Ambiguity and Film Criticism

Ambiguity and Film Criticism

Author: Hoi Lun Law

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2021-02-02

Total Pages: 190

ISBN-13: 3030629457

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This book defends an account of ambiguity which illuminates the aesthetic possibilities of film and the nature of film criticism. Ambiguity typically describes the condition of multiple meanings. But we can find multiple meanings in what appears unambiguous to us. So, what makes ambiguity ambiguous? This study argues that a sense of uncertainty is vital to the concept. Ambiguity is what presses us to inquire into our puzzlement over a movie, to persistently ask “why is it as it is?” Notably, this account of the concept is also an account of its criticism. It recognises that a satisfying assessment of what is ambiguous involves both our reason and doubt; that is, reason and doubt can work together in our practice of reading. This book, then, considers ambiguity as a form of reasonable doubt, one that invites us to reflect on our critical efforts, rethinking the operation of film criticism.


Bernardo Bertolucci

Bernardo Bertolucci

Author: Claretta Tonetti

Publisher: Macmillan Reference USA

Published: 1995

Total Pages: 312

ISBN-13:

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In 1962, the year in which he directed his first film The Grim Reaper, Bernado Bertolucci published a book of poetry entitled In cerca del mistero (In Search of Mystery) - a title which characterizes his entire cinematic work. In this study, Claretta Tonetti recognizes that Bertolucci search for knowledge is never dogmatic, and that he never claims to have all the answers, aesthetically or otherwise. The open-ended quality of his films, based on his own admitted difficulty to finish, bears witness to this. Instead, Bertolucci allows the audience to take part in the director's creative process, one that - like life itself - is ever evolving.


Fairy Tale Films

Fairy Tale Films

Author: Pauline Greenhill

Publisher: University Press of Colorado

Published: 2010-08-06

Total Pages: 452

ISBN-13: 0874217822

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This ISBN refers to the ebook edition of this text, available directly from the publisher. It has erroneously been listed as paperback by some online vendors. The true paperback edition is indeed available at online vendors. Paste this ISBN into the search box: 9780874217810. In this, the first collection of essays to address the development of fairy tale film as a genre, Pauline Greenhill and Sidney Eve Matrix stress, "the mirror of fairy-tale film reflects not so much what its audience members actually are but how they see themselves and their potential to develop (or, likewise, to regress)." As Jack Zipes says further in the foreword, “Folk and fairy tales pervade our lives constantly through television soap operas and commercials, in comic books and cartoons, in school plays and storytelling performances, in our superstitions and prayers for miracles, and in our dreams and daydreams. The artistic re-creations of fairy-tale plots and characters in film—the parodies, the aesthetic experimentation, and the mixing of genres to engender new insights into art and life— mirror possibilities of estranging ourselves from designated roles, along with the conventional patterns of the classical tales.” Here, scholars from film, folklore, and cultural studies move discussion beyond the well-known Disney movies to the many other filmic adaptations of fairy tales and to the widespread use of fairy tale tropes, themes, and motifs in cinema.


Gilles Deleuze and Film Criticism

Gilles Deleuze and Film Criticism

Author: Dominic Lash

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2023-08-07

Total Pages: 226

ISBN-13: 3031333055

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This book is the first collection of essays to offer detailed examinations of the role that close attention to individual films plays in the philosopher Gilles Deleuze’s work on cinema. In the last two decades, Deleuze's two books on film have had an enormous influence on Film Studies, profoundly affecting thinking about movement, time, history, and other topics. Theoretically ambitious and philosophically rich but clearly written by a broad range of established and emerging international film scholars, the chapters in this volume will both contribute to, and in places challenge, the vibrant field of Deleuzian film studies. Topics covered range from the relationship of Deleuze to film criticism; the role of theories of movement; and studies of works by major filmmakers including Federico Fellini, Werner Herzog, Vincente Minnelli, and Orson Welles. This book will be of interest not only to specialists in Deleuze but to anybody engaged with the close study of film and its philosophical ramifications.


