S. Brent Plate
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- January 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780195335989
- eISBN:
- 9780199868940
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195335989.003.0017
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
This chapter discusses the similar structures of religious worlds and films. It thus offers an introduction to theories and terms of religious studies through the popular medium of film. Drawing on ...
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This chapter discusses the similar structures of religious worlds and films. It thus offers an introduction to theories and terms of religious studies through the popular medium of film. Drawing on film theory, the chapter indicates some of the ways film re‐creates the world through cinematography, mise‐en‐scène, editing, and other production elements. By drawing on theorists of religion such as Peter Berger, William Paden, and Nelson Goodman, the chapter goes on to show how religions achieve similar world‐making strategies by setting apart particular objects and periods of time through the telling of stories and the gathering together of people focused on one thing. By paying attention to the manner in which films are constructed, we can shed light on the ways religious myths and rituals are developed and vice versa.Less
This chapter discusses the similar structures of religious worlds and films. It thus offers an introduction to theories and terms of religious studies through the popular medium of film. Drawing on film theory, the chapter indicates some of the ways film re‐creates the world through cinematography, mise‐en‐scène, editing, and other production elements. By drawing on theorists of religion such as Peter Berger, William Paden, and Nelson Goodman, the chapter goes on to show how religions achieve similar world‐making strategies by setting apart particular objects and periods of time through the telling of stories and the gathering together of people focused on one thing. By paying attention to the manner in which films are constructed, we can shed light on the ways religious myths and rituals are developed and vice versa.
Michael Bliss (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780813178141
- eISBN:
- 9780813178134
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University Press of Kentucky
- DOI:
- 10.5810/kentucky/9780813178141.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
Widely acknowledged as a highly innovative film, Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch was released in 1969. From the outset, the movie was considered controversial because of its powerful, graphic, and ...
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Widely acknowledged as a highly innovative film, Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch was released in 1969. From the outset, the movie was considered controversial because of its powerful, graphic, and direct depiction of violence, but it was also praised for its lush photography, intricate camera work, and cutting-edge editing. Peckinpah’s tale of an ill-fated, aging outlaw gang bound by a code of honor is often regarded as one of the most complex and influential Westerns in American cinematic history. The issues dealt with in this groundbreaking film—violence, morality, friendship, and the legacy of American ambition and compromise—are just as relevant today as when the film first debuted.
To honor the significance of The Wild Bunch, this collection brings together leading Peckinpah scholars and critics to examine what many consider to be the director’s greatest work. The book’s nine essays explore the function of violence in the film and how its depiction is radically different from what is seen in other movies; the background of the film’s production; the European response to the film’s view of human nature; and the role of Texas/Mexico milieu in the narrative.Less
Widely acknowledged as a highly innovative film, Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch was released in 1969. From the outset, the movie was considered controversial because of its powerful, graphic, and direct depiction of violence, but it was also praised for its lush photography, intricate camera work, and cutting-edge editing. Peckinpah’s tale of an ill-fated, aging outlaw gang bound by a code of honor is often regarded as one of the most complex and influential Westerns in American cinematic history. The issues dealt with in this groundbreaking film—violence, morality, friendship, and the legacy of American ambition and compromise—are just as relevant today as when the film first debuted.
To honor the significance of The Wild Bunch, this collection brings together leading Peckinpah scholars and critics to examine what many consider to be the director’s greatest work. The book’s nine essays explore the function of violence in the film and how its depiction is radically different from what is seen in other movies; the background of the film’s production; the European response to the film’s view of human nature; and the role of Texas/Mexico milieu in the narrative.
Liam Burke
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781628462036
- eISBN:
- 9781626745193
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781628462036.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, Comics Studies
The first chapter identifies why, after a century of indifference, comic books moved from the fringes of popular culture to the center of mainstream film production in the early 21st century. It ...
