Yoshiharu Tezuka
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9789888083329
- eISBN:
- 9789882209282
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Hong Kong University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5790/hongkong/9789888083329.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
Japan's film industry has gone through dramatic changes in recent decades, as international consumer forces and transnational talent have brought unprecedented engagement with global trends. With ...
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Japan's film industry has gone through dramatic changes in recent decades, as international consumer forces and transnational talent have brought unprecedented engagement with global trends. With careful research and unique first-person observations drawn from years of working within the international industry of Japanese film, this book aims to examine how different generations of Japanese filmmakers engaged and interacted with the structural opportunities and limitations posed by external forces, and how their subjectivity has been shaped by their transnational experiences and has changed as a result. Having been through the globalization of the last part of the twentieth century, are Japanese themselves and overseas consumers of Japanese culture really becoming more cosmopolitan? If so, what does this mean for Japan's national culture and the traditional sense of national belonging among Japanese people?Less
Japan's film industry has gone through dramatic changes in recent decades, as international consumer forces and transnational talent have brought unprecedented engagement with global trends. With careful research and unique first-person observations drawn from years of working within the international industry of Japanese film, this book aims to examine how different generations of Japanese filmmakers engaged and interacted with the structural opportunities and limitations posed by external forces, and how their subjectivity has been shaped by their transnational experiences and has changed as a result. Having been through the globalization of the last part of the twentieth century, are Japanese themselves and overseas consumers of Japanese culture really becoming more cosmopolitan? If so, what does this mean for Japan's national culture and the traditional sense of national belonging among Japanese people?
Barbara Walczak and Una Kai
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780813032528
- eISBN:
- 9780813046310
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University Press of Florida
- DOI:
- 10.5744/florida/9780813032528.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, Dance
Widely regarded as the foremost choreographer of contemporary ballet, George Balanchine was, and continues to be, an institution and major inspiration in the world of dance. This book provides a ...
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Widely regarded as the foremost choreographer of contemporary ballet, George Balanchine was, and continues to be, an institution and major inspiration in the world of dance. This book provides a technical explanation of the stylistic approaches that he taught in New York City between 1940 and 1960, as recorded by two prominent dancers who studied with him at that time. It replicates moments in the studio with the influential teacher, describing his instructions and corrections for twenty-four classes. These lessons not only introduce Balanchine's methods for executing steps, but also discuss the organization and development of his classes, shedding light on the aesthetics of his unique and celebrated style of movement.Less
Widely regarded as the foremost choreographer of contemporary ballet, George Balanchine was, and continues to be, an institution and major inspiration in the world of dance. This book provides a technical explanation of the stylistic approaches that he taught in New York City between 1940 and 1960, as recorded by two prominent dancers who studied with him at that time. It replicates moments in the studio with the influential teacher, describing his instructions and corrections for twenty-four classes. These lessons not only introduce Balanchine's methods for executing steps, but also discuss the organization and development of his classes, shedding light on the aesthetics of his unique and celebrated style of movement.
Andreas C. Lehmann, John A. Sloboda, and Robert H. Woody
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195146103
- eISBN:
- 9780199851164
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195146103.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, Psychology of Music
This book provides a concise, accessible, and up-to-date introduction to psychological research for musicians, performers, music educators, and studio teachers. Designed to address the needs and ...
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This book provides a concise, accessible, and up-to-date introduction to psychological research for musicians, performers, music educators, and studio teachers. Designed to address the needs and priorities of the performing musician rather than the research community, it reviews the relevant psychological research findings in relation to situations and issues faced by musicians, and draws out practical implications for the practice of teaching and performance. Rather than a list of dos and don'ts, the book equips musicians with an understanding of the basic psychological principles that underlie music performance, enabling each reader to apply the content flexibly to the task at hand. Following a brief review of the scientific method as a way of thinking about the issues and problems in music, the text addresses the nature–nurture problem, identification and assessment of musical aptitude, musical development, adult skill maintenance, technical and expressive skills, practice, interpretation and expressivity, sight-reading, memorization, creativity, and composition, performance anxiety, critical listening, and teaching and learning. While there is a large body of empirical research regarding music, most musicians lack the scientific training to interpret these studies. This text bridges this gap by relating these skills to the musician's experiences, addressing their needs directly with non-technical language and practical application. It includes multiple illustrations, brief music examples, cases, questions, and suggestions for further reading.Less
This book provides a concise, accessible, and up-to-date introduction to psychological research for musicians, performers, music educators, and studio teachers. Designed to address the needs and priorities of the performing musician rather than the research community, it reviews the relevant psychological research findings in relation to situations and issues faced by musicians, and draws out practical implications for the practice of teaching and performance. Rather than a list of dos and don'ts, the book equips musicians with an understanding of the basic psychological principles that underlie music performance, enabling each reader to apply the content flexibly to the task at hand. Following a brief review of the scientific method as a way of thinking about the issues and problems in music, the text addresses the nature–nurture problem, identification and assessment of musical aptitude, musical development, adult skill maintenance, technical and expressive skills, practice, interpretation and expressivity, sight-reading, memorization, creativity, and composition, performance anxiety, critical listening, and teaching and learning. While there is a large body of empirical research regarding music, most musicians lack the scientific training to interpret these studies. This text bridges this gap by relating these skills to the musician's experiences, addressing their needs directly with non-technical language and practical application. It includes multiple illustrations, brief music examples, cases, questions, and suggestions for further reading.
