David E. James - Böcker

For two decades after the mid-1950s, biracial popular music played a fundamental role in progressive social movements on both sides of the Atlantic. Balancing rock's capacity for utopian popular cultural empowerment with its usefulness for the capitalist media industries, Rock 'N' Film explores how the music's contradictory potentials were reproduced in various kinds of cinema, including major studio productions, minor studios' exploitation projects, independent documentaries, and the avant-garde.These include Rock Around the Clock and other 1950s jukebox musicals; the films Elvis made before being drafted, especially King Creole, as well as the formulaic comedies in which Hollywood abused his genius in the 1960s; early documentaries such as The T.A.M.I. Show that presented James Brown and the Rolling Stones as the core of a black-white, US-UK cultural commonality; A Hard Day's Night that marked the British Invasion; Dont Look Back, Monterey Pop, Woodstock, and other Direct Cinema documentaries about the music of the counterculture; and avant-garde films about the Rolling Stones by Jean-Luc Godard, Kenneth Anger, and Robert Frank. After the turn of the decade, notably Gimme Shelter, in which the Stones appeared to be complicit in the Hells Angels' murder of a young black man, 1960s' music-and films about it-reverted to separate black and white traditions based respectively on soul and country. These produced blaxploitation and Lady Sings the Blues on the one hand, and bigoted representations of Southern culture in Nashville on the other. Ending with the deaths of their stars, both films implied that rock 'n' roll had died or even, as David Bowie proclaimed, that it had committed suicide. But in his documentary about Bowie, Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, D.A. Pennebaker triumphantly re-affirmed the community of musicians and fans in glam rock.In analyzing this history, David E. James adapts the methodology of histories of the classic film musical to show how the rock 'n' roll film both displaced and recreated it.

Ken Jacobs has been making cinema for more than fifty years. Along with over thirty film and video works, he has created an array of shadow plays, sound pieces, installations, and magic lantern and film performances that have transformed how we look at and think about moving images. He is part of the permanent collections at MoMA and the Whitney, and his work has been celebrated in Europe and the U.S. While his importance is well-recognized, this is the first volume dedicated entirely to him. It includes essays by prominent film scholars along with photographs and personal pieces from artists and critics, all of which testify to the extraordinary variety and influence of his accomplishments. Anyone interested in cinema or experimental arts will be well-rewarded by a greater acquaintance with the genius, the innovation, and the optical antics of Ken Jacobs.

Ken Jacobs has been making cinema for more than fifty years. Along with over thirty film and video works, he has created an array of shadow plays, sound pieces, installations, and magic lantern and film performances that have transformed how we look at and think about moving images. He is part of the permanent collections at MoMA and the Whitney, and his work has been celebrated in Europe and the U.S. While his importance is well-recognized, this is the first volume dedicated entirely to him. It includes essays by prominent film scholars along with photographs and personal pieces from artists and critics, all of which testify to the extraordinary variety and influence of his accomplishments. Anyone interested in cinema or experimental arts will be well-rewarded by a greater acquaintance with the genius, the innovation, and the optical antics of Ken Jacobs.

