What can post-catastrophe films tell us about our current real-world circumstances?

This book proposes that a new sub-genre of film called ‘post-catastrophe’ is emerging that displays narratives directly analogous to our current predicament of runaway climate disruption. Post-catastrophe film sits in the space between blockbuster disaster movies that use scenes of destruction to blow the world up and disrupt the flow of humanity and post-apocalyptic films where a version of society has formed in the ashes of the disaster.

In these narratives, the characters are thrown into a world of unsettling circumstances in which they have to adapt and strive for survival and reimagine the world as it changes around them. We face a similar predicament."

Presents a diverse range of perspectives on contemporary superhero scholarship. It links in-depth close readings of central texts of the superhero discourse from a variety of media (comics, TV, film) with larger societal and cultural discourses such as cross-medial, meta-textual and more general intersections and negotiations between the figure of the superhero and culture.



The book explores various functionalizations of superheroes such as Batman, Iron Man or Watchmen within society, analysing how superheroes reflect and problematise ideology, the military industrial complex, public and private responsibility. Processes of identity construction are analysed by looking at the superheroes’ secret identity and the notion of masking. Furthermore, cultural and personal grief and trauma in relation to such discourses as race and politics are investigated.

The book presents an interpretation of neo-noir filmmaking through the lens of economics, based on readings of central neo-noir works from the noir revival of the early 1970s to recent films. Analyzing key themes and figures of neo-noir – desire and betrayal, corruption and alienation, the private detective and the femme fatale – the project reads neo-noir filmmaking as a privileged site for the expression of anxieties around work, money, trust, and exchange. Neo-noir filmmaking embodies a profound reflection on the hollowing-out of economic and social life, the collapse of trust, the erosion of institutions, and fears regarding legacy and identity, developments that have undermined the promise of American life in the long twilight of the American dream since the end of postwar prosperity.



Aimed at the many scholars and faculty who study and teach film noir and neo-noir at levels from high school to post-graduate. It will appeal as well to the extensive community of cinephiles enthusiastic about noir, those who attend “Noirvember” screenings at repertory movie houses, who read the websites of the Film Noir Foundation or Eddie Muller (the self-styled “Czar of Noir”), and participate in discussions of noir and neo-noir filmmaking on online forums.

China’s film industry policies play a pivotal role in governing production, distribution and exhibition, shaping the industry’s development. This study empirically analyses 32 national film policies (2001–20) to trace China’s strategic shift towards a state-controlled socialist cultural market – a framework designed to counterbalance the cultural impact of China’s World Trade Organization (WTO) accession in 2001. By introducing the concept of the socialist cultural market, this article offers a novel analytical framework for understanding the evolution of China’s film policy and industry dynamics. The findings demonstrate that the government has institutionalized this model, enforcing ideological conformity through censorship, licensing and screening controls to prioritize ‘social effects’. Meanwhile, to enhance economic returns and global competitiveness, authorities have selectively liberalized production and co-exhibition regulations. This dual approach, however, generates a fundamental tension between ideological control and cultural exportation, which raises a concern on the global reception of its film industry. As of now, new policy documents have yet to be introduced to tackle this institutional tension.

This chapter begins with the story of breaking into a storage unit in an undisclosed location and the contents therein: some 2,700 boxes piled over six feet high—all that remained of the formerly legendary library and archives of the Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality. I use the history of this collection and my involvement with it in order to forefront the work of archives and archivists. I review the state of the conversation (i.e. the lack thereof) between porn studies and archival studies—but I also draw from and discuss literature in museum studies, library and information science, cultural heritage preservation, knowledge organization, history of sexuality, and studies of film, media, and porn. Gathering these various scholarly threads together allows a turn to a discussion about the issues that result from humanists’ lack of engagement with GLAMS (galleries, libraries, archives, museums, and special collections) scholarship and practitioners. I conclude by offering some potential directions for future work, which might explore the “intersextions” between porn and archival studies. Appendixed to the chapter is a list of research archives and collections of interest to adult media scholars and porn studies.

