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Filmmaking in the rest of the Arab realm is only rudimentary in its development. In Sudan as well as Libya, Mauritania, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates native productions have remained largely limited to documentaries, short films, and films for television. Mass audiences are fed foreign-made commercial films in the cinemas and on television that must first pass through the strict scrutiny of the censors. The number of feature films that have been made so far can be counted on the fingers of one's hand. Many filmmakers like Saba Ghada from Jordan, Nadra Al Sultan from Kuwait, Hizam Al Kilani from Saudi Arabia, and Nujoom Al Ghaneem from United Arab Emirates live and work outside their native countries.

Rabat is not only the capital of Morocco but also the film metropolis of the country. Terrorist attacks devastated the country for the first time in May 2003. Bomb attacks in Casablanca killed more than forty people, including the eleven assassins. The direction that film and society in Morocco will take depends on the course of King Mohammed VI. Only six feature films appeared in Morocco under native direction during the French colonial period. The film industry in Morocco was never nationalized after the country achieved national independence in 1956. The number of Moroccan feature film productions has increased considerably since 1980. With this was the establishment of a national film fund (Fonds de l'Aide à la Production Cinématographique) that can subsidize up to fifty percent of a film's budget.

As soon as it was clear that the Luftwaffe had been comprehensively defeated in the daylight battles over England in August and September 1940, and the threat of invasion thereby averted, film companies began thinking about celebrating this singular victory on celluloid. For a number of reasons, though, it would take almost a year for a British feature film in which the Battle of Britain played a significant role to reach the screen; and almost two until audiences were able to judge the major effort by Leslie Howard to interpret the outcome of the battle with reference to the career of R. J. Mitchell, designer of the Spitfire. Neither the failure of such projects nor the insistence by the Air Ministry that Royal Air Force operations and security concerns took absolute precedence over the needs of film production companies dampened the spirits of those who thought feature films tackling the Battle of Britain would be successful. The First of the Few began production in August 1941 and was shown the following year.

This chapter is about André Téchiné, whose sixteen feature films to date include a range of low- and high-budget productions. Among these films, some involve major stars of the French cinema, some a cast of unknowns, some highly successful in terms of the box office, some far less so. Téchiné is a particularly interesting case for auteur study in that there seems to be a major break in 1981, when his films became less experimental and more mainstream, inaugurating a realist, novelistic cinema which continues to this day. However, his first filmmaking experience emerged from a theatrical milieu. In 1969, Téchiné was assistant director of Jacques Rivette's L'Amour fou. It was around this time that he conceived and began to shoot his first feature film, Paulina s'en va. The chapter also explores Téchiné's other feature film, such as Les Soeurs Brontë (1979) and Souvenirs d'en France (1975). Téchiné's first four features are striking for the differences between them and the departures each makes from its predecessor.

Yau Ching's Ho Yuk: Let's Love Hong Kong is the first narrative feature film about Hong Kong lesbians told from a lesbian/feminist perspective. Yau Ching's road to filmmaking shows how Hong Kong's vibrant alternative film and video culture can nurture innovation, strengthen ties to the world filmmaking community, and involve Hong Kong filmmakers in the expansion of the public sphere for the marginalized, maligned, and dispossessed. The story of its production also highlights the connections between Hong Kong independent cinema and international trends in queer counter-cinemas. In this interview, Yau Ching talks about her development as a filmmaker, her inspiration for Ho Yuk, its production, and its impact on local as well global audiences. Yau Ching talks about her experience of making films began long before her film education began.

In the year 1963, the film history of Syria began when the socialist Ba'th took power. Their film industry produced commercial films and maintained a relatively high annual of production ratio. But before national independence was declared in 1946, production of the film industry in Syria fell, wherein they had only three feature films that were under native direction, and this was because of their lack of financial institutions. Added to their lack of financial support, the cultural policies of the French colonial administration led talented artists and intellectuals to migrate to Egypt, weakening the artistic life of their country. As a result of their fallow production, private companies founded a Syrian film corporation during the Second World War, which they hoped would profit due to the absence of western film imports, just like in Egypt when they had a production upswing during and after the war.

