Seoul Searching (e-book) by
Seoul Searching is a collection of fourteen provocative essays about contemporary South Korean cinema, the most productive and dynamic cinema in Asia. Examining the three dominant genres that have led Korean film to international acclaim melodramas, big-budget action blockbusters, and youth films the contributors look at Korean cinema as industry, art form, and cultural product, and engage cinema s role in the formation of Korean identities. Committed to approaching Korean cinema within its cultural contexts, the contributors analyze feature-length films and documentaries as well as industry structures and governmental policies in relation to transnational reception, marketing, modes of production, aesthetics, and other forms of popular culture. An interdisciplinary text, Seoul Searching provides an original contribution to film studies and expands the developing area of Korean studies.
Bombay Before Bollywood (e-book) by
Traces the development of Indian cinema from the 1920s to the mid-1990s, before "Bollywood" erupted onto the world stage.
Separate Cinema by
This magnificent volume is a celebration of the first 100 years of Black film poster art. A visual feast, it honors the 40th anniversary of the Separate Cinema Archive, the most extensive private holdings of African-American film memorabilia in the world, containing over 35,000 authentic movie posters and photographs from over 30 countries. The book features stunning images that recount the diverse and historic journey of the Black film industry from the earliest days of Hollywood to present day. Part aesthetic, part nostalgic and wholly fascinating.
New Queer Cinema by
B. Ruby Rich designated a brand new genre, the New Queer Cinema (NQC), in her groundbreaking article in the Village Voice in 1992. This movement in film and video was intensely political and aesthetically innovative, made possible by the debut of the camcorder, and driven initially by outrage over the unchecked spread of AIDS. The genre has grown to include an entire generation of queer artists, filmmakers, and activists. As a critic, curator, journalist, and scholar, Rich has been inextricably linked to the New Queer Cinema from its inception. This volume presents her new thoughts on the topic, as well as bringing together the best of her writing on the NQC. She follows this cinematic movement from its origins in the mid-1980s all the way to the present in essays and articles directed at a range of audiences, from readers of academic journals to popular glossies and weekly newspapers. She presents her insights into such NQC pioneers as Derek Jarman and Isaac Julien and investigates such celebrated films as Go Fish, Brokeback Mountain, Itty Bitty Titty Committee, and Milk. In addition to exploring less-known films and international cinemas (including Latin American and French films and videos), she documents the more recent incarnations of the NQC on screen, on the web, and in art galleries.
Feminist Film Studies by
Feminist Film Studies is a readable, yet comprehensive textbook for introductory classes in feminist film theory and criticism. Karen Hollinger provides an accessible overview of women's representation and involvement in film, complemented by analyses of key texts that illustrate major topics in the field. Key areas include: a brief history of the development of feminist film theory the theorization of the male gaze and the female spectator women in genre films and literary adaptations the female biopic feminism and avant-garde and documentary film women as auteurs lesbian representation women in Third Cinema. Each chapter includes a "Films in Focus" section, which analyzes key texts related to the chapter's major topic, including examples from classical Hollywood, world cinema, and the contemporary period. This book provides students in both film and gender/women's studies with a clear introduction to the field of feminist film theory and criticism.
Tech-Noir Film by
From the postapocalyptic world of Blade Runner to theJames Cameron mega-hit Terminator, tech-noir has emerged as a distinct genre, with roots in both the Promethean myth and the earlier popular traditions of gothic, detective, and science fiction. In this new volume, many well-known film and literary works—including The Matrix, RoboCop, and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein—are discussed with reference to their relationship to tech-noir and one another. Featuring an extensive, clearly indexed filmography, Tech-Noir Film will be of great interest to anyone wishing to learn more about the development of this new and highly innovative genre.
