Film Studies
The Traumatic Screen
Christopher Nolan occupies a rare realm within the Hollywood mainstream creating complex original films that achieve both critical acclaim and commercial success. In The Traumatic Screen Stuart Joy builds on contemporary applications of psychoanalytic film theory to consider the function and presentation of trauma across Nolan’s work arguing that the complexity thematic consistency and fragmentary nature of his films mimic the structural operation of trauma.
From 1997’s Doodlebug to 2017’s Dunkirk Nolan’s films highlight cinema’s ability to probe the nature of human consciousness while commenting on the relationship between spectator and screen. Joy examines Nolan’s treatment of trauma – both individual and collective – through the formal construction mise en scène and repeated themes of his films. The argument presented is based on close textual analysis and a methodological framework that incorporates the works of Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan. The first in-depth overtly psychoanalytic understanding of trauma in the context of the director’s filmography this book builds on and challenges existing scholarship in a bold new interpretation of the Nolan canon.
American Presidents and Oliver Stone
Perhaps no current filmmaker has made more provocative films about American history than Oliver Stone. In this book Carl Freedman gives a detailed and nuanced account of the presidencies of John F. Kennedy Richard Nixon and George W. Bush as fictionalized in Stone’s biographical films JFK Nixon and W.
Offering detailed historical perspectives alongside careful aesthetic criticism Freedman explores how Stone uses melodrama tragedy and farce to transform politics into national mythology. Synthesizing film criticism with political and historical analysis the book transcends the limitations of formalism and empiricism reflecting on both Stone’s achievements as a filmmaker and American politics of the past sixty years.
Oliver Stone’s importance among filmmakers as the major chronicler of recent US history is the starting point for the analysis of his three ‘presidential’ films: JFK Nixon and W. While not claiming equal artistic merit for Stone’s films Freedman makes some comparison with Shakespeare’s history plays and draws on T.S. Eliot’s notion of ‘essential history’ to transcend the barren dichotomy of formalism versus empiricism – that is treating historical fiction as either only pure fiction with nothing to say about real history or judging it as non-fiction by the extent to which it adheres to superficial historical detail. Instead the focus is on the capacity of Stone’s films to illuminate the structural workings of history contemporary and general.
Freedman is thoroughly familiar with his subject and his meticulous attention to historical accuracy and critical attention to the films is impeccable. This book has a powerfully original focus and makes a significant contribution to the field through offering these detailed historical perspectives alongside much more careful aesthetic criticism of the films. It has the potential to become not only a great source on its subject but a model of how to approach historical fiction in general.
This is an academic study but is written in such an accessible style that it will have genuine appeal to the general reader – to anyone with an interest in cinema politics and recent history. Wide-ranging accessible and highly original American Presidents combines erudition and complex analysis with jargon-free writing and is sure to engage anyone interested in the intersection of American politics and cinema.
The academic readership will be among humanities scholars and students of film popular culture media politics political history and modern history. It will be highly relevant to undergraduate and postgraduate students studying film or modern American history and culture.
Radical Mainstream
Radical Mainstream examines independent film and video cultures in Britain from the mid-1970s to the late 1980s in the context of struggles against capitalism patriarchy racism colonialism and homophobia examining relations between counterpublics and social change. The book considers this period in order to examine the capacity for radical discourse to affect dominant cultural media forms arguing that independent film- and video-makers helped transform television into a vital site of counterpublic discourse.
The end of the twentieth century saw the development of new social models of film and video production and exhibition alongside the formation of new alliances to campaign for changes to social practice policy and legislature. Radical Mainstream explores the interrelation between public debate institutions and individuals arguing that independent film and video in Britain at this time – including activist documentary currents of counter-cinema avant-garde film and video art – were largely concerned with creating and circulating counterpublic discourses. The book traces the diversity of the influences on independent film and video from socialist and liberation movements to popular radical histories and psychoanalytic and Marxist film theory. The account provides a historic backdrop to contemporary documentary and moving image work and illuminates the heritage of critical thinking within such practices.
