Showing papers on "Movie theater published in 2003"

America on Film: Representing Race, Class, Gender, and Sexuality at the Movies

Abstract: Acknowledgments. How to Use This Book. Part I: Culture and American Film: . 1. Introduction to the Study of Film Form and Representation . Film Form. American Ideologies: Discrimination and Resistance. Culture and Cultural Studies. Case Study: The Lion King (1994). Questions for Discussion. Further Reading. 2. The Structure and History of Hollywood Filmmaking . Hollywood vs. Independent Film. The Style of Hollywood Cinema. The Business of Hollywood. The History of Hollywood: The Movies Begin. The Classical Hollywood Cinema. World War II and Postwar Film. 'New' Hollywood and the Blockbuster Mentality. Questions for Discussion. Further Reading. Further Screening. Part II: Race and Ethnicity and American Film: . Introduction to Part II: What is Race?. 3. The Concept of Whiteness and American Film. Seeing White. Bleaching the Green: The Irish in American Cinema. Looking for Respect: Italians in American Cinema. A Special Case: Jews and Hollywood. Case Study: The Jazz Singer (1927). Veiled and Reviled: Arabs on Film in America. Conclusion: Whiteness and American Film Today. Questions for Discussion. Further Reading. Further Screening. 4. African Americans and American Film. African Americans in Early Film. Blacks in Classical Hollywood Cinema. World War II and the Postwar Social Problem Film. The Rise and Fall of Blaxploitation Filmmaking. Box: Blacks on TV. Hollywood in the 1980s and the Arrival of Spike Lee. Black Independent vs. "Neo-Blaxploitation" Filmmaking. New Images for a New Century - Or Not?. Case Study: Bamboozled (2000). Questions for Discussion. Further Reading. Further Screening. 5. Native Americans and American Film. The American "Indian" Before Film. Ethnographic Films and the Rise of the Hollywood Western. The Evolving Western. A Kinder, Gentler America?. Case Study: Smoke Signals (1998). Conclusion: Twenty-First-Century Indians?. Questions for Discussion. Further Reading. Further Screening. 6. Asian Americans and American Film. Silent Film and Asian Images. Asians in Classical Hollywood Cinema. World War II and After: War Films, Miscegenation Melodramas, and Kung Fu. Contemporary Asian American Actors and Filmmakers. Case Study: Eat a Bowl of Tea (1989). Questions for Discussion. Further Reading. Further Screening. 7. Latinos and American Film. The Greaser and the Latin Lover: Alternating Stereotypes. World War II and After: The Good Neighbor Policy. The 1950s to the 1970s: Back to Business as Usual?. Expanding Opportunities in Recent Decades. Conclusion: A Backlash Against Chicanos?. Case Study: My Family/Mi Familia (1995). Questions for Discussion. Further Reading. Further Screening. Part III: Class and American Film: . Introduction to Part III: What is Class?. 8. Classical Hollywood Cinema and Class. Setting the Stage: The Industrial Revolution. Early Cinema: The Rise of the Horatio Alger Myth. Hollywood and Unionization. Class in the Classical Hollywood Cinema. Case Study: The Grapes of Wrath (1940). Conclusion: Recloaking Class Consciousness. Questions for Discussion. Further Reading. Further Screening. 9. Cinematic Class Struggle After the Depression. From World War II to the Red Scare. From Opulence to Counterculture. Box: Class on Television. New Hollywood and the Resurrection of the Horatio Alger Myth. Case Study: Bulworth (1998). Conclusion: Corporate Hollywood and Labor Today. Questions for Discussion. Further Reading. Further Screening. Part IV: Gender and American Film: . Introduction to Part IV: What is Gender?. 10. Women in Classical Hollywood Filmmaking. Images of Women in Early Cinema. Early Female Filmmakers. Images of Women in 1930s Classical Hollywood. World War II and After. Case Study: All that Heaven Allows (1955). Questions for Discussion. Further Reading. Further Screening. 11. Exploring the Visual Parameters of Women in Film . Ways of Seeing. "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema". Case Study: Gilda (1946). Conclusion: Complicating Mulvey's Arguments. Questions for Discussion. Further Reading. Further Screening. 12. Masculinity in Classical Hollywood Filmmaking. Masculinity and Early Cinema. Masculinity and the Male Movie Star. World War II and Film Noir. Case Study: Dead Reckoning (1947). Masculinity in 1950s American Film. Questions for Discussion. Further Reading. Further Screening. 13. Gender in American Film Since the 1960s. Second Wave Feminism and Hollywood. Box: Women and American Television. Into the 1980s: A Backlash against Women?. A New Generation of Female Filmmakers. Case Study: The Ballad of Little Jo (1993). Conclusion: Gender in the Early Twenty-First Century. Questions for Discussion. Further Reading. Further Screening. Part V: Sexuality and American Film:. Introduction to Part V: What is Sexuality?. 14. Heterosexuality, Homosexuality, and Classical Hollywood. (Hetero)Sexuality on Screen. (Homo)Sexuality in Early Film. Censoring Sexuality during the Classical Hollywood Era. Postwar Sexualities and the Weakening of the Production Code. Camp and the Underground Cinema. Case Study: The Celluloid Closet (1995). Questions for Discussion. Further Reading. Further Screening. 15. Sexualities on Film Since the Sexual Revolution. Hollywood and the Sexual Revolution. Film and Gay Culture from Stonewall to AIDS. The AIDS Crisis. Box: Queer TV. Queer Theory and New Queer Cinema. Case Study: Go Fish (1995). Hollywood Responds to New Queer Cinema. (Hetero)Sexualities in Contemporary American Cinema. Questions for Discussion. Further Reading. Further Screening. Part VI: Ability and American Film:. Introduction to Part VI: What is Ability?. 16. Cinematic Images of (Dis)Ability. Disabled People in Early American Film: Curiosities and Freaks. Romanticizing Disability in Classical Hollywood Melodramas. Disability in War Movies and Social Problem Films. Disability and the Counterculture. Case Study: Children of a Lesser God (1986). A More Enlightened Age?. Questions for Discussion. Further Reading. Further Screening. 17. Making Connections . Case Study 1: Queen Christina (1933). Case Study 2: The Old Maid (1939). Case Study 3: The Gang's All Here (1943). Case Study 4: A Patch of Blue (1965). Case Study 5: Erin Brockovich (2000). Case Study 6: 8 Mile (2002). Case Study 7: Better Luck Tomorrow (2002). Case Study 8: Saving Face (2004). Case Study 9: Crash (2004). Case Study 10: The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio (2005). Case Study 11: Brokeback Mountain (2005). Case Study 12: Quinceanera (2006). Glossary. Index

