Download or read book Lightning Flowers written by Katherine E. Standefer and published by Little, Brown Spark. This book was released on 2020-11-10 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This "utterly spectacular" book weighs the impact modern medical technology has had on the author's life against the social and environmental costs inevitably incurred by the mining that makes such innovation possible (Rachel Louise Snyder, author of No Visible Bruises). What if a lifesaving medical device causes loss of life along its supply chain? That's the question Katherine E. Standefer finds herself asking one night after being suddenly shocked by her implanted cardiac defibrillator. In this gripping, intimate memoir about health, illness, and the invisible reverberating effects of our medical system, Standefer recounts the astonishing true story of the rare diagnosis that upended her rugged life in the mountains of Wyoming and sent her tumbling into a fraught maze of cardiology units, dramatic surgeries, and slow, painful recoveries. As her life increasingly comes to revolve around the internal defibrillator freshly wired into her heart, she becomes consumed with questions about the supply chain that allows such an ostensibly miraculous device to exist. So she sets out to trace its materials back to their roots. From the sterile labs of a medical device manufacturer in southern California to the tantalum and tin mines seized by armed groups in the Democratic Republic of the Congo to a nickel and cobalt mine carved out of endemic Madagascar jungle, Lightning Flowers takes us on a global reckoning with the social and environmental costs of a technology that promises to be lifesaving but is, in fact, much more complicated. Deeply personal and sharply reported, Lightning Flowers takes a hard look at technological mythos, healthcare, and our cultural relationship to medical technology, raising important questions about our obligations to one another, and the cost of saving one life.
Download or read book The Cinema of Wim Wenders written by Roger F. Cook and published by Wayne State University Press. This book was released on 1997 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Cinema of Wim Wenders, the first anthology of scholarly work on Wenders, is a unique anthropology of source materials and selected critical essays on the films of Wim Wenders, a major filmmaker in the so-called New German Cinema movement. His work, probably more than that of any other European director, reflects the tension between the European auteur tradition and the increasing dominance of the American media industry. In both his filmmaking and his critical writing, he explores how the relationship between image and narrative manifests the basic opposition between these two film traditions. This book serves as an introduction to the central concerns of his cinema while situation his work within German film history and the contemporary debates about postmodern film and media theory.
Download or read book Theorizing Documentary written by Michael Renov and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012-10-02 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A key collection of essays that looks at the specific issues related to the documentary form. Questions addressed include `What is documentary?' and `How fictional is nonfiction?'
Download or read book Illness as Many Narratives written by Stella Bolaki and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2016-02-02 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Illness narratives have become a cultural phenomenon in the Western world. In what ways can they be seen to have aesthetic, ethical and political value? What do they reveal about experiences of illness, the relationship between the body and identity and the role of the arts in bearing witness to illness for people who are ill and those connected to them? How can they influence medicine, the arts and shape public understandings of health and illness? These questions and more are explored in Illness as Many Narratives, which contains readings of a rich array of representations of illness from the 1980s to the present. A wide range of arts and media are considered such as life writing, photography, performance, film, theatre, artists' books and animation. The individual chapters deploy multidisciplinary critical frameworks and discuss physical and mental illness. Through reading this book you will gain an understanding of the complex contribution illness narratives make to contemporary culture and the emergent field of Critical Medical Humanities.
Download or read book Jim Jarmusch written by Sara Piazza and published by Reaktion Books. This book was released on 2015-05-15 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jim Jarmusch: Music, Words and Noise is the first book to examine the films of Jim Jarmusch from a sound-oriented perspective. The three essential acoustic elements that structure a film— music, words and noise—propel this book’s fascinating journey through his work. Exploring the director’s extensive back catalogue, including Stranger Than Paradise, Down By Law, Dead Man, and Only Lovers Left Alive, Sara Piazza’s unique reading reveals how Jarmusch created a form of “sound democracy” in film, in which all acoustic layers are capable of infiltrating each other and in which sound is not subordinate to the visual. In his cultural melting pot, hierarchies are irrelevant: Schubert and Japanese noise-bands, Marlowe and Betty Boop, can coexist easily side-by-side. Developing the innovative idea of a “silent-sound film,” Piazza identifies prefiguring elements from pre-sound-era film in Jarmusch’s work. Highlighting the importance of Jarmusch’s treatment of sound, Piazza investigates how the director’s distinctive reputation consolidated itself over the course of a thirty-year career. Based in New York, Jarmusch was able to develop a fiercely personal vision far from the commercial pressures of Hollywood. The book uses wide-ranging examples from music, film, literature, and visual art, and features interviews with many prominent figures, including Ennio Morricone, Luc Sante, Roberto Benigni, John Lurie, and Jarmusch himself. An innovative account of a much-admired body of work, Jim Jarmusch will appeal not only to the many fans of the director but all those interested in the connections between sound and film. Visit the author's page for this book: http://jimjarmusch-musicwordsandnoise.com
Download or read book D A Pennebaker written by Keith Beattie and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2011-10-15 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume is the first book-length study of the extensive career and prolific works of D.A. Pennebaker, one of the pioneers of direct cinema, a documentary form that emphasizes observation and a straightforward portrayal of events. With a career spanning decades, Pennebaker's many projects have included avant-garde experiments (Daybreak Express), ground-breaking television documentaries (Primary), celebrity films (Dont Look Back), concert films (Monterey Pop), and innovative fusions of documentary and fiction (Maidstone). Exploring the concept of "performing the real," Keith Beattie interprets Pennebaker's films as performances in which the act of filming is in itself a performative transgression of the norms of purely observational documentary. He examines the ways in which Pennebaker's presentation of unscripted everyday performances is informed by connections between documentary filmmaking and other experimental movements such as the New American Cinema. Through his collaborations with such various artists as Richard Leacock, Shirley Clarke, Norman Mailer, and Jean-Luc Godard, Pennebaker has continually reworked and redefined the forms of documentary filmmaking. This book also includes a recent interview with the director and a full filmography.