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The first chapter identifies why, after a century of indifference, comic books moved from the fringes of popular culture to the center of mainstream film production in the early 21st century. It argues that comic-book movies were well suited, perhaps ideally suited, to the cultural, technological, and economic concerns that beset Hollywood production at the start of the twenty-first century, including post-9/11 concerns, digital filmmaking techniques, and conglomerate practices. That comic book adaptations could meet and surmount such demands, and achieve unprecedented levels of popularity, testifies to their importance within modern Hollywood filmmaking.Less
The first chapter identifies why, after a century of indifference, comic books moved from the fringes of popular culture to the center of mainstream film production in the early 21st century. It argues that comic-book movies were well suited, perhaps ideally suited, to the cultural, technological, and economic concerns that beset Hollywood production at the start of the twenty-first century, including post-9/11 concerns, digital filmmaking techniques, and conglomerate practices. That comic book adaptations could meet and surmount such demands, and achieve unprecedented levels of popularity, testifies to their importance within modern Hollywood filmmaking.
Ann Davies
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- July 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780719073649
- eISBN:
- 9781781702093
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719073649.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
Daniel Calparsoro, a director who has contributed to the contemporary scene in Spanish and Basque cinema, has provoked strong reactions from the critics. Reductively dismissed as a purveyor of crude ...
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Daniel Calparsoro, a director who has contributed to the contemporary scene in Spanish and Basque cinema, has provoked strong reactions from the critics. Reductively dismissed as a purveyor of crude violence by those critics lamenting a ‘lost golden age’ of Spanish filmmaking, Calparsoro's films reveal in fact a more complex interaction with trends and traditions in both Spanish and Hollywood cinema. This book is a full-length study of the director's work, from his early social realist films set in the Basque Country to his later forays into the genres of the war and horror film. It offers an in-depth film-by-film analysis, while simultaneously exploring the function of the director in the contemporary Spanish context, the tension between directors and critics, and the question of national cinema in an area—the Basque Country—of heightened national and regional sensitivities.Less
Daniel Calparsoro, a director who has contributed to the contemporary scene in Spanish and Basque cinema, has provoked strong reactions from the critics. Reductively dismissed as a purveyor of crude violence by those critics lamenting a ‘lost golden age’ of Spanish filmmaking, Calparsoro's films reveal in fact a more complex interaction with trends and traditions in both Spanish and Hollywood cinema. This book is a full-length study of the director's work, from his early social realist films set in the Basque Country to his later forays into the genres of the war and horror film. It offers an in-depth film-by-film analysis, while simultaneously exploring the function of the director in the contemporary Spanish context, the tension between directors and critics, and the question of national cinema in an area—the Basque Country—of heightened national and regional sensitivities.
Nicola Mai
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780226584959
- eISBN:
- 9780226585147
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226585147.001.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Gender and Sexuality
The book draws on unique and original research on the experiences of women, men, transgender people, minors and third party agents working in the sex industry in a variety of settings and jobs in the ...
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The book draws on unique and original research on the experiences of women, men, transgender people, minors and third party agents working in the sex industry in a variety of settings and jobs in the European Union, the Balkans and North Africa. Mobile Orientations addresses a critical issue within the transformation of global societies: the relation between the increase in migration flows, the expansion of the sex industry and the emergence of new forms of agency and exploitation. Moral panics about migrant ‘sex slaves’ being exploited in the global sex industry obfuscate the reality that only a minority is actually trafficked. The original research evidence analysed in Mobile Orientations counters the scenario of hegemonic exploitation presented by such moral panics. It shows that by migrating and working in the global sex industry, young women and men find opportunities to counter the increased precariousness and exploitability they meet in neoliberal times. The book’s autoethnographic writing style expresses the main theoretical contribution Mobile Orientations aims to make: to provide a nuanced and emic analysis of the complex understandings of agency and exploitation of migrants working in the global sex industry. The discussion of the methodological and expressive opportunities (and challenges) offered by ethnography and participatory filmmaking is integral part of the argument made by Mobile Orientations, which ultimately challenges the criteria of scientific and documentary authenticity and the forms of social exclusion engendered by the convergence between sexual humanitarianism and neoliberalism.Less
The book draws on unique and original research on the experiences of women, men, transgender people, minors and third party agents working in the sex industry in a variety of settings and jobs in the European Union, the Balkans and North Africa. Mobile Orientations addresses a critical issue within the transformation of global societies: the relation between the increase in migration flows, the expansion of the sex industry and the emergence of new forms of agency and exploitation. Moral panics about migrant ‘sex slaves’ being exploited in the global sex industry obfuscate the reality that only a minority is actually trafficked. The original research evidence analysed in Mobile Orientations counters the scenario of hegemonic exploitation presented by such moral panics. It shows that by migrating and working in the global sex industry, young women and men find opportunities to counter the increased precariousness and exploitability they meet in neoliberal times. The book’s autoethnographic writing style expresses the main theoretical contribution Mobile Orientations aims to make: to provide a nuanced and emic analysis of the complex understandings of agency and exploitation of migrants working in the global sex industry. The discussion of the methodological and expressive opportunities (and challenges) offered by ethnography and participatory filmmaking is integral part of the argument made by Mobile Orientations, which ultimately challenges the criteria of scientific and documentary authenticity and the forms of social exclusion engendered by the convergence between sexual humanitarianism and neoliberalism.
