Film Studies
Beijing Film Academy 2021
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 have 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.
Outback
Focusing on the incidence of the ‘Westerns’ film genre in the 120-odd years of Australian cinema history exploring how the American genre has been adapted to the changing Australian social political and cultural contexts of their production including the shifting emphases in the representation of the Indigenous population.
The idea for the book came to the author while he was writing two recent articles. One was an essay for Screen Education on the western in Australian cinema of the 21st century; the other piece was the review of a book entitled Film and the Historian for the online journal Inside Story . Between the two he saw the interesting prospect of a book-length study of the role of the western genre in Australia’s changing political and cultural history over the last century – and the ways in which film can without didacticism provide evidence of such change. Key matters include the changing attitudes to and representation of Indigenous peoples and of women's roles in Australian Westerns.
When one considers that the longest narrative film then seen in Australia and quite possibly the world was Charles Tait’s The Story of the Kelly Gang (1906) it is clear that Australia has some serious history in the genre and Kelly has ridden again in Justin Kurzel’s 2020 adaptation of Peter Carey’s The True History of the Kelly Gang.
World Film Locations: Los Angeles
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.
Infrastructure in Dystopian and Post-apocalyptic Film, 1968-2021
Dystopian and post-apocalyptic movies from 1968 to 2021 usually conclude with optimism with a window into what is possible in the face of social dysfunction - and worse. The infrastructure that peeks through at the edges of the frame surfaces some of the concrete ways in which dystopian and post-apocalyptic survivors have made do with their damaged and destroyed worlds.
If the happy endings so common to mass-audience films do not provide an all-encompassing vision of a better world the presence of infrastructure whether old or retrofitted or new offers a starting point for the continued work of building toward the future.
Film imaginings energy transportation water waste and their combination in the food system reveal what might be essential infrastructure on which to build the new post-dystopian and post-apocalyptic communities. We can look to dystopian and post-apocalyptic movies for a sense of where we might begin.
Architecture, Film, and the In-between
The long-established dialogue between architecture and film offers an interdisciplinary platform for a critical examination of spaces of in-between.
Apart from architecture informing scenography and cities serving as backdrops to the moving image films have actively participated in shaping the public opinion about architecture and its allied disciplines. While architecture and design may not necessarily be central themes in a film their spatial contextualization of the narrative informs cinematic productions. Screen Space and the In-Between looks at both the filmic imagination/representation of architectural in-betweenness as well as the in-between spaces within the inherent architectural structure of filmic expression.
On the one hand cinematic production serves as a site to project utopian fantasies of the built environment and on the other hand the processes tools and methods involved in both architecture and film function as mediators between abstract ideation and its materialized manifestation.
The book interrogates the filmic creation of spatial imaginaries through the anthropological lens especially as the disciplines in the built environment react to the liminal spaces of the cinematic. It adopts cinematic experiences of the built environment as a vantage point to reframe ongoing theoretical debates about liminal spaces.
Foreword by Mark Foster Gage
Contributors: Giuliana Bruno Beatriz Colomina James F. Kerestes Graham Harman Ferda Kolatan Juhani Pallasmaa Eva Perez De Vega Mehmet Sahinler Patrik Schumacher Maria Sieira Alican Taylan Vahid Vahdat Jason Vigneri-Beane Jon Yoder Michael Young
Call Me by Your Name
Adapted by James Ivory from André Aciman’s novel and directed by Luca Guadagnino the film Call Me by Your Name has been passionately received among audiences and critics ever since its 2017 release.
A love story between seventeen-year-old Elio (Timothée Chalamet) and graduate student Oliver (Armie Hammer) and set in 1983 ‘Somewhere in northern Italy’ Call Me by Your Name presents a gay relationship in a romantic idyll seemingly untroubled by outside pressures prejudices or tragedy. While this means it offers audiences welcome opportunities to swoon in front of an LGBTQ+ romance that equals classic heterosexual romances onscreen its relevance or political significance today may not be immediately apparent. And yet the film is abundantly infused with narrative thematic and stylistic elements that can be interpreted as speaking powerfully to contemporary audiences on questions of sexual identity.
