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 202 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 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 390 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 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 284 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 Film written by Maria Pramaggiore and published by Allyn & Bacon. This book was released on 2008 with total page 476 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Film: A Critical Introduction, 2e, provides a comprehensive framework for studying films, with an emphasis on writing as a means of exploring film's aesthetic and cultural significance. This book's consistent and comprehensive focus on writing allows the reader to master film vocabulary and concepts while learning to formulate rich interpretations. Part I introduces the reader to the importance of film analysis, offering helpful strategies for discerning the way films produce meaning. Part II examines the fundamental elements of film, including narrative form, mise en scne, cinematography, editing, and sound, and shows how these concepts can be used to interpret films. Part III moves beyond textual analysis to explore film as a cultural institution and introduce the reader to essential areas of film studies research.
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 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 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 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 Hollywood and the Culture Elite written by Peter Decherney and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2005-04-06 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As Americans flocked to the movies during the first part of the twentieth century, the guardians of culture grew worried about their diminishing influence on American art, education, and American identity itself. Meanwhile, Hollywood studio heads were eager to stabilize their industry, solidify their place in mainstream society, and expand their new but tenuous hold on American popular culture. Peter Decherney explores how these needs coalesced and led to the development of a symbiotic relationship between the film industry and America's stewards of high culture. Formed during Hollywood's Golden Age (1915-1960), this unlikely partnership ultimately insured prominent places in American culture for both the movie industry and elite cultural institutions. It redefined Hollywood as an ideal American industry; it made movies an art form instead of simply entertainment for the masses; and it made moviegoing a vital civic institution. For their part, museums and universities used films to maintain their position as quintessential American institutions. As the book delves into the ties between Hollywood bigwigs and various cultural leaders, an intriguing cast of characters emerges, including the poet Vachel Lindsay, film producers Adolph Zukor and Joseph Kennedy, Hollywood flak and censor extraordinaire Will Hays, and philanthropist turned politician Nelson Rockefeller. Decherney considers how Columbia University's film studies program helped integrate Jewish students into American culture while also professionalizing screenwriting. He examines MoMA's career-savvy film curator Iris Barry, a British feminist once dedicated to stemming the tide of U.S. cultural imperialism, who ultimately worked with Hollywood and the U.S. government to fight fascism and communism and promote American values abroad. Other chapters explore Vachel Lindsay's progressive vision of movies as reinvigorating the public sphere through film libraries and museums; the promotion of movie connoisseurship at Harvard and other universities; and how the heir of a railroad magnate bankrolled the American avant-garde film movement. Amid ethnic diversity, the rise of mass entertainment, world war, and the global spread of American culture, Hollywood and cultural institutions worked together to insure their own survival and profitability and to provide a coherent, though shifting, American identity.
Download or read book Film Criticism and Digital Cultures written by Andrew McWhirter and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2016-08-26 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'The critic is dead.' 'Everyone's a critic.' These statements reflect some of the perceptions of film criticism in a time when an opinion can be published in seconds, yet reach an audience of millions. This book examines the reality of contemporary film criticism, by talking to leading practitioners in the UK and North America - such as Nick James, Mark Cousins, Jonathan Rosenbaum and Richard Porton - and by covering a broad spectrum of influential publications - including Sight & Sound, The Guardian, Cineaste, indieWIRE and Variety. Forming a major new contribution to an emerging field of study, these enquiries survey the impact of larger cultural, economic and technological processes facing society, media and journalism. Historical perspectives on criticism from ancient times and current debates in journalism and digital media are used to unravel questions, such as: what is the relationship between crisis and criticism? In what way does the web change the functions and habits of practitioners? What influences do film industries have on the critical act? And how engaged are practitioners with converged and creative film criticism such as the video essay?In the face of transformative digital idealism, empirical findings here redress the balance and argue the case for evolution rather than revolution taking place within film criticism.
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 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 746 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 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.
Download or read book Early Film Culture in Hong Kong Taiwan and Republican China written by Emilie Yueh-yu Yeh and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2018-02-14 with total page 394 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume features new work on cinema in early twentieth-century Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Republican China. Looking beyond relatively well-studied cities like Shanghai, these essays foreground cinema’s relationship with imperialism and colonialism and emphasize the rapid development of cinema as a sociocultural institution. These essays examine where films were screened; how cinema-going as a social activity adapted from and integrated with existing social norms and practices; the extent to which Cantonese opera and other regional performance traditions were models for the development of cinematic conventions; the role foreign films played in the development of cinema as an industry in the Republican era; and much more.
Download or read book A Companion to American Indie Film written by Geoff King and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2016-12-19 with total page 542 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Companion to American Indie Film features a comprehensive collection of newly commissioned essays that represent a state-of-the-art resource for understanding key aspects of the field of indie films produced in the United States. Takes a comprehensive and fresh new look at the topic of American indie film Features newly commissioned essays from top film experts and emerging scholars that represent the state-of-the-art reference to the indie film field Topics covered include: indie film culture; key historical moments and movements in indie film history; relationships between indie film and other indie media; and issues including class, gender, regional identity and stardom in in the indie field Includes studies of many types of indie films and film genres, along with various filmmakers and performers that have come to define the field
