Edinburgh Studies in Film and Intermediality – Serie

This book investigates the sensuous qualities of narration in the feature-length fiction film. Sensuous narration takes place when details of visual (or aural) texture are foregrounded for storytelling purposes. For example, the image becomes 'soft' in order to signal the representation of a character's memory; a 'scratchy' version of a song plays on the soundtrack in order to shape the viewer's understanding of the images it accompanies. In these cases, image and sound are associated with tactile properties (softness and scratchiness).The book provides a comprehensive account of existing work on film narration and offers an overview of the sensuous aspects of cinematic storytelling, as demonstrated through a broad selection of films. The films used as case studies in the book are particularly 'multi-layered', in that they all make extensive use of materials with sensuously contrasting visual and/or aural properties: for example, films whose images are a combination of colour and monochrome (e.g. The Wizard of Oz); whose soundtracks feature multiple voiceover narrators (e.g. All About Eve) or which feature multiple performers portraying the same character (e.g. the Bob Dylan biopic I'm Not There).

In a fresh and invigorating look at British cinema that considers film as an art form among other arts, John Orr takes a critical look at the intriguing relationship between romanticism and modernism that has been much neglected in the study of UK cinema and downplayed in the development of Western cinema. Encompassing a broad selection of films, film-makers and debates, this book brings a fresh perspective to how scholars might understand and interrogate the major traditions that have shaped British cinema history.Covering the period between 1929 and the present, this book examines outstanding directors such as Alfred Hitchcock, David Lean, Carol Reed, Nicholas Roeg, Terence Davies and Bill Douglas, and articulates two genres vital to British cinema - the fugitive film and the trauma film - which bridge the gap between romantic and modern forms. Two detailed chapters also assess the powerful impact of major expatriate directors like Losey, Antonioni, Polanski, Kubrick and Skolimowski on modernism in the 1960s and 1970s. Detailed critical readings explore Blackmail, The Lady Vanishes, Black Narcissus, Odd Man Out, The Passionate Friends, The Innocents, Lawrence of Arabia, The Servant, Blow-Up, A Clockwork Orange, Don't Look Now, The Wicker Man, Moonlighting, the Bill Douglas trilogy and The Long Day Closes. The book concludes with an analysis of the persistence of romantic and modernist forms in the 21st century in two recent prize-winning features, Control and Hunger.

Through the feature films and documentaries of directors including Emmer, Erice, Godard, Hitchcock, Pasolini, Resnais, Rossellini and Storck, Jacobs examines the way films 'animate' artworks by means of cinematic techniques, such as camera movements and editing, or by integrating them into a narrative. He explores how this 'mobilization' of the artwork is brought into play in art documentaries and artist biopics, as well as in feature films containing key scenes situated in museums. The tension between stasis and movement is also discussed in relation to modernist cinema, which often includes tableaux vivants combining pictorial, sculptural and theatrical elements. This tension also marks the aesthetics of the film still, which have inspired prominent art photographers such as Cindy Sherman and Jeff Wall.Illustrated throughout, Jacobs' study of the presence of art in film, alongside the omnipresence of the filmic image in today's art museums, is an engaging work for students and scholars of film and art alike.

This book explores contemporary artists' filmmaking within the context of film theory and practice. Remembering Cinema focuses on artists' filmmaking exhibited in gallery spaces since 1990; or 'gallery films'. It argues that although they have chosen a different space for experiment, gallery films should not be expelled from film theory's critical frame, since they explore and expand our understanding of what cinema has been, is now and could be. Therefore, while the auditorium has increasingly been seen as the space for the death of cinema, in the art gallery the cinematic is revived, renewed and remembered. Through a comprehensive assemblage, discussion and analysis of the proliferating field, this book is the first to fully comprehend gallery films' unique explorations of narrative, spectatorship, time, space, film history and identity. In investigating the gallery as the preferred space for experiment in contemporary cinema, Remembering Cinema also questions the actual and theoretical spaces within which cinema practice and cinema studies have circulated and been constructed.This is the first fully comprehensive study of the growing field of films made for the gallery space since 1990. It is the only exploration of contemporary artists' filmmaking that seriously interrogates the work in relation to film theory and film practice. It is an important consideration of 'the cinematic' that considers other spaces in which cinema practice and cinema studies have circulated and been constructed.

