Fictional Film Club


Book Description

In FICTIONAL FILM CLUB, our narrator attempts to review a series of movies that don't exist. From here, he slips into an ever more obsessive and self-obsessive unreality of made-up movie stars, false features, and perverse productions.




Missing Reels


Book Description

New York in the late 1980s. Ceinwen Reilly has just moved from Yazoo City, Mississippi, and she’s never going back, minimum wage job (vintage store salesgirl) and shabby apartment (Avenue C walkup) be damned. Who cares about earthly matters when Ceinwen can spend her days and her nights at fading movie houses—and most of the time that’s left trying to look like Jean Harlow? One day, Ceinwen discovers that her downstairs neighbor may have—just possibly—starred in a forgotten silent film that hasn’t been seen for ages. So naturally, it’s time for a quest. She will track down the film, she will impress her neighbor, and she will become a part of movie history: the archivist as ingénue. As she embarks on her grand mission, Ceinwen meets a somewhat bumbling, very charming, 100% English math professor named Matthew, who is as rational as she is dreamy. Together, they will or will not discover the missing reels, will or will not fall in love, and will or will not encounter the obsessives that make up the New York silent film nut underworld. A novel as winning and energetic as the grand Hollywood films that inspired it, Missing Reels is an irresistible, alchemical mix of Nora Ephron and David Nicholls that will charm and delight.




The Meryl Streep Movie Club


Book Description

Escape to the breathtaking coast of Maine and let the unmissable novel from Mia March brighten up your summer. Perfect for fans of Jenny Colgan, Veronica Henry and The Jane Austen Book Club. On the coast of Maine sits The Three Captains Inn, a haven for tourists and locals alike. When Lolly, the owner, summons her nieces home, they assume she’s planning to sell the inn, the place they called home after they lost their parents in a car accident that also claimed the life of Lolly’s husband. Little do they know, the truth is far more unimaginable . . . Along with Kat, Lolly’s daughter, the women reunite for their first summer together in many years and home truths and long buried secrets begin to emerge. Then movie-lover Lolly invites her family to one of her legendary movie nights – this month’s theme: Meryl Streep – and what was intended to be a few hours’ distraction ends up making them question everything they thought they knew about life, love and one another. As each woman sees her complicated life reflected through the magic of cinema, will they be able to find their own happily-ever-afters before it’s too late? ‘A treat for movie lovers and fans of meaningful women’s fiction’ Romantic Times 'A heartwarming, spirit-lifting read just in time for beach season' Kirkus Reviews 'A touching story of self-discovery and the strength of family' Booklist




Fight Club: A Novel


Book Description

The first rule about fight club is you don't talk about fight club. Chuck Palahniuk showed himself to be his generation’s most visionary satirist in this, his first book. Fight Club’s estranged narrator leaves his lackluster job when he comes under the thrall of Tyler Durden, an enigmatic young man who holds secret after-hours boxing matches in the basements of bars. There, two men fight "as long as they have to." This is a gloriously original work that exposes the darkness at the core of our modern world.




A Planet for Rent


Book Description

The most successful and controversial Cuban Science Fiction writer of all time, Yoss (aka José Miguel Sánchez Gómez) is known for his acerbic portraits of the island under Communism. In his bestselling A Planet for Rent, Yoss pays homage to Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles and 334 by Thomas M. Disch. A critique of Cuba in the nineties, after the fall of the Soviet Union and the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, A Planet for Rent marks the debut in English of an astonishingly brave and imaginative Latin American voice. Praise for Yoss “One of the most prestigious science fiction authors of the island.” —On Cuba Magazine "A gifted and daring writer." —David Iaconangelo "José Miguel Sánchez [Yoss] is Cuba’s most decorated science fiction author, who has cultivated the most prestige for this genre in the mainstream, and the only person of all the Island’s residents who lives by his pen.” —Cuenta Regresiva Born José Miguel Sánchez Gómez, Yoss assumed his pen name in 1988, when he won the Premio David Award in the science fiction category for Timshel. Together with his peculiar pseudonym, the author's aesthetic of an impentinent rocker has allowed him to stand out amongst his fellow Cuban writers. Earning a degree in Biology in 1991, he went on to graduate from the first ever course on Narrative Techniques at the Onelio Jorge Cardoso Center of Literary Training, in the year 1999. Today, Yoss writes both realistic and science fiction works. Alongside these novels, the author produces essays, Praise for, and compilations, and actively promotes the Cuban science fiction literary workshops, Espiral and Espacio Abierto. When he isn’t translating, David Frye teaches Latin American culture and society at the University of Michigan. Translations include First New Chronicle and Good Government by Guaman Poma de Ayala (Peru, 1615); The Mangy Parrot by José Joaquín Fernandez de Lizardi (Mexico, 1816), for which he received a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship; Writing across Cultures: Narrative Transculturation in Latin America by Ángel Rama (Uruguay, 1982), and several Cuban and Spanish novels and poems.




