Download or read book Cinematic Quests for Identity written by Maria Garcia and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2015-04-02 with total page 285 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Whether embodied in literature, theater, or film, an enduring theme of many artistic works has been the protagonist’s search for identity. Such quests are typically psychological or spiritual journeys and depicted on the screen in a variety of manifestations—endeavors embarked upon to address an emotional trauma or to overcome an obstacle in the hero’s life. Using Jean Cocteau’s La Belle et La Bête as a leitmotif, these pursuits are discussed by author Maria Garcia as encounters with the “Beast.” At the end of their quests, heroes are reborn into their new identities, while the Beast disappears, transforms, or dies. In Cinematic Quests for Identity: The Hero’s Encounter with the Beast, Garcia examines the cinematic conventions of the male and female search for individuation across several genres. After discussing La Belle et La Bête, the author looks at a number of films including three iconic male journeys—The Picture of Dorian Gray, The Searchers, and The Deer Hunter. Additional chapters focus on The Silence of the Lambs, Bringing Up Baby, The Lady Eve, The Secret of Roan Inish, The Natural, and Moneyball. The book concludes with a consideration of the three fairy tale films by Catherine Breillat—Fat Girl, Bluebeard, and The Sleeping Beauty—and the female characters in several Robert Bresson films, including The Trial of Joan of Arc. Providing a unique and original perspective on films throughout the world, this provocative book draws upon Jungian thought, as well as several literary traditions including fairy tales, epic poetry, and Greek and Celtic mythology. Aimed at scholars of film and film theory, Cinematic Quests for Identity will also appeal to movie fans interested in a deeper understanding of films that explore a character’s struggle to live a conscious life.

Download or read book Zoom In Zoom Out written by Sandra Barriales-Bouche and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2009-03-26 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the context of the transformations that Europe is undergoing, Zoom in, Zoom out: Crossing Borders in Contemporary European Cinema attempts to serve as a testimony to the multiple ways in which European filmmakers are questioning the many borders of the continent. European films have become a vital cultural space where the relationship between borders and identity is being renegotiated. The films discussed here self-consciously address the question of European identity while overtly crossing geographic, cultural, linguistic and aesthetic borders. While all the articles explore the crossing of borders in Contemporary European films, the volume maintains diverse themes and perspectives as subtopics. It includes articles not only about films that deal thematically with border-crossings, but also articles that examine movies that cross borders in genres and techniques. The articles have different theoretical approaches (Film theory, Cultural Studies, History, Sociology, Philosophy, and Psychoanalysis) and cover films from well-known cinematic traditions (French, Spanish, German, and Italian) as well as lesser-known cinematic traditions (Yugoslavian, Greek, and Irish). As a whole, the essays frame the self-conscious gesture by European filmmakers to define European cinema as a work-in-progress, or at the very least, as a project that, like Europe itself, raises as many questions as it answers. "This volume is a welcome addition to the growing critical literature on the evolution of the conception and practice of national cinema in Europe over the last two decades. Sandra Barriales-Bouche and Marjorie Attignol Salvodon have chosen a solid selection of representative case studies that reflects different critical approaches to the problem of maintaining local or national cinema production in Europe during a period of intense globalization. Their insightful introduction formulates the theme of “unsettled borders” and “renegotiated identities” that will resonate in the nine essays that follow. With a focus on the critical concept of these unsettled borders, the various authors explore the ways that the traditional mark of national space has been transformed through political and economic realignments as well as new technologies and the emergence of a new generation of filmmakers for whom national cinema no longer means what it did even twenty years ago. The volume provides a good balance of critical approaches that includes auteur studies, descriptions of state policies and the particular practices of filmmakers and producers in different parts of the continent (Spain, Germany, Ireland, the Balkans) and, finally, useful appendices that provide a close-up view of the complex nature of international co-productions." —Marvin D’Lugo, Professor of Spanish, Clark University "This is an interesting collection of essays that has been well conceived and organised. The standard of writing is high and I recommend publication. I particularly commend the conceptual framework underpinning the volume. This marries a cultural studies approach, which still dominates the study of film in Area Studies and language departments across Europe and the US (where filmic texts are increasingly used as teaching tools), with the more industry-based focus one tends to find adopted by Media and Screen Studies departments. Thus this collection will appeal to a wide range of students and academics. The introduction sets out the volume’s overarching framework cogently and clearly, giving a nuanced exploration of the way that the notion of the border can be used as a dynamic prism to help define and explore the limits of our understanding of Europe, European identity and European culture, within which cinema has long played a key role. The editors give a good account, for example, of the way film has been employed as a space to explore the possibilities of European integration by EU politicians as well as highlighting the flaws inherent within this project. They do, however, perhaps suggest a certain Western European/North American-centric view in their suggestion that the cinema of Yugoslavia, Greece or Ireland is somehow less well known than other national and transnational cinemas explored here. Less well known to whom? ... However, from the broad range of cinemas explored in the rest of the volume clearly this is not the case. Particular high points for me are the chapters on the work of Fatih Akin by Janis Little Solomon and John Davidson’s discussion of Schulze gets the Blues, as well as Olivier Asselin’s fascinating account of Database Cinema. This will be a good addition to scholarship on European film and I look forward to receiving my copy." —Professor Paul Cooke (University of Leeds)

