Irony and the satirical impulse in cinema have gradually lost favor, mockery increasingly more selective in its choice of targets. As Linda Hutcheon notes, irony is becoming a problematic mode of expression in the 21st century.



The book examines the work of eight film auteurs: Luis Bunuel, RW Fassbinder, Stanley Kubrick, Robert Altman, Paul Verhoeven, Aki Kaurismaki, Aleksei Balabanov and David Lynch, much of whose work is not always regarded thus and the films examined are often more ironic than satirical. From apparent melodrama and eroticism to fantasy and horror, these eight directors redefine satire’s limits, providing evidence that irony in cinema often goes unrecognised.



The introduction examines the various categories of satire, and the chapters then study the filmmakers individually through selected works, offering interpretations of films and identifying a consistent approach. Since the work is often ambiguous the book speculates on each film’s purport, engaging in textual interpretation of individual works to understand concerns underneath the most obvious. The Afterword tries to find common targets and strategies on the filmmakers’ part.

A Renaissance is underway. It can be seen as a response to environmental, societal and ethical issues so acute that human survival is in question. Artistic, philosophical and political, it builds on the scientific revolutions of the last decades and positions itself in relation to technoscientific and transhumanist promises. Within this Wild Renaissance, man no longer positions himself as master and owner, imposing his will on a passive and purposeless nature. He makes ready to listen to a new partner: the world around him. He discovers the potential of its forces, which he both harnesses and engages with, joining them with his own. A new era is taking shape, restoring man to his “wild” dignity and giving his existence meaning, joy and ambition. An art is emerging that is redefining the paradigms of creation. Its work is in the vanguard of this societal project.

There is a major tendency in contemporary art and design, and perhaps the most innovative one, that is putting in place new ways of working and producing works which represent a significant break with the principles that have guided modernity up to the present. We are witnessing the beginnings of a renaissance that can be described as “wild.” Powerfully ambitious, it stands as a response to the acute environmental, societal and ethical questions raised in today’s world and, at their heart, the very survival of the human species as we enter the Anthropocene era. It bears witness to massive shifts in consciousness, and echoes a call for a change that is becoming increasingly audible. Nature, or, more precisely, a new way of being “wild” – that is to say, of thinking and acting on the Earth, is the key reference around which the contents of an alternative common destiny are being articulated. The “Wild Renaissance” is supplanting both the modernity that placed man at the center of the world, assigning him the vocation of becoming the master and owner of nature, and postmodernity, which put an end to the great narratives and left only an absolute relativism incapable of supporting new sustainable models.



The word “renaissance” is not used lightly. It stems from a philosophical and ecological analysis of the turn of the 15th and 16th centuries in Italy. This upheaval did not come out of nowhere. Today, as back then, a period of some hundred and fifty yeas paved the way for its emergence. The proto-Wild Renaissance goes from the mid-19th century to the early 21st century. The evolution and convergence of art, philosophy and the sciences of the environment can be observed there in relation to key historical and political moments that have repeatedly raised the question of the continuing habitability of the Earth.



The Wild Renaissance is articulated around a renewed vision of humankind and nature. Humankind no longer aspires to impose its will on a passive, purposeless nature. Instead, it is beginning to listen to a new partner: the world around it. Humanity is discovering the potential of these forces and entering into a relation with them, allying them with its own. Humanity is going from from master to collaborator, assuming an ecological responsibility that goes hand in hand with a revived dignity and an existence that is all the more exciting for all that. Already-established figures in contemporary art and design together with emerging creators are at the forefront of this new movement. The works and practices analyzed here are shown in a new light, with a fresh understanding of their historical grounding, conceptual underpinnings and significance for the present.

Previously published in French by Presses Universitaires de France (PUF).

World Film Locations: Los Angeles Volume 2 is an engaging and highly visual city-wide tour of both well known and slightly lesser known films shot on location in one of the birthplaces of cinema and the ‘screen spectacle’. It pairs 50 synopses of carefully chosen film scenes with evocative full-colour film stills.

