Contemporary Approaches to Film and Media Series – serie

At a time when few reviewers and critics were taking the study of film seriously, Robin Wood released a careful and thoroughly cinematic commentary on Ingmar Bergman’s films that demonstrated the potential of film analysis in a nascent scholarly field. The original Ingmar Bergman influenced a generation of film scholars and cineastes after its publication in 1969 and remains one of the most important volumes on the director. This new edition of Ingmar Bergman, edited by film scholar Barry Keith Grant, contains all of Wood’s original text plus four later pieces on the director by Wood that were intended for a new volume that was not completed before Wood’s death in 2010. In analysing a selection of Bergman’s films, Wood makes a compelling case for the logic of the filmmaker’s development while still respecting and indicating the distinctiveness of his individual films. Wood’s emphasis on questions of value (What makes a work important? How does it address our lives?) informed his entire career and serve as the basis for many of these chapters. In the added material for this new edition, Wood considers three important films Bergman made after the book was first published—Cries and Whispers, Fanny and Alexander, and From the Life of the Marionettes—and also includes significant reassessment of Persona. These pieces provocatively suggest the more political directions Wood might have taken had he been able to produce Ingmar Bergman Revisited, as he had planned to do before his death. In its day, Ingmar Bergman was one of the most important volumes on the Swedish director published in English, and it remains compelling today despite the multitude of books to appear on the director since. Film scholars and fans of Bergman’s work will enjoy this updated volume.

Marcia Landy has gathered thirty-seven important essays on film and melodrama that have appeared in books and journals over the last two decades. In her introduction to the book, Landy explores the recent interest in the genre in relation to theoretical work in psychoanalysis and semiotics, setting the stage for the essays that follow.The book's seven sections examine the history of melodrama, its emphasis on emotional excess, its manicheanism, and its dependence on non-verbal strategies to communicate. Essays focus on the family melodramas of the 1950s, the role of Hollywood directors and stars in the development of the genre, and melodrama in the silent films and on television. The book concludes with an exploration of the use of melodrama in European and Latin American cinema, both silent and sound.Imitations of Life thus provides a variety of perspectives-chronological, theoretical, and international-on the genre while investigating its cultural, social, and political significance.

Full of Secrets is the complete source book on ""Twin Peaks"", the first foray into television for prominent film director David Lynch. Addressing a wide variety of topics, including the series' cult status, its obsession with doubling, and its silencing of women, this diverse group of essays analyses the series from feminist, deconstructionist and semiotic perspectives. The show, which earned 14 Emmy nominations in its first season, was originally tauted as capable of changing television forever. Due to its unique visual style, its resistance of stereotype - it was a hybrid of FBI drama, murder mystery, soap opera, comedy and commercial - and its controversial subject matter centred around father-daughter incest, ""Twin Peaks"" was, for a time, the most talked about show on television. Because it was at once subversive and innovative, many found it hard to believe that this moody, bizarre, intertextual, and self-referential series found an audience on network television. To help explain the phenomenon, ""Full of Secrets"" looks at ""Twin Peaks"" from a critical and interpretive standpoint. In doing so, the book not only acts as an essential guide to the series, but it also raises questions about the very nature and function of television in the 1990s. Containing virtually everything necessary for an in-depth examination of the series' importance and meaning, this book also features a director and writer list, a cast list, a ""Twin Peaks"" calendar, a complete scene breakdown for the entire series, and a comprehensive bibliography.