Charlotte Greenspan
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780195111101
- eISBN:
- 9780199865703
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195111101.003.0007
- Subject:
- Music, History, American
This chapter focuses on the Hollywood career of Dorothy Fields and Jimmy McHugh. McHugh and Fields went to Hollywood as a songwriting team, like Rodgers and Hart, or George and Ira Gershwin. They ...
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This chapter focuses on the Hollywood career of Dorothy Fields and Jimmy McHugh. McHugh and Fields went to Hollywood as a songwriting team, like Rodgers and Hart, or George and Ira Gershwin. They signed their first contract with MGM studios on October 3, 1929, just a few weeks before the stock market crash. The first film that Dorothy and Jimmy provided songs for, Love in the Rough (1930), was the sort of cheery fare that would become typical of musicals produced during the Depression.Less
This chapter focuses on the Hollywood career of Dorothy Fields and Jimmy McHugh. McHugh and Fields went to Hollywood as a songwriting team, like Rodgers and Hart, or George and Ira Gershwin. They signed their first contract with MGM studios on October 3, 1929, just a few weeks before the stock market crash. The first film that Dorothy and Jimmy provided songs for, Love in the Rough (1930), was the sort of cheery fare that would become typical of musicals produced during the Depression.
Ron Rodman
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- February 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780195340242
- eISBN:
- 9780199863778
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195340242.003.0007
- Subject:
- Music, Popular, History, American
Besides its role as a narrative agent, music has been featured in television to pleasure its audience, creating what Carolyn Abbate would call a “drastic” experience. However, the pleasures of ...
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Besides its role as a narrative agent, music has been featured in television to pleasure its audience, creating what Carolyn Abbate would call a “drastic” experience. However, the pleasures of television music are often highly mediated and restrained, permitting the audience to derive culturally based pleasure (what Barthes would call plaisir) from the music but not a more visceral, primordial pleasure (jouissance). This chapter surveys the musical variety show and situation comedies that employ music. While musical variety shows have served as promotional vehicles for artists whom TV audiences find amenable (Perry Como, Dinah Shore, Andy Williams), throughout television's history many situation comedies have been presented as mini‐musicals in which the narrative action of the program is interrupted by a musical presentation on‐screen. Programs produced by Desilu Studios in the 1950s and 1960s, such as I Love Lucy, The Dick Van Dyke Show, and The Andy Griffith Show, often imitated the Hollywood film musical by featuring musical presentations of a show‐within‐a‐show to showcase musical talent. Such scenes would interrupt the narrative flow of the episode, and so some narrative pretense would be made to accommodate the musical interruption.Less
Besides its role as a narrative agent, music has been featured in television to pleasure its audience, creating what Carolyn Abbate would call a “drastic” experience. However, the pleasures of television music are often highly mediated and restrained, permitting the audience to derive culturally based pleasure (what Barthes would call plaisir) from the music but not a more visceral, primordial pleasure (jouissance). This chapter surveys the musical variety show and situation comedies that employ music. While musical variety shows have served as promotional vehicles for artists whom TV audiences find amenable (Perry Como, Dinah Shore, Andy Williams), throughout television's history many situation comedies have been presented as mini‐musicals in which the narrative action of the program is interrupted by a musical presentation on‐screen. Programs produced by Desilu Studios in the 1950s and 1960s, such as I Love Lucy, The Dick Van Dyke Show, and The Andy Griffith Show, often imitated the Hollywood film musical by featuring musical presentations of a show‐within‐a‐show to showcase musical talent. Such scenes would interrupt the narrative flow of the episode, and so some narrative pretense would be made to accommodate the musical interruption.