When the World Film Locations series was launched in 2011, with volumes on Los Angeles, New York, Paris and Tokyo, the world was a different place. Although interest in film locations has grown steadily for years as people seek to walk in the footsteps of their cinematic idols by visiting sites from their favorite movies – the recent global lockdown seems to have only increased an appetite for cinetourism; prompting us to consider a second volume for one of the world’s most evocative and enduring locations. The city of Los Angeles, with its meandering sun-baked sweep and beautifully fractured topography, continues to lure filmmakers into its clutches – affording an endless panoply of locations to prop up both character and story. Since 2011, thousands of new productions have made the most of what the city has to offer; using, reusing and discovering places that will surely become sites of pilgrimage in years to come - and while this volume includes just 50 of them, our modest selection is carefully curated to compliment volume 1 and further reveal both the well-known and more hidden parts of a Los Angeles in constant flux. 

The heart of Hollywood’s star-studded film industry for more than a century, Los Angeles and its abundant and ever-changing locales – from the Santa Monica Pier to the infamous and now-defunct Ambassador Hotel – have set the scene for a wide variety of cinematic treasures, from Chinatown to Forrest Gump, Falling Down to the coming-of-age classic Boyz n The Hood.



This second volume marks an engaging citywide tour of the many films shot on location in this birthplace of cinema and the screen spectacle. World Film Locations: Los Angeles Vol 2 pairs fifty incisive synopses of carefully chosen film scenes – both famous and lesser-known – with an accompanying array of evocative full-colour film stills, demonstrating how motion pictures have contributed to the multifarious role of the city in our collective consciousness, as well as how key cinematic moments reveal aspects of its life and culture that are otherwise largely hidden from view.



Insightful essays and interviews throughout turn the spotlight on the important directors, iconic locations, thematic elements and historical periods that provide insight into Los Angeles and its vibrant cinematic culture. Rounding out this information are city maps with information on how to locate key features, as well as photographs showing featured locations as they appear now.



A guided tour of the City of Angels conducted by the likes of John Cassavetes, Robert Altman, Nicholas Ray, Michael Mann and Roman Polanski, World Film Locations: Los Angeles Vol 2 is a concise and user-friendly guide to how Los Angeles has captured the imaginations of both filmmakers and those of us sitting transfixed in theatres worldwide.

 

Italy’s 1948 constitution states that Italy is a ‘republic founded upon work’. This book explores women’s labour following World War Two and Italy’s new republic. It focuses its enquiry on three sectors: agriculture (rice weeders), fashion (seamstresses), and religious work (nuns). It studies original oral history interviews and compares women’s own words with their representation in film.

In Italy, both war and national reconstruction have typically been framed as masculine undertakings. This book shifts that frame to investigate the labour that Italian women were doing at this critical time of political, social, and ideological change. By examining (filmed) oral history interviews and postwar fiction films, the book brings a vivid, engaging, and cross-disciplinary account of women’s work.

Historical studies of Italian women’s work in this period are scarce, short, and almost never in English; this work addresses that critical gap. Film histories almost invariably study women for their beauty and on-screen sexuality; this work critiques and moves beyond this bias. Oral history studies aim to give voice to the under-represented; this book shares that goal.

The book is interested in how women’s work was viewed by society and by women workers themselves. Critical analysis of films produced between 1945 and 1965 reveals tensions around women workers’ financial, sexual, intellectual, and spatial independence. Oral histories reveal little-discussed professions and women’s experiences in the workplace. These interviews expose the profound difference work made to women’s lives, and the joys and dilemmas of this difference.

In this lavishly illustrated volume, Laura Lee introduces the art of Tokyo-based digital art collective teamLab, which has soared to global fame with its electrifying immersive and interactive installations. The first of its kind, Worlds Unbound: The Art of teamLab provides a comprehensive overview of teamLab’s artistic vision and achievements from its beginnings to its twentieth anniversary in 2021, and illuminates the remarkable scope of teamLab’s groundbreaking art and its fundamental contribution to the pivotal field of new media art.

This original new book, the first scholarly monograph on this popular group, unpacks the popularity and success of the digital immersive environments created worldwide by the Tokyo-based collective, teamLab, from multiple perspectives and addresses the lack of critical appreciation of their work. The book includes an extensive interview with teamLab.

teamLab launched in January 2001 with five members and now comprises more than 600 individuals in a multidisciplinary collaboration of engineers, computer graphics animators, mathematicians, graphic designers, architects, artists and computer programmers.