Isabelle McNeill
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748638918
- eISBN:
- 9780748671014
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748638918.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
A vital rethinking of memory and the moving image for the digital age, this book investigates the role of the moving image in cultural memory, considering the impact of digital technologies on visual ...
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A vital rethinking of memory and the moving image for the digital age, this book investigates the role of the moving image in cultural memory, considering the impact of digital technologies on visual culture. Drawing on an interdisciplinary range of theoretical resources and an unusual body of films and moving image works, the book examines the ways in which recent French filmmaking conceptualises both the past and the workings of memory. Ultimately the book argues, memory is an intersubjective process, in which filmic forms continue to play a crucial role even as new media come to dominate our contemporary experience. The book introduces new ways of thinking about the relation between film and memory, arising from an interdisciplinary study of theories and films; explores the French context while drawing theoretical conclusions with wider implications and applicability; provides detailed close readings of varied moving image works to aid theoretical explorations; moves away from auteurist approaches, examining work by canonical directors including Jean-Luc Godard, Chris Marker and Agnès Varda alongside that of less well-known filmmakers such as Claire Simon and Yamina Benguigui; and brings together thinkers such as Bergson, Deleuze, Bazin and Barthes with, for example, Rodowick and Mulvey, in an interweaving of theories. Works considered include Jean-Luc Godard's Histoire(s) du Cinéma (1989–98), Yamina Benguigui's Mémoires d'Immigrés (1997), Chris Marker's CD-ROM Immemory (1998), Claire Simon's Mimi (2003), Michael Haneke's Caché (2005) and Agnès Varda's multi-media exhibition, L'Île et Elle (2006).Less
A vital rethinking of memory and the moving image for the digital age, this book investigates the role of the moving image in cultural memory, considering the impact of digital technologies on visual culture. Drawing on an interdisciplinary range of theoretical resources and an unusual body of films and moving image works, the book examines the ways in which recent French filmmaking conceptualises both the past and the workings of memory. Ultimately the book argues, memory is an intersubjective process, in which filmic forms continue to play a crucial role even as new media come to dominate our contemporary experience. The book introduces new ways of thinking about the relation between film and memory, arising from an interdisciplinary study of theories and films; explores the French context while drawing theoretical conclusions with wider implications and applicability; provides detailed close readings of varied moving image works to aid theoretical explorations; moves away from auteurist approaches, examining work by canonical directors including Jean-Luc Godard, Chris Marker and Agnès Varda alongside that of less well-known filmmakers such as Claire Simon and Yamina Benguigui; and brings together thinkers such as Bergson, Deleuze, Bazin and Barthes with, for example, Rodowick and Mulvey, in an interweaving of theories. Works considered include Jean-Luc Godard's Histoire(s) du Cinéma (1989–98), Yamina Benguigui's Mémoires d'Immigrés (1997), Chris Marker's CD-ROM Immemory (1998), Claire Simon's Mimi (2003), Michael Haneke's Caché (2005) and Agnès Varda's multi-media exhibition, L'Île et Elle (2006).
Gary Needham
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748633821
- eISBN:
- 9780748651252
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748633821.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
Upon its release in 2005, Brokeback Mountain became a major cultural event and a milestone in independent American filmmaking. Based on the short story by Annie Proulx and directed by Ang Lee, it ...
