In the aftermath of the MeToo movement, during an ongoing pandemic, and in the midst of repeated demands for a 50/50 split between men and women in above-the-line positions, this book analyzes and ...interrogates the politics of gender focusing on the Swedish film industry, often considered to be the most "gender equal" film industry worldwide. While this gender equality (with a considerable proportion of women behind the camera) is much due to policies carried out of the state funded Swedish Film Institute, women filmmakers in Sweden still struggle with the same problems as do women in other national film industries. These problems entail having smaller production and distribution budgets than men and working in an environment involving recurring scandals of gender discrimination and sexual harassment. This open access book looks behind the statistics and explores the often complex cultural, legal, and political conditions under which women have entered a male-dominated industry and discusses women’s strategies and efforts to promote change while providing evidence on how women’s presence has challenged the industry by provoking critical reactions and introducing new ways to portray women on screen. Using a wide range of different sources (e.g. archival material, laws, contracts, films, biographical materials, and interviews), the book tells the history of the rise of gender equality efforts undertaken by the Swedish Film Institute and investigates women’s possibilities to manage the rights to their work. It offers compelling portraits of pioneering women who have worked in or in relation to the industry and looks at the experiences of women currently working in the film industry. The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by Örebro universitet.
The impact of French film critic André Bazin (1918-1958) on the development of film studies, though generally acknowledged, remains contested. A passionate initiator of film culture during his ...lifetime, his ideas have been challenged, defended and revived throughout his afterlife. Studying Film with André Bazin offers an entirely original interpretation of major concepts from Bazin’s legacy, such as auteur theory, realism, film language and the influence of film on other arts (poetry and painting in particular). By examining mostly unknown and uncollected texts, Blandine Joret explains Bazin’s methodology and adopts it in a contemporary reading, linking his ideas to major philosophical and scientific frameworks as well as more recent media practices such as advertising, CGI, 3D cinema and Virtual Reality. In tune with 21st-century concerns in media culture and film studies, this book addresses a wide readership of film scholars, students and cinephiles.
Electrochromic (EC) smart windows are able to vary their throughput of visible light and solar energy by the application of an electrical voltage and are able to provide energy efficiency and indoor ...comfort in buildings. Section 1 explains why this technology is important and timely by first outlining today's precarious situation concerning increasing energy use and associated effects on the world's climate, and this section also underscores the great importance of enhancing the energy efficiency of buildings by letting them function more in harmony with the environment—particularly its varying temperature—than is possible with current mainstream technologies. This same chapter also surveys recent work on the energy savings and other benefits that are possible with EC-based technologies. Section 2 then provides some notes on the history of the EC effect and its applications. Section 3 presents a generic design for the oxide-based EC devices that are most in focus for present-day applications and research. This design includes five superimposed layers with a centrally-positioned electrolyte connecting two oxide films—at least one of which having EC properties—and with transparent electrical conductors surrounding the three-layer structure in the middle. It is emphasized that this construction can be viewed as a thin-film electrical battery whose charging state is manifested as optical absorption. Also discussed are six well known hurdles for the implementation of these EC devices, as well as a number of practical constructions of EC-based smart windows. Section 4 is an in-depth discussion of various aspects of EC oxides. It begins with a literature survey for 2007–2013, which updates earlier reviews, and is followed by a general discussion of optical and electronic effects and, specifically, on charge transfer absorption in tungsten oxide. Ionic effects are then treated with foci on the inherent nanoporosity of the important EC oxides and on the possibilities to accomplish further porosity by having suitable thin-film deposition parameters. A number of examples on the importance of the detailed deposition conditions are presented, and Section 4 ends with a presentation of the EC properties of films with compositions across the full tungsten–nickel oxide system. Section 5 is devoted to transparent electrical conductors and electrolytes, both of which are necessary in EC devices. Detailed surveys are given of transparent conductors comprising doped-oxide semiconductors, coinage metals, nanowire meshes and other alternatives, and also of electrolytes based on thin films and on polymers. Particular attention is devoted to electrolyte functionalization by nanoparticles. Section 6 considers one particular device construction: A foil that is suitable for glass lamination and which, in the author's view, holds particular promise for low-cost large-area implementation of EC smart windows. Device data are presented, and a discussion is given of quality assessment by use of 1/f noise. The “battery-type” EC device covered in the major part of this critical review is not the only alternative, and Section 7 consists of brief discussions of a number of more or less advanced alternatives such as metal hydrides, suspended particle devices, polymer-dispersed liquid crystals, reversible electroplating, and plasmonic electrochromism based on transparent conducting oxide nanoparticles. Finally, Section 8 provides a brief summary and outlook. The aim of this critical review is not only to paint a picture of the state-of-the-art for electrochromics and its applications in smart windows, but also to provide ample references to current literature of particular relevance and thereby, hopefully, an easy entrance to the research field.
