Julian Ross – författare

Shorlisted for the BAFTSS 2020 Award for Best MonographStarting out as an independent filmmaker, and despite his films being subjected to censorship in his native China, Jia Zhangke has become the country’s leading film director internationally. Seen as one of world cinema’s foremost auteurs, he has played a crucial role in documenting and reflecting upon China’s era of intense transformations since the 1990s..Cecília Mello provides in-depth analysis of Jia’s unique body of work, from his early films Xiao Wu and Platform, to experimental quasi-documentary 24 City and the audacious Mountains May Depart. Mello suggests that Jia’s particular expression of the realist mode is shaped by the aesthetics of other Chinese artistic traditions, allowing Jia to unearth memories both personal and collective, still lingering within the ever-changing landscapes of contemporary China. Mello’s groundbreaking study opens a door into Chinese cinema and culture, addressing the nature of the so-called ‘impure’ cinematographic art and the complex representation of China through the ages.Foreword by Walter Salles and with a new preface by the author.

In Japanese Cinema and Punk, Mark Player examines how the do-it-yourself ethos of punk empowered a new generation of Japanese filmmakers during a period of crisis and change in Japan’s film industry.Drawing on rare materials and first-hand interviews with key figures from the jishu eiga (self-made film)tradition, including Ishii Gakuryu (formerly Ishii Sogo), Yamamoto Masashi, Tsukamoto Shin’ya, and Fukui Shozin, Player explores how punk’s bricolage style was leveraged to create exciting intermedial film aesthetics. These aesthetics were influenced by rock music, graffiti art, street performance, handmade animation, television, and other mass media. By considering the practical, phenomenological, and political ramifications of combining diverse media elements, Player offers in-depth analyses of films such as Burst City (1982), Robinson’s Garden (1987), Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989), and more. He further traces the changing sociocultural position of Japan’s punk generation throughout the 1980s—from its euphoric early-80s peak to the growing disillusionment caused by its mainstream co-optation and convergence.

In Japanese Cinema and Punk, Mark Player examines how the do-it-yourself ethos of punk empowered a new generation of Japanese filmmakers during a period of crisis and change in Japan’s film industry.Drawing on rare materials and first-hand interviews with key figures from the jishu eiga (self-made film)tradition, including Ishii Gakuryu (formerly Ishii Sogo), Yamamoto Masashi, Tsukamoto Shin’ya, and Fukui Shozin, Player explores how punk’s bricolage style was leveraged to create exciting intermedial film aesthetics. These aesthetics were influenced by rock music, graffiti art, street performance, handmade animation, television, and other mass media. By considering the practical, phenomenological, and political ramifications of combining diverse media elements, Player offers in-depth analyses of films such as Burst City (1982), Robinson’s Garden (1987), Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989), and more. He further traces the changing sociocultural position of Japan’s punk generation throughout the 1980s—from its euphoric early-80s peak to the growing disillusionment caused by its mainstream co-optation and convergence.

Winner of Best Monograph at the 2025 BAFTSS Awards.This book provides an in-depth exploration of the evolving landscape of Bollywood cinema in response to recent socio-political changes in India, including a surge in sectarian violence and the ascent of Hindutva, or Hindu nationalism, under Prime Minister Narendra Modi's leadership. Through a comprehensive analysis of prominent filmmakers and actors like Sanjay Leela Bhansali, Kangana Ranaut, Akshay Kumar, and Anupam Kher, Ajay Gehlawat investigates the extent to which their recent works align with key tenets of the Hindutva movement. He scrutinizes the growing influence of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on film production, manifesting in collaborations covering diverse themes, from Modi's Clean India initiative to the nation's space exploration endeavors and grand historical epics such as Padmaavat (2018) and Manikarnika (2019) that seek to reshape Indian history in line with Hindutva ideology.Gehlawat goes on to dissect smaller budget films like Article 15 (2019) and Shubh Mangal Zyada Saavdhan (2020), which tackle pressing social issues like caste-based violence and homophobia exacerbated by the surge in right-wing extremism in India. In doing so, he elucidates the profound and far-reaching impact of Hindutva ideology on Indian cinematic narratives and aesthetics, while also considering the broader implications for Indian society as a whole.