The Cinematic ImagiNation: Indian Popular Films as Social History

Abstract: India produces more films than any other country in the world and these works are consumed by non-Western cultures in Africa, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and by the Indian communities across the world. This text focuses on how such a dominant media configures the ""nation"" in post-Independence Hindi cinema. The author scrutinizes approxiamtely 30 films that have appeared since 1950 and demonstrates how concepts of the nation centre this cinema's moral universe. As a form of storytelling, Indian cinema provides an account of social history and cultural politics, with the family deployed as a symbol of the nation. Virdi demonstrates how Hindi films' portrayal of the nation as a mythical community collapses under the weight of its own contradictions - irreconcilable differences that encompass gender, sexuality, family, class and religious communities.

Screen Traffic: Movies, Multiplexes, and Global Culture

Abstract: In Screen Traffic , Charles R. Acland examines how, since the mid-1980s, the U.S. commercial movie business has altered conceptions of moviegoing both within the industry and among audiences. He shows how studios, in their increasing reliance on revenues from international audiences and from the ancillary markets of television, videotape, DVD, and pay-per-view, have cultivated an understanding of their commodities as mutating global products. Consequently, the cultural practice of moviegoing has changed significantly, as has the place of the cinema in relation to other sites of leisure. Integrating film and cultural theory with close analysis of promotional materials, entertainment news, trade publications, and economic reports, Acland presents an array of evidence for the new understanding of movies and moviegoing that has developed within popular culture and the entertainment industry. In particular, he dissects a key development: the rise of the megaplex, characterized by large auditoriums, plentiful screens, and consumer activities other than film viewing. He traces its genesis from the re-entry of studios into the movie exhibition business in 1986 through 1998, when reports of the economic destabilization of exhibition began to surface, just as the rise of so-called e-cinema signaled another wave of change. Documenting the current tendency toward an accelerated cinema culture, one that appears to arrive simultaneously for everyone, everywhere, Screen Traffic unearths and critiques the corporate and cultural forces contributing to the “felt internationalism” of our global era.

Analyzing Performance: Theater, Dance, and Film

Abstract: Analyzing Performance provides conceptual tools for understanding a range of performance, including theater, dance, cinema, other audiovisual media, and mime. This richly illustrated book develops protocols for the analysis of performance at every level -- from the minute gestures and facial expressions of an actor to the social network in which theater is embedded -- and respects the importance of every aspect of performance, including actor, costume, space, time, music, and lighting. With a keen awareness of the roles of social context in the interpretation of performance, Patrice Pavis leads the reader from a purely formal analysis to a semiology and anthropology of performance, where spectator and actor are equally objects of study. Drawn from performance traditions and innovations all over the world, the book's many examples make critical techniques vivid and concrete. Analyzing Performance will be essential reading for critics, scholars, students, and practitioners of theater, who will find that David Williams's elegant translation brings Pavis's insights within reach of English-language readers.Patrice Pavis, Professor of Theater at Paris-VIII University, has written extensively and influentially on performance.David Williams is Professor of Theater, Dartington College of Arts, Devon, England.