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Upon its release in 2005, Brokeback Mountain became a major cultural event and a milestone in independent American filmmaking. Based on the short story by Annie Proulx and directed by Ang Lee, it situated a love story between two closeted cowboys at the heart of American mythology, film spectatorship, and genre. Brokeback Mountain offered an independent and queer revision of the conventions and clichés of the Western and the melodrama through a studied exploration of homophobia and the closet. This book examines the film in relation to indie cinema, genre, spectatorship, editing and homosexuality. In doing so it brings film studies and queer theory into dialogue with one another and explains the importance of Brokeback Mountain as both a contemporary independent and queer film. The book provides an overview of Focus Features as a hybrid company operating across both the mainstream and independent cinema sectors, and proposes a new way of thinking about gay spectatorship that takes into account how editing and cruising relate to one another.Less
Upon its release in 2005, Brokeback Mountain became a major cultural event and a milestone in independent American filmmaking. Based on the short story by Annie Proulx and directed by Ang Lee, it situated a love story between two closeted cowboys at the heart of American mythology, film spectatorship, and genre. Brokeback Mountain offered an independent and queer revision of the conventions and clichés of the Western and the melodrama through a studied exploration of homophobia and the closet. This book examines the film in relation to indie cinema, genre, spectatorship, editing and homosexuality. In doing so it brings film studies and queer theory into dialogue with one another and explains the importance of Brokeback Mountain as both a contemporary independent and queer film. The book provides an overview of Focus Features as a hybrid company operating across both the mainstream and independent cinema sectors, and proposes a new way of thinking about gay spectatorship that takes into account how editing and cruising relate to one another.
Rebecca Hillauer
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9789774249433
- eISBN:
- 9781936190089
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- American University in Cairo Press
- DOI:
- 10.5743/cairo/9789774249433.003.0010
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Middle Eastern Studies
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 ...
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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.Less
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.
Nicholas Rombes (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748620340
- eISBN:
- 9780748671052
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748620340.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This book examines a new breed of film that is indebted to the punk spirit of experimentation, do-it-yourself ethos, and an uneasy, often defiant relationship with the mainstream. An array of ...
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This book examines a new breed of film that is indebted to the punk spirit of experimentation, do-it-yourself ethos, and an uneasy, often defiant relationship with the mainstream. An array of scholars trace and map the contours of new punk cinema, from its roots in neorealism and the French New Wave, to its flowering in the work of Lars von Trier and the Dogma 95 movement. Subsequent chapters explore the potentially democratic and even anarchic forces of digital filmmaking; the influences of hypertext and other new media; the increased role of the viewer in arranging and manipulating the chronology of a film; and the role of new punk cinema in plotting a course beyond the postmodern. The book examines a range of films, including The Blair Witch Project, Time Code, Run Lola Run, Memento, The Celebration, Gummo and Requiem for a Dream.Less
This book examines a new breed of film that is indebted to the punk spirit of experimentation, do-it-yourself ethos, and an uneasy, often defiant relationship with the mainstream. An array of scholars trace and map the contours of new punk cinema, from its roots in neorealism and the French New Wave, to its flowering in the work of Lars von Trier and the Dogma 95 movement. Subsequent chapters explore the potentially democratic and even anarchic forces of digital filmmaking; the influences of hypertext and other new media; the increased role of the viewer in arranging and manipulating the chronology of a film; and the role of new punk cinema in plotting a course beyond the postmodern. The book examines a range of films, including The Blair Witch Project, Time Code, Run Lola Run, Memento, The Celebration, Gummo and Requiem for a Dream.
David Martin-Jones
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748633913
- eISBN:
- 9780748651207
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748633913.003.0012
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
It would appear that indigenous film production is likely to continue to expand in Scotland. Even if Scotland remains a small national cinema in global terms, it is to be hoped that it will carry on ...
