Search results for ""British Film Institute""

Phillip Drummond offers a detailed account of 'High Noon's' troubled production context and its early public reception, along with career summaries of the key participants.

Read more less

Examines the role television played in providing news about the event of the Princess of Wales' death. The book goes on to explore the reasons why Diana's death affected so many people and suggests that TV is integral to culture.

Read more less

Went the Day Well? is one of the most unusual Ealing Studios pictures, a distinctly unsentimental war film made in the darkest days of WWII. Houston studies why the film avoids the cosy Ealing trademark. This Film Classics 20th anniversary edition comes with a new foreword by Geoff Brown, and a stunning new jacket design by Mark Swan.

Read more less

Manohla Dargis explores the careers of director Curtis Hanson and writer James Ellroy, based on interviews with both men, to dig deep into the film's obsession with the twinned, equally troubled histories of the Hollywood studio system and the city of Los Angeles.

Read more less

In this book, which includes a new interview with Ballard who wrote the book on which the film was based, Sinclair explores the temporal loop which connects film and novel, and asks questions such as to what extent is Crash a premonition of some of the more remarkable media events of recent times. In the BFI MODERN CLASSICS series.

Read more less

Widely believed to be Terry Gilliam's best film, Brazil's brilliantly imaginative vision of a retro-futuristic bureaucracy has had a lasting influence on genre cinema. Exploring its complex history and relationship with other dystopias, Paul McAuley explains why this satire on the unchecked power of the state is more relevant than ever.

Read more less

Released in 1968, the Maysles' Salesman is widely acknowledged as a landmark in documentary film. In his compelling and detailed study, J.M. Tyree discusses the film's various technical and artistic innovations, tracing their theoretical roots and enduring influence.

Read more less

Claude Lanzmann's epic 1985 film 'Shoah' tells the story of the Holocaust through interviews with survivors of theextermination camps, bystanders who watched or participated in mass murder, and some of the perpetrators of genocide. Sue Vice addresses Lanzmann's central role in the film and the issue of representing the unrepresentable.

Read more less

Ivan The Terrible (1944/46) was envisaged as a trilogy, but, its director Sergei Eisenstein died before begining the third part. This book offers an insight into Eisenstein's grand project. He reconstructs the director's mental film that underlies the finished work.

Read more less

Double Indemnity was a key film in the definition of the genre that came to be known as film noir.

Read more less

Mark Kermode, who describes Silent Running (1972) as his favourite sci-fi film of all time, traces Douglas Trumbull's sentimental masterpiece from its roots in the counter-culture of the sixties to its enduring appeal as a cult classic in the 21st century.

Read more less

On release in the 1930s, Snow White became a milestone in animated film, Disney production and the US box office. Today its fans cross generations and continents, proving that this tale of the loveable, banished princess and her seven outstanding friends possesses a special magic that makes it both an all-time Disney great and a true film classic.

Read more less

Laura Mulvey offers a fresh and original reading of one of the greatest films in all cinema. This new edition of Mulvey's study is published in the Film Classics 20th anniversary series of special editions, with a new foreword by the author, and a stunning new jacket design by Eric Skillman.

Read more less

A comprehensive guide to science fiction films, which analyzes and contextualizes the most important examples of the genre, from Un voyage dans la lune (1902), to The Road (2009).

Read more less

This study examines Rome Open City and its place in Roberto Rossellini's career. The film is based on events that took place in Nazi occupied Italy 1944, one year before the film was made. The author argues that the film has value as a commerorative piece and as a documentary record.

Read more less

Offering a fresh perspective on The General, arguably one of the most successful American films of the silent era, this insightful text analyses its initial critical reception and the thematic and stylistic characteristics of the film that made it difficult for critics to appreciate at the time, but led to its celebration by later generations.

Read more less

Alien, that legendary fusion of science fiction and horror, was born out of a terrible monster movie script called Star Beast. Tracing the constellation of talents that came together to produce the film, this book explores how and why this interstellar slasher movie, this old dark house in space, came to coil itself around our darkest imaginings.

Read more less

This is a study of the film Shadows, directed by John Cassavetes. The film tells the story of three beatnik siblings living together. The film deals with racial issues but the director wished it to be a human film concerned to rescue the small feelings of life.

