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Screening American Independent Film (Screening Cinema)
This indispensable collection offers 51 chapters, each focused on a distinct American independent film. Screening American Independent Film presents these films chronologically, addressing works from across more than a century (1915−2020), emphasizing the breadth and long duration of American independent cinema. The collection includes canonical examples as well as films that push against and expand the definitions of "independence." The titles run from micro-budget films through marketing-friendly Indiewood projects, from auteur-driven films and festival darlings to B-movies, genre pics, and exploitation films. The chapters also introduce students to different approaches within film studies including historical and contextual framing, industrial and institutional analysis, politics and ideology, genre and authorship, representation, film analysis, exhibition and reception, and technology. Written by leading international scholars and emerging talents in film studies, this volume is the first of its kind. Paying particular attention to issues of diversity and inclusion for both the participating scholars and the content and themes within the selected films, Screening American Independent Film is an essential resource for anyone teaching or studying American cinema.
Screening Love and War in Troy: Fall of a City (IMAGINES – Classical Receptions in the Visual and Performing Arts)
This is the first volume of essays published on the television series Troy: Fall of a City (BBC One and Netflix, 2018). Covering a wide range of engaging topics, such as gender, race and politics, international scholars in the fields of classics, history and film studies discuss how the story of Troy has been recreated on screen to suit the expectations of modern audiences. The series is commended for the thought-provoking way it handles important issues arising from the Trojan War narrative that continue to impact our society today. With discussions centered on epic narrative, cast and character, as well as tragic resonances, the contributors tackle gender roles by exploring the innovative ways in which mythological female figures such as Helen, Aphrodite and the Amazons are depicted in the series. An examination is also made into the concept of the hero and how the series challenges conventional representations of masculinity. We encounter a significant investigation of race focusing on the controversial casting of Achilles, Patroclus, Zeus and other series characters with Black actors. Several essays deal with the moral and ethical complexities surrounding warfare, power and politics. The significance of costume and production design are also explored throughout the volume.
Screening the Crisis: US Cinema and Social Change in the Wake of the 2008 Crash
The financial collapse of 2008 extended and deepened a prolonged, multilayered crisis that has transformed, often in unexpected ways, how we think about all aspects of social life. Amid these turbulent times, film studies scholars have begun to ask new questions and create fresh strategies in order to integrate intellectual and political work in ways that directly address our current predicament. This timely volume reconsiders the relationships between cinema and society at a time when neoliberal policies threaten not only civic culture but also nearly every aspect of human life. Screening the Crisis brings together established authors as well as brilliant young scholars in the field of film studies to explore the ways in which new tendencies in US cinema enhance awareness of the complexity of the problems facing contemporary society. The issues addressed include economic inequality, shifts in gender roles, racial conflicts, immigration, surveillance practices, the environmental crisis, the politics of housing, and the fragility of nationhood. These questions are explored through in-depth studies and contextualized analyses of a wide variety of recent films, genres, and filmmakers. With its ample range of topics and perspectives, this collection provides an essential reference work for those who want to research how US cinema has responded to the manifold interconnected crises that characterize our current times.
Screening the Past: Film and the Representation of History
Film and television have been accepted as having a pervasive influence on how people understand the world. An important aspect of this is the relationship of history and film. The different views of the past created by film, television, and video are only now attracting closer attention from historians, cultural critics, and filmmakers. This volume seeks to advance the critical exploration scholars have recently begun.Barta begins by addressing the various ways the past is screened for our understanding and relates the art of film to other media. The essays that follow deal primarily with the changing perspectives of political and social developments—and changing concepts of ideology, gender, or culture—in films and television programs made for historically shaped reasons. Chapters by filmmakers explore issues of context and intent in their own projects. Scholars and general readers interested in film and cultural studies will find this an important volume.
Sense8: Transcending Television
This collection explores the many ways in which the Netflix series Sense8 transcends television. As its characters transcend physical and psychological borders of gender and geography, so the series itself transcends those between television, new media platforms and new screen technologies, while dissolving those between its producers, stars, audiences and fans. Sense8 united, inspired and energized a global community of fans that realized its own power by means of online interaction and a successful campaign to secure a series finale. The series' playful but poignant exploration of globalization, empathy, transnationalism, queer and trans aesthetics, gender fluidity, imagined communities and communities of sentiment also inspired the interdisciplinary range of contributors to this volume. In this collection, leading academics illuminate Sense8 as a progressive and challenging series that points to vital, multifarious, contemporary social, political, aesthetic and philosophical concerns. Sense8: Transcending Television is much more than an academic examination of a series; it is an account and analysis of the way that we all receive, communicate and consider ourselves as participants in global communities that are social, political and cultural, and now both physical and virtual too.
