Eschewing the idea of film reviewer-as-solitary-expert, Jonathan Rosenbaum continues to advance his belief that a critic's ideal role is to mediate and facilitate our public discussion of cinema. Portraits and Polemics presents debate as an important form of cinematic encounter whether one argues with filmmakers themselves, on behalf of their work, or with one's self. Rosenbaum takes on filmmakers like Chantal Akerman, Richard Linklater, Manoel De Oliveira, Mark Rappaport, Elaine May, and Béla...
Gender and Representation in the Films of Ingmar Bergman
by Marilyn Johns Blackwell
A detailed feminist study of Bergman's most important films. This book covers the whole of Bergman's production, but concentrates in particular on close analyses of five of his major films: Smiles of a Summer Night, The Seventh Seal, The Silence, Persona, and Cries and Whispers. In addition to bringing post-modernist theoretical strategies to bear on the films, it offers a clear, current, pluralist feminist perspective.
Fatih Akin's Cinema and the New Sound of Europe (New Directions in National Cinemas)
by Berna Gueneli
In Fatih Akın's Cinema and the New Sound of Europe, Berna Gueneli explores the transnational works of acclaimed Turkish-German filmmaker and auteur Fatih Akın. The first minority director in Germany to receive numerous national and international awards, Akın makes films that are informed by Europe's past, provide cinematic imaginations about its present and future, and engage with public discourses on minorities and migration in Europe through his treatment and representation of a diverse, mul...
This is a major new study of the films of Luis Bunuel, surrealist scourge of the bourgeoisie and enduring influence on European cinema. Uniquely, the book offers an extended analysis of Buñuel's films in the context of contemporary debates in film studies, focusing in particular on questions of subjectivity and desire. Throughout, Buñuel's films are viewed as both the brilliant, subversive expressions of the director's fantasies and obsessions and as reflections of wider cultural norms and pre...
Glorious catastrophe presents a detailed critical analysis of the work of Jack Smith from the early 1960s until his AIDS-related death in 1989. Dominic Johnson argues that Smith’s work offers critical strategies for rethinking art’s histories after 1960. Heralded by peers as well as later generations of artists, Smith is an icon of the New York avant-garde. Nevertheless, he is conspicuously absent from dominant histories of American culture in the 1960s, as well as from narratives of the impact...
Celebrated as Pixar's "Chief Creative Officer," John Lasseter is a revolutionary figure in animation history and one of today's most important filmmakers. Lasseter films from Luxo Jr. to Toy Story and Cars 2 highlighted his gift for creating emotionally engaging characters. At the same time, they helped launch computer animation as a viable commercial medium and serve as blueprints for the genre's still-expanding commercial and artistic development. Richard Neupert explores Lasseter's signature...
American Cinema of the 1940s (Screen Decades, v. 2)
The 1940s was a watershed decade for American cinema and the nation. At the start of the decade, Hollywood - shaking off the Depression - launched an unprecedented wave of production, generating some of its most memorable classics, including Citizen Kane, Rebecca, The Lady Eve, Sergeant York, and How Green Was My Valley. Hollywood then joined the national war effort with a vengeance, creating a series of patriotic and escapist films, such as Casablanca, Mrs. Miniver, The Road to Morocco, and Yan...
This is an authoritative account of the career of Sydney Box, one of British cinema’s most successful and significant producers. Concentrating on the period 1940-65, it highlights the crucial but often misunderstood role that the producer plays in the film making process and, using largely unpublished material, affords an exceptional insight into the workings of the film industryBox’s career was exceptionally varied and this study analyses the work of his company Verity Films which wartime produ...
"What I remember was that it was the first time a piece of fiction had had such a devastating emotional effect on me. A lot of children remember seeing cartoons, Pinocchio or Bambi or something that breaks their heart. I remember seeing The Blue Angel and it breaking my heart. It was the first time I realised there was an adult world - that adults could damage each other or destroy each other emotionally. It might have fed into a whole series of epiphanies about my own upbringing. I was livin...