Looking for the Other by
What happens when white people look at non-whites? What happens when the gaze is returned? Looking for the Other responds to criticisms leveled at white feminist film theory of the 1970s and 1980s for its neglect of issues to do with race. It focuses attention on the male gaze across cultures, as illustrated by women filmmakers of color whose films deal with travel. Looking relations are determined by history, tradition, myth; by national identity, power hierarchies, politics, economics, geographical and other environment. Travel implicitly involves looking at, and looking relations with, peoples different from oneself. Featured films include Birth of a Nation, The Cat People, Home of the Brave, Black Narcissus, Chocolat, and Warrior Marks. Featured filmmakers include D.W.Griffith, Jacques Tourneur, Michael Powell, Julie Dash, Pratibha Parmar, Trinh T. Min-ha, and Claire Denis.
Theories of Authorship by 
Italian Giallo in Film and Television by 
Girls Will Be Boys by
Marlene Dietrich, Greta Garbo, and Katharine Hepburn all made lasting impressions with the cinematic cross-dressing they performed onscreen. What few modern viewers realize, however, is that these seemingly daring performances of the 1930s actually came at the tail end of a long wave of gender-bending films that included more than 400 movies featuring women dressed as men. Laura Horak spent a decade scouring film archives worldwide, looking at American films made between 1908 and 1934, and what she discovered could revolutionize our understanding of gender roles in the early twentieth century. Questioning the assumption that cross-dressing women were automatically viewed as transgressive, she finds that these figures were popularly regarded as wholesome and regularly appeared onscreen in the 1910s, thus lending greater respectability to the fledgling film industry. Horak also explores how and why this perception of cross-dressed women began to change in the 1920s and early 1930s, examining how cinema played a pivotal part in the representation of lesbian identity. Girls Will Be Boys excavates a rich history of gender-bending film roles, enabling readers to appreciate the wide array of masculinities that these actresses performed--from sentimental boyhood to rugged virility to gentlemanly refinement. Taking us on a guided tour through a treasure-trove of vintage images, Girls Will Be Boys helps us view the histories of gender, sexuality, and film through fresh eyes.
L.A. Private Eyes by
L.A. Private Eyes examines the tradition of the private eye as it evolves in films, books, and television shows set in Los Angeles from the 1930's through the present day. It takes a closer look at narratives--both on screen and on the printed page--in which detectives travel the streets of Los Angeles, uncovering corruption, moral ambiguity, and greed with the conviction of urban cowboys, while always ultimately finding truth and redemption. With a review of Los Angeles history, crime stories, and film noir, L.A. Private Eyes explores the metamorphosis of the solitary detective figure and the many facets of the genre itself, from noir to mystery, on the screen. While the conventions of the genre may have remained consistent and recognizable, the points where they evolve illuminate much about our changing gender and power roles. Watch a video of the author speaking about this topic: https://goo.gl/Xr9RFD And also: https://www.dropbox.com/s/mkqw3mplruf7jje/Detective%20Talk%20Full.mp4?dl=0 (https://www.dropbox.com/s/mkqw3mplruf7jje/Detective%20Talk%20Full.mp4?dl=0)
Cinematic Terror by
Cinematic Terror takes a uniquely long view of filmmakers' depiction of terrorism, examining how cinema has been a site of intense conflict between paramilitaries, state authorities and censors for well over a century. In the process, it takes us on a journey from the first Age of Terror that helped trigger World War One to the Global War on Terror that divides countries and families today. Tony Shaw looks beyond Hollywood to pinpoint important trends in the ways that film industries across Europe, North and South America, Asia, Africa and the Middle East have defined terrorism down the decades. Drawing on a vast array of studio archives, government documentation, personal interviews and box office records, Shaw examines the mechanics of cinematic terrorism and challenges assumptions about the links between political violence and propaganda.
Buddhism and American Cinema
Backwards and in Heels by 
Cinematic Style by 
Dangerous Men by 
The Rough Guide to Cult Movies by 
Laughing Hysterically by 
Cinematic Cuts (e-book) by
Explores the philosophical, literary, and psychoanalytic significance of film endings.
