Showing papers on "Movie theater published in 2015"

On 'Visual pleasure and narrative cinema'

Abstract: Preparing this piece, I found myself looking back, not only at “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” (“VP&NC”) itself (Laura Mulvey 1975), and the theoretical and political context in which it app...

Reel World: An Anthropology of Creation

Abstract: Reel World explores what happens to life when everything begins to look and feel like cinema. Drawing on years of fieldwork with Tamil filmmakers, artists, musicians, and craftsmen in the south Indian movie studios of "Kollywood," Anand Pandian examines how ordinary moments become elements of a cinematic world. With inventive, experimental, and sometimes comical zeal, Pandian pursues the sensory richness of cinematic experience and the adventure of a writing true to these sensations. Thinking with the visceral power of sound and image, his stories also broach deeply philosophical themes such as desire, time, wonder, and imagination. In a spirit devoted to the turbulence and uncertainty of genesis, Reel World brings into focus an ecology of creative process: the many forces, feelings, beings, and things that infuse human endeavors with transformative potential.

Reframing Cinematic Space and Audience Practice in the Digital Age

Abstract: The articles in this issue speak to some on-going and current debates and practice related to cinema and film ranging from cinephilia to multiscreen art installations. The articles consider the expansion of cinema experiences into other locations and on other devices. Cinema is considered holistically as technology, space, experience and form. New and emerging technologies inform much of the current thinking about cinema, not only those technologies of exhibition and film form, but also those related to wider communication practices. Indeed the culture of cinema and film- the sharing of information around them, as well as the experiences that might compete with them- are as significant as any other. Rather than consider cinema and film as challenged by emerging technologies, experiences or practices, these articles propose an expanding outwards: to the streets where live events or performances draw the pleasures of the screen out into the world; to multiscreen projection and the narrative ‘play’ enabled by such; to the re-emergence of cinephilia through memory of cinema-going; and, finally, to digital platforms that enhance and revitalise the cinema as pleasurable experience.

Women's Cinema, World Cinema: Projecting Contemporary Feminisms

Abstract: In Women’s Cinema, World Cinema , Patricia White explores the dynamic intersection of feminism and film in the twenty-first century by highlighting the work of a new generation of women directors from around the world: Samira and Hana Makhmalbaf, Nadine Labaki, Zero Chou, Jasmila Zbanic, and Claudia Llosa, among others. The emergence of a globalized network of film festivals has enabled these young directors to make and circulate films that are changing the aesthetics and politics of art house cinema and challenging feminist genealogies. Extending formal analysis to the production and reception contexts of a variety of feature films, White explores how women filmmakers are both implicated in and critique gendered concepts of authorship, taste, genre, national identity, and human rights. Women’s Cinema, World Cinema revitalizes feminist film studies as it argues for an alternative vision of global media culture.

From Self-fulfilment to Survival of the Fittest: Work in European Cinema from the 1960s to the Present

Abstract: Contrary to the assumption that Western and Eastern European economies and cinemas were very different from each other, they actually had much in common. After the Second World War both the East and the West adopted a mixed system, containing elements of both socialism and capitalism, and from the 1980s on the whole of Europe, albeit at an uneven speed, followed the neoliberal agenda. This book examines how the economic systems of the East and West impacted labor by focusing on the representation of work in European cinema. Using a Marxist perspective, it compares the situation of workers in Western and Eastern Europe as represented in both auteurist and popular films, including those of Tony Richardson, Lindsay Anderson, Jean-Luc Godard, Andrzej Wajda, DusanMakavejev, Jerzy Skolimowski, the Dardenne Brothers, Ulrich Seidl and many others.