Read more less

This intriguing text overturns a myth of film history by examining new evidence surrounding the authorship of Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari - a film that still exerts its gothic spell after nearly a century. A new introduction considers the place of German Expressionist cinema within the European revival of Gothic at the turn of the 20th century.

Read more less

James Naremore's insightfulstudy ofthis darkly satiric and much-admired film about the culture of celebrity in 1950s New York, starring Burt Lancaster and Tony Curtis, providesnew production information, a lively discussion of the film's historical context, and a close analysis of the work of its various contributors.

Read more less

Lively and illuminating guide to 100 key horror movies. Dissects classic films from directors and coutries particularly noted with horror production, as well asdelving into sub-genres such as zombie, cannibal and vampire movies and films by directors more commonly noted with art cinema, such as Bergman and Polanski. .

Read more less

A selection of 100 films from one of the best-loved genres of Hollywood and world cinema, with entries ranging from 'Gold Diggers of 1933' to 'High School Musical' of 2006, and from the Reggae classic 'The Harder They Come' to Guru Dutt's 'Pyaasa' (1957). The authors' introduction outlines the history and key features of the film musical.

Read more less

This study provides a detailed account of the 1960s film, L'avventura, arguing that in order to appreciate its greatness it is necessary to understand not only that the film is a classic but also that it represents a revolution in cinema.

Read more less

The Wizard of Oz shows that imagination can become reality, that there is no such place like home, or rather that the only home is the one we make for ourselves. This new edition of Rushdie's study is published in the Film Classics 20th anniversary series of special editions, with a new foreword by the author.

Read more less

Richard Taylor asks to what extent the film can lay claim to authentic history. He then examines October's relationship to the politics of the period and explains the theory and its application, as well as placing October in the wider context of Eisenstein's career.

Read more less

An accessible and up to date guide to one hundred of World Cinema's most interesting and influential cult movies. Covering a diverse range of genres and films from 1920 to the present day, this lavishly illustrated volume includes entries on films ranging from 'This is Spinal Tap' to 'Donnie Darko'.

Read more less

John Gill provides a revealing insight into Todd Haynes' cult classic Far From Heaven (2002), the first single critical study of the film. Gill exploreshowHaynes confronts issues of race, sexuality and classin a surburban 1950s American neighbourhood, in a clear homage to director Douglas Sirk and his work of the period.

Read more less

Traces the history of The Shawshank Redemption, originally a low-key prison movie,from the pages of Stephen King's novella Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemptionto the screens on which it became a phenomenon, as well as exploring the near-religious fervour that the film inspires in its devoted fans.

Read more less

When it was released, Dead Man puzzled many audiences and critics. Here, the author argues that the film is both a quantum leap and a logical step in the director's career, and it's a film that speaks powerfully of contemporary concerns.

Read more less

Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove, or: How I learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964) is the definitive film about the nuclear age. Peter Kramer analyses its key scenes and complex production history, highlighting major themes such as Strangelove's Nazi past and the film's close relationship with real-world nuclear strategy and politics.

Read more less

Night and the City (1950), directed by Jules Dassin and starring Richard Widmark,is the compelling story ofa hoodlum on the make in postwar London. Andrew Pulver's study of the film traces the film's production history and places it in the context of British film noir and the urban mythology ofits West End setting.

Read more less

Amores Perros (2000) speaks to an international audience while never oversimplifying its local culture. This study of this film opens up that culture, revealing the film's relationship to television soap operas, pop music and contemporary debates about what it means to be Mexican.

Read more less

This text looks at one of the masterpieces of French cinema, made under great difficulties during the German occupation in World War II, and set in the world of 19th-century Parisian theatre.

Read more less

Jill Poppy has taught English, Media and Film studies at GCSE and AS/A2 levels and Film Studies to undergraduates. She is principal examiner for Film Studies and is a mentor for the British Film Institute panel of tutors. She contributes regularly to the British Film Institute teacher training programmes and student events and has provided in-service training for the English and Media Centre, NATE and other professional organisations. She has written a range of study guides.

Read more less

PHIL WICKHAM is a TV Curator at the British Film Institute. He has written and lectured on British film and TV and is the author of the forthcoming BFI TV Classic on The Likely Lads.