Postmodern Hollywood (e-book) by
Postmodernism is essential to American culture today. We can see its manifestations on billboards and on television; we can hear its tone on the radio and in everyday conversation; and we can even sense its outlook in how we live our lives. This volume presents an accessible and brief summary of postmodernism, especially as it pertains to American cinema-one of the central players and leading lights in the development of this cultural attitude. Four distinct sections investigate postmodernist fragmentation, musical use, and pastiches of previous television shows and cinematic genres in such films as Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction, David Lynch's Mulholland Drive, and Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette. Discussions of the phenomenon of postmodernism have established certain characteristics that are typical of postmodernist culture. These characteristics include formal fragmentation, a tendency toward a particular kind of nostalgia, and the use of materials and styles borrowed from previous films and other cultural products. This volume presents a brief summary of the characteristics that have typically been associated with postmodernism, especially as they pertain to film. It illustrates those characteristics with discussions of a wide variety of American films of the past thirty years, noting how those films participate in the phenomenon of postmodernism. Emphasis is on popular, commercial films, rather than the more esoteric, experimental products that have sometimes been associated with postmodern film. Booker's work contains detailed discussions of a wide variety of American films--including classics like Sullivan's Travels and The Last Picture Show, and recent successes such as Scream, Natural Born Killers, Memento, Moulin Rouge, and Fight Club--noting how these films participate in the phenomenon of postmodernism, and how they have helped to shape its current form.
What Is Cinema? by
André Bazin's What Is Cinema? (volumes I and II) have been classics of film studies for as long as they've been available and are considered the gold standard in the field of film criticism. Although Bazin made no films, his name has been one of the most important in French cinema since World War II. He was co-founder of the influential Cahiers du Cinéma, which under his leadership became one of the world's most distinguished publications. Championing the films of Jean Renoir (who contributed a short foreword to Volume I), Orson Welles, and Roberto Rossellini, he became the protégé of François Truffaut, who honors him touchingly in his forword to Volume II. This new edition includes graceful forewords to each volume by Bazin scholar and biographer Dudley Andrew, who reconsiders Bazin and his place in contemporary film study. The essays themselves are erudite but always accessible, intellectual, and stimulating. As Renoir puts it, the essays of Bazin "will survive even if the cinema does not."
Film/Genre by
This text seeks to revise notions of film genre. It connects the roles played by industry critics and audiences in making and re-making genre.
Film Theory by
This book is a lively and provoking introduction to film theory. Suitable for students from any discipline, it is particularly aimed at those studying film and literature, providing a depth of reference not generally available outside the field of film studies.
Theory of Film by
Siegfried Kracauer's classic study, originally published in 1960, explores the distinctive qualities of the cinematic medium. The book takes its place alongside works in classical film theory by such figures as Béla Balázs, Rudolf Arnheim, and André Bazin, among others, and has met with much critical dispute. In this new edition, Miriam Bratu Hansen, examining the book in the context of Kracauer's extensive film criticism from the 1920s, provides a framework for appreciating the significance of Theory of Film for contemporary film theory.
Pretty: film and the decorative image by
Film culture often rejects visually rich images, treating simplicity, austerity, or even ugliness as the more provocative, political, and truly cinematic choice. Cinema may challenge traditional ideas of art, but its opposition to the decorative represents a long-standing Western aesthetic bias against feminine cosmetics, Oriental effeminacy, and primitive ornament. Inheriting this patriarchal, colonial perspective--which treats decorative style as foreign or sexually perverse--filmmakers, critics, and theorists have often denigrated colorful, picturesque, and richly patterned visions in cinema. Condemning the exclusion of the "pretty" from masculine film culture, Rosalind Galt reevaluates received ideas about the decorative impulse from early film criticism to classical and postclassical film theory. The pretty embodies lush visuality, dense mise-en-scène, painterly framing, and arabesque camera movements-styles increasingly central to world cinema. From European art cinema to the films of Wong Kar-wai and Santosh Sivan, from the experimental films of Derek Jarman to the popular pleasures of Moulin Rouge!, the pretty is a vital element of contemporary cinema, communicating distinct sexual and political identities. Inverting the logic of anti-pretty thought, Galt firmly establishes the decorative image as a queer aesthetic, uniquely able to figure cinema's perverse pleasures and cross-cultural encounters. Creating her own critical tapestry from perspectives in art theory, film theory, and philosophy, Galt reclaims prettiness as a radically transgressive style, shimmering with threads of political agency.