The audience studies reader

Abstract: Notes on Contributors Acknowledgements INTRODUCTION 'It's out there ... somewhere': Locating the audience for The Reader in Audience Studies PART ONE Paradigm shift: from 'effects' to 'uses and gratifications' Introduction 1. The People's Choice: How the Voter Makes Up His Mind in a Presidential Campaign, Paul F. Lazarsfeld, Bernard Berelson, Hazel Gaudet 2. Mass Persuasion: The Social Psychology of a War Bond Drive Robert K. Merton 3. Analysis of the Film Don't Be A Sucker: A Study in Communication Eunice Cooper and Helen Dinerman 4. Tendency Systems and the Effects of a Movie Dealing With A Social Problem Charles Winick Suggestions for further reading PART TWO Moral panic and censorship: the vulnerable audience Introduction 5. Culture Industry Reconsidered T.W. Adorno 6. Seduction of the Innocent Fredric Wertham 7. The Uses of Literacy Richard Hoggart 8. The Newson Report Martin Barker Suggestions for further reading PART THREE Reading as resistance: the active audience. Introduction 9. The Nationwide Audience David Morley 10. The Practice of Everyday Life Michel de Certeau 11. Understanding Popular Culture John Fiske 12. "We're Here, We're Queer and We're Not Going Catalogue Shopping" Gregory Woods. Suggestions for further reading PART FOUR The Spectator and the Audience: shifts in screen theory. Introduction 13.Visual pleasure and narrative cinema Laura Mulvey 14. Babel And Babylon: Spectatorship in American Silent Film Miriam Hansen 15. Star-gazing: Hollywood Cinema and Female Spectatorship Jackie Stacey 16. Women Viewing Violence Philip Schlesinger, Rebecca Dobash, Russell Dobash, C. Kay Weaver Suggestions for further reading PART FIVE The Fan Audience: cult texts and community. Introduction 17. Out of the Closet and Into the Universe: Queers and Star Trek Henry Jenkins 18. Beatlemania: Girls Just Want To Have Fun Barbara Ehrenreich, Elizabeth Hess, Gloria Jacobs 19. Histories, Fictions and Xena: Warrior Princess Sara Gwenllian-Jones 20. Suffering and Solace: The Genre of Pain Camille Bacon-Smith 21. Inside Subculture: The Postmodern Meaning of Style David Muggleton Suggestions for further reading PART SIX Female audiences: gender and reading. Introduction 22. Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy and Popular Literature Janice Radway 23. Living Room Wars: Rethinking Audiences for a Postmodern World Ien Ang 24. Feminism and Youth Culture Angela McRobbie 25. Girl Talk: Adolescent Magazines and Their Readers Dawn H. Currie 26. ' " Just a book", she said...' Reconfiguring Ethnography for the Female Reader of Sexual Fiction Esther Sonnet Suggestions for further reading PART SEVEN Interpretive communities: nation and ethnicity Introduction 27. Enlightened Racism: The Cosby Show Audiences and the Myth

Future cinema : the cinematic imaginary after film

Abstract: Throughout the history of cinema, a radical avant-garde has existed on the fringes of the film industry. A great deal of research has focused on the pre- and early history of cinema, but there has been little speculation about a future cinema incorporating new electronic media. Electronic media have not only fundamentally transformed cinema but have altered its role as a witness to reality by rendering "realities" not necessarily linked to documentation, by engineering environments that incorporate audiences as participants, and by creating event-worlds that mix realities and narratives in forms not possible in traditional cinema. This hybrid cinema melds montage, traditional cinema, experimental literature, television, video, and the net. The new cinematic forms suggest that traditional cinema no longer has the capacity to represent events that are themselves complex configurations of experience, interpretation, and interaction. This book, which accompanies an exhibition organized by the ZKM Institute for Visual Media, explores the history and significance of pre-cinema and of early experimental cinema, as well as the development of the unique theaters in which "immersion" evolved. Drawing on a broad range of scholarship, it examines the shift from monolithic Hollywood spectacles to works probing the possibilities of interactive, performative, and net-based cinemas. The post-cinematic condition, the book shows, has long roots in artistic practice and influences every channel of communication.

Rites of Realism: Essays on Corporeal Cinema

Abstract: Rites of Realism rethinks cinematic realism, shifting discussion away from the usual focus on the faithfulness of record or the illusory effects of verisimilitude towards a notion of "performative realism," a realism that does not simply represent a given reality but enacts actual social tensions. These essays by a range of film theorists propose stimulating new approaches to the critical evaluation of modern realist films and such referential genres as reenactment, historical film, adaptation, portrait films, documentary, and realist depictions of urban life. By providing close readings of classic and contemporary works, Rites of Realism signals the need to return to a focus on films as the main provocateurs and innovators of realist representation. Inspired by the pioneering thought of Andre Bazin, the book features two new translations: of Bazin's 1958 essay "Death Every Afternoon," examining the filming of a bullfight and of Serge Daney's essay reinterpreting imagery invoked by Bazin. These pieces evince key concerns-particularly the link between cinematic realism and representations of the body-that the other essays explore further. Among the topics addressed are the provocative mimesis of Luis Bunuel's Land Without Bread; the adaptation of trial documents in Carl Dreyer's Passion of Joan of Arc; the use of the tableaux vivant by Wim Wenders and Peter Greenaway; the way Pasolini transposed The Gospel According to Matthew from Palestine to southern Italy; and the variables in urban representation in contemporary Chinese cinema. Contributors also look at the resistance to visibility posed by images of possession in Maya Deren's work and the historical contingencies of identity representation in avant-garde and documentary films of the 1960s, as well as the social geography presented in Mike Leigh's oeuvre and the exemplary dimension of reenactment in films by Antonioni, Cesare Zavattini, Zhang Yuan, and Abbas Kiarostami. Rites of Realism will appeal not only to cinema studies specialists but also to those interested in performance theory and art history. Contributors: Paul Arthur, Andre Bazin, Mark A. Cohen, Serge Daney, Mary Ann Doane, James Lastra, Ivone Margulies, Abe Mark Normes, Brigitte Peucker, Richard Porton, Philip Rosen, Catherine Russell, James Schamus, Noa Steimatsky, and Xiaobing Tang.

Spanish National Cinema

Abstract: This study examines the discourses of nationalism as they intersected or clashed with Spanish film production from its inception to the present. While the book addresses the discourses around filmmakers such as Almodovar and Medem, whose work has achieved international recognition, Spanish National Cinema is particularly novel in its treatment of a whole range of popular cinema rarely touched on in studies of Spanish cinema. Using accounts of films, popular film magazines and documents not readily available to an English-speaking audience, as well as case studies focusing on the key issues of each epoch, this volume illuminates the complex and changing relationship between cinema and Spanish national identity.

