Download or read book Bicycle Thieves Ladri Di Biciclette written by Robert S. C. Gordon and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2008-11-15 with total page 133 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bicycle Thieves (Ladri di biciclette, 1948) is unarguably one of the most important films in the history of cinema. It is also one of the most beguiling, moving and (apparently) simple pieces of narrative ever made. The film tells the story of one man and his son, as they search fruitlessly through the streets of Rome for his stolen bicycle; the bicycle which had offered the possibility of escape from the poverty and humiliation of long-term unemployment. One of a cluster of extraordinary films to come out of post-war, post-Fascist Italy - loosely labelled 'neorealist' – Bicycle Thieves won an Oscar in 1949, topped the first Sight and Sound poll of the best films of all time in 1952 and has been hugely influential throughout world cinema ever since. It remains a necessary point of reference for any cinematic engagement with the labyrinthine experience of the modern city, the travails of poverty in the contemporary world, the complex bond between fathers and sons, and the capacity of the camera to capture something like the essence of all of these. Robert S. C. Gordon's BFI Film Classics volume shows how Bicycle Thieves is ripe for re-viewing, for rescuing from its worthy status as a neorealist 'classic'. It looks at the film's drawn-out planning and production history, the vibrant and riven context in which it was made, and the dynamic geography, geometry and sociology of the film that resulted. ROBERT S. C. GORDON is Reader in Modern Italian Culture, Gonville and Caius College, University of Cambridge, UK.

Download or read book Bicycle Thieves written by Mary di Michele and published by ECW Press. This book was released on 2017-04-11 with total page 96 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A masterwork from one of Canada’s most important poets Referencing the post-war neorealist film by Vittorio De Sica, Mary di Michele’s Bicycle Thieves commemorates her Italian past and her life in Canada through elegy and acts of translation of text and of self. The collection opens with a kind of hymn to life on the planet, sung from the peak of that urban island, Montreal — an attempt to see beyond death. The book moves into a sequence of poems described by Sharon Thesen as the poet “envisioning the passage of time under the ‘full and waning’ moon of Mount Royal’s beacon cross, recalling her Italian immigrant parents in Toronto and her current life in Montreal [. . .] a sort of Decameron.” p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Times; -webkit-text-stroke: #000000} span.s1 {font-kerning: none} Thesen’s description is apt for the collection as a whole, which moves into the poet’s autobiography — in search of catharsis through literature — and pays tributes to poets who have been part of the literary landscape di Michele now inhabits. Bicycle Thieves is poetry as time machine, transcending the borders between life and death, language and culture.

Download or read book Bicycle Thieves written by Robert S. C. Gordon and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2019-07-25 with total page 138 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bicycle Thieves (Ladri di biciclette, 1948) is unarguably one of the most important films in the history of cinema. It is also one of the most beguiling, moving and (apparently) simple pieces of narrative ever made. The film tells the story of one man and his son, as they search fruitlessly through the streets of Rome for his stolen bicycle; the bicycle which had offered the possibility of escape from the poverty and humiliation of long-term unemployment. One of a cluster of extraordinary films to come out of post-war, post-Fascist Italy - loosely labelled 'neorealist' – Bicycle Thieves won an Oscar in 1949, topped the first Sight and Sound poll of the best films of all time in 1952 and has been hugely influential throughout world cinema ever since. It remains a necessary point of reference for any cinematic engagement with the labyrinthine experience of the modern city, the travails of poverty in the contemporary world, the complex bond between fathers and sons, and the capacity of the camera to capture something like the essence of all of these. Robert S. C. Gordon's BFI Film Classics volume shows how Bicycle Thieves is ripe for re-viewing, for rescuing from its worthy status as a neorealist 'classic'. It looks at the film's drawn-out planning and production history, the vibrant and riven context in which it was made, and the dynamic geography, geometry and sociology of the film that resulted.

Download or read book Thing Is written by Suzannah Showler and published by McClelland & Stewart. This book was released on 2017-03-28 with total page 98 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A startling and hip collection of poetry from a dual American/Canadian citizen who's already making waves on the literary scene. Suzannah Showler's bracing, intense second collection is equal parts cultural critique and phenomenological investigation. Building on the enlightened skepticism of her much-praised debut, Thing Is puts the hashtag age through some much-needed paces. Witty, cutting, heartbroken, and cautiously hopeful, these poems are really about "aboutness," about what it means to be alive right now. They also nimbly advance the longstanding poetic argument for the value of considered attention: "What follows from / what you know is / not the same thing / as knowledge. Even / when you get it right."