This volume is the first book-length study of the extensive career and prolific works of D.A. Pennebaker, one of the pioneers of direct cinema, a documentary form that emphasizes observation and a straightforward portrayal of events. With a career spanning decades, Pennebaker's many projects have included avant-garde experiments (Daybreak Express), ground-breaking television documentaries (Primary), celebrity films (Dont Look Back), concert films (Monterey Pop), and innovative fusions of documen...
The Cinema of Iciar BollaíN (Spanish and Latin-American Filmmakers)
by Isabel Santaolalla
Director, actress, scriptwriter and producer, Iciar Bollaín is one of the liveliest of contemporary young Spanish filmmakers and the first female director to have had a film (También la lluvia, 2010) shortlisted by the American Film Academy. Through detailed analysis of film form, socio-cultural contexts and conditions of production and consumption, the book opens up key issues on gender, production, film authorship, the mediation of socio-historical realities and the whole question of ‘women’s...
Providing an extensive analysis of ""Rear Window"", John Fawell dismantles many myths and cliches about Hitchcock, particularly in regard to his attitude toward women.
The Films of Theo Angelopoulos (Princeton Modern Greek Studies)
by Andrew Horton
Focusing on Angelopoulos' cinematic vision, this text provides a contextual study that attempts to demonstrate the quintessentially Greek nature of the director's work. The book situates the director in the context of over 3000 years of Greek culture and history. Angelopoulos has used cinema to explore the history and individual identities of his culture. With such far-reaching influences as Greek myth, ancient tragedy and epic, Byzantine inconography and ceremony, Greek and Balkan history, mode...
This is a personal account of Pier Paolo Pasolini's cinema and literature, written by the author of "Antonioni" and "Rocco and his Brothers".
The author's treatment of the works of the most subtle of all film-makers analyzes the key elements of suspense, humour and tone across the whole of the director's career. The book examines in detail such films as "North by Northwest", "The Birds" and "Notorious", amongst many others.
Scandinavia's foremost living auteur and the catalyst of the Dogme95 movement, Lars von Trier is arguably world cinema's most confrontational and polarizing figure. Willfully devastating audiences, he takes risks few filmmakers would conceive, mounting projects that somehow transcend the grand follies they narrowly miss becoming. Challenging conventional limitations and imposing his own rules, he restlessly reinvents the film language. The Danish director has therefore cultivated an insistently...
This book examines the television serials created by influential showrunner David Simon. The book argues that Simon’s main theme is the state of the contemporary American city and that all of his serials (barring one about the Iraq War) explore different facets of the metropolis. Each series offers distinctly different visions of the American city, but taken together they represent a sustained and intricate exploration of urban problems in modern America. From deindustrialisation in The Wire and...
With a sharp eye for social detail and the pressures of class inequality, Alfred Hitchcock brought to the American scene a perspicacity and analytical shrewdness unparalleled in American cinema. Murray Pomerance works from a basis in cultural analysis and a detailed knowledge of Alfred Hitchcock's films and production techniques to explore how America of the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s is revealed and critically commented upon in Hitchcock's work. Alfred Hitchcock's America is full of stunning deta...
You're Not Dead Until You're Forgotten
by John Dunning and Bill Brownstein
Much to his chagrin, John Dunning was born into the movie business. But once he came to accept his career fate, he developed a great passion for making movies, and ultimately became Canada's pre-eminent B-movie producer, with a knack for developing young talent. In You're Not Dead until You're Forgotten, Dunning, in forthright and charming fashion, recounts his rough-and-tumble upbringing in the Montreal suburb of Verdun in the 1930s, his modest start in the film industry behind the candy count...
Good Day Today – David Lynch Destabilises The Spectator
by Daniel Neofetou
In his speech following the 2011nationwide riots in Britain, Prime Minister David Cameron spoke out against people "being too unwilling for too long to talk about what is right and what is wrong" and proclaimed "this relativism - it's not going to cut it anymore". He was, then, presumably laying the foundation for one-size-fits-all absolutist authoritarianism and, worryingly, the moral outrage induced by the riots means a large proportion of the British public might not oppose such measures. Wh...