Anna Backman Rogers argues that American independent cinema is a cinema not merely in crisis, but also of crisis. As a cinema which often explores the rite of passage by explicitly drawing on American cinematic heritage, from the teen movie to the western, American independent films deal in images of crisis, transition and metamorphosis, offering a subversive engagement with more traditional modes of representation.　Examining films by Gus Van Sant, Jim Jarmusch and Sofia Coppola to highlight their use of cinematic time as a mode of philosophical thought, this book brings new and exciting perspectives to American independent cinema.

Documentary cinema has always drawn from real life, but an increasing number of contemporary filmmakers are going further still, drawing onscreen images of reality through a range of animated filmmaking techniques. Drawn from Life is the first book to explore the field of animated documentaries from a diverse range of scholarly and practice-based perspectives, exploring and proposing answers to a range of questions that preoccupy twenty-first-century film artists and audiences alike: Why use animation to document? How do such images reflect and influence our understanding and experience of reality, whether public or private, psychological or political? From early cinema to present-day scientific research, military uses, digital art and gaming, this book casts new light on the capacity of the moving image to act as a record of the world around us, challenging the orthodox definitions of documentary cinema.

How do we experience theatre through film? Laura Sava critically engages with the filmic representation of theatre, focusing on a selection of art house and independent films which provide a sophisticated commentary on the interaction between the two media. Through an in-depth analysis of films such as Jacques Rivette’s L’Amour fou, Pedro Almodóvar’s All About My Mother and Charlie Kaufman’s Synecdoche, New York, this book analyses the embedment of theatre in film and the notion of spectatorial address. Using textual analysis in conjunction with concepts derived from narratology, performance philosophy, and film and theatre phenomenology, it explores the mechanisms of representation involved in the intermedial diegetisation of theatre in film.

In recent years some of the best-known European and American art film directors have made films that place the spectator in a position of intense discomfort: Feel-Bad Films. These films systematically manipulate the spectator: sometimes by withholding information from her, sometimes by shocking her, and sometimes by seducing her in order to further disturb her. As a result, they have been criticized for being amoral, nihilistic, politically irresponsible and anti-humanistic.The Feel-Bad Film raises three questions to this body of work: How is the feel-bad experience created? What do the directors believe they can achieve in this manner? And how should the films be situated in intellectual history? Through close analysis of films by Lars von Trier, Gus Van Sant, Claire Denis, Michael Haneke, Lucille Hadzihalilovic, Brian de Palma, Bruno Dumont and Harmony Korine, the book argues that feel-bad directors invite the spectator to think of art as an experimental activity with ethical norms that are different from the ones we hope to find outside the movie theatre. Only when given the freedom to take advantage of this asymmetry can film realize its ethical potential.

In recent years some of the best-known European and American art film directors have made films that place the spectator in a position of intense discomfort: Feel-Bad Films. These films systematically manipulate the spectator: sometimes by withholding information from her, sometimes by shocking her, and sometimes by seducing her in order to further disturb her. As a result, they have been criticized for being amoral, nihilistic, politically irresponsible and anti-humanistic.The Feel-Bad Film raises three questions to this body of work: How is the feel-bad experience created? What do the directors believe they can achieve in this manner? And how should the films be situated in intellectual history? Through close analysis of films by Lars von Trier, Gus Van Sant, Claire Denis, Michael Haneke, Lucille Hadzihalilovic, Brian de Palma, Bruno Dumont and Harmony Korine, the book argues that feel-bad directors invite the spectator to think of art as an experimental activity with ethical norms that are different from the ones we hope to find outside the movie theatre. Only when given the freedom to take advantage of this asymmetry can film realize its ethical potential.

Screens and Illusionism explores the effects of illusionism as foundational to contemporary acts of perception and aesthetics. Our point of departure is the acknowledgement that our sensory perception is fundamentally subject to mediation, through a class of objects, techniques, and technologies. We emphasize mediation to consider the loss of optical certainty, and explore illusionism within the register of the uncanny. The volume is divided into three sections: Screens as Perceptual Vehicles (Part I), Mediation and its Avatars (Part II), and Alternative Teleologies of Media (Part III). Overall, the collection resonates with contemporary discussions of screen culture, media materiality and intermediality. It explores an array of pre- and post-cinematic devices and spectacular entertainments, forging links between old and new media, and across media formats.

