The Cinema Book is widely recognised as the ultimate guide to cinema. Authoritative and comprehensive, the third edition has been extensively revised, updated and expanded in response to developments in cinema and cinema studies. Lavishly illustrated in colour, this edition features a wealth of exciting new sections and in-depth case studies. Sections address Hollywood and other World cinema histories, key genres in both fiction and non-fiction film, issues such as stars, technology and authorship, and major theoretical approaches to understanding film.
This much-anticipated new edition builds upon the achievements of the first, taking stock of the many recent exciting developments in the field while retaining the historical coverage and depth of the original. The text is supported by over 250 illustrations, selected reading guides, and full bibliographies. Another unique feature of T"he Cinema Book "is its fifty-five sidebars that support the text with in-depth analysis and relevant information on over 350 films. This new edition will consolidate "The Cinema Book"'s position as the leading teaching aid in the field.
The new edition of The British Cinema Book has been thoroughly revised and updated to provide a comprehensive introduction to the major periods, genres, studios, film-makers and debates in British cinema from the 1890s to the present. The book has five sections, addressing debates and controversies; industry, genre and representation; British cinema 1895-1939; British cinema from World War II to the 1970s, and contemporary British cinema. Within these sections, leading scholars and critics address a wide range of issues and topics, including British cinema as a 'national' cinema; its complex relationship with Hollywood; film censorship; key British genres such as horror, comedy and costume film; the work of directors including Alfred Hitchcock, Anthony Asquith, Alexander Mackendrick, Michael Powell, Lindsay Anderson, Ken Russell and Mike Leigh; studios such as Gainsborough, Ealing, Rank and Gaumont, and recent signs of hope for the British film industry, such as the rebirth of the low-budget British horror picture, and the emergence of a British Asian cinema. Discussions are illustrated with case studies of key films, many of which are new to this edition, including Piccadilly (1929) It Always Rains on Sunday (1947), The Ladykillers (1955), This Sporting Life (1963), The Devils (1971), Withnail and I (1986), Bend it Like Beckham (2002) and Control (2007), and with over 100 images from the BFI's collection. The Editor: Robert Murphy is Professor in Film Studies at De Montfort University and has written and edited a number of books on British cinema, including British Cinema and the Second World War (2000) and Directors in British and Irish Cinema (2006). The contributors: Ian Aitken, Charles Barr, Geoff Brown, William Brown, Stella Bruzzi, Jon Burrows, James Chapman, Steve Chibnall, Pamela Church Gibson, Ian Conrich, Richard Dacre, Raymond Durgnat, Allen Eyles, Christine Geraghty, Christine Gledhill, Kevin Gough-Yates, Sheldon Hall, Benjamin Halligan, Sue Harper, Erik Hedling, Andrew Hill, John Hill, Peter Hutchings, Nick James, Marcia Landy, Barbara Korte, Alan Lovell, Brian McFarlane, Martin McLoone, Andrew Moor, Robert Murphy, Lawrence Napper, Michael O'Pray, Jim Pines, Vincent Porter, Tim Pulleine, Jeffrey Richards, James C. Robertson, Tom Ryall, Justin Smith, Andrew Spicer, Claudia Sternberg, Sarah Street, Melanie Williams and Linda Wood.
This thoroughly revised and expanded edition of a key textbook offers an innovative and accessible account of the richness and diversity of French film history and culture from the 1890s to the present day. The contributors, who include leading historians and film scholars, provide an indispensable introduction to key topics and debates in French film history. Each chronological section addresses seven key themes – people, business, technology, forms, representations, spectators and debates, providing an essential overview of the cinema industry, the people who worked in it, including technicians and actors as well as directors, and the culture of cinema going in France from the beginnings of cinema to the contemporary period.
This timely volume explores the massively popular cinema of writer-director James Cameron. It couches Cameron's films within the evolving generic traditions of science fiction, melodrama, and the cinema of spectacle. The book also considers Cameron's engagement with the aesthetic of visual effects and the 'now' technology of performance-capture which is arguably moving a certain kind of event-movie cinema from photography to something more akin to painting. This book is explicit in presenting Cameron as an authentic auteur, and each chapter is dedicated to a single film in his body of work, from The Terminator to Avatar. Space is also given to discussion of Strange Days as well as his short films and documentary works.
This comprehensive study of prolific British filmmaker Michael Winterbottom explores the thematic, stylistic, and intellectual consistencies running through his eclectic and controversial body of work. Within an overview of his career, this volume undertakes a close analysis of fifteen of Winterbottom's films ranging from TV dramas to transnational coproductions featuring Hollywood stars, and from documentaries to costume films. This analysis is grounded in a consideration of Winterbottom's collaborative working practices, the political and cultural contexts of the work, and its critical reception. Arguing that Winterbottom's work comprises a 'cinema of borders', it examines its treatment of sexuality, class, ethnicity, national and international politics. The book argues that what is evident in Winterbottom's oeuvre is the search for an adequate means of narrating inequality, injustice, and violence. Drawing out the tensions, contradictions, and border-crossing strategies of these films, The Cinema of Michael Winterbottom highlights the complex political aesthetic that structures the work of this singular director.
For more than half a century now, scholars have debated over what comprises a 'genuinely' religious film-one that evinces an 'authentic' manifestation of the sacred. Often these scholars do so by pitting the 'successful' films against those which propagate an inauthentic spiritual experience-with the biblical spectacular serving as their most notorious candidate. This book argues that what makes a filmic manifestation of the sacred true or authentic may say more about a spectator or critic's particular way of knowing, as influenced by alphabetic literacy, than it does about the aesthetic or philosophical-and sometimes even faith-based-dimensions of the sacred onscreen. Engaging with everything from Hollywood religious spectaculars, Hindu mythologicals, and an international array of films revered for their 'transcendental style,' The Sacred and the Cinema unveils the epistemic pressures at the heart of engaging with the sacred onscreen. The book also provides a valuable summation of the history of the sacred as a field of study, particularly as that field intersects with film.
Ranging from Bollywood superstar Amitabh Bachchan to Quentin Tarantino, and from auteur theory to the Hollywood Blockbuster, Cinema Studies: The Key Concepts has firmly established itself as the essential guide for anyone interested in film. Covering an impressive range of key genres, movements, theories and production terms, this third edition includes a fully updated bibliography, and has been revised and expanded to include new topical entries such as: female masquerade silent cinema exploitation cinema art direction national cinema political cinema. Authoritative yet accessible, Cinema Studies: The Key Concepts is undoubtedly a must-have guide to what is both a fascinating area of study and arguably the greatest art form of modern times.
This collection brings together international experts on the cinema of migration and diaspora in postcolonial and postnational Europe. It offers a comprehensive theoretical and analytical discussion of a highly productive creative sector and documents the spectrum of this area of exploration in European, transnational and World Cinema studies.
