Download or read book Film Criticism as a Cultural Institution written by Huw Walmsley-Evans and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-03-28 with total page 382 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At the beginning of the 21st century film criticism was described as in crisis. The decline of print journalism, a series of lay-offs of prominent critics, and the rise of "amateur" reviewing online spurred a conversation about the decline, even death, of film criticism. This discourse flourished in part because film criticism has been little examined in scholarship to date. This book takes a deeper look at film criticism by focusing on its institutional contours. This is achieved through a combination of archival research and interviews with prominent film critics and stakeholders, including Adrian Martin (LOLA), Stephanie Zacharek (Time), Peter Bart (Variety), and Andrew Sarris (The Village Voice). Film Criticism as a Cultural Institution first examines the contemporary crisis conversation surrounding film criticism, comparing this to historical precedents. It then provides what today’s crisis conversation does not: an account of film criticism’s institutional formations. Using primarily U.S. and Australian case studies based on interviews, observation and archival research—as well as accounts from other national schools—the book maps contemporary film criticism. Across various sites, such as publications or online spaces, and organisations, such as film critics circles, it elucidates film criticism’s institutional practices, tasks, comportments, and personae. Looking at the history of conversations about film criticism shows us that "crisis" has always been a leitmotif. While acknowledging the considerable changes and challenges that film criticism faces today, this book situates these within an historical context and proposes an institutional framework that allows us to move beyond crisis discourse. Looking at film criticism in this way allows us to see that the very question of what counts as film criticism is continually contested within an institutional ecology made up of distinctive critical comportments addressed to distinctive audiences.
Download or read book Film Criticism in the Digital Age written by Mattias Frey and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2015-04-20 with total page 285 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the past decade, as digital media has expanded and print outlets have declined, pundits have bemoaned a “crisis of criticism” and mourned the “death of the critic.” Now that well-paying jobs in film criticism have largely evaporated, while blogs, message boards, and social media have given new meaning to the saying that “everyone’s a critic,” urgent questions have emerged about the status and purpose of film criticism in the twenty-first century. In Film Criticism in the Digital Age, ten scholars from across the globe come together to consider whether we are witnessing the extinction of serious film criticism or seeing the start of its rebirth in a new form. Drawing from a wide variety of case studies and methodological perspectives, the book’s contributors find many signs of the film critic’s declining clout, but they also locate surprising examples of how critics—whether moonlighting bloggers or salaried writers—have been able to intervene in current popular discourse about arts and culture. In addition to collecting a plethora of scholarly perspectives, Film Criticism in the Digital Age includes statements from key bloggers and print critics, like Armond White and Nick James. Neither an uncritical celebration of digital culture nor a jeremiad against it, this anthology offers a comprehensive look at the challenges and possibilities that the Internet brings to the evaluation, promotion, and explanation of artistic works.
Download or read book The Emergence of Film Culture written by Malte Hagener and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2014-09-01 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Between the two world wars, a distinct and vibrant film culture emerged in Europe. Film festivals and schools were established; film theory and history was written that took cinema seriously as an art form; and critical writing that created the film canon flourished. This scene was decidedly transnational and creative, overcoming traditional boundaries between theory and practice, and between national and linguistic borders. This new European film culture established film as a valid form of social expression, as an art form, and as a political force to be reckoned with. By examining the extraordinarily rich and creative uses of cinema in the interwar period, we can examine the roots of film culture as we know it today.
Download or read book Film as Cultural Artifact written by Mathew P. John and published by Fortress Press. This book was released on 2017-06-15 with total page 170 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Film is popularly described as a mirror of culture. It plays a pivotal role in facilitating intercultural dialogue in our global village. World cinema helps us understand and appreciate each other’s cultural identity, and promotes harmony across different cultures in our pluralistic society. It introduces us to the life of “the other” in an entertaining yet engaging fashion, creating cultural bridges that foster a sense of unity in the midst of our diversity. This book argues that “cultural anthropology” and “theology” offer two distinct, yet intrinsically connected theoretical frameworks to formulate a more “holistic” reading of religion from world cinema. It proposes an integrated methodology for religious criticism of film in which we look at religion as a subsystem of culture and observe how religious experiences depicted on the screen are mediated through the personal bias of the auteur and the context in which the film is produced. It thus creates a renewed appreciation for the religious diversity in our world by providing a new way of observing and interpreting ethnographic information from world cinema.