Download or read book The Asian Cinema Experience written by Stephen Teo and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-05-07 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the range and dynamism of contemporary Asian cinemas, covering East Asia (China, Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan), Southeast Asia (Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia), South Asia (Bollywood), and West Asia (Iran), in order to discover what is common about them and to engender a theory or concept of "Asian Cinema". It goes beyond existing work which provides a field survey of Asian cinema, probing more deeply into the field of Asian Cinema, arguing that Asian Cinema constitutes a separate pedagogical subject, and putting forward an alternative cinematic paradigm. The book covers "styles", including the works of classical Asian Cinema masters, and specific genres such as horror films, and Bollywood and Anime, two very popular modes of Asian Cinema; "spaces", including artistic use of space and perspective in Chinese cinema, geographic and personal space in Iranian cinema, the private "erotic space" of films from South Korea and Thailand, and the persistence of the family unit in the urban spaces of Asian big cities in many Asian films; and "concepts" such as Pan-Asianism, Orientalism, Nationalism and Third Cinema. The rise of Asian nations on the world stage has been coupled with a growing interest, both inside and outside Asia, of Asian culture, of which film is increasingly an indispensable component – this book provides a rich, insightful overview of what exactly constitutes Asian Cinema.

Download or read book The Cinematic Language of Theo Angelopoulos written by Vrasidas Karalis and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2021-09-17 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Beginning with his first film Reconstruction, released in 1970, Theo Angelopoulos’s notoriously complex cinematic language has long explored Greece’s contemporary history and questioned European culture and society. The Cinematic Language of Theo Angelopoulos offers a detailed study and critical discussion of the acclaimed filmmaker’s cinematic aesthetics as they developed over his career, exploring different styles through which Greek and European history, identity, and loss have been visually articulated throughout his oeuvre, as well as his impact on both European and global cinema.

Download or read book The Cinema of the Low Countries written by Ernest Mathijs and published by Wallflower Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Films from the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg have long been regarded as isolated texts. The Cinema of the Low Countries points to the interconnectedness between these national cinemas from the point of view of genre, language and format, and their local and international importance by explicitly focusing on 24 key feature films and documentaries from the region. Building on each film's relationship with its particular cultural context, this volume presents twenty-four specially commissioned essays that explore the particular significance and influence of a wide range of exemplary films. Covering the work of internationally acclaimed directors such as Joris Ivens, Henri Stock, Paul Verhoeven and the Dardenne Brothers and featuring the films Turkish Delight, The Vanishing, Daughters of Darkness, Rosetta, Soldiers of Orange and Man Bites Dog, this collection offers an original approach to the appreciation of a diverse and increasingly important regional cinema.

Download or read book Identity in Animation written by Jane Batkin and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2017-02-17 with total page 182 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Identity in Animation: A Journey into Self, Difference, Culture and the Body uncovers the meaning behind some of the most influential characters in the history of animation and questions their unique sense of who they are and how they are formed. Jane Batkin explores how identity politics shape the inner psychology of the character and their exterior motivation, often buoyed along by their questioning of ‘place’ and ‘belonging’ and driven by issues of self, difference, gender and the body. Through this, Identity in Animation illustrates and questions the construction of stereotypes as well as unconventional representations within American, European and Eastern animation. It does so with examples such as the strong gender tropes of Japan’s Hayao Miyazaki, the strange relationships created by Australian director Adam Elliot and Nick Park’s depiction of Britishness. In addition, this book discusses Betty Boop’s sexuality and ultimate repression, Warner Bros’ anarchic, self-aware characters and Disney’s fascinating representation of self and society. Identity in Animation is an ideal book for students and researchers of animation studies, as well as any media and film studies students taking modules on animation as part of their course.