This edited collection addresses how the film helps inform our understanding of contemporary sexual identity and romance. How does this love story explore wider tensions that exist between the specific and the general between the open and the hidden and between the past and the present? The contributors to the collection explore these questions in stimulating and contemplative manners.
Material Media-Making in the Digital Age
There is now no shortage of media for us to consume from streaming services and video-on-demand to social media and everything else besides. This has changed the way media scholars think about the production and reception of media. Missing from these conversations though is the maker: in particular the maker who has the power to produce media in their pocket.
How might one craft a personal media-making practice that is thoughtful and considerate of the tools and materials at one's disposal? This is the core question of this original new book. Exploring a number of media-making tools and processes like drones and vlogging as well as thinking through time editing sound and the stream Binns looks out over the current media landscape in order to understand his own media practice.
The result is a personal journey through media theory history and technology furnished with practical exercises for teachers students professionals and enthusiasts: a unique combination of theory and practice written in a highly personal and personable style that is engaging and refreshing.
This book will enable readers to understand how a personal creative practice might unlock deeper thinking about media and its place in the world.
The primary readership will be among academics researchers and students in the creative arts as well as practitioners of creative arts including sound designers cinematographers and social media content producers.
Designed for classroom use this will be of particular importance for undergraduate students of film production and may also be of interest to students at MA level particularly on the growing number of courses that specifically offer a blend of theory and practice. The highly accessible writing style may also mean that it can be taken up for high school courses on film and production.
It will also be of interest to academics delivering these courses and to researchers and scholars of new media and digital cinema.
Ulrike Ottinger
The first English language scholarly collection of articles on the leading Berlin based German artist and film-maker Ulrike Ottinger. The articles engage with the full range of the works from the early Berlin feature films of the 1970s and .'80s to the ethnographic documentaries also including the art exhibitions photography shows installations and artist books. The book brings together feminist film theorists with art historians and cultural theorists each with a distinctive and detailed perspective on the queer fabulist genres of Ottinger now in her 80s.
Reframing Berlin
Reframing Berlin is about how architecture and the built environment can reveal the memory of a city an urban memory through its transformation and consistency over time by means of ‘urban strategies’ which have developed throughout history as cities have adjusted to numerous political religious economic and societal changes. These strategies are organised on a ‘memory spectrum’ which range from demolition to memorialisation.
It reveals the complicated relationship between urban strategies and their influence on memory-making in the context of Berlin since 1895 with the help of film locations. It utilises cinematic representations of locations as an audio-visual archive to provide a deeper analysis of the issues brought up by strategies and case studies in relation to memory-making.
Foreword by Kathleen James-Chakraborty
A new volume in the Mediated Cities series from Intellect
Designing and Conducting Practice-Based Research Projects
This is a textbook aimed primarily at upper undergraduate and Master’s students undertaking practice-based research in the arts and includes practical guidance examples exercises and further resources.
The book offers definitions and a brief background to practice-related research in the arts contextualization of practice-based methods within that frame a step-by-step approach to designing practice-based research projects chapter summaries examples of practice-related research exercises for progressing methods design and evaluating research approach and lists for further reading. This textbook can serve as the foundation for a wider online “living” textbook for practice-related research in the arts.
Designing and Conducting Practice-Based Research Projects
This is a textbook aimed primarily at upper undergraduate and Master’s students undertaking practice-based research in the arts and includes practical guidance examples exercises and further resources.
The book offers definitions and a brief background to practice-related research in the arts contextualization of practice-based methods within that frame a step-by-step approach to designing practice-based research projects chapter summaries examples of practice-related research exercises for progressing methods design and evaluating research approach and lists for further reading. This textbook can serve as the foundation for a wider online “living” textbook for practice-related research in the arts.