In the history of German cinema, film directors have developed visual and narrative responses to the anxieties and excesses of their own times and those of Germany's past. This book provides a detailed historical overview of German film from the silent era to the present, as well as close readings of individual films. Chosen for their representative significance, the 14 films featured on ""German Cinema"" cover five major historical periods of the German cinema: Weimar, the Third Reich, the early postwar years, East Germany, and the New German cinema. Each chapter analyses a single film as the point of departure for discussing authorial aspects such as film-makers' personal styles and intentions, and textual aspects such as genre, modes of narration, and address. Furthermore, the film analyses also take into account the wider context of film production and reception: on the one hand, the interactions between political issues and social change and, on the other, the continuities and ruptures at all levels in the German cinema. Along with interantionally celebrated films such as Ernst Lubitsch's ""Passion"" and Margarethe von Trotta's ""Marianne and Juliane"", ""German Cinema"" boradens the base of critical discussion by including less known works from the 1940s and 1950s from east Germany that were popular hits at the time of their release - for example, the Nazi propaganda musical ""Reuest Concert"" and the ""Heimat"" film comedy ""Black Forest Girl"" - but which have since become obscure. This book sets out to revise the reader's understanding of German film history, providing both an introduction to German film for the more general reader and, at the same time, a detailed study for experts in the field.

Mapping the historical and cultural contexts of film practices in Latin America, this two-volume collection of programmatic statements, essays and interviews is devoted to the study of a theorized, dynamic and unfinished cinematic movement. Forged by Latin America's post-colonial environment of underdevelopment and dependency, the New Latin American Cinema movement has sought to inscribe itself in Latin America's struggles for cultural and economic autonomy. ""Volume One"" - this work - explores the formation of the New Latin American Cinema movement, its national and continental implications (including the diasporic/exilic experience) and transcontinental articulations through the writings of pioneer film-makers and scholars. Glauber Rocha, Julio Garcia Espinosa, Jorge Sanjines, Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino address the central question of the Latin American aesthetic - a particular style and production method connected with the political and social conditions and circumstances of Latin America. Ana Lopez, Julianne Burton and Michael Chanan examine the movement's formation in the 1950s and its development through the 1980s in a socio-historical context, paying special attention to modes of production and consumption. Paul Willemen assesses the movement's relevance to radical film practice and theory in the First and Third Worlds, and Antonio Skarmeta calls for a distribution network of Third World Cinema on a pan-European level. The volume concludes with essays by Ruby Rich and Zuzana M. Pick who address, from widely different approaches, the issues of the movement's adaptability, renovation and identity, in consideration of its evolution since the 1950s. ""Volume Two"" comprises essays on the development of the New Latin American Cinema as a comparative national project. Essays are grouped by nation into two regions - Middle and Central America and Caribbean and South America - for comparitive study, particularly between capitalist and post-revolutionary socialist formations. The selected essays examine the relationship between cinema and nationhood and the ambiguous categories of culture, identity and nation within the socio-historical specificities of the movement's development, especially in Cuba, Brazil, Mexico, Chile and Argentina. This collection should serve as an essential reference and research tool for the study of world cinema. The collection, while celebrating the diversity and innovation of the New Latin American Cinema, explicates the historical importance of filmmaking as a cultural form and political practice in Latin America.

Mapping the historical and cultural contexts of film practices in Latin America, this two-volume collection of programmatic statements, esays and interviews is devoted to the study of a theorized, dynamic and unfinished cinematic movement. Forged by Latin America's post-colonial environment of underdevelopment and dependency, the New Latin American Cinema movement has sought to inscribe itself in Latin America's struggles for cultural and economic autonomy. ""Volume One"" explores the formation of the New Latin American Cinema movement, its national and continental implications (including the diasporic/exilic experience) and transcontinental articulations through the writings of pioneer filmmakers and scholars. Glauber Rocha, Julio Garcia Espinosa, Jorge Sanjines, Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino address the central question of the Latin American aesthetic - a particular style and production method connected with the political and social conditions and circumstances of Latin America. Ana Lopez, Julianne Burton and Michael Chanan examine the movement's formation in the 1950s and its development through the 1980s in a socio-historical context, paying special attention to modes of production and consumption. Paul Willemen assesses the movement's relevance to radical film practice and theory in the First and Third Worlds, and Antonio Skarmeta calls for a distribution network of Third World Cinema on a pan-European level. The volume concludes with essays by Ruby Rich and Zuzana M. Pick who address, from widely different approaches, the issues of the movement's adaptability, renovation and identity, in consideration of its evolution since the 1950s. ""Volume Two"" - this one - comprises essays on the development of the New Latin American Cinema as a comparative national project. Essays are grouped by nation into two regions - Middle and Central America and Caribbean and South America - for comparitive study, particularly between capitalist and post-revolutionary socialist formations. The selected essays examine the relationship between cinema and nationhood and the ambiguous categories of culture, identity and nation within the socio-historical specificities of the movement's development, especially in Cuba, Brazil, Mexico, Chile and Argentina. This collection will serve as an essential reference and research tool for the study of world cinema. The collection, while celebrating the diversity and innovation of the New Latin American Cinema, explicates the historical importance of filmmaking as a cultural form and political practice in Latin America.