Screens and Illusionism explores the effects of illusionism as foundational to contemporary acts of perception and aesthetics. Our point of departure is the acknowledgement that our sensory perception is fundamentally subject to mediation, through a class of objects, techniques, and technologies. We emphasize mediation to consider the loss of optical certainty, and explore illusionism within the register of the uncanny. The volume is divided into three sections: Screens as Perceptual Vehicles (Part I), Mediation and its Avatars (Part II), and Alternative Teleologies of Media (Part III). Overall, the collection resonates with contemporary discussions of screen culture, media materiality and intermediality. It explores an array of pre- and post-cinematic devices and spectacular entertainments, forging links between “old” and “new” media, and across media formats.

Velvet Curtains and Gilded Frames explores the intermedial context of early cinema. It tackles the first European feature films' intricate relationship with its sister arts to reveal that the period referred to by historians as the "long nineteenth century" was one in which Bourgeois Realism reigned supreme. The nineteenth-century rise of the middle class coincided with realism becoming the dominant artistic mode in both form and content, leading to a revival of genre painting in the art academies; the supremacy of the social melodrama on the stage; and the advent of Pictorialism in photography. In its quest for artistic legitimacy, European filmmakers sought to win over middle-class audiences with films based on popular works of art - the first "art films" - by employing similar visual and narrative strategies as its artistic counterparts.

This book studies the relation between documentary film and political violence, treating images not as representations, but as original experiences that are a part of a reality that they both present and shape.​​​​​​​Whereas documentary film scholarship has often been preoccupied with questions of the referentiality and representation, Images of Unrest: Documentary Film and Political Violence prioritises the question of what images do. The volume argues that this approach, far from being an abnegation of our responsibility towards the real, heightens the ethical stakes of documentary filmmaking and filmviewing, reminding us that we are always in and of the real.

This book investigates the sensuous qualities of narration in the feature-length fiction film. Sensuous narration takes place when details of visual (or aural) texture are foregrounded for storytelling purposes. For example, the image becomes 'soft' in order to signal the representation of a character's memory; a 'scratchy' version of a song plays on the soundtrack in order to shape the viewer's understanding of the images it accompanies. In these cases, image and sound are associated with tactile properties (softness and scratchiness).The book provides a comprehensive account of existing work on film narration and offers an overview of the sensuous aspects of cinematic storytelling, as demonstrated through a broad selection of films. The films used as case studies in the book are particularly 'multi-layered', in that they all make extensive use of materials with sensuously contrasting visual and/or aural properties: for example, films whose images are a combination of colour and monochrome (e.g. The Wizard of Oz); whose soundtracks feature multiple voiceover narrators (e.g. All About Eve) or which feature multiple performers portraying the same character (e.g. the Bob Dylan biopic I'm Not There).

From the 1990s onwards the ‘ethnographic turn in contemporary art’ has generated intense dialogues between anthropologists, artists and curators. While ethnography has been both generously and problematically re-appropriated by the art world, curation has seldom caught the conceptual attention of anthropologists.Based on two years of participant-observation in Mexico City, Tarek Elhaik addresses this lacuna by examining the concept-work of curatorial platforms and media artists. Taking his cue from ongoing critiques of Mexicanist aesthetics, and what Roger Bartra calls ‘the post-Mexican condition’, Elhaik conceptualises curation less as an exhibition-oriented practice within a national culture, than as a figure of care and an image of thought animating a complex assemblage of inter-medial practices, from experimental cinema and installations to curatorial collaborations. Drawing on Gilles Deleuze and Paul Rabinow, the book introduces the concept of the ‘Incurable-Image,’ an antidote to our curatorial malaise and the ethical substance for a post-social anthropology of images.

Cinema plays a major role in contemporary art, yet the deeper influence of its diverse historical forms on artistic practice has received little attention. Screen Presence explores the intersections of film, popular media, and art since the 1950s through the examples of four pivotal figures – Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg, Mona Hatoum and Douglas Gordon. While their film-related works may appear primarily as challenges to conventional cinema, these artists draw on overlooked forms of popular film culture that have been commonplace, and even dominant, in specific social contexts. Through a range of new sources, including advertisements, specialty magazines, postcards, technical guides and souvenir programs, Stephen Monteiro demonstrates the dependence of contemporary artists on cinema’s shifting applications and interpretations, offering a fresh understanding of the enduring impact of everyday media on how we make and view art.