This chapter provides a critical review of the literature on pornography in/and Africa. Through an examination of the existing literature, it argues that much of the popular and scholarly discourses on porn in Africa emphasize its harmful effects on African subjects, particularly women, teenage boys, and adolescent girls. Much of the discourse on porn is informed by moral panics and infantilizes Africans, reducing them to being susceptible and vulnerable to Western sexual cultures, which are often portrayed as being incompatible with African values. This chapter critiques the current state of “porn studies” in Africa for its limited social science and behavioral studies methodological approaches, which, unsurprisingly, conclude that exposure to porn at a young age negatively affects male adolescents’ sexual behavior and cognitive development. Furthermore, the emphasis on risk, behavior, and moral panics reiterates colonial imaginaries of African sexualities as deviant and dangerous, erasing the complex terrain of African sexual subjectivities, desires, and pleasures. By focusing solely on the “negative effects” of porn, researchers reinscribe dangerous “patriarchal and heterosexist policing of women’s freedom and rights.” Informed by African feminists’ calls to center pleasure and alternative frameworks, this chapter asks us to rethink the role of sexual pleasure in Africa to generate more productive ways to understand African sexual agency and erotic autonomy away from discourses of danger, contamination, and harm.

This chapter provides a history of trans pornography in the United States. It traces its origins back to the 1960s and charts its evolution from community-produced niche magazines to a highly commercialized genre of studio pornography that is increasingly being integrated into mainstream straight pornography. Initially a largely community-controlled genre during the 1960s and 1970s, trans pornography was popularized and commercialized in the 1990s by a string of cisgender men who marketed it to straight-identified men. From the 2010s onward some of the largest conglomerates in the pornography industry have begun taking a direct stake in its production. This history provides a detailed overview of the genre’s major players, featuring key performers, producers, and studios that have all crucially shaped it. It details the persistent exclusion trans people have faced in this area of the economy and shows how, against all odds, trans porn workers have managed to successfully assert themselves alongside their cisgender counterparts in some of the industry’s biggest productions.

Starting with the contested figure of the dick pic, this chapter explores the meanings and boundaries of the notion of porn. Combining conceptual reflection with empirical inquiry, it asks how the users of Alaston Suomi, a Finnish sexual social media platform dedicated to naked self-shooting, discuss the prevalence of dick pics on the site, and how they deploy the notion of porn when discussing user-generated content. Within this interview material, dick pics emerge both as objects of appreciation and as markers of deficient aesthetic ambition and social awkwardness. Meanwhile, porn weaves in and out of how self-shooters make sense of their output and the platform’s functions in ways pointing out the term’s limitations when seeking to understand networked sexual exchanges. I suggest that, in a context in which nudity is weeded out from mainstream social media in a horizontal manner in the name of safety, yet in which forms of online sexual content continue to multiply, scholarly inquiry holding on to the marker of porn as descriptive of the things circulated risks posing normative classifications and losing touch with how this content is made sense of.

This chapter tracks the development of gay male visual pornographies in Euro-American contexts from the early 1970s to the present. It highlights the problematic of gay pornography as visual documents of sex acts as well as fantasies underscoring those sex acts. The chapter’s subsections focus on gay male porn as an archive of abundance, the connections between gay porn and gay liberation, the role of HIV/AIDS, the operations of race and racial fetishism, and the ways that media technologies, formats, and platforms shape gay porn temporalities.

Bisexual male adult film and video and its successive reimaginings over time can be situated within the story of two distinct modes of the adult industry’s production and marketing. The theatrical and early home video eras attempted “crossover” to a larger “mainstream” audience through high production values, major stars, and well-crafted stories. This was replaced by a high-output mode of production, which led to a parsing of the (imagined) audience into ever smaller niches, each with its own (presumed) specialized interest(s). Beginning with the rapid growth of the adult video industry in the late 1980s, it expanded by orders of magnitude after the industry adopted online digital content delivery in the early twenty-first century. Bisexual male porn is one of the most illuminating case studies through which to chart this change, and it is also a useful example of decades-long debates within the industry itself about its audience(s) and how to effectively cultivate them. Key events in this process include the failed 1975 theatrical release of Both Ways (dir. Jerry Douglas); the successful reintroduction of these elements on home video; the creation of new stars, such as Jeff Stryker; and the dizzying variety of combinations and scenarios offered on the internet.

This chapter investigates the role of transnational entrepreneurs in the economic development of western Europe’s pornographic film business during the 1960s and 1970s. Drawing on extensive archival research, it shows how these entrepreneurs were crucial to the growth of the industry by capitalizing on cross-border networks to expand markets and benefit from changing pornography regulations. The chapter outlines three key, interrelated features of transnational entrepreneurship in this context: 1) acquiring social capital through building international networks via events such as trade fairs, film festivals, and magazine classifieds; 2) converting this social capital into economic capital by expanding market reach across borders through smuggling and distribution, or by importing goods from more permissive countries; and 3) exploiting location-specific advantages by moving operations to countries with attractive business conditions, such as relaxed censorship. Examining figures such as Walter Bartkowski, John Lindsay, and Lasse Braun, it demonstrates how transnational entrepreneurs facilitated the cross-border movement of pornography by brokering relationships between economic actors. This enabled the transition of pornography from an illicit commodity to an industrialized, commercialized business. The chapter highlights transnational entrepreneurship as crucial for understanding western Europe’s evolving pornography trade and the role such “porn-brokers” played in its international development during this period.

