American Smart Cinema examines a contemporary type of US filmmaking that exists at the intersection of mainstream, art and independent cinema and often gives rise to absurd, darkly comic and ...nihilistic effects.
This ground-breaking collection, the first sustained examination of the work of female practitioners within American independent cinema, reclaims the difference of female indie filmmaking.
A study of US independent films marginalized in and by the rise of ‘indie’ cultureThis collection looks beyond the directors and films that have branded indie discourse throughout the 1990s and 2000s ...to some less discussed examples that can expand ideas on exactly what constitutes this popular and acclaimed sensibility. In 20 close studies of single films, leading figures in cinema studies consider how received notions of indie style, politics, and practitioners can be questioned, and in this way account for a larger body of work than the dominant canon reflects.
This paper will explore the ways in which thrift operates as a signifier of a specific type of lprecarity and imperfection in young women’s lives in several popular series associated with the current ...‘golden age’ of women’s television production. The twenty-something women of series including Girls, Insecure, Broad City, Fleabag, Can’t Cope Won’t Cope and Search Party, have all been raised in comfortable middle-class homes and are now living independently in major global, expensive cities. The precarity of the ways in which they dwell, at both a practical and figurative level, is a symptom of what has come to be understood as ‘adulting’—where relatively privileged millennials struggle with the rituals and realities of adult life in a starkly neoliberal society. Through a focus on the narrative device of the apartment plot, this paper will examine how the concept of thrift, with its central spectrum of necessity and choice, can illuminate both the everyday practices and the overarching logic of the adulting phenomenon as represented in this wave of television production. By attending to a variety of contemporary series by, for and about women, it will also argue for the ways in which both thrift and adulting can be understood as specifically gendered behaviours.
B Is for Bad Cinema Claire Perkins, Constantine Verevis / Claire Perkins, Constantine Verevis
2014, 2014-02-19
eBook
B Is for Bad Cinema continues and extends, but does not limit itself to, the trends in film scholarship that have made cult and exploitation films and other "low" genres increasingly acceptable ...objects for critical analysis. Springing from discussions of taste and value in film, these original essays mark out the broad contours of "bad"—that is, aesthetically, morally, or commercially disreputable—cinema. While some of the essays share a kinship with recent discussions of B movies and cult films, they do not describe a single aesthetic category or represent a single methodology or critical agenda, but variously approach bad cinema in terms of aesthetics, politics, and cultural value. The volume covers a range of issues, from the aesthetic and industrial mechanics of low-budget production through the terrain of audience responses and cinematic affect, and on to the broader moral and ethical implications of the material. As a result, B Is for Bad Cinema takes an interest in a variety of film examples—overblown Hollywood blockbusters, faux pornographic works, and European art house films—to consider those that lurk on the boundaries of acceptability.
American Smart Cinema examines a contemporary type of US filmmaking that exists at the intersection of mainstream, art and independent cinema and often gives rise to absurd, darkly comic and ...nihilistic effects.
"Independent Women: From Film to Television" explores the significance for feminism of the increasing representation of women on and behind the screen in television contexts around the world. ..."Independent" has functioned throughout film and television history as an important euphemism for "feminist," and this special issue investigates how this connection plays out in a contemporary environment that popular feminist discourse is constructing as a golden age of television for women. The original essays offer keen insight into how post-network television is being valued as a new site of independent production for women, and examine how the connotations of creative control that attend this orients perceptions of both female creators and their content as feminist. Together, they provide a compelling perspective on the feminist consequences of how independence and "indie" have intensified as cultural sensibilities that coincide and engage with the digital transformation of television over the past decade.
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This paper will explore the ways in which thrift operates as a signifier of a specific type of lprecarity and imperfection in young women’s lives in several popular series associated with the current ...‘golden age’ of women’s television production. The twenty-something women of series including Girls, Insecure, Broad City, Fleabag, Can’t Cope Won’t Cope and Search Party, have all been raised in comfortable middle-class homes and are now living independently in major global, expensive cities. The precarity of the ways in which they dwell, at both a practical and figurative level, is a symptom of what has come to be understood as ‘adulting’—where relatively privileged millennials struggle with the rituals and realities of adult life in a starkly neoliberal society. Through a focus on the narrative device of the apartment plot, this paper will examine how the concept of thrift, with its central spectrum of necessity and choice, can illuminate both the everyday practices and the overarching logic of the adulting phenomenon as represented in this wave of television production. By attending to a variety of contemporary series by, for and about women, it will also argue for the ways in which both thrift and adulting can be understood as specifically gendered behaviours.
In Treatment (2008-2010) was the first Israeli series to be remade for US television, and its largely positive critical reception established a reputation for Israel as a home for quality drama - ...setting the stage for the remake of Hatufim (Prisoners of War, 2009-2012) into Homeland (2011-). This article takes up the case of In Treatment to examine how the process of transnational television remaking can illuminate the concept of US quality television in the millennial era. Arguing that the aesthetic and industrial brand of 'quality' is defined by the theme and device of transformation, the article analyses how the American remake gradually diverges from the original series Be'Tipul (2005-2008) to accentuate this concept in its stories and narrative style. The resulting text presents the quintessential contemporary example of what I call the television 'treatment' genre: a mode of programming that operates by centripetal narrative complexity to present 'serial selves,' or characters whose time in therapy produces progressive or regressive modifications in their emotional state. When read against the more halting and circular narratives of Be'Tipul, this format demonstrates a clear socio-cultural remapping of its topic: where therapeutic culture in America is presented as a site that is underpinned by contested neoliberal ideologies on the government of subjectivity.
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