Understanding Cinema: A Psychological Theory of Moving Imagery

Abstract: Understanding Cinema, first published in 2003, analyzes the moving imagery of film and television from a psychological perspective. Per Persson argues that spectators perceive, think, apply knowledge, infer, interpret, feel and make use of knowledge, assumptions, expectations and prejudices when viewing and making sense of film. Drawing psychology and anthropology, he explains how close-ups, editing conventions, character psychology and other cinematic techniques work, and how and why they affect the spectator. This study integrates psychological and culturalist approaches to meanings and reception. Anchoring the discussion in concrete examples from early and contemporary cinema, Understanding Cinema also analyzes the design of cinema conventions and their stylistic transformations through the evolution of film.

Chinese Cinema during the Era of Reform: The Ingenuity of the System

Abstract: Foreword Preface Chinese Cinema: A Culture and and Economy in Disarray Cinematic Modernization and Chinese Cinems"s Firt Art Wave Economic Reform and Populist Cinematic Revival From New Wave to Post-New Wave Post-Wave: "It's the Economy, Stupid" Shadowplay: Early Chinese Cinema in the Shadow of Hollywood Chinese Cinema: A Cultural or and Economic Issue? Index

Between Shanghai and Hong Kong: The Politics of Chinese Cinemas

Abstract: Based on meticulous archival research and a repetorary of rare films, most of which were believed lost, this book is a pioneering critical study of the Chinese cinemas in Hong Kong and Shanghai and their complex interconnections. The years 1935-50 were a period of ceaseless violence in China, of war, occupation, civil war, and colonialism, leading to mass displacements of millions of people and extreme poverty. Both the cinema and the broader popular culture of this period have been little studied, partly because access to research materials is so difficult, partly because of the political problems involved (most films produced during the war have been considered pro-Japanese and their makers traitors). This study brings to light the humanity of the filmmakers, writers, and business people; the many facets of the historical situation in which they worked; and the complex politics of the films they made. This is also an original and important study of the regional networks, diasporic connections, and border-crossing movement of goods, capital, and people that drew Hong Kong and Shanghai together in an intercity nexus that sustained the survival and even flourishing of popular cinema during this tumultuous period.

Rethinking Third Cinema

Abstract: Introduction Rethinking Third Cinema. Anthony R. Guneratne Third Cinema Theory and Beyond Beyond Third Cinema: The Aesthetics of Hybridity Robert Stam Challenging Third World Legacies: Issues of Gender, Culture and Representation Feminist Genealogies, Colonial Legacies, Democratic Futures Ella Shohat The Erotics of History: Gender and Transgression in the New Asian Cinemas Sumita Chakravarty Alternative Cinemas in the Age of Globalization Authorship, Globalization and the New Identity Politics of Latin American Cinema: From the Mexican 'Ranchera' to Argentinian 'Exile' Marvin D'lugo Video Booms and the Manifestations of 'First' Cinema in Anglophone Africa N. Frank Ukadike The Relocation of Culture: Social Specificity and the "Third" Question What's 'Oppositional' in Indonesian Cinema? Krishna Sen The Seductions of Homecoming: Place, Authenticity, and Chen Kaige's 'Temptress Moon' Rey Chow Receiving/Retrieving Third (World) Cinema: Alternative Approaches to Spectator Studies and Critical History Theorizing 'Third World' Spectatorship - The Case of Iran and Iranian Cinema Hamid Naficy Rethinking Indian Popular Cinema: Towards Newer Frames of Understanding Wimal Dissanayake

Delivery of targeted offers for move theaters and other retail stores

Abstract: The invention provides a computer system and methods of use for effecting marketing to customers in movie theater stores and other retail stores including cross-marketing, and marketing based upon aspects of movie showings, and methods of identification and use of transaction data related to the same consumer.

Women's Cinema: The Contested Screen

Abstract: WOMEN'S CINEMA: THE CONTESTED SCREEN Alison M. Butler. London: Wallflower Press, 2002,144 pp. In her new book, Alison Butler attempts to tackle the complex subject of women's filmmaking around the globe in a single, 124-page volume. Her study is divided into three sections, each devoted to women's filmmaking in the context of a specific cinematic practice: genderand genre in Hollywood cinema, authorship in experimental cinema, and cultural identity in women's cinema. Usinga number of filmmakers as case studies, The Contested Screen offers a broad overview of "women's cinema," and while Butler is successful on some levels, her discussion falls short in certain key areas. From the start, Butler frames women's cinema as a "minor cinema" and, as with most books on the subject, assumes feminism on the part of the directors she includes, whether or not it is evident in their work. Consequently, the success orfailure of theirfilms is determined solely according to feminist criteria. Butler makes her case by minimizing discussion of female-led opposition to some of feminism's assumptions, and by omitting important and challenging female filmmakers such as Lina WertmuUer. Butler's introduction begins with a review of the central critical debates in feminist film theory. Although her discussion is not terribly detailed, this section is a useful review for students already familiar with these issues. She continues with a brief discussion of early women filmmakers such as Ida Lupino and Dorothy Arzner (saving one of their contemporaries, Maya Deren, forthe section on experimental cinema), which provides a foundation for the first chapter on women filmmakers in Hollywood. In "Girls' Own Stories: Genre and Gender in Hollywood Cinema," Butler focuses on narrative filmmakers (Claudia Weill, Katherine Bigelow, and Gillian Armstrong) and the relationship of their work to Hollywood. She also includes a more extensive discussion of Arzner and the French-born Alice Guy-Blache, who is credited by some historians as the director of the first narrative film. Unfortunately, Butler's discussion of Hollywood filmmakers is written in broad strokes, as if she were not terribly interested in narrative. The author's commitment to experimental cinema, however, is evident in chapter two ("Performing Authorship: Self-Inscription in Women's Experimental Cinema"), which offers excellent and decidedly more detailed readings of works by Deren, Carolee Schneeman, Yvonne Rainer, and others. This is the most insightful and informative section of the book. …