By the end of the 1950s, it was increasingly obvious that watching television at home was supplanting going out to the cinema as a prime recreational habit for young and old in Britain. This, in turn, had led to serious shrinkage both in the number of operating cinemas and in film production throughout the country. And, as the 1960s unfolded, what film output there was came as often as not to be financed by the more affluent American studios with an eye on the wider world market, where the Battle of Britain did not resonate. Even within the Air Ministry, there were those who wondered if harking back to the Battle of Britain every year was really in the best interests of the Royal Air Force (RAF). After years of work and a good deal of press scrutiny, a feature film called Battle of Britain made its high-profile premiere at the Dominion Theatre in aid of the RAF Benevolent Fund on the evening of September 15, 1969.

This chapter analyzes how the experiences of Maghrebi migrant women in France are conveyed through feature films and considers the extent to which these films encourage spectators to come to a better understanding of the women’s experiences and appreciate their respective points of view. It analyzes a wide range of techniques used in the films, from those that could be considered the most ‘verbal’ in the traditional sense of the word (such as interior monologue voiceover and verbal exchanges) to those that are entirely non-verbal (including body language and non-verbal sounds). While the spoken words of first-generation women have the potential to provide significant insight into the women’s experiences, this is not always the case, nor do a woman’s words necessarily invite spectators to identify with her point of view. Words also have the potential to be misunderstood or not understood at all – for example, when there is a language barrier – and this can inhibit communication. Non-verbal tools can provide an effective channel through which the women’s voices can be communicated, regardless of differences in age, language, or culture between the characters and the implied spectators. Works examined include films by Yamina Benguigui, Mehdi Charef, and Bourlem Guerdjou.

This chapter discusses how the Quay Brothers’ small-scale puppet animations turned into feature and live-action films. In addition to their independent filmmaking engagements, they also took charge of stage performances such as Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Jonathan Miller, 1996), the opera Mazeppa (Richard Jones, 1991), and the ballet Queen of Spades (Kim Brandstrup, 2001). They were particularly assigned to the decorative, architectural, and narrative design of these performances. This chapter then explores how these performances contributed to the film techniques used by the Quay Brothers in their entry into the field of feature and live-action films. These include The Comb [From the Museums of Sleep] (1990), De Artificiali Perspectiva, or Anamorphosis (1991), Stille Nacht Series, Institute Benjamenta (1995), The Summit (1995), In Absentia (2000), and Frida (2002).

This chapter examines the 1912 feature film Queen Elizabeth as a reflection of Sarah Bernhardt's roles in the late nineteenth century and her insistence that these could remain relevant to audiences in the twentieth century. In histories of the cinema, Queen Elizabeth is a film consistently referred to as an example of “filmed theater.” The chapter considers the cinematic practices that Queen Elizabeth reveals and how the film draws upon the long and rich history of Queen Elizabeth's appearance in the theater, the visual arts, and the popular presses. It argues that Queen Elizabeth was an intelligent and creative response to the theatrical possibilities of the cinema and to the tastes and fashions of Bernhardt's day. It also discusses how Bernhardt brings to film the same practices and processes that Paul Delaroche had earlier brought to history painting. Finally, it shows how Queen Elizabeth establishes a link between Elizabeth and William Shakespeare, thus presenting itself as film that animates history.

This chapter examines Japanese assumptions about Chinese, Korean, and Southeast Asian difference through elements of mise-en-scène, including acting styles, gestures, makeup, and dialogue in feature films. The discussion centers on Japanese representations of culture, ethnicity, and language, and the ways in which they masked Asian difference in order to construct a seamless and attractive image of an idealized Pan-Asian subject. The chapter looks at China-born Japanese actress Ri Koran, who exemplified the exoticism, mystery, and allure of a Japani?ed China. It also discusses the assimilation program in Korea; the film You and I, which championed two colonial cultural policies: the Military Volunteer Program (shiganhei seido) and the Interracial Marriage Policy between Japanese and Koreans (naisen kekkon); and feature films that deal with the issue of Japanese prejudice against returning prostitutes and children of miscegenetic relationships. The chapter concludes by considering non-Japanese reception of Japanese performances of Asian identity in order to identify schisms between Japanese and non-Japanese imperial subjects.