Estimating a War of Attrition: The Case of the US Movie Theater Industry

Abstract: This paper estimates the impact of competition and exogenous demand decline on the exit process of movie theaters in the US from 1950-1965. I modify Fudenberg and Tirole (1986)'s model of exit in a duopoly with incomplete information to an oligopoly. I estimate this model with panel data, using variations in TV diusion across house- holds and other market characteristics to identify the parameters in the theater's payo¤ function and the distribution of unobservable exit values. Using the estimated model, I show that theaters who are making negative pro…ts may choose to remain in the market if they expect to outlast their competitors, because at that point their pro…ts would increase. This creates a signi…cant delay in the exit process. In addition, by decompos- ing the across-market variation in the exit process, I …nd that TV diusion explains a substantial proportion of the variation in the exit process.

The End of Cinema?: A Medium in Crisis in the Digital Age

Abstract: PrefaceIntroduction: The End of Cinema?1. Cinema Is Not What It Used to Be2. Digitalizing Cinema from Top to Bottom3. A Brief Phenomenology of "Digitalized" Cinema4. From Shooting to Filming: The Aufhebung Effect5. A Medium Is Always Born Twice...6. New Variants of the Moving Image7. "Animage" and the New Visual CultureConclusion: A Medium in Crisis in the Digital AgeNotesAcknowledgmentsSelected BibliographyIndex

The aesthetics of absence and duration in the post-trauma cinema of Lav Diaz

Abstract: Aiming to make an intervention in both emerging Slow Cinema and classical Trauma Cinema scholarship, this thesis demonstrates the ways in which the post-trauma cinema of Filipino filmmaker Lav Diaz merges aesthetics of cinematic slowness with narratives of post-trauma in his films Melancholia (2008), Death in the Land of Encantos (2007) and Florentina Hubaldo, CTE (2012). Diaz has been repeatedly considered as representative of what Jonathan Romney termed in 2004 “Slow Cinema”. The director uses cinematic slowness for an alternative approach to an on-screen representation of post-trauma. Contrary to popular trauma cinema, Diaz’s portrait of individual and collective trauma focuses not on the instantenaeity but on the duration of trauma. In considering trauma as a condition and not as an event, Diaz challenges the standard aesthetical techniques used in contemporary Trauma Cinema, as highlighted by Janet Walker (2001, 2005), Susannah Radstone (2001), Roger Luckhurst (2008) and others. Diaz’s films focus instead on trauma’s latency period, the depletion of a survivor’s resources, and a character’s slow psychological breakdown. Slow Cinema scholarship has so far focused largely on the films’ aesthetics and their alleged opposition to mainstream cinema. Little work has been done in connecting the films’ form to their content. Furthermore, Trauma Cinema scholarship, as trauma films themselves, has been based on the immediate and most radical signs of post-trauma, which are characterised by instantaneity; flashbacks, sudden fears of death and sensorial overstimulation. Following Lutz Koepnick’s argument that slowness offers “intriguing perspectives” (Koepnick, 2014: 191) on how trauma can be represented in art, this thesis seeks to consider the equally important aspects of trauma duration, trauma’s latency period and the slow development of characteristic symptoms. With the present work, I expand on current notions of Trauma Cinema, which places emphasis on speed and the unpredictability of intrusive memories. Furthermore, I aim to broaden the area of Slow Cinema studies, which has so far been largely focused on the films’ respective aesthetics, by bridging form and content of the films under investigation. Rather than seeing Diaz’s slow films in isolation as a phenomenon of Slow Cinema, I seek to connect them to the existing scholarship of Trauma Cinema studies, thereby opening up a reading of his films.

The History Boys? : masculinity, memory and the 1980s in British cinema, 2005-2010

