Janine Marchessault - Böcker

The Oxford Handbook of Canadian Cinema is a rich, diverse overview of Canadian cinema. Responding to the latest developments in Canadian film studies this volume takes into account the variety of artistic voices, media technologies and places which have marked cinema in Canada throughout its history. Drawing on a range of established and emerging scholars from a range of disciplines, this volume will be useful to teachers, scholars and to a general readership interested in cinema in Canada. Moving beyond the director-focused approach of much previous scholarship, this book is concerned with communities, institutions, and audiences for Canadian cinema at both national and international levels. The choice of subjects covered ranges from popular, genre cinema to the most experimental of artistic interventions. Canadian cinema is seen in its interaction with other forms of art-making and media production in Canada and at the international level. Particular attention has been paid to the work of Indigenous filmmakers, members of diasporic communities and feminist and LGBTQ artists. The result is a book attentive to the complex social and institutional contexts in which Canadian cinema is made and consumed.

Wild Science investigates the world-wide boom in 'health culture'. While self-help health books and medical dramas are popular around the globe, we are bombarded with daily media images of DNA research, and news reports about cloning, the fight against AIDS, cancer and depression. With popular culture now the principal means through which the non-scientific population encounters science why do certain images of science get promoted above others?Contributors examine the public meanings of science, revealing the frictions and contradictions within popular representations of what medicine can and should do. Focusing on the visual culture of medicine, they show how representations of science have a direct impact on popular perceptions of the limits of science, and ultimately on health education, funding and research, and examine the belief that media literacy in popular representations of medicine makes an ethical public discourse on the aims of science possible.With sections addressing the new visual technologies which make the human body into a virtual territory, the diagnostic and medical practices centered around women's bodies, and popular debates around genetics and identity, Wild Science argues that science is a practice bound in values and institutions, and argues for a responsible engagement with the public cultures of science and health.

Wild Science investigates the world-wide boom in 'health culture'. While self-help health books and medical dramas are popular around the globe, we are bombarded with daily media images of DNA research, and news reports about cloning, the fight against AIDS, cancer and depression. With popular culture now the principal means through which the non-scientific population encounters science why do certain images of science get promoted above others?Contributors examine the public meanings of science, revealing the frictions and contradictions within popular representations of what medicine can and should do. Focusing on the visual culture of medicine, they show how representations of science have a direct impact on popular perceptions of the limits of science, and ultimately on health education, funding and research, and examine the belief that media literacy in popular representations of medicine makes an ethical public discourse on the aims of science possible.With sections addressing the new visual technologies which make the human body into a virtual territory, the diagnostic and medical practices centered around women's bodies, and popular debates around genetics and identity, Wild Science argues that science is a practice bound in values and institutions, and argues for a responsible engagement with the public cultures of science and health.

Locating Migrating Media details the extent to which media productions, both televisual and cinematic, have sought out new and cheaper shot locations, creative staff, and financing around the world. The book contributes to debates about media globalization, focusing on the local impact of new sites of media production. The book's chapters also question the role that film and television industries and local and regional governments play in broader economic develop and tax incentive schemes.While metaphors of transportation, mobility, fluidity and change continue to serve as key concepts and frames for understanding contemporary media industries, products and processes, the essays in this book look to local spaces, neighborhoods, cultural workers and stories to ground the global—that is, to interrogate the effect of media globalization before, during and after film and television shooting and onsite production.By locating migrating media, these chapters seek to determine the political, economic and cultural conditions that produce contemporary forms of televisual and cinematic storytelling, and how these processes affect the inhabitants, the "look" and the very geopolitical future of local communities, neighborhoods, cities and regions. The focus on relocated screen production highlights the act of film- and television-making, both aesthetically and economically. To locate migrating media is therefore to determine the political and cultural economies of globalized sets and stages, be they in new studios or on city streets or, perhaps most importantly, in our imaginations.

'In quite a profound, high-modernist way, this succinct but comprehensive book deems its subject worthy of careful scholarly analysis. I applaud and recommend it for taking much of the nonsense out of McLuhan' - Topia Journal

'Feted and reviled in his own lifetime, Marshall McLuhan has made a dramatic comeback in recent years. Marchessault gives a balanced and carefully considered appraisal of McLuhan's contribution to cultural theory, which may be even more pertinent now, in the early twenty-first century, than when he originally formulated it in the 1950s and '60s'

Jim McGuigan, Professor of Cultural Analysis, Loughborough University

Why is McLuhan important? What use can we make of his approach to the media today? In this insightful critical introduction, McLuhan's contribution is carefully explained and his reputation reassessed. The book:

· Explains McLuhan's key ideas

· Engages with critical issues in media and contemporary art

· Demonstrates the relevance of his work for students

of media and communications

· Addresses his methodological contribution

· Revises our understanding of his place in the history of ideas.

Illustrated with many examples from the network society, the book works as a guide to anyone who wants to know why McLuhan is important.