Film Studies in China 2
Film Studies in China 2 is a collection of selected articles chosen from issues of the journal Contemporary Cinema published throughout the year and translated for an English-speaking audience. As one of the most prestigious academic film studies journals in China Contemporary Cinema has been active not only in publishing Chinese scholarship for Chinese readers but also in reaching out to academics from across the globe. This anthology hopes to encourage a cross-cultural academic conversation on the fields of Chinese cinema and media studies. Following the successful release of the first volume this is the second collection to be released in the Film Studies in China series.
Women in Iberian Filmic Culture
Though cinema arrived in Spain and Portugal at the end of the nineteenth century national and industrial problems as well as the dictatorships of Salazar and Caetano (in Portugal) and Franco (in Spain) meant Iberian cinemas were isolated from European cultural trends. Strict censorship in both countries limited the themes and artistic practices adopted while a specific cinematographic language in many cases full of metaphors and symbolism sought alternatives to the imposed official discourse and preconceived definitions of supposed national identities. By contrast the arrival of democracy from the 1970s onwards widened not just the panorama of film production and criticism but also opened the film industry to women’s participation in areas historically assigned to men.
Focusing on Portuguese and Spanish cinema this collection brings together research about women and their status in relation to Iberian filmic culture. The volume contributes to ongoing debates about the position of women in the cinemas of Portugal and Spain from interdisciplinary and feminist perspectives as well as new accounts of film history. It also aims to promote comparisons between Iberian cinemas and visual culture a topic that is almost unexplored in academia despite the similar histories of the two countries particularly throughout the twentieth century.
Fellini’s Films and Commercials
Federico Fellini’s distinct style delighted generations of film viewers and inspired filmmakers and artists around the world. In Fellini’s Films and Commercials: From Postwar to Postmodern renowned Fellini scholar Frank Burke presents a film-by-film analysis of the famed director’s cinematic output from a theoretical perspective. The book explores Fellini’s movement from relatively classic filmmaking to modernist reflexivity and then to ‘postmodern reproduction’. Burke moves from analysis of stories told from a relatively ‘objective’ standpoint to increased concentration on Fellini-as-author and on the cinematic apparatus to Fellini’s dismantling of authorship and cinematic apparatus to his postmodern signifying strategies. Grounded in poststructuralist approaches to texts and signification Burke shows that Fellini is profoundly readable if extremely complex.
Revisiting Burke’s 1996 Fellini’s Films: From Postwar to Postmodern this new edition includes revised material from the original plus a new preface and new chapter on the filmmaker’s work on commercials. Elegantly written and thoroughly researched this book is essential reading for Fellini fans and scholars.
Understanding Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey
Scholars have been studying the films of Stanley Kubrick for decades. This book however breaks new ground by bringing together recent empirical approaches to Kubrick with earlier formalist approaches to arrive at a broader understanding of the ways in which Kubrick’s methods were developed to create the unique aesthetic creation that is 2001: A Space Odyssey. More than 50 years after its release contributors explore the film’s still striking design vision and philosophical structure offering new insights and analyses that will give even dedicated Kubrick fans new ways of thinking about the director and his masterpiece.
The Architecture of Cinematic Spaces
The Architecture of Cinematic Spaces by Interiors is a graphic exploration of architectural spaces in cinema that provides a new perspective on the relationship between architecture and film. Combining critical essays with original architectural floor plan drawings the book discusses production design in key films from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries including The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari Rope Le mépris Playtime 2001: A Space Odyssey Home Alone Panic Room A Single Man Her and Columbus. Each chapter is accompanied by an original floor plan of a key scene bridging the gap between film criticism and architectural practice. The book written by the editors of the critically acclaimed online journal Interiors will appeal to both film and architecture communities and everyone in between. A must-read for fans and scholars alike this volume prompts us to reconsider the spaces our favourite characters occupy and to listen to the stories those spaces can tell.