Abstract: This study will consider the function of cinema in British society’s ongoing relationship with the 1980s. Its focus on a key period of recent British film history acknowledges popular culture’s flourishing identification with this decade, reflected through a number of media including literature, music and fashion. I argue that with seventeen films set in the 1980s and produced between 2005 and 2010, British cinema is at the centre of this retrospective, providing a unique perspective on our relationship with the era. But what are the determinants of this mediated reminiscence and what does it say about the function of cinema in rendering the past? I contend that a key aspect of this channelling of popular and personal memory is the role of the writer and director. Nearly all male and mostly middle-aged, the films’ creative agents present narratives that foreground young male protagonists and specifically masculine themes. These thematic concerns, including patriarchal absence and homosocial groups, whilst anchored in the concerns of their 1980s socio-political landscape also highlight a contemporary need for the films’ authors to connect to a personal past. Through reference to sociological, cinematic and political discourse, amongst others, this study will also consider the role of memory in these films. It will contend that the films present a complex perspective of the 1980s, highlighting an ambivalent relationship with the period that transcends nostalgia. The thematic structure of this work will allow a full analysis of the films’ relationship with key aspects of the 1980s incorporating a consideration of critically neglected texts that, I argue, demonstrate a strong mediated relationship with the 1980s. Additionally the study’s unique perspective on a specific period of the recent past and its mediation through film will ensure it has a key contribution to current thinking around the relationship between contemporary masculinity, British cinema and the 1980s.

New Nollywood: A Sketch of Nollywood's Metropolitan New Style

Abstract: Recent experimentation by Nollywood producers has encouraged increas- ing differentiation of film practices as a strategy for contending with a demanding video market. "New Nollywood" refers to a select group of aesthetically sophisti- cated films intended for a new tiered distribution method, beginning with theatrical release and ending with DVD release. Nigeria's upscale multiplex cinemas are therefore a starting point for examining what is new—and not so new—in Nolly- wood. This article argues that New Nollywood films and the cinemas in which they appear appeal directly to spectators' senses by promising not only a movie and shop- ping, but also an affective experience closely bound up with global consumerism. The films exhibit a metropolitan vantage point that emphasizes subjects such as airline travel, trendy technology, consumer culture, global pop culture, lifestyle brands, high fashion, and luxury goods. These films advertise their "modernity," which is not presented as a consolidated order of knowledge and values, but rather as an assemblage of signifiers of city life. Whereas mainstream Nollywood con- tinues to produce strong narratives that resonate with its intended audience, New Nollywood—with its emphasis on images and style—is a direct expression of the cultural and economic forces shaping life in Lagos today. Resume: L'experimentation recente par les producteurs de Nollywood a encourage la differenciation croissante de pratiques de cinema en tant que strategie permettant de soutenir un marche de la video en constante evolution. "Nouveau Nollywood" fait reference a un groupe restreint de films esthetiquement sophistiques destines a une nouvelle methode de distribution a plusieurs etapes, en commencant par la

The Changing Face of Korean Cinema : 1960 to 2015

Abstract: Introduction: Introducing "Planet Hallyuwood" Part 1: The Golden Age of the 1960s 1 Hypergrowth of the Propaganda Factory and the Producing Paradox 2 At the Crossroads of Directing and Politics 3 Genre Intersections and the Literary Film 4 Feasting on Asian Alliances: Hong Kong Co-productions and Japanese Remakes Part 2: The Dark Age of the 1970s and Hollywood's Domination in the Aftermath 5 Policy and Producing Under Hollywood's Shadow in the 1970s and 1980s 6 Robust Invalids in a New Visual Era: Directing in the 1970s and 1980s 7 Weapons of Mass Distraction: The Erotic Film Genres of the 1970s and 1980s Part 3: The Golden Age of the Post-censorship Era 8 The Rise of the New Corporate and Female Producers 9 The Rise of the Female Writer-Director and the Changing Face of Korean Cinema10 Genre Transformations in Contemporary Korean Cinema 11 Korean Transnational Cinema and the Renewed Tilt Toward China 12 Conclusion Welcome to Planet Hallyuwood

Putting the moral into morale: YMCA cinemas on the Western Front, 1914–1918

Abstract: This article will focus on the wartime cinema facilities provided by the philanthropic association the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA). At the outbreak of the First World War in August 1914, the YMCA turned its attention to supporting troops fighting for Britain and her Empire. YMCA huts were built to provide soldiers with food and a place to rest on the frontline, or at home in military camps and railway stations. Alongside the arrangements for entertainments made by the Army at Divisional level, the YMCA had a central role in providing morale-boosting entertainment and moral-strengthening education to British soldiers. Films became a central mode of entertainment for British servicemen serving on the Western Front and the Mediterranean. Cinema shows were the most popular part of the concert party programme, with many cinema halls also acting as theatres. The YMCA had 77 cinema plants, the majority of which were portable units providing free showings to men in forward positions. There were 20 sp...

