Search results for ""Author Daniel Morgan""

The Lure of the Image shows how a close study of camera movement challenges key assumptions underlying a wide range of debates within cinema and media studies. Highlighting the shifting intersection of point of view and camera position, Daniel Morgan draws on a range of theoretical arguments and detailed analyses across cinemas to reimagine the relation between spectator and camera—and between camera and film world. With sustained accounts of how the camera moves in films by Fritz Lang, Guru Dutt, Max Ophuls, and Terrence Malick and in contemporary digital technologies, The Lure of the Image exposes the persistent fantasy that we move with the camera within the world of the film and examines the ways that filmmakers have exploited this fantasy. In so doing, Morgan provides a more flexible account of camera movement, one that enables a fuller understanding of the political and ethical stakes entailed by this key component of cinematic style.

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With "Late Godard and the Possibilities of Cinema", Daniel Morgan makes a significant contribution to scholarship on Jean-Luc Godard, especially his films and videos since the late 1980s, some of the most notoriously difficult works in contemporary cinema. Through detailed analyses of extended sequences, technical innovations, and formal experiments, Morgan provides an original interpretation of a series of several internally related films - "Soigne ta droite" ("Keep Your Right Up", 1987), "Nouvelle vague" ("New Wave", 1990), and "Allemagne 90 neuf zero" ("Germany 90 Nine Zero", 1991) - and the monumental late video work, "Histoire(s) du cinema" (1988-1998). Taking up a range of topics, including the role of nature and natural beauty, the relation between history and cinema, and the interactions between film and video, the book provides a distinctive account of the cinematic and intellectual ambitions of Godard's late work. At the same time, "Late Godard and the Possibilities of Cinema" provides a new direction for the fields of film and philosophy by drawing on the idealist and romantic tradition of philosophical aesthetics, which rarely finds an articulation within film studies. In using the tradition of aesthetics to illuminate Godard's late films and videos, Morgan shows that these works transform the basic terms and categories of aesthetics in and for the cinema.

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The Lure of the Image shows how a close study of camera movement challenges key assumptions underlying a wide range of debates within cinema and media studies. Highlighting the shifting intersection of point of view and camera position, Daniel Morgan draws on a range of theoretical arguments and detailed analyses across cinemas to reimagine the relation between spectator and camera—and between camera and film world. With sustained accounts of how the camera moves in films by Fritz Lang, Guru Dutt, Max Ophuls, and Terrence Malick and in contemporary digital technologies, The Lure of the Image exposes the persistent fantasy that we move with the camera within the world of the film and examines the ways that filmmakers have exploited this fantasy. In so doing, Morgan provides a more flexible account of camera movement, one that enables a fuller understanding of the political and ethical stakes entailed by this key component of cinematic style.

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Though the emergence of media archaeology has provided a necessary challenge to the dominant strains of film theory, the contributors to this special issue argue that there are important blind spots. They point out how the focus in media archaeology on historical narratives—especially on models of temporality—has led to a blind spot with regard to non-Western media. Drawing on resources in film studies for thinking about the trans- or international movement of media, the authors set out the need for and terms of a globalizing media archaeology.

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Every five years from 1955 to 1985, mass Czechoslovak gymnastic demonstrations and sporting parades called Spartakiads were held to mark the 1945 liberation of Czechoslovakia. Featuring hundreds of thousands of male and female performers of all ages and held in the world’s largest stadium—a space built expressly for this purpose—the synchronized and unified movements of the Czech citizenry embodied, quite literally, the idealized Socialist people: a powerful yet pliant force directed by the regime. In this book, Petr Roubal explores the political, social, and aesthetical dimensions of these mass physical demonstrations, with a particular focus on their roots in the völkisch nationalism of the German Turner movement and the Czech Sokol gymnastic tradition. Roubal draws on extensive interviews and archival research to investigate the many facets of this sporting tradition, from the reactions of ordinary, non-political gymnasts who appropriated and challenged official rituals to the organizational demands of the Spartakiads, such as the incredible finances involved and the knowledge and skills required from hundreds of former Sokol officials. Featuring an abundance of archival photographs, Spartakiad takes a new approach to Communist history by opening a window onto the mentality and mundanity behind the Iron Curtain.