Seventies British Cinema
Seventies British Cinema provides a comprehensive re-evaluation of British film in the 1970s. The decade has long been written off in critical discussions as a 'doldrums' period in British cinema, perhaps because the industry, facing near economic collapse, turned to 'unacceptable' low culture genres such as sexploitation comedies or extreme horror. The contributors to this new collection argue that 1970s cinema is ripe for reappraisal: giving serious critical attention to populist genre films, they also consider the development of a British art cinema in the work of Derek Jarman and Peter Greenaway, and the beginnings of an independent sector fostered by the BFI Production Board and producers like Don Boyd. A host of highly individual directors managed to produce interesting and cinematically innovative work against the odds, from Nicolas Roeg to Ken Russell to Mike Hodges. As well as providing a historical and cinematic context for understanding Seventies cinema, the volume also features chapters addressing Hammer horror, the Carry On films, Bond films of the Roger Moore period, Jubilee and other films that responded to Punk rock; heritage cinema and case studies of key seventies films such as The Wicker Man and Straw Dogs. In all, the book provides the final missing piece in the rediscovery of British cinema's complex and protean history. Contributors: Ruth Barton, James Chapman, Ian Conrich, Wheeler Winston Dixon, Christophe Dupin, Steve Gerrard, Sheldon Hall I. Q. Hunter, James Leggott, Claire Monk, Paul Newland, Dan North, Robert Shail, Justin Smith and Sarah Street.
Shadow Cinema: The Historical and Production Contexts of Unmade Films
Filmmakers and cinema industries across the globe invest more time, money and creative energy in projects and ideas that never get produced than in the movies that actually make it to the screens. Thousands of projects are abandoned in pre-production, halted, cut short, or even made and never distributed – a “shadow cinema” that exists only in the archives. This collection of essays by leading scholars and researchers opens those archives to draw on a wealth of previously unexamined scripts, correspondence and production material, reconstructing many of the hidden histories of the last hundred years of world cinema. Highlighting the fact that the movies we see are actually the exception to the rule, this study uncovers the myriad reasons why 'failures' occur and considers how understanding those failures can transform the disciplines of film and media history. The first survey of this new area of empirical study across transnational borders, Shadow Cinema is a vital and fascinating demonstration of the importance of the unmade, unseen, and unknown history of cinema.
Shadows of Progress: Documentary Film in Post-War Britain
Britain emerged from war a changed country, facing new social, industrial and cultural challenges. Its documentary film tradition – established in the 1930s and 1940s around legendary figures such as Grierson, Rotha and Jennings – continued evolving, utilising technical advances, displaying robust aesthetic concerns, and benefiting from the entry into the industry of wealthy commercial sponsors. Thousands of films were seen by millions worldwide. Received wisdom has been that British documentary went into swift decline after the war, resurrected only by Free Cinema and the arrival of television documentary. Shadows of Progress demolishes these simplistic assumptions, presenting instead a complex and nuanced picture of the sponsored documentary in flux. Patrick Russell and James Piers Taylor explore the reasons for the period's critical neglect, and address the sponsorship, production, distribution and key themes of British documentary. They paint a vivid picture of institutions – from public bodies to multinational industries – constantly redefining their relationships with film as a form of enlightened public relations. Many of the issues that these films addressed could not be more topical today: the rise of environmentalism; the balance of state and industry, individual and community; a nation and a world travelling from bust to boom and back again. In the second part of the book, contributors from the curatorial and academic world provide career biographies of key film-makers of the period. From Lindsay Anderson's lesser-known early career to neglected film-makers like John Krish, Sarah Erulkar, Eric Marquis and Derrick Knight, a kaleidoscopic picture is built up of the myriad relationships of artist and sponsor.
Shakespeare and Geek Culture
From fantasy and sci-fi to graphic novels, from boy scouts to board games, from blockbuster films to the cult of theatre, Shakespeare is everywhere in popular culture. Where there is popular culture there are fans and nerds and geeks. The essays in this collection on Shakespeare and Geek Culture take an innovative approach to the study of Shakespeare's cultural presences, situating his works, his image and his brand to locate and explore the nature of that geekiness that, the authors argue, is a vital but unrecognized feature of the world of those who enjoy and are obsessed by Shakespeare, whether they are scholars, film fans, theatre-goers or members of legions of other groupings in which Shakespeare plays his part.Working at the intersections of a wide range of fields ? including fan studies and film analysis, cultural studies and fantasy/sci-fi theory – the authors demonstrate how the particularities of the connection between Shakespeare and geek culture generate new insights into the plays, poems and their larger cultural legacy in the 21st century.