'In quite a profound, high-modernist way, this succinct but comprehensive book deems its subject worthy of careful scholarly analysis. I applaud and recommend it for taking much of the nonsense out of McLuhan' - Topia Journal

'Feted and reviled in his own lifetime, Marshall McLuhan has made a dramatic comeback in recent years. Marchessault gives a balanced and carefully considered appraisal of McLuhan's contribution to cultural theory, which may be even more pertinent now, in the early twenty-first century, than when he originally formulated it in the 1950s and '60s'

Jim McGuigan, Professor of Cultural Analysis, Loughborough University

Why is McLuhan important? What use can we make of his approach to the media today? In this insightful critical introduction, McLuhan's contribution is carefully explained and his reputation reassessed. The book:

· Explains McLuhan's key ideas

· Engages with critical issues in media and contemporary art

· Demonstrates the relevance of his work for students

of media and communications

· Addresses his methodological contribution

· Revises our understanding of his place in the history of ideas.

Illustrated with many examples from the network society, the book works as a guide to anyone who wants to know why McLuhan is important.

Handmade films stretch back to cinema's beginnings, yet until now their rich history has been neglected. Process Cinema is the first book to trace the development of handmade and hand-processed film in its historical and contemporary contexts, and from a global perspective. Mapping the genealogy of handmade film, and uncovering confluences, influences, and interstices between various international movements, sites, and practices, Process Cinema positions the resurgence of handmade and process cinema as a counter-practice to the rise of digital filmmaking. This volume brings together a range of renowned academics and artists to examine contemporary artisanal films, DIY labs, and filmmakers typically left out of the avant-garde canon, addressing the convergence between the analog and the digital in contemporary process cinema. Contributors investigate the history of process cinema – unscripted, improvisatory manipulation of the physicality of film – with chapters on pioneering filmmakers such as Len Lye and Marie Menken, while others discuss an international array of collectives devoted to processing films in artist-run labs from South Korea to Finland, Australia to Austria, and Greenland to Morocco, along with historical and contemporary practices in Canada and the United States. Addressing the turn to a new, sustainable creative ecology that is central to handmade films in the twenty-first century, and that defines today's reinvigorated film cultures, Process Cinema features some of the most beautiful handcrafted films and the most forward-thinking filmmakers within a global context.

Since Nell Shipman wrote and starred in Back to God's Country (1919), Canadian women have been making films. The accolades given to film-makers such as Patricia Rozema (I've Heard the Mermaids Singing, When Night is Falling), Alanis Obomsawin (Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance), and Micheline Lanctôt (Deux actrices) at festivals throughout the world in recent years attest to the growing international recognition for films made by Canadian women. With Gendering the Nation the editors have produced a definitive collection of essays, both original and previously published, that address the impact and influence of a century of women's film-making in Canada. In dialogue with new paradigms for understanding the relationship of cinema with nation and gender, Gendering the Nation seeks to situate women's cinema through the complex optic of national culture. This collection of critical essays employs a variety of frameworks to analyse cinematic practices that range from narrative to documentary to the avant-garde.

Since Nell Shipman wrote and starred in Back to God's Country (1919), Canadian women have been making films. The accolades given to film-makers such as Patricia Rozema (I've Heard the Mermaids Singing, When Night is Falling), Alanis Obomsawin (Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance), and Micheline Lanctôt (Deux actrices) at festivals throughout the world in recent years attest to the growing international recognition for films made by Canadian women. With Gendering the Nation the editors have produced a definitive collection of essays, both original and previously published, that address the impact and influence of a century of women's film-making in Canada. In dialogue with new paradigms for understanding the relationship of cinema with nation and gender, Gendering the Nation seeks to situate women's cinema through the complex optic of national culture. This collection of critical essays employs a variety of frameworks to analyse cinematic practices that range from narrative to documentary to the avant-garde.

As a medium, film is constantly evolving both in form and in content. Fluid Screens, Expanded Cinema considers the shift from traditional cinema to new frontiers of interactive, performative, and networked media.Using the theories of Marshall McLuhan and Gilles Deleuze as a starting point, renowned scholars from the fields of film theory, communication studies, cultural studies, and new media theory explore the ways in which digital technology is transforming contemporary visual culture. The essays consider a series of questions: What constitutes the "new" in new media? How are digital aesthetics different from film aesthetics? What new forms of spectatorship and storytelling, political community, and commodity production are being enabled through the digital media?Using Gene Youngblood's 1970 book Expanded Cinema as an anchor for the volume, Fluid Screens, Expanded Cinema understands the digital not simply as a technological form, but also as an experience of space and time that is tied to capitalism. This important collection is unique in framing a range of social justice issues with aesthetic theories of new digital screen culture that will appeal to scholars and multimedia artists prepared to break new ground.

Holding Ground: Nuit Blanche and Other Ruptures investigates international methodologies in curatorial practice from Canada, France, England, Aotearoa New Zealand, the United States, and many more countries. It unearths the connections and historical moments that draw public exhibitions and public art together and the differences that set them apart. This book is grounded in ongoing international exchanges and draws on the breadth of artistic and curatorial work in the field. This volume brings forward as many voices as possible to reflect on their experiences with Nuit Blanche and public art, creating a diversity of perspectives on this evolving event/festival/exhibition/happening. While the aim is to present the history of Nuit Blanche through the lens of its different urban incarnations, the volume also seeks to capture its decolonial and BIPOC energies alongside its more radical and utopian aspirations. This collection of essays, therefore, emphasizes the political changes that are reflected in the curatorial programming of recent Nuit Blanche exhibitions, with a new generation of curators and artists who have created ruptures and disruptions by proposing new models of public art with engagements that simultaneously question, decentre, and expand experiences of the city.