Scenographers, set and costume designers in the Alessandro Blasetti Archive
The Alessandro Blasetti Archive is a unique source of information that traces the profiles and work of many professional figures of the film industry including scenographers and costume designers. An examination of the director’s filmography reveals the names of the numerous maestri of Italian cinema who between the 1930s and the 1970s elevated the art of set and costume design beyond Italy. Among them were pioneers such as Virgilio Marchi Gastone Medin Gino Carlo Sensani and Dario Cecchi. The archive holds rare documents that concern them as well as documents relative to Marina Arcangeli and Maria de Matteis two women who were as important as their male colleagues to the success of Italian talent in this sector.
Fashion, migration and identity in Italian cinema: The case of Billo il grand dakhaar and Bangla
This article analyses the insightful role that fabric fashion and clothing shops have in Laura Muscardin’s Billo il grand dakhaar (Billo the Grand Dakhaar) (2008) and Phaim Bhuiyan’s first feature film Bangla (2019). Billo portrays the story of a young tailor from Senegal who dreams of becoming a fashion designer in Rome; Bangla fictionalizes the life of its director Phaim Bhuiyan a second-generation Italian of Bangladeshi descent. By analysing flashbacks and dream sequences as signifiers of cultural ties and by examining the role of the shops as emblematic spaces where the local and the transnational forge a new intersecting reality the article aims to investigate how both protagonists become active agents of change and how fashion contributes to the reshaping of the landscape of the city of Rome.
A Roman holiday with ‘open heritage’? Exploring copyright law and cultural heritage law’s role for our collective cultural interest in Italian film and Italian fashion
This article explores how the law affects an audience’s collective recognition that a film and fashion in film is of cultural interest. It argues that copyright law today can play an important and crucial role in a film’s continued relevance and in the preservation and valorization of cinema as copyright law regulates the copying and display of a film and its images including the fashion images within it. Likewise it shows how cultural heritage law plays an important and crucial role in the preservation and continued relevance of fashion through film as cultural heritage law applies certain rules and norms to the preservation of film reels and the archives and institutions in which they are stored. The article uses Roman Holiday (Wyler 1953) and La Dolce Vita (Fellini 1960) as case studies and considers Cinecittà’s description of itself as an ‘open heritage’ to explore the relationship between law fashion and film.
L’abito di domani: Storia della moda nel tempo, Giovanna Gagliardo (dir.) (2009), Italy: Luce Cinecittà
Review of: L’abito di domani: Storia della moda nel tempo Giovanna Gagliardo (dir.) (2009) Italy: Luce Cinecittà
‘Vetrine della Moda’: Forms and models of femininity on the pages of fascist movie magazines
Italian fascism of the 1930s dominated more than just politics particularly as it spilled over into styles of clothing. This article demonstrates that despite the manipulative ideology of fascism women found other ways to affirm their femininity. American fashion and costumes conveyed through the movie magazines of the same period became evidence of new cultural models that stood out in opposition to the Duce and his familiar and domestic ideals. Magazines such as Stelle and Cinema Illustrazione which were considered ‘cultural intermediaries’ proposed an image of a new woman built through exotic and sensual clothing and looks. Many columns were dedicated to building a direct relationship between the audience and the entertainment industry. As the industry sprung up with more advertisements and fashion articles it promoted new clothing styles make-up use and acting. This cultural orientation represented a historical contradiction which this article will consider.
Malavita chic: Fashion and fandom in the Italian crime series
This article analyses how fashion in the Italian crime series Suburra and Gomorrah is a significant facet of how these programmes’ visual and narrative discourses work upon audiences to communicate a privileged vision of the criminal subcultures they represent. Clothing and style are crucial to the series through the narrative dimension in which costuming reveals character development and symbolizes shifts in plot and theme as well by articulating the characters’ adherence to and deviation from their cultural milieu. Moreover by presenting an ethnography of criminal subcultures as articulated through dress these series have engendered a complex network of fashion fandom raising significant questions about viewer identification and the reification of mob wear within mainstream culture. This in-depth analysis of the role of fashion in Suburra and Gomorrah aims to deepen our understanding of how these series constitute a significant intervention on the interplay of fashion and identity in Italy today.