This chapter explores the storied golden age of porn, a period from roughly 1972 to 1984, when hardcore porn took a form similar to that of Hollywood film: feature length, narrative and character driven, screened in theaters, and reviewed in mainstream publications. This era took shape due to a confluence of technological, cultural, and legal factors—factors that also contributed to the era’s disappearance. The golden age, a fleeting historical chapter in porn, remains a nostalgic touchstone for understandings of the sexual revolution, American cinema, and the porn industry. This status leaves the golden age in a peculiar, almost mythological position, symbolic of a range of concerns related to art, sex, censorship, spectatorship, and categories of art and pornography that risks glossing over the period’s complexity.

Although the dictum “I know it when I see it” has often been used to describe pornography, for the range of erotic materials emanating from south Asia this saying does not hold true. In south Asian countries what is considered “pornographic” often overlaps with discussions of obscenity. There is a fine line separating the obscene and the pornographic, and in the south Asian context the blurriness of this line often casts a shadow over what we think we know about pornography. Some of this has to do with colonial encounters and the legal ramifications thereof, which still linger in south Asia. By surveying legal regimes, institutional structures, and mediated sexual expressions ranging from audiovisual, textual, and performative forms, this chapter aims to demonstrate how the geopolitical and cultural nuances of south Asia can sometimes render non-explicit, non-normative sexual expressions “pornographic.”

This chapter explores the development, operations, and effects of pornography platforms. It deploys cases from leading porn platform companies to illustrate key principles of platform markets, infrastructures, and governance. Although the chapter considers the activities of actors moving within these network, as well as stakeholders adjacent to them, the focus is not porn content or creators. Instead, this overview is primarily concerned with the technological and commercial structures of platforms, and how power relations are defined through their systems.

This chapter explores the various research methods employed by scholars of adult film and media. As a nascent and interdisciplinary field, adult film and media researchers come from disparate disciplines and employ various methodologies, often in provocative combinations. This chapter begins with a summary of the emergence of the first academic texts about pornography from the discipline of film studies and the ensuing reliance on visual analysis or close reading, then explores other works that emerged out of history, film history, and sociology that utilize archival research and ethnographic methods, such as interviews and participant observation. The chapter introduces readers to some of the most influential scholars and texts in the field, and details methods for the study of film and video, periodicals, live theatre, and sex shops. Works covered include meditations on affect and form, readings of race and class, industry studies, studies of labor, and histories of various media formats. The purview of adult media studies is vast and its objects diverse; this chapter suggests that its method might in fact be methodological promiscuity.

This chapter surveys the state of pornography and sexually explicit audio-visual media in southeast Asian countries by considering the political, religious, economic, technological, and moral discourses surrounding it. Instead of doing an in-depth analysis of these discourses, the chapter attempts to describe them comparatively in the hopes of sparking scholarly debates informed by comparative approaches and initiating in-depth academic research on the local and national contexts in southeast Asia. The chapter considers pornography as a text that facilitates socialization and is crucial to the (re)production of gendered and sexualized knowledge. In terms of politics, law, religion, culture, and morality, pornography in southeast Asia is considered taboo, even illegal, because it disrupts established moral, religious, and political regimes. Economically, however, pornography sees more opportunities for production, distribution, and consumption, especially for queer individuals, as digital media enables individuals to build communities, socialize, and construct their identities using pornographic media. Lastly, the chapter charts the approaches of different southeast Asian countries in addressing child pornography, which is a pervasive issue in the region.