From cabaret songs inspired by Buster Keaton to Mickey Mouse’s diagnosis as a “melo-maniac,” Weimar Slapstick and Hollywood Comedy Transformed explores the extraordinary appeal of American slapstick, cartoon, and screwball comedies during and after Germany’s Weimar Republic. Bridging two crucial sites of interwar modernity, Paul Flaig offers a fundamental reassessment of Weimar culture, Hollywood comedy, and their intertwined legacies.Through a series of comic pairings—including Harold Lloyd and Curt Bois, Felix the Cat and psychotechnics—Flaig investigates the aesthetic, political and sexual forces that shaped Weimar Germany’s fascination with American film comedies, as they were taken up and transformed by German filmmakers, philosophers, advertisers, artists, and politicians. Examining a wide range of sources—including films, manifestoes, arts journals, feuilletons, and trade press reports—he underscores the essential and diverse contributions of Weimar culture to our understanding of these comic laboratories of modernity.

Departing from standard histories, this book draws on the theory of excess in film to provide a re-examination of Polish cinema history, following emancipatory impulses that emerged in Polish culture between the great crisis of 1968 and the conservative revolution of the Solidarity movement in the 1980s.Employing a transnational, queer, and decolonial lens, Sebastian Jagielski argues that beyond the binary of state-endorsed and official 'opposition' media, there exists a range of subversive and radical films. He provides close readings of key examples such as The Devil (Diabel) (1972), A Story of Sin (Dzieje grzechu) (1975) and The Palace (Palac) (1980), considering their depiction and transformation of emancipatory ideals born out of Western countercultural movements. He also explores the filmmaking practices of directors like Andrzej Wajda and Andrzej Zulawski, examining their use of subtext, lurid narratives and subversive embedded gestures, all developed against the backdrop of normative visions of Polishness shaped by nationalism, Catholicism, and heteronormativity. In doing so he proposes a critical revision of the conservative cinema of moral anxiety.The book also addresses how on-screen depictions of sexuality intersect with various modes of difference, highlighting the impact of racism, homophobia, misogyny, and classism. Rejecting a linear narrative in favour of a fragmented history, Jagielski uncovers the untold stories of Polish cinema's subversive influences.

This book explores how the generation of filmmakers born in the aftermath of the Chilean dictatorship (1973-1990) use cinema to navigate and narrate the complex legacies of their country's turbulent past.Eva-Rosa Ferrand Verdejo examines the work of the Novísimo Cine Chileno, providing close readings of key films such as Fernando Guzzoni’s Carne de Perro (2013),Cristóbal León and Joaquín Cociña’s La Casa Lobo (2018), Manuela Martelli’s 1976 (2022), and Pablo Larraín’s El Conde (2023). She identifies a recurring trope of blurred boundaries within these films – whether between right and wrong, past and present, fiction and reality, or a blending of genre conventions, – which disorients the viewer and resists any singular understanding of the film. She argues that this disorientation pushes the audience into a more active and critical mode of spectatorship.Drawing on psychoanalytical theory and political philosophy, she goes on to explore how the aesthetic choices within these films are reflective of an uneasy relationship to Chile's traumatic past. Labelling these the 'aesthetics of trauma', she argues that they challenge official histories and raise broader questions about memory, trauma, and ethical representation in post-dictatorial societies.

The figure of the auteur continues to haunt the study of film, resisting both the poststructuralist charges that pointed to its absence and the histories of production that have described its pitfalls. In an era defined by the instability of identities and the recycling of works, Performing Authorship offers a refreshingly new take on the cinematic auteur, proposing that the challenges that once accelerated this figure's critical demise should instead pump new life into it. This book is about the drama of creative processes in essay, documentary and fiction films, with particular emphasis on the effects that the filmmaker's body exerts on our sense of an authorial presence. It is an illuminating analysis of films by Jean-Luc Godard, Woody Allen, Agnes Varda, Orson Welles, Jean Rouch, Eduardo Coutinho and Sarah Turner that shows directors shifting between opposite movements towards exposure and masking, oscillating between the assertion and divestiture of their authorial control. In the process, Cecilia Sayad argues, the film author is not necessarily at the work's origin, nor does it constitute the end product.What this new concept of performing authorship describes is the making and unmaking of a subject.

