Frank Beaver – författare

Contemporary independent American and non-American films distributed in the United States have emerged as a distinct system of representation formulated in the expanse between principles of Hollywood popular film and alternative cinematic practices. Cinema & Culture considers independent film as an industry, a set of institutions, a discursive formation, and a specific series of texts. Investigating the consumption side of the spectrum (distribution, reception, textual analysis), attention is focused on narrative films released theatrically in the United States by nonstudio distributors between 1980 and 2001. The category «independent film» is analyzed as the function of multiple, simultaneous, layered, and interacting discourses: representational, institutional, interpretive, and cultural/historical. Under exploration is the extent to which independent film as a distinct cultural formation is able to represent the stories, perspectives, and experiences of a pluralistic, multicultural society.

The long love-hate relationship between the United States and France is a curious one that derives from misconceptions, dissimilar economic imperatives, and genuinely different cultural patterns. Didn’t You Used to Be Depardieu? identifies and analyzes these differences through the contrast of American film remakes and the French originals.

On September 11, 2001, a major part of Manhattan’s skyline vanished. Before the tragic events of that day, New York has been the object of a love-hate relationship with the rest of the country. Its skyline had set the stage for innumerable motion pictures that showed the city at its most brilliant, as well as its most shadowy. Focusing its examination solely on Manhattan, Scenes in the City traces the growth, history, and myths of this legendary borough through some of the films whose significance it inflected.

Now in its fifth edition, Frank Beaver’s Dictionary of Film Terms has become an indispensable reference tool for the study of films and filmmaking. This trusted and practical handbook clearly and concisely defines the essential terms of film analysis and film art, with a special focus on the aesthetic parameters and values of filmmaking.The updated and expanded edition includes new definitions ranging from «bullet-time» optical effects, to the coming-of-age narrative, and LED lighting technology in science fiction films such as Gravity. More than 200 film title references not cited in previous editions have been added. Many classic and contemporary photo stills are included to illustrate terms. Extensive cross-referencing among individual definitions ensures easy access to interrelated terms, and a comprehensive topical index relates to larger concepts of film art.This up-to-date and comprehensive resource is a useful companion for film students and filmgoers, who will find it illuminating in its range and clarity.

For the past century African American cinema has primarily been an independent phenomenon. However, recent and consistent inclusion in the mainstream film industry of Hollywood suggests a significant change in its status. Despite a tendency to posit the «genre» as «other» it is not a separate cinema. Contemporary African American cinema contextualizes its forms and themes within the American film tradition. With crossover success and critical acclaim, it became clear by 1991 that profit would be a motive for expansion, and that these films had established profound connections not only with Black audiences and agendas but within a diverse mainstream audience as well. Contemporary African American cinema continues to sustain itself while informing, mediating, challenging, and entertaining American audiences.

Over the past few decades, Italian colonial cinema has proved to be a compelling area to explore artistic productions born during the colonial and fascist periods whose unique ideology shifted from propaganda to fiction. The films produced during the Italian colonial intervention in Africa, which lasted roughly seventy-five years, reflect cinema’s recollection of political beliefs and its aesthetic attention to colonialism while exposing its ideological contradictions. Italian colonial films mirror imperial ideology influenced by a racial hierarchy that was acted upon during the colonization of Africa.This study on images of Italian and African identities displayed in these films today invites viewers to reflect on racially constructed images that speak of justice and loyalty, values that reflect nationalist and patriotic ideals defining but also confining the identities of both Africans and Italians. The films analyzed in this book include Attilio Gatti’s Siliva Zulu (1927); Mario Camerini’s Kif tebbi (1928); Augusto Genina’s Squadrone bianco (1936). To conclude this journey through colonial discourses in Italian cinema, two examples of contemporary cinema given by Bernardo Bertolucci in L’assedio (1998) and Cristina Comencini in Bianco e Nero (2007) expand the study from colonial national and cultural identity to interracial relationships in today’s multiethnic Italy. The representations of African and Italian identities found in these two contemporary films grow into compelling visual documents of a historical connection that does not seem to move forward from its colonial mentality.These films’ analyses are helpful tools for understanding the growing racial intolerance which has been troubling Italian society in the past decade. The need remains crucial to explain the racial component of the relationship between Italy and Africa by looking at the imagery of national and cultural identity found in the films shot in Africa during the Italian expansionist intervention in the 1920s and 1930s.