The costumes of an archaic dream: Pasolini, Danilo Donati and Oedipus the King (1967)
This article examines the collaboration between Pier Paolo Pasolini and Danilo Donati. Pasolini wanted the aesthetic of Oedipus the King to evoke an ‘indistinct barbaric’ feel and asked the great costume designer Danilo Donati for a mélange of Persian Sumerian Aztec and African art. Pasolini sought the shapes the drawings and the sculptures of an archaic civilization but mixed together adhering to the Pasolinian method of contamination so that they would lose their original identity in a new form that at the same time recalled ancient cultures or in the case of the African art even tribal history.
Fashioning: Women and gender in film and fashion
This article introduces the interviews featured in this issue of the journal with filmmaker Alina Marazzi and creative director of the Maison Christian Dior Maria Grazia Chiuri. In 2020 Maria Grazia Chiuri commissioned Alina Marazzi to make a short film about the work of Lucia Marcucci a feminist visual poet and artist active in the 1960s and 1970s who combined the language of mass media and advertising and addressed themes such as the changing values of family domesticity and the role of women. Focusing on the work of Alina Marazzi and Maria Grazia Chiuri this article provides a framework to explore the long history of fashion and film as well as the collaboration between Chiuri and female artists. In addition to discussing the digital genre of the ‘fashion film’ the essay contextualizes the emergence and development of the field of fashion studies and its relationship with feminism women the media and the history of women and fashion.
Eclectic primitivism: Piero Tosi’s Medea (1969)
Marked by difficult beginnings Piero Tosi’s work on the costumes for Pier Paolo Pasolini’s 1969 Medea turned out to be one of the designer’s most innovative contributions. Departing from his own philological method and from the protective alliance with Luchino Visconti Tosi eventually came to absorb from Pasolini a liberating form of contamination which remains at the core of the film’s primitivistic costumes. Seconding Pasolini’s allegorical intentions and anthropological imagination Tosi reconstructed the mythological past of the Euripidean tragedy without incurring the clichés of conventional Hellenism. Supported by dressmaker Umberto Tirelli he created experimental works that drew upon a variety of anachronistic sources from seventeenth-century Tupi feather garments to early twentieth-century fashion from Pre-Columbian gold ornaments to Italian mannerist paintings. This article aims at uncovering several overlooked references in Tosi’s postmodern eclecticism while providing a documented reconstruction of the designer’s collaboration with Pasolini.
Interview with Alina Marazzi: The tactile gaze
Alina Marazzi is a well-known Italian feminist director whose explorations of women’s lives the challenges they have faced (and still face) in society and the family have had a profound impact on film and feminist studies. She has contributed to creating a new cinematic language and mode of storytelling through experimenting with the use of both collage and montage. She has also made incursions into the world of fashion with a film on international fashion icon and intellectual Anna Piaggi and later with her short film that the House of Dior commissioned: To Cut Is to Think (2020). The interview focuses on this latter film where Marazzi shares her experience in working on the film the opportunities it opened up for her creative process her collaboration with Maria Grazia Chiuri and her encounter with the work of the poet and artist Lucia Marcucci whose work is the subject of the film.
The New Made in Italy for the 21st Century: Fashion, Film, Art and Design, Eugenia Paulicelli, Claudio Napoli and Massimo Mascolo (dirs) (2022), USA: Okozoko
Review of: The New Made in Italy for the 21st Century: Fashion Film Art and Design Eugenia Paulicelli Claudio Napoli and Massimo Mascolo (dirs) (2022) USA: Okozoko
‘Film, Fashion, Costume in Italy and Beyond’
This editorial positions the study of fashion and costume against the field of film studies and the history of Italian cinema and media. Although scholarly approaches to this field of study first appeared in Anglo American literature at the beginning of the 1990s the pioneering work of Italian historian and film critic Mario Verdone has yet to be acknowledged. The anthology Verdone edited in 1950 a pivotal year of Italy’s post-war reconstruction was the first of its kind: prior to its publication the relationship between costume fashion and film had never been the subject of scholarly enquiry. The title of Verdone’s book La moda e il costume nel film (‘Fashion and costume in film’) calls attention to how these arts techniques and industries work in the actual process of making films. Verdone’s book offers a context for the articles contained in this volume.