The figure of the auteur continues to haunt the study of film, resisting both the poststructuralist charges that pointed to its absence and the histories of production that have described its pitfalls. In an era defined by the instability of identities and the recycling of works, Performing Authorship offers a refreshingly new take on the cinematic auteur, proposing that the challenges that once accelerated this figure's critical demise should instead pump new life into it. This book is about the drama of creative processes in essay, documentary and fiction films, with particular emphasis on the effects that the filmmaker's body exerts on our sense of an authorial presence. It is an illuminating analysis of films by Jean-Luc Godard, Woody Allen, Agnes Varda, Orson Welles, Jean Rouch, Eduardo Coutinho and Sarah Turner that shows directors shifting between opposite movements towards exposure and masking, oscillating between the assertion and divestiture of their authorial control. In the process, Cecilia Sayad argues, the film author is not necessarily at the work's origin, nor does it constitute the end product.What this new concept of performing authorship describes is the making and unmaking of a subject.

Over the last decade, a realist tendency has made its mark on the world cinema map. What are its main aesthetic and political characteristics? How does it relate to the realist canon and world cinema history? What are the different facets of this phenomenon as expressed in diverse cinemas across the globe? Drawing on foundational realist theories and recent takes on the body and the senses, this illuminating book aims to provide in-depth answers to these questions by examining the fascinating work of Carlos Reygadas (Mexico), Tsai Ming-liang (Taiwan) and Gus Van Sant (US), including award-winning films such "Japon", "Vive l'amour" and "Elephant". In their common allegiance to the long take, these are cinemas characterised by a sensory mode of address based on the protracted inspection of physical reality. Their hyperbolic focus on material phenomena, de Luca argues, translates into phenomenological film experiences that provide an antidote to a world saturated by simulation processes. The book demonstrates how these cinemas politically affirm new ways of being in the world.

Cinemas from East Asia are among the most exciting and influential in the world. They are attracting popular and critical attention on a global scale, with films from the region circulating as art house, cult, blockbuster and 'extreme' cinema, or as Hollywood remakes. This book explores developments in the global popularity of East Asian cinema, from Chinese martial arts, through Japanese horror, to the burgeoning new Korean cinema, with particular emphasis on crossovers, remakes, hybrids and co-productions. It examines changing cinematic traditions in Asia alongside the 'Asianisation' of western cinema. It explores the dialogue not only between 'East' and 'West', but between different cinemas in the Asia Pacific. What do these trends mean for global cinema? How are co-productions and crossover films changing the nature of Hollywood and East Asian cinemas? The book includes in-depth studies of Park Chan-wook, 'Infernal Affairs', 'Seven Samurai', and 'Princess Mononoke'.

Argentine filmmaking from the mid-1990s to the present has enjoyed worldwide success. New Argentine Cinema explores this cinema in order to discover the elements that have made for this success, in relation to the country's profound political, social and cultural crisis during the same period. Jens Andermann shows how the most recent wave of films differs markedly from the Argentine cinema of the preceding decade, following the end of the dictatorship in 1983. Studying films by Lisandro Alonso, Albertina Carri, Lucrecia Martel, Raul Perrone, Martin Rejtman, and Pablo Trapero, among others, he identifies a shift in aesthetic sensibilities between these directors and those of the previous generation as well as a profound change in the way films are being made, and their relation to the audiovisual field at large. In combining close comparative analyses with a review of the changing models of production, editing, actorship and location, Andermann uncovers the ways in which Argentine films have managed to construct a complex, multilayered account of their own present, as shot through - or 'perforated' - by the still unresolved legacies of the past.