Constructivism in Film - A Cinematic Analysis (Cambridge Studies in Film)
by Vlada Petric
Vlada Petric explicates the cinematic text of one of the most famous works of avant-garde nonfiction film, Dziga Vertov's Man with a Movie Camera
Ingmar Bergman was the last and arguably the greatest of the old-style European auteurs and his influence across all areas of contemporary cinema has continued to be considerable since his death in July 2007. Drawing on interviews with collaborators and original research, this book puts Bergman's career into the context of his life and offers a new and revealing portrait of this great filmmaker. Geoffrey Macnab explores the often painfully autobiographical nature of his work, while also looking...
This Wounded Cinema, This Wounded Life (Non-Series)
by Gabrielle M. Murray
Film scholarship has largely failed to address the complex and paradoxical nature of the films of Sam Peckinpah, focusing primarily on the violence of movies such as The Wild Bunch and Straw Dogs while ignoring the poetry and gentility of lesser-known pictures including The Ballad of Cable Hogue and Junior Bonner. Serving as a necessary corrective, Gabrielle Murray's This Wounded Cinema, This Wounded Life: Violence and Utopia in the Films of Sam Peckinpah offers a better understanding of the wor...
Acclaimed filmmaker George Lucas reinvigorated the science-fiction genre more than 25 years ago with Star Wars, one of the greatest epics and cultural icons of its generation. He has enthralled audiences with his grand vision, mythic narratives, and groundbreaking visual effects ever since, and he remains a pivotal figure in American cinema: Star Wars: Episode II (2002) was the first film to be shot entirely with state-of-the-art digital cameras, and Star Wars: Episode III, Revenge of the Sith i...
This landmark collection of essays considers the global legacy of John Grierson, the father of British documentary. Featuring the work of leading scholars from around the world, The Grierson Effect explores the impact of Grierson's ideas about documentary and educational film in a wide range of cultural and national contexts – from Russia and Scandinavia, to Latin America, South Africa and New Zealand. In reconsidering Grierson's international infl uence, this major new study emphasises the ma...
Set in the South two years before the Civil War, Django Unchained stars Django, a slave whose brutal history with his former owners lands him face-top-face with German-born bounty hunter, Dr. King Schultz. Schultz is on the trail of the murderous Brittle brothers, and only Django can lead him to his bounty. The unorthodox Schultz acquires Django with a promise to free him upon the capture of the Brittles — dead or alive. Success leads Schultz to free Django, though the two men choose not to go t...
Werner Herzog
by Herbert Achternbusch, Peter Berling, Claudia Cardinale, Lena Herzog, Werner Herzog, Hans Helmut Prinzler, and Schlondorff, Volker
The great German film director Werner Herzog celebrated his 60th birthday in September 2002. This large-format volume documents an extensive appreciation of him in words and pictures. Swiss photographer Beat Presser worked together with Herzog and his favourite actor Klaus Kinski for many years. In 100 photographs he reveals the dynamism and rousing strength of the great filmmaker. Companions like Volker Schlondorff, Peter Berling, Herbert Achternbusch, Lena Herzog and Claudia Cardinale as well...
The Continuity Supervisor is a practical guide to the basics of continuity, designed to be of use both to the newcomer and those more experienced. Formerly titled 'The Continuity Handbook: a guide for single-camera shooting, this new edition covers the latest technological changes which affect the Continuity Supervisor. Avril Rowlands worked at the BBC for any years as a PA. She has been involved in specialised training for the television industry and major film and television colleges. Her hig...
Bob Willoughby is one of the world's foremost photojournalists of the Hollywood movie iindustry, and was the first 'outside' photographer to work on what were originally closed sets. Since the early 1950s he has documented the making of literally hundreds of Hollywood films, taking intimate portraits of famous Academy Award-winning stars and directors that reflect the drama and emotions of moviemaking that exist both on and off the screen. From such 1950s classics as George Cukor's "A Star is Bo...
Charlie Chaplin was the first international cinema star and one of the greatest comic geniuses the world has known. Drawing on research and interviews with those who knew Chaplin, Jeffrey Vance presents an illustrated account which captures Chaplin's fascinating life as well as his creative process. Vance describes in detail the atmosphere on Chaplin's film sets and his relationships with the cast and crew, his first attempts at comedy sequences that later became famous, and the main themes and...