Download or read book Jim Jarmusch written by Juan A. Suárez and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2007-08-13 with total page 215 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first major English-language study of Jarmusch At a time when gimmicky, action-driven blockbusters ruled Hollywood, Jim Jarmusch spearheaded a boom in independent cinema by making now-classic low-budget films like Stranger than Paradise, Down by Law, and Mystery Train. Jarmusch's films focused on intimacy, character, and new takes on classical narratives. His minimal form, peculiar pacing, wry humor, and blank affect have since been adopted by directors like Sofia Coppola, Hal Hartley, Richard Linklater, and Tsai Ming-liang. Juan A. Suárez identifies and describes an abundance of aesthetic influences on Jarmusch, delving into the director's links to punk, Structural film, classic street photography, hip-hop, beat literature and art, and the New York pop vanguard of the late 1970s. At the same time, he analyzes Jarmusch's work from three mutually implicated perspectives: in relation to independent filmmaking from the 1980s to the present; as a form of cultural production that appropriates existing icons, genres, and motifs; and as an instance of postmodern politics. A volume in the series Contemporary Film Directors, edited by James R. Naremore
Download or read book Narrative Mortality written by Catherine Russell and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 1995 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What seems like closure might be something more, as Catherine Russell shows us in this book about death in narrative cinema since the 1950s. Analyzing the structural importance of death in narrative endings, as well as the thematics of loss and redemption, Russell identifies mortality as a valuable critical tool for understanding the cinema of the second half of the twentieth century. Her work includes close textual readings of films by Fritz Lang, Wim Wenders, Oshima Nagisa, Jean-Luc Godard, and Robert Altman, among others. In these analyses, Russell reveals an uneasy relationship between death and closure, which she traces to anxieties about identity, gender, and national-cultural myths, and also to the persistence of desire. Drawing on the work of Walter Benjamin, she shows us death as a fundamentally allegorical structure in cinema - and as a potential sign of historical difference, with crucial implications for theories of film narrative and spectatorship. "Narrative Mortality" provides an insight into the dynamics of postmodern cinema as it emerged from the modernist preoccupation with existential mortality. By tracing the role of death from a work that precedes the Brechtian cinema of the 60s ("Beyond a reasonable doubt") to several that succeed it ("Nashville", "The State of things"), the book expands the narrative project of new wave cinema and ushers it onto a broad historical plane.
Download or read book Star Texts written by Jeremy G. Butler and published by Wayne State University Press. This book was released on 1991 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of previously published works on performance and stardom, examining the relationship between genre and performance, the position of the star within ideology, the construction of a semiotics of performance and stardom, the function of the actor within experimental or independent cinema, and the distinction between performance and everyday behavior. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Download or read book European Cinemas in the Television Age written by Dorota Ostrowska and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2007-02-01 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: European Cinemas in the Television Age is a radical attempt to rethink the post-war history of European cinemas. The authors approach the subject from the perspective of television's impact on the culture of cinema's production, distribution, consumption and reception. Thus they indicate a new direction for the debate about the future of cinema in Europe. In every European country television has transformed economic, technological and aesthetic terms in which the process of cinema production had been conducted. Television's growing popularity has drastically reshaped cinema's audiences and forced governments to introduce policies to regulate the interaction between cinema and television in the changing and dynamic audio-visual environment. It is cinematic criticism, which was slowest in coming to terms with the presence of television and therefore most instrumental in perpetuating the view of cinema as an isolated object of aesthetic, critical and academic inquiry. The recognition of the impact of television upon European cinemas offers a more authentic and richer picture of cinemas in Europe, which are part of the complex audiovisual matrix including television and new media.