Ryan André Brasseaux
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- September 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780195343069
- eISBN:
- 9780199866977
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195343069.003.0003
- Subject:
- Music, History, American
This chapter examines the dawn of Cajun recording. The Cajun community’s relationship to recording technology, the evolving nature of America’s recording industry, and Cajun music’s relationship to ...
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This chapter examines the dawn of Cajun recording. The Cajun community’s relationship to recording technology, the evolving nature of America’s recording industry, and Cajun music’s relationship to the ethnic, race, and hillbilly markets, are examined to illustrate the cultural intersections between the Bayou Country and America writ large. The pioneering recording careers of Joe Falcon, Cleoma Breaux Falcon, and Leo Soileau are also offered as further examples of the recording industry’s impact on local traditions and perceptions of Cajun music.Less
This chapter examines the dawn of Cajun recording. The Cajun community’s relationship to recording technology, the evolving nature of America’s recording industry, and Cajun music’s relationship to the ethnic, race, and hillbilly markets, are examined to illustrate the cultural intersections between the Bayou Country and America writ large. The pioneering recording careers of Joe Falcon, Cleoma Breaux Falcon, and Leo Soileau are also offered as further examples of the recording industry’s impact on local traditions and perceptions of Cajun music.
Ryan André Brasseaux
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- September 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780195343069
- eISBN:
- 9780199866977
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195343069.003.0004
- Subject:
- Music, History, American
Bayou Country’s musical terrain and the cultural and historical undercurrents that expanded the genre’s repertoire, stylistic range, and instrumental conventions are outlined in this chapter. Three ...
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Bayou Country’s musical terrain and the cultural and historical undercurrents that expanded the genre’s repertoire, stylistic range, and instrumental conventions are outlined in this chapter. Three factors encouraged heterogeneity in the Louisiana’s musical traditions: a musical network that stimulated exchange between musicians, thereby diversifying Louisiana’s soundscape; the historical idiosyncrasies and ethnic variation shaping cultural production in rural enclaves; and the tension between traditional and innovative tendencies within the genre. Residual colonial song structures performed by guitarist Blind Uncle Gaspard, Dennis McGee’s enigmatic fiddling that crossed stylistic and racial boundaries, the friction between conservative and progressive inclinations in regional Cajun popular culture, as performed by Leo Soileau and Moïse Robin, and Cajun readings of American popular culture as interpreted by accordionists Lawrence Walker and Nathan Abshire are used as points of departure in this discussion of heterogeneous musical expression on 78 rpm record.Less
Bayou Country’s musical terrain and the cultural and historical undercurrents that expanded the genre’s repertoire, stylistic range, and instrumental conventions are outlined in this chapter. Three factors encouraged heterogeneity in the Louisiana’s musical traditions: a musical network that stimulated exchange between musicians, thereby diversifying Louisiana’s soundscape; the historical idiosyncrasies and ethnic variation shaping cultural production in rural enclaves; and the tension between traditional and innovative tendencies within the genre. Residual colonial song structures performed by guitarist Blind Uncle Gaspard, Dennis McGee’s enigmatic fiddling that crossed stylistic and racial boundaries, the friction between conservative and progressive inclinations in regional Cajun popular culture, as performed by Leo Soileau and Moïse Robin, and Cajun readings of American popular culture as interpreted by accordionists Lawrence Walker and Nathan Abshire are used as points of departure in this discussion of heterogeneous musical expression on 78 rpm record.
Irene González-López and Michael Smith (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781474409698
- eISBN:
- 9781474444637
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474409698.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This is the first book in English dedicated to the actress and director Tanaka Kinuyo. Praised as amongst the greatest actors in the history of Japanese cinema, Tanaka’s career spanned the industrial ...
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This is the first book in English dedicated to the actress and director Tanaka Kinuyo. Praised as amongst the greatest actors in the history of Japanese cinema, Tanaka’s career spanned the industrial development of cinema - from silent to sound, monochrome to colour. Alongside featuring in films by Ozu, Mizoguchi, Naruse and Kurosawa, Tanaka was also the only Japanese woman filmmaker between 1953 and 1962, and her films tackled distinctly feminine topics such as prostitution and breast cancer. Because her career overlaps with a transformative period in Japan, especially for women, this close analysis of her fascinating life and work offers new perspectives into the Japanese history of women and classical era of national cinema.