The digital art collective has attained international celebrity for its electrifying installations that transcend boundaries between gallery, public space and popular entertainment and, judging from press coverage, ticket sales and prolific production, it seems clear teamLab’s success is only on the rise. In 2018, the collective opened the MORI Building DIGITAL ART MUSEUM: teamLab Borderless, a massive technological environment in Tokyo that recorded 2.3 million visitors in its first year of operation – the world’s largest annual number of visitors of any single-artist museum. The same year saw numerous other high-profile immersive exhibitions, including teamLab: Massless in Helsinki, Au-delà des limites in Paris, and teamLab Planets TOKYO, a second exhibition in Tokyo.

These were quickly followed by two new museums, teamLab Borderless Shanghai in 2019 and, in 2020, teamLab SuperNature in Macao. The vast sea of selfies that have emerged from these venues index the collective’s soaring global popularity.

At the same time, teamLab’s works have found art market success and have been exhibited in major museums worldwide, including the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC and Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), and they are part of the permanent collection of The Art Gallery of New South Wales, the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, and Amos Rex in Helsinki, among numerous others. This canonization of teamLab’s art belies the fact that the group did not have a traditional gallery start, and in fact teamLab has always engaged in software development and corporate work, in addition to creating artworks. The collective thus boasts an enigmatic status, spanning conventional categories and defying traditional art world pedigree. In so doing it has produced a tremendously rich body of work that speaks to several overlapping issues pertinent to contemporary art while advancing a unique artistic vision.

Primary readership will include artists, art historians and visual studies scholars who are particularly interested in the most recent media art and Japanese contemporary art. It will be an essential resource for students and scholars working in Japanese art, global contemporary art, digital art, augmented reality, expanded cinema and installation art and related fields.

It will also be of more general interest to those who have visited, or hope to visit, teamLab environments worldwide.

In Writing Belonging at the Millennium, Emily Potter critically considers the long-standing settler-colonial pursuit of belonging manifested through an obsession with firm and stable ground. This pursuit continues across the field of the postcolonial nation today; the recognition of colonization’s destructive impacts on humans and environments troublingly generates a renewed desire to secure non-indigenous belonging. Focusing on the crucial role that Australia’s contemporary literature plays in shaping ideas of place and its inhabitation, Potter tracks non-indigenous belonging claims through a range of fiction and non-fiction texts to examine how settler-colonial anxieties about belonging intersect with intensifying environmental challenges. Significantly, she proposes that new understandings of unsettled and uncertain non-indigenous belonging may actually be fruitful context for decolonizing relations with place – something that is imperative in a time of heightened global environmental crisis.

By paying tribute to matter, materiality and materialisation, the examples of contemporary art assembled in What’s Next? Eco Materialism and Contemporary Art challenge the social, cultural and ethical norms that prevailed in the twentieth century. This significant frontier of contemporary culture is identified as Eco Materialism because it affirms the emergent philosophy of Neo Materialism and attends to the pragmatic urgency of environmentalism.     

In this highly original book, Linda Weintraub surveys the work of 40 international artists who present materiality as a strategy to convert society’s environmental neglect into responsible stewardship. These bold art initiatives, enriched by their associations with philosophy, ecology and cultural critique, bear the hallmark of a significant new art movement. This accessible text, written for students and a wider readership, is augmented with interactive opportunities that actuate eco material attitudes and behaviours. They invite readers to engage in this timely arena of contemporary art. 

Printed in high quality black and white throughout, colour reproductions of the artworks discussed are available to view through the author's website.

Emily Brontë’s beloved novel Wuthering Heights has been adapted countless times for film and television over the decades. Valérie V.Hazette offers here a historical and transnational study of those adaptations, presenting the afterlife of the book as a series of cultural journeys that focuses as much on the readers, filmmakers, and viewers as on the dramas themselves. Taking in the British silent film; French, Mexican, and Japanese versions; the British television serials; and more, this richly theoretical volume is the first comprehensive global analysis of the adaptation of Wuthering Heights for film and television.