Analyzes the visual and cultural context of Europe's first feature films from 19th century painting to pictorial photographySheds new light on the late 19th and early 20th century's cultural contextInnovatively brings together different media, their artistic traditions, and their respective theoretical and discursive paradigmsPresents an alternative history of early European cinema by analyzing it from an inclusive art historical perspectiveThoroughly explores the first European feature films' cinematic form and functionVelvet Curtains and Gilded Frames explores the intermedial context of early cinema. It tackles the first European feature films' intricate relationship with its sister arts to reveal that the period referred to by historians as the long nineteenth century" was one in which Bourgeois Realism reigned supreme. The nineteenth-century rise of the middle class coincided with realism becoming the dominant artistic mode in both form and content, leading to a revival of genre painting in the art academies; the supremacy of the social melodrama on the stage; and the advent of Pictorialism in photography. In its quest for artistic legitimacy, European filmmakers sought to win over middle-class audiences with films based on popular works of art - the first "art films" - by employing similar visual and narrative strategies as its artistic counterparts."

Moving image culture seems to privilege the instantly identifiable: the recognizable face, the well-timed stunt, the perfectly synchronized line of dialogue. Yet perfect, in-focus visibility does not come ‘naturally’ to the moving image, and if there is one visual effect the eye of the camera can record better than the human eye it is blur. Looking beyond popular media to works of experimental cinema and video art, this groundbreaking collection addresses the aesthetics and politics of moving images in states of decay, distortion, indistinctness and fragmentation. A range of international scholars examines what is at stake in these images’ sometimes radical foregrounding of materiality and mediation, or of evanescence and spectrality, as well as their challenging of the dominant position accorded to ‘legible’ images. How have artists and filmmakers rendered the ‘indefinite’ image, and what questions does it pose? With a range of approaches, from aesthetics to phenomenology to production studies, the authors in this volume investigate techniques, themes and concepts that emerge from this wilful excavation of the moving image’s material base.

With a range of approaches, from aesthetics to phenomenology to production studies, the authors in this volume investigate techniques, themes and concepts that emerge from this wilful excavation of the moving image s material base.

Casting fresh light on one of the most important movements in film history, Intermedial Dialogues: The French New Wave and the Other Arts is the first comprehensive study of the New Wave’s relationship with the older arts. Traversing the fields of literature, theatre, painting, architecture and photography, and drawing on André Bazin alongside recent theories of intermediality, it investigates the ‘impure’, intermedial aesthetics of New Wave cinema. Filmmakers under discussion include critics-turned-directors François Truffaut, Eric Rohmer, Jean-Luc Godard, Jacques Rivette and Claude Chabrol, members of the Left Bank Group Alain Resnais, Agnès Varda and Chris Marker, but also lesser-known directors, notably the ‘secret child of the New Wave’, Guy Gilles. This wide-ranging book offers an original reading of the complex, often ambivalent ways in which the New Wave engages the other arts in both its discursive construction and filmic practice.Key Features:A wide-ranging study which explores the complex, often ambiguous ways in which the New Wave engages with the other arts in both its discursive construction and cinematic practiceAffords a new prism for understanding New Wave filmmaking and its legacy through comprehensive analysis of the ways in which the New Wave aesthetic was shaped through intermedial dialogue and medium rivalry Reassesses one of the most acclaimed movements in film history drawing on cutting-edge theory in the prominent field of intermediality studiesOffers an inclusive, heterogeneous view of the New Wave through inclusion of lesser-known directors such as Guy Gilles, Jean-Daniel Pollet and Jacques Demy alongside renowned Nouvelle Vague filmmakers

Screening Statues: Sculpture and Cinema is the first book to focus on the relationship between sculpture and the silver screen. It covers a broad range of magical, mystical and phenomenological interactions between the two media, from early film's eroticized tableaux vivants to enigmatic sculptures in modernist cinema. Sculptures are literally brought to life on the silver screen, while living people are turned into, or trapped inside, statuary. The book examines key sculptural motifs and cinematic sculpture in film history through a series of case studies and through an extensive reference gallery of 150 different films. Considering the work of directors like Georges Melies, Jean Cocteau and Alain Resnais, as well as films like House of Wax, Jason and the Argonauts and Clash of the Titans, this is an innovative exploration of two different media, their artistic traditions and their respective theoretical paradigms.