Download or read book Film Criticism in the Digital Age written by Mattias Frey and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2015-04-20 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the past decade, as digital media has expanded and print outlets have declined, pundits have bemoaned a “crisis of criticism” and mourned the “death of the critic.” Now that well-paying jobs in film criticism have largely evaporated, while blogs, message boards, and social media have given new meaning to the saying that “everyone’s a critic,” urgent questions have emerged about the status and purpose of film criticism in the twenty-first century. In Film Criticism in the Digital Age, ten scholars from across the globe come together to consider whether we are witnessing the extinction of serious film criticism or seeing the start of its rebirth in a new form. Drawing from a wide variety of case studies and methodological perspectives, the book’s contributors find many signs of the film critic’s declining clout, but they also locate surprising examples of how critics—whether moonlighting bloggers or salaried writers—have been able to intervene in current popular discourse about arts and culture. In addition to collecting a plethora of scholarly perspectives, Film Criticism in the Digital Age includes statements from key bloggers and print critics, like Armond White and Nick James. Neither an uncritical celebration of digital culture nor a jeremiad against it, this anthology offers a comprehensive look at the challenges and possibilities that the Internet brings to the evaluation, promotion, and explanation of artistic works.
Download or read book County Business Patterns Arkansas written by and published by . This book was released on 1976 with total page 48 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Understanding Film written by James R Russo and published by Liverpool University Press. This book was released on 2021-01-12 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This film analysis textbook contains sixteen essays on historically significant, artistically superior films released between 1922 and 1982. Written for college, high school, and university students, the essays cover central issues raised in todays cinema courses and provide students with practical models to help them improve their own writing and analytical skills. This film casebook is geographically diverse, with eight countries represented: Italy, France, the United States, Russia, Germany, Great Britain, Japan, and India. The essays, sophisticated yet not overly technical or jargon-heavy, are perfect introductions to their respective films as well as important contributions to the field of film studies in general. The books critical apparatus features credits, images, and bibliographies for all films discussed, filmographies for the directors, a glossary of film terms, the elements of film analysis, a chronology of film theory and criticism, topics for writing and discussion, a bibliography of film criticism, and a comprehensive index. Understanding Film: A Viewers Guide bucks the trend of current film analysis texts (few of which contain actual film analyses) by promoting analysis of the chosen films alongside the methods and techniques of film analysis. It has been prepared as a primary text for courses in film analysis, and a supplementary text for courses such as Introduction to Film or Film Appreciation; History of Film or Survey of Cinema; and Film Directors or Film Style and Imagination.
Download or read book The American Film Institute and the Cultural Politics of Experimental and Independent Cinema written by Gracia Ramirez and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2024-03-15 with total page 181 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the role that the American Film Institute (AFI) had in supporting experimental and independent cinema at a key moment of change in the history of American film. Weaving a rich historical narrative, Ramirez argues that the Cold War struggle for cultural supremacy motivated the creation of the federally-funded AFI. Exploring the intersection of business interests and political objectives, Ramirez demonstrates how the AFI’s approach to experimental and independent cinema was marked by an interest in promoting innovative aesthetics and protecting the creative freedom of filmmakers but lacked the attention to distribution and exhibition that would strengthen the viability of experimental and independent filmmaking as professional practices. Scholars of film, history, and American studies will find this work particularly useful.