The first half of the book focuses on Tanaka as actress and analyses the elements and meanings associated with her star image, and her powerful embodiment of diverse, at times contradictory, ideological discourses. The second half is dedicated to Tanaka as director and explores her public image as filmmaker and her depiction of gender and sexuality against the national history in order to reflect on her role and style as author.
With a special focus on the melodrama genre and on the sociopolitical and economic contexts of film production, the book offers a revision of theories of stardom, authorship, and women’s cinema. In examining Tanaka’s iconic reification of femininities in relation to politics, national identity, and memory, the chapters shed light on the cultural construction of female subjectivity and sexuality in Japanese popular culture.Less
This is the first book in English dedicated to the actress and director Tanaka Kinuyo. Praised as amongst the greatest actors in the history of Japanese cinema, Tanaka’s career spanned the industrial development of cinema - from silent to sound, monochrome to colour. Alongside featuring in films by Ozu, Mizoguchi, Naruse and Kurosawa, Tanaka was also the only Japanese woman filmmaker between 1953 and 1962, and her films tackled distinctly feminine topics such as prostitution and breast cancer. Because her career overlaps with a transformative period in Japan, especially for women, this close analysis of her fascinating life and work offers new perspectives into the Japanese history of women and classical era of national cinema.
The first half of the book focuses on Tanaka as actress and analyses the elements and meanings associated with her star image, and her powerful embodiment of diverse, at times contradictory, ideological discourses. The second half is dedicated to Tanaka as director and explores her public image as filmmaker and her depiction of gender and sexuality against the national history in order to reflect on her role and style as author.
With a special focus on the melodrama genre and on the sociopolitical and economic contexts of film production, the book offers a revision of theories of stardom, authorship, and women’s cinema. In examining Tanaka’s iconic reification of femininities in relation to politics, national identity, and memory, the chapters shed light on the cultural construction of female subjectivity and sexuality in Japanese popular culture.
David Manning
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195182392
- eISBN:
- 9780199851485
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195182392.003.0089
- Subject:
- Music, History, Western
The Sinfonia Antartica was suggested by the film Scott of the Antarctic, which was produced by Ealing Studios a few years ago. Some of the themes are derived from my incidental music to that film. ...
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The Sinfonia Antartica was suggested by the film Scott of the Antarctic, which was produced by Ealing Studios a few years ago. Some of the themes are derived from my incidental music to that film. The Musical Director was Ernest Irving. The Sinfonia is therefore gratefully dedicated to him. A large orchestra is used, including a vibraphone, a wind machine, and women's voices used orchestrally. There are five movements: Prelude, Scherzo, Landscape, Intermezzo, and Epilogue. Each movement is headed by an appropriate quotation. Other themes follow leading to a big climax. The bell passage comes in again, suddenly very soft. The voices are heard again and the opening flourish, first loud and then soft, leads to a complete repetition of the beginning of the Prelude. Then the solo singer is heard again and the music dies down to nothing, except for the voices and the Antarctic wind.Less
The Sinfonia Antartica was suggested by the film Scott of the Antarctic, which was produced by Ealing Studios a few years ago. Some of the themes are derived from my incidental music to that film. The Musical Director was Ernest Irving. The Sinfonia is therefore gratefully dedicated to him. A large orchestra is used, including a vibraphone, a wind machine, and women's voices used orchestrally. There are five movements: Prelude, Scherzo, Landscape, Intermezzo, and Epilogue. Each movement is headed by an appropriate quotation. Other themes follow leading to a big climax. The bell passage comes in again, suddenly very soft. The voices are heard again and the opening flourish, first loud and then soft, leads to a complete repetition of the beginning of the Prelude. Then the solo singer is heard again and the music dies down to nothing, except for the voices and the Antarctic wind.
Ian Christie
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780226105628
- eISBN:
- 9780226610115
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226610115.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Modern History
Responsibility for the invention of moving pictures has traditionally been contested, largely between American and French pioneers, with some recognition of early achievements in England. But the ...