This article examines the linguistic and cultural politics surrounding New Nollywood’s pursuit of global recognition through the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film (AABIFF). Using the disqualification of Nigeria’s first ever submission and the rejection of three Yoruba-language films by the Nigerian Official Selection Committee (NOSC) as case studies, the article explores how language, the question of authenticity and institutional gatekeeping intersect in shaping the international trajectories of Nigerian cinema. The analysis situates these controversies within broader debates about the dominance of English in African cultural productions, the legacy of colonialism and the ongoing efforts to valorize indigenous languages in cinema. Through historical contexts, the article argues that while economic motivations and the desire for wider circulation partly drive the preference for English, indigenous linguistic endowments remain central to how authenticity in cinematic representations is constructed and interpreted. Using examples from Old Nollywood, the article ultimately calls for a renewed investment in Indigenous language films. It argues that this is both an aesthetic and a strategic choice, not just for AABIFF but also for repositioning Nigerian cinema within global circuits.

Migration is an age-old phenomenon and a social issue that transcends geographical borders. In African cinema, it is a popular theme, as evidenced by Ousmane Sembène’s (1966)Black Girl and Djibril Diop Mambéty’s (1973)Touki Bouki, two films that account for most of the scholarly work on early African cinema and migration. This article contributes to African cinema and migration scholarship by analysing contemporary films released during the last decade. It focuses exclusively on voluntary migrants whose experiences are often delegitimized. It examines the representation of transnational migration from the perspective of sub-Saharan Africa, using Arie Esiri and Chuko Esiri’s (2020)Eyimofe: This Is My Desire and Rosine Mbakam’s (2018)Chez Jolie Coiffure, as the source texts. The discussions combine film analysis with survey data received from African immigrants. The article suggests that the films analysed engage with and depict aspects of migrant life in ways that resonate with real experiences of migrants.

This study provides a new perspective on adaptation processes by examining the interactions amongst television screenwriters and book authors within Israel’s youth media system. It explores the relationships and dialogues between these content creators during the adaptation process using polysystem theory and a media systems integration model as theoretical frameworks in specific contexts. Through semi-structured interviews with fifteen youth content creators (seven screenwriters and eight authors), this study reveals how adaptations are shaped by professional norms and interpersonal dynamics in this marginal media system. The findings identify three key dynamics: creative autonomy for practitioners, which enables content creators to exercise their expertise whilst maintaining collaborative respect; interpersonal adaptability in navigating personal relationships and professional egos; and adherence to core narrative principles that preserve essential story elements. Additionally, the research exposes a status distinction within adaptation practices: literary-to-screen adaptations are regarded as culturally valuable and pedagogically beneficial, whereas screen-to-literature adaptations are considered primarily commercial ventures with minimal artistic merit. These findings demonstrate how adaptation outcomes emerge from production contexts and professional relationships rather than being determined exclusively by source material analysis. The present work contributes to adaptation theory by highlighting the significance of production environment and creator collaboration in shaping adaptation processes and their cultural reception.

This research examines the practice of filmmaking from the site of a wheelchair and reflects on making films with a recurring set of limitations that is also an impetus for freedom and creative engagement. An imagined conversation with experimental filmmaker, Jonas Mekas, provides a platform for considering the notion of creative practice research, while simultaneously reflecting on the methodology used to make films.

This article analyses the particularities of Sarah Maldoror’s gaze, founded upon a singular notion of political cinema that used the poetic image of a surrealist matrix. In the Portuguese-speaking world, Maldoror stood out from other engagé¹ filmmakers for being the first to use fiction to portray the fight for African independence. Later films shot in Cape Verde and Guinea-Bissau portray the involvement of people in the decolonization, without failing to unabashedly point out the cultural hybridity. Her work (dis)orders itself as a ‘filmography of survival’ – which includes both personal projects and commissions accepted to make a living in cinema, in her insubordinate and politicized way. Making use of poetry, jazz and painting, she relied upon a surrealist aesthetic and never conceded to the pressures exerted on her filmmaking, all the while putting together a body of work portraying decolonization and survival. I propose that the invisibility of Maldoror’s filmography resulted from the difficult balance between her creative choices and the coercion she was subjected to.

During the last two decades, Italian crime TV series have increased considerably, becoming one of the main scripted television genres offered on national channels, both on free-to-air and pay-TV and streaming platforms, while additionally developing an ever-closer synergy with local territories and their representation. Focusing on the 2020–21 television season, this article provides some maps in order to highlight roles and identities of national places and territories in defining different types and gradations of Italian crime drama TV series. More specifically, it underlines the variety of functions that territories played through the plot and the way they could be represented alternatively as background or foreground, as well as realistic or imaginary, taking into account different models of representation of a multifaceted genre and its connections with geographical locations, which could explain the prominence of giallo in national popular culture.