Architecture Filmmaking
Unlike other books on architecture and film Architecture Filmmaking investigates how the now-expanded field of architecture utilizes the practice of filmmaking (feature/short film stop motion animation and documentary) or video/moving image in research teaching and practice and what the consequences of this interdisciplinary exchange are. While architecture and filmmaking have clearly distinct disciplinary outputs and filmmaking is a much younger art than architecture the intersection between them is less defined. This book investigates the ways in which architectural researchers teachers of architecture their students and practising architects filmmakers and artists are using filmmaking uniquely in their practice.
The Poetics and Politics of the Veil in Iran
This volume explores the lives of women in Iran through the social political and aesthetic contexts of veiling unveiling and re-veiling. Through poetic writings and photographs Azadeh Fatehrad responds to the legacy of the Iranian Revolution via the representation of women in photography literature and film. The images and texts are documentary analytical and personal.
The Poetics and Politics of the Veil in Iran features Fatehrad’s own photographs in addition to work by artists Hengameh Golestan Shirin Neshat Shadi Ghadirian Abbas Kiarostami Mohsen Makhmalbaf Adolf Loos Gaëtan Gatian de Clérambault and Alison Watt. In exploring women’s lives in post-revolutionary Iran Fatehrad considers the role of the found image and the relationship between the archive and the present resulting in an illuminating history of feminism in Iran in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
Teachers and Teaching on Stage and on Screen
Why are educators and their profession the focus of so much film and theatre? Diane Conrad and Monica Prendergast bring together scholars and practitioners in education examining dramatic portrayals of teachers and teaching to answer this very question. Films such as Freedom Writers Bad Teacher and School of Rock to name a few intentionally or inadvertently comment on education and influence the opinions and ultimately the experiences of anyone who has taught or been taught. The chapters gathered in this collection critique the Hollywood 'good teacher' repertoire delve into satiric parodies and alternative representations and explore issues through analyses of independent and popular films and plays from around the world. By examining teacher-student relationships institutional cultures societal influences and much more Teachers and Teaching on Stage and on Screen addresses these media’s varied fascinations with the educator like no collection before it.
The Idea of the Avant Garde
The concept of the avant garde is highly contested whether one consigns it to history or claims it for present-day or future uses. The first volume of The Idea of the Avant Garde – And What It Means Today provided a lively forum on the kinds of radical art theory and partisan practices that are possible in today’s world of global art markets and creative industry entrepreneurialism. This second volume presents the work of another 50 artists and writers exploring the diverse ways that avant-gardism develops reflexive and experimental combinations of aesthetic and political praxis. The manifest strategies temporalities and genealogies of avant-garde art and politics are expressed through an international intergenerational and interdisciplinary convocation of ideas that covers the fields of film video architecture visual art art activism literature poetry theatre performance intermedia and music.
Preston Sturges
Few directors of the 1930s and 40s were as distinctive and popular as Preston Sturges whose whipsmart comedies have entertained audiences for decades. This book offers a new critical appreciation of Sturges' whole oeuvre incorporating a detailed study of the last ten years of his life from new primary sources. Preston Sturges details the many unfinished projects of Sturges' last decade including films plays TV series and his autobiography. Drawing on diaries sketchbooks correspondence unpublished screenplays and more Nick Smedley and Tom Sturges present the writer-director's final years in more detail than we've ever seen showing a master still at work – even if very little of that work ultimately made it to the screen or stage.
Fan Phenomena: Harry Potter
Nineteen years later . . .
Even as a new generation embraces the Harry Potter novels for the first time J.K. Rowling’s world is expanding with Fantastic Beasts Cursed Child and Pottermore. There are new mobile games new toys and of course the theme parks. Meanwhile Quidditch and the Harry Potter Alliance stretch from college to college inspiring each generation. Fans have adapted the series into roleplaying games parodies musicals films dances art and published fiction like Tommy Taylor or Carry On. They are also scrambling Potter with new franchises: Game of Thrones Hunger Games Percy Jackson Hamilton. What else is this new generation discovering about loving Potter? Which are the best conventions the best fanfiction and wizard rock? And how has Potter aged and what does it still have to teach us? Fan Phenomena: Harry Potter offers Potter fans a taste of the best the fandom has to offer.