Visions of Blood, Sex and Money. Fantasy Spaces in Popular Ghanaian Cinema

Abstract: This article focuses on Ghanaian popular cinema,' which emerged in the late 1980s and has become a major form of entertainment for urban audiences. It shows that the filmmakers, who produce films in the video format which are very close to everyday life experiences and dreams, offer visions which they and their audiences regard as being similar to those provided by religious prophets and preachers. Watching these films allows for complex negotiations between the desires for transgression of the moral order, the longing to feel morally superior, and the striving for knowledge to understand one's world. On the basis of a detailed analysis of the film Women in Love, which conjures up a fantasy space located at the bottom of the sea where money and commodities are generated in exchange for sex and blood, this article argues that popular cinema is part and parcel of a new culture of vision, one characterized by the visualization of otherwise invisible fantasy spaces as well as by its easy accessibility through...

Screening the city

Abstract: The city has long been an important location for filmmakers. Visually compelling and always modern, it is the perfect metaphor for man's place in the contemporary world. In this provocative collection of essays, a diverse range of films are examined in terms of the relationship between cinema and the paradigmatic urban experience in Europe and the United States since the early twentieth century. Moscow, Leningrad, Berlin, Prague, and Warsaw - sites of dramatic upheaval in the 1920s-1930s, and again in the 1970s-1980s - feature strongly in the first part of the book. In the cinematic representation of these cities, modernist experimentation combined with social and political change to produce such memorable films as The Man with the Movie Camera, Berlin: The Symphony of a great City, Berlin Alexanderplatz, and, more recently, the work of Krzysztof Kieslowski, Jan Svankmajer, and the Brother Quay. The different but comparable space of the North American city since World War Two provides the primary focus for the second part of the book. Here, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, and Toronto proved the settings for an investigation of the relations hip between cinema and race, and cinema and postmodern global capitalism, in a comprehensive range of films from Point Blank, Medium Cool, Network, and Annie Hall in the 1960s and 1970s to Boyz N the Hood, Falling Down, Pulp Fiction, [Safe], Crash and The End of Violence in the 1990s. Throughout the book, the cinema's artistic encounter with the city always intersects with a social and political engagement in which urgent issues of class, race, sexuality, the environment, liberty, capital, and totalitarianism are everywhere at stake.

A good night out? Multiplex cinemas as sites of embodied leisure

Abstract: In this paper, the reasons for the current popularity of multiplex cinemas as sites of nighttime leisure and recreation in the UK is explored. By definition, such cinemas offer a choice of films and viewing times, are usually located in a peripheral urban location and provide free and plentiful parking. Drawing on interviews conducted in Leicester (UK), it is argued that multiplexes are popular with particular audiences because they provide a form of ‘going out’ that facilitates the maintenance of bodily comfort and ontological security. The paper accordingly concludes that we can only understand the appeal of multiplex cinemas by considering the embodied geographies of cinema going - a leisure practice that involves the consumption of place as well as the visual consumption of film.

Cinema of Interruptions: Action Genres in Contemporary Indian Cinema

Abstract: CINEMA OF INTERRUPTIONS: ACTION GENRES IN CONTEMPORARY INDIAN CINEMA Lalitha Gopalan. London: BFI Publishing, 2002, 240 pp. Lalitha Gopalan's Cinema of Interruptions proposes a view of popular Indian cinema that challenges the perception that as a narrative form, Indian films have not fully achieved the seamlessness of Hollywood films. The author argues that Indian cinema, with its "interruptions" of song and dance numbers, its interval or intermission, and its censored scenes, has an aesthetic coherence that marks it as uniquely Indian. Ratherthan considering these pauses or "interruptions" as side trips away from the narrative cause-effect chain, Gopalan argues that filmmakers make these interruptions integral parts of the narrative. For example, she suggests that the interval has been used in a variety of ways, such as to launch a new sensibility or to suture two genres together. Under her analysis, the interval (or intermission) emerges as a structuring device, rather than simply a break in an over-long, undisciplined narrative. I believe this central argument, reflected in the book's title, is the strength and main contribution of her work. It offers a way of viewing Indian cinema on its own terms, ratherthan those of the unified narrative of Hollywood. Gopalan demonstrates a breathtaking command of film theory and employs a panoply of these ideas to contextualize events on the screen. She relies extensively on close readings of films, teasing out the narrative structure, images, and editing techniques that support herthesis. In her introduction, she outlines her reliance on psychoanalytic screen theory, which argues that narrative form produces an idealized position of spectatorship. She effectively employs Laura Mulvey's essay "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" to highlight the oftenoverlooked argument that the fetishization of the female body interrupts the diegesis. Gopalan uses several contemporary films to demonstrate her theory that the "constellation of interruptions" actually sutures together a narrative and makes these films uniquely Indian. Her first chapter examines a series of films that feature the figure of the avenging woman. Narrative interruptions are written into these films: Gopalan argues that the camera withdraws just before a sexually explicit act, a move that is akin to coitus interruptus and that is followed by shots of "waterfalls, flowers, thunder, lightning and tropical storms" (21), metonyms for the missing act. Gopalan notes that even though this withdrawal of the camera is required by state censors, the camera will often focus on the breasts and hips of the woman, thereby fetishizing and fragmenting her body. This heightened objectification of the woman is a "ruse to circumvent censorship, resorting once again to the woman's body," a way of displacing the responsibility for this move onto the state. Gopalan applies both Mulvey's theory and Carol Clover's work on the horror film to the rape-revenge film, a popular genre in India. She examines the spectatorial positions possible in such films; both masochistic and sadomasochistic pleasure is mobilized, first in the rape and then in the revenge. This chapter presents a compelling analysis of the position of women in this emotionally charged genre, and the author gets good traction in her use of theoretical tools. Her third chapter, which focuses on notions of masculinity, examines the films of J. P. Dutta, and Gopalan presents this as an exhumation of the auteur theory from its premature interment by Roland Barthes. She cites the recent work of scholars who use the theory, and she points out that Dutta's films, which are critically acclaimed for their distinctive style, are marketed using "Dutta" as a type of branding strategy to build box office. One troubling move in her selection of texts, however-and it damages both her argument about the "cinema of interruptions" and about the auteur-is that she admits she will not discuss the narrative structure of four of Dutta's films because they do not support her argument. …