Film Theory and Criticism by
Since publication of the first edition in 1974, Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen's Film Theory and Criticism has been the most widely used and cited anthology of critical writings about film. Now in its seventh edition, this landmark text continues to offer outstanding coverage of more than a century of thought and writing about the movies. Incorporating classic texts by pioneers in film theory--including Rudolf Arnheim, Siegfried Kracauer, and André Bazin--and cutting-edge essays by such contemporary scholars as David Bordwell, Tania Modleski, Thomas Schatz, and Richard Dyer, the book examines both historical and theoretical viewpoints on the subject. Building upon the wide range of selections and the extensive historical coverage that marked previous editions, this new compilation stretches from the earliest attempts to define the cinema to the most recent efforts to place film in the contexts of psychology, sociology, and philosophy, and to explore issues of gender and race. Reorganized into eight sections--each comprising the major fields of critical controversy and analysis--this new edition features reformulated introductions and biographical headnotes that contextualize the readings, making the text more accessible than ever to students, film enthusiasts, and general readers alike. The seventh edition also integrates exciting new material on feminist theory, queer cinema, and global cinema, as well as a new section, "Digitization and Globalization," which engages important recent developments in technology and world cinema. A wide-ranging critical and historical survey, Film Theory and Criticism remains the leading text for undergraduate courses in film theory. It is also ideal for graduate courses in film theory and criticism. ABOUT THE EDITORS Leo Braudy is University Professor and Bing Professor of English at the University of Southern California. Among other books, he is author of Native Informant: Essays on Film, Fiction, and Popular Culture (OUP, 1991), The Frenzy of Renown: Fame and Its History (OUP, 1986), and most recently, From Chivalry to Terrorism: War and the Changing Nature of Masculinity (2003). Marshall Cohen is University Professor Emeritus and Dean Emeritus of the College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences at the University of Southern California. He is coeditor, with Roger Copeland, of What Is Dance? Readings in Theory and Criticism (OUP, 1983) and founding editor of Philosophy and Public Affairs.
The Tactile Eye by
The Tactile Eye expands on phenomenological analysis and film theory in its accessible and beautifully written exploration of the visceral connection between films and their viewers. Jennifer M. Barker argues that the experience of cinema can be understood as deeply tactile--a sensuous exchange between film and viewer that goes beyond the visual and aural, gets beneath the skin, and reverberates in the body. Barker combines analysis of embodiment and phenomenological film theory to provide an expansive description of cinematic tactility. She considers feminist experimental film, early cinema, animation, and horror, as well as classic, modernist, and postmodern cinema; films from ten national cinemas; and work by Chuck Jones, Buster Keaton, the Quay Brothers, Satyajit Ray, Carolee Schneemann, and Tom Tykwer, among others.
Visual and Other Pleasures by
A new edition of Laura Mulvey's groundbreaking collection of essays, originally published in 1989. In an extensive introduction to this second edition, Mulvey looks back at the historical and personal contexts for her famous article Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema , and reassesses her theories in the light of new technologies.
For more works on film theory, search OneSearch by the term "Motion pictures Philosophy."
Colorization by 
A/V a to Z (e-book) by
Defining more than 10,000 words and phrases from everyday slang to technical terms and concepts, this dictionary of the audiovisual language embraces more than 50 subject areas within film, television, and home entertainment. It includes terms from the complete lifecycle of an audiovisual work from initial concept through commercial presentation in all the major distribution channels including theatrical exhibition, television broadcast, home entertainment, and mobile media. The dictionary definitions are augmented by more than 700 illustrations, 1,600 etymologies, and nearly 2,000 encyclopedic entries that provide illuminating anecdotes, historical perspective, and clarifying details.