Cinema Civil Rights: Regulation, Repression, and Race in the Classical Hollywood Era

Abstract: From Al Jolson in blackface to Song of the South, there is a long history of racism in Hollywood film. Yet as early as the 1930s, movie studios carefully vetted their releases, removing racially offensive language like the "N-word." This censorship did not stem from purely humanitarian concerns, but rather from worries about boycotts from civil rights groups and loss of revenue from African American filmgoers. Cinema Civil Rights presents the untold history of how Black audiences, activists, and lobbyists influenced the representation of race in Hollywood in the decades before the 1960s civil rights era. Employing a nuanced analysis of power, Ellen C. Scott reveals how these representations were shaped by a complex set of negotiations between various individuals and organizations. Rather than simply recounting the perspective of film studios, she calls our attention to a variety of other influential institutions, from protest groups to state censorship boards. Scott demonstrates not only how civil rights debates helped shaped the movies, but also how the movies themselves provided a vital public forum for addressing taboo subjects like interracial sexuality, segregation, and lynching. Emotionally gripping, theoretically sophisticated, and meticulously researched, Cinema Civil Rights presents us with an in-depth look at the film industry's role in both articulating and censoring the national conversation on race.

The role of movie images and its impact on destination choice.

Abstract: Purpose – This study aims to examine whether movies are pivotal in developing empathy, nostalgia, perceived risk, place familiarity and place image that can shape viewer attitude towards and intention to visit a place. Design/methodology/approach – Data were collected from two sample frames of patrons at a large cinema chain located in a major shopping centre in Perth, Western Australia. The experimental group watched the romantic comedy, Friends with Benefits. The control group watched the romantic comedy, Desi Boyz which is set in London and India and is not associated with New York. A quota for data collection was set at 230 subjects in each group. The two groups watched their movies concurrently in different theatres at the same cinema chain in the same shopping centre. Subjects in both groups were asked for their responses to New York immediately after viewing the movie. Findings – In an experimental study, subjects who watched a romantic comedy set in New York had significantly higher empathy, place...

Cinematic ghosts : haunting and spectrality from silent cinema to the digital era

Abstract: Acknowledgements Introduction Murray Leeder, University of Calgary, Canada Ghosts of Pre-Cinema and Silent Cinema Chapter 1 Phantom Images and Modern Manifestations: Spirit Photography, Magic Theater, Trick Films and Photography's Uncanny Tom Gunning, University of Chicago, USA Chapter 2 "Visualizing the Phantoms of the Imagination": Projecting Haunted Minds Murray Leeder, University of Calgary, Canada Chapter 3 Specters of the Mind: Ghosts, Illusion, and Exposure in Paul Leni's The Cat and the Canary Simone Natale, Humboldt University, Germany Chapter 4 Supernatural Speech: Silent Cinema's Stake in Visualizing the Impossible Robert Alford, University of California, Berkeley, USA Cinematic Ghosts from the 1940s through the 1980s Chapter 5 Bad Sync: Spectral Sound and Retro-effects in Portrait of Jennie Rene Thoreau Bruckner, University of Southern California, USA Chapter 6 "Antique Chiller": Quality, Pretention and History in the Critical Reception of The Innocents and The Haunting Mark Jancovich, University of East Anglia, UK Chapter 7 Shadows of Shadows: The Undead in Ingmar Bergman's Cinema Maurizio Cinquegrani, University of Kent, UK Chapter 8 Locating the Spectre in Dan Curtis's Burnt Offerings Dara Downey, University College Dublin, Ireland Chapter 9 The Bawdy Body in Two Comedy Ghost Films: Topper and Beetlejuice Katherine A. Fowkes, High Point University, USA Millennial Ghosts Chapter 10 "I See Dead People": Visualizing Ghosts in the Horror Film Before the Arrival of CGI Steffen Hantke, Sogang University, Korea Chapter 11 Spectral Remainders and Transcultural Hauntings: (Re)iterations of the Onryo in Contemporary Japanese Horror Cinema Jay McRoy, University of Wisconsin - Parkside, USA Chapter 12 Painted Skin: Romance with the Ghostly Femme Fatale in Contemporary Chinese Cinema Li Zeng, Illinois State University, USA Chapter 13 "It's Not the House that's Haunted": Demons, Debt and the Family in Peril in Recent Horror Cinema Bernice M. Murphy, Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland Chapter 14 Glitch Gothic Marc Olivier, Brigham Young University, USA Chapter 15 Showing the Unknown: Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives Mitsuyo Wada-Marciano, Carleton University, Canada Afterword: Haunted Viewers Jeffrey Sconce, Northwestern University, USA