This is a study of the cinematic traditions and film practices in the black Diaspora. With contributions by film scholars, film critics, and film-makers from Europe, North America and the Third World, this diverse collection provides a critical reading of film-making in the black Diaspora that challenges the assumptions of colonialist and ethnocentrist discourses about Third World, Hollywood and European cinemas. The book examines the impact on film-making of Western culture, capitalist production and distribution methods, and colonialism and the continuing neo-colonial status of the people and countries in which film-making is practiced. Organised in three parts, the study first explores cinema in the black Diaspora along cultural and political lines, analysing the works of a radical and aesthetically alternative cinema. The book proceeds to group black cinemas by geographical sites, including Africa, the Caribbean and South America, Europe, and North America, to provide global context for comparative and case study analyses. Finally, three important manifestoes document the political and economic concerns and counter-hegemonic institutional organising efforts of black and Third World film-makers from the 1970s to the early 1990s. ""Cinemas of the Black Diaspora"" should serve as a valuable basic reference and research tool for the study of world cinema. While celebrating the diversity, innovativeness, and fecundity of film-making in different regions of the world, this important collection also explicates the historical importance of film-making as a cultural form and political practice.

In this anthology, filmmakers, psychoanalysts, film scholars and cultural historians use a psychoanalytic approach to examine Bernardo Bertolucci's epic film ""The Last Emperor"" (1988). Evolving out of a conference on Bertolucci's work, the essays interweave psychological, political and cinematic themes in ""The Last Emperor"" as well as in much of Bertolucci's other works. This volume includes a foreword by Bernardo Bertolucci and is organized into four parts or ""takes"", including ""Filmcraft"", ""Psychoanalysis"", ""Film Scholarship"" and ""Cultural History"". The collection begins with the filmmaker's perspective. In ""Take One"", an interview with Bertolucci discusses the potential of psychoanalysis to transgress social order which Bertolucci explores in ""The Last Emperor""; cinematographer Vittorio Storaro's essay on the photographic conception of ""The Last Emperor"" offers a glimpse of the creative impulse at work; and a chapter from Fabien S. Gerard's shooting diary records the excitement and tedium on the set of ""The Last Emperor"". Analyzing the character and psychopathology of Aisingioro Pu Yi as Bertolucci represented him, clinicians Bruce H. Sklarew, Estelle Shane and Morton Shane explore the relationship between psychoanalytic theory and art criticism in ""Take Two"". Diane Borden and Bonnie S. Kaufman look at the use of psychoanalysis and the formal aspects of filmmaking, such as images, camera shots and framing in ""The Last Emperor"". In ""Take Three"", Farimah Tobing Rony investigates Bertolucci's representation of Eastern culture from what she argues is a Europhallocentric position; T. Jefferson Kline gives an overview of Marxist, psychoanalytic and cinematic issues intersecting in the film; and Lynda K. Bundtzen looks at the theme of castration and its resonance with ""auteur"" theory. In ""Take Four"", the late sinologist John K. Fairbank and academic art historian Ding Ning look at historical versus artistic representations of history in ""The Last Emperor"", while Robert Burgoyne, Robert Zaller and Ellen Handler Spitz look at contrasting historical processes. Although we can never fully know the real Aisingioro Pu Yi, Bertolucci used his vision of the intricate relationship between art, ideology and the psychic experience to tell the story of one ordinary man's extraordinary life. ""Bertolucci's 'The Last Emperor'"" hopes to illuminate this complex and often enigmatic creation as well as renew an excitement about the possibilities of interdisciplinary criticism in film studies.