Download or read book The Autobiographical Turn in Germanophone Documentary and Experimental Film written by Robin Curtis and published by Boydell & Brewer. This book was released on 2014 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The essays in this volume examine the parameters shaping the audiovisual self in the Germanophone cultural context across a variety of practices and aesthetic modes, from contemporary artists including Hito Steyerl, Ming Wong, and kate hers to Rolf Dieter Brinkmann's multimedia experiments of the 1970s, and from Helke Misselwitz's challenges to the documentary tradition in the GDR to Peter Liechti's investigations of Swiss ambivalence toward the nation's iconic landscape. The volume thus takes up a number of historically and geographically specific iterations of autobiographical discourse that in each case remain contingent on the space and time in which they are uttered.
Download or read book Death in Documentaries written by Benjamin Bennett-Carpenter and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2017-11-13 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Memento mori is a broad and understudied cultural phenomenon and experience. The term “memento mori” is a Latin injunction that means “remember mortality,” or more directly, “remember that you must die.” In art and cultural history, memento mori appears widely, especially in medieval folk culture and in the well-known Dutch still life vanitas paintings of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Yet memento mori extends well beyond these points in art and cultural history. In Death in Documentaries: The Memento Mori Experience, Benjamin Bennett-Carpenter suggests that documentaries are an especially apt form of contemporary memento mori. Bennett-Carpenter shows that documentaries may offer composed transformative experiences in which a viewer may renew one’s consciousness of mortality – and thus renew one’s life.
Download or read book Placing Movies written by Jonathan Rosenbaum and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 1995-05-10 with total page 347 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Once or twice a generation a film critic comes along who expands or even redefines how we talk about the medium. Jonathan Rosenbaum is one of these figures."—Alan Williams, author of Republic of Images
Download or read book Film Directors on Directing written by John A. Gallagher and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 1989-05-04 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Independent director and screenwriter John Andrew Gallagher, interviews 21 filmmakers on the craft of motion picture directing. Francois Truffaut, the late great French director, as well as Michael Cimino, Ulu Grosbard, Dennis Hopper, Alan Parker, Susan Seidelman, Joan Micklin Silver and many others reveal behind-the-scenes anecdotes about well known films and stars. The big gamblers who spend millions per film as well as the colorful low-budget kings provide an intriguing look at the mechanics of filmmaking. Choosing and preparing the screenplay, working with actors and crew, dealing with the distributor, and advice to young filmmakers--all are covered in this book's illuminating interviews. Serious students of cinema, filmmakers, movie buffs, and people fascinated by film will find Film Directors on in this book's illuminating interviews.
Download or read book Primary Physical Science Education written by Hans U. Fuchs and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2023-11-11 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This open access book is the first of two volumes that integrates a study of direct encounters with Primary Forces of Nature, Wind, Light, Rain, Heat and Cold, Water, etc., with imaginative narrative forms of communication. The approach developed in this book shows how the growth of cognitive tools (first of mythic and then of romantic forms of understanding) lets children make sense of experiencing physical phenomena. An in-depth description of Fluids, Gravity, and Heat as Basic Forces shows how primary sense-making can evolve into understanding of aspects of physical science, allowing for a nature-based pedagogy and application to environmental systems. The final chapter introduces visual metaphors and theatrical storytelling that are particularly useful for understanding the role of energy in physical processes. It explores how a mythic approach to nature can inform early science pedagogy. This book is of interest to kindergarten and primary school teachers as well as early education researchers and instructors.
Download or read book Wim Wenders and Peter Handke written by Martin Brady and published by Rodopi. This book was released on 2011 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Preliminary Material -- Acknowledgements -- Authors' Note -- Introduction -- Politics, Poetics, Film: The Beginnings of a Collaboration -- Parallel Texts: Language into Image in The Goalkeeper's Fear of the Penalty -- Accompanied by Text: From Short Letter, Long Farewell to Alice in the Cities -- Mute Stories and Blind Alleys: Text, Image and Allusion in Wrong Move -- Leafing through Wings of Desire -- Conclusion -- Filmographies -- Bibliography -- Index.
Download or read book The Films of Wim Wenders written by Robert Phillip Kolker and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1993-01-29 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The authors trace the development of one of the most well-known directors of the New German Cinema that flourished in the 1970s and early 1980s. Examining Wim Wenders' career from his early film school productions through his mature works of the 1970s, this book also analyses the most recent works, as well as the themes and preoccupations that unite his oeuvre. As the authors note, Wenders' works have been profoundly influenced by American films, especially the 'road movie' genre. His own work often features characters who are always on the move, in an attempt to capture a glimpse of their identity and place in the world. They also represent a generation of postwar Germans seeking to redeem themselves and the history of their country by turning to American popular culture, particularly its music and movies.