Defining cult movies: the cultural politics of oppositional taste

Abstract: Defining cult movies stresses the sheer diversity of the films which have been brought together under the term 'cult movies'. Indeed, there is debate about whether films become cult movies on the basis of their modes of production, exhibition, internal textual features or through acts of appropriation by specific audiences. This collection concentrates on the analysis of cult movies, how they are defined, who defines them and the cultural politics of these definitions. The definition of the cult movie relies on a sense of its distinction from the 'mainstream' or 'ordinary'. This also raises issues about the perception of it as an oppositional form of cinema, and of its strained relationships to processes of institutionalization and classification. In other words, cult movie fandom has often presented itself as being in opposition to the academy, commercial film industries and the media more generally, but has been far more dependent on these forms than it has usually been willing to admit. For example, the history of academic film studies and that of cult movie fandom are inextricably intertwined. The international roster of essayists range over a wide and entertaining gamut of cult films from Dario Argento, Spanish horror and Peter Jackson's New Zealand gorefests to sexploitation, kung fu and sci-fi flicks, as well as investigations of Sharon Stone, 'underground' and fan trivia. As a result, this book will be of interest to students and researchers in the fields of film, media and cultural studies and to all those interested in this diverse and fascinating area of contemporary culture.

Korean Film: History, Resistance, and Democratic Imagination

Abstract: Preface Korean Cinema: Philosophical Foundations and Theoretical Frameworks Oppression, Liberation, Censorship, and Depression: History and Major Trends of Korean Cinema from the 1910s to the 1970s Korean National Cinema in the 1980s: Enlightenment, Political Struggle, Social Realism, and Defeatism Auteur Criticism: In Case of Sunwoo Jang's "Taste of Heaven" Discourses of Modernity and Postmodernity in Contemporary Korean Cinema Hollywood Imagination, Foreign Films, and Korean Identity: Resistance, Assimilation, and Articulation New Korean Cinema: A Boom or a Renaissance? Index

The Prime Time Closet: A History of Gays and Lesbians on TV

Abstract: The Prime Time Closet: A History of Gays and Lesbians on TV. Stephen Tropiano. New York: Applause Theatre and Cinema Books, 2002. 332 pp. $16.95 pbk. Given the current media buzz surrounding Bravo's Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, it may be hard to recall the groundbreaking nature of the "coming out" episode of the Ellen sitcom only seven years ago. Yet the decision by the show's star, comedienne Ellen DeGeneres, to out herself and her ABC character in April 1997 was perhaps one of modern prime-time television's most significant events. That episode, while enormously important, was just one moment in a long evolutionary process of American television programs dealing with the subject of homosexuality. In The Prime Time Closet: A History of Gays and Lesbians on TV, Stephen Tropiano offers one of the first in-depth studies of how gays and lesbians have been portrayed on entertainment television. Tropiano, director of the Ithaca College Communications Program in Los Angeles, provides an important addition to the growing literature on the media's representation of homosexuality. Reminiscent of The Celluloid Closet, Vito Russo's seminal work on gays in American film, The Prime Time Closet's real value is its critical analysis of gay-themed television story lines and characters. Like Russo, Tropiano deconstructs many of the programs' messages and ties them to contemporary events in American society. he divides prime-time television shows into four categories including medical and law and order dramas, dramatic series, and television comedy. (While Tropiano includes prime-time television news programming in his lists, he does not critique that genre in any detail, leaving a gap in the literature for another researcher to fill.) The book's scope is vast, ranging from campy but not overtly gay programs from the 1950s and 1960s like I Love Lucy and the judy Garland Show, to today's in-your-face gay cable hits Queer as Folk and Six Feet Under. One of the most significant contributions of Tropiano's book is his historic overview of how television dealt with major social issues. he writes, "In the 1970s, the issue du jour was gay teachers. In the 1980s and 1990s, it was AIDS." Tropiano outlines how television, like the rest of the nation, struggled to find an appropriate response to the devastating disease. While the results were not always laudable, television did have a significant influence on how the nation viewed AIDS and those it affected. The author also notes the occasional fallout from network decisions on gay programming. Some of the most interesting material includes Tropiano's account of the controversy caused by a 1973 episode of ABC's Marcus Welby, ? …