Violence has been a topic of continued concern within American culture and society. Although there have been numerous sociological and historical studies of violence and its origins, there is relatively little systematic analysis of violence within media representation, even as this issue becomes preeminent within public discourse. This anthology examines a number of issues related to violence within the media landscape, using various methodologies to suggest the implications of the increasing obsession with violence for postmodern civilization.

This is a study of the television programme ""The Simpsons"" which focuses on the show's dual roles as subversive political satire and mainstream mass media hit. Since its first appearance as a series of cartoon vignettes in 1987 and its debut as a weekly programme in 1990, ""The Simpsons"" has had multiple, even contradictory, media identities. Although the show has featured biting political and social satire, which often proves fatal to mass public acceptance, ""The Simpsons"" entered fully into the mainstream, consistently earning high ratings from audiences and critics alike. ""Leaving Springfield"" addresses the success of ""The Simpsons"" as a corporate-manufactured show that openly and self-reflexively paraodies the very consumer capitalism it simultaneously promotes. By exploring such topics as the impact of the show's satire on its diverse viewing public and the position of ""The Simpsons"" in sitcom and television animation history, the commentators develop insights into the ways parody intermixes with mass media to critique postmodern society.

The crime serials by French filmmaker Louis Feuillade provide a unique point of departure for film studies, presenting modes rarely examined within early cinematic paradigms. Made during 1913 to 1920, the series of six films share not only a consistency of narrative structure and style but also a progressive revelation of the criminal threat - a dislocation of both cinematic and ideological subjectivity - as it shifts realms of social, cultural, and aesthetic disturbance. Feuillade's work raises significant questions of cinema authorship, film history, and film aesthetics, all of which are examined in Vicki Callahan's groundbreaking work Zones of Anxiety, the first study to address the crime serials of Louis Feuillade from a feminist perspective. Zones of Anxiety merges cultural history and feminist film theory, arguing for a different kind of film history, a ""poetic history"" that is shaped by the little-examined cinematic mode of ""uncertainty."" Often obscured by film technique and film historians, this quality of uncertainty endemic to the cinema comes in part from the formal structures of repetition and recursion found in Feuillade's serials. However, Callahan argues that uncertainty is also found in the ""poetic body"" of the actress Musidora, who is featured in two of the serials. It is the mobility of the Musidora figure - socially, culturally, sexually, and textually - that makes her a powerful image and also a place to view the historical blind spots of film studies and feminist studies with regard to questions of race, class, and sexuality. Callahan's substantial focus on archival research builds a foundation for a host of compelling arguments for a new feminist history of film. Other studies have touched on the issue of gender in early cinema, though until now neither Feuillade's work nor French silent film have been examined in light of feminist film theory and history. Zones of Anxiety opens up the possibility of alternate readings in film studies, illuminating our understanding of subjectivity and situating a spectatorship that acknowledges social and cultural differences.

Korean cinema was virtually unavailable to the West during the Japanese colonial period (1910-1945), and no film made before 1943 has been recovered even though Korea had an active film-making industry that produced at least 240 films. For a period of 40 years, after Korea was liberated from colonialism, a time where Western imports were scarce, Korean cinema became an innovative force reflecting a society whose social and cultural norms were becoming less conservative. This collection of ten essays written about Im Kwon-Taek, better known as the father of New Korean cinema, takes a critical look at the situations of filmmakers in South Korea.