Download or read book The Figure of the Migrant in Contemporary European Cinema written by Temenuga Trifonova and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2020-07-09 with total page 291 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Figure of the Migrant in Contemporary European Cinema explores contemporary debates around the concepts of 'Europe' and 'European identity' through an examination of recent European films dealing with various aspects of globalization (the refugee crisis, labour migration, the resurgence of nationalism and ethnic violence, neoliberalism, post-colonialism) with a particular attention to the figure of the migrant and the ways in which this figure challenges us to rethink Europe and its core Enlightenment values (citizenship, justice, ethics, liberty, tolerance, and hospitality) in a post-national context of ephemerality, volatility, and contingency that finds people desperately looking for firmer markers of identity. The book argues that a compelling case can be made for re-orienting the study of contemporary European cinema around the figure of the migrant viewed both as a symbolic figure (representing post-national citizenship, urbanization, the 'gap' between ethics and justice) and as a figure occupying an increasingly central place in European cinema in general rather than only in what is usually called 'migrant and diasporic cinema'. By drawing attention to the structural and affective affinities between the experience of migrants and non-migrants, Europeans and non-Europeans, Trifonova shows that it is becoming increasingly difficult to separate stories about migration from stories about life under neoliberalism in general

Download or read book European Cinema and Intertextuality written by E. Mazierska and published by Springer. This book was released on 2011-07-12 with total page 285 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers an up-to-date approach to the question of representing history through film, exploring how films represent crucial events in twentieth-century European history. This includes the Second World War, Armenian Genocide, anti-Semitic attacks in Poland, European terrorism of the 1970s, and the end of communism.

Download or read book Storytelling in World Cinemas written by Lina Khatib and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2012-05-29 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Storytelling in World Cinemas, Vol. 1: Forms is an innovative collection of essays that discuss how different cinemas of the world tell stories. The book locates European, Asian, African, and Latin American films within their wider cultural and artistic frameworks, showing how storytelling forms in cinema are infused with influences from other artistic, literary, and oral traditions. This volume also reconsiders cinematic storytelling in general, highlighting the hybridity of 'national' forms of storytelling, calling for a rethinking of African cinematic storytelling that goes beyond oral traditions, and addressing films characterised by 'non-narration'. This study is the first in a two-volume project, with the second focusing on the contexts of cinematic storytelling.

Download or read book Rethinking Testimonial Cinema in Postdictatorship Argentina written by Verónica Garibotto and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2019-01-07 with total page 207 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For roughly two decades after the collapse of the military regime in 1983, testimonial narrative was viewed and received as a privileged genre in Argentina. Today, however, academics and public intellectuals are experiencing "memory fatigue," a backlash against the concepts of memory and trauma, just as memory and testimonial films have reached the center of Argentinian public discourse. In Rethinking Testimonial Cinema in Postdictatorship Argentina, Verónica Garibotto looks at the causes for this reticence and argues that, rather than discarding memory texts for their repetitive excess, it is necessary to acknowledge them and their exhaustion as discourses of the present. By critically examining how trauma theory and subaltern studies have previously been applied to testimonial cinema, Garibotto rereads Argentinian films produced since 1983 and calls for an alternate interpretive framework at the intersection of semiotics, theories of affect, scholarship on hegemony, and the ideological uses of documentary and fiction. She argues that recurrent concepts—such as trauma, mourning, memory, and subalternity—miss how testimonial films have changed over time, shifting from subaltern narratives to official, hegemonic, and iconic accounts. Her work highlights the urgent need to continue to study these types of narratives, particularly at a time when military dictatorships have become entrenched in Latin America and memory narratives proliferate worldwide. Although Argentina is Garibotto's focus, her theory can be adapted to other contexts in which narratives about recent political conflicts have shifted from alternative versions of history to official, hegemonic accounts—such as in Spanish, Chilean, Uruguayan, Brazilian, South African, and Holocaust testimonies. Garibotto's study of testimonial cinema moves us to pursue a broader ideological analysis of the links between film and historical representation.

Download or read book The Film Archipelago written by Antonio Gómez and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2021-12-16 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How do the islands and archipelagos of the New World figure in Latin American cinema? Comprising 15 essays and a critical introduction, The Film Archipelago: Islands in Latin American Cinema addresses this question by examining a series of intersections between insular spaces and filmmaking in Latin America. The volume brings together international scholars and filmmakers to consider a diverse corpus of films about islands, films that take place on islands, films produced in islands, and films that problematise islands. The book explores a diverse range of films that extend from the Chilean documentaries of Patricio Guzmán to work on the Malvinas/Falkland Islands, and films by Argentine directors Gustavo Fontán and Lucrecia Martel. Chapters focus on Rapa Nui (Easter Island), the Mexican Islas Marías, and the Panamanian Caribbean; on ecocritical, environmental and film historical aspects of Brazilian and Argentine river islands; and on Cuban, Guadeloupean, Haitian, and Puerto Rican contexts. The Film Archipelago argues that the islands and archipelagos of Latin American cinema constitute a critically interesting, analytically complex, and historically suggestive angle to explore issues of marginality and peripherality, remoteness and isolation, and fragility and dependency. As a whole, the collection demonstrates to what extent the combined insular and archipelagic lens can re-frame and re-figure both longstanding and recent discussions on the spaces of Latin American cinema.

