Love in Contemporary Cinema

Love in Contemporary Cinema

Author: Benjamín de la Pava Vélez

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2021-07-18

Total Pages: 246

ISBN-13: 1000409481

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This book looks at social representations of romantic love as portrayed in films and interpreted by their audiences, using cinema as a means for analysing the state of romantic love today, and the touchpoints and disconnects between its representation on screen and the lived experiences of film audiences. Through a media sociology lens, the book draws on analysis of five contemporary romantic films and the meanings brought to and made from them by socially and economically diverse audiences. Employing both textual analysis and primary interviews, the book contests overly pessimistic perspectives on modern intimacy while acknowledging and exploring some of the challenges, woes and changes that romantic love is experiencing in late capitalism. Concerns and debates over monogamy, the teleology romantic love and the division of labour in relationships percolate in this book’s examination of how audiences’ responses to these films reflect their attitudes and expectations regarding romantic love. This book will have great resonance for scholars and students of not just film studies and media studies, but also audience studies, media sociology, philosophy, gender and sexuality.


Falling in Love Again

Falling in Love Again

Author: Abbott And Deborah Jermyn (Eds) Stacey

Publisher: I. B. Tauris

Published: 2009-01-19

Total Pages: 252

ISBN-13: 9786612619144

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This anthology updates, revisits and reflects on today's romantic comedies. It considers the films and issues that illustrate the diversity of the genre, from the queer pleasures of 'Miss Congeniality' and the rom-com persona of J-Lo and Bill Murray to high school prom-coms and indie romantic comedies.


Contemporary Hollywood Cinema

Contemporary Hollywood Cinema

Author: STEVE NEALE

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-04-15

Total Pages: 361

ISBN-13: 1135108765

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A comprehensive overview of the film industry in Hollywood today, Contemporary Hollywood Cinema brings together leading international cinema scholars to explore the technology, institutions, film makers and movies of contemporary American film making.


New Blood in Contemporary Cinema

New Blood in Contemporary Cinema

Author: Pisters Patricia Pisters

Publisher: Edinburgh University Press

Published: 2020-08-18

Total Pages: 349

ISBN-13: 1474466982

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Since the turn of the millennium, a growing number of female filmmakers have appropriated the aesthetics of horror for their films. In this book, Patricia Pisters investigates contemporary women directors such as Ngozi Onwurah, Claire Denis, Lucile Hadzihalilovic and Ana Lily Amirpour, who put 'a poetics of horror' to new use in their work, expanding the range of gendered and racialised perspectives in the horror genre. Exploring themes such as rage, trauma, sexuality, family ties and politics, New Blood in Contemporary Cinema takes on avenging women, bloody vampires, lustful witches, scary mothers, terrifying offspring and female Frankensteins. By following a red trail of blood, the book illuminates a new generation of women directors who have enlarged the general scope and stretched the emotional spectrum of the genre.


Stillness of Solitude

Stillness of Solitude

Author: Michelle Devereaux

Publisher: Edinburgh University Press

Published: 2019-07-03

Total Pages: 224

ISBN-13: 147444606X

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Michelle Devereaux explores the underlying philosophical and aesthetic Romantic connections between a selection of seven films from four popular filmmakers: Wes Anderson, Sofia Coppola, Spike Jonze and Charlie Kaufman.