In their study of one of Stanley Cavell's greatest yet most neglected books, William Rothman and Marian Keane address this eminent philosopher's many readers, from a variety of disciplines, who have neither understood why he has given film so much attention, nor grasped the place of ""The World Viewed"" within the totality of his writings about film. The authors also reintroduce ""The World Viewed"" to the field of film studies. When the new field entered universities in the late 1960s, it predicated its legitimacy on the conviction that the medium's artistic achievements called for serious criticism and on the corollary conviction that no existing field was capable of the criticism film called for. The study of film needed to found itself, intellectually, upon a philosophical investigation of the conditions of the medium and art of film. Such was the challenge ""The World Viewed"" took upon itself. However, film studies opted to embrace theory as a higher authority than our experiences of movies, divorcing itself from the philosophical perspective of self-reflection apart from which, ""The World Viewed"" teaches, we cannot know what movies mean, or what they are. Rothman and Keane now argue that the poststructuralist theories that dominated film studies for a quarter of a century no longer compel conviction, Cavell's brilliant and beautiful book can provide a sense of liberation to a field that has foresaken its original calling. Read in a way that acknowledges its philosophical achievement, ""The World Viewed"" can show the field a way to move forward by rediscovering its passion for the art of film. The title should be useful to scholars and students of film and philosophy, and to those in other fields, such as literary studies and American studies, who have found Cavell's work provocative and fruitful.

From ""The Wizard of Oz"" to ""Lolita"", from ""Heathers"" to ""Spice Girls - The Movie"", images of girlhood have been projected on the silver screen in myriad ways. Films have depicted society's problematic expectations of girls together with the dreams, anxieties and tensions experienced by girls themselves. In examining the construction of girlhood from many angles, this collection of essays attempts to capture the richness of meaning behind ""girl films"", but also explores the recent resurgence of youth-orientated cinema and the relationship of young female viewers to that medium. The 20 essays approach the construction of girlhood from a variety of perspectives, including reception, production, star images and textual analyses, while exploring such topics as star power, the Riot Grrrl movement, coming of age and loss of innocence. Among the characters given special attention are those in ""Gidget"", ""Crooklyn"", ""Titanic"", ""Freeway"" and ""Girls Town"". Written for general and academic readers, this work offers a livley discussion of gender in youth-orientated films.

When the lights go down and the film starts to roll, we give ourselves over to the magic of movies. But as George Toles observes, what we experience in this house of light may strike closer to home than we imagine. In eleven essays, Toles combines aesthetic inquiry with a psychology of spectatorship to illuminate the dialogue between sentiment and irony that unfolds in every good movie. Reflecting a literary critic's and professional screenwriter's ongoing love affair with cinema, each essay plunges the reader into the experience of one or more films, inviting us to ponder the nature and implications of that experience. Toles considers a wide variety of film experience, from Frank Capra to the Coen brothers to Alfred Hitchcock. However escapist a trip to the movies might be, says Toles, there is no escaping some version of ""home"" in every film experience. Toles examines important homes - from the cottage in ""Random Harvest"" to the foreboding Bates house in ""Psycho"" - to suggest that the house of film is a frame we long to enter in the spirit of homecoming but one that we cannot possess any more securely than the lost home of our beginnings.

While most people associate Japanese film with modern directors like Akira Kurosawa, Japan's cinema has a rich tradition going back to the silent era. Japan's ""pure film movement"" of the 1910s is widely held to mark the birth of film theory as we know it and is a touchstone for historians of early cinema. Yet this work has been difficult to access because so few prints have been preserved. Joanne Bernardi offers a study of this important era, recovering a body of lost film and establishing its significance in the development of Japanese cinema. Building on a wealth of original-language sources she examines how the movement challenged the industry's dependence on pre-existing stage repertoires, preferences for lecturers over intertitles, and the use of female impersonators. Bernardi provides in-depth analysis of key scripts - ""The Glory of Life"", ""A Father's Tears"", ""Amateur Club"" and ""The Lust of the White Serpent"" - and includes translations in an appendix. These films offer case studies for understanding the craft of screenwriting during the silent era and shed light on such issues as genre, authorship and control, and gender representation. ""Writing in Light"" helps fill gaps in the history of Japanese silent cinema. By identifying points at which ""pure film"" discourse merges with changing international trends and attitudes toward film, it should offer an important resource for film, literary and cultural historians.