The Material of Film and the Idea of Cinema: Contrasting Practices in Sixties and Seventies Avant-Garde Film*

Abstract: In 1976, the American Federation of Arts organized a major program of American avant-garde films made since the early 1940s. In his introduction to the program's catalog, Whitney film curator and series organizerJohn Hanhardt argued that the central preoccupation of filmmakers across the history of avant-garde cinema had been with the exploration of the material properties of the film medium itself: "This cinema subverts cinematic convention by exploring its medium and its properties and materials, and in the process creates its own history separate from that of the classical narrative cinema. It is filmmaking that creates itself out of its own experience."1 Having traced the history of avant-garde film according to the modernist notion that an art form advances by reflexively scrutinizing the "properties and materials" of its medium, Hanhardt turned his attention to more recent developments. But these new developments were not entirely receptive to his modernist model. On the one hand, he argued, filmmakers were continuing to create works that engaged the physical materials of film-film strip, projector, camera, and screen-and the range of effects these made possible. On the other, this engagement appeared to be leading some filmmakers to create cinematic works challenging the material limits of the film medium as it had been defined for over eighty years. For example, in Anthony McCall's Line Describing a Cone (1973), the focus of the viewer's attention was not an image projected onto a screen, but the projector beam itself, which over the course of thirty minutes grew from a thin line of light to a cone-a three-dimensional light sculpture with which the viewer could interact. Such a work not only eliminated one of the material limits of

African Film: Re-Imagining a Continent

Abstract: African Film: Re-Imagining a Continent. By Josef Gugler. Bloomington: Indiana University Press; Oxford: James Currey; Cape Town: David Philip, 2003. Pp. xiii, 202; illustrations. $24.95 paper. African Film: Re-Imagining a Continent is the book that many have been waiting for. Josef Gugler has composed a lively and loving handbook for African film aficionados and for those willing to be converted. Erudite without being stuffy, informative without being pedantic, Gugler condenses years of viewing and critiquing films into a dense but accessible compendium of stimulating observations. The format is extremely attractive, replete with photos, film frames, reproductions of film posters, and intriguing side notes. The cover design welcomes readers with the faces of two smiling children from "Yaaba," which Gugler analyzes at length. The text is arranged in an orderly manner in six categories, primarily historical, and is preceded by a clear Table of Contents followed by a briefly annotated list of the main films, humorously entitled "17 films in 17 sentences." An Author's Preface is followed by a useful chart of Basic Indicators for African Countries-all countries cited are south of the Sahara, though not all in this region are included. A simple map provides a further reference point for the discussions of films spanning the continent. The depth and breadth of Gugler's study are well indicated in his Introduction. Using a warm, personal voice, he states that he has a "predilection for films that address social, cultural, and political issues," which determined the films he selected for the book. Nevertheless, the films are diverse and provide a fair sampling of the countries, styles, and topics represented in African cinema. The exception, which Gugler addresses without apology, is the omission of films from North Africa. Since the earliest films from the African continent were made in Tunisia and Egypt, and some of the most compelling recent films have come from Tunisia in particular, this omission seems regrettable. Gugler often injects humor into his observations. He introduces a light note after serious introductory material by suggesting that viewers avoid being distracted by subtitles by watching a film a second time and disregarding them (and he closes the sentence with an exclamation mark). The occasional leavening of serious analysis contributes to the book's appeal. The only odd note is Gugler's use of "we" in the text during and after the personal introduction; the pronoun is apparently intended to engage the reader as if an actual discussion were occurring. …

Digital rights management for digital cinema

Abstract: There is a wide consensus among feature film production studios that the Internet era brings a new paradigm for film distribution to cinemas worldwide. The benefits of digital cinema to both producers and cinemas are numerous: significantly lower distribution and maintenance costs, immediate access to film libraries, higher presentation quality, and strong potential for developing new business models. Despite these advantages, the studios are still reluctant to jump into the digital age. An important concern regarding digital and conventional cinema is the danger of widespread piracy. Piracy already costs Hollywood an estimated two billion dollars annually, and digital cinema without proper copyright enforcement could increase this number. In this paper, we present a copyright management system that aims at providing the set of necessary security tools: standard cryptographic primitives and copyright protection mechanisms that enable a reliable and secure feature film delivery system.

Out in Nicaragua: Local and Transnational Desires after the Revolution

Abstract: In June 2000, I returned to spend several weeks in Nicaragua after two years away and found the capital city of Managua transformed by the rebuilding of an urban center, with new government buildings, immense traffic circles and plazas, and hotels and commercial establishments in abundance. My first day back, I ventured into one of two major shopping malls and discovered that the movie Boys Don't Cry (Muchachos no lloran, with subtitles) was playing at a multiplex cinema. In a city where a couple of years before the only movie theatres were exceptionally seedy and offered X-rated porn, I was curious to see what reception this film would have in the Nicaraguan setting soon after its release to wide acclaim in the United States. The audience at the matinee was small and fairly middle class-not surprising in a nation where the two-dollar ticket price was beyond the means of the majority-but it seemed to appreciate the movie's powerful story of sexual-identity transgression and its consequences in the American Midwest.' When it comes to sex and sexuality, some stories are told whereas others remain untold. Histories of sexuality everywhere are subject to revision and debate when local, national, or transnational conditions prompt caution on the one hand or allow more open discussion of sexual difference and transgression on the other.2 Periods of social transformation may present opportunities for personal or national reflection on the politics of gender and sexuality, or they may push such reflection to the margins in the name of settling larger historical accounts. But what happens when personal or local desires are supported by