The aim of this article is to analyse the TV series L’ispettore Coliandro (Inspector Coliandro) (2006–present), starting from the conceptual categories regarding complex storytelling such as extrinsic norms, intrinsic norms, authorship and transmedia. The analysis of the different dimensions of this series (production and distribution history, forms of storytelling, transmedia narrative ecosystem) tries to highlight the peculiar media characteristics of L’ispettore Coliandro, with a twofold objective. First, the article intends to investigate the reasons why Coliandro differs from other Italian detective series. Second, it aims to study how these peculiar characteristics affect the interaction between production and distribution policies, the aesthetic-narrative framework and the fandom. To this end, we present the results of a media content analysis of the posts published on the Facebook group ‘Noi che amiamo l’Ispettore Coliandro’.

This article addresses the development of TV crime dramas in Italy during the last two decades, arguing that the impact of international shows as well as national literary series gradually led to significant changes in the crime series produced by both public and private broadcasters. In particular, a few recent crime series produced by Rai participate in a process of ‘noirification’ of crime narratives, in an attempt to produce noir series addressed to an international audience and characterized by the combination of national literary sources and the model of US quality television. On the one hand, the aim is to explore the specific traits of the national approach to crime narratives. On the other hand, the investigation gives the opportunity to reflect upon the ‘noirification’ of European popular narratives more broadly, examining the uses of genre to increase the cultural and commercial value of TV series on the international market.

This editorial provides an overview of the historical development of crime dramas on Italian television from the early years to contemporary challenges, while sketching many of the complexities of the giallo genre. With references to a large number of crime dramas, to the contributions included in this Special Issue and to relevant literature, the representation of investigators and criminals in Italian television is scrutinized in its most distinguishing features: from genre tropes and hybridizations to literary adaptations and digital transmedia aspects; from leading male and female characters to central and peripheral locations; from the global circulation of local content to the changing cultural and societal representations. As a result, Italian TV crime drama is shown as a field of constant negotiation where varied and satisfying forms of balance have been experimented.

Drawing on the notion of stasis (‘civil war’), this article offers an iconographic study of visual motifs in the TV series Gomorrah (2014–21). To explain the unique qualities of Gomorrah in the context of the Italian giallo narrative ecosystem, the study attempts to answer two basic questions: ‘what is the relationship between the images presented in Gomorrah and the Italian (and international) crime story tradition?’ and ‘in what ways do its gestural motifs of rage, despair, impotence and rebellion constitute a profound transformation of the visual codes representing crime?’ Focusing on the dual tension between international network broadcasting and the narrative space of the outskirts of Naples that informs the images in Gomorrah, this article explores the unique iconography of a neo-giallo model that involves a transformation of forms of violence in both the crime genre and the public sphere.

This article explores the relationship between Andrea Camilleri’s Inspector Montalbano novels and the RAI TV series, Il commissario Montalbano. While both are successful, the televised version has turned Montalbano into a household name across Italy, ranking as the most successful giallo production on RAI. The analysis delves into disparities between Camilleri’s literary character and the TV persona, examining alterations made for commercial viability. Focusing on recurring visual elements – geographic imagery and female beauty – the series addresses sensitive themes. The article concludes that the TV adaptation, not aiming for faithful reproduction, targets a different audience. It effectively adjusts the original message using cinematographic techniques, emphasizing female beauty, food and slapstick comedy to entertain while navigating uncomfortable topics.

Adopting the interdisciplinary approach of location studies, this article focuses on TV series set in the Po Valley, which in the past twenty years has become – both from the point of view of current events and from that of the related television fictional representations – a social and narrative theatre of murky mysteries and heinous crimes. In this TV series, the visual innovation of the ‘provincial’ Padanian context is further amplified by complex narratives, ambiguous anti-heroes and unconventional female characters, who renegotiate the rules of gender. Lending itself not only as a topical film-television location but also as an authentic ‘actor’ – around which the most hidden fears and the most brutal instincts of the Italian history of the third millennium are condensed – the peripheral Padanian geography lends itself to localize universal stories, thus reshaping the entire audience’s collective imagination regarding ‘Italianness’.

Using Gomorra: La serie (Seasons 1–3) as a case study, this article examines how complex television crime drama engages with moral and artistic values. It proposes a novel framework that integrates analytic aesthetics with empirical audience research and film analysis to investigate whether and how this genre can shape viewers’ moral responses. The first section outlines the critical and public discourse surrounding the series. The second introduces the concept of ‘cinematic moralism’ to describe how Gomorrah’s narrative and stylistic choices are meant to elicit a morally reflective response from viewers. The final section explores how Twitter users engage with the series’ ethical cues, revealing a disconnect between intended and actual audience responses. The article supports a cautious view, suggesting that while fiction may invite moral reflection, empirical evidence does not confirm its power to improve moral judgment or function reliably as a source of moral learning. This conclusion aligns with Gregory Currie’s call for caution regarding the idea that fiction can serve as a reliable source of moral knowledge.

