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.


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.

Although stardom and celebrity have sometimes been seen as antithetical to traditional British notions of restraint and modesty, female stars have nonetheless always been an important attraction for audiences of British cinema, offering specifically British takes on ideas of glamour, acting prowess and femininity. This book will explore in detail the history of British female stardom from the 1940s to the present day through an examination of the careers and star personae of some of the most significant stars from the last seventy years of British cinema; from the Gainsborough girls who enjoyed enormous popularity in the immediate postwar years to key contemporary figures such as Helena Bonham Carter and Judi Dench.

Analyzes the visual and cultural context of Europe's first feature films from 19th century painting to pictorial photography

Sheds new light on the late 19th and early 20th century's cultural context
Innovatively brings together different media, their artistic traditions, and their respective theoretical and discursive paradigms
Presents an alternative history of early European cinema by analyzing it from an inclusive art historical perspective
Thoroughly explores the first European feature films' cinematic form and function

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.

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