Download or read book Italian Neorealist Cinema written by Christopher Wagstaff and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 2007-01-01 with total page 537 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The end of the Second World War saw the emergence in Italy of the neorealism movement, which produced a number of films characterized by stories set among the poor and working class, often shot on location using non-professional actors. In this study Christopher Wagstaff provides an in-depth analysis of neorealist film, focusing on three films that have had a major impact on filmmakers and audiences around the world: Roberto Rossellini's Roma città aperta and Paisà and Vittorio De Sica's Ladri di biciclette. Indeed, these films are still, more than half a century after they were made, among the most highly regarded works in the history of cinema. In this insightful and carefully researched work, Wagstaff suggests that the importance of these films is largely due to the aesthetic and rhetorical qualities of their assembled sounds and images rather than, as commonly thought, their particular representations of historical reality.The author begins by situating neorealist cinema in its historical, industrial, commercial, and cultural context. He goes on to provide a theoretical discussion of realism and the merits of neorealist films, individually and collectively, as aesthetic artefacts. He follows with a detailed analysis of the three films, focusing on technical and production aspects as well as on the significance of the films as cinematic works of art.While providing a wealth of information and analysis previously unavailable to an English-speaking audience, Italian Neorealist Cinema offers a radically new perspective on neorealist cinema and the Italian art cinema that followed it."

Download or read book Realist Film Theory and Bicycle Thieves written by Hilary Neroni and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2023-05-18 with total page 185 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Film Theory in Practice series fills a gaping hole in the world of film theory. By marrying the explanation of a film theory with the interpretation of a film, the volumes provide discrete examples of how film theory can serve as the basis for textual analysis. Realist Film Theory and Bicycle Thieves offers a concise introduction to realist film theory in jargon-free language and shows how this theory can be deployed to interpret Vittorio De Sica's 1948 Italian neo realist masterpiece Bicycle Thieves. Hilary Neroni explores the original realist film theorists from the 1940s: André Bazin, Siegfried Kracauer, and Cesare Zavattini, among others. But rather than seeing realist film theory as simply a theory of the past to be moved beyond, the book argues that the prevalence of realism in many different forms within practice and theory suggests the importance of updating this original realist film theory with an understanding of realism that would sustain its viability. Throughout the book, Neroni analyzes neorealist film movements-such as Italian Neorealism, Parallel Cinema of India, and the Iranian New Wave-that challenge mainstream realism with a more radical form that exposes the social order instead of hiding it. Her in-depth investigation of Bicycle Thieves provides a realist methodology that reveals the radicality of its combination of realist techniques, a melodramatic story, and humanist values.

Download or read book Italian Film in the Light of Neorealism written by Millicent Marcus and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2020-03-31 with total page 464 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The movement known as neorealism lasted seven years, generated only twenty-one films, failed at the box office, and fell short of its didactic and aesthetic aspirations. Yet it exerted such a profound influence on Italian cinema that all the best postwar directors had to come to terms with it, whether in seeming imitation (the early Olmi), in commercial exploitation (the middle Comencini) or in ostensible rejection (the recent Tavianis). Despite the reactionary pressures of the marketplace and the highly personalized visions of Fellini, Antonioni. And Visconti, Italian cinema has maintained its moral commitment to use the medium in socially responsible ways--if not to change the world, as the first neorealists hoped, then at least to move filmgoers to face the pressing economic, political, and human problems in their midst. From Rossellini's Open City (1945) to the Taviani brothers' Night of the Shooting Stars (1982). The author does close readings of seventeen films that tell the story of neorealism's evolving influence on Italian postwar cinematic expression. Other films discussed are De Sica's Bicycle Thief and Umberto D. De Santis's Bitter Rice, Comencini's Bread, Love, and Fantasy, Fellini's La strada, Visconti's Senso, Antonioni's Red Desert, Olmi's Il Posto, Germi's Seduced and Abandoned, Pasolini's Teorema, Petri's Investigation of a Citizen above Suspicion, Bertolucci's The Conformist, Rosi's Christ Stopped at Eboli, and Wertmuller's Love and Anarchy, Scola's We All Loved Each Other So Much provides the occasion for the author's own retrospective consideration of how Italian cinema has fulfilled, or disappointed, the promise of neorealism.