Rock 'N' Film presents a cultural history of films about US and British rock music during the period when biracial popular music was fundamental to progressive social movements on both sides of the Atlantic. Considering the music's capacity for utopian popular cultural empowerment and its usefulness for the capitalist media industries, Rock 'N' Film explores how its contradictory potentials were reproduced in various kinds of cinema, including major studio productions, minor studios' exploitation projects, independent documentaries, and avant-garde works. These include Rock Around the Clock (Fred F. Sears, 1956) and other 1950s jukebox musicals; Elvis's King Creole (Michael Curtiz, 1958) and other important films he made before being drafted as well as the formulaic musical comedies in which Hollywood abused his genius in the 1960s; early documentaries such as The T.A.M.I. Show (Steve Binder, 1964) that presented James Brown and the Rolling Stones as core of a black-white, US-UK cultural commonality; A Hard Day's Night (Richard Lester, 1964) that precipitated the British Invasion, Dont Look Back (1967), Monterey Pop (1968), and other Direct Cinema documentaries about the music of the counterculture by D. A. Pennebaker; Woodstock (1970); avant-garde documentaries about the Rolling Stones by Jean-Luc Godard, Kenneth Anger, Robert Frank, and others. After the turn of the decade, notably Gimme Shelter (1970) in which Charlotte Zwerin edited David and Albert Maysles's footage of the Altamont free concert so as to portray the Stone's complicity in the Hells Angels' murder of a young man, the 60s' utopian biracial music--and films about it--reverted to separate black and white traditions based respectively on soul and country. These produced Blaxploitation and Lady Sings the Blues (Sidney J. Furie, 1972) on the one hand, and bigoted representations of the Southern culture in Nashville (Robert Altman, 1975) on the other. Both these last two films ended with the deaths of their stars, and it seemed that rock 'n' roll had died or even, as David Bowie proclaimed, that it had committed suicide. But in another documentary about Bowie's concert, Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars (1973), D.A. Pennebaker triumphantly re-affirmed the community of musicians and fans in glam rock. In analyzing this history, David James adapts the methodology of histories of the classic musical to rock 'n' roll to show how the rock 'n' roll film both displaced and recreated the film musical.

Drylands are a sizeable part of the world's potentially arable land. They vary from the hyper-arid regions of the classic deserts of Africa and Asia to the more common semi-arid and sub-humid areas that support extensive agricultural systems dependent on rainfall or irrigation.Following their successful and innovative work The Economics of Dryland Management the editors have assembled twenty case studies from nine countries in the continents of Africa, Asia, North America and Australia. They help to explore more fully the costs of land degradation and illustrate the economics of reclamation, rehabilitation and prevention. The cases in this book present a rich, varied and readable survey of a wide range of drylands and their resources.Originally published in 19990

Jonas Mekas, one of the driving forces behind New York's alternative film culture from the 1950s through the 1980s, made for an unlikely counterculture hero: a Lithuanian emigr and fervent nationalist from an agrarian family, he had not grown up with either capitalist commercialism or the postwar rebellion against it. By focusing on his sensitivity to political struggle, however, leading film commentators here offer fascinating insights into Mekas's career as a writer, filmdistributor, and film-maker, while exploring the history of independent cinema in New York since World War II. This collection of essays, interviews, and photographs addresses such topics as Mekas's column in the Village Voice, his foundation and editorship of Film Culture, his role in the establishment of Anthology Film Archives and The Film-Makers Co-op (the major distribution center for independent film), his interaction with other artists, including John Lennon and Yoko Ono, and finally the critical assessment of his own films, from Guns of the Trees and The Brig in the sixties to the diary films that followed Walden.The contributors to this volume are Paul Arthur, Vyt Bakaitis, Stan Brakhage, Robert Breer, Rudy Burckhardt, David Curtis, Richard Foreman, Tom Gunning, Bob Harris, J. Hoberman, David E. James, Marjorie Keller, Peter Kubelka, George Kuchar, Richard Leacock, Barbara Moore, Peter Moore, Scott Nygren, John Pruitt, Lauren Rabinovitz, Michael Renov, Jeffrey K. Ruoff, and Maureen Turim.

This volume is based on a number of reports prepared over several years for a research project jointly sponsored by the United Nations Environment Programme, the Australian International Development Assistance Bureau and the Australian and New Zealand Environment and Conservation Council. Since release of the report of the World Commission on Environment and Development, the quest has intensified for methods that combine economic analysis and environmental assessments to achieve the goals of sustainable development. The main purpose of this volume is to explain how this may be accomplished. It combines scientific assessments, economic analysis and governmental procedures in an integrated approach to planning for economic development and environmental protection. The first four chapters explain economic concepts and techniques and their incorporation in EIA procedure. Six case studies are presented, demonstrating practical applications in different countries - Indonesia, Thailand, Nepal, the Philippines, Hawaii and Australia.The volume should assist all participants involved in environmental impact assessment: public and private development proponents, environmental and conservation groups, public administrators and decision-makers, and interested members of the public. The book aims to provide a wide perspective on the field by combining economics, EIA techniques, procedures, and institutional aspects.