Agent of Challenge and Defiance (Cinema Voices S., v. 7.)
For more than 30 years, Ken Loach's films have examined the social, political, economic, and psychological costs of living in Great Britain. These invariably controversial film and television works—Cathy Come Home, Kes, Hidden Agenda, Riff-Raff, and Land and Freedom, among others—represent a continuing commitment to using film for political purposes. In this first English-language book on Loach, McKnight brings together seven original critical essays on major aspects of Loach's work, an intervie...
Troping the Body (Women's Studies/Cultural Studies)
by Gwendolyn Audrey Foster
"Troping the Body: Gender, Etiquette, and Performance "is an interdisciplinary study of etiquette texts, conduct literature, and advice books and films. Gwendolyn" "Audrey Foster analyzes the work of such women authors as Emily Post, Christine de Pizan, Hannah Webster Foster, Emily Bronte, Frances E. W. Harper, and Martha Stewart as well as such women filmmakers as Lois Weber and Kasi Lemmons. Specifically, Foster notes, I was interested in the possibility of locating power and agency in the voi...
Alfred Hitchcock: Centenary Essays
This collection of essays displays the range and breadth of Hitchcock scholarship and assesses the significance of his body of work as a bridge between the fin de siecle culture of the 19th century and the 20th century. It engages with Hitchcock's characteristic formal and aesthetic preoccupations.
Orson Welles was once asked which directors he most admired. He replied: "The old masters. By which I mean John Ford, John Ford and John Ford." John Ford (1894--1973) was a legend in his own time. Honored with four Academy Awards for best director, and two others for his World War II documentaries, Ford directed more than 140 films in a career that lasted from the early silent era through the late 1960s. Ford today is celebrated throughout the world as the cinema's foremost chronicler of America...
Orson Welles (Studio Book) (Illustrated History of the Movies)
by Joseph McBride
Orson Welles (1915--1985) revolutionized the art of filmmaking with his first feature, Citizen Kane, made when he was only twenty-five. This landmark study challenges the conventional wisdom that regards Welles's subsequent career as a long decline from that early peak, demonstrating that Welles continued to create audacious, profoundly moving, and richly varied films throughout his tumultuous life. Tracing Welles's development from his playful beginnings as an amateur filmmaker in the early 193...
Examines the film practice of the Chilean-French filmmaker and artist Alejandro Jodorowsky The first scholarly collection dedicated to the films of Alejandro Jodorowsky Offers theoretical interpretations from the fields of cinema studies, art history, Latin American studies, gender studies, comparative literature, disability studies, and sound studies, from leading scholars in the field Includes both textual and contextual analysis of Jodorowsky's entire filmography Known as the father of the...
For more than eighty years, the unsolved murder of William Desmond Taylor, one of the leading silent film directors, has generated debate and controversy. Now, best-selling author Charles Higham has solved the crime. Higham uncovers the corruption and intrigue of Los Angeles in the Roaring Twenties - and the film industry moguls' complete domination of the city's authorities. Through remarkable research, exclusive interviews with the killer, and unique access to police records, Higham scrutinize...
The first academic evaluation of the work of this major film director aims to study both his aesthetic achievement and the underlying themes and values he projects. Working within the boundaries of many diverse popular genres, Scott has infused his works with new energy through both a strong formal sense and a cohesive world view. In such films as Alien, Blade Runner, Thelma & Louise, and the recent blockbuster Gladiator, Scott addresses the tensions between institutions and individuals, passion...
Most Tim Burton films are huge box-office successes, and several are already classics. The director's mysterious and eccentric public persona attracts a lot of attention, while the films themselves have been somewhat overlooked. Here, Alison McMahan redresses this imbalance through a close analysis of Burton's key films () and their industrial context. She argues that Burton has been a crucial figure behind many of the transformations taking place in horror, fantasy, and sci-fi films over the la...
Werner Herzog came to fame in the 1970s as the European new wave explored new cinematic ideas. With films like Signs of Life (1968), Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972), The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (1974) and Fitzcarraldo (1982), Herzog became the subject of public debate, particularly due to his larger-than-life characters, often played by the mad Klaus Kinski. After the success of his documentary Grizzly Man (2005), Herzog began to lead a new form of hybrid documentary, and his tough attitude tow...