With the end of apartheid, South African cinema is at a turning point in its history. This collection offers an exploration of a film industry that has excluded its country's black majority, in both representation and production - and which now must overcome collusion between racist ideology and film form. Until recently, filmmakers could work only within a culture that reluctantly took black South Africans into account. Therefore, to explore what South African cinema has been and could become, the authors do not limit their discussion to film production but approach cinema as a manifestation of cultural history. How has the purpose of cinema been viewed at different times in South Africa, by different governments and social groups? What is the relation between film and a sense of nationhood in South Africa? Such questions lead to a consideration not only of films made by South Africans in South Africa but also of an unfolding film culture within a series of stages that have yet to give rise to a national cinema.

This title considers the history of the American blockbuster - the large-scale, high-cost film - as it evolved from the 1890s to today. The pantheon of big-budget, commercially successful films encompasses a range of genres, including biblical films, war films, romances, comic-book adaptations, animated features, and historical epics. In ""Epics, Spectacles, and Blockbusters: A Hollywood History"", authors Sheldon Hall and Steve Neale discuss the characteristics, history, and modes of distribution and exhibition that unite big-budget pictures, from their beginnings in the late nineteenth century to the present. Moving chronologically, the authors examine the roots of today's blockbuster in the 'feature', 'special', 'superspecial', 'roadshow', 'epic', and 'spectacle' of earlier eras, with special attention to the characteristics of each type of picture. In the first section, Hall and Neale consider the beginnings of features, specials, and superspecials in American cinema, as the terms came to define not the length of a film but its marketable stars or larger budget. The second section investigates roadshowing as a means of distributing specials and the changes to the roadshow that resulted from the introduction of synchronized sound in the 1920s. In the third section, the authors examine the phenomenon of epics and spectacles that arose from films like ""Gone with the Wind"", ""Samson and Deliliah"", and ""Spartacus"" and continues to evolve today in films like ""Spider-Man"" and ""Pearl Harbor"". In this section, Hall and Neale consider advances in visual and sound technology and the effects and costs they introduced to the industry. Scholars of film and television studies as well as readers interested in the history of American moviemaking will enjoy ""Epics, Spectacles, and Blockbusters"".

This volume contains twenty in-depth studies of prominent New Zealand directors, producers, actors, and cinematographers. ""New Zealand Filmmakers"" outlines and examines three major constituent groups who are responsible for the industry as it appears today: those involved in pioneering film in New Zealand, those associated with the New Wave of the 1970s and 1980s, and those post - mid-1980s visionaries and fantasists who have produced striking individual productions. A comprehensive introduction situates the New Zealand film industry in cultural, historical, and ideological contexts.The book displays the diversity of filmmaking in New Zealand and highlights the specific industrial, aesthetic, and cultural concerns that have created a film culture of international significance. With the majority of the contributions in the book containing analysis developed through dialogue with the filmmakers, ""New Zealand Filmmakers"" is an authoritative study of the film industry in New Zealand. Each essay also includes a thorough and definitive filmography, detailing the full nature of the work produced by each individual, with key titles highlighted.Filmmakers covered in this volume include Barry Barclay, David Blyth, Jane Campion, Roger Donaldson, Rudall Hayward, Peter Jackson, John Laing, Bruno Lawrence, Len Lye, Alison Maclean, Merata Mita, Ian Mune, Geoff Murphy, Leon Narbey, John O'Shea, Gaylene Preston, John Reid, Vincent Ward, Jennifer Ward-Lealand, and Peter Wells. This collection is illustrated with 50 film prints, many of which have never before been published. With the New Zealand film industry poised to become a center of film production and already a major topic of critical interest, this volume will find many interested readers among film scholars and educators.