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With "Late Godard and the Possibilities of Cinema", Daniel Morgan makes a significant contribution to scholarship on Jean-Luc Godard, especially his films and videos since the late 1980s, some of the most notoriously difficult works in contemporary cinema. Through detailed analyses of extended sequences, technical innovations, and formal experiments, Morgan provides an original interpretation of a series of several internally related films - "Soigne ta droite" ("Keep Your Right Up", 1987), "Nouvelle vague" ("New Wave", 1990), and "Allemagne 90 neuf zero" ("Germany 90 Nine Zero", 1991) - and the monumental late video work, "Histoire(s) du cinema" (1988-1998). Taking up a range of topics, including the role of nature and natural beauty, the relation between history and cinema, and the interactions between film and video, the book provides a distinctive account of the cinematic and intellectual ambitions of Godard's late work. At the same time, "Late Godard and the Possibilities of Cinema" provides a new direction for the fields of film and philosophy by drawing on the idealist and romantic tradition of philosophical aesthetics, which rarely finds an articulation within film studies. In using the tradition of aesthetics to illuminate Godard's late films and videos, Morgan shows that these works transform the basic terms and categories of aesthetics in and for the cinema.

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At publication date, a free ebook version of this title will be available through Luminos, University of California Press's Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. In this beautifully written and deeply researched study, Hannah Frank provides an original way to understand American animated cartoons from the Golden Age of animation (1920–1960). In the pre-digital age of the twentieth century, the making of cartoons was mechanized and standardized: thousands of drawings were inked and painted onto individual transparent celluloid sheets (called “cels”) and then photographed in succession, a labor-intensive process that was divided across scores of artists and technicians. In order to see the art, labor, and technology of cel animation, Frank slows cartoons down to look frame by frame, finding hitherto unseen aspects of the animated image. What emerges is both a methodology and a highly original account of an art formed on the assembly line.

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In Degrees of Separation, scholars from the Czech Republic, Canada, Germany, and Hungary take a new approach to exploring the work of one of Central Europe’s most interesting modernist painters, Bohumil Kubišta. While many art historians have viewed Kubišta’s work solely in the context of an idealized Czech canon, Kubišta did not identify with a nation-state clearly defined by ethnicity, language, or territorial reach. Taking a transnational approach that incorporates thorough topographical research, the authors attempt to redraw the map of European modernism by exploring the artist’s subversive approach to the stylistic currents of his time. The book reveals the complex relationships within early twentieth-century Europe, as Kubišta and other Central European artists tried to balance their admiration for the dominant artistic trends coming out of Paris with their desire to find alternative forms of expression arising from local artistic and intellectual sources. The richly illustrated book features a wealth of documentation, including an exhaustive timeline with notes, a comprehensive inventory of Kubišta’s works, and an up-to-date exhibition list.

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It is known that a society in transformation undergoes significant changes on many levels, but structural and cultural changes are arguably two of the most significant. How do such monumental changes affect the lives of individuals and small communities? Teachers on the Waves of Transformation aims to answer this question through the lens of education. With careful exploratory research at two schools in a small town in central Bohemia, anthropologist Dana Moree follows the fates of two generations of teachers at the schools. Through interviews with teachers, school administrators, and the students’ parents, Moree focuses on the relationships, values, shared stories, and symbolic and ritual worlds that create the culture of the schools. Teachers on the Waves of Transformation offers a unique perspective of cultural flux as witnessed in the classroom.

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Czech action art - a medium similar to performance art that does not require an audience - emerged out of the political and social turmoil of the 1960s. This movement has received little critical attention, however, as the Iron Curtain prevented its dissemination to an international audience. Here theorist and art historian Pavlina Morganova gives this art scene its due, chronicling its inception and tracing its evolution through to the present. Morganova explains the various forms of action art, from the "actions" and "happenings" of the 1960s; to the actions of land art that encompass stones, trees, water, or fire; to recent displays of body art; to the actions of the latest generation of artists, who are using the principles of action art in contemporary postconceptual and participative art. Along the way, she introduces the most prominent Czech artists of each specific niche, including Milan Knizak, Zorka Saglova, Ivan Kafka, Petr Stembera, Karel Miler, Jiri Kovanda, and Katerina Seda, and demonstrates not only the changes in the art forms themselves but also the shifting roles of artists and spectators after World War II. With over one hundred illustrations, Czech Action Art introduces this heretofore overlooked but fascinating art form to a global readership.

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