Download or read book Cinematic Uses of the Past written by Marcia Landy and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 1996 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cinematic Uses of the Past was first published in 1996. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions. From the first, cinema has sustained a romance with the past. The nature of this attachment, and what it reveals about our culture, is the subject of Marcia Landy's book. Cinematic Uses of the Past looks at British, American, Italian, and African films for what they can tell us about popular history and our cultural investment in certain images of the past. Landy peruses six different moments in the history of cinema, employing the theories of Nietzsche and Gramsci. Her reading of these films explores their investments in history and memory in relation to ideas of nation, sexuality, gender, and race. Among the films she discusses are A Fistful of Dynamite, The Scarlet Empress, Dance with a Stranger, Holocaust, Schindler's List, Le camp de Thiaroye, Guelwaar, The Leopard, and Veronika Voss. A thoroughly compelling reading of these emblematic films, Cinematic Uses of the Past is also a revealing interpretation of popular history, exposing the fragmentary, tentative, and invested nature of cultural memory. Marcia Landy is professor of literature and film studies at the University of Pittsburgh. She is the author of several books, including Film, Politics, and Gramsci (Minnesota, 1995).
Download or read book On the History of Film Style written by David Bordwell and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1997 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bordwell scrutinizes the theories of style launched by various film historians and celebrates a century of cinema. The author examines the contributions of many directors and shows how film scholars have explained stylistic continuity and change.
Download or read book Engaging the Past written by Alison Landsberg and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2015-06-02 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reading films, television dramas, reality shows, and virtual exhibits, among other popular texts, Engaging the Past examines the making and meaning of history for everyday viewers. Contemporary media can encourage complex interactions with the past that have far-reaching consequences for history and politics. Viewers experience these representations personally, cognitively, and bodily, but, as this book reveals, not just by identifying with the characters portrayed. Some of the works considered in this volume include the films Hotel Rwanda (2004), Good Night and Good Luck (2005), and Milk (2008); the television dramas Deadwood, Mad Men, and Rome; the reality shows Frontier House, Colonial House, and Texas Ranch House; and The Secret Annex Online, accessed through the Anne Frank House website, and the Kristallnacht exhibit, accessed through the Unites States Holocaust Museum website. These mass cultural texts cultivate what Alison Landsberg calls an "affective engagement" with the past, tying the viewer to an event or person and fostering a sense of intimacy that does more than transport the viewer back in time. Affect, she suggests, can also work to disorient the viewer, forcibly pushing him or her out of the narrative and back into his or her own body. By analyzing these specific popular history formats, Landsberg shows the unique way they provoke historical thinking and produce historical knowledge, prompting a reconsideration of what constitutes history and an understanding of how history works in the contemporary mediated public sphere.
Download or read book Cinema and History written by Mike Chopra-Gant and published by Wallflower Press. This book was released on 2008 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume examines some of the key historical issues raised by popular film, including what film might tell us about the past, the reliability of movies as sources of historical knowledge, and how the film might compare to more 'serious' works of history.
Download or read book A History of Film Music written by Mervyn Cooke and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2008-09-25 with total page 627 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides a comprehensive and lively introduction to the major trends in film scoring from the silent era to the present day, focussing not only on dominant Hollywood practices but also offering an international perspective by including case studies of the national cinemas of the UK, France, India, Italy, Japan and the early Soviet Union. The book balances wide-ranging overviews of film genres, modes of production and critical reception with detailed non-technical descriptions of the interaction between image track and soundtrack in representative individual films. In addition to the central focus on narrative cinema, separate sections are also devoted to music in documentary and animated films, film musicals and the uses of popular and classical music in the cinema. The author analyses the varying technological and aesthetic issues that have shaped the history of film music, and concludes with an account of the modern film composer's working practices.