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It would appear that indigenous film production is likely to continue to expand in Scotland. Even if Scotland remains a small national cinema in global terms, it is to be hoped that it will carry on making a big impact globally. Whether it does or not, however, it seems probable that international film coproductions and location shooting will, because of the mutual benefit that Scotland's landscape brings to filmmakers from outside Scotland, the Scottish film industry and related industries like tourism. The increasingly blurry boundaries surrounding the category of ‘Scottish’ cinema require a reconsideration of Scottish filmmaking and filmmaking in Scotland inclusively, both in terms of its artistic and popular merits and in relation to an increasingly global context of production and distribution. Moreover, a brief survey of a few of the films not discussed in this book illustrates the variety of fantasy Scotlands that continue to exist and that have been created by filmmakers within, and from outside, Scotland, and the exploration of identities they facilitate.Less
It would appear that indigenous film production is likely to continue to expand in Scotland. Even if Scotland remains a small national cinema in global terms, it is to be hoped that it will carry on making a big impact globally. Whether it does or not, however, it seems probable that international film coproductions and location shooting will, because of the mutual benefit that Scotland's landscape brings to filmmakers from outside Scotland, the Scottish film industry and related industries like tourism. The increasingly blurry boundaries surrounding the category of ‘Scottish’ cinema require a reconsideration of Scottish filmmaking and filmmaking in Scotland inclusively, both in terms of its artistic and popular merits and in relation to an increasingly global context of production and distribution. Moreover, a brief survey of a few of the films not discussed in this book illustrates the variety of fantasy Scotlands that continue to exist and that have been created by filmmakers within, and from outside, Scotland, and the exploration of identities they facilitate.
Samm Deighan
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781474440189
- eISBN:
- 9781474476607
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474440189.003.0005
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
Elaine May’s 1971 directorial debut, A New Leaf was a watershed moment within May’s career, but as a film important to the contemporary development of American comedy cinema. This chapter will ...
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Elaine May’s 1971 directorial debut, A New Leaf was a watershed moment within May’s career, but as a film important to the contemporary development of American comedy cinema. This chapter will examine A New Leaf as part of a greater comedic tradition, particularly in terms of pre-code and 1930s/1940s screwball comedy, later black comedies, and romantic comedies about unlikely couplings between unsympathetic protagonists, forging a connection between the theme of romance, finance, and mortality. This chapter argue that A New Leaf represents an important development in this subgenre, and examines A New Leaf in connection to the relatively unsentimental romantic comedies of the ‘60s and ‘70s concerned with unlikely couplings that concern an unlikely romance that develops as the result of a search for fortune.Less
Elaine May’s 1971 directorial debut, A New Leaf was a watershed moment within May’s career, but as a film important to the contemporary development of American comedy cinema. This chapter will examine A New Leaf as part of a greater comedic tradition, particularly in terms of pre-code and 1930s/1940s screwball comedy, later black comedies, and romantic comedies about unlikely couplings between unsympathetic protagonists, forging a connection between the theme of romance, finance, and mortality. This chapter argue that A New Leaf represents an important development in this subgenre, and examines A New Leaf in connection to the relatively unsentimental romantic comedies of the ‘60s and ‘70s concerned with unlikely couplings that concern an unlikely romance that develops as the result of a search for fortune.
David MacDougall
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- September 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781526134097
- eISBN:
- 9781526144720
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9781526134097.001.0001
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Social and Cultural Anthropology
The looking machine calls for the redemption of documentary cinema, exploring the potential and promise of the genre at a time when it appears under increasing threat from reality television, ...
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The looking machine calls for the redemption of documentary cinema, exploring the potential and promise of the genre at a time when it appears under increasing threat from reality television, historical re-enactments, designer packaging, and corporate authorship. The book consists of a set of essays each focused on a particular theme derived from the author’s own experience as a filmmaker. It provides a practice-based, critical perspective on the history of documentary, how films evoke space, time and physical sensations, questions of aesthetics, and the intellectual and emotional relationships between filmmakers and their subjects. It is especially concerned with the potential of film to broaden the base of human knowledge, distinct from its expression in written texts. Among its underlying concerns are the political and ethical implications of how films are actually made, and the constraints that may prevent filmmakers from honestly showing what they have seen. While defending the importance of the documentary idea, MacDougall urges us to consider how the form can become a ‘cinema of consciousness’ that more accurately represents the sensory and everyday aspects of human life. Building on his experience bridging anthropology and cinema, he argues that this means resisting the inherent ethnocentrism of both our own society and the societies we film.Less
The looking machine calls for the redemption of documentary cinema, exploring the potential and promise of the genre at a time when it appears under increasing threat from reality television, historical re-enactments, designer packaging, and corporate authorship. The book consists of a set of essays each focused on a particular theme derived from the author’s own experience as a filmmaker. It provides a practice-based, critical perspective on the history of documentary, how films evoke space, time and physical sensations, questions of aesthetics, and the intellectual and emotional relationships between filmmakers and their subjects. It is especially concerned with the potential of film to broaden the base of human knowledge, distinct from its expression in written texts. Among its underlying concerns are the political and ethical implications of how films are actually made, and the constraints that may prevent filmmakers from honestly showing what they have seen. While defending the importance of the documentary idea, MacDougall urges us to consider how the form can become a ‘cinema of consciousness’ that more accurately represents the sensory and everyday aspects of human life. Building on his experience bridging anthropology and cinema, he argues that this means resisting the inherent ethnocentrism of both our own society and the societies we film.