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Responsibility for the invention of moving pictures has traditionally been contested, largely between American and French pioneers, with some recognition of early achievements in England. But the London-based electrical engineer Robert Paul has never received the recognition he deserves, despite figuring in many histories for his imaginative response to H. G. Wells’ Time Machine story of 1895. Although no such machine was attempted, Paul, like the Lumières in France, built upon Edison’s Kinetoscope breakthrough to become Britain’s most successful manufacturer and producer in 1896, the year that film swept the world. After early success with actuality films, he and his wife Ellen opened a studio in North London in 1898 where they produced the first multi-scene dramas, widely shown and imitated. The Anglo-Boer war in South Africa prompted new kinds of film, both documentary and allegorical, while Paul’s studio kept pace with the trick films produced by one of his early customers, Georges Méliès. Paul’s original instrument-making business continued to flourish, and after abandoning film in 1909 in the face of market pressures, he contributed to defence work during World War I, and in his final years played an active part in both science and film history. Despite his many achievements, Paul has remained a shadowy, underestimated figure, now brought to life in this closely researched study that makes the case for him being considered one of cinema’s major pioneers.Less
Responsibility for the invention of moving pictures has traditionally been contested, largely between American and French pioneers, with some recognition of early achievements in England. But the London-based electrical engineer Robert Paul has never received the recognition he deserves, despite figuring in many histories for his imaginative response to H. G. Wells’ Time Machine story of 1895. Although no such machine was attempted, Paul, like the Lumières in France, built upon Edison’s Kinetoscope breakthrough to become Britain’s most successful manufacturer and producer in 1896, the year that film swept the world. After early success with actuality films, he and his wife Ellen opened a studio in North London in 1898 where they produced the first multi-scene dramas, widely shown and imitated. The Anglo-Boer war in South Africa prompted new kinds of film, both documentary and allegorical, while Paul’s studio kept pace with the trick films produced by one of his early customers, Georges Méliès. Paul’s original instrument-making business continued to flourish, and after abandoning film in 1909 in the face of market pressures, he contributed to defence work during World War I, and in his final years played an active part in both science and film history. Despite his many achievements, Paul has remained a shadowy, underestimated figure, now brought to life in this closely researched study that makes the case for him being considered one of cinema’s major pioneers.
Brian R. Jacobson
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780231172813
- eISBN:
- 9780231539661
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231172813.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
By 1915, Hollywood had become the epicenter of American filmmaking, with studio “dream factories” structuring its vast production. Filmmakers designed Hollywood studios with a distinct artistic and ...
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By 1915, Hollywood had become the epicenter of American filmmaking, with studio “dream factories” structuring its vast production. Filmmakers designed Hollywood studios with a distinct artistic and industrial mission in mind, which in turn influenced the form, content, and business of the films that were made and the impressions of the people who viewed them. The first book to retell the history of film studio architecture, Studios Before the System expands the social and cultural footprint of cinema’s virtual worlds and their contribution to wider developments in global technology and urban modernism. Focusing on six significant early film corporations in the United States and France—the Edison Manufacturing Company, American Mutoscope and Biograph, American Vitagraph, Georges Méliès’s Star Films, Gaumont, and Pathé Frères—as well as smaller producers and film companies, Studios Before the System describes how filmmakers first envisioned the space they needed and then sourced modern materials to create novel film worlds. Artificially reproducing the natural environment, film studios helped usher in the world’s Second Industrial Revolution and what Lewis Mumford would later call the “specific art of the machine.” From housing workshops for set, prop, and costume design to dressing rooms and writing departments, studio architecture was always present though rarely visible to the average spectator in the twentieth century, providing the scaffolding under which culture, film aesthetics, and our relation to lived space took shape.Less
By 1915, Hollywood had become the epicenter of American filmmaking, with studio “dream factories” structuring its vast production. Filmmakers designed Hollywood studios with a distinct artistic and industrial mission in mind, which in turn influenced the form, content, and business of the films that were made and the impressions of the people who viewed them. The first book to retell the history of film studio architecture, Studios Before the System expands the social and cultural footprint of cinema’s virtual worlds and their contribution to wider developments in global technology and urban modernism. Focusing on six significant early film corporations in the United States and France—the Edison Manufacturing Company, American Mutoscope and Biograph, American Vitagraph, Georges Méliès’s Star Films, Gaumont, and Pathé Frères—as well as smaller producers and film companies, Studios Before the System describes how filmmakers first envisioned the space they needed and then sourced modern materials to create novel film worlds. Artificially reproducing the natural environment, film studios helped usher in the world’s Second Industrial Revolution and what Lewis Mumford would later call the “specific art of the machine.” From housing workshops for set, prop, and costume design to dressing rooms and writing departments, studio architecture was always present though rarely visible to the average spectator in the twentieth century, providing the scaffolding under which culture, film aesthetics, and our relation to lived space took shape.