Evading Class in Contemporary British Literature

Abstract: Introduction: Questions of Class in the Contemporary British Novel 'Unworkable Subjects': Middle-Class Narratives in Pat Barker, Ian McEwan, and Kazuo Ishiguro 'Our Economic Position': Middle-Class Consciousness in Zadie Smith and Will Self Classless Fictions?: Middle-Class History/Working-Class Subjects in Martin Amis, Peter Ackroyd, and Hanif Kureishi We're all Bourgeois Now: Realism and Class in Alan Hollinghurst, Graham Swift, and Jonathan Coe A Class Act: Representations of Class in British Cinema and Television

Cinema and Its Ghosts: An Interview with Jacques Derrida

Abstract: Interview conducted July 10, 1998 and November 6, 2000 in Paris. Transcribed and formatted by Stephane Delorme.When a philosopher admits to a "hypnotic fascination" with cinema, is it just chance that his thought leads him to encounter the ghosts haunting dark theaters?- Cahiers du cinemaIt is not obvious that ajournai such as Cahiers du anemawould interview Jacques Derrida. Above all because, for a long time, Derrida seemed to be interested only in the phenomenon of writing, in its trace, in speech, in the voice. And then came several books: Memoirs of the Blind, around an exhibition at the Louvre, Echographies of Television, a conversation about that mass medium with Bernard Stiegler that affirmed a new interest in the image. And then too, a film, Derrida's Elsewhere, directed by Safaa Fathy, and a book Tourner les mots, cowritten with the film's director, which finally tackled the experience of cinema. That's all we needed to go and ask some questions of a philosopher who, even though he admits he's not a cinephile, nevertheless has truly been thinking about the cinematographic apparatus, projection, and the ghosts that every normally constituted viewer feels an irresistible urge to encounter. Derrida's discourse, which resonates in the following interview, is thus that of neither a specialist nor a professor speaking from the height of commanding knowledge, but very simply that of a man who thinks and who goes back to the ontology of cinema while shedding new light on it.Cahiers du cinema: How did cinema enter your life?Derrida: Very early. In Algiers, when I was ten or twelve years old, at the end of the war then right after the war. It was a vital way of getting out. I lived in a suburb of the city, El Biar. To go to the movies was an emancipation, getting away from the family. I remember well the names of all the movie houses in Algiers, I can see them still: The Vox, The Cameo, The Noon-Midnight, The Olympia . . . No doubt I went to the movies without being very selective. I saw everything, the French films made during the Occupation, and especially the American films that returned after 1942. I would be totally incapable of listing the titles of the films, but I remember the sort of films I saw. A Tom Sawyer for example, certain scenes of which came back to me recently: a cave where Tom is closed up with a little girl. A sexual emotion: I saw that a twelve-year-old boy could caress a little girl. I was about the same age. Of course a large part of one's sensual and erotic education comes from movies. You learn what a kiss is at the movies, before learning it in life. I remember that adolescent erotic thrill. I would be totally incapable of citing anything else. I have a passion for the cinema; it's a kind of hypnotic fascination, I could remain for hours and hours in a theater, even to watch mediocre things. But I have not the least memory for cinema. It's a culture that leaves no trace in me. It's virtually recorded, I've forgotten nothing, I also have notebooks where I keep reminders of the titles of films from which I don't remember a single image. I am not at all a cinephile in the classical sense of the term. Instead I'm a pathological case. During periods when I go to the movies a lot, particularly when I'm abroad in the United States where I spend my time in movie theaters, a constant repression erases the memory of these images that nonetheless fascinate me. In 1949, I arrived in Paris, for advanced preparatory school, and the rhythm continued, several shows a day sometimes, in the countless movie theaters of the Latin Quarter, especially the Champo.Cahiers du cinema: What is for you the first effect of film in the state of childhood? You mentioned the erotic dimension, which is certainly essential in the apprenticeship of images. But is it a relation to gestures, a relation to time, the body, space?Derrida: If it wasn't the names of films, or the stories, or the actors that made an impression on something in me, it was surely another form of emotion that has its source in projection, in the very mechanism of projection. …