Liam Burke
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781628462036
- eISBN:
- 9781626745193
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781628462036.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Comics Studies
This Introduction traces the history of today’s comic book film adaptation trend back to the earliest days of cinema with Louis Lumière’s 1895 film L’Arroseur Arrosé. It outlines the scope of the ...
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This Introduction traces the history of today’s comic book film adaptation trend back to the earliest days of cinema with Louis Lumière’s 1895 film L’Arroseur Arrosé. It outlines the scope of the book and establishes key terms. This section also identifies where this project fits in the field of adaptation studies. Specifically, it argues that a study of the comic book film adaptation is well positioned to traverse the research quagmires of the past and move the study of adaptation into new and more productive territory.Less
This Introduction traces the history of today’s comic book film adaptation trend back to the earliest days of cinema with Louis Lumière’s 1895 film L’Arroseur Arrosé. It outlines the scope of the book and establishes key terms. This section also identifies where this project fits in the field of adaptation studies. Specifically, it argues that a study of the comic book film adaptation is well positioned to traverse the research quagmires of the past and move the study of adaptation into new and more productive territory.
Liam Burke
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781628462036
- eISBN:
- 9781626745193
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781628462036.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, Comics Studies
The Golden Age of Comic Book Filmmaking saw filmmakers engaging with the language of comics with unprecedented enthusiasm, often by utilizing the control offered by digital technologies. Bullet-time, ...
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The Golden Age of Comic Book Filmmaking saw filmmakers engaging with the language of comics with unprecedented enthusiasm, often by utilizing the control offered by digital technologies. Bullet-time, which was innovated for The Matrix as a means to approximate the limitless discourse time of comics, probably proliferated most widely. However, there were many further efforts to adapt the language of comics to cinema. For instance, filmmakers often went beyond ready-made equivalents in their desire to create comic book-like panels and transitions, visualize sound, and bring previously specific codes to the screen. The enthusiasm for the comic language, coupled with the plasticity of the digital film image, even led to a measure of comic book graphiation seeping into cinema. Although many of these techniques did not enjoy the success of bullet-time, collectively they testify to a concerted effort to achieve a comic aesthetic, which has served to enrich the expressivity of mainstream cinema.Less
The Golden Age of Comic Book Filmmaking saw filmmakers engaging with the language of comics with unprecedented enthusiasm, often by utilizing the control offered by digital technologies. Bullet-time, which was innovated for The Matrix as a means to approximate the limitless discourse time of comics, probably proliferated most widely. However, there were many further efforts to adapt the language of comics to cinema. For instance, filmmakers often went beyond ready-made equivalents in their desire to create comic book-like panels and transitions, visualize sound, and bring previously specific codes to the screen. The enthusiasm for the comic language, coupled with the plasticity of the digital film image, even led to a measure of comic book graphiation seeping into cinema. Although many of these techniques did not enjoy the success of bullet-time, collectively they testify to a concerted effort to achieve a comic aesthetic, which has served to enrich the expressivity of mainstream cinema.
Liam Burke
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781628462036
- eISBN:
- 9781626745193
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781628462036.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, Comics Studies
This final section summarizes the key points raised in the book, while anticipating the future of the comic book movie.
This final section summarizes the key points raised in the book, while anticipating the future of the comic book movie.
Shilyh Warren
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- January 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780252042539
- eISBN:
- 9780252051371
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5622/illinois/9780252042539.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This book reconsiders the history and study of women’s documentary filmmaking in the United States from 1920 to 1940, and during the long 1970s--when significant transformations in cinematic ...
