In the words of Richard Maltby . . . "Maximum Movies--Pulp Fictions describes two improbably imbricated worlds and the piece of cultural history their intersections provoked." One of these worlds ...comprises a clutch of noisy, garish pulp movies--Kiss Me Deadly, Shock Corridor, Fixed Bayonets!, I Walked with a Zombie, The Lineup, Terror in a Texas Town, Ride Lonesome--pumped out for the grind houses at the end of the urban exhibition chain by the studios' B-divisions and fly-by-night independents. The other is occupied by critics, intellectuals, cinephiles, and filmmakers such as Jean-Luc Godard, Manny Farber, and Lawrence Alloway, who championed the cause of these movies and incited the cultural guardians of the day by attacking a rigorously policed canon of tasteful, rarified, and ossified art objects. Against the legitimate, and in defense of the illegitimate, in an insolent and unruly manner, they agitated for the recognition of lurid sensational crime stories, war pictures, fast-paced Westerns, thrillers, and gangster melodramas were claimed as examples of the true, the real, and the authentic in contemporary culture--the foundation upon which modern film studies sits.
Despite a career spanning over forty years, filmmaker Alan Rudolph has flown largely under the radar of independent film scholars and enthusiasts, often remembered as Robert Altman’s protégé. Through ...a reading of his 1985 film Trouble in Mind, Caryl Flinn demonstrates that Rudolph is long overdue for critical re-evaluation. Exploring Trouble in Mind’s influence on indie filmmaking, Rudolph’s dream-like style, and the external political influences of the Reagan era, Flinn effectively conveys the originality of Rudolph’s work through this multifaceted film. Utilizing archival materials and interviews with Rudolph himself and his collaborators, Flinn argues for this career-defining film’s relevance to American independent cinema and the decade of the 1980s. Amply illustrated with frame enlargements and set photographs, this book uncovers new production stories and reception contexts of a film that Flinn argues deserves a place in the limelight.
The first filmed prizefight, Veriscope'sCorbett-Fitzsimmons Fight(1897) became one of cinema's first major attractions, ushering in an era in which hugely successful boxing films helped transform a ...stigmatized sport into legitimate entertainment. Exploring a significant and fascinating period in the development of modern sports and media,Fight Picturesis the first work to chronicle the mostly forgotten story of how legitimate bouts, fake fights, comic sparring matches, and more came to silent-era screens and became part of American popular culture.
What unleashed the forces of global capitalism which continue to shape today’s world? To solve this riddle economic historians usually point to the emergence of business-friendly values, the ...emergence of consumer markets and new forms of applied knowledge in early European modernity, which led to innovations in industrial organization, shipping, logistics and trade (which, among other things, enabled and were driven by the transatlantic slave trade). This book focuses on the 20th and 21st centuries and zooms in on the moving image as a factor of economic development and the history of global capitalism. In a series of in-depth cases studies at the intersection of film and media studies, science and technology studies and economic and social history, Films That Work Harder: The Circulations of Industrial Film presents an in-depth, global perspective on the dynamic relationship between film, industrial organization and economic development. Bringing together new research from leading scholars from Europe, Asia, Australia and North America, this book combines the state of the art in the field with an agenda for future research.
In Vitagraph , Andrew A. Erish provides the
first comprehensive examination and reassessment of the company
most responsible for defining and popularizing the American movie.
This history challenges ...long-accepted Hollywood mythology that
simply isn't true: that Paramount and Fox invented the feature
film, that Universal created the star system, and that these
companies, along with MGM and Warner Bros., developed motion
pictures into a multi-million-dollar business. In fact, the truth
about Vitagraph is far more interesting than the myths that later
moguls propagated about themselves.
Established in 1897 by J. Stuart Blackton and Albert E. Smith,
Vitagraph was the leading producer of motion pictures for much of
the silent era. Vitagraph established America's studio system, a
division of labor utilizing specialized craftspeople and artists,
including a surprising number of women and minorities, whose
aesthetic innovations have long been incorporated into virtually
all commercial cinema. They developed fundamental aspects of the
form and content of American movies, encompassing everything from
framing, lighting, and performance style to emphasizing
character-driven comedy and drama in stories that respected and
sometimes poked fun at every demographic of Vitagraph's vast
audience. The company overcame resistance to multi-reel motion
pictures by establishing a national distribution network for its
feature films. Vitagraph's international distribution was even more
successful, cultivating a worldwide preference for American movies
that endures to the present. For most of its existence America's
most influential studio was headquartered in Brooklyn, New York
before relocating to Hollywood.