Hanan al-Cinema: Affections for the Moving Image

Abstract: In this book, Laura Marks examines one of the world's most impressive, and affecting, bodies of independent and experimental cinema from the last twenty-five years: film and video works from the Arabic-speaking world. Some of these works' creative strategies are shared by filmmakers around the world; others arise from the particular economic, social, political, and historical circumstances of Arab countries, whose urgency, Marks argues, seems to demand experiment and invention. Grounded in a study of infrastructures for independent and experimental media art in the Arab world and a broad knowledge of hundreds of films and videos, Hanan al-Cinema approaches these works thematically. Topics include the nomadism of the highway, nostalgia for '70s radicalism, a romance with the archive, algorithmic and glitch media, haptic and networked space, and cinema of the body. Marks develops an aesthetic of enfolding and unfolding to elucidate the different ways that cinema can make events perceptible, seek connections among them, and unfold in the bodies and thoughts of audiences. The phrase Hanan al-cinema expresses the way movies sympathize with the world and the way audiences feel affection for, and are affected by, them. Marks's clear and expressive writing conveys these affections in works by such internationally recognized artists and filmmakers as Akram Zaatari, Elia Suleiman, Hassan Khan, Mounir Fatmi, and Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige, and others who should be better known.

The Third Man: Comparative analysis of a science autobiography and a cinema classic as windows into post-War life sciences research

Abstract: In 2003, biophysicist and Nobel Laureate Maurice Wilkins published his autobiography entitled The Third Man. In the preface, he diffidently points out that the title (which presents him as the ‘third’ man credited with the co-discovery of the structure of DNA, besides Watson and Crick) was chosen by his publisher, as a reference to the famous 1949 movie no doubt, featuring Orson Welles in his classical role as penicillin racketeer Harry Lime. In this paper I intend to show that there is much more to this title than merely its familiar ring. If subjected to a (psychoanalytically inspired) comparative analysis, multiple correspondences between movie and memoirs can be brought to the fore. Taken together, these documents shed an intriguing light on the vicissitudes of budding life sciences research during the post-war era. I will focus my comparative analysis on issues still relevant today, such as dual use, the handling of sensitive scientific information (in a moral setting defined by the tension between collaboration and competition) and, finally, on the interwovenness of science and warfare (i.e. the ‘militarisation’ of research and the relationship between beauty and destruction). Thus, I will explain how science autobiographies on the one hand and genres of the imagination (such as novels and movies) on the other may deepen our comprehension of tensions and dilemmas of life sciences research then and now. For that reason, science autobiographies can provide valuable input (case material) for teaching philosophy and history of science to science students.