Read more less

Kay Dickinson is Associate Professor of Film Studies at Concordia University, Canada. She is the author of Off Key: When Film and Music Won't Work Together (Oxford University Press, 2008); the editor of Movie Music (Routledge, 2002), Teen TV (British Film Institute Publishing, 2003), and The Arab Avant-Garde: Music, Politics and Modernity (Wesleyan University Press, 2013). In addition, she has worked as an education officer on the Ramallah International Film Festival and as an advisor on the Shashat Women's Film Festival (Bethlehem, Nablus and Ramallah). In the academic year of 2010-11, she was awarded a Fellowship in Global Aesthetics at Cornell University.

Read more less

This is the first English translation of Alain Bergala's seminal text on the potentials, possibilities, and problems of bringing film to schools and other educational contexts. Based on the author's own experiences of writing about and teaching film as well as serving as an adviser to then-Minister of Education Jack Lang, Bergala promotes an understanding of film as an autonomous art form – rather than viewing it as a supplement to other established school subjects. Film, for Bergala, is not something that has to smoothly blend into the school but something that can serve as a productive rupture, for both institution and pupil. Published in collaboration with the British Film Institute, this edition will be complemented by a new introduction on the occasion of its first appearance in English and a conversation with Bergala about the current state of film education on an international scale.

Read more less

TOM MILNE was aleading British filmCritic,contributing toSight& Sound, the Monthly Film Bulletin, The Observer, The Financial Times and The Times during his career. During the 1960s he worked at the British Film Institute asAssociate Editor of Sight& Sound and Editor of the Monthly Film Bulletin.In addition to his study of Mamoulian, published in the BFI/Thames& HudsonCinema One series,Milne published a number of monographson Film Directors Joseph Losey (1967) - also in the Cinema One series - and ashort study on the Danish Director Carl Theodor Dreyer (1971) and edited and translated an anthology of interviews and writings on Jean-Luc Godard (1972).Tom Milne had a lifelong interest in the translation and subtitling of French films for television screenings and was the Founding Editor of the Time Out Film Guide, first published in 1989. Introduction by GEOFF ANDREW - Head of the Film Programme at BFI Southbank, UK, and was previously Film Editor of Time Out London.He is the author of

Read more less

This book on rare books, holographs and historical artifacts in a single collection is a treasure in itself. With generous portions of passages paired with pictures and tastefully spiced with comments, this book is a feast to the intellect. I commend this book as an aperitivo for starters and a digestivo for the sated. Bon Appetit to all guests! Adoor Gopalakrishnan, India, Writer & Filmmaker, Recipient of India's highest film honour: Dadasaheb Phalke Award; Winner: British Film Institute Award; French honour: Commander of the Order of Arts & Letters About the Book Book of Books is a box of literary delights. Illustrated throughout, it provides a guided tour of rare books, manuscripts and historical artifacts in a single collection. The reader is invited to explore and enjoy carefully chosen pearls that dangle from the strands of Time. The theme runs across cultures and centuries from both East and West with excerpts from the works of many great authors including Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Omar Khayyam, Rabindranath Tagore and Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, and such notable figures as Abraham Lincoln and Mahatma Gandhi.

Read more less

This book offers the first full account of the film society movement in Britain and its contribution to post-World War Two film culture. It brings to life a lost history of alternative film exhibition and challenges the general assumption that the study of film began with university courses on ‘Film Studies’. Showing how film societies operated and the lasting impression they made on film culture, The Appreciation of Film details the history of film education in Britain. The book illuminates the changing relationship between volunteer-run societies and professionalised agencies promoting film art such as festivals, specialist commercial distributors and public bodies such as the British Film Institute. Drawing on original archival research and oral history interviews the book acknowledges the vigour and dedication of volunteer film society activists and presents contemporary readers with a record of their achievement. Written in an accessible style, this is a study of 16mm projectors, associational life and the making of film culture in Britain. It reclaims the marginalised civic cinephilia of volunteer film society activists whilst providing an alternative narrative of the emergence of film study in Britain.