Brian R. Jacobson
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780231172813
- eISBN:
- 9780231539661
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231172813.003.0002
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter examines W.K.L. Dickson’s Black Maria studio and its critical role in Dickson and Thomas Edison’s invention of moving images. It argues that the Black Maria films’ “framed aesthetic” was ...
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This chapter examines W.K.L. Dickson’s Black Maria studio and its critical role in Dickson and Thomas Edison’s invention of moving images. It argues that the Black Maria films’ “framed aesthetic” was the product of the studio’s architectural form and reflected the technological enframing by which Dickson’s design strove to put the sun on reserve for cinematic representation.Less
This chapter examines W.K.L. Dickson’s Black Maria studio and its critical role in Dickson and Thomas Edison’s invention of moving images. It argues that the Black Maria films’ “framed aesthetic” was the product of the studio’s architectural form and reflected the technological enframing by which Dickson’s design strove to put the sun on reserve for cinematic representation.
Brian R. Jacobson
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780231172813
- eISBN:
- 9780231539661
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231172813.003.0003
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter examines Georges Méliès's glass-and-iron studio, the first studio in France and the model that would become the standard form for studio architecture through the 1910s. Situating the ...
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This chapter examines Georges Méliès's glass-and-iron studio, the first studio in France and the model that would become the standard form for studio architecture through the 1910s. Situating the development of “glass house” studios in nineteenth-century glass-and-iron architecture, the chapter argues that the same spatial and material qualities–including spatial fluidity, material plasticity, and artificiality–that contemporary critics observed in the late nineteenth-century architectural forms characterized the glass studios and reappeared in the form of the films made in them.Less
This chapter examines Georges Méliès's glass-and-iron studio, the first studio in France and the model that would become the standard form for studio architecture through the 1910s. Situating the development of “glass house” studios in nineteenth-century glass-and-iron architecture, the chapter argues that the same spatial and material qualities–including spatial fluidity, material plasticity, and artificiality–that contemporary critics observed in the late nineteenth-century architectural forms characterized the glass studios and reappeared in the form of the films made in them.
Brian R. Jacobson
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780231172813
- eISBN:
- 9780231539661
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231172813.003.0004
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter examines how American film companies in New York used cutting-edge building technologies and materials–including reinforced concrete, prismatic glass, and steel–to compete for the ...
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This chapter examines how American film companies in New York used cutting-edge building technologies and materials–including reinforced concrete, prismatic glass, and steel–to compete for the twentieth century’s most advanced film studios. It argues that the history of film’s relationship to the city and to architecture remains incomplete without more precise knowledge of cinema’s place in the construction of the built environment.Less
This chapter examines how American film companies in New York used cutting-edge building technologies and materials–including reinforced concrete, prismatic glass, and steel–to compete for the twentieth century’s most advanced film studios. It argues that the history of film’s relationship to the city and to architecture remains incomplete without more precise knowledge of cinema’s place in the construction of the built environment.
Brian R. Jacobson
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780231172813
- eISBN:
- 9780231539661
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231172813.003.0005
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter analyzes the expansion of film studios into mass production centers in major Western cities, focusing on Gaumont and Pathé’s studios in Paris. As these studios began to look and operate ...
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This chapter analyzes the expansion of film studios into mass production centers in major Western cities, focusing on Gaumont and Pathé’s studios in Paris. As these studios began to look and operate more like the industrial centers of the later Hollywood “dream factory system,” their architectural spaces shaped concurrent (or “convergent”) practices of cinematic, artistic, and industrial production, all while adapting to the changing infrastructure of modernizing Paris.Less
This chapter analyzes the expansion of film studios into mass production centers in major Western cities, focusing on Gaumont and Pathé’s studios in Paris. As these studios began to look and operate more like the industrial centers of the later Hollywood “dream factory system,” their architectural spaces shaped concurrent (or “convergent”) practices of cinematic, artistic, and industrial production, all while adapting to the changing infrastructure of modernizing Paris.
Brian R. Jacobson
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780231172813
- eISBN:
- 9780231539661
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231172813.003.0006
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter focuses on the transition to Hollywood and the peculiar reinvention of studio form and the emergence of both the studio backlot and the concept of “location” there between 1909 and 1915. ...