Uplift Cinema: The Emergence of African American Film and the Possibility of Black Modernity

Abstract: In Uplift Cinema , Allyson Nadia Field recovers the significant yet forgotten legacy of African American filmmaking in the 1910s. Like the racial uplift project, this cinema emphasized economic self-sufficiency, education, and respectability as the keys to African American progress. Field discusses films made at the Tuskegee and Hampton Institutes to promote education, as well as the controversial The New Era , which was an antiracist response to D. W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation . She also shows how Black filmmakers in New York and Chicago engaged with uplift through the promotion of Black modernity. Uplift cinema developed not just as a response to onscreen racism, but constituted an original engagement with the new medium that has had a deep and lasting significance for African American cinema. Although none of these films survived, Field's examination of archival film ephemera presents a method for studying lost films that opens up new frontiers for exploring early film culture.

Movie Migrations: Transnational Genre Flows and South Korean Cinema

Abstract: As the two billion YouTube views for oGangnam Styleo would indicate, South Korean popular culture has begun to enjoy new prominence on the global stage. Yet, as this timely new study reveals, the nation's film industry has long been a hub for transnational exchange, producing movies that put a unique spin on familiar genres, while influencing world cinema from Hollywood to Bollywood. Movie Migrations is not only an introduction to one of the world's most vibrant national cinemas, but also a provocative call to reimagine the very concepts of onational cinemaso and ofilm genreo. Challenging traditional critical assumptions that place Hollywood at the center of genre production, Hye Seung Chung and David Scott Diffrient bring South Korean cinema to the forefront of recent and ongoing debates about globalization and transnationalism. In each chapter they track a different way that South Korean filmmakers have adapted material from foreign sources, resulting in everything from the Manchurian Western to The Host 's reinvention of the Godzilla mythos. Spanning a wide range of genres, the book introduces readers to classics from the 1950s and 1960s Golden Age of South Korean cinema, while offering fresh perspectives on recent favorites like Oldboy and Thirst . Perfect not only for fans of Korean film, but for anyone curious about media in an era of globalization, Movie Migrations will give readers a new appreciation for the creative act of cross-cultural adaptation.

Grindhouse Nostalgia: Memory, Home Video and Exploitation Film Fandom

Abstract: Too often dismissed as nothing more than 'trash cinema' exploitation films have become both earnestly appreciated cult objects and home video items that are more accessible than ever. In this wide-ranging new study, David Church explores how the history of drive-in theatres and urban grind houses has descended to the home video formats that keep these lurid movies fondly alive today. Arguing for the importance of cultural memory in contemporary fan practices, Church focuses on both the re-release of archival exploitation films on DVD and the recent cycle of 'retrosploitation' films like Grindhouse, Machete, Viva, The Devil's Rejects, and Black Dynamite. At a time when older ideas of subcultural belonging have become increasingly subject to nostalgia, Grindhouse Nostalgia presents an indispensable study of exploitation cinema's continuing allure, and is a bold contribution to our understanding of fandom, taste politics, film distribution, and home video.Key Features: The first in-depth critical examination of the recent and ongoing "retrosploitation" cycle *Expands a growing body of research on the importance of home video as containers of material history *Unites cultural memory studies and fan studies in productive ways for understanding a broad range of fan investments *Restores questions of affect and non-ironic reception to understandings of exploitation cinema's continuing appeal