Shakespeare and Indian Cinemas: "Local Habitations" (Routledge Studies in Shakespeare)
This book is the first to explore the rich archive of Shakespeare in Indian cinemas, including less familiar, Indian language cinemas to contribute to the assessment of the expanding repertoire of Shakespeare films worldwide. Essays cover mainstream and regional Indian cinemas such as the better known Tamil and Kannada, as well as the less familiar regions of the North Eastern states. The volume visits diverse filmic genres, starting from the earliest silent cinema, to diasporic films made for global audiences, television films, independent films, and documentaries, thus expanding the very notion of ‘Indian cinema’ while also looking at the different modalities of deploying Shakespeare specific to these genres. Shakespeareans and film scholars provide an alternative history of the development of Indian cinemas through its negotiations with Shakespeare focusing on the inter-textualities between Shakespearean theatre, regional cinema, performative traditions, and literary histories in India. The purpose is not to catalog examples of Shakespearean influence but to analyze the interplay of the aesthetic, historical, socio-political, and theoretical contexts in which Indian language films have turned to Shakespeare and to what purpose. The discussion extends from the content of the plays to the modes of their cinematic and intermedial translations. It thus tracks the intra–Indian flows and cross-currents between the various film industries, and intervenes in the politics of multiculturalism and inter/intraculturalism built up around Shakespearean appropriations. Contributing to current studies in global Shakespeare, this book marks a discursive shift in the way Shakespeare on screen is predominantly theorized, as well as how Indian cinema, particularly ‘Shakespeare in Indian cinema’ is understood.
The Shakespeare North Playhouse: Replica Theatres and Their Uses (ISSN)
This collection celebrates the opening of the Shakespeare North Playhouse (SNP). After discussion of its genesis and development by four people pivotal to its progress at different stages of the project, this book explores different aspects of the SNP’s purpose and functions across three broad categories: buildings and spaces, practices and performance, and community arts and education. Various chapters offer answers to fundamental questions about replica theatres, including: Why do we build them? What do they do? How do we use them? In the course of these discussions, the purposes, potential, and programming of the SNP are discussed in relation to other Globe-type replicas in the UK and beyond. Contributors to this collection analyse key academic and practice-based concerns within their fields of expertise connected to the use (and misuse) of replica theatres to suggest the ways in which they can be used to drive research and practice in contemporary Shakespearean performance, connect with young people, and serve local communities.This book will appeal to academics, students, and practitioners interested in historical and contemporary approaches to Shakespeare in the fields covered. It should also appeal to general readers with an interest in the topics, particularly in Merseyside and the North-West region.
Social Divisions
Society consists of people sharply divided from one another, living different lives and with distinct identities. This updated and expanded second edition of a successful text explores each of the social divisions. The book includes three major new chapters, on religion, poverty and elites and is written by leading academics in each field.
Social Justice in Dance/Movement Therapy: Practice, Research and Education
This book demonstrates the use of dance/movement therapy to directly counteract social injustices and promote healing in international settings. It also demonstrates the potential for dance/movement therapy in prevention and wellness in clinical and community settings. The use of improvisational and creative dance is presented throughout the book as a tremendously clear, strong and powerful inroad to healing in every setting. The chapters in this book do not directly address social justice in dance/movement therapy, but rather provide provoking social justice related positions. This call for a provoking re-examination of the definition of dance/movement therapy is fitting as we—as a community—challenge our identity as dance/movement therapists, educators, supervisors and as human beings who have internalized oppression in various forms through our many identifiers and the unique intersections of those identifiers. The editors and authors posit that social justice cannot be fully addressed by focusing solely on the social issues. Rather, we must be aware of where and how the social issues come into the individual(s), the setting, and the therapy process itself.Chapter “‘Breaking Free': One Adolescent Woman's Recovery from Dating Violence Through Creative Dance" is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license via link.springer.com.
Spaces of War, War of Spaces
Spaces of War, War of Spaces provides a rich, international and multi-disciplinary engagement with the convergence of war and media through the conceptual lens of 'space'. 'Space' offers a profound, challenging and original framework through which notions of communication, embodiment, enactment, memory and power are interrogated not only in terms of how media spaces (traditional, digital, cultural, aesthetic, embodied, mnemonic) transform the conduct, outcomes and consequences of war for all involved, but how 'war' actors (political, military, survivors, victims) recreate space in a manner that is transformative across political, social, cultural and personal spheres. Foregrounding the work of artists, activists and practitioners alongside more traditional scholarly approaches Spaces of War, War of Spaces engages with the 'messiness' of war and media through the convergence of practice and theory, where showing and embodying is made explicit.