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This chapter focuses on the transition to Hollywood and the peculiar reinvention of studio form and the emergence of both the studio backlot and the concept of “location” there between 1909 and 1915. The creation of studio backlots, it argues, offered a working solution to the same basic tension that drove studio design two decades earlier: filmmakers still needed bright sunlight, and they continued to create technological spaces to regulate the sun and put nature on reserve for cinematic representation.Less
This chapter focuses on the transition to Hollywood and the peculiar reinvention of studio form and the emergence of both the studio backlot and the concept of “location” there between 1909 and 1915. The creation of studio backlots, it argues, offered a working solution to the same basic tension that drove studio design two decades earlier: filmmakers still needed bright sunlight, and they continued to create technological spaces to regulate the sun and put nature on reserve for cinematic representation.
Steven S. Lee
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780231173520
- eISBN:
- 9780231540117
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231173520.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
Chapter 3 traces the passing of the ethnic avant-garde by discussing Langston Hughes' 1956 account of his 1932 Moscow film project--specifically the account's deployment of a racially exclusive ...
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Chapter 3 traces the passing of the ethnic avant-garde by discussing Langston Hughes' 1956 account of his 1932 Moscow film project--specifically the account's deployment of a racially exclusive notion of cultural authenticity. However, the actual film script, discovered in Soviet archives, completely upends Hughes' dismissive description. The Russian-written script points both to a fascinating, experimental film, and to an alternate, avant-gardeist notion of authenticity.Less
Chapter 3 traces the passing of the ethnic avant-garde by discussing Langston Hughes' 1956 account of his 1932 Moscow film project--specifically the account's deployment of a racially exclusive notion of cultural authenticity. However, the actual film script, discovered in Soviet archives, completely upends Hughes' dismissive description. The Russian-written script points both to a fascinating, experimental film, and to an alternate, avant-gardeist notion of authenticity.
Nilo Couret
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780520296848
- eISBN:
- 9780520969162
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520296848.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This book reconceptualizes both the geopolitical boundaries and the periodization of Latin American film histories in order to reveal a predominant comic mode in the cultural practices of Latin ...
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This book reconceptualizes both the geopolitical boundaries and the periodization of Latin American film histories in order to reveal a predominant comic mode in the cultural practices of Latin America in the twentieth century. Comedies have been either relegated to the margins of regional film histories in the shadow of the New Latin American Cinema or articulated to the broader socializing and nationalistic function of earlier commercial traditions. Rather than map Latin American cinema according to radical politics, film directors, or film movements—as do conventional film histories—this comparative project examines the formal and narrative operations of Argentine, Brazilian, and Mexican commercially successful comedies released between the 1920s and the 1950s in order to demonstrate how they functioned as peripheral responses to modernization and prefigured the more explicitly political New Latin American Cinema of the 1960s. Each chapter braids empirical research, close reading, film theory, and Latin American studies to argue that Latin American cinema from the studio period became classical in ways that were phenomenally distinct from but structurally akin to those of Hollywood. To that end, each chapter presents one way that classical Hollywood was constructed within film studies and demonstrates how the ways cinema became classical in Hollywood do not occur identically in Latin America. Using an approach that encompasses both textual analysis as well as a range of practices from the film experience, such as stardom, trade and popular publications, and broadcast media, this book proposes thinking classicism as a discourse that mediates and renders the world, looking at the construction of the aesthetic world as diegetic totality and the circulation of the texts and objects in global circuits of economic exchange.Less
This book reconceptualizes both the geopolitical boundaries and the periodization of Latin American film histories in order to reveal a predominant comic mode in the cultural practices of Latin America in the twentieth century. Comedies have been either relegated to the margins of regional film histories in the shadow of the New Latin American Cinema or articulated to the broader socializing and nationalistic function of earlier commercial traditions. Rather than map Latin American cinema according to radical politics, film directors, or film movements—as do conventional film histories—this comparative project examines the formal and narrative operations of Argentine, Brazilian, and Mexican commercially successful comedies released between the 1920s and the 1950s in order to demonstrate how they functioned as peripheral responses to modernization and prefigured the more explicitly political New Latin American Cinema of the 1960s. Each chapter braids empirical research, close reading, film theory, and Latin American studies to argue that Latin American cinema from the studio period became classical in ways that were phenomenally distinct from but structurally akin to those of Hollywood. To that end, each chapter presents one way that classical Hollywood was constructed within film studies and demonstrates how the ways cinema became classical in Hollywood do not occur identically in Latin America. Using an approach that encompasses both textual analysis as well as a range of practices from the film experience, such as stardom, trade and popular publications, and broadcast media, this book proposes thinking classicism as a discourse that mediates and renders the world, looking at the construction of the aesthetic world as diegetic totality and the circulation of the texts and objects in global circuits of economic exchange.