Movie music : the film reader

Abstract: 1. How Music Works in Film Kassabian 2.Why Music? The Sound Film and its Spectator GorbmanN 3. Suggestions and Conclusions Adorno and Eisler 4. Reforming 'Jackass music': the Problematic Aesthetics of Early Film Music Accompaniment' Anderson 5. (Re) new (ed) Conservatism in Film Marketing Doty 6. My Huckleberry Friend Smith 7. Cinema, Postmodernity and Authenticity Grossberg 8. The Animation of Sound Brophy 9. Whose Jazz, Whose Cinema? Gabbard 10. Hollywood and the Challenge of the Youth Market Mundy 11. Pop, Speed and the MTV aesthetic Kay Dickinson 12. Gender, Power, and a Cucumber: Satirising Masculinity in This is Spinal Tap Plantinga 13. (Pass Through) The Mirror Moment and Don't Look Back: Music and Gender in a Rockumentary Knobloch 14. Manufacturing Authenticity: Imagining the Music Industry in Anglo-American Cinema Keightley 15. Five Fan Events Lewis

Screenplay: Cinema/videogames/interfaces

Abstract: SCREENPLAY: CINEMA/VIDEOGAMES/INTERFACES GeoffKing and Tanya Krzywinska, eds. London: Wallflower Press, 2002, 229 pp. An analysis of the intersection of two related media often provides a perspective for a better understanding of both. There is no denying the interrelationships of graphic art and photography, film and theater, radio and television, and television and film, or the value of looking at these interrelationships. But what of the relationship between cinema and the relatively new medium of video games? ScreenPlay: Cinema/Videogames/lnterfaces provides a solid foundation for an emerging area of study, offers interesting perspectives on both forms by defining their similarities and differences, and, in the process, takes a step toward developing tools forthe critical analysis of video games. The fourteen essays (including two by King and Krzywinska) are organized from those that presenta more formal discussion of the relationships of film to games to those that are more specific about unique features of game genres. Although there is some overlap in the topics covered, there is a consistent and logical line of thought that unifies the pieces. Andrew Mactavish's "Technological Pleasure: The Performance and Narrative of Technology in Half-Life and Other High-Tech Computer Games," and Geoff King's "Die Hard/Try Harder: Narrative, Spectacle and Beyond, from Hollywood to Videogame," both discuss narrative in light of game qualities such as spectacle and kinesthesia, and the pleasure the gamer experiences in the special effects afforded by technology. This theme is continued in Jo Bryce and Jason Rutter's "Spectacle of the Deathmatch: Character and Narrative in First-Person Shooters," which focuses on the visceral thrill of the spectacle and the interactivity of games, defining the divergence of films from games by the active participation of the individual player and the unique audience formed by cyber game communities. The highly immersive experience of the gamer is further discussed in "First-Person Shooters-A Game Apparatus," by Sue Morris, her exploration of first-person point of view as it relates to interactivity, which gives the player "the illusion of full control." Wee LiangTongand Marcus ChengChyeTan, in "Vision and Virtuality: The Construction of Narrative Space in Film and Computer Games," build on the concept of the gamer's feeling of control. They discuss the gamer's active role in creating narrative as the player's actions alter the framing and change the composition of the mise-enscene in a real-time game environment. They point out that the experience of active gaming is akin to participating in unedited, continuous filming and that it creates a distinct form of visual narrative. This participatory creation of the narrative permits themes, characters, and plots to develop and become resolved, according to Sacha Howells in "Watching A Game, Playing A Movie: When Media Collide." Although, she points out, some of this narrative is often carried by "cut scenes," the short cinematic sequences found in many games, when these are integrated with the player's first-person experience, the active and inactive experiences blend into a coherent narrative thread. Paul Ward's "Videogames as Remediated Animation" continues the discussion of the relationship of cut scenes by pointing out that video games cannot be truly understood without an understanding of the role of animation; further, he argues that watching animated film is much closer to the experience of playing a video game than is watching a live action film. He makes the case that the cinematic cut scenes and the graphic universe of a game derived from an animated film-as in the case of Toy Story 2 (1999) and the game Buzz Lightyearto the Rescue-bear a strong resemblance to each other. Thus, the difference between the two experiences is blurred. Following this thread of discussion, a series of essays explores other cinematic elements of video games. …

Reframing British Cinema, 1918-1928: Between Restraint and Passion

Abstract: Introduction: an Old Fashioned Cinema? PART ONE: CO-ORDINATES Chapter 1: Theatricality and British Cinema Chapter 2: Pictorialism: Going to the - British - Pictures Chapter 3: Performing British Cinema PART TWO: CONJUNCTIONS Chapter 4: Directors' Picture Stories: Pictures, Documents and Visions Chapter 5: Class Acts: Performers and Genres Chapter 6: The Stories British Cinema Tells Bibliograpy Index

New Soviet Man: Gender and Masculinity in Stalinist Soviet Cinema

Abstract: Why men, and why Stalinist cinema? cultural revolution, or the masculiniztion of discourse urban myths - the musical comedies of Grigorii Aleksandrov countryphile - men in labour in the collective farm comedies of Ivan Pyr'ev brothers in arms - the changing face of the Soviet soldier in Stalinst cinema.