Interview with Maria Grazia Chiuri: Women in fashion: Crafting feminisms
Maria Grazia Chiuri creative director at the House of Christian Dior talks about her current role working for the French luxury brand. She reflects on how passionate she is about highlighting and promoting women’s multifaceted manifestations of work image and creativity. Chiuri also discusses her long career in fashion starting with her mother’s atelier her studies at the European Institute of Design and then her work for the Fendi sisters and Valentino both located in Rome where she was born. Chiuri stresses certain books have been crucial for her from Ngozi’s recent bestseller We Should All Be Feminists (2015) to Clare Hunter’s Threads of Life (2019) and classical texts by Simone de Beauvoir as well as Robin Morgan’s Sisterhood Is Powerful (1970). In addition she emphasizes how beneficial it has been to be able to immerse herself in Dior’s rich archive. She finds inspiration in the history of women fashion feminism the arts cinema and how all these institutions promote necessary changes to the fashion industry of the twenty-first century.
Fashion and costumes in the work of Italian filmmaker Robert Vignola in silent Hollywood
While the influence of dive fashion on the cross-class audience of Italian silent cinema has been established the relationship between fashion and silent Hollywood stresses the class-composition of the audience. The work of director Robert G. Vignola born in Italy but active in the United States clarifies the passage from a cinema addressed to the popular audience of the nickelodeon to the middle class and specifically women in the narrative and through stars within the suggestions of fashion. There is a general consensus about Italian American culture being an extension of Italianness. In the press Vignola was always identified as an Italian and his artistic sensibility was credited to his Italian origins at a time where Italian silent cinema was incredibly popular on American screens. From a transnational perspective the role of fashion in his work both within a historical perspective and in the theoretical debate on female silent film spectatorship also points to the underestimated relations between American media and Italian culture.
Feminist genealogies, archival constellations and women’s labour in fashion films: Anna Piaggi: una visionaria nella moda (2016) and Triangle (2014)
In this article I examine how Alina Marazzi and Costanza Quatriglio deal with the world of haute couture and off-the-rack fashion and with the turn to the archive in their documentaries. They construct feminist genealogies (between maternage and spectral sisterhood) in the fashion world and adopt different modalities of montage (between gleaning and détournement). In Anna Piaggi: una visionaria nella moda (‘Anna Piaggi: A fashion visionary’) (2016) Marazzi focuses on Anna Piaggi a renowned fashion editor for Vogue Italia. In contrast Costanza Quatriglio in Triangle (2014) centres her story on the 123 women textile workers victims of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York in 1911 in counterpoint to her interview with Mariella Fasanella the only survivor of a collapsed sweatshop in Barletta Italy in 2011. The two filmmakers produce a short circuit in fashion films among feminist genealogies archival constellations and women’s labour in the fashion industry activating a feminist and ethical stance.
Film, fashion, costume and Rome-based archives
This essay presents a mapping of archival sources public and private connected to the activities of the cine-theatrical tailors and costume designers in order to reconstruct a productive and cultural reality of absolute excellence that starting from the past century developed in Rome. The aim is to offer information in the context of personal archives consisting of documentary assets of various types ranging from collections of press clippings photographs notes working manuscripts and above all else collections of original sketches often accompanied by samples of fabrics produced by costume designers for the creation of cinematic televisual and theatrical costumes. The major film and theatre ateliers operating in Rome are listed and follow a focus on the archival funds of costume designers of the Chiarini Library of the Experimental Center for Cinematography Foundation. Designers include such names as Gino Carlo Sensani Piero Tosi Vera Marzot Adriana Berselli Marisa D’Andrea and Alberto Verso.