Read more less

As one of the most globally recognisable instances of 20th century Eurohorror, Dario Argento's Suspiria (1976) is poetic, chaotic, and intriguing. The cult reputation of Argento's baroque nightmare is reflected in the critical praise it continues to receive almost 40 years after its original release, and it appears regularly on lists of the greatest horror films ever. For fans and critics alike, Suspiria is as mesmerising as it is impenetrable: the impact of Argento's notorious disinterest in matters of plot and characterisation combines with Suspiria's aggressive stylistic hyperactivity to render it a movie that needs to be experienced through the body as much as through emotion or the intellect. For its many fans, Suspiria is synonymous with European horror more broadly, and Argento himself is by far the most famous of all the Italian horror directors. If there was any doubt of his status as one of the great horror auteurs, Argento's international reputation was solidified well beyond the realms of cult fandom in the 1990s with retrospectives at both the American Museum of the Moving Image and the British Film Institute. This book considers the complex ways that Argento weaves together light, sound and cinema history to construct one of the most breathtaking horror movies of all time, a film as fascinating as it is ultimately unfathomable.

Read more less

The accompanying Analysing Media Texts DVD-ROM is the winner of the 2006 British Universities Film and Video Council 'Learning on Screen Award' for Interactive Media (Course and Curriculum related content). More about the awards and the shortlist can be found at www.bufvc.ac.uk/conferences/learningonscreen/losawards.htmlVisit the Understanding Media series microsite. This book provides an engaging introduction to analysing media texts. Students learn how to do semiotic, genre and narrative analysis, content and discourse analysis, and engage with debates about the politics of representation. Each chapter provides readings and worked examples, from the classic 1959 film melodrama by Douglas Sirk, Imitation of Life, to contemporary television ads. The book has an accompanying DVD-ROM for PC users. “Another exemplary volume from the OU presents a wide range of questions that cab be asked about mediated texts and the complexity of providing adequate answers to such questions. An enjoyable interactive DVD-ROM offers exercises that allow the reader to make the critical language their own." Professor Annabelle Sreberny, Centre for Media and Film Studies, SOAS. "This is an impressive resource, accessible and user-friendly, but authoritative in its development of established theories of textual analysis. The DVD-ROM offers a series of excellent exercises making this a 'must-have' for all undergraduate media studies courses." Professor Richard Paterson, British Film Institute. "An excellent introduction to the theory and practice of media analysis [and] a much-needed ‘toolkit’... The DVD-ROM, with its 'cool' design, clips gallery and innovative narrative sequence builder, allows students to put into practice skills acquired throughout the text and offers an important tool for bringing concepts to life… A wonderful addition to a first-rate series." Alison Griffiths, Associate Professor, Communication Studies, Baruch College, The City University of New York.

Read more less

The No. 1 Sunday Times and internationally bestselling account of life as a child with autism, now a documentary film Winner of Best Documentary and Best Sound in the British Independent Film Awards 2021. 'It will stretch your vision of what it is to be human' Andrew Solomon, The TimesWhat is it like to have autism? How can we know what a person - especially a child - with autism is thinking and feeling? This groundbreaking book, written by Naoki Higashida when he was only thirteen, provides some answers. Severely autistic and non-verbal, Naoki learnt to communicate by using a 'cardboard keyboard' - and what he has to say gives a rare insight into an autistically-wired mind. He explains behaviour he's aware can be baffling such as why he likes to jump and why some people with autism dislike being touched; he describes how he perceives and navigates the world, sharing his thoughts and feelings about time, life, beauty and nature; and he offers an unforgettable short story. Proving that people with autism do not lack imagination, humour or empathy, THE REASON I JUMP made a major impact on its publication in English. Widely praised, it was an immediate No. 1 Sunday Times bestseller as well as a New York Times bestseller and has since been published in over thirty languages.In 2020, a documentary film based on the book received its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival. Directed by Jerry Rothwell, produced by Jeremy Dear, Stevie Lee and Al Morrow, and funded by Vulcan Productions and the British Film Institute, it won the festival's Audience Award for World Cinema Documentary, then further awards at the Vancouver, Denver and Valladolid International Film Festivals before its global release in 2021.The book includes eleven original illustrations inspired by Naoki's words, by the artistic duo Kai and Sunny.

