Film history, theory or criticism Books

About Raymond Williams represents the overdue critical acclaim of Williams' lasting influence and unbroken repercussions in critical thought. His writings have effectively shaped the ways in which people understand the complexity of the notion of...

Collective Trauma and the Psychology of Secrets in Transnational Film advances a methodological line of inquiry based on a fresh insight into the ways in which cinematic meaning is generated and can be ascertained. Premised on a critical reading strategy...

This is the first edited volume on new independent Indian cinema. It aims to be a comprehensive compendium of diverse theoretical, philosophical, epistemological and practice-based perspectives, featuring contributions from multidisciplinary scholars and...

New Argentine Film is the most complete text to be published on the new Argentine cinema. While anchored in critical discourse and written by an academic, it also has the virtue of using clear and accessible language. In addition, the book is more than a...

Si la devise du Québec sombre parfois dans l'oubli, ce livre s'impose tel un véritable devoir de mémoire envers les pionniers du cinéma de fiction LGBTQ+ québécois : Je me souviens de ce premier et courageux aveu queer de Claude Jutra dans À tout...

Drawn into the circuit of men cruising for sex in and around a train station, restless adolescent Henri begins a frenzied pursuit of a dangerously charismatic older man, with sometimes violent and ultimately tragic consequences. Premiering at Cannes in...

You probably already have a clear idea of what a "discussion guide for students" is: a series of not-very-interesting questions at the end of a textbook chapter. Instead of triggering thought-provoking class discussion, all too often these guides are...

The study of fashion has exploded in recent decades, yet quite what this all means, quite where it might take us, is not clear. This new book helps to bring fashion into focus, with a comprehensive guide to the key theories, perspectives and developments...

This exciting collection addresses action and adventure from the silent to the contemporary period exploring diverse questions of aesthetics, industry and ideology. Action has established itself as one of the leading commercial genres of the New...

While Jesus has attracted the sporadic interest of film-makers since the epics of the Sixties, it is often forgotten that between the advent of motion pictures in the 1890s and the close of the "silent" era at the end of the 1920s, some of the longest,...

Screening Gender on Children's Television offers readers insights into the transformations taking place in the presentation of gender portrayals in television productions aimed at younger audiences. It goes far beyond a critical analysis of the existing...

From Easy Rider to The Blair Witch Project, this book is a comprehensive examination of the independent film scene. Exploring the uneasy relationship between independent films and the major studios, the contributors trace the changing ideas and...

Enhanced by artificial intelligence, today's simulated females are becoming ever more lifelike as the virtual vies with the real. They have already had a dramatic impact on personal relationships, on our views of women, and our ideas about what it means...

The Queer Biopic in the AIDS Era offers a new account of the AIDS crisis and the emergence of New Queer Cinema. Author Laura Stamm asks why queer filmmakers repeatedly produced biographical films of queer individuals living and dead throughout the years...

From the late forties through the sixties, Elia Kazan was the most important and influential director in America, and the only one who managed simultaneously to dominate both theater and film. In that role he manifestly shaped the conception and writing,...

Tina Chanter resolves a fundamental problem in film theory by negotiating a middle path between "gaze theory" approaches to film and spectator studies or cultural theory approaches that emphasize the position of the viewer and thereby take account of...

With a "crooked stick," filmmaker Oscar Micheaux (1884-1951) sought to hit a "straight lick" by stressing the strategic importance of class mobility, or "uplift," for African Americans. A theme in all of his more than 40 feature-length, black-produced,...

Hillman's groundbreaking study enables both serious and casual film students to approach these works with sharpened vision and improved hearing." -Klaus Phillips, Hollins UniversityUnsettling Scores: German Film, Music, and Ideology examines the use of...

This is a very strong, thought-provoking [volume]... "-George MarcusAs home photographs shift from the print format to digital technology and as video moves from the television screen to multimedia, it is crucial to develop new strategies of interpreting...

Shelley Cobb explores film adaptations directed by women (often working with women screenwriters, producers, and sometimes editors) that foreground the figure of the female author. Through analysis of the films themselves, and their reception and...