Critics rarely associate popular film with German cinema, despite the international success of films like ""Das Boot"" (1981), ""The Never-Ending Story"" (1984) ""Run Lola Run"" (1998) and recent German comedies, all representing a body of work outside the parameters of high culture. This success has compelled the editors of this volume to look at German popular film across the historical spectrum and to challenge the tendency among critics to divvy up German film, like Germans themselves, into the Good and the Bad. Together the essays re-examine popular film production along with larger cultural, historical and political meanings suggested by the term ""popular"". The essays challenge the traditional shape of German film history, while offering in-depth analyses of films that have, until now, been beyond the pale of critical attention. What emerges is a story of oft-repeated obsessions, overlapping generic forms, omnipresent or subtle nods to Hollywood and myriad political concerns irreducible to a unified message or aesthetic form - all bearing witness to the vibrance of German culture.

In many ways a traditional western, ""The Searchers"" (1956) is considered by critics to be one of the greatest Hollywood films, made by the most influential of western directors. But John Ford's classic work, in its complexity and ambiguity, was a product of post-World War II American culture and sparked a deconstruction of the western film myth by looking unblinkingly at white racism and violence and suggesting its social and psychological origins. The film tells the story of the kidnapping of the niece of Ethan Edwards (John Wayne) by Comanche Indians and Edward's long search to find her - ultimately not to rescue her, since he finds her racially and sexually violated. This text brings historians and film scholars together to cover the major critical issues of the film as seen through a contemporary prism. It also contains a sustained reaction to the film by Native Americans. The essays explore a range of topics: from John Wayne's grim character of Ethan Edwards, to the actual history of Indian captivity on the southern Plains, as well as the role of the film's music, setting and mythic structure - all of which should help the reader to understand what makes ""The Searchers"" such an enduring work.

In its history the ""Hitchcock Annual"" has established itself as a key source of historical information and critical commentary on one of the central figures in film history and arguably one of the most important artists of the 20th century. This selection of writings offers an overview of thinking on the filmmaker and his work. The articles span his career and cover a wide range of topics from archaeological investigation to incisive analyses on the films themselves. The collection begins with rare insights into Hitchcock's early years, including his work in Germany and his silent film ""Easy Virtue"", which, with its metaphoric play on the concept of ""being framed"", drmatizes aspects of the human condition to which Hitchcock returned repeatedly. Commentators explore a variety of themes, including the centrality of kissing shots and sequences in nearly all the films, and images of women's handbags as elements of sspense and sexual tension in such films as ""Dial M for Muder"" and ""Psycho"". Other essays examine the influence of ""Vertigo"" , ""The Birds"" and ""Frenzy"" on Francois Truffaut the remaking of ""Psycho"" and feminist interpretations of ""Shadow of a Doubt"". Interview with Jay Presson Allen and Evan Hunter illuminate Hitchcock's working relationship with screenwriters, actors, and actresses.

Though it is often neglected in cinema scholarship, screen performance is a crucial element in the ideological and emotional impact of films. More Than a Method: Trends and Traditions in Contemporary Film Performance features twelve essays that analyze performance in post-1950s film, addressing distinct questions about the working relationships between actors and directors and discussing the interplay between performance and cinematic techniques. The authors explain the context for performance analysis as they address an international array of film genres, actors, and directors including Alfred Hitchcock, Gus Van Sant, Robert Bresson, Michelangelo Antonioni, Robert Altman, John Cassavetes, John Sayles, Neil Jordan, Tomas Gutierrez Alea, Stanley Kubrick, Jim Carrey, and John Woo. More Than a Method provides the reader with a historical perspective on film performance theory and explains the relevance of analyzing acting. The essays are divided into three sections: modernism, neonaturalism, and postmodern film performance, each opening with a descriptive discussion of screen acting and the ways dramatic characters are constructed. The authors clearly define terms relating to acting and acting styles and provide brief overviews of the significant themes and predominant visual styles of each director. The volume's essays share a focus on the art and craft of acting, each emphasizing performance as it is presented on-screen, challenging the idea that the best (or only) way to categorize performance is by training or working method. Through dynamic and sophisticated analyses of a wide range of acting styles and choices, More Than a Method fills an important gap in today's film scholarship.

