Unseen Cinema


Book Description

El proyecto de recuperación de películas históricas Unseen Cinema explora en detalle los logros, desconocidos hasta la fecha, de los cineastas pioneros que desarrollaron su labor dentro y fuera de las fronteras de Estados Unidos durante el periodo formativo del cine americano. Con la colaboración de innumerables instituciones, desde los archivos de la Academia de Cine de Hollywood, el Museo de Arte Moderno de Nueva York (MOMA), el British Film Institute, el Deustchen Film museum hasta el Gosfilmofond de Russia, la recuperación de estas películas y su posterior organización en 7 discos postula una visión innovadora del cine experimental. Un buen número de estas películas no había estado disponible desde su creación hace más de un siglo, algunas nunca se habían proyectado en público, y en casi todos los casos, hasta ahora, no se disponía de una copia prístina de proyección. En palabras de su compilador se trata de rectificar una pequeña parte de la negligencia con la que se ha tratado a los primeros cineastas y películas de vanguardia. Pese a la exhaustiva labor de busca y rastreo por parte de Posner y otros historiadores del cine para desenterrar las copias de los filmes incluidos en la colección, a día de hoy muchas no han sido recuperadas.




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.




Popular Hindi Cinema


Book Description

The popular Hindi film industry is the largest in India and the most conspicuous film industry in the non-Western world. This book analyses the pivotal visual and narrative conventions employed in popular Hindi films through the combined prism of film studies and classical Indian philosophy and ritualism. The book shows the films outside Western paradigms, as visual manifestations and outcomes of the evolution of classical Hindu notions and esthetic forms. These include notions associated with the Advaita-Vedānta philosophical school and early Buddhist thought, concepts and dynamism stemming from Hindu ritualism, rasa esthetic theories, as well as Brahmanic notions such as dharma (religion, law, order), and mokṣa (liberation). These are all highly abstract notions which the author defines as "the unseen": a cluster of diversified concepts denoting what subsists beyond the phenomenal, what prevails beyond the empirical world of saṁsāra and stands out of this world (alaukika), while simultaneously being embodied and transformed within visual filmic imagery, codes and semiotics that are teased out and analyzed. A culturally sensitive reading of popular Hindi films, the interpretations put forward are also applicable to the Western context. They enable a fuller understanding of religious phenomena outside the primary religious field, within the vernacular arenas of popular culture and mass communication. The book is of interest to scholars in the fields of Indology, modern Indian studies, film, media and cultural studies.




Small Cinemas in Global Markets


Book Description

Small Cinemas in Global Markets addresses aspects such as identity, revisiting the past, internationalized genres, new forms of experimental cinema, markets and production, as well as technological developments of alternative small screens that open new perspectives into small cinema possibilities. Small and big markets for small industries reveal an unimagined diversification of the cultural product and consequently the need to analyze the impact at local, regional, and global levels. Much needed to continue and expand the existing scholarship in the field, this volume is based on research by authors who approach their subject from Western theoretical perspectives with a professional (mostly native) knowledge of the language, cultural realities, and film industry practices. It covers aspects from fifteen different countries, including Bolivia, Brazil, China (Hong Kong), Croatia, East Africa (Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda), Greece, Indonesia, Lithuania, Bulgaria, Poland, Romania, Morocco, and the United States. Since both film and documentary distribution from certain areas of the globe on international markets remains problematic, it is important for the academic field to discuss and circulate them as much as possible, and to create the basis for further exploration. Documenting and reflecting on the role, state, and reception of the film industry provides scholarly understanding to the industry’s wide range of seemingly chaotic technological transformations.




The Unseen Force


Book Description

(Applause Books). Following his highly successful An Askew View: The Films of Kevin Smith (Applause), John Kenneth Muir now turns to the life and work of legendary cult-film director Sam Raimi. Raimi exploded on the movie scene in 1982, when he was 23 years old, with the audacious, independently produced horror film The Evil Dead . Re-igniting the horror genre to such a degree that Wes Craven credited Raimi on-screen in A Nightmare on Elm Street , Raimi went on to direct two Evil Dead sequels, his own comic-book superhero, Darkman , and an over-the-top, post-modern western, The Quick and the Dead . Raimi's influence on other filmmakers continues to be enormous from the "shaky cam" shots of the Coen brothers to the early oeuvre of Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson, both of whom have been termed the "direct progeny" of Raimi's works.In 2002, Raimi's Spider-Man had the biggest opening weekend in history, earning more than $114 million at the box office. The Unseen Force also features a sneak peek at the much anticipated Spider-Man 2 . Included are 30 first-person accounts and interviews from a number of eclectic sources from the cinematographers who shot Raimi's early films to the producers, screenwriters, actors, special effects magicians and composers who collaborated to make his films the stuff of legend, earn mainstream success, and still be the focus of obsessive cult followings.




