One of the world’s most erudite and entertaining film critics on the state of cinema in the post-digital—and post-9/11—age. This witty and allusive book, in the style of classic film theorists/critics like André Bazin and Siegfried Kracauer, includes considerations of global cinema’s most important figures and films, from Lars von Trier and Zia Jiangke to WALL-E, Avatar and Inception.

This book, which accompanies an exhibition organized by the ZKM Institute for Visual Media, explores the history and significance of pre-cinema and of early experimental cinema, as well as the development of the unique theaters in which "immersion" evolved. 1,000 illustrations.

Corrigan argues that in the past 25 years the increased conglomerization of film production/distribution companies and the rise of VCR, satellite, and cable television technologies have altered the way films are made and how we view them. The result is a growing internationalization of national cinema cultures and an increasing fragmentation of the audience. Video has reduced the movie to private and domestic performance. At the same time, audiences are bombarded with a surfeit of images that leaves them with a battered sense of their place in history and culture. Corrigan notes that, combined with what many critics have recognized as the growing incoherence in film texts, these facts make it more meaningful to discuss films not as texts but as multiple cultural and commercial processes constructed by increasingly specialized audiences. ISBN 0-8135-1667-6: $36.00.

A clear and concise overview of and introduction to Deleuze's theories of cinema.

In this work, Marcus interprets a body of work that managed to transcend the decline of Italian cinema's prominence within the industry during the last two decades of the 20th-century.

Since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, transnational European cinema has risen, not only in terms of production but also in terms of a growing focus on multiethnic themes within the European context. This shift from national to trans-European filmmaking has been profoundly influenced by such historical developments as the collapse of the Iron Curtain and the subsequent ongoing enlargement of the European Union. In European Cinema after the Wall: Screening East–West Mobility, Leen Engelen and Kris Van Heuckelom have brought together essays that critically examine representations of post-1989 migration from the former Eastern Bloc to Western Europe, uncovering an array of common tropes and narrative devices that characterize the influences and portrayals of immigration. Featuring essays by contributors from backgrounds as divergent as film studies, Slavic and Russian studies, comparative literature, sociology, contemporary history, and communication and media studies, this volume will appeal to scholars of film, European history, and those interested in the impact of migration, diaspora, and the global flow of cinematic culture.

The unprecedented increase in lesbian representation over the past two decades has, paradoxically, coincided with queer theory's radical transformation of the study of sexuality. In Lesbian Cinema after Queer Theory, Clara Bradbury-Rance argues that this contradictory context has yielded new kinds of cinematic language through which to give desire visual form. By offering close readings of key contemporary films such as Blue Is the Warmest Colour, Water Lilies and Carol alongside a broader filmography encompassing over 300 other films released between 1927 and 2018, the book provokes new ways of understanding a changing field of representation. Bradbury-Rance resists charting a narrative of representational progress or shoring up the lesbian's categorisation in the newly available terms of the visible. Instead, she argues for a feminist framework that can understand lesbianism's queerness. Drawing on a provocative theoretical and visual corpus, Lesbian Cinema after Queer Theory reveals the conditions of lesbian legibility in the twenty-first century.

Marking a return for Laura Mulvey to questions of film theory and feminism, as well as a reconsideration of new and old film technologies, this urgent and compelling collection of essays is essential reading for anyone interested in the power and pleasures of moving images. Its title, Afterimages, alludes to the dislocation of time that runs through many of the films and works it discusses as well as to the way we view them. Beginning with a section on the theme of woman as spectacle, a shift in focus leads to films from across the globe, directed by women and about women, all adopting radical cinematic strategies. Mulvey goes on to consider moving image works made for art galleries, arguing that the aesthetics of cinema have persisted into this environment. Structured in three main parts, Afterimages also features an appendix of ten frequently asked questions on her classic feminist essay “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” in which Mulvey addresses questions of spectatorship, autonomy, and identity that are crucial to our era today.

Horror films have exploded in popularity since the tragic events of September 11, 2001, many of them breaking box-office records and generating broad public discourse. These films have attracted A-list talent and earned award nods, while at the same time becoming darker, more disturbing, and increasingly apocalyptic. Why has horror suddenly become more popular, and what does this say about us? What do specific horror films and trends convey about American society in the wake of events so horrific that many pundits initially predicted the death of the genre? How could American audiences, after tasting real horror, want to consume images of violence on screen? Horror after 9/11 represents the first major exploration of the horror genre through the lens of 9/11 and the subsequent transformation of American and global society. Films discussed include the Twilight saga; the Saw series; Hostel; Cloverfield; 28 Days Later; remakes of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Dawn of the Dead, and The Hills Have Eyes; and many more. The contributors analyze recent trends in the horror genre, including the rise of 'torture porn,' the big-budget remakes of classic horror films, the reinvention of traditional monsters such as vampires and zombies, and a new awareness of visual technologies as sites of horror in themselves. The essays examine the allegorical role that the horror film has held in the last ten years, and the ways that it has been translating and reinterpreting the discourses and images of terror into its own cinematic language.

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