Finally, here is a historically rigorous and thorough account of
the most influential producer of American motion pictures during
the silent era. Drawing on valuable primary material long
overlooked by other historians, Erish introduces readers to the
fascinating, forgotten pioneers of Vitagraph.
While there are numerous film studies that focus on one particular grouping of films-by nationality, by era, or by technique-here is the first single volume that incorporates all of the above, ...offering a broad overview of experimental Latin American film produced over the last twenty years.
Analyzing seventeen recent films by eleven different filmmakers from Argentina, Brazil, Cuba, Mexico, Paraguay, and Peru, Cynthia Tompkins uses a comparative approach that finds commonalities among the disparate works in terms of their influences, aesthetics, and techniques. Tompkins introduces each film first in its sociohistorical context before summarizing it and then subverting its canonical interpretation. Pivotal to her close readings of the films and their convergences as a collective cinema is Tompkins's application of Deleuzian film theory and the concept of the time-image as it pertains to the treatment of time and repetition. Tompkins also explores such topics as the theme of decolonization, the consistent use of montage, paratactically structured narratives, and the fusion of documentary conventions and neorealism with drama. An invaluable contribution to any dialogue on the avant-garde in general and to filmmaking both in and out of Latin America,Experimental Latin American Cinemais also a welcome and insightful addition to Latin American studies as a whole.
Offering a variety of case studies in which films have been remade across national borders,Transnational Film Remakesprovides an analysis of cinematic remaking that moves beyond Hollywood to address ...the truly global nature of this phenomenon. From Hong Kong remakes of Japanese cinema to Bollywood remakes of Australian television, this book interrogates the fluid and dynamic ways in which texts are adapted and reworked across national borders to provide a distinctive new model for understanding these global cultural borrowings.
Trauma Culture Kaplan, E. Ann
2005, 20050711, 2005-07-11
eBook, Book
It may be said that every trauma is two traumas or ten thousand-depending on the number of people involved. How one experiences and reacts to an event is unique and depends largely on one's direct or ...indirect positioning, personal psychic history, and individual memories. But equally important to the experience of trauma are the broader political and cultural contexts within which a catastrophe takes place and how it is "managed" by institutional forces, including the media.In Trauma Culture, E. Ann Kaplan explores the relationship between the impact of trauma on individuals and on entire cultures and nations. Arguing that humans possess a compelling need to draw meaning from personal experience and to communicate what happens to others, she examines the artistic, literary, and cinematic forms that are often used to bridge the individual and collective experience. A number of case studies, including Sigmund Freud's Moses and Monotheism, Marguerite Duras' La Douleur, Sarah Kofman's Rue Ordener, Rue Labat, Alfred Hitchcock's Spellbound, and Tracey Moffatt's Night Cries, reveal how empathy can be fostered without the sensationalistic element that typifies the media.From World War II to 9/11, this passionate study eloquently navigates the contentious debates surrounding trauma theory and persuasively advocates the responsible sharing and translating of catastrophe.
Too often dismissed as nothing more than ‘trash cinema’, exploitation films have become both earnestly appreciated cult objects and home video items that are more accessible than ever. In this ...wide-ranging new study, David Church explores how the history of drive-in theatres and urban grind houses has descended to the home video formats that keep these lurid movies fondly alive today. Arguing for the importance of cultural memory in contemporary fan practices, Church focuses on both the re-release of archival exploitation films on DVD and the recent cycle of ‘retrosploitation’ films like Grindhouse, Machete, Viva, The Devil’s Rejects, and Black Dynamite. At a time when older ideas of subcultural belonging have become increasingly subject to nostalgia, Grindhouse Nostalgia presents an indispensable study of exploitation cinema’s continuing allure, and is a bold contribution to our understanding of fandom, taste politics, film distribution, and home video.