How backstory and direct address reformulate the Shakespearean character on television: The case of the missing psychological motivation for House of Cards’ Frank Underwood
This article delves into narrative elements of direct address and backstory in television focusing on House of Cards (2012–19) Shakespeare’s Richard III and Game of Thrones (2011–19). Comparing dramaturgical approaches in stage plays and TV series the study highlights House of Cards’ unique incorporation of a pragmatic use of the direct address to create ‘world-view’ for character exploration. The analysis extends to Game of Thrones emphasizing Tyrion Lannister’s self-descriptive addresses revealing a psychological struggle rooted in rejection and backstory. The article proposes a methodological framework linking first lines or direct addresses to character backstories emphasizing the role of self-descriptive asides in character creation. It introduces the concept of a ‘psychological motivational arc’ within character arcs exploring how direct addresses contribute to nonlinear character development. Concluding with an in-depth examination of House of Cards’ Frank Underwood it scrutinizes Willimon’s ‘show don’t tell’ approach questioning its potential limitations on character depth and challenging traditional screenwriting advice. The analysis unravels the interplay between direct address backstory and character development in television series offering insights into evolving narrative techniques and their implications for contemporary screenwriting.
Africa’s Lost Classics: New Histories of African Cinema, Lizelle Bisschoff and David Murphy (eds) (2014)
Review of: Africa’s Lost Classics: New Histories of African Cinema Lizelle Bisschoff and David Murphy (eds) (2014)
Oxon and New York: Modern Humanities Research Association and Routledge 217 pp.
ISBN 978-1-90797-551-6 h/bk $48.95
Scripted resonance or lost in translation?: Storytelling and Chinese reception of Everything Everywhere All at Once
This study delves into the intricate art of screenwriting by critically examining the reception of the 2023 award-winning film Everything Everywhere All at Once among Chinese audiences. Notwithstanding its international laurels Everything has sparked a divided sentiment in Mainland China. While its audacious blend of genres and the poignant depiction of Chinese–American experiences have been recognized Everything was absent from Chinese theatres owing to its explicit content. However its digital footprint on Chinese streaming platforms has painted a picture of ambivalence. Many Chinese viewers expressed reservations about the screenwriters’ frequent use of pop culture references perceived narrative clichés and the incorporation of elements that seem discordant with conventional Chinese storytelling. Yet interspersed among these critiques is admiration for its visual brilliance and inclusivity. Grounded in resonance theory this study scrutinizes Everything particularly the screenplay’s reliance on the oft-touted ‘universal’ blueprint of the Hero’s Journey. Aligning with critiques suggesting such frameworks might be culturally myopic this study connects these screenwriting choices to the lukewarm reception among Chinese audiences. Through this lens the study offers invaluable insights for screenwriters keen on crafting narratives that resonate deeply with Chinese viewers. Moreover it adds to the larger conversation about the need for diversifying screenwriting templates on the global stage challenging the dominance of western-centric paradigms such as the Hero’s Journey. At its core this study deciphers the intricate tapestry of screenwriting elements that strike a chord within the Chinese sociocultural milieu.
In Custody: From written text to audio-visual discourse through a postcolonial lens
Comparing the novel In Custody written by Anita Desai (1984) and the film adaptation In Custody (1993) directed by Ismail Merchant provides an interesting opportunity to examine how literary texts are transformed into audio-visual works through different discursive techniques. A written text is taken from the page to live on a screen and thus focusing on the main content the literary author created becomes a challenge for screenwriters filmmakers and translators. In the case of In Custody the inclusion of English subtitles in the film allows for its internationalization while respecting the language of the novel. This approach enables audiences to appreciate the sounds of Hindi and Urdu poetry and in doing so they become custodians of these rich literary traditions.
The Neoliberal Self in Bollywood
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.
Fallen Women: Filmic Representations of Nuns
Women's Work in Post-war Italy
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.