Delphine Letort - Böcker

A rare look at Spike Lee's creative appropriation of the documentary film genre.In this groundbreaking book, Delphine Letort sheds light on a neglected part of Spike Lee's filmmaking by offering a rare look at his creative engagement with the genre of documentary filmmaking. Ranging from history to sports and music, Lee has tackled a diversity of topics in such nonfiction films as 4 Little Girls, A Huey P. Newton Story, Jim Brown: All-American, and When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts. Letort analyzes the narrative and aesthetic discourses that structure these films and calls attention to Lee's technical skills and narrative-framing devices. Drawing on film and media studies, African American studies, and cultural theories, she examines the sociological value of Lee's investigations into contemporary culture and also explores the ethics of his commitment to a genre characterized by its claim to truth.

A rare look at Spike Lee's creative appropriation of the documentary film genre.In this groundbreaking book, Delphine Letort sheds light on a neglected part of Spike Lee's filmmaking by offering a rare look at his creative engagement with the genre of documentary filmmaking. Ranging from history to sports and music, Lee has tackled a diversity of topics in such nonfiction films as 4 Little Girls, A Huey P. Newton Story, Jim Brown: All-American, and When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts. Letort analyzes the narrative and aesthetic discourses that structure these films and calls attention to Lee's technical skills and narrative-framing devices. Drawing on film and media studies, African American studies, and cultural theories, she examines the sociological value of Lee's investigations into contemporary culture and also explores the ethics of his commitment to a genre characterized by its claim to truth.

At a time when debates about social inequality are in the spotlight, it is worth examining how the two most popular media of the 20th and 21st centuries--film and television--have shaped the representation of social classes. How do generic conventions determine the representation of social stereotypes? How do filmmakers challenge social class identification? How do factors such as national history, geography and gender affect the representation of social classes? This collection of new essays explores these and other questions through an analysis of a wide range of American and British productions--from sitcoms and reality TV to documentaries and auteur cinema--from the 1950s to the present.

In this book, Delphine Letort examines the plots and ploys that intermingle fiction and history in Barry Jenkins’ television adaptation of The Underground Railroad, allowing viewers to experience enslavement and flight through the eyes of the female protagonist, Cora. Letort demonstrates how the fusion of imaginary and real elements underlies a poetic visual and narrative style to guide viewers’ emotional and epistemological understanding of the past. She posits that another imagery of enslavement can be created—one that does not position the black woman at the margins of slavery cinema and history—as the mise-en-scène of the underground as a symbolic space representing the hidden and the repressed opens new fictional possibilities for imagining the intimate life of the enslaved. Ultimately, this book reveals how the serial format proves instrumental in transforming the gaze on the racial subject, using repetition and difference from one episode to the next to prompt new ways of seeing. Scholars of film and television studies, popular culture, history, and critical race theory will find this book of particular interest.

With an interdisciplinary approach that looks at literature, cinema and cultural studies, Women Activists and Civil Rights Leaders in Auto/Biographical Literature and Cinema argues that life writing is a key source of artistic creativity and activism which enables us to take a fresh look at history.