Download or read book Sociology on Film written by Chris Cagle and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2016-12-28 with total page 189 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After World War II, Hollywood’s “social problem films”—tackling topical issues that included racism, crime, mental illness, and drug abuse—were hits with critics and general moviegoers alike. In an era of film famed for its reliance on pop psychology, these movies were a form of popular sociology, bringing the academic discipline’s concerns to a much broader audience. Sociology on Film examines how the postwar “problem film” translated contemporary policy debates and intellectual discussions into cinematic form in order to become one of the preeminent genres of prestige drama. Chris Cagle chronicles how these movies were often politically fractious, the work of progressive directors and screenwriters who drew scrutiny from the House Un-American Activities Committee. Yet he also proposes that the genre helped to construct an abstract discourse of “society” that served to unify a middlebrow American audience. As he considers the many forms of print media that served to inspire social problem films, including journalism, realist novels, and sociological texts, Cagle also explores their distinctive cinematic aesthetics. Through a close analysis of films like Gentleman’s Agreement, The Lost Weekend, and Intruder in the Dust, he presents a compelling case that the visual style of these films was intimately connected to their more expressly political and sociological aspirations. Sociology on Film demonstrates how the social problem picture both shaped and reflected the middle-class viewer’s national self-image, making a lasting impact on Hollywood’s aesthetic direction.
Download or read book Reviewing Culture Online written by Maarit Jaakkola and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-12-02 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines how ordinary users review cultural products online, ranging from books to films and other art objects to consumer products. The book maps different communities—in institutional and non-institutional settings—which intersect with the genre of review, especially in the social web where reviewing is conducted on platforms such as Instagram, YouTube and Vimeo. The book, drawing on the key concepts of cultural intermediation, platformized cultural production and post-professionalism, looks at user-generated content in lifestyle communities beyond the binary of professional and amateur production.
Download or read book Film Criticism in Cape Town 1928 1930 written by Michael Eckardt and published by AFRICAN SUN MeDIA. This book was released on 2004-04-01 with total page 124 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the development of film criticism in Cape Town’s daily press from 1928 to 1930, using film reviews from the Cape Times and Die Burger. The character of film criticism in the period under discussion is explained by describing the general function of film criticism, as well as comparing the local with the international film press. The basis for the comparative analysis is a list of films screened in three selected cinemas in Cape Town.
Download or read book The Children s Hour written by Julia Erhart and published by McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP. This book was released on 2024-05-14 with total page 115 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Based on a play by Lillian Hellman, The Children’s Hour (1961) was the first mainstream commercial American film to feature a lesbian character in a leading role. It centres on a teacher at a girls’ school (Shirley MacLaine) who is accused of harbouring feelings for her co-worker (Audrey Hepburn) and depicts the intense moral panic that ensues. Produced in the social climate of the Lavender Scare, the film reveals deep insights into the politics of sexuality and censorship in midcentury America, only a few years before more visible struggles for queer liberation. The director, William Wyler, lobbied hard to get the film made after an earlier straight-washed version in 1936. The tense road to production included debates about whether to eliminate mentions of lesbianism from the script and how implicitly queer subject matter might conflict with the Production Code, by then weakened but still in force. Julia Erhart’s reading of the film’s conception, production, and reception advances a nuanced case of censorship as a productive force. While contests between Hellman and Wyler suppressed scenes of overt affection between main characters Karen and Martha, reception was comparatively fixated on the characters’ lesbianism: it threatened middlebrow movie critics in the mainstream press and resonated with queer audiences. Erhart’s attentive interpretation of both the script and the sonic landscape yields a detailed analysis of the soundtrack as an original pro-lesbian element. As issues of queer censorship continue to permeate life and culture more than fifty years later, Erhart demonstrates that The Children’s Hour is as salient to social and political tensions around gender and sexuality today as it was in the 1960s.