Download or read book Bicycle Thieves written by and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Olympia written by Taylor Downing and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2017-10-07 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Leni Riefenstahl's Olympia (1938) is one of the most controversial films ever made. Capitalising on the success of Triumph of the Will (1935), her propaganda film for the Nazi Party, Riefenstahl secured Hitler's approval for her grandiose plans to film the 1936 Berlin Olympics. The result was a work as notorious for its politics as celebrated for its aesthetic power. This revised edition includes new material on Riefenstahl's film-making career before Olympia and her close relationship with Hitler. Taylor Downing also discusses newly-available evidence on the background to the film's production that conclusively proves that the film was directly commissioned by Hitler and funded through Goebbels's Ministry of Propaganda and not, as Riefenstahl later claimed, commissioned independently from the Nazi state by the Olympic authorities. In writing this edition, Taylor Downing has been given access to a magnificent new restoration of the original version of the film by the International Olympic Committee.

Download or read book Grundrisse written by Karl Marx and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2005-11-24 with total page 912 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Written during the winter of 1857-8, the Grundrisse was considered by Marx to be the first scientific elaboration of communist theory. A collection of seven notebooks on capital and money, it both develops the arguments outlined in the Communist Manifesto (1848) and explores the themes and theses that were to dominate his great later work Capital. Here, for the first time, Marx set out his own version of Hegel's dialectics and developed his mature views on labour, surplus value and profit, offering many fresh insights into alienation, automation and the dangers of capitalist society. Yet while the theories in Grundrisse make it a vital precursor to Capital, it also provides invaluable descriptions of Marx's wider-ranging philosophy, making it a unique insight into his beliefs and hopes for the foundation of a communist state.

Download or read book Closely Watched Films written by Marilyn Fabe and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2014-10-14 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Through detailed examinations of passages from classic films, Marilyn Fabe supplies the analytic tools and background in film history and theory to enable us to see more in every film we watch"--Page [4] of cover.

Download or read book Vittorio De Sica written by Stephen Snyder and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 2000-01-01 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recognized as a master of Italian cinema, Vittorio De Sica is perhaps best known and most respected for his critically acclaimed neorealist films of the period 1946-55. As this anthology reveals, however, his production was remarkably multifaceted. The essays included here - some newly commissioned, some reprinted, and others in translation - look at De Sica's varied career from many perspecives. Structured chronologically, the volume begins by introducing readers to De Sica's early popularity as an actor and singer during the years of Italian Fascism, and to his initial directorial efforts before the end of World War II. It was not until the postwar era, however, that De Sica made his mark in film history. Special attention is given to this critical phase of his career, which encompasses the neorealist films that made him famous: "Shoeshine", "Bicycle Thieves", "Miracle in Milan", and "Umberto D." When the neorealist movement waned after 1955, De Sica returned to his roots in Neapolitan comedy for a series of commercially successful films starring Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni. Memorable works from this period include "Two Women" and "Marriage Italian Style" as well as "Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow", which won De Sica an Academy Award in 1965. In one of his final films, "The Garden of the Finzi Continis", he returned to the subject of World War II and to the human tragedy characteristic of his best neorealist productions. This fine anthology offers a comprehensive critical survey that covers the entire scope of De Sica's career, and is an excellent resource for students, critics and film enthusiasts.

Download or read book Italian Neorealism written by Mark Shiel and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2006-03-17 with total page 153 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Italian Neorealism: Rebuilding the Cinematic City is a valuable introduction to one of the most influential of film movements. Exploring the roots and causes of neorealism, particularly the effects of the Second World War, as well as its politics and style, Mark Shiel examines the portrayal of the city and the legacy left by filmmakers such as Rossellini, De Sica, and Visconti. Films studied include Rome, Open City (1945), Paisan (1946), The Bicycle Thief (1948), and Umberto D. (1952).