100 Ideas That Changed Film (e-book) by
This inspiring book chronicles the most influential ideas that have shaped film since its inception. Entertaining and intelligent, it is both a concise history and a fascinating resource. Each idea is presented through informed text and arresting visuals paying homage to the medium's great classics. We learn why and how the ideas first evolved and what their impact has been up to the present day.
Passport to Hollywood (e-book) by
Examines popular films made in Hollywood by European directors, offering a fresh take on the much-debated issue of the "great divide" between modernism and mass culture.
Film Style and Technology by
Film Style and Technology is a history of film style and its relationship to film technology. It also includes a theory of film analysis and demonstrates this theory using the films of Max Ophuls.
A History of Film by
Substantially revised for the Seventh Edition, A History of Film is a comprehensive international survey of film from its beginnings to the present. This book highlights the contributions of major film-producing countries, significant filmmakers, and their films within social, artistic, economic, and technological contexts. This Seventh Edition incorporates major revisions designed to improve the book's focus and update its coverage.
Hollywood on the Hudson by
Richard Koszarski rewrites an important part of the history of American cinema in this book. As he reveals, many writers, producers, and directors continued to work in New York, especially if their independent vision was too big for the Hollywood production line.
Cinemas of the World: Film and Society from 1895 to the Present by
The cinema has been the pre-eminent popular art form of the 20th century. In "Cinemas of the World," James Chapman examines the relationship between film and society in the modern world: film as entertainment medium, film as a reflection of national cultures and preoccupations, film as an instrument of propaganda. He also explores two interrelated issues that have recurred throughout the history of cinema: the economic and cultural hegemony of Hollywood on the one hand, and, on the other, the attempts of film-makers elsewhere to establish indigenous national cinemas drawing on their own cultures and societies. Chapman examines the rise to dominance of Hollywood cinema in the silent and early sound periods. He discusses the characteristic themes of American movies from the Depression to the end of the Cold War especially those found in the western and "film noir" genres that are often used as vehicles for exploring issues central to us society and politics. He looks at national cinemas in various European countries in the period between the end of the First World War and the end of the Second, which all exhibit the formal and aesthetic properties of modernism. The emergence of the so-called "new cinemas" of Europe and the wider world since 1960 are also explored. "Chapman is a tough-thinking, original writer . . . an engaging, excellent piece of work." David Lancaster, "Film and History""
The Dawn of Technicolor, 1915-1935 by
Published to coincide with Technicolors centennial in 2015, The Dawn of Technicolor recounts the beginnings of one of the most widely recognized names in the American film industry. Following its incorporation in 1915, Technicolor developed a series of two-colour processes as necessary steps toward full-colour photography and printing. Despite success in the laboratory and in small-scale production, the company was plagued by repeated disappointments. With the support of patient investors and the visionary leadership of Herbert T. Kalmus, Technicolor eventually persevered against daunting odds to create the only commercially viable colour process for motion pictures. The Dawn of Technicolor investigates the vital make-or-break years, as the firm grew from a small team of exceptional engineers into a multimillion-dollar corporation. The authors chart the making of pivotal films in the process, from the troubled productions of Ben-Hur (1925) and The Mysterious Island (192629), to the early short films in Technicolors groundbreaking three-color process: Walt Disneys animated Flowers and Trees (1932) and the live-action La Cucaracha (1934). The book spotlights the talented engineers and filmmakers associated with Technicolor and the remarkable technical innovations that finally made color films practical, changing the film industry forever.