This chapter looks at a controversial release by the Wharton brothers: the five-reel feature The Black Stork (1917). Advertised as a “eugenics love story,” the film told a fictionalized story based on the actual 1915 “Bollinger Case,” in which Dr. Harry J. Haiselden, the chief surgeon at the German-American Hospital in Chicago, refused to perform a life-saving surgery on a severely disabled infant, “Baby [John] Bollinger.” Hoping to clear himself before the American public, Haiselden decided to participate, and even to star, in The Black Stork. In addition to its central premise that it is necessary, even laudable, to ensure the integrity of society by terminating the lives of “defectives,” the film drew a further direct and unfortunate link between hereditary defects and ethnicity, class, and race. The chapter also considers the first new Wharton production of 1917, The Great White Trail. The film was less controversial than The Black Stork, but its subplot of white slavery and prostitution also elicited some concerns.

This chapter describes how animation has become big business and an increasingly fashionable field for study due to the growth of CGI effects in feature films, the proliferation of digital animation production companies, the appearance of an international array of broadcast and cable-delivered animation programs, and the full growth of the computer game industry. This is based on the fact that animation is not only essential to the realms of visual entertainment, advertising, and instruction, but also because it suggests the very real possibility of a paradigm shift in visually based media, as it promises to replace or radically alter components of these realms that people have come to take for granted.

This chapter describes how the once close relationship between the Wharton brothers irreparably broke. In late spring of 1919, after he and Ted parted ways, Leo Wharton left New York and headed west—not to Los Angeles but to Texas, which he hoped would become part of a film community that might rival Hollywood. At San Antonio Motion Pictures, he believed that he would have the opportunity to produce the kinds of feature films that he had long wanted to make. The demise of San Antonio Motion Pictures, however, effectively marked the end of Leo's film career. Ted Wharton, who left Ithaca less than a year after his brother Leo did, also traveled west. But whereas Leo had sought fame and success in Texas, Ted moved to Hollywood, which was rapidly evolving into the film capital of the United States. Almost immediately, Universal—by then well known for its popular westerns—hired him to work on the production of The Moon Riders (1920). Sadly, little more is known about the Whartons' final years. Nevertheless, a close examination of their careers restores Ted and Leo Wharton to the classical narrative of early filmmaking and reveals their profound impact on the early serial picture and their influence on later popular genres.

This book examines the oeuvre of Russian director Alexander Sokurov. Sokurov has kept his audiences intrigued, enthralled, confused, and even angered at times, with a cinema that is all at once incredibly diverse and yet immediately recognizable as bearing the seal of its maker. Its outward components are well known, whether revered or derided: Sokurov's cinema is a delicate but difficult exploration of the human conscience and soul, of memory, destiny and history, be it in its fictional or documentary form. This book explores the anxiety of influence of twentieth-century art, death, and homosexuality in Sokurov's feature films, including Lonely Voice of Man, Mournful Insensitivity, Days of the Eclipse, The Second Circle, Taurus, Father and Son, and Faust.

The Arriflex 35 assumed a more significant role in the production of feature films and television dramas in the 1960s. This chapter focuses on its use as a secondary camera, called upon in situations in which a Mitchell (or later, a studio Panavision camera) would be too difficult, expensive, or time-consuming to use. This accounts by far for the largest amount of Arriflex use on American feature films and television dramas during this period.

The musical biopic's complex articulation of the relationship between ‘life’ and ‘art’ raises issues also presented by the tradition of the rockumentary. Two notable Australian feature films of the 1990s, Muriel's Wedding (1994) and The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994), foreground the music of ABBA in self-conscious ways, connecting the films' narratives with the group's popularity. In particular, ABBA's significance to Australian popular culture is encapsulated in the feature film that centres on their tour of Australia in the 1970s: ABBA The Movie (1977). The ironic stance towards ABBA fandom in the 1990s was prefigured in the paradoxical attitude to stardom, and the fans' ownership of band, music and meaning, seen in ABBA The Movie. This chapter argues how ABBA The Movie (1977) helped to circulate star meanings attached to the band as well as being a way for the fans to have a form of access to their heroes. Its focus on the camp and ironic aspects to ABBA's Australian reception leads to a discussion of The Adventures of Priscilla and Muriel's Wedding.