Masculinity and Film Performance is a lively and engaging study of the complex relationship between masculinity and performance on and off screen, focusing on the performance of "male angst" in American film and popular culture during the 1990s and 2000s...

This volume contains a set of stateoftheart essays by younger philosophers on various topics in the philosophy of action. Some of the essays are about the metaphysics of action and agency; some consider the nature of autonomy and free agency; some...

Winner of three Oscars and the highest-grossing film of its time, Jaws was a phenomenon, and this is the only book on how twenty-six-year-old Steven Spielberg transformed Peter Benchley's number-one bestselling novel into the classic film it became.Hired...

This book argues that the fundamental shift in Chinese Cinema away from Socialism and towards Post-Socialism can be located earlier than the emergence of the "Fifth Generation" in the mid-eighties when it is usually assumed to have occured. By close...

Launched in 1980, cable network Black Entertainment Television (BET) has helped make blackness visible and profitable at levels never seen prior in the TV industry. In 2000, BET was sold by founder Robert L. Johnson, a former cable lobbyist, to media...

In this original study, Scharf investigates issues of national identity in films of the New German Cinema. Using a cultural studies analysis, Scharf argues that the conflict between this generation of critical filmmakers and their...

The liberal way of war and the liberal way of rule are correlated; this book traces that correlation to liberalism's original commitment to 'making life live'. Committed to making life live, liberalism is committed to waging war on behalf of life,...

Acknowledging the significance of Edward Said's Orientalism for contemporary discourse, the contributors to this volume deconstruct, rearrange and challenge elements of his thesis, looking at the new conditions and opportunities offered by globalization.

This book addresses a prominent group of virtues and vices as portrayed in popular films to further our understanding of these moral character traits. The discussions emphasize the interplay between the philosophical conception of the virtues and vices...

Women in African Cinema: Beyond the Body Politic showcases the very prolific but often marginalised presence of women in African cinema, both on the screen and behind the camera. This book provides the first in-depth and sustained examination of...

The story of the American West is that of a journey. It is the story of a movement, of a geographical and human transition, of the delineation of a route that would soon become a rooted myth. The story of the American West has similarly journeyed across...

What does it mean for a cinematic work to be "Chinese"? Does it refer specifically to a work's subject, or does it also reflect considerations of language, ethnicity, nationality, ideology, or political orientation? Such questions make any...

With the recent release of spectacular blockbuster films from Gladiator to The Lord of the Rings trilogy, the epic has once again become a major form in contemporary cinema. This new volume in the AFI Film Readers series explores the rebirth of the epic...

Through a comparative approach of current theories developed on ideology and an analysis of official documents from the Vatican and the United States Department of State, the book investigates the decisive role that American production companies played...

Paranormal Media offers a unique, timely exploration of the extraordinary, unexplained and supernatural in popular culture, looking in unusual places in order to understand this phenomenon.

Television Personalities offers an exciting, engaging approach to studying and understanding the most prominent and popular performers in television and celebrity culture. It is an original, indispensable guide for undergraduate and postgraduate students...

This collection of forty new essays, written by the leading scholars in adaptation studies and distinguished contributors from outside the field, is the most comprehensive volume on adaptation ever published. Written to appeal alike to specialists in...

The coming of sound to film was an event whose importance can hardly be overestimated; sound transformed not only the Hollywood film industry but all of world cinema as well. As economic and film historian Douglas Gomery explains, the business of film...

From An Affair to Remember to Legally Blonde, "chick flicks" have long been both championed and vilified by women and men, scholars and popular audiences. Like other forms of "chick culture," which the editors define as a group of mostly American and...

The reality of transnational innovation and dissemination of new technologies, including digital media, has yet to make a dent in the deep-seated culturalism that insists on reinscribing a divide between the West and Japan. The Oxford Handbook of...

Flashbacks in Film examines film flashback as a rich multimodal narrative device, analyzing the cognitive underpinnings of film flashbacks and the mechanisms that lead viewers to successfully comprehend them.Combining a cognitive film theory approach...