This title explores the contributions of black diasporic filmmakers and thinkers to contemporary artistic and theoretical discourses.Created at the crossroads of slavery, migration, and exile, and comprising a global population, the black diaspora is a diverse space of varied histories, experiences, and goals. Likewise, black diasporic film tends to focus on the complexities of transnational identity, which oscillates between similarity and difference and resists easy categorization. In ""Contact Zones"", author Sheila J. Petty addresses a range of filmmakers, theorists, and issues in black diasporic cinema, highlighting their ongoing influences on contemporary artistic and theoretical discourses.Petty examines both Anglophone and Francophone films and theorists, divided according to this volume's three thematic sections - Slavery, Migration and Exile, and Beyond Borders. The feature films and documentaries considered - which include ""Sankofa"", ""Daughters of the Dust"", ""The Man by the Shore"", and ""Rude"", among others - represent a wide range of cultures and topics. Through close textual analysis that incorporates the work of well-known diasporic thinkers like W. E. B. DuBois, Aime Cesaire, and Frantz Fanon along with contemporary notables such as Molefi Kete Asante, bell hooks, Clenora Hudson-Weems, Rene Depestre, Paul Gilroy, and Rinaldo Walcott, Petty details the unique ways in which black diasporic films create meaning.By exploring a variety of African American, Caribbean, Black British, and African Canadian perspectives, ""Contact Zones"" provides a detailed survey of the diversity and vitality of black diasporic contributions to cinema and theory. This volume will be a welcome addition to the libraries of scholars and students of film studies and Africana studies.

As global cinema becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish, characterizations of horror films from various geographical and cultural locations seem more fluid and transitional than ever before. However, this does not mean denying the existence of national features that affect and are reflected in horror films, whether from an artistic or a reception standpoint. Horror is one of the most studied genres in cinema, yet none of the many books on the subject focus on films or traditions outside the United States or the United Kingdom. While Italian, Japanese, Mexican, German, and Hong Kong horror films have received a modicum of critical recognition, the areas of Egyptian, Romanian, Belgian, Dutch, New Zealand, and Thai horror all still need - in fact, demand - some attention. Horror International seeks to rectify this by giving the global perspectives and cross-cultural dynamics of world horror cinema its due. This groundbreaking collection of eighteen original essays examine a myriad of films, showing how each draws from Hollywood horror conventions and also local cinematic traditions, local folklore, and national historical and cultural concerns. The production, marketing, and reception of various national cinemas are also addressed, demonstrating how these films are understood by different audiences worldwide. This in turn sheds new light on the original cultural production of many works and their subsequent ""translations"" and meanings in different national contexts. The diverse and highly informative essays in Horror International will engross both scholars and fans of horror films and finally illuminate the distinct multicultural factors of this exciting cinematic genre.

The development of young masculine sexuality is still a cultural taboo of sorts, and until now there has been little scholarship available that discusses aspects of boyhood and its relation to cinema - in particular, the process whereby masculinities are socially, historically, economically, aesthetically, and psychologically created in male coming-of-age as depicted onscreen. Where the Boys Are, Cinemas of Masculinity and youth scrutinizes a broad corpus of films about boyhood within a cross-genre, trans-historical, cross-cultural framework. Unlike the filmic investigations before it, this book is not restricted to examining boys as agents of violence, aggression, and withdrawal; or as routinely glossed agents of romance or victims of comedic ridicule. Where the Boys Are is divided into three sections: Archetypes and Facades includes essays that examine historically central typifications of boyhood, the most accessible categories for seeing and understanding boy characters; essays in Bonds and Beautifications analyze the ways boys establish images of themselves and identify with one another in affiliation or love; and essays in Struggles and Redefinitions explore the way boys are depicted in film as aligning themselves in relation to people, forces, ideas, and situations. Using the most current and diverse critical methods, Where the Boys Are is a crucial resource for film scholars and students at any level, and is also the perfect companion to Gateward and Pomerance's Sugar, Spice, and Everything Nice. Cinemas of Girlhood (Wayne State University Press, 2002).