Stanislavsky and Race: Questioning the “System” in the 21st Century (Stanislavsky And...)
Stanislavsky and Race is the first book to explore the role that Konstantin Stanislavsky’s “system” and its legacies can play in building, troubling and illuminating today’s anti-racist theatre practices. This collection of essays from leading figures in the field of actor training stands not only as a resource for a new area of academic enquiry, but also for students, actors, directors, teachers and academics who are engaged in making inclusive contemporary theatre. In seeking to dismantle the dogma that surrounds much actor training and replace it with a culturally competent approach that will benefit our entire community, the “system” is approached from a range of perspectives featuring the research, reflections and provocations of 20 different international artists interrogating Stanislavsky’s approach through the lens of race, place and identity. Stanislavsky and … is a series of multi-perspectival collections that bring the enduring legacy of Stanislavskian actor training into the spotlight of contemporary performance culture, making them ideal for students, teachers and scholars of acting, actor training and directing.
Stars, Studios, and the Musical Theatre Screen Adaptation: An Oxford Handbook of Musical Theatre Screen Adaptations, Volume 3 (OXFORD HANDBOOKS SERIES)
Hollywood's conversion to sound in the 1920s created an early peak in the film musical, following the immense success of The Jazz Singer. The opportunity to synchronize moving pictures with a soundtrack suited the musical in particular, since the heightened experience of song and dance drew attention to the novelty of the technological development. Until the near-collapse of the genre in the 1960s, the film musical enjoyed around thirty years of development, as landmarks such as The Wizard of Oz, Meet Me in St. Louis, Singin' in the Rain, and Gigi showed the exciting possibilities of putting musicals on the silver screen. The final of three volumes, Stars, Studios, and the Musical Theatre Screen Adaptation: An Oxford Handbook traces how stardom and technology has affected the evolution of the genre of the stage-to-screen musical. Many chapters examine specific screen adaptations in depth, with case studies on the screen versions of Broadway favorites Carousel and Brigadoon, while others deal with broad issues such as how music rights affected how studios approached screen adaptations. Together, the chapters incite lively debates about the process of adapting Broadway for the big screen and provide models for future studies. Volume I: The Politics of the Musical Theatre Screen Adaptation Volume II: Race, Sexuality, and Gender and the Musical Screen Adaptation Volume III: Stars, Studios, and the Musical Theatre Screen Adaptation
The String Quartets of Béla Bartók: Tradition and Legacy in Analytical Perspective
Béla Bartók (1881-1945) was one of the most important composers and musical thinkers of the 20th century. His contributions as a composer, as a performer and as the father of ethnomusicology changed the course of music history and of our contemporary perception of music itself. At the center of Bartók's oeuvre are his string quartets, which are generally acknowledged as some of the most significant pieces of 20th century chamber music. The String Quartets of Béla Bartók brings together innovative new scholarship from 14 internationally recognized music theorists, musicologists, performers, and composers to focus on these remarkable works from a range of theoretical and methodological perspectives. Focusing on a variety of aspects of the string quartets-harmony and tonality, form, rhythm and meter, performance and listening-it considers both the imprint of folk and classical traditions on Bartók's string quartets, and the ways in which they influenced works of the next generation of Hungarian composers. Rich with notated music examples the volume is complemented by an Oxford Web Music companion website offering additional notated as well as recorded examples. The String Quartets of Béla Bartók, reflecting the impact of the composer himself, is an essential resource for scholars and students across a variety of fields from music theory and musicology, to performance practice and ethnomusicology.
The Sustainable Legacy of Agnès Varda: Feminist Practice and Pedagogy
Drawing especially on the encounters and relationships that defined her exceptional career, The Sustainable Legacy of Agnès Varda outlines a sustainable legacy for the celebrated director and visual artist. Over nine chapters, it unpacks how creation, connection, and environment form the core of Varda's artistry, which centers foremost on relationships with her family, with other artists, even with passersby she would meet in her travels around the world. Also celebrating her feminist legacy, the chapters cover a wide range, from the classic Cléo from 5 to 7 (1962) to documentaries The Beaches of Agnès (2008) and Faces Places (2017) as well as selected art installations. The book's final section is dedicated to teaching Varda's work; here, ten scholars from around the world consider how Varda's art and feminist pedagogies offer unique ways to bring crucial concepts into the classroom. By seeking a sustainable praxis to discuss and teach Varda's work, and by making pedagogical concerns an explicit part of this approach, this book argues that Varda's insights about the nature of creative work will inspire new generations of viewers and audiences.