Download or read book Lights Camera History written by Richard V. Francaviglia and published by Texas A&M University Press. This book was released on 2007 with total page 150 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This important volume addresses a number of central topics concerning how history is depicted in film. In the preface, the volume editors emphasize the importance of using film in teaching history: students will see historical films, and if they are not taught critical viewing, they will be inclined simply to accept what they see as fact. Authors of the individual chapters then explore the portrayal of history--and the uses of history--in specific films and film genres. Robert Rosenstone's "In Praise of the Biopic" considers such films as Reds, They Died with Their Boots On, Little Big Man, Seabiscuit, Cinderella Man, and The Grapes of Wrath. In his chapter, Geoff Pingree focuses on the big questions posed in Jay Rosenblatt's 1998 film Human Remains. Richard Francaviglia's chapter on films about the Middle East is especially timely in the post-9/11 world. One chapter, by Daniel A. Nathan, Peter Berg, and Erin Klemyk, is devoted to a single film: Martin Scorsese's urban history The Gangs of New York, which the authors see as a way of exploring complex themes of the immigrant experience. Finally, Robert Brent Toplin addresses the paradox of using an art form (film) to present history. Among other themes, he considers the impact of Patton and Platoon on military decisions and interpretations, and of Birth of a Nation and Glory on race relations. The cumulative effect is to increase the reader's understanding of the medium of film in portraying history and to stimulate the imagination as to how it can and how it should not be used. Students and teachers of history and cinema will benefit deeply from this informative and thoughtful discussion.
Download or read book Memory and popular film written by Paul Grainge and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 2018-07-30 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This electronic version has been made available under a Creative Commons (BY-NC-ND) open access license. One of the first books to put memory at the centre of analysis when exploring the relationship between film culture and the past. Provides a sustained, interdisciplinary perspective on memory and film from early cinema to the present, drawing from film studies, American studies and cultural studies. Adopts a resolutely cultural perspective and unlike psychoanalytic or formalist approaches to memory, explores questions of culture, power and identity. Contributes to the growing debate about the status and function of the past in cultural life and discourse, discussing issues of memory in film, and of film as memory. Considers such well known films as Forrest Gump, Pleasantville, and Jackie Brown.
Download or read book Camera Historica written by Antoine de Baecque and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2012 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Antoine de Baecque proposes a new historiography of cinema, investigating how cinematic representation changes the very nature of history.
Download or read book History and Film written by Eleftheria Thanouli and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2018-10-18 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: History and Film: A Tale of Two Disciplines addresses the representation of history in cinema, a much-argued debate on the need to understand cinematic history in its own terms and develop a certain vocabulary for discussing historical films, their relation to public history, and their impact on public historical consciousness. Eleftheria Thanouli does this by changing the agenda altogether - combining a macro-level perspective with a micro-level one in order to argue that cinematic history is the dominant form of historiography in the 20th century, as it succeeded in remediating and repurposing the key formal, rhetorical, and ideological practices of 19th-century professional historiography. With case studies ranging from The Thin Red Line and Life is Beautiful, to The Fog of War and The Last Bolshevik, Thanouli bridges the gap between history and film studies and lays the foundations for a new visual historiography.
Download or read book Studios Before the System written by Brian R. Jacobson and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2015-09-01 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By 1915, Hollywood had become the epicenter of American filmmaking, with studio "dream factories" structuring its vast production. Filmmakers designed Hollywood studios with a distinct artistic and industrial mission in mind, which in turn influenced the form, content, and business of the films that were made and the impressions of the people who viewed them. The first book to retell the history of film studio architecture, Studios Before the System expands the social and cultural footprint of cinema's virtual worlds and their contribution to wider developments in global technology and urban modernism. Focusing on six significant early film corporations in the United States and France—the Edison Manufacturing Company, American Mutoscope and Biograph, American Vitagraph, Georges Méliès's Star Films, Gaumont, and Pathé Frères—as well as smaller producers and film companies, Studios Before the System describes how filmmakers first envisioned the space they needed and then sourced modern materials to create novel film worlds. Artificially reproducing the natural environment, film studios helped usher in the world's Second Industrial Revolution and what Lewis Mumford would later call the "specific art of the machine." From housing workshops for set, prop, and costume design to dressing rooms and writing departments, studio architecture was always present though rarely visible to the average spectator in the twentieth century, providing the scaffolding under which culture, film aesthetics, and our relation to lived space took shape.
Download or read book Visions of the Past written by Robert A. Rosenstone and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1998-08-04 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Can filmed history measure up to written history? What happens to history when it is recorded in images, rather than words? Can images convey ideas and information that lie beyond words? Taking on these timely questions, Robert Rosenstone pioneers a new direction in the relationship between history and film. Rosenstone moves beyond traditional approaches, which examine the history of film as art and industry, or view films as texts reflecting their specific cultural contexts. This essay collection makes a radical venture into the investigation of a new concern: how a visual medium, subject to the conventions of drama and fiction, might be used as a serious vehicle for thinking about our relationship with the past. Rosenstone looks at history films in a way that forces us to reconceptualize what we mean by "history." He explores the innovative strategies of films made in Africa, Latin America, Germany, and other parts of the world. He journeys into the history of film in a wide range of cultures, and expertly traces the contours of the postmodern historical film. In essays on specific films, including Reds, JFK, and Sans Soleil, he considers such issues as the relationship between fact and film and the documentary as visionary truth. Theorists have for some time been calling our attention to the epistemological and literary limitations of traditional history. The first sustained defense of film as a way of thinking historically, this book takes us beyond those limitations.
