This book tells inspirational stories of women who have worked with and within communities to bring stories to life through screenwriting. As such the book evidences that women’s work is important; that ‘films can change lives’. The collection divides the chapters according to worlds, in recognition of the fact that though we live on one planet, the conditions of existence are vastly different between first and third worlds; between the wealthiest and the poorest.



Each chapter shows how attitudes have shifted, policies have been rewritten, and life experiences and horizons have been altered for specific communities through these instances of screenwriting. The themes touched upon include gender, race, disability, culture, war, colonization, labour relations, political ideologies, to name a few. The parallels found amongst these themes across national, religious and cultural divides, are also telling. The book is wide in its scope, considering screenwriting a skill which can apply to games, social media, music videos, virtual reality … in fact, any of the burgeoning formats alive on our devices and through constantly evolving platforms. All are considered screenwriting.



The book is a celebration of the female writers who have told screen stories that educate and heal.



The book suits readers across disciplines, including screenwriting, filmmaking, women’s studies, history, sociology, and many other areas.

The annual Beijing Film Academy Yearbook highlights the best academic debates, discussions and research from the previous year, as previously published in the highly prestigious Journal of Beijing Film Academy. This volume brings together specially selected articles, appearing for the first time in English, to bridge the gap in cross-cultural research in cinema and media studies.

The book is the latest in the Intellect China Library series to produce work by Chinese scholars that has not previously been available to English language academia. Covering the subjects of film studies, visual arts, performing arts, media and cultural studies, the series aims to foster intellectual debate and to promote closer cross-cultural intellectual exchanges by introducing important works of Chinese scholarship to readers.

This book examines film reviewing and screenwriting as key sites of cultural mediation, providing new insights on the relationship between criticism and reviewing, as well as the way reviewers handle concepts of story, dialogue, and narrative.



Drawing on the work of Pierre Bourdieu on the cultural field, and his theory of taste, the book provides an assessment of the place of film reviewing in contemporary screen culture. The book analyses a case study comprised of ten years of television scripts of the Australian film reviewing programme, At the Movies (2004–2014). Hosted by two of Australia’s most eminent film critics, Margaret Pomeranz and David Stratton, for over two decades, this study of At the Movies provides a unique window into film reviewing, movie consumption, and wider cultural attitudes in this period of Australian cultural history. It examines the programme’s cultural significance, and the contribution of Margaret and David to screen culture.



This book makes a significant contribution to an under-studied area of media studies (the review), screenwriting research through the analysis of broadcast scripts, and cultural studies through the study of an important television programme.

This article aims to demonstrate the value of applying a star-studies approach to the examination of screenplay archives. This methodological framework is illustrated through a case study of the documents from the collection deposited by director Claude Autant-Lara at the Swiss National Film Archive that relate to the genesis of the film Love Is My Profession (1958). This film is notable for its cast, which includes two leading stars: Jean Gabin, an established actor associated with classical cinema for over two decades, and Brigitte Bardot, a rising icon of the French New Wave. The study reveals how the multiple screenplay variants for this adaptation of a Simenon novel, successively drafted by Autant-Lara, Jean Aurenche and Pierre Bost, were partly shaped by the involvement of these two stars, whose participation was planned from the project’s inception. Examining specific choices among the many possibilities envisioned highlights the significance of considering screenplays within a socio-historical perspective. This analysis draws on a rich collection of documents including, for example, scattered notes written day by day by the filmmaker, or letters exchanged between him and his producer, who insisted that the romance between the characters played by the two stars take centre stage.

Female characters in African crime films play diverse roles, influencing the progression of the stories and diegetic situations. This is particularly significant in African crime films, where male characters have dominated leading roles. Through the analysis of Kemi Adetiba’s King of Boys (2018) and Victor Gatonye’s 40 Sticks (2020), this article discusses the leading female characters’ embodiment of agency of gendered power in the context of crime genre lawlessness as a useful metaphor for representing women leadership and motherhood. The inferences drawn from observation of the films, interspersed with secondary data sourced from books, journals, online articles and behind-the-scenes documentaries, inform the discussions on female characters’ depiction in the sampled films as material to a critique of gendered antagonisms as microcosms of women within African societies.

Review of: Le cose non dette, Patrizia Fregonese de Filippo (dir.) (2023), Italy: Kalabrone Film and A.C.E.R.