Moving images have become an increasingly common feature in a wide range of museums, which are frequently populated with screens and audio-visual projections. But when did films start to be displayed in museum galleries? And what are the issues at stake when showing moving images in exhibition spaces? With an innovative and strongly interdisciplinary theoretical framework, this book offers an extensive investigation of the use of audio-visuals in exhibition design. Highlighting the continuities and fractures between different periods, contexts and practices, Elisa Mandelli shows the deep influence of audio-visuals on the configuration of the exhibition space, as well as on the relationship between museums and their visitors.

This introduction to American Independent Cinema offers both a comprehensive industrial and economic history of the sector from the early twentieth century to the present and a study of key individual films, filmmakers and film companies. Ordered chronologically, beginning with independent filmmaking in the studio era (examining both top-rank and low-end independent film production), moving to the 1950s and 1960s (discussing both the adoption of independent filmmaking as the main method of production as well as exploitation filmmaking) and finishing with contemporary American independent cinema (exploring areas such as the New Hollywood, the rise of mini-major and major independent companies and the institutionalisation of independent cinema in the 1990s), readers will develop an understanding of the complex dynamic relations between independent and mainstream American cinema. Thoroughly updated to include developments from the mid-2000s onwards, this second edition includes new case studies, a new chapter on American Independent Cinema in the Age of Media Convergence, a new prologue and an enhanced epilogue and bibliography. Each chapter includes case studies focusing on specific films or filmmakers, and independent production and distribution companies are discussed throughout the text.

Exploring the archetypal representation of the straight girl with the queer guy in film and television culture from 1948 to the present day, Straight Girls and Queer Guys considers the process of the ‘hetero media gaze’ and the way it contextualizes sexual diversity and gender identity. Offering both an historical foundation and a rigorous conceptual framework, Christopher Pullen draws on a range of case studies, including the films of Doris Day and Rock Hudson, the performances of Kenneth Williams, televisions shows such as Glee, Sex and the City and Will and Grace, the work of Derek Jarman, and the role of the gay best friend in Hollywood film. Critiquing the representation of the straight girl and the queer guy for its relation to both power and otherness, this is a provocative study that frames a theoretical model which can be applied across diverse media forms.

An inquiry into the convergences of avant-garde film, trans-cultural media arts, experimental ethnography and curatorial practice in contemporary Mexico

Screen Presence explores the intersections of film, popular media and contemporary art through the examples of four internationally celebrated artists: Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg, Mona Hatoum and Douglas Gordon.

This book examines the impact since 1600 of out migration from Scotland on the homeland, the migrants, and the destinations in which they settled. It does so through a focus on the under-researched themes of slavery, cross-cultural encounters, economics, war, tourism, and the modern diaspora since 1945.

Screening Statues: Sculpture and Cinema is the first book to focus on the relationship between sculpture and the silver screen. It covers a broad range of magical, mystical and phenomenological interactions between the two media, from early film’s eroticized tableaux vivants to enigmatic sculptures in modernist cinema. Sculptures are literally brought to life on the silver screen, while living people are turned into, or trapped inside, statuary. The book examines key sculptural motifs and cinematic sculpture in film history through a series of case studies and through an extensive reference gallery of 150 different films. Considering the work of directors like Georges Méliès, Jean Cocteau and Alain Resnais, as well as films like House of Wax, Jason and the Argonauts and Clash of the Titans, this is an innovative exploration of two different media, their artistic traditions and their respective theoretical paradigms.

Documentary cinema has always drawn from real life, but an increasing number of contemporary filmmakers are going further still, drawing onscreen images of reality through a range of animated filmmaking techniques. Drawn from Life is the first book to explore the field of animated documentaries from a diverse range of scholarly and practice-based perspectives, exploring and proposing answers to a range of questions that preoccupy twenty-first-century film artists and audiences alike: Why use animation to document? How do such images reflect and influence our understanding and experience of reality, whether public or private, psychological or political? From early cinema to present-day scientific research, military uses, digital art and gaming, this book casts new light on the capacity of the moving image to act as a record of the world around us, challenging the orthodox definitions of documentary cinema.