Download or read book A Dictionary of Cultural and Critical Theory written by Michael Payne and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2013-05-06 with total page 834 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Now thoroughly updated and revised, this new edition of the highly acclaimed dictionary provides an authoritative and accessible guide to modern ideas in the broad interdisciplinary fields of cultural and critical theory Updated to feature over 40 new entries including pieces on Alain Badiou, Ecocriticism, Comparative Racialization , Ordinary Language Philosophy and Criticism, and Graphic Narrative Includes reflective, broad-ranging articles from leading theorists including Julia Kristeva, Stanley Cavell, and Simon Critchley Features a fully updated bibliography Wide-ranging content makes this an invaluable dictionary for students of a diverse range of disciplines
Download or read book At Full Speed written by Ching-Mei Esther Yau and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 2001 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Breathtaking swordplay and nostalgic love, Peking opera and Chow Yun-fat's cult followers -- these are some of the elements of the vivid and diverse urban imagination that find form and expression in the thriving Hong Kong cinema. All receive their due in At Full Speed, a volume that captures the remarkable range and energy of a cinema that borrows, invents, and reinvents across the boundaries of time, culture, and conventions. At Full Speed gathers film scholars and critics from around the globe to convey the transnational, multilayered character that Hong Kong films acquire and impart as they circulate worldwide. These writers scrutinize the films they find captivating: from the lesser known works of Law Man and Yuen Woo Ping to such film festival notables as Stanley Kwan and Wong Kar-wai, and from the commercial action, romance, and comedy genres of Jackie Chan, Peter Chan, Steven Chiau, Tsui Hark, John Woo, and Derek Yee to the attempted departures of Evans Chan, Ann Hui, and Clara Law. In this cinema the contributors identify an aesthetics of action, gender-flexible melodramatic excesses, objects of nostalgia, and globally projected local history and identities, as well as an active critical film community. Their work, the most incisive account ever given of one of the world's largest film industries, brings the pleasures and idiosyncrasies of Hong Kong cinema into clear close-up focus even as it enlarges on the relationships between art and the market, cultural theory and the movies.
Download or read book The SAGE Handbook of Cultural Analysis written by Tony Bennett and published by SAGE. This book was released on 2008-03-26 with total page 1151 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A genuine one-stop reference point for the many, many differing strands of cultural analysis. This isn′t just one contender among many for the title of ′best multidisciplinary overview′; this is a true heavyweight." - Matt Hills, Cardiff University "An achievement and a delight - both compelling and useful." - Beverley Skeggs, Goldsmiths, University of London With the ′cultural turn′, the concept of culture has assumed enormous importance in our understanding of the interrelations between social, political and economic structures, patterns of everyday interaction, and systems of meaning-making. In The SAGE Handbook of Cultural Analysis, the leading figures in their fields explore the implications of this paradigm shift. Part I looks at the major disciplines of knowledge in the humanities and social sciences, asking how they have been reshaped by the cultural turn and how they have elaborated distinctive new objects of knowledge. Parts II and III examine the questions arising from a practice of analysis in which the researcher is drawn reflexively into the object of study and in which methodological frameworks are rarely given in advance. Addressed to academics and advanced students in all fields of the social sciences and humanities, The SAGE Handbook of Cultural Analysis is at once a synthesis of advances in the field, with a comprehensive coverage of the scholarly literature, and a collection of original and provocative essays by some of the brightest intellectuals of our time.
Download or read book Screening Cuba written by and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2010-10-01 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hector Amaya advances into new territory in Latin American and U.S. cinema studies in this innovative analysis of the differing critical receptions of Cuban film in Cuba and the United States during the Cold War. Synthesizing film reviews, magazine articles, and other primary documents, Screening Cuba compares Cuban and U.S. reactions to four Cuban films: Memories of Underdevelopment, Lucia, One Way or Another, and Portrait of Teresa. In examining cultural production through the lens of the Cold War, Amaya reveals how contrasting interpretations of Cuban and U.S. critics are the result of the political cultures in which they operated. While Cuban critics viewed the films as powerful symbols of the social promises of the Cuban revolution, liberal and leftist American critics found meaning in the films as representations of anti-establishment progressive values and Cold War discourses. By contrasting the hermeneutics of Cuban and U.S. culture, criticism, and citizenship, Amaya argues that critical receptions of political films constitute a kind of civic public behavior.
Download or read book Australian National Cinema written by Tom O'Regan and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2005-08-10 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tom O'Regan's book is the first of its kind on Australian post-war cinema. It takes as its starting point Bazin's question 'What is cinema?'and asks what the construct of a 'national' cinema means. It looks at the broader concept from a different angle, taking film beyond the confines of 'art' into the broader cultural world. O'Regan's analysis situates Australian cinema in its historical and cultural perspective producing a valuable insight into the issues that have been raised by film policy, the cinema market place and public discourse on film production strategies. Since 1970 Australian film has enjoyed a revival. This book contains detailed critiques of the key films of this period and uses them to illustrate the recent theories on the international and Australian cinema industries. Its conclusions on the nature of the nation's cinema and the discourses within it are relevant within a far wider context; film as a global phenomenon.