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This book reconsiders the history and study of women’s documentary filmmaking in the United States from 1920 to 1940, and during the long 1970s--when significant transformations in cinematic technologies coincided with major transformations in sociopolitical discourses surrounding gender and race. Rather than comprehensive, the approach is transhistorical, setting women’s cultural expression during these two periods into conversation, and thereby provoking a reconsideration of a number of key debates about subjectivity, feminism, realism, and documentary that have had lasting epistemological and material consequences for film and feminist studies. The book excavates a lost ethnographic history of women’s documentary production and investigates the political and aesthetic legacy of this early history in later, more deliberately feminist and yet equally misremembered periods, especially the 1970s. In particular, Subject to Reality asks how ethnographic thinking and seeing shaped the historical arc and aesthetic, ethical, and political commitments of women’s realist documentaries throughout the twentieth century. The shared interests of women in anthropology, academic film studies, and political feminism have long shaped the production and reception of documentary in the United States. Subject to Reality explores the consequences of this cross-pollination as it has shaped women’s documentaries, and especially the realist films that have been glossed over as “boring” “organizing tools” or merely “talking head films.”Less
This book reconsiders the history and study of women’s documentary filmmaking in the United States from 1920 to 1940, and during the long 1970s--when significant transformations in cinematic technologies coincided with major transformations in sociopolitical discourses surrounding gender and race. Rather than comprehensive, the approach is transhistorical, setting women’s cultural expression during these two periods into conversation, and thereby provoking a reconsideration of a number of key debates about subjectivity, feminism, realism, and documentary that have had lasting epistemological and material consequences for film and feminist studies. The book excavates a lost ethnographic history of women’s documentary production and investigates the political and aesthetic legacy of this early history in later, more deliberately feminist and yet equally misremembered periods, especially the 1970s. In particular, Subject to Reality asks how ethnographic thinking and seeing shaped the historical arc and aesthetic, ethical, and political commitments of women’s realist documentaries throughout the twentieth century. The shared interests of women in anthropology, academic film studies, and political feminism have long shaped the production and reception of documentary in the United States. Subject to Reality explores the consequences of this cross-pollination as it has shaped women’s documentaries, and especially the realist films that have been glossed over as “boring” “organizing tools” or merely “talking head films.”
Daniel Kremer
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780813165967
- eISBN:
- 9780813166742
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Kentucky
- DOI:
- 10.5810/kentucky/9780813165967.003.0014
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
Here the author describes Furie’s upcoming project, which Furie claims will be his final film, his swan song. Drive Me to Vegas and Mars, a comedy-drama-caper, is slated to be produced as a ...
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Here the author describes Furie’s upcoming project, which Furie claims will be his final film, his swan song. Drive Me to Vegas and Mars, a comedy-drama-caper, is slated to be produced as a microbudget digital film, a summing up of a career in more ways than one.Less
Here the author describes Furie’s upcoming project, which Furie claims will be his final film, his swan song. Drive Me to Vegas and Mars, a comedy-drama-caper, is slated to be produced as a microbudget digital film, a summing up of a career in more ways than one.
Derek Schilling and Philippe Met (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781526106858
- eISBN:
- 9781526135995
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9781526106858.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
Long before the emergence in the 1990s of a ‘cinéma de banlieue’ on the heels of Mathieu Kassovitz’s La Haine (1995), French filmmakers looked beyond the gates of the French capital for inspiration ...