History of the American Cinema (10-volume set) by 
The Big Screen by
The Big Screentells the enthralling story of the movies: their rise and spread, their remarkable influence over us, and the technology that made the screen—smaller now, but ever more ubiquitous—as important as the images it carries. The Big Screenis not another history of the movies. Rather, it is a wide-ranging narrative about the movies and their signal role in modern life. At first, film was a waking dream, the gift of appearance delivered for a nickel to huddled masses sitting in the dark. But soon, and abruptly, movies began transforming our societies and our perceptions of the world. The celebrated film authority David Thomson takes us around the globe, through time, and across many media—moving from Eadweard Muybridge to Steve Jobs, fromSunrisetoI Love Lucy, from John Wayne to George Clooney, from television commercials to streaming video—to tell the complex, gripping, paradoxical story of the movies. He tracks the ways we were initially enchanted by movies as imitations of life—the stories, the stars, the look—and how we allowed them to show us how to live. At the same time, movies, offering a seductive escape from everyday reality and its responsibilities, have made it possible for us to evade life altogether. The entranced audience has become a model for powerless and anxiety-ridden citizens trying to pursue happiness and dodge terror by sitting quietly in a dark room. Does the big screen take us out into the world, or merely mesmerize us? That is Thomson's question in this grand adventure of a book. Books about the movies are often aimed at film buffs, but this passionate and provocative feat of storytelling is vital to anyone trying to make sense of the age of screens—the age that, more than ever, we are living in.
Hollywood's Last Golden Age by
Between 1967 and 1976 a number of extraordinary factors converged to produce an uncommonly adventurous era in the history of American film. The end of censorship, the decline of the studio system, economic changes in the industry, and demographic shifts among audiences, filmmakers, and critics created an unprecedented opportunity for a new type of Hollywood movie, one that Jonathan Kirshner identifies as the "seventies film." In Hollywood's Last Golden Age, Kirshner shows the ways in which key films from this period--including Chinatown, Five Easy Pieces, The Graduate, and Nashville, as well as underappreciated films such as The Friends of Eddie Coyle, Klute, and Night Moves--were important works of art in continuous dialogue with the political, social, personal, and philosophical issues of their times. These "seventies films" reflected the era's social and political upheavals: the civil rights movement, the domestic consequences of the Vietnam war, the sexual revolution, women's liberation, the end of the long postwar economic boom, the Shakespearean saga of the Nixon Administration and Watergate. Hollywood films, in this brief, exceptional moment, embraced a new aesthetic and a new approach to storytelling, creating self-consciously gritty, character-driven explorations of moral and narrative ambiguity. Although the rise of the blockbuster in the second half of the 1970s largely ended Hollywood's embrace of more challenging films, Kirshner argues that seventies filmmakers showed that it was possible to combine commercial entertainment with serious explorations of politics, society, and characters' interior lives.
French Cinema by
The Hollywood model of cinema as mass-market spectacle - as entertainment rather than an art - is more dominant than ever, its box-office power amounting to an effective monopoly. France has been one of the most active countries to challenge this hegemony. A key motivation has been its sense of a distinct film tradition that has always provided the most sustained alternative model to Hollywood. The respected film critic Charles Drazin has written what will become the definitive history of French cinema. Drazin examines France' s role as the inventor of cinema and its pivotal influence over the language of cinema across the past century. Along the way, he highlights the influence of Hollywood directors such as Hitchcock, Ford, and Hawks on Truffaut' s generation, as well as the impact of British directors such as Ken Loach and Mike Leigh on current filmmakers. French Cinema seeks to capture some essence of French cinema through the key personalities and episodes in its history, but it is also the story of a conflict between two traditions that continues to this day.
Colour in Early Film by
We normally think of early film as being black and white, but in truth, the first color cinematography appeared as early as the first decade of the twentieth century. In this visually stunning book, the authors present a treasure trove of early color film images from the archives of EYE Film Institute Netherlands, bringing to life their rich hues and forgotten splendor. Carefully selecting and reproducing frames from the original film of movies made before World War I, Gunning, Yumibe, Fossati, and Rosen share the images here in a full range of tone and colors. Accompanying essays discuss the history of early film and the technical processes that filmmakers employed to capture these fascinating images, while other contributions explore preservation techniques and describe the visual delights that early film has offered audiences, both then and now. Featuring three hundred color illustrations for readers to examine and enjoy, Fantasia of Color in Early Cinema will engage scholars and buffs alike.
The Black Guy Dies First by 
Forbidden Hollywood: the Pre-Code Era (1930-1934) by For more works on film history, search OneSearch by the term "Motion pictures History."
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