11. Science Fiction and the Cult of Ed Wood: Glen or Glenda?, Bride of the Monster, and Plan 9 from Outer Space (Rodney Hill) 12. Visual Pleasure, the Cult, and Paracinema (Sherryl Vint) 13. “Lack of Respect, Wrong Attitude, Failure to Obey Authority”: Dark Star and A Boy and His Dog as New Wave Cult SF (Rob Latham) 14. Capitalism, Camp, and Cult SF: Space Truckers as Satire (M. Keith Booker) 15. Bubba Ho-tep and the Seriously Silly Cult Film (Jeffrey Weinstock)

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Book SynopsisThe Liverpool Companion to World Science Fiction Film offers critical insights into SF far beyond the more common Anglo-American narratives. Contributors take either a national or transnational approach, and stretch the geographic and conceptual boundaries of science fiction cinema. Recurrent themes include genre discussions, engagement with Hollywood, and the international subgenre of science fiction parody. Chapters contain a variety of perspectives and styles: from gender and race studies, to the eco-critical, and the post-colonial; from the avant-garde, to socialist realism, and the Hammer film. Edited by Sonja Fritzsche, the collection contains fourteen chapters written by specialists from around the world. Film traditions represented include Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Cameroon, China, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, India, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Poland, the United Kingdom, and the United States. There is also a chapter on digital shorts. From the dinosaur myth that became Godzilla to Brazilian science fiction comedy, from China’s Death Ray to Kenya’s Pumzi, this book will broaden the horizons of scholars and students of science fiction.Trade Review'A welcome and overdue addition to the critical discourse surrounding science fiction cinema. This book provides an important point of entry for those academics and students who wish to broaden their understanding of science fiction film as a global phenomenon rather than simply as a Hollywood or Anglophone practice.'Peter Wright, Edge Hill UniversityTable of Contents Introduction - Sonja Fritzsche PART I: AFRICA 1. The Environmental Dominant in Wanuri Kahiu’s Pumzi - Ritch Calvin PART II: ASIA 2. Death Ray on a Coral Island as China’s First Science Fiction Film - Jie Zhang 3. Indian Science Fiction Cinema: An Overview - Jessica Langer and Dominic Alessio 4. On the Monstrous Planet: or, How Godzilla Took a Roman Holiday - Takayuki Tatsumi, translated by Seth Jacobowitz PART III: EUROPE 5. Invaders, Launchpads and Hybrids: The Importance of Transmediality in British Science Fiction Film in the 1950s - Derek Johnston 6. Gender and Apocalypse in Eastern European Cinema - Jason Merrill 7. Casting for a Socialist Earth: Multicultural Whiteness in the East German/Polish Science-Fiction Film Silent Star (1960) - Evan Torner 8. Looking for French Science Fiction Cinema - Daniel Tron 9. Science Fiction Interventions in Irish Cinema - Katie Moylan 10. The Uncomfortable Relationship Between Science Fiction and Italy:Film, Humor, and Gender - Rafaella Boccolini PART IV: NORTH AMERICA 11. Are Black Women the Future of Man? The Role of Black Women in Political and Cultural Transformation in Science Fiction from the US and Cameroon - Robyn Citizen PART V: SOUTH AMERICA 12. Maradona on the Moon: Postcolonial Politics and Cultural Hybridity in Argentina’s Goodbye Dear Moon - Mariano Paz 13. Alert Limit! A Short History of Brazilian Science Fiction Film and Its Fight for Survival in a Rarefied Atmosphere - Alfredo Suppia PART VI: DIGITAL CINEMA 14. Digital Film and Audiences - Pawel Frelik Recommended Viewing

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Book SynopsisDrawing on historical, literary and cultural studies perspectives, this book examines the phenomenon of the “Returned Yank” in the cultural imagination, taking as its point of departure the most exhaustively discussed Returned Yank narrative, The Quiet Man (dir. John Ford, 1952). Often dismissed as a figure that embodies the sentimentality and nostalgia of Irish America writ large, this study argues that the Returned Yank’s role in the Irish cultural imagination is much more varied and complex than this simplistic construction allows. Throughout the twentieth century and into the twenty-first, s/he has been widely discussed in broadcast and print media, and depicted in plays, novels, short stories and films. The imagined figure of the Returned Yank has been the driving impetus behind some of Ireland's most well-known touristic endeavours and festivals. In the form of U.S. Presidential visits, s/he has repeatedly been the catalyst for questions surrounding Irish identity. Most significantly, s/he has been mobilised as an arbiter in one of the most important debates in post-Independence Ireland: should Ireland remain a "traditional" society or should it seek to modernise? His/her repeated appearances in Irish literature and culture after 1952 – in remarkably heterogeneous, often very sophisticated ways – refute claims of the “aesthetic caution” of Irish writers, dramatists and filmmakers responding to the tradition/modernity debate.Trade Review'An incisive and impressively contextualized study of the trope of "the Returned Yank" in Irish culture. This fascinating and outstanding book will make an invaluable and timely contribution to Irish and American Studies, as well as to diaspora studies more widely.'Dr Tony Murray, Director of the Irish Studies Centre at London Metropolitan University'Extremely commendable in its scope and ambition, this book offers a valuable contribution to Irish cultural studies, in particular to research on the complex relationship between "tradition" and "modernity" in Irish culture. It fills a genuine gap in existing scholarship, and its sustained analysis across several decades and multiple forms of representation is especially impressive, as it allows the reader to track a complex and historically-informed narrative arc for the "Returned Yank" figure.'Dr Stephanie Rains, Senior Lecturer in the Department of Media Studies, Maynooth UniversityReviews 'Sinéad Moynihan’s Ireland, Migration and Return Migration is an impressively wide-ranging and insightful study of migration to and from the United States in Irish literature, film, and culture. This book pushes beyond simplistic models of deracination, exile or the émigré, to think about the recurring nature of migration and return migration, and raises questions about decolonization, neo-colonialism, and the nature of “modern” Ireland both before and after the Celtic Tiger. Moynihan's work interrogates gendered mythologies about maternity and return, and similarly reworks notions of return in relation to literary forebears and genres. She combines an impressive range of cultural sources with nuanced close readings in an important and timely contribution to Irish Studies.' 2019 ACIS Michael J. Durkan PrizeTable of ContentsAcknowledgementsIntroduction - “The Meanest Form of Animal”?: The Returned Yank in the Cultural ImaginationChapter 1. “Quiet Men”: Film and Filmmaking in Returned Yank Fictions of the TroublesChapter 2. “Mother Macree ad nauseam”: Maternity, Modernity and the Female Returned Yank Chapter 3. Erin’s Acres: The Returned Yank, Property Disputes and the Rise and Fall of the Irish EconomyChapter 4. “The Secret Dotted Line”: Return, Roots Journeys and Irish Literary GenealogiesCoda - “We are where we are”: Mythologies of Return and the Post-Celtic Tiger MomentWorks CitedIndex