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Long before the emergence in the 1990s of a ‘cinéma de banlieue’ on the heels of Mathieu Kassovitz’s La Haine (1995), French filmmakers looked beyond the gates of the French capital for inspiration and content. In the Paris suburbs, they found a vast reservoir of architectural forms, landscapes and contemporary social types in which to anchor their fictions. From the villas and vacant lots of silent serials of the 1910s and the bucolic riverside guinguettes of 1930s poetic realism, to the housing estates and motorways of the second post-war, the suburban landscape came to form a privileged site in the French cinematographic imaginary. In keeping with directorial vision, the prerogatives of the film industry or the internal demands of genre, the suburb could be made to impart a strong impression of reality or unreality, novelty or ordinariness, danger or enjoyment. The contributors to this volume argue collectively for a long history of the suburban imaginary by contrasting diverse ‘structures of feeling’ (Raymond Williams) that correlate to divergent aesthetic and ideological programmes. Commenting on narrative, documentary and essay films, they address such themes as class conflict, leisure, boredom, violence and anti-authoritarianism, underscoring the broader function of the suburb as a site of intense cultural productivity.Less
Long before the emergence in the 1990s of a ‘cinéma de banlieue’ on the heels of Mathieu Kassovitz’s La Haine (1995), French filmmakers looked beyond the gates of the French capital for inspiration and content. In the Paris suburbs, they found a vast reservoir of architectural forms, landscapes and contemporary social types in which to anchor their fictions. From the villas and vacant lots of silent serials of the 1910s and the bucolic riverside guinguettes of 1930s poetic realism, to the housing estates and motorways of the second post-war, the suburban landscape came to form a privileged site in the French cinematographic imaginary. In keeping with directorial vision, the prerogatives of the film industry or the internal demands of genre, the suburb could be made to impart a strong impression of reality or unreality, novelty or ordinariness, danger or enjoyment. The contributors to this volume argue collectively for a long history of the suburban imaginary by contrasting diverse ‘structures of feeling’ (Raymond Williams) that correlate to divergent aesthetic and ideological programmes. Commenting on narrative, documentary and essay films, they address such themes as class conflict, leisure, boredom, violence and anti-authoritarianism, underscoring the broader function of the suburb as a site of intense cultural productivity.
Alexandra Heller-Nicholas and Dean Brandum (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781474440189
- eISBN:
- 9781474476607
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474440189.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This book explores the diverse career of director, screenwriter, comic and actor, Elaine May Spanning from obscurity to notoriety, the films of director, screenwriter, actor and comic Elaine May have ...
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This book explores the diverse career of director, screenwriter, comic and actor, Elaine May Spanning from obscurity to notoriety, the films of director, screenwriter, actor and comic Elaine May have recently experienced a long-overdue renaissance. Although she made only four films — A New Leaf (1971), The Heartbreak Kid (1972), Mikey and Nicky (1976) and Ishtar (1987) — and never reached the level of acclaim of her frequent collaborator Mike Nichols, May’s work is as enigmatic, sophisticated and unceasingly fascinating as her own complicated, reluctant star persona. This collection focuses both on the films she has directed, and also emphasises her work with other high profile collaborators such as John Cassavetes and Otto Preminger.Less
This book explores the diverse career of director, screenwriter, comic and actor, Elaine May Spanning from obscurity to notoriety, the films of director, screenwriter, actor and comic Elaine May have recently experienced a long-overdue renaissance. Although she made only four films — A New Leaf (1971), The Heartbreak Kid (1972), Mikey and Nicky (1976) and Ishtar (1987) — and never reached the level of acclaim of her frequent collaborator Mike Nichols, May’s work is as enigmatic, sophisticated and unceasingly fascinating as her own complicated, reluctant star persona. This collection focuses both on the films she has directed, and also emphasises her work with other high profile collaborators such as John Cassavetes and Otto Preminger.
Jan Bryant
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781474456944
- eISBN:
- 9781474476867
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474456944.003.0006
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Aesthetics
Through the letters of Pasolini and Calvino, this chapter delves into the different political paths that they each took. While Pasolini wrote of his disappointment with his age and politics, Calvino ...
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Through the letters of Pasolini and Calvino, this chapter delves into the different political paths that they each took. While Pasolini wrote of his disappointment with his age and politics, Calvino by this stage has withdrawn from political life to become part of the French structuralist group, Oulip. In recognition of the voids that open up between text and world, the group’s investigations into the structures of language systems aligns with what has been called ‘the linguistic turn’ in late 20th century European philosophy. Pasolini considers that such a move is a deflection from directly approaching the inequalities of class. In return, Calvino censures Pasolini for making films because they are so far from slow reading and reflection. [118]Less
Through the letters of Pasolini and Calvino, this chapter delves into the different political paths that they each took. While Pasolini wrote of his disappointment with his age and politics, Calvino by this stage has withdrawn from political life to become part of the French structuralist group, Oulip. In recognition of the voids that open up between text and world, the group’s investigations into the structures of language systems aligns with what has been called ‘the linguistic turn’ in late 20th century European philosophy. Pasolini considers that such a move is a deflection from directly approaching the inequalities of class. In return, Calvino censures Pasolini for making films because they are so far from slow reading and reflection. [118]