Nick Riddle
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- February 2021
- ISBN:
- 9781911325529
- eISBN:
- 9781800342330
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3828/liverpool/9781911325529.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
The Damned (1963) is the most intriguing of director Joseph Losey's British “journeyman” films. A sci-fi film by a director who hated sci-fi; a Hammer production that sat on the shelf for over two ...
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The Damned (1963) is the most intriguing of director Joseph Losey's British “journeyman” films. A sci-fi film by a director who hated sci-fi; a Hammer production that sat on the shelf for over two years before being released with almost no publicity as the second half of a double bill. Losey was a director vocal in his dislike of depictions of physical violence, but he often made films that radiate an energy produced by a violent clash of elements. The Damned catches a series of collisions — some of them inadvertent — and traps them as if in amber. Its volatile elements include Losey, the blacklisted director; Hammer, the erratic British studio, Oliver Reed, the 'dangerous' young actor, and radioactive children. This book concentrates on historical and cultural context, place, genre, and other themes in order to try to make sense of a fascinating, underappreciated film.Less
The Damned (1963) is the most intriguing of director Joseph Losey's British “journeyman” films. A sci-fi film by a director who hated sci-fi; a Hammer production that sat on the shelf for over two years before being released with almost no publicity as the second half of a double bill. Losey was a director vocal in his dislike of depictions of physical violence, but he often made films that radiate an energy produced by a violent clash of elements. The Damned catches a series of collisions — some of them inadvertent — and traps them as if in amber. Its volatile elements include Losey, the blacklisted director; Hammer, the erratic British studio, Oliver Reed, the 'dangerous' young actor, and radioactive children. This book concentrates on historical and cultural context, place, genre, and other themes in order to try to make sense of a fascinating, underappreciated film.
Tom Ryan
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- January 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781496817983
- eISBN:
- 9781496822406
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781496817983.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
Working in Europe during the 1930s, mainly for Germany’s UFA studios, and then in America in the 1940s and ’50s, Douglas Sirk brought to all his work a distinctive style that has led to his ...
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Working in Europe during the 1930s, mainly for Germany’s UFA studios, and then in America in the 1940s and ’50s, Douglas Sirk brought to all his work a distinctive style that has led to his reputation as one of the 20th century cinema’s great ironists. He did things his own way: for him, rules were there to be broken, whether they were the decrees of Nazi authorities trying to turn film into propaganda or of studios insisting that characters’ problems should always be solved and that endings should always restore order, providing what Sirk used to call “emergency exits” for audiences.
This study of Sirk is the first comprehensive critical overview of the filmmaker’s entire career, examining the ’50s melodramas for which he has been rightly acclaimed – films such as All That Heaven Allows, Written on the Wind, The Tarnished Angels and Imitation of Life – and instructively looking beyond them at his earlier work, which includes musicals, comedies, thrillers, war movies and westerns.
Offering fresh insights into all of these films and situating them in the culture of their times, the book also incorporates extensive interview material drawn from a variety of sources, including the author’s own conversations with the director. Furthermore, it undertakes a detailed reconsideration of the generally overlooked novels and plays that served as sources for Sirk’s films, as well as providing a critical overview of previous Sirk commentary, from the time of the director’s “rediscovery” in the late 1960s to the present day.Less
Working in Europe during the 1930s, mainly for Germany’s UFA studios, and then in America in the 1940s and ’50s, Douglas Sirk brought to all his work a distinctive style that has led to his reputation as one of the 20th century cinema’s great ironists. He did things his own way: for him, rules were there to be broken, whether they were the decrees of Nazi authorities trying to turn film into propaganda or of studios insisting that characters’ problems should always be solved and that endings should always restore order, providing what Sirk used to call “emergency exits” for audiences.
This study of Sirk is the first comprehensive critical overview of the filmmaker’s entire career, examining the ’50s melodramas for which he has been rightly acclaimed – films such as All That Heaven Allows, Written on the Wind, The Tarnished Angels and Imitation of Life – and instructively looking beyond them at his earlier work, which includes musicals, comedies, thrillers, war movies and westerns.
Offering fresh insights into all of these films and situating them in the culture of their times, the book also incorporates extensive interview material drawn from a variety of sources, including the author’s own conversations with the director. Furthermore, it undertakes a detailed reconsideration of the generally overlooked novels and plays that served as sources for Sirk’s films, as well as providing a critical overview of previous Sirk commentary, from the time of the director’s “rediscovery” in the late 1960s to the present day.
