Critical Cinema: Beyond the Theory of Practice purges the obstructive line between the making of and the theorising on film, uniting theory and practice in order to move beyond the commercial confines of Hollywood. Opening with an introduction by Bill Nichols, one of the world's leading writers on nonfiction film, this volume features contributions by such prominent authors as Noel Burch, Laura Mulvey, Peter Wollen, Brian Winston and Patrick Fuery. Seminal filmmakers such as Peter Greenaway and Mike Figgis also contribute to the debate, making this book a critical text for students, academics, and independent filmmakers as well as for any reader interested in new perspectives on culture and film.

Annotation. This sequel to A Critical Cinema offers a new collection of interviews with independent filmmakers that is a feast for film fans and film historians. Scott MacDonald reveals the sophisticated thinking of these artists regarding film, politics, and contemporary gender issues. The interviews explore the careers of Robert Breer, Trinh T. Minh-ha, James Benning, Su Friedrich, and Godfrey Reggio. Yoko Ono discusses her cinematic collaboration with John Lennon, Michael Snow talks about his music and films, Anne Robertson describes her cinematic diaries, Jonas Mekas and Bruce Baillie recall the New York and California avant-garde film culture. The selection has a particularly strong group of women filmmakers, including Yvonne Rainer, Laura Mulvey, and Lizzie Borden. Other notable artists are Anthony McCall, Andrew Noren, Ross McElwee, Anne Severson, and Peter Watkins.

Critical Cinema: Beyond the Theory of Practice purges the obstructive line between the making of and the theorising on film, uniting theory and practice in order to move beyond the commercial confines of Hollywood. Opening with an introduction by Bill Nichols, one of the world's leading writers on nonfiction film, this volume features contributions by such prominent authors as Noel Burch, Laura Mulvey, Peter Wollen, Brian Winston and Patrick Fuery. Seminal filmmakers such as Peter Greenaway and Mike Figgis also contribute to the debate, making this book a critical text for students, academics, and independent filmmakers as well as for any reader interested in new perspectives on culture and film.

This sequel to A Critical Cinema offers a new collection of interviews with independent filmmakers that is a feast for film fans and film historians. Scott MacDonald reveals the sophisticated thinking of these artists regarding film, politics, and contemporary gender issues. The interviews explore the careers of Robert Breer, Trinh T. Minh-ha, James Benning, Su Friedrich, and Godfrey Reggio. Yoko Ono discusses her cinematic collaboration with John Lennon, Michael Snow talks about his music and films, Anne Robertson describes her cinematic diaries, Jonas Mekas and Bruce Baillie recall the New York and California avant-garde film culture. The selection has a particularly strong group of women filmmakers, including Yvonne Rainer, Laura Mulvey, and Lizzie Borden. Other notable artists are Anthony McCall, Andrew Noren, Ross McElwee, Anne Severson, and Peter Watkins.

A Critical Cinema 4 is the fourth volume in Scott MacDonald's Critical Cinema series, the most extensive, in-depth exploration of independent cinema available in English. In this new set of interviews, MacDonald once again engages filmmakers in detailed discussions of their films and of the personal experiences and political and theoretical currents that have shaped their work. The interviews are arranged to express the remarkable diversity of modern independent cinema and the network of interconnections within the community of filmmakers. A Critical Cinema 4 includes the most extensive interview with the late Stan Brakhage yet published; a conversation with P. Adams Sitney about his arrival on the New York independent film scene; a detailed discussion with Peter Kubelka about the experience of making Our African Journey; a conversation with Jill Godmilow and Harun Farocki on modern political documentary; Jim McBride's first extended published conversation in thirty years; a discussion with Abigail Child about her evolution from television documentarian to master editor; and the first extended interview with Chuck Workman. This volume also contains discussions with Chantal Akerman about her place trilogy ; Lawrence Brose on his examination of Oscar Wilde's career; Hungarian Peter Forgács about his transformation of European home movies into video operas; Iranian-born Shirin Neshat on working between two cultures; and Ellen Spiro about exploring America with her video camera and her dog. Each interview is supplemented by an introductory overview of the filmmaker's contributions. A detailed filmography and a selected bibliography complete the volume.

World Cinema: A Critical Introduction is a comprehensive yet accessible guide to film industries across the globe. From the 1980s onwards, new technologies and increased globalization have radically altered the landscape in which films are distributed and exhibited. Films are made from the large-scale industries of India, Hollywood, and Asia, to the small productions in Bhutan and Morocco. They are seen in multiplexes, palatial art cinemas in Cannes, traveling theatres in rural India, and on millions of hand-held mobile screens. Authors Deshpande and Mazaj have developed a method of charting this new world cinema that makes room for divergent perspectives, traditions, and positions, while also revealing their interconnectedness and relationships of meaning. In doing so, they bring together a broad range of issues and examples—theoretical concepts, viewing and production practices, film festivals, large industries such as Nollywood and Bollywood, and smaller and emerging film cultures—into a systemic yet flexible map of world cinema. The multi-layered approach of this book aims to do justice to the depth, dynamism, and complexity of the phenomenon of world cinema. For students looking to films outside of their immediate context, this book offers a blueprint that will enable them to transform a casual encounter with a film into a systematic inquiry into world cinema.

Films about cities abound. They provide fantasies for those who recognize their city and those for whom the city is a faraway dream or nightmare. How does cinema rework city planners’ hopes and city dwellers’ fears of modern urbanism? Can an analysis of city films answer some of the questions posed in urban studies? What kinds of vision for the future and images of the past do city films offer? What are the changes that city films have undergone? Cities and Cinema puts urban theory and cinema studies in dialogue. The book’s first section analyzes three important genres of city films that follow in historical sequence, each associated with a particular city, moving from the city film of the Weimar Republic to the film noir associated with Los Angeles and the image of Paris in the cinema of the French New Wave. The second section discusses socio-historical themes of urban studies, beginning with the relationship of film industries and individual cities, continuing with the portrayal of war torn and divided cities, and ending with the cinematic expression of utopia and dystopia in urban science fiction. The last section negotiates the question of identity and place in a global world, moving from the portrayal of ghettos and barrios to the city as a setting for gay and lesbian desire, to end with the representation of the global city in transnational cinematic practices. The book suggests that modernity links urbanism and cinema. It accounts for the significant changes that city film has undergone through processes of globalization, during which the city has developed from an icon in national cinema to a privileged site for transnational cinematic practices. It is a key text for students and researchers of film studies, urban studies and cultural studies.

This volume offers introductions to the work of fifteen avant-garde American women filmmakers.

A Critical Cinema 5 is the fifth volume in Scott MacDonald's Critical Cinema series, the most extensive, in-depth exploration of independent cinema available in English. In this new set of interviews, MacDonald engages filmmakers in detailed discussions of their films and of the personal experiences and political and theoretical currents that have shaped their work. The interviews are arranged to express the remarkable diversity of modern independent cinema and the interactive community of filmmakers that has dedicated itself to producing forms of cinema that critique conventional media.