Lacan and Contemporary Film

Lacan and Contemporary Film

Author: Todd Mcgowan

Publisher: Other Press, LLC

Published: 2020-09-08

Total Pages: 259

ISBN-13: 1635421063

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This unique volume collects a series of essays that link new developments in Lacanian psychoanalytic theory and recent trends in contemporary cinema. Though Lacanian theory has long had a privileged place in the analysis of film, film theory has tended to ignore some of Lacan's most important ideas. As a result, Lacanian film theory has never properly integrated the disruptive and troubling aspects of the filmic experience that result from the encounter with the Real that this experience makes possible. Many contemporary theorists emphasize the importance of the encounter with the Real in Lacan's thought, but rarely in discussions of film. By bringing the encounter with the Real into the dialogue of film theory, the contributors to this volume present a new version of Lacan to the world of film studies. These essays bring this rediscovered Lacan to bear on contemporary cinema through analysis of a wide variety of films, including Memento, Eyes Wide Shut, Breaking the Waves, and Fight Club. The films discussed here demand a turn to Lacanian theory because they emphasize the disruptive role of the Real and of jouissance in the experience of the human subject. There is a growing number of films in contemporary cinema that speak to film's power to challenge and disturb the complacency of spectators, and the essays in Lacan and Contemporary Film analyze some of these films and bring their power to light. Because of its dual focus on developments in Lacanian theory and in contemporary film, this collection serves as both an accessible introduction to current Lacanian film theory and an introduction to the study of contemporary cinema. Each essay provides an accessible, jargon-free analysis of one or more important films, and at the same time, each explains and utilizes key concepts of Lacanian theory. The collection stages an encounter between Lacanian theory and contemporary cinema, and the result is the enrichment of both.


Contemporary Cinema and 'Old Age'

Contemporary Cinema and 'Old Age'

Author: Josephine Dolan

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2018-02-06

Total Pages: 261

ISBN-13: 1137584025

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This book is the first to explore ‘old age’ in cinema at the intersection of gender, ageing, celebrity and genre studies. It takes its cue from the dual meanings of ‘silvering’ – economics and ageing – and explores shifting formulations of ‘old age’ and gender in contemporary cinema. Broad in its scope, the book establishes the importance of silver audiences to the survival of cinema exhibition while also forging connections between the pleasures of ‘old age’ films, consumer culture, the ‘economy of celebrity’ and the gendered silvering of stardom. The chapters examine gendered genres such as romantic comedies, action and heist movies, the prosthetics of costume, and CGI enabled age transformations. Through this analysis, Josephine Dolan teases out the different meanings of ageing masculinity and femininity offered in contemporary cinema. She identifies ageing femininity as the pathologised target of rejuvenation while masculine ageing is seen to enhance an enduring youthfulness. This book has interdisciplinary appeal and will engage scholars interested in ‘old age’ and gender representations in contemporary cinema.


Masculinity in the Contemporary Romantic Comedy

Masculinity in the Contemporary Romantic Comedy

Author: John Alberti

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-09-11

Total Pages: 140

ISBN-13: 1136222898

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This volume addresses the growing obsolescence of traditional constructions of masculine identity in popular romantic comedies by proposing an approach that combines gender and genre theory to examine the ongoing radical reconstruction of gender roles in these films. Alberti creates a unified theory of gender role change in the movies that combines the insights of both poststructuralist gender and narrative genre theory, avoiding binary approaches to the study of gender representation. He establishes the current "crises" in both gender representation and genre development within romantic comedies as examples of experimentation and change towards narratives that feature more egalitarian and less essentialist constructions of gender.


Love in Motion

Love in Motion

Author: Reidar Due

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2013-10-22

Total Pages: 193

ISBN-13: 0231167326

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This is a book about how film encountered love in the course of its history. It is also a book about the philosophy of love. Since Plato, erotic love has been praised for leading the soul to knowledge. The vast tradition of poetry devoted to love has emphasized that love is a feeling. Love in Motion presents a new metaphysics and ontology of love as a reciprocal erotic relationship. The book argues that film has been particularly well suited for depicting love in this way, in virtue of its special narrative language. This is a language of expression that has developed in the course of film history. The book spans this history from early silent directors such as Joseph von Sternberg to contemporary filmmakers like Sophia Coppola. At the centre of this study is a comparison between Classical French and American love films of the forties and a series of modernist films by Luis Buñuel, François Truffaut and Wong Kar Wai.


Contemporary Cinema and Neoliberal Ideology

Contemporary Cinema and Neoliberal Ideology

Author: Ewa Mazierska

Publisher:

Published: 2018

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781138235748

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In this edited collection, an international ensemble of scholars examine what contemporary cinema tells us about neoliberal capitalism and cinema, exploring whether filmmakers are able to imagine progressive alternatives under capitalist conditions. Individual contributions discuss filmmaking practices, film distribution, textual characteristics and the reception of films made in different parts of the world. They engage with topics such as class struggle, debt, multiculturalism and the effect of neoliberalism on love and sexual behaviour. Written in accessible, jargon-free language, Contemporary Cinema and Neoliberal Ideology is an essential text for those interested in political filmmaking and the political meanings of films.