Download or read book The Secret Race written by Tyler Hamilton and published by Bantam. This book was released on 2012-09-05 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “The holy grail for disillusioned cycling fans . . . The book’s power is in the collective details, all strung together in a story that is told with such clear-eyed conviction that you never doubt its veracity. . . . The Secret Race isn’t just a game changer for the Lance Armstrong myth. It’s the game ender.”—Outside NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • WINNER OF THE WILLIAM HILL SPORTS BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD The Secret Race is the book that rocked the world of professional cycling—and exposed, at long last, the doping culture surrounding the sport and its most iconic rider, Lance Armstrong. Former Olympic gold medalist Tyler Hamilton was once one of the world’s top-ranked cyclists—and a member of Lance Armstrong’s inner circle. Over the course of two years, New York Times bestselling author Daniel Coyle conducted more than two hundred hours of interviews with Hamilton and spoke with numerous teammates, rivals, and friends. The result is an explosive page-turner of a book that takes us deep inside a shadowy, fascinating, and surreal world of unscrupulous doctors, anything-goes team directors, and athletes so relentlessly driven to win that they would do almost anything to gain an edge. For the first time, Hamilton recounts his own battle with depression and tells the story of his complicated relationship with Lance Armstrong. This edition features a new Afterword, in which the authors reflect on the developments within the sport, and involving Armstrong, over the past year. The Secret Race is a courageous, groundbreaking act of witness from a man who is as determined to reveal the hard truth about his sport as he once was to win the Tour de France. With a new Afterword by the authors. “Loaded with bombshells and revelations.”—VeloNews “[An] often harrowing story . . . the broadest, most accessible look at cycling’s drug problems to date.”—The New York Times “ ‘If I cheated, how did I get away with it?’ That question, posed to SI by Lance Armstrong five years ago, has never been answered more definitively than it is in Tyler Hamilton’s new book.”—Sports Illustrated “Explosive.”—The Daily Telegraph (London)

Download or read book The Organ Thieves written by Chip Jones and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2020-08-18 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks meets Get Out in this “startling…powerful” (Kirkus Reviews) investigation of racial inequality at the core of the heart transplant race. In 1968, Bruce Tucker, a black man, went into Virginia’s top research hospital with a head injury, only to have his heart taken out of his body and put into the chest of a white businessman. Now, in The Organ Thieves, Pulitzer Prize–nominated journalist Chip Jones exposes the horrifying inequality surrounding Tucker’s death and how he was used as a human guinea pig without his family’s permission or knowledge. The circumstances surrounding his death reflect the long legacy of mistreating African Americans that began more than a century before with cadaver harvesting and worse. It culminated in efforts to win the heart transplant race in the late 1960s. Featuring years of research and fresh reporting, along with a foreword from social justice activist Ben Jealous, “this powerful book weaves together a medical mystery, a legal drama, and a sweeping history, its characters confronting unprecedented issues of life and death under the shadows of centuries of racial injustice” (Edward L. Ayers, author of The Promise of the New South).

Download or read book The Book Thief written by Markus Zusak and published by Knopf Books for Young Readers. This book was released on 2007-12-18 with total page 578 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • ONE OF TIME MAGAZINE’S 100 BEST YA BOOKS OF ALL TIME The extraordinary, beloved novel about the ability of books to feed the soul even in the darkest of times. When Death has a story to tell, you listen. It is 1939. Nazi Germany. The country is holding its breath. Death has never been busier, and will become busier still. Liesel Meminger is a foster girl living outside of Munich, who scratches out a meager existence for herself by stealing when she encounters something she can’t resist–books. With the help of her accordion-playing foster father, she learns to read and shares her stolen books with her neighbors during bombing raids as well as with the Jewish man hidden in her basement. In superbly crafted writing that burns with intensity, award-winning author Markus Zusak, author of I Am the Messenger, has given us one of the most enduring stories of our time. “The kind of book that can be life-changing.” —The New York Times “Deserves a place on the same shelf with The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank.” —USA Today DON’T MISS BRIDGE OF CLAY, MARKUS ZUSAK’S FIRST NOVEL SINCE THE BOOK THIEF.

Download or read book Better Living Through Criticism written by A. O. Scott and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2017-02-07 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The New York Times film critic shows why we need criticism now more than ever Few could explain, let alone seek out, a career in criticism. Yet what A.O. Scott shows in Better Living Through Criticism is that we are, in fact, all critics: because critical thinking informs almost every aspect of artistic creation, of civil action, of interpersonal life. With penetrating insight and warm humor, Scott shows that while individual critics--himself included--can make mistakes and find flaws where they shouldn't, criticism as a discipline is one of the noblest, most creative, and urgent activities of modern existence. Using his own film criticism as a starting point--everything from his infamous dismissal of the international blockbuster The Avengers to his intense affection for Pixar's animated Ratatouille--Scott expands outward, easily guiding readers through the complexities of Rilke and Shelley, the origins of Chuck Berry and the Rolling Stones, the power of Marina Abramovich and 'Ode on a Grecian Urn.' Drawing on the long tradition of criticism from Aristotle to Susan Sontag, Scott shows that real criticism was and always will be the breath of fresh air that allows true creativity to thrive. "The time for criticism is always now," Scott explains, "because the imperative to think clearly, to insist on the necessary balance of reason and passion, never goes away."