Small-Gauge Storytelling


Book Description

What do you understand by the term 'home movie'? Do you imagine images of babies-on-the lawn, sandcastles on the beach, or travels with the family? Did you know that amateur filmmakers have also explored fictional genres as diverse and fascinating as their professional counterparts, that specific amateur film studios have risen and fallen, or that household-name directors owe their origins and inspirations to the amateur film movement? Across a range of settings from the Canadian north-west to the Russian far-east, this book offers an introduction to the amateur maker of film comedies, thrillers, adaptations and sci-fi. It records the ambitions and achievements of enthusiasts struggling to emulate the mainstream and tell their own stories, armed with limited resources and endless initiative.




Exhibition Experiments


Book Description

Exhibition Experiments is a lively collection that considers experiments with museological form that challenge our understanding of - and experience with - museums. Explores examples of museum experimentalism in light of cutting-edge museum theory Draws on a range of global and topical examples, including museum experimentation, exhibitionary forms, the fate of conventional notions of ‘object’ and ‘representation’, and the impact of these changes Brings together an international group of art historians, anthropologists, and sociologists to question traditional disciplinary boundaries Considers the impact of technology on the museum space tackles a range of examples of experimentalism from many different countries, including Australia, Austria, Germany, Israel, Luxembourg, Sweden, the UK and the US Examines the changes and challenging new possibilities facing museum studies




Amateur Cinema


Book Description

From the very beginning of cinema, there have been amateur filmmakers at work. It wasn’t until Kodak introduced 16mm film in 1923, however, that amateur moviemaking became a widespread reality, and by the 1950s, over a million Americans had amateur movie cameras. In Amateur Cinema, Charles Tepperman explores the meaning of the “amateur” in film history and modern visual culture. In the middle decades of the twentieth century—the period that saw Hollywood’s rise to dominance in the global film industry—a movement of amateur filmmakers created an alternative world of small-scale movie production and circulation. Organized amateur moviemaking was a significant phenomenon that gave rise to dozens of clubs and thousands of participants producing experimental, nonfiction, or short-subject narratives. Rooted in an examination of surviving films, this book traces the contexts of “advanced” amateur cinema and articulates the broad aesthetic and stylistic tendencies of amateur films.




Off to the Pictures


Book Description

Examines womens constructions of selfhood through film and literature in interwar BritainOff to the Pictures: Cinemagoing, Womens Writing and Movie Culture in Interwar Britain offers a rich new exploration of interwar womens fictions and their complex intersections with cinema. Interrogating a range of writings, from newspapers and magazines to middlebrow and modernist fictions, the book takes the reader through the diverse print and storytelling media that women constructed around interwar film-going, arguing that literary forms came to constitute an intermedial gendered cinema culture at this time.Using detailed case studies, this innovative book draws upon new archival research, industrial analysis and close textual readings to consider cinemas place in the fictions and critical writings of major literary figures such as Winifred Holtby, Stella Gibbons, Elizabeth Bowen, Jean Rhys, Elinor Glyn, C. A. Lejeune and Iris Barry. Through the lens of feminist film historiography, Off to the Pictures presents a bold new view of interwar cinema culture, read through the creative reflections of the women who experienced it.




Seeing Fictions in Film


Book Description

What happens when we view a movie? Do we actually see the fiction, and if so how? Literary fiction is recounted by a voice of some sort--the narrator. George M. Wilson explores the strategies of cinematic narration, and argues that this prompts viewers to imagine seeing and hearing events in the fictional world.