Ambiguous Cinema

Ambiguous Cinema

Author: Kelli Fuery

Publisher: EUP

Published: 2022

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781399504263

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Simone de Beauvoir's notion of ambiguity became a cornerstone of her philosophy and influenced a radical rethinking of freedom well into the twenty-first century. In Ambiguous Cinema, Fuery examines Beauvoir's notion of ambiguity in relation to film experience, exploring both the legacies and limits of her existentialist ethics through a range of films by independent women filmmakers, including Joanna Hogg, Liliana Cavani, Debra Granik, Cheryl Dunye, Claire Denis, Lucrecia Martel, Lynne Ramsay and Céline Sciamma. In doing so, Fuery deftly demonstrates the currency and relevancy of Beauvoir's ideas to contemporary debates in film-philosophy and feminist thought by examining how these women filmmakers navigate turbulent themes such as moral choice, power, adolescence, love, trauma and motherhood. Reimagining Beauvoir's idea of ambiguity within the context of film studies, Fuery asks that we confront and embrace difficult emotional situations so that we might realise an authentic, if indeterminate, freedom through our cinematic experiences.


The Language and Style of Film Criticism

The Language and Style of Film Criticism

Author: Andrew Klevan

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2011-04-26

Total Pages: 244

ISBN-13: 1136728287

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The Language and Style of Film Criticism brings together original essays from an international range of academics and film critics highlighting the achievements, complexities and potential of film criticism. In recent years, in contrast to the theoretical, historical and cultural study of film, film criticism has been relatively marginalised, especially within the academy. This book highlights the distinctiveness of film criticism and addresses ways in which it can take a more central place within the academy and develop in dynamic ways outside it. The Language and Style of Film Criticism is essential reading for academics, teachers, students and journalists who wish to understand and appreciate the language and style of film criticism.


Issues in Feminist Film Criticism

Issues in Feminist Film Criticism

Author: Patricia Erens

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 1990

Total Pages: 492

ISBN-13: 9780253206107

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"This anthology makes it abundantly clear that feminist film criticism is flourishing and has developed dramatically since its inception in the early 1970s." —Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism Erens brings together a wide variety of writings and methodologies by U.S. and British feminist film scholars. The twenty-seven essays represent some of the most influential work on Hollywood film, women's cinema, and documentary filmmaking to appear during the past decade and beyond. Contributors include Lucie Arbuthnot, Linda Artel, Pam Cook, Teresa de Lauretis, Mary Ann Doane, Elizabeth Ellsworth, Lucy Fischer, Jane Gaines, Mary C. Gentile, Bette Gordon, Florence Jacobowitz, Claire Johnston, E. Ann Kaplan, Annette Kuhn, Julia Lesage, Judith Mayne, Sonya Michel, Tania Modleski, Laura Mulvey, B. Ruby Rich, Gail Seneca, Kaja Silverman, Lori Spring, Jackie Stacey, Maureen Turim, Diane Waldman, Susan Wengraf, Linda Williams, and Robin Wood.


Secrets of Cinema

Secrets of Cinema

Author: Daniel Kieckhefer

Publisher:

Published: 2020-07

Total Pages: 652

ISBN-13: 9781680534931

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"This is a survey of 100 influential films, told from an analytical perspective"--


After Authority

After Authority

Author: Kalling Heck

Publisher: Rutgers University Press

Published: 2020-02-14

Total Pages: 180

ISBN-13: 1978807007

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After Authority explores the tendency in art cinema to respond to political transition by turning to ambiguity, a system that ideally stems the reemergence of authoritarian logics in art and elsewhere. By comparing films from Italy, Hungary, South Korea, and the United States, this book contends that the aesthetic tradition of ambiguity in art cinema can be traced to post-authoritarian conditions and that it is in the context of a transition away from authoritarianism where art cinema aesthetics become legible. Art cinema, then, can be seen as a mode of cinematic practice that is at its core political, as its constitutive ambiguity finds its roots in the rejection of centralized and hierarchical configurations of authority. Ultimately, After Authority proposes a history of art cinema predicated on the potentials, possibilities, and politics of ambiguity.