Download or read book The Palgrave Handbook of Asian Cinema written by Aaron Han Joon Magnan-Park and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-11-04 with total page 743 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection offers new approaches to theorizing Asian film in relation to the history, culture, geopolitics and economics of the continent. Bringing together original essays written by established and emerging scholars, this anthology transcends the limitations of national borders to do justice to the diverse ways in which the cinema shapes Asia geographically and imaginatively in the world today. From the revival of the Silk Road as the “belt and road” of a rising China to historical ruminations on the legacy of colonialism across the continent, the authors argue that the category of “Asian cinema” from Turkey to the edges of the Pacific continues to play a vital role in cutting-edge film research. This handbook will serve as an essential guide for committed scholars, students, and all those interested in the past, present, and possible future of Asian cinema in the 21st century.

Download or read book French language Road Cinema written by Michael Gott and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2016-05-31 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Focusing on a corpus of films from France, Belgium and Switzerland, French-language Road Cinema contends that nowhere is the impulse to remap the spaces and identities of 'New Europe' more evident than in French-language cinema.

Download or read book Cinematic Ethics written by Robert Sinnerbrink and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-10-23 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How do movies evoke and express ethical ideas? What role does our emotional involvement play in this process? What makes the aesthetic power of cinema ethically significant? Cinematic Ethics: Exploring Ethical Experience through Film addresses these questions by examining the idea of cinema as a medium of ethical experience with the power to provoke emotional understanding and philosophical thinking. In a clear and engaging style, Robert Sinnerbrink examines the key philosophical approaches to ethics in contemporary film theory and philosophy using detailed case studies of cinematic ethics across different genres, styles, and filmic traditions. Written in a lucid and lively style that will engage both specialist and non-specialist readers, this book is ideal for use in the academic study of philosophy and film. Key features include annotated suggestions for further reading at the end of each chapter and a filmography of movies useful for teaching and researching cinematic ethics.

Download or read book The Journal of Korean Studies Volume 16 Number 2 Fall 2011 written by Clark W. Sorensen and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2011-12-22 with total page 167 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The University of Washington-Korea Studies Program, in collaboration with Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, is proud to publish the Journal of Korean Studies. In 1979 Dr. James Palais (PhD Harvard 1968), former UW professor of Korean History edited and published the first volume of the Journal of Korean Studies. For thirteen years it was a leading academic forum for innovative, in-depth research on Korea. In 2004 former editors Gi-Wook Shin and John Duncan revived this outstanding publication at Stanford University. In August 2008 editorial responsibility transferred back to the University of Washington. With the editorial guidance of Clark Sorensen and Donald Baker, the Journal of Korean Studies (JKS) continues to be dedicated to publishing outstanding articles, from all disciplines, on a broad range of historical and contemporary topics concerning Korea. In addition the JKS publishes reviews of the latest Korea-related books. To subscribe to the Journal of Korean Studies or order print back issues, please click here.

Download or read book The End of Cinema as We Know it written by Jon Lewis and published by Pluto Press. This book was released on 2002 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The End of Cinema As We Know It, contributors well known in the 'movie' field talk about the movie industry and look at the variety of new ways we are viewing films. They query whether or not we are getting different, better movies?

Download or read book The Sensuous Cinema of Wong Kar wai written by Gary Bettinson and published by Hong Kong University Press. This book was released on 2014-11-01 with total page 175 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The widely acclaimed films of Wong Kar-wai are characterized by their sumptuous yet complex visual and sonic style. This study of Wong’s filmmaking techniques uses a poetics approach to examine how form, music, narration, characterization, genre, and other artistic elements work together to produce certain effects on audiences. Bettinson argues that Wong’s films are permeated by an aesthetic of sensuousness and “disturbance” achieved through techniques such as narrative interruptions, facial masking, opaque cuts, and other complex strategies. The effect is to jolt the viewer out of complete aesthetic absorption. Each of the chapters focuses on a single aspect of Wong’s filmmaking. The book also discusses Wong’s influence on other filmmakers in Hong Kong and around the world. The Sensuous Cinema of Wong Kar-wai will appeal to all who are interested in authorship and aesthetics in film studies, to scholars in Asian studies, media and cultural studies, and to anyone with an interest in Hong Kong cinema in general, and Wong’s films in particular. “In this carefully written study, Gary Bettinson offers a critical assessment not only of the stylistic features of Wong Kar-wai’s films but also of the scholarship that has developed around them. Arguing against the facile culturalism that tends to dominate such scholarship, this book does full justice to Wong’s cinematic methods in a series of impressively well-informed and informative readings.” —Rey Chow, Duke University