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Book SynopsisVivre Ici invites the reader on a journey through the vast viewing landscape of contemporary French documentary film, a genre that has experienced a renaissance in the past twenty years. The films explored are connected not just by a general interest in engaging the “real,” but by a particular attention to French space and place. From farms and wild places to roads, schools, and urban edgelands, these films explore the spaces of the everyday and the human and non-human experiences that unfold within them. Through a critical approach that integrates phenomenology, film theory, eco-criticism and cultural history, Levine investigates the notion of documentary as experience. She asks how and why, in the contemporary media landscape, these films seek to avoid argumentation and instead, give the viewer a feeling of “being there.” As a diverse collection of filmmakers, both well-known and lesser-known, explore the limits and possibilities of these places, a collage-like, incomplete, and fragmented vision of France as seen and felt through documentary cameras comes into view. Venturing beyond film analysis to examine the production climate for these films and their circulation in contemporary France, Levine explores the social and political consequences of these “films that matter” for the viewers who come into contact with them.Trade Review'This is an excellent study of issues of space and place in recent French documentary, offering rich and evocative readings of individual films and detailed engagement with the material specificities of documentary production in France. It will be of major interest to researchers and students.'Laura McMahon, Cambridge'Vivre Ici marks a major advance in thinking about contemporary documentary in France and about documentary in general. It does this by mobilizing aesthetic, cultural, and institutional approaches.'Steven Ungar, University of Iowa'Vivre Ici represents a useful curation of French documentary and a worthy addition to an expanding subfield of Film Studies that will be of much interest to film scholars, researchers, and students of French documentary.'Matthew Gibson, Modern Language Review‘One of the impressive strengths of Levine’s study is the further comparative aesthetic and ethical questioning the analysis triggers. Her attention to the extra-textual context surrounding each film, with a focus on audience response, combined with her meticulous attention to the multisensory experience of film space, brilliantly underlines the impossibility of separating the social and political role (and responsibility) of documentary film, from its equally important status as an art form that affects and moves the spectator in more ways than one…Scholars and students of French history, cinema and cultural studies, and of documentary film studies more generally, will find the book an inspiring and informative pedagogical resource to draw on.'Albertine Fox, H-France Review‘Alison J. Murray Levine’s latest book Vivre Ici is a refreshing, accessible read that invites readers to appreciate the unique ability documentary, and more specifically French documentary, has to connect us to the world around us.’ Audrey Evrard, Modern & Contemporary France'The balance between theory and its application in Levine’s book makes for a very accessible and pleasing read [...] It will be of appeal to academics and students alike, particularly those working in French studies, and film and media studies.' Oliver Brett, French History'Levine’s book fills in an important gap in French film studies in that it moves away from the topic of a small set of films to focus on what matters the most—that documentaries can transmit a sensual experience to the audience. Levine examines films produced over the last twenty years in metropolitan France. However, her analysis can apply to general documentaries, past or future, French or not.' Martine Guyot-Bender, French ReviewReviews 'This monograph is pertinent for scholars of film or contemporary French history. Furthermore, its readability lends it to being a useful addition to bibliographies for film and culture studies courses as well as an enjoyable book for cinephiles or Francophiles outside of academia.' Tessa Ashlin Nunn, Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

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Book SynopsisPrevenge (2016) is an entertainingly dark 21st-century horror movie detailing the serial killing journey of heavily pregnant Ruth. It’s a cleverly crafted narrative full of stark social commentary, traversing the delicate line between comedy and tragedy by fusing together a kitchen sink approach with a supernatural revenge plot. This book, as part of the Devil’s Advocates series, examines how the film deconstructs the slasher mythology and the sexism therein, and upends stereotypical representations of the ‘weak’ woman and ‘delicate’ mother. With new exclusive input from writer, director and star Alice Lowe, the text also looks at the production’s inception and development, assesses its debts to cult British cinema, and inspects its umbilical connections to Rosemary’s Baby, Alien, Village of the Damned and many other ‘Monstrous Child’ silver screen features. Trade Review'Andrew Graves offers a suitably appreciative, perceptive celebration of a movie that never wanted to be pigeonholed for the sake of its commercial prospects... This concise, engaging DEVIL’S ADVOCATES monograph is... a witty, insightful read that will inspire you to revisit Lowe’s glorious back catalogue.'Steven West, FrightFest

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