Nick Rees-Roberts - Böcker

French Queer Cinema looks at queer self-representation in contemporary auteur film and experimental video in France. Whilst there is growing research on representations of queer sexualities in France, this is the first comprehensive study of the cultural formation and critical reception of contemporary queer film and video. French Queer Cinema addresses the socio-political context informing both queer DIY video and independent gay cinema, including films such as Patrice Chéreau’s Ceux qui m’aiment prendront le train, Olivier Ducastel and Jacques Martineau’s Drôle de Félix, François Ozon’s Le Temps qui reste and André Téchiné’s Les Témoins. Taking up the recent Anglo-American attention to queer migration, the book looks at gay fantasies of Arab (beur) men, as well as beur self-representation in Europe’s fastest-selling gay DV porn production Citébeur. Further chapters cover transgender dissent, and the effects of AIDS and loss on the formation of gay identities.Key Features*Provides a full, up-to-date account of the formation, reception and setting for contemporary queer film and video in France.*Situates cinematic representations of migration, social exclusion and queer sexualities in the context of recent repressive legislation on sex work and immigration.*Covers the work of less well-known directors such as Christophe Honoré, Sébastien Lifshitz and Gaël Morel.

French Queer Cinema examines the representation of queer identities and sexualities in contemporary French filmmaking. This groundbreaking volume is the first comprehensive study of the cultural formation and critical reception of contemporary queer film and video in France. French Queer Cinema addresses the emergence of a gay cinema in the French context since the late 1990s, including critical coverage of films by important contemporary directors such as François Ozon, Sébastien Lifshitz, Patrice Chéreau, André Téchiné and Christophe Honoré. Nick Rees-Roberts transposes contemporary Anglo-American Queer Theory to the study of French screen culture, drawing particular attention to issues of race and migration such as problematic fantasies of Arab masculinities in queer cinematic production. This theoretically-informed book engages with a number of fault-lines running through queer cultural representation in France including transgender dissent and the effects of AIDS and loss on the formation of queer identities and sexualities.Key Features*Provides a full, up-to-date account of the formation, reception and setting for contemporary queer film and video in France.*Situates cinematic representations of migration, social exclusion and queer sexualities in the context of recent repressive legislation on sex work and immigration.*Covers the work of less well-known directors such as Christophe Honoré, Sébastien Lifshitz and Gaël Morel.

The moving image has become a key marketing tool for luxury fashion, central in enabling brands to shape their visual codes and extend their brand awareness. Fashion Film is the first detailed study of the shifting shape of fashion imagery in the digital age, investigating the role of the moving image in the promotion, communication and spectacle of contemporary fashion. Combining interdisciplinary analysis of cinema and digital culture, this ground-breaking book traces the emergence of fashion film in the 21st century through its historical roots in pre-digital forms of photography, experimental cinema, mass-media advertising and documentary film-making, right up to today’s visual spread of contemporary fashion on video blogs, online magazines and live-streamed catwalk shows.Examining collaborations between fashion designers and pioneering image-makers such as Guy Bourdin, Jean-Paul Goode, William Klein and Nick Knight, the book highlights the critical tension between the fashion film conceived as a creative endeavour and as commercial enterprise. Fashion Film also includes a parallel focus on factual representations of fashion through the recent rise of documentary fashion film that goes behind the scenes to follow the processes and personalities involved in making fashion. Accessible and well-illustrated, Fashion Film will appeal to students and scholars of fashion, film, media, photography, celebrity, sociology and cultural studies.

Fashion thrives on fame and success, capitalism and culture. But beneath the luster and hype, fashion is also inevitably about failure – an essential part of its history and evolution. In his contribution to the Fashion in Action series of short books rallying readers to tackle pressing issues in fashion, Nick Rees-Roberts unravels the relationship between forms of creative and commercial failure to consider how we might begin to address the systemic failings of the fashion industry today. Positing failure as a speculative way to rethink fashion and focussing on the checkered histories of a number of designers and brands, Rees-Roberts explores how forms of commercial failure within a capitalist framework might actually be productive, enabling designers to retain independence and balance by potentially opting out of the fashion establishment, if not of the system altogether. He then goes on to look at the broader systemic failures of the 21st-century fashion industry, arguing that rather than keep focussing on doing and making, we should be undoing and remaking the idea of fashion itself in order to rethink design outside of the framework of a hyper-globalized industry.By applying failure as a critical mode of inquiry, this book invites readers to consider a new direction for the future of fashion – one that values resilience and reinvention over the relentless pursuit of the next big success.

Few European male actors have been as iconic and influential for generations of filmgoers as Alain Delon. Emblematic of a modern, European masculinity, Delon’s appeal spanned cultures and continents. From his breakthrough as the first on-screen Tom Ripley in Purple Noon in 1960, through two legendary performances in Rocco and His Brothers and The Leopard in the early 1960s, to his roles in some of Jean-Pierre Melville’s most celebrated films noirs, Delon came to embody the flair and stylishness of the European thriller as one of France’s most recognizable film stars. This collection examines the star’s career, image and persona. Not only focusing on his spectacular early performances, the book also considers less well documented aspects of Delon’s long career such as his time in Hollywood, his work as director, producer and screenwriter, his musical collaborations, his TV appearances, and his enduring role as a fashion icon in the 21st century. Whether the object of reverence or ridicule, of desire or disdain, Delon remains a unique figure who continues to court controversy and fascination more than five decades after he first achieved international fame.

Featuring a lineup of distinguished academics, this collection remedies the absence of scholarly attention to French cinematic legend Isabelle Huppert. This volume deconstructs Huppert’s star persona and public profile through critical and theoretical analysis of her various screen roles—from her very early appearances alongside Romy Schneider in César et Rosalie (Sautet, 1972) and Gérard Depardieu in Les Valseuses (1974) to a number of celebrated collaborations with high-profile European auteurs such as Catherine Breillat, Claire Denis, Jean-Luc Godard, Michael Haneke and Joseph Losey, and with more popular auteurs such as Claude Chabrol and François Ozon.Known for a cerebral internalization of characterization, a technical mastery of extreme emotions, and a singular brand of icy intellectualism, Huppert’s performances continue to impress, stun and surprise audiences. By focusing on several theoretical questions that relate to image, identity, sexuality and place, this volume situates Huppert’s star persona in the more practical creative contexts of performance, authorship, genre and collaboration. This volume contrasts complementary critical accounts of her stardom by working across the different periods and territories of her career.

Featuring a lineup of distinguished academics, this collection remedies the absence of scholarly attention to French cinematic legend Isabelle Huppert. This volume deconstructs Huppert’s star persona and public profile through critical and theoretical analysis of her various screen roles—from her very early appearances alongside Romy Schneider in César et Rosalie (Sautet, 1972) and Gérard Depardieu in Les Valseuses (1974) to a number of celebrated collaborations with high-profile European auteurs such as Catherine Breillat, Claire Denis, Jean-Luc Godard, Michael Haneke and Joseph Losey, and with more popular auteurs such as Claude Chabrol and François Ozon.Known for a cerebral internalization of characterization, a technical mastery of extreme emotions, and a singular brand of icy intellectualism, Huppert’s performances continue to impress, stun and surprise audiences. By focusing on several theoretical questions that relate to image, identity, sexuality and place, this volume situates Huppert’s star persona in the more practical creative contexts of performance, authorship, genre and collaboration. This volume contrasts complementary critical accounts of her stardom by working across the different periods and territories of her career.