Exposing Vulnerability
This book explores the diversity of perspectives afforded by the emerging body of Scandinavian films produced by women. The author focuses on women filmmakers' use of their own vulnerability in representing Scandinavian experiences with globally relevant contemporary issues such as race gender mental illness bullying and the trauma of migration and highlights the frictions between the positive and negative manifestations of such vulnerability. Though Scandinavia is reputed for its ambitious and innovative film tradition film scholarship has largely ignored women’s bold contributions to the canon. Exposing Vulnerability is a cultural and socio-political analysis of contemporary film by Scandinavian women as they use their lives and work to reconfigure the cinematic the political and the ethical.
Britpop Cinema
The Britpop movement of the mid-1990s defined a generation and the films were just as exciting as the music. Beginning with Shallow Grave hitting its stride with Trainspotting and going global with The Full Monty Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels Human Traffic Sexy Beast Shaun of the Dead and This Is England Britpop cinema pushed boundaries paid Hollywood no heed and placed the United Kingdom all too briefly at the centre of the movie universe.
Featuring exclusive interviews with key players such as Simon Pegg Irvine Welsh Michael Winterbottom and Edgar Wright Britpop Cinema combines eyewitness accounts close analysis and social history to celebrate a golden age for UK film.
The Cultural Practice of Immigrant Filmmaking
Based on a research project funded by the Swedish Research Council this book analyses 40 years of post-war independent immigrant filmmaking in Sweden. John Sundholm and Lars Gustaf Andersson consider the creativity that lies in the state of exile offering analyses of over 50 rarely seen immigrant films that would otherwise remain invisible and unarchived. They shed light on the complex web of personal economic and cultural circumstances around migrant filmmaking and discuss associations that became important sites of self-organization for exiled filmmakers: The Independent Film Group The Stockholm Film Workshop Cineco Kaleidoscope and Tensta Film Association.
Using an innovative combination of key film theory The Cultural Practice of Immigrant Filmmaking studies immigrant filmmaking in a transnational context exploring how immigrant filmmakers use film to find a place in a new cultural situation.
The e-book of this work is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND. To view a copy of the licence visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
Open Access PDF of this title is available from OAPEN at this link - The Cultural Practice of Immigrant Filmmaking.
From Méliès to New Media
From Méliès to New Media contributes to a dynamic stream of film history that is just beginning to understand that new media forms are not only indebted to but firmly embedded within the traditions and conventions of early film culture. Adopting a media archaeology this book will present a comparative examination of cinema including early film experiments with light and contemporary music videos silent film and their digital restorations German Expressionist film and post-noir cinema French Gothic film and the contemporary digital remake Alfred Hitchcock’s films exhibited in the gallery post medium films as abstracted light forms and interactive digital screens revising experiments in precinema. Media archaeology is an approach that uncovers the potential of intermedial research as a fluid form of history. It envisages the potential of new discoveries that foreground forgotten or marginalised contributions to history. It is also an approach that has been championed by influential new historicists like Thomas Elsaesser as providing the most vibrant and productive new histories (2014).
Spanish Cinema of the New Millennium
Spanish Cinema of the New Millennium provides a new approach to the study of contemporary Spanish cinema between 2000 and 2015 by analysing films that represent both ‘high’ and ‘popular’ culture side by side. The two film cultures are represented by Goya-winning films and the biggest box-office successes. By analysing the chronological trajectory of the country’s most important films over this period Spanish Cinema of the New Millennium examines contemporary Spain’s national identity culture and film industry.
The Anarchist Cinema
The Anarchist Cinema examines the complex relationships that exist between anarchist theory and film. No longer hidden in obscure corners of cinematic culture anarchy is a theme that has traversed arthouse underground and popular film. James Newton explores the notion that cinema is an inherently subversive space establishes criteria for deeming a film anarchic and examines the place of underground and DIY filmmaking within the wider context of the category. The author identifies subversive undercurrents in cinema and uses anarchist political theory as an interpretive framework to analyse filmmakers genres and the notion of cinema as an anarchic space.