Symbolic Narratives/African Cinema: Audiences, Theory and the Moving Image
In the conference Africa and the History of Cinematic Ideas held in London in 1995, film-makers, cultural theorists and critics gathered to debate a range of issues. Views were exchanged on such topics as imperialism, and the problems of distribution.
The Television Genre Book
In this new edition of The Television Genre Book, leading international scholars have come together to offer an accessible and comprehensive update to the debates, issues and concerns of the field. As television continues to evolve rapidly, this new edition reflects the ways in which TV has transformed in recent years, particularly with the emergence of online streaming services such as Netflix, Disney+, HBO Max and Amazon Prime. It also includes a new chapter on sports TV, and expanded coverage of horror, political thrillers, Nordic noir, historical documentary and docu-drama. With analyses of popular shows like Stranger Things, Killing Eve, The Crown, Chernobyl, Black Mirror, Fleabag, Breaking Bad and RuPaul's Drag Race, this book offers a comprehensive understanding of television genre for scholars and students alike.
The Television History Book
Traces the history of broadcasting and the infludence developments in broadcasting have had over our social, cultural and economic practices. Examining the broadcasting traditions of the UK and USA, 'The Television History Book' make connections between events and tendencies that both unite and differentiate these national broadcasting traditions.
Television in the Making (Routledge Library Editions: Broadcasting #37)
Television in the Making (1956) looks at television in its infancy, with essays by the leaders of the medium at the time, people who were forging new paths as they imagined and actioned the possibilities of television.
Television Publics in South Asia: Mediated Politics and Culture
Television has a prime role to play in the formation of discursive domains in the everyday life of South Asian publics. This book explores various television media practices, social processes, mediated political experiences and everyday cultural compositions from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. With the help of country specific case studies, it captures broad range of themes which foreground the publics and their real-life experiences of television in the region. The essays in this book discuss gendered television spaces; women seeking solace from television in pandemic; the taboo in digital tv dramas; television viewership and localizing publics; changing viewership from television to OTT; news and public perception of death; re-defining ‘the national’; theatrical television; and post truth television news, among other key issues. Rich in ethnographic case studies, this volume will be a useful resource for scholars and researchers of media and communication studies, journalism, digital media, South Asian studies, cultural studies, sociology and social anthropology.
Theatre Responds to Social Trauma: Chasing the Demons (Routledge Series in Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion in Theatre and Performance)
This book is a collection of chapters by playwrights, directors, devisers, scholars, and educators whose praxis involves representing, theorizing, and performing social trauma.Chapters explore how psychic catastrophes and ruptures are often embedded in social systems of oppression and forged in zones of conflict within and across national borders. Through multiple lenses and diverse approaches, the authors examine the connections between collective trauma, social identity, and personal struggle. We look at the generational transmission of trauma, socially induced pathologies, and societal re-inscriptions of trauma, from mass incarceration to war-induced psychoses, from gendered violence through racist practices. Collective trauma may shape, protect, and preserve group identity, promoting a sense of cohesion and meaning, even as it shakes individuals through pain. Engaging with communities under significant stress through artistic practice offers a path towards reconstructing the meaning(s) of social trauma, making sense of the past, understanding the present, and re-visioning the future.The chapters combine theoretical and practical work, exploring the conceptual foundations and the artists’ processes as they interrogate the intersections of personal grief and communal mourning, through drama, poetry, and embodied performance.
Theorising National Cinema
Why do we think of clusters of films as 'national cinema'? Why has the relationship between the nation and film become so widely and uncritically accepted? 'Theorising National Cinema' is a major contribution to work on national cinema, by many of the leading scholars in the field. It addresses the knotty and complex relationship between cinema and national identity, showing that the nationality of a cinema production company, and the films that its made, have not always been seen as pertinent. The volume begins by reviewing and rethinking the concept of national cinema in an age of globalisation, and it goes on to chart the parallel developments of national film industries and the idea of a nation state in countries as diverse as Japan, South Korea, Russia, France and Italy. The issues of a 'national cinema' for nation states of contested status, with disputed borders or displaced peoples, is discussed in relation to film-making in Taiwan, Ireland and Palestine. The contributors also consider the future of national cinema in an age of trans-national cultural flows, exploring issues of national identity and cinema in Latin America, Asia, the Middle-East, India, Africa and Europe. 'Theorising National Cinema' also includes a valuable bibliography of works on national cinema.