Sex and Film


Book Description

Sex and Film is a frank, comprehensive analysis of the cinema's love affair with the erotic. Forshaw's lively study moves from the sexual abandon of the 1930s to filmmakers' circumvention of censorship, the demolition of taboos by arthouse directors and pornographic films, and an examination of how explicit imagery invaded modern mainstream cinema.




Music for Piano and Orchestra


Book Description

Suitable for all admirers of the piano, this work brings together more than 3,000 works for piano and orchestra. It comes with a supplement containing over 200 new entries.




Revival After the Great War


Book Description

The challenges of post-war recovery from social and political reform to architectural design In the months and years immediately following the First World War, the many (European) countries that had formed its battleground were confronted with daunting challenges. These challenges varied according to the countries' earlier role and degree of involvement in the war but were without exception enormous. The contributors to this book analyse how this was not only a matter of rebuilding ravaged cities and destroyed infrastructure, but also of repairing people’s damaged bodies and upended daily lives, and rethinking and reforming societal, economic and political structures. These processes took place against the backdrop of mass mourning and remembrance, political violence and economic crisis. At the same time, the post-war tabula rasa offered many opportunities for innovation in various areas of society, from social and political reform to architectural design. The wide scope of post-war recovery and revival is reflected in the different sections of this book: rebuild, remember, repair, and reform. It offers insights into post-war revival in Western European countries such as Belgium, France, the United Kingdom, Germany, Portugal, Spain, and Italy, as well as into how their efforts were perceived outside of Europe, for instance in Argentina and the United States.




Confessions of a Literary Archaeologist


Book Description

The author recounts his experiences in building collections of rare books and manuscripts of French literature, and reveals little-known facts about French artists, composers, and writers.




Andre Bazin's New Media


Book Description

André Bazin’s writings on cinema are among the most influential reflections on the medium ever written. Even so, his critical interests ranged widely and encompassed the “new media” of the 1950s, including television, 3D film, Cinerama, and CinemaScope. Fifty-seven of his reviews and essays addressing these new technologies—their artistic potential, social influence, and relationship to existing art forms—have been translated here for the first time in English with notes and an introduction by leading Bazin authority Dudley Andrew. These essays show Bazin’s astute approach to a range of visual media and the relevance of his critical thought to our own era of new media. An exciting companion to the essential What Is Cinema? volumes, André Bazin’s New Media is excellent for classroom use and vital for anyone interested in the history of media.




Dictionary of Films


Book Description

Lists significant international films, with brief plot summaries, critical analyses, and listings of producers, directors, and actors




The False Traitor


Book Description

The nineteenth-century Métis politician and mystic Louis Riel has emerged as one of the most popular - and elusive - figures in Canadian culture. Since his hanging for treason in 1885, the self-declared David of the New World has been depicted variously as a traitor to Confederation; a French-Canadian and Catholic martyr; a bloodthirsty rebel; a pan-American liberator; a pawn of shadowy white forces; a Prairie political maverick; a First Nations hero; an alienated intellectual; a victim of Western industrial progress; and even a Father of Confederation. Albert Braz synthesizes the available material by and about Riel, including film, sculpture, and cartoons, as well as literature in French and English, and analyzes how an historical figure could be portrayed in such contradictory ways. In light of the fact that most aesthetic representations of Riel bear little resemblance not only to one another but also to their purported model, Braz suggests that they reveal less about Riel than they do about their authors and the society to which they belong. The most comprehensive treatment of the representations of Louis Riel in Canadian literature, The False Traitor will be a seminal work in the study of this popular Canadian figure.




The Getty Villa


Book Description

The original Getty Museum, housed in a replica of a Roman Villa on a site overlooking the Pacific Ocean, is one of Los Angeles's most treasured landmarks. Closed for almost ten years while renovations were made to the building and the site itself was transformed into a center for the study of antiquities and conservation, the Getty Villa is now set to open late in 2005. The Getty Villa is a lively history of the Getty Museum, its renowned antiquities collections, and its growth from a small museum in a ranch house in Malibu to its first home in a building designed to replicate what we know of the Villa dei Papiri, an ancient Roman villa partially uncovered in Herculaneum. Most engagingly, this book records the ten-year adventure in reconfiguring a beautiful, but topographically challenging, site into one that could continue to accommodate the splendid Museum building and also provide for an outdoor theater, laboratories for conservation work and research, offices for staff and visiting scholars, and an education program for adults and children. This is a story of architectural imagination, geographical challenges, and legal hurdles, all of which have resulted in a truly unique and beautiful site. The story is an enlightening and rewarding one for anyone interested in architecture and in the difficulties posed by building on a grand scale in the twenty-first century. Beautifully illustrated throughout, the book includes 250 reproductions of works of art, photographs of both the old and the new Getty Museum, site plans, and architectural elevations.




Provence and the British Imagination


Book Description

Although it resonates today with lavender fields, sunny heritage locations and the gentrified memory of Paul Cézanne’s pictorial turbulence, Provence has not always been the attractive territory of pacified leisure and festival culture. Since the seventeenth century, indeed, the region has inscribed its shifting geography, complex politics and the extraordinary diversity of its land and seascapes in the perception and imagination of British visitors. In the steps of anonymous or excellent travellers, the chapters of this volume chart some of the most significant moments in the intercultural transactions between the proud linguistic and literary distinctiveness of the province on one hand and the always challenged and sometimes baffled perception of Anglophone (and Anglophile) visitors on the other. Spanning across two centuries, from the largely unknown pre-revolutionary Provence visited by John locke and tobias smollett through the Victorian paradise of popular tourism and finally to the more secret ‘homeland’ of Modernists, this volume reveals an unexpected Provence which, in oblique and complex ways, has long held a mirror to British culture and often acted as the laboratory of its artistic life.




Composition as Explanation


Book Description

Gertrude Stein's "Composition as Explanation" delves into the intricate relationship between language and artistic expression. Published in 1926, the essay explores Stein's unique approach to writing and challenges conventional perceptions of composition. With a distinctive prose style, she reflects on the nature of creativity, emphasizing the significance of repetition and abstraction. Stein's work serves as both an exploration of her own artistic process and a broader commentary on the essence of language in shaping our understanding of art.