Florence, with its rich history, privileged place in the canon of Western art, and long-standing relationship with the moving image, is a cinematic city equal to Venice or Rome. World Film Locations: Florence explores the city as it is manifested in the minds of filmmakers and filmgoers. Contributors to the collection consider a wide range of topics, including the tourist’s perception of Florence, representations of art and artists on screen, the camera-friendly Tuscan countryside and mouthwatering local cuisine and filmic adaptations of canonical Italian literature. Through scene reviews of films, including Bobby Deerfield, A Room with a View, Tea with Mussolini and Under the Tuscan Sun, World Film Locations: Florence delves deeper into the makeup of the city, looking at both familiar and unfamiliar locations through the lens of such filmmakers as Roberto Rossellini, Mario Monicelli, Brian DePalma and Ridley Scott.

Havana is among the world’s leading cinematic locales. In films made beyond the island as well as those created by local cineastes, Havana is depicted as a vibrant Caribbean city. The quantity and quality of the works representing this tropical cityscape attest to the prominence of this film location and underscore the need for a book dedicated to it. World Film Locations: Havana situates Havana as a modern city in pre-Revolutionary times, noting the architectural and cultural shifts evident during the revolution, and comments on recent reconfigurations of the city and its inhabitants in the wake of global forces. Among the forty-six scene reviews chosen to show the city in all its multifaceted-glory, films such as Our Man in Havana, I Am Cuba, Hello Hemingway, Habana Blues and Chico and Rita are bookended by seven insightful essays. The essays look at the history of revolutionary cinema in Cuba and consider documentary films, from the Latin American Newsreel to avant-garde experimental work, including the island’s documentary tradition showcasing local faces and places that have paved the way for present-day media and audio-visual art. The essays also explore the multifaceted film culture of the capital, the cine club movement, historic cinemas and film venues around the city, the abundance of film festivals such as the International Festival of New Latin American Cinema and film-themed cafeterias, restaurants, bookstores and markets.

Celebrating Shanghai’s rich cinematic history, the films covered here represent a lengthy time period, from the first Golden Age of Chinese Cinema in the 1930s to the city’s status as an international production hub in 2013. Given the enduring status of Shanghai as the 'Paris of the East,' World Film Locations: Shanghai emphasizes the city’s cosmopolitan glamour through locations that are steeped in cinematic exoticism, while also probing the reality behind the image by investigating its backstreets and residential zones. To facilitate this study of Shanghai’s dual identity through reference to film locations, the book includes films from both the commercial and independent sectors, with a balance between images captured by local filmmakers and the visions of Western directors who have also utilized the city for their projects. With numerous essays that reflect Shanghai’s relationship to film and scene reviews of such iconic titles as Street Angel, Temptress Moon, Kung Fu Hustle, and Skyfall, World Film Locations: Shanghai is essential reading for all scholars of China’s urban culture.

Founded by the Puritans in 1630 and the site of many of the American Revolution’s major precursors and events (including the Boston Massacre, the Boston Tea Party and Paul Revere’s midnight ride, among others), Boston has played – and continues to play – an influential role in the shaping of the historic, intellectual, cultural and political landscapes of the United States. And Boston has a significantly rich tradition of cinematic representation. While Harvard is central to many of the films set in the Greater Boston area, World Film Locations: Boston considers the full spectrum of Boston’s abundant aesthetic potential, reviewing films located within as well as far beyond Harvard’s hallowed halls and ivy-covered gates. Many iconic American classics, blockbusters, romantic comedies and legal thrillers, as well as films examining Boston’s criminal under-side, particularly in juxtaposition to the city’s elitist high society, were filmed on location in the city’s streets and back lots. World Film Locations: Boston looks in depth into a highly select group of forty-six films such as Love Story, Good Will Hunting, The Friends of Eddy Coyle, and The Social Network, among many others, presented at the intersection of critical analysis and stunning visual critique (with material from the films themselves as well as photographs of the contemporary city locations). Featuring articles and film scene reviews written by a variety of leading contemporary film writers, critics and scholars, this book is a multimedia resource that will find a welcome audience in movie lovers in Beantown and beyond.

