History & Criticism

From American Beauty (overrated) to The Night of the Hunter (masterpiece), this collection of Peter Rainer's film critiques spans the course of his illustrious 30-year career, which dates back to the early 1980s. Rainer covers films both well-known and...

From the first published movie review in the late 1800s to the 21st-century era of the 'great movie critics' wake', this chronicle reviews the nature, scope and controversies in American film criticism. Moving through the Silent Era, the pre- and postwar...

Until now, Hollywood's political history has been dominated by a steady stream of films and memoirs decrying the nightmare of the Red Scare. But Ronald and Allis Radosh show that the real drama of that era lay in the story of the movie stars, directors...

Between 1945 and 1970, millions of public school students were subjected to hundreds of films designed to keep them on the straight and narrow. These cultural gems "enlightened" the nation's youth about proper dating, good table manners, the evils of...

Following the American indie cinema boom of the 1990s and the creation of "specialty" divisions by several Hollywood studios, many predicted an end to both the indie sector's viability and the making of films with ambitions beyond the commercial...

Following the American indie cinema boom of the 1990s and the creation of "specialty" divisions by several Hollywood studios, many predicted an end to both the indie sector's viability and the making of films with ambitions beyond the commercial...

First published in 1983, Shiguéhiko Hasumi's Directed by Yasujirō Ozu has become one of the most influential books on cinema written in Japanese. This pioneering translation brings Hasumi's landmark work to an English-speaking public for the first time,...

From 2015 to 2019, the Walt Disney Corporation has produced five theatrical films in the Star Wars galaxy. These films have been met with mixed reactions from audiences and critics alike and sparked seemingly endless public debate about representations...

The way we communicate with each other is vital to preserving the cultural ecology, or wellbeing, of a place and time. Do we listen to each other? Do we ask the right questions? Do we speak about each other with respect or disdain? The stories that we...

In recent years, environmental and human rights advocates have suggested that we have entered the first new geological epoch since the end of the ice age: the Anthropocene. In this new epoch, humans have come to reshape unwittingly both the climate and...

This book offers a novel understanding of the epistemological strategies that are mobilized by the essay film, and of where and how such strategies operate. Against the backdrop of Theodor W. Adorno's discussion of the essay form's anachronistic,...

From vampire apocalypses, shark attacks, witches, and ghosts, to murderous dolls bent on revenge, horror has been part of the American cinematic imagination for almost as long as pictures have moved on screens. But why do they captivate us so? What is...

Real Sex Films explores one of the most controversial movements in international cinema through an innovative interdisciplinary combination of theories of globalization and embodiment. Risk sociology, feminist film theory and critical feminist mapping...

Even though essay films have been a key practice since the 1950s, there is scant analysis about this form in English. Part of this is likely due to the inherent difficulty of definition. The films, which foreground subjectivity and adopt an explicit,...

In a culture increasingly focused on visual media, students have learned not only to embrace multimedia presentations in the classroom, but to expect them. Such expectations are perhaps more prevalent in a field as dynamic and cross-disciplinary as...

What impact did the new art of film have on the development of another new art, the emerging science fiction genre, during the pre- and early post-World War II era? Focusing on such popular pulp magazines as Amazing Stories, Astounding Stories, and...

When the World Laughs is a book about the intersection of humor, history, and culture. It explores how film comedy, one of the world's most popular movie genres, reflects the values and beliefs of those who enjoy its many forms, its most enduring...

Winner of the 2020 Antonio Candido Prize for Best Book in the Humanities from the Brazil section of the Latin American Studies Association. This book examines the vibrant field of documentary filmmaking in Brazil from the transition to democracy in 1985...

The backstudio picture, or the movie about movie-making, is a staple of Hollywood film production harking back to the silent era and extending to the present day. What gives backstudios their coherence as a distinctive genre, Steven Cohan argues in...

Adaptation persists as a major area of inquiry in both film and literary studies. Over the past two decades, scholars have extended the debate well beyond George Bluestone's influential Novels into Film (1957) by taking into account such concerns as...

Beginning in 1922, when Robert Flaherty filmed 'Nanook of the North' in Canada's Arctic, and encouraged by John Grierson and the federal government in 1939 when they created the National Film Board of Canada (NFB), documentaries have dominated Canada's...

During the 1968 Prague Spring and the Soviet-led invasion and occupation that followed, Czechoslovakia's Army Film studio was responsible for some of the most politically subversive and aesthetically innovative films of the period. Although the studio is...

Since the 1960s, Hong Kong cinema has helped to shape one of the world's most popular cultural genres: action cinema. Hong Kong action films have proved popular over the decades with audiences worldwide, and they have seized the imaginations of...

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Pioneer of political documentary and inventor of cinema verite, Dziga Vertov has exerted a decisive influence on directors from Eisenstein to Godard. Yet his reputation long rested upon a lone masterpiece, 'Man with a Movie Camera'. Recently, however...

This book covers a significant part of the history of Spanish film, from the 1920s until the present day. Starting with a study of the kiss in silent films, the volume explores homoerotic narratives in the crusade films of the 1940s, the commodification...

Opening a debate about the political dimension of science fiction films, this book uses Carl Schmitt's thought to provide a new theoretical approach to American cinematic sci-fi since the late 1970s. Drawing on Schmitt's notion of the state of exception...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781474475884Author David ChurchFormat HardbackPage Count 280Imprint Edinburgh University PressPublisher Edinburgh University PressWeight(grams)...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781474451895Author Katrina MacapagalFormat HardbackPage Count 216Imprint Edinburgh University PressPublisher Edinburgh University PressWeight(grams)...

In the two decades after World War II, a vibrant cultural infrastructure of cineclubs, archives, festivals, and film schools took shape in Latin America through the labor of film enthusiasts who often worked in concert with French and France-based...

Some women attack and harm men who abuse them. Social norms, law, and films all participate in framing these occurrences, guiding us in understanding and judging them. How do social, legal, and cinematic conventions and mechanisms combine to lead us to...

The end of the Second World War saw the emergence of neorealist film in Italy. In Italian Neorealist Cinema, Christopher Wagstaff analyses three neorealist films that have had significant influence on filmmakers around the world. Wagstaff treats these...

Television and Society is a textbook designed to introduce students to the role of television in contemporary society. It explores the structure of the television text, the way in which that text is produced and the way it is consumed. The first section...

Looking at contemporary film and television, this book explores how popular genres frame our understanding of on-screen performance. It brings together ground-breaking and inspiring work on this topic from both renowned and newer academics in the field...

Pairing significant research with primary documents, Moviegoing in America charts the evolution of film exhibition and reception as a function of changing patterns of American community, identity, consumption, and the fabric of everyday life. "Moviegoing...

Ingmar Bergman's film Persona (1966) is considered both one of his greatest masterpieces and his most enigmatic and abstract film. The highly influential film achieved global critical acclaim and has been the subject of numerous studies and...

Hindi popular cinema has played a key role as a national cinema because it assisted in the imagining of a unified India by addressing a public across the nation-to-be even before 1947. Examining the diverse elements that constitute the "popular" in...

For observers of the European film scene, Federico Fellini’s death in 1993 came to stand for the demise of Italian cinema as a whole. Exploring an eclectic sampling of works from the new millennium, Italian Film in the Present Tense confronts this...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9783863354565Author Stefan RipplingerFormat PaperbackPage Count 272Imprint Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther KonigPublisher Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9783037645505Author Francois BovierFormat PaperbackPage Count 384Imprint JRP RingierPublisher JRP Ringier