Read more less

Inventing Film Studies offers original and provocative insights into the institutional and intellectual foundations of cinema studies. Many scholars have linked the origins of the discipline to late-1960s developments in the academy such as structuralist theory and student protest. Yet this collection reveals the broader material and institutional forces—both inside and outside of the university—that have long shaped the field. Beginning with the first investigations of cinema in the early twentieth century, this volume provides detailed examinations of the varied social, political, and intellectual milieus in which knowledge of cinema has been generated. The contributors explain how multiple instantiations of film study have had a tremendous influence on the methodologies, curricula, modes of publication, and professional organizations that now constitute the university-based discipline. Extending the historical insights into the present, contributors also consider the directions film study might take in changing technological and cultural environments.Inventing Film Studies shows how the study of cinema has developed in relation to a constellation of institutions, technologies, practices, individuals, films, books, government agencies, pedagogies, and theories. Contributors illuminate the connections between early cinema and the social sciences, between film programs and nation-building efforts, and between universities and U.S. avant-garde filmmakers. They analyze the evolution of film studies in relation to the Museum of Modern Art, the American Film Council movement of the 1940s and 1950s, the British Film Institute, influential journals, cinephilia, and technological innovations past and present. Taken together, the essays in this collection reveal the rich history and contemporary vitality of film studies. Contributors: Charles R. Acland, Mark Lynn Anderson, Mark Betz, Zoë Druick, Lee Grieveson, Stephen Groening, Haden Guest, Amelie Hastie, Lynne Joyrich, Laura Mulvey, Dana Polan, D. N. Rodowick, Philip Rosen, Alison Trope, Haidee Wasson, Patricia White, Sharon Willis, Peter Wollen, Michael Zryd

Read more less

The first comprehensive biography of the director behind Godzilla and other Japanese sci-fi classics.Ishiro Honda was arguably the most internationally successful Japanese director of his generation, with an unmatched succession of science fiction films that were commercial hits worldwide. From the atomic allegory of Godzilla and the beguiling charms of Mothra to the tragic mystery of Matango and the disaster and spectacle of Rodan, The Mysterians, King Kong vs. Godzilla, and many others, Honda's films reflected postwar Japan's real-life anxieties and incorporated fantastical special effects, a formula that appealed to audiences around the globe and created a popular culture phenomenon that spans generations. Now, in the first full account of this long overlooked director's life and career, authors Steve Ryfle and Ed Godziszewski shed new light on Honda's work and the experiences that shaped it—including his days as a reluctant Japanese soldier, witnessing the aftermath of Hiroshima, and his lifelong friendship with Akira Kurosawa. Ishiro Honda: A Life in Film, from Godzilla to Kurosawa features close analysis of Honda's films (including, for the first time, his rarely seen dramas, comedies, and war films) and draws on previously untapped documents and interviews to explore how creative, economic, and industrial factors impacted his career. Fans of Honda, Godzilla, and tokusatsu (special effects) film, and of Japanese film in general, will welcome this in-depth study of a highly influential director who occupies a uniquely important position in science fiction and fantasy cinema, as well as in world cinema.Together, the authors have provided audio commentary tracks and produced supplemental material for numerous home video releases, including Ishiro Honda's Godzilla for the British Film Institute. They co-produced the documentary feature Bringing Godzilla Down to Size (2008).

Read more less

The No. 1 Sunday Times and internationally bestselling account of life as a child with autism, now an award-winning documentary film. 'It will stretch your vision of what it is to be human' Andrew Solomon, The TimesWhat is it like to have autism? How can we know what a person - especially a child - with autism is thinking and feeling? This groundbreaking book, written by Naoki Higashida when he was only thirteen, provides some answers. Severely autistic and non-verbal, Naoki learnt to communicate by using a 'cardboard keyboard' - and what he has to say gives a rare insight into an autistically-wired mind. He explains behaviour he's aware can be baffling such as why he likes to jump and why some people with autism dislike being touched; he describes how he perceives and navigates the world, sharing his thoughts and feelings about time, life, beauty and nature; and he offers an unforgettable short story. Proving that people with autism do not lack imagination, humour or empathy, THE REASON I JUMP made a major impact on its publication in English. Widely praised, it was an immediate No. 1 Sunday Times bestseller as well as a New York Times bestseller and has since been published in over thirty languages. In 2020, a documentary film based on the book received its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival. Directed by Jerry Rothwell, produced by Jeremy Dear, Stevie Lee and Al Morrow, and funded by Vulcan Productions and the British Film Institute, it won the festival's Audience Award for World Cinema Documentary, then further awards at the Vancouver, Denver and Valladolid International Film Festivals before its global release in 2021.The book includes eleven original illustrations inspired by Naoki's words, by the artistic duo Kai and Sunny.

Read more less