With Nature provides new ways to think about our relationship with nature in today’s technologically mediated culture. Warwick Mules makes original connections with German critical philosophy and French poststructuralism in order to examine the effects of technology on our interactions with the natural world. In so doing, the author proposes a new way of thinking about the eco-self in terms of a careful sharing of the world with both human and non-human beings. With Nature ultimately argues for a poetics of everyday life that affirms the place of the human-nature relation as a creative and productive site for ecological self-renewal and redirection.

São Paulo is the largest city in South America and the powerhouse of Brazil’s economy. A multi-racial metropolis with a diverse population of Asian, Arabic and European immigrants as well as migrants from other parts of Brazil, it is a global city with international reach. Films set in São Paulo often replace the postcard images of beautiful tropical beaches and laid-back lifestyles with working environments and the search for better opportunities. Bikinis and flip flops give way to urban subcultures, sport, entertainment and artistic movements. The ability to transcend national boundaries, and its resistance to stereotypical images of an 'exotic' Brazil, make São Paulo a fascinating location in which to explore Brazil’s changing economic and cultural landscapes. 

Outside of the capital London, no other British city has attracted more film-makers than Liverpool. Sometimes standing in for London, New York, Chicago, Paris, Rome or Moscow, and sometimes playing itself – or a version of its own past in Beatles biopics – Liverpool is an adaptable filmic backdrop that has attracted film-makers to its ports for decades. A place of passion, humour and pride, Liverpool evokes caverns and cathedrals, ferries and football grounds; it is a city so vivid we see it clearly even if we’ve never been there. From the earliest makers of moving images – among them the Mitchell & Kenyon film company, the Lumière brothers and pioneering early cinematographer Claude Friese-Greene – who preserved the city, the river, the docks, the streets and the people, Liverpool has endured as a cinematic destination. This collection celebrates that survival instinct and will be welcomed by enthusiasts of British cities, films and culture.

World Film Locations: Vancouver highlights the work of such Canadian filmmakers who have received less attention than they merit, whilst bringing insight into how so-called ‘runaway’ productions from Hollywood use Vancouver to stand in for other locations, from Seattle, USA to Lagos, Nigeria. Analyses of 38 different film scenes reveal the cinematic city in its myriad forms, while spotlight essays provide insight into the creativity and contradictions of Vancouver’s film industry throughout the ages. The essays examine the following topics: the masking of Vancouver’s indigenous stories in filmic representations of the city; Australian screenwriter James Clavell’s Vancouver-set debut The Sweet and the Bitter; Sylvia Spring’s Madeleine Is..., the first female-directed feature in Canada; Jonathan Kaplan’s The Accused, for which Jodie Foster won an Oscar; and, the use of Vancouver locations in a number of US television crime series. World Film Locations: Vancouver offers new perspectives on the west coast city and in doing so sheds further light upon the relationship between the movies and the metropolis.

While some call it the Second City, Chicago is no stranger to the silver screen. Director Christopher Nolan transformed Chicago into the darkly foreboding Gotham City for The Dark Knight . Ferris Bueller rode a parade float down Dearborn and made stops during his epic day off at a host of landmarks, from Buckingham Fountain to Wrigley Field. Everyone’s favourite foul-mouthed blues act ended their film’s climactic chase by taking the Bluesmobile through the plate-glass windows of the Richard J. Daley Center. With World Film Locations: Chicago , critic Scott Jordan Harris takes readers on a cinematic tour of the city, featuring modern blockbusters and beloved classics. Along the way, scenes from almost fifty films made or set in the city are discussed, accompanied by full-colour stills and interspersed with essays examining the city’s unique character onscreen. Among the contributors are Gordon Quinn, cofounder of Chicago’s Kartemquim Films; Elizabeth Weitzman, film critic for the New York Daily News; the BBC’s Samira Ahmed; and Steve James, director of the coming-of-age classic Hoop Dreams. For readers hoping to locate landmarks from favourite films, the book also includes detailed maps that point out key scenes. A fun and fact-packed read, World Film Locations: Chicago will be welcomed by film fans and anyone planning a trip to the Windy City.