Korean cinema was virtually unavailable to the West during the Japanese colonial period (1910-1945), and no film made before 1943 has been recovered even though Korea had an active film-making industry that produced at least 240 films. For a period of 40 years, after Korea was liberated from colonialism, a time where Western imports were scarce, Korean cinema became an innovative force reflecting a society whose social and cultural norms were becoming less conservative. This collection of ten essays written about Im Kwon-Taek, better known as the father of New Korean cinema, takes a critical look at the situations of filmmakers in South Korea.

Alternative Projections: Experimental Film in Los Angeles, 1945-1980 is a groundbreaking anthology that features papers from a conference and series of film screenings on postwar avant-garde filmmaking in Los Angeles sponsored by Filmforum, the Getty Foundation, and the University of Southern California's School of Cinematic Arts, together with newly-commissioned essays, an account of the screening series, reprints of historical documents by and about experimental filmmakers in the region, and other rare photographs and ephemera. The resulting diverse and multi-voiced collection is of great importance, not simply for its relevance to Los Angeles, but also for its general discoveries and projections about alternative cinemas.

Like David James' earlier collection of essays, Power Misses: Essays Across (Un)Popular Culture (1996), the present volume, Power Misses II: Cinema, Asian and Modern is concerned with popular cultural activity that propose alternatives and opposition to capitalist media. Now with a wider frame of reference, it moves globally from west to east, beginning with films made during the Korean Democracy Movement, and then turning to socialist realism in China and Taiwan, and to Asian American film and poetry in Los Angeles. Several other avant-garde film movements in L.A. created communities resistant to the culture industries centered there, as did elements in the classic New York avant-garde, here instanced in the work of Ken Jacobs and Andy Warhol. The final chapter concerns little-known films about communal agriculture in the Nottinghamshire village of Laxton, the only one where the medieval open-field system never suffered enclosure. This survival of the commons anticipated resistance to the extreme and catastrophic forms of privatization, monetization, and theft of the public commonweal in the advanced form of capitalism we know as neoliberalism.

We have always had land in which the agricultural productivity is limited because there is not enough moisture. Systems of farming and burning often degrade dryland further until it is desert. Today, however, the problem is becoming much more serious. Over 20 per cent of the world's population lives in dryland areas, and unless action is taken drylands will increase dramatically. This book focuses on the people who live and .farm in the drylands, their use of land resources and the economic returns from their decisions. In a clear and thorough economic appraisal, the authors show how it is still possible to arrest the problem.Originally published in 1989

Drylands are a sizeable part of the world's potentially arable land. They vary from the hyper-arid regions of the classic deserts of Africa and Asia to the more common semi-arid and sub-humid areas that support extensive agricultural systems dependent on rainfall or irrigation.Following their successful and innovative work The Economics of Dryland Management the editors have assembled twenty case studies from nine countries in the continents of Africa, Asia, North America and Australia. They help to explore more fully the costs of land degradation and illustrate the economics of reclamation, rehabilitation and prevention. The cases in this book present a rich, varied and readable survey of a wide range of drylands and their resources.Originally published in 19990

Mass culture: pro or con? From the time of Adorno and Horkheimer's seminal essay on "the culture industry," cultural studies has stood in the shadow of the Frankfurt School's critique of mass culture and its model of popular vs. elite culture, whatever the merits of either. Looking at culture as something people do rather than buy, Power Misses challenges the prevailing wisdom in cultural studies today.David James insists that popular resistance to domination by the culture industry must intervene at the point of production rather than consumption. In its most resolute instances, from the poetry of William Blake to the British Miners' Campaign Tape Project, alternative culture has fused with radical politics. Authoritatively mapping the terrain of cultural resistance under capitalism, James examines the material contradictions and the utopian potentials articulated in John Berger's fiction, Dada, rock music, the films of Andy Warhol and Jonas Mekas, and the poetry of punk. Following in the steps of Brecht and Benjamin, James explores the myriad ways in which culture is saturated by the commodity form, while at the same time giving rise to numerous forms of popular resistance to the culture industry's dominance.