This article engages with the audio-visual essay film production process through a feminist film-philosophical lens by arguing that useful parallels can be established between screen writing for the audio-visual essay film format and the novel work of the feminist philosopher Luce Irigaray. In doing so, it reveals the ethical, political and poetical potential of the screenwriting process. My central contention is that both the screenwriting process for the audio-visual essay film format and Irigaray's work share the same method of production, what I call “caressing mimetic play”. Drawing on my own experimental audio-visual essay A caressing dialogical encounter (UK, 2019, 22:05 mins), I argue that Irigaray's concept of the caress is not only useful as a philosophical tool but also as a novel methodological tool, affording the possibility of formulating and envisioning an alternative screen- writing space, full of new potential for feminist essay film production processes.

Theoretically framed by Gilles Deleuze's notion of the time-image, this article traces the palimpsestic temporalities, performative modes, and disjunctive ethos of film essayistic storytelling in Marianna Christofides' Days In Between (2015). It seeks to draw attention to the multiply inscribed, at times contrapuntal affective and aesthetic movements that mark Days In Between, as well as reflect the filmmaker's own skeptical and ambivalent stance in her encounters with Southeast Europe. It is the durational character of these repetitive encounters with a changing region that keeps the gap open, as the co-authors argue, and allows binary notions of ‘self’ and ‘other’, ‘history’ and ‘memory’ or concepts of space and time to become destabilized. The critical exploration of, and deeper felt insights into, the poetics and politics of essayistic filmmaking, in the article, take up the form of a loosely choreographed dance-for-two, resonating with the film essay's dialogic mode.

Building on the research previously conducted, and looking at the narrative strategies implemented in Three Sisters in a Sketchbook (Turina 2024), the chapter deepens the reflection on how geo-cultural negotiations and spaces of historical and emotional resonance allow the essay film to investigate the archive. We look at how screenwriting strategies allow to open spaces of negotiation with silenced history, where personal trauma and personhood emerge through the circular structure of the essay film. We see how the layers of signification emerge progressively, a little more at each repetition/loop within the film, and any hypothesis formed in viewing the preceding sequences is inevitably re-negotiated and never entirely clarified. Following the path, it becomes clear how the openness of the answers not given to the audience is key to the essay film form, as the accumulation of meaning integrated into the visual solutions proposed to the audience is there to open and explore, to think. Accordingly, the idea of thought in motion related to the form becomes evident in the screenplay, as the writing of the page in its first-person format is both apt and odd in classical screenwriting.

This book explores the consequences of unbridled expansion of neoliberal values within India through the lens of popular film and culture. The focus of the book is the neoliberal self, which, far from being a stable marker of urban, liberal, millennial Indian identity, has a schizophrenic quality, one that is replete with contradictions and oppositions, unable to sustain the weight of its own need for self-promotion, optimism, and belief in a narrative of progress and prosperity that has marked mainstream cultural discourse in India. The unstable and schizophrenic neoliberal identity that is the concern of this book, however, belies this narrative and lays bare the sense of precarity and inherent inequality that neoliberal regimes confer upon their subjects.

The analysis is explicitly political and draws upon theories of feminist media studies, popular culture analyses, and film studies to critique mainstream Hindi cinema texts produced in the last two decades. Rele Sathe also examine a variety of other peripheral ‘texts’ in her analysis such as the film star, the urban space, web series, YouTube videos, and social media content.

Patricia Howell broke into the Costa Rican film scene when being a filmmaker in Central America was unthinkable for anyone, and more so for a politically active and sexually diverse woman. With her groundbreaking fiction works Íntima Raíz (1984) and Lobas (2015), Patricia developed a career that spans four decades and dozens of fiction and documentary films, and has paved the way for a national cinema told from a female perspective. In this chapter, we explore the influences, main themes and methods used by Patricia in her screenplays and how activism for women’s rights became her main goal in life through motion pictures. We also review the impact that Patricia’s work has had on younger generations of Costa Rican female screenwriters and directors, and how her work has affected the country’s cultural laws to promote more women creators whose voices will be heard, thanks in part to her pioneering work.