Feminist Discourse and Spanish Cinema


Book Description

This work provides a detailed consideration of women directors working before the Civil War and during Franco's dictatorship, and an exploration of the impact of feminism on filmmaking in Spain.




Women Film Editors


Book Description

When the movie business adopted some of the ways of other big industries in 1920s America, women--who had been essential to the industry's early development--were systematically squeezed out of key behind-the-camera roles. Yet, as female producers and directors virtually disappeared for decades, a number of female film editors remained and rose to the top of their profession, sometimes wielding great power and influence. Their example inspired a later generation of women to enter the profession at mid-century, several of whom were critical to revolutionizing filmmaking in the 1960s and 1970s with contributions to such classics as Bonnie and Clyde, Jaws and Raging Bull. Focusing on nine of these women and presenting shorter glimpses of nine others, this book tells their captivating personal stories and examines their professional achievements.




Mary Ellen Bute


Book Description

Mary Ellen Bute: Pioneer Animator captures the personal and professional life of Mary Ellen Bute (1906-1983) one of the first American filmmakers to create abstract animated films in 1934, also one of the first Americans to use the electronic image of the oscilloscope in films starting in 1949, and the first filmmaker to interpret James Joyce's literature for the screen, Passages from James Joyce's Finnegans Wake, a live-action film for which she won a Cannes Film Festival Prize in 1965. Bute had an eye for talent and selected many creative people who would go on to be famous. She hired Norman McLaren to hand paint on film for the animation of her Spook Sport, 1939, before he left to head the animation department of the Canadian Film Board. She cast the now famous character actor Christopher Walken at age fourteen as the star of her short live-action film, The Boy Who Saw Through, 1958. Also, Bute enlisted Elliot Kaplan to compose the film score of her Finnegans Wake before he moved on to compose music for TV's Fantasy Island and Ironside. This biography drawn from interviews with Bute's family, friends, and colleagues, presents the personal and professional life of the filmmaker and her behind-the-scenes process of making animated and live action films.




A Companion to Japanese Cinema


Book Description

Go beyond Kurosawa and discover an up-to-date and rigorous examination of historical and modern Japanese cinema In A Companion to Japanese Cinema, distinguished cinematic researcher David Desser delivers insightful new material on a fascinating subject, ranging from the introduction and exploration of under-appreciated directors, like Uchida Tomu and Yoshimura Kozaburo, to an appreciation of the Golden Age of Japanese cinema from the point of view of little-known stars and genres of the 1950s. This Companion includes new resources that deal in-depth with the issue of gender in Japanese cinema, including a sustained analysis of Kawase Naomi, arguably the most important female director in Japanese film history. Readers will appreciate the astute material on the connections and relationships that tie together Japanese television and cinema, with implications for understanding the modern state of Japanese film. The Companion concludes with a discussion of the Japanese media’s response to the 3/11 earthquake and tsunami that devastated the nation. The book also includes: A thorough introduction to the History, Ideology, and Aesthetics of Japanese cinema, including discussions of Kyoto as the cinematic center of Japan and the Pure Film Movement and modern Japanese film style An exploration of the background to the famous story of Taki no Shiraito and the significant and underappreciated contributions of directors Uchida Tomu, as well as Yoshimura Kozaburo A rigorous comparison of old and new Japanese cinema, including treatments of Ainu in documentary films and modernity in film exhibition Practical discussions of intermediality, including treatments of scriptwriting in the 1930s and the influence of film on Japanese television Perfect for upper-level undergraduate and graduate students studying Japanese and Asian cinema, A Companion to Japanese Cinema is a must-read reference for anyone seeking an insightful and contemporary discussion of modern scholarship in Japanese cinema in the 20th and 21st centuries.




Cut, the Unseen Cinema


Book Description




Recent Books