•Critical review of electrochromic oxide thin films and devices.•Variable transmittance of visible light and solar energy.•Fenestration in energy efficient buildings.
Traces the very beginnings of Arab women making documentaries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), from the 1970s and 1980s in Egypt and Lebanon, to the 1990s and 2000s in Morocco and Syria.
In 1931 Universal Pictures releasedDraculaandFrankenstein,two films that inaugurated the horror genre in Hollywood cinema. These films appeared directly on the heels of Hollywood's transition to ...sound film.Uncanny Bodiesargues that the coming of sound inspired more in these massively influential horror movies than screams, creaking doors, and howling wolves. A close examination of the historical reception of films of the transition period reveals that sound films could seem to their earliest viewers unreal and ghostly. By comparing this audience impression to the first sound horror films, Robert Spadoni makes a case for understanding film viewing as a force that can powerfully shape both the minutest aspects of individual films and the broadest sweep of film production trends, and for seeing aftereffects of the temporary weirdness of sound film deeply etched in the basic character of one of our most enduring film genres.
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.
This open access collection deals with musical moments in film as one of the most pivotal and compelling issues of current film music research. Musical moments as defined by Amy Herzog occur when a ...musical number inverts the normal relationship between the image track and the soundtrack in a film in such a way that what we see is determined by what we hear. As one potential approach, this definition provokes a variety of perspectives to investigate the disruptive potential of these moments and numbers as a creative device in the production of audiovisual narratives.
Dieser Open Access Sammelband behandelt musikalische Momente im Film als zentrales und wegweisendes Thema aktueller Filmmusikforschung. Musikalische Momente wie von Amy Herzog (2009) definiert, treten dann auf, wenn die konventionelle Beziehung im Film zwischen Bild und Ton umgekehrt wird, so dass das was wir sehen von dem was wir hören bestimmt wird. Diese Definition ermöglicht neue Ansätze um besonders das disruptive Potential dieser musikalischen Momente und Nummern als kreatives Mittel der Produktion audiovisueller Erzählungen zu untersuchen.
The rise of cinema as the predominant American entertainment around the turn of the last century coincided with the migration of hundreds of thousands of African Americans from the South to the urban ..."land of hope" in the North. This richly illustrated book, discussing many early films and illuminating black urban life in this period, is the first detailed look at the numerous early relationships between African Americans and cinema. It investigates African American migrations onto the screen, into the audience, and behind the camera, showing that African American urban populations and cinema shaped each other in powerful ways. Focusing on Black film culture in Chicago during the silent era,Migrating to the Moviesbegins with the earliest cinematic representations of African Americans and concludes with the silent films of Oscar Micheaux and other early "race films" made for Black audiences, discussing some of the extraordinary ways in which African Americans staked their claim in cinema's development as an art and a cultural institution.
Sound is half the picture, and since the 1960s, film sound not only has rivaled the innovative imagery of contemporary Hollywood cinema, but in some ways has surpassed it in status and privilege ...because of the emergence of sound design.
This in-depth study by William Whittington considers the evolution of sound design not only through cultural and technological developments during the last four decades, but also through the attitudes and expectations of filmgoers. Fans of recent blockbuster films, in particular science fiction films, have come to expect a more advanced and refined degree of film sound use, which has changed the way they experience and understand spectacle and storytelling in contemporary cinema.
The book covers recent science fiction cinema in rich and compelling detail, providing a new sounding of familiar films, while offering insights into the constructed nature of cinematic sound design. This is accomplished by examining the formal elements and historical context of sound production in movies to better appreciate how a film sound track is conceived and presented.Whittington focuses on seminal science fiction films that have made specific advances in film sound, including2001: A Space Odyssey, THX 1138, Star Wars, Alien, Blade Runner(original version and director's cut),Terminator 2: Judgment DayandThe Matrixtrilogy and games--milestones of the entertainment industry's technological and aesthetic advancements with sound.
Setting itself apart from other works, the book illustrates through accessible detail and compelling examples how swiftly such advancements in film sound aesthetics and technology have influenced recent science fiction cinema, and examines how these changes correlate to the history, theory, and practice of contemporary Hollywood filmmaking.
The development of facile and versatile strategies for thin-film and particle engineering is of immense scientific interest. However, few methods can conformally coat substrates of different ...composition, size, shape, and structure. We report the one-step coating of various interfaces using coordination complexes of natural polyphenols and Fe(III) ions. Film formation is initiated by the adsorption of the polyphenol and directed by pH-dependent, multivalent coordination bonding. Aqueous deposition is performed on a range of planar as well as inorganic, organic, and biological particle templates, demonstrating an extremely rapid technique for producing structurally diverse, thin films and capsules that can disassemble. The ease, low cost, and scalability of the assembly process, combined with pH responsiveness and negligible cytotoxicity, makes these films potential candidates for biomedical and environmental applications.
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