Political Animals: The New Feminist Cinema

Abstract: Feminist filmmakers are hitting the headlines. The last decade has witnessed: the first Best Director Academy Award won by a woman; female filmmakers reviving, or starting, careers via analogue and digital television; women filmmakers emerging from Saudi Arabia, Palestine, Pakistan, South Korea, Paraguay, Peru, Burkina Faso, Kenya and The Cree Nation; a bold emergent trans cinema; feminist porn screened at public festivals; Sweden's A-Markt for films that pass the Bechdel Test; and Pussy Riot's online videos sending shockwaves around the world. A new generation of feminist filmmakers, curators and critics is not only influencing contemporary debates on gender and sexuality, but starting to change cinema itself, calling for a film world that is intersectional, sustainable, family-friendly and far-reaching. Political Animals argues that, forty years since Laura Mulvey's seminal essay 'Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema' identified the urgent need for a feminist counter-cinema, this promise seems to be on the point of fulfilment. Forty years of a transnational, trans-generational cinema has given rise to conversations between the work of now well-established filmmakers such as Abigail Child, Sally Potter and Agnes Varda, twenty-first century auteurs including Kelly Reichardt and Lucretia Martel, and emerging directors such as Sandrine Bonnaire, Shonali Bose, Zeina Daccache, and Hana Makhmalbaf. A new and diverse generation of British independent filmmakers such as Franny Armstrong, Andrea Arnold, Amma Asante, Clio Barnard, Tina Gharavi, Sally El Hoseini, Carol Morley, Samantha Morton, Penny Woolcock, and Campbell X join a worldwide dialogue between filmmakers and viewers hungry for a new and informed point of view. Lovely, vigorous and brave, the new feminist cinema is a political animal that refuses to be domesticated by the persistence of everyday sexism, striking out boldly to claim the public sphere as its own.

The Comic Book Film Adaptation: Exploring Modern Hollywood's Leading Genre

Abstract: In the summer of 2000 X-Men surpassed all box office expectations and ushered in an era of unprecedented production of comic book film adaptations. This trend, now in its second decade, has blossomed into Hollywood's leading genre. From superheroes to Spartan warriors, The Comic Book Film Adaptation offers the first dedicated study to examine how comic books moved from the fringes of popular culture to the center of mainstream film production. Through in-depth analysis, industry interviews, and audience research, this book charts the cause-and-effect of this influential trend. It considers the cultural traumas, business demands, and digital possibilities that Hollywood faced at the dawn of the twenty-first century. The industry managed to meet these challenges by exploiting comics and their existing audiences. However, studios were caught off-guard when these comic book fans, empowered by digital media, began to influence the success of these adaptations. Nonetheless, filmmakers soon developed strategies to take advantage of this intense fanbase, while codifying the trend into a more lucrative genre, the comic book movie, which appealed to an even wider audience. Central to this vibrant trend is a comic aesthetic in which filmmakers utilize digital filmmaking technologies to engage with the language and conventions of comics like never before. The Comic Book Film Adaptation explores this unique moment in which cinema is stimulated, challenged, and enriched by the once-dismissed medium of comics.

Cinema Approaching Reality: Locating Chinese Film Theory

Abstract: Contents Acknowledgments Note on Transliteration Introduction 1. Approaching Reality: Chinese Ontology and the Potentiality of Time 2. Cinema of Thought: Directed Consciousness in Chinese Marxist Film Theory 3. Soft Film Theory: Lifein All Its Presence and Concreteness 4. Fey Mou: The Presence of an Absence 5. Cinema of Ideation, Cinema of Play: The Early Cantonese Sound Film Conclusion Notes Filmography Index

Audio-description reloaded: An analysis of visual scenes in 2012 and Hero

Abstract: This article explores whether the so-called new “cinema of attractions”, with its supposed focus on visual effects to the detriment of storytelling, requires a specific approach to audio-description (AD). After some thoughts on film narrative in this type of cinema and the way in which it incorporates special effects, selected scenes with AD from two feature films, 2012 (directed by Emmerich) and Hero (directed by Zhang Yimou), are analysed. 2012 is a disaster movie aiming to thrill the audience with action. Hero is an equally visual movie but its imagery has an aesthetic purpose. The analysis investigates how space, time and action are treated in the films and the ADs, and how the information is presented in terms of focalization, timing and phrasing. The results suggest that effect-driven narratives require carefully timed and phrased ADs that devote much attention to the prosody of the AD script, its interaction with sounds and the use of metaphor.