Download or read book Explorations in New Cinema History written by Richard Maltby and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2011-03-16 with total page 355 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explorations in New Cinema History brings together cutting-edge research by the leading scholars in the field to identify new approaches to writing and understanding the social and cultural history of cinema, focusing on cinema’s audiences, the experience of cinema, and the cinema as a site of social and cultural exchange. Includes contributions from Robert Allen, Annette Kuhn, John Sedwick, Mark Jancovich, Peter Sanfield, and Kathryn Fuller-Seeley among others Develops the original argument that the social history of cinema-going and of the experience of cinema should take precedence over production- and text-based analyses Explores the cinema as a site of social and cultural exchange, including patterns of popularity and taste, the role of individual movie theatres in creating and sustaining their audiences, and the commercial, political and legal aspects of film exhibition and distribution Prompts readers to reassess their understanding of key periods of cinema history, opening up cinema studies to long-overdue conversations with other disciplines in the humanities and social sciences Presents rigorous empirical research, drawing on digital technology and geospatial information systems to provide illuminating insights in to the uses of cinema
Download or read book Past Imperfect written by Mark C. Carnes and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 1996-11-15 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Essays that consider how classic movies have reflected history include the writings of such noted historians as Paul Fussell, Antonia Fraser, and Gore Vidal.
Download or read book Screening the Past written by Pam Cook and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2004-08-02 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Mildred Pierce and Brief Encounter to Raging Bull and In the Mood for Love, this lively and accessible collection explores film culture's obsession with the past, offering searching and provocative analyses of a wide range of titles. Screening the Past engages with current debates about the role of cinema in mediating history through memory and nostalgia, suggesting that many films use strategies of memory to produce diverse forms of knowledge which challenge established ideas of history, and the traditional role of historians. Classic essays sit side by side with new research, contextualized by introductions which bring them up to date, and provide suggestions for further reading as the work of contemporary directors such as Martin Scorsese, Kathryn Bigelow, Todd Haynes and Wong Kar-wai is used to examine the different ways they deploy creative processes of memory. Pam Cook also investigates the recent history of film studies, reviewing the developments that have culminated in the exciting, if daunting, present moment. The result is a rich and stimulating volume that will appeal to anyone with an interest in cinema, memory and identity.
Download or read book British Cinema Past and Present written by Justine Ashby and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-05-13 with total page 409 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: British Cinema: Past and Present responds to the commercial and critical success of British film in the 1990s. Providing a historical perspective to the contemporary resurgence of British cinema, this unique anthology brings together leading international scholars to investigate the rich diversity of British film production, from the early sound period of the 1930s to the present day. The contributors address: * British Cinema Studies and the concept of national cinema * the distribution and reception of British films in the US and Europe * key genres, movements and cycles of British cinema in the 1940s, 50s and 60s * questions of authorship and agency, with case studies of individual studios, stars, producers and directors * trends in British cinema, from propaganda films of the Second World War to the New Wave and the 'Swinging London' films of the Sixties * the representation of marginalised communities in films such as Trainspotting and The Full Monty * the evolution of social realism from Saturday Night, Sunday Morning to Nil By Mouth * changing approaches to Northern Ireland and the Troubles in films like The Long Good Friday and Alan Clarke's Elephant * contemporary 'art' and 'quality' cinema, from heritage drama to the work of Peter Greenaway, Derek Jarman, Terence Davies and Patrick Keiller.
Download or read book Projecting the Past written by Maria Wyke and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-12-02 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Brought vividly to life on screen, the myth of ancient Rome resonates through modern popular culture. Projecting the Past examines how the cinematic traditions of Hollywood and Italy have resurrected ancient Rome to address the concerns of the present. The book engages contemporary debates about the nature of the classical tradition, definitions of history, and the place of the past in historical film.
Download or read book The Historical Film written by Marcia Landy and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2001-01-01 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This aims to show how media critics and historians have written about history as portrayed in cinema and television by historical films and documentaries, focusing on what it means to "read" films historically and the colonial experience as shown in post-colonial film.
