Michelle Royer – författare

The writer Marguerite Duras was a key figure in post-war French cinema, pioneering innovations such as the disjunction of film and image, and the primacy given to voices, silence and music. Her multisensorial approach opened up new spaces for the female experience to be expressed. Although she worked with some of the best French visual technicians and musicians of her time, critiques have often neglected the visual and sonic aesthetics of her films, and their effects on spectators. Drawing on theories of embodiment and spectatorship, this book analyses the tactility and multisensoriality of Duras’ films, and how they relate to her female-centred perspective.

The writer Marguerite Duras was a key figure in post-war French cinema, pioneering innovations such as the disjunction of film and image, and the primacy given to voices, silence and music. Her multisensorial approach opened up new spaces for the female experience to be expressed. Although she worked with some of the best French visual technicians and musicians of her time, critiques have often neglected the visual and sonic aesthetics of her films, and their effects on spectators. Drawing on theories of embodiment and spectatorship, this book analyses the tactility and multisensoriality of Duras’ films, and how they relate to her female-centred perspective.

Deflecting the attention from Hollywood, Stars in World Cinema fills an important gap in the study of film by bringing together Star Studies and World Cinema. A team of international scholars here bring their expertise and in-depth knowledge of world cultures and cinema to the study of stars and stardom from six continents, exploring their cultures, their local history and their global relevance. Chapters look at the role of acting, music, singing, painting and martial arts in the making of stars from Australia’s indigenous population, Austria, China, Egypt, France, Germany, Greece, India, Iran, Japan, North and South Korea, Nigeria, the Philippines, the former Soviet Union, Spain, North and South America. Since the very beginnings of cinema, actors and stars have been central to its history and have been one of the medium’s defining characteristics. They have also been fundamental to the marketing of cinema and have played a major part in the reception of films in many cultures. Stars in World Cinema examines stardom and the circulation of stars across borders, analysing how local star systems or non-systems construct stardom around the world. Contributors put into practice their local knowledge of history, language and cultural systems, to consider issues of hybridity, boundary crossing, the mobility of stardom, and embodied spectatorship, in order to further the understanding of stars in light the of recent interest in reception theory.Rooted in a multidisciplinary and polycentric approach, this book throws light on unexpected connections between stars and stardoms from different parts of the world, cutting across chronology, geographies and film history.

Francophone Oceania Today: Literature, Visual Arts, Music and Cinema is a compilation of essays that breaks new ground in the exploration of recent and contemporary cultural expressions emerging from Francophone Oceania. This books explores Francophone Oceania today: a region rich in literary, artistic, and cultural productions, which nonetheless remains a marginalised space within Francophone Studies and disconnected from the mostly Anglophone cultural networks currently deployed in the South Pacific.Francophone Oceania Today: Literature, Visual Arts, Music and Cinema establishes an état présent of recent and contemporary Francophone Oceanian literature, visual arts, music and cinema. It measures the local and global diffusion of Francophone Oceanian culture today and examines its key thematic and critical approaches, including ecocritical perspectives on art, literature, and cinema, while proposing new directions for research in the region.Francophone Oceania Today opens a much-needed critical conversation between scholarly disciplines, between French-speaking and English-speaking academics, and between university researchers, museum professionals, and artistic voices. Our book contains hitherto unpublished contributions by Mā'ohi Nui/French Polynesian writer Chantal T. Spitz and by New Caledonian writer Nicolas Kurtovitch (in English translations by Jean Anderson).Our book aims to draw interdisciplinary bridges among literature, cinema, music and the visual arts, and to account for the various cross-fertilisations currently happening in the region. Ultimately, what emerges from our volume is a multifaceted reflexion on the contemporary existence of Francophone Oceania, showcasing the diversity of views, artforms, critical perspectives and artistic voices that are gathered across its islands and the sea that surrounds them.