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Reading philosophy through the lens of Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo, Andrea Cavalletti shows why, for two centuries, major philosophers have come to think of vertigo as intrinsically part of philosophy itself. Fear of the void, terror of heights: everyone knows what acrophobia is, and many suffer from it. Before Freud, the so-called “sciences of the mind” reserved a place of honor for vertigo in the domain of mental pathologies. The fear of falling—which is also the fear of giving in to the tempta...

African cinema is a vibrant, diverse, and relatively new art form, which continues to draw the attention of an ever-expanding worldwide audience. African Filmmaking is the first comprehensive study in English linking filmmaking in the Maghreb with that in the 12 independent states of francophone West Africa. Roy Armes examines a wide range of issues common to filmmakers throughout the region: the socio-political context, filmmaking in Africa before the mid-1960s, the involvement of African and F...

Popular Spanish Film Under Franco is the first book of its kind to analyze cinematic comedy during the initial two decades of Francisco Franco's dictatorship. Focusing on the intersection between popular culture and political populism, it breaks new theoretical ground in re-evaluating the policies of the regime and the tactics employed by those who sought to undermine it. Its cultural studies approach - combining Gramsci, de Certeau and Bakhtin - interrogates the ambiguous nature of subversion a...

From images of stewed missionaries to Hannibal Lecter's hiss, cannibals have intrigued while evoking horror and repulsion. The label of cannibal has been used throughout history to denigrate a given individual or group. By examining who is labelled cannibal at any given time, we can understand the fears, prejudices, accepted norms and taboos of society at that time. From the cannibal in colonial literature, to the idea of regional Gothic and the hillbilly cannibal, to serial killers, this book e...

Horror and slasher films are often dismissed for their apparent lack of sophistication and dearth of redeemable values. However, despite criticism from film snobs who turn up their noses and moralists who look down upon the genre, slasher films are more than just movies filled with gory mayhem. Such films can actually serve a purpose and offer their audiences something more than split skulls and severed heads. In Life Lessons from Slasher Films, Jessica Robinson looks at representative works th...

The charismatic Alexander the Great of Macedon (356-323 B.C.E.) was one of the most successful military commanders in history, conquering Asia Minor, Egypt, Persia, central Asia, and the lands beyond as far as Pakistan and India. Alexander has been, over the course of two millennia since his death at the age of thirty-two, the central figure in histories, legends, songs, novels, biographies, and, most recently, films. In 2004 director Oliver Stone's epic film ""Alexander"" generated a renewed in...

This ground-breaking study provides an authoritative account of the career of one of cinema's most iconic stars. It highlights the importance of Connery's early work, especially his television appearances, as well as dissecting the 'Bond phenomenon' that propelled him to international stardom on an unprecedented scale for a British actor.The book offers an in-depth exploration of Connery' s twenty-year struggle to escape 'Bondage', including his reinvention as a father-mentor, a clever career mo...

On 4 July, 1910, in 100-degree heat at an outdoor boxing ring near Reno, Nevada, film cameras recorded-and thousands of fans witnessed-former heavyweight champion Jim Jeffries' reluctant return from retirement to fight Jack Johnson, a black man. After 14 grueling rounds, Johnson knocked out Jeffries and for the first time in history, there was a black heavyweight champion of the world. At least 10 people lost their lives because of Johnson's victory and hundreds more were injured due to white re...

From the obscure 1958 Sonja Henie vehicle Hello London to the 2000 Academy Award winner Gladiator (released posthumously), the screen career of dynamic British actor Oliver Reed (1937-1999) is thoroughly documented in this illustrated filmography. Following a concise capsule biography, the authors chronologically list all 96 of Reed's films, among them The Curse of the Werewolf, Oliver!, The Devils, The Three Musketeers and Tommy. Each entry contains extensive cast and production credits, a syno...

Prolific British director Michael Winterbottom (b.1961) might be hard to pin down and even harder to categorize. Over sixteen years, he has created feature films as disparate and stylistically diverse as Welcome to Sarajevo, 24 Hour Party People, In This World, Butterfly Kiss, and The Killer Inside Me. But in this collection, the first English-language volume to gather international profiles and substantive interviews with the Blackburn native, Winterbottom reveals how working with small crews,...

Focusing primarily on film and televisual texts from the ten years before and after the millennium, the contributors ask how recent films and television programs play with, imitate, subvert, mock, critique, and queer the romantic narrative conventions so common in Western culture.