Focusing on early cinema's relationship with the pictorial arts, this pioneering study explores how cinema's emergence was grounded in theories of picture composition, craft and arts education - from magic lantern experiments in 1890s New York through to early Hollywood feature films in the 1920s.
The first computer-generated animated feature film, Toy Story (1995) sustains a dynamic vitality that proved instantly appealing to audiences of all ages.
Todd Haynes's 2002 film Far From Heaven has been hailed as a homage to 1950s Hollywood melodrama, although anyone tempted to take the film at face value should be warned that it aims to subvert as much as celebrate that genre.
The new wave of documentaries that prominently feature their filmmakers, such as the works of Michael Moore and Morgan Spurlock, have attracted fresh, new audiences to the form but they have also drawn criticism that documentaries now promote entertainment at the expense of truth.
When the sun set on the British Empire, the resultant fragmentation of British identity emerged most tellingly in artistic works: cinematic works such as Howards End depicted a richly historical land steeped in tradition and tragedy, while the more modern Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels revealed a brutal yet sharply humorous portrayal of contemporary English life.
For more than thirty years, David Cronenberg has made independent films such as Scanners and A History of Violence which aim to disturb, surprise, and challenge audiences.
Hollywood special effects offer spectacular creations or re-creations that make claims to our attention on the grounds of their 'incredible-seeming reality'.
This book is the first collection of essays to explore the changing relationships between war, media and the public from a multidisciplinary perspective and over an extended historical period.
Part of Intellect's World Film Locations series, World Film Locations: Helsinki explores the relationship between the city, cinema and Finnish cultural history.
Fascinating, incommensurable and chaotic, Mumbai is a megalopolis of dramatic diversity and heartbreaking extremes, where immense wealth is just steps away from the searing poverty of its huge slums.
In a series of spotlight essays and illustrated scene reviews, a cast of seasoned scholars and fresh new voices explore the vast range of films - encompassing drama, madcap comedy, martial arts escapism and magical realism - that have been set in Beijing.
An important addition to Intellect's popular series, Directory of World Cinema: Finland provides historical and cultural overviews of the country's cinema.
Bringing to mind rockers and royals, Buckingham Palace and the Scottish Highlands, Britain holds a special interest for international audiences who have flocked in recent years to quality exports like Fish Tank, Trainspotting and The King's Speech.
Building on and bringing up to date the material presented in the first instalment of Directory of World Cinema: Japan, this volume continues the exploration of the enduring classics, cult favourites and contemporary blockbusters of Japanese cinema with new contributions from leading critics and film scholars.
Commended for their social relevance and artistic value, Chinese films remain at the forefront of international cinema, bolstered in recent years by a new generation of talented young filmmakers.
'We'll always have Paris,' Humphrey Bogart assures Ingrid Bergman in the oft-quoted farewell scene from Casablanca in which Bogart's character, hard-hearted restaurateur Rick Blaine, bids former lover Ilsa Lund goodbye.
From bleak Expressionist works to the edgy political cinema of the New German Cinema and the feel-good Heimat films of the postwar era, Directory of World Cinema: Germany aims to offer a wider film and cultural context for the films that have emerged from Germany - including some of the East German films recently made available to Western audiences for the first time.
From the postapocalyptic world of Blade Runner to theJames Cameron mega-hit Terminator, tech-noir has emerged as a distinct genre, with roots in both the Promethean myth and the earlier popular traditions of gothic, detective, and science fiction.
Italian cinema has proved very popular with international audiences, and yet a surprising unfamiliarity remains regarding the rich traditions from which its most fascinating moments arose.
The heart of Hollywood's star-studded film industry for more than a century, Los Angeles and its abundant and ever-changing locales - from the Santa Monica Pier to the infamous and now-defunct Ambassador Hotel - have set the scene for a wide variety of cinematic treasures, from Chinatown to Forrest Gump, Falling Down to the coming-of-age classic Boyz n The Hood.
Recent years have seen an increased interest in issues of national identity and representation, and cinema is a major medium where strands and layers of representational systems come together in cross-cultural dialogues.
Beyond Auteurism is a comprehensive study of nine film authors from France, Italy and Spain who since the 1980s have blurred the boundaries between art-house and mainstream, and national and transnational film production.
This landmark collection draws together a number of accessible and insightful essays that explore, for the first time, an exciting new area of academic analysis and debate.
Profiling the canonized figures alongside recently-established filmmakers, this collection features interviews with Lars von Trier, S ren Kragh-Jacobsen, Thomas Vinterberg and Henning Carlsen among many others.
Diasporas of Australian Cinema is the first volume to focus exclusively on diasporic hybridity and cultural diversity in Australian filmmaking over the past century.
This addition to Intellect's Directory of World Cinema series turns the spotlight on Australia and New Zealand and offers an in-depth and exciting look at the cinema produced in these two countries since the turn of the twentieth century.
