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Altman by
For decades, Robert Altman fascinated audiences with pioneering films--among them M*A*S*H, Nashville, The Player, and Gosford Park--that combined technical innovation with subversive, satirical humor and impassioned political engagement. His ability to explore and engage so many different worlds with a single, coherent vision changed the landscape of cinema forever. This signature "Altmanesque" style is, in the words of Martin Scorsese: "as recognizable and familiar as Renoir's brushstrokes or Debussy's orchestrations." Now, the Altman estate opens its archive to celebrate his extraordinary life and career in the first authorized visual biography on the iconoclastic director. Altman, by Altman's widow Kathryn Reed Altman and film critic Giulia D'Agnolo Vallan, brims with photographs and ephemera, many culled from private family albums, and personal recollections of the director. Alongside the intimate illustrated story is a complete visual, historical, and critical narrative of Altman's films and his process. To honor the Altman trademark of using a wide cast of characters, Altman also features contributions from his collaborators and contemporaries including Frank Barhydt, E. L. Doctorow, Roger Ebert, Jules Feiffer, Julian Fellowes, James Franco, Tess Gallagher, Pauline Kael, Garrison Keillor, Michael Murphy, Martin Scorsese, Lily Tomlin, Alan Rudolph, Michael Tolkin, and Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
The Cinema of Robert Altman by
In a controversial and tumultuous filmmaking career that spanned nearly fifty years, Robert Altman mocked, subverted, or otherwise refashioned Hollywood narrative and genre conventions. Altman's idiosyncratic vision and propensity for formal experimentation resulted in an uneven body of work: some rank failures and intriguing near-misses, as well as a number of great films that are among the most influential works of New American Cinema. While Altman always professed to have nothing authoritative to say about the state of contemporary society, this volume surveys all of his major films in their sociohistorical context to reposition the director as a trenchant satirist and social critic of postmodern America, depicted as a lonely wasteland of fraudulent spectacle, exploitative social relations, and unfulfilled solitaries in search of elusive community.
The Cinematic by 
A Companion to Robert Altman by
A Companion to Robert Altman presents myriad aspects of Altman's life, career, influence and historical context. This book features 23 essays from a range of experts in the field, providing extensive coverage of these aspects and dimensions of Altman's work. The most expansive and wide-ranging book yet published on Altman, providing a comprehensive account of Altman's complete career Provides discussion and analysis of generally neglected aspects of Altman's career, including the significance of his work in television and industrial film, the importance of collaboration, and the full range and import of his aesthetic innovations Includes essays by key scholars in "Altman studies", bringing together experts in the field, emerging scholars and writers from a broad range of fields Multi-disciplinary in design and draws on a range of approaches to Altman's work, being the first substantial publication to make use of the recently launched Robert Altman Archive at the University of Michigan Offers specific insights into particular aspects of film style and their application, industrial and aesthetic film and TV history, and particular areas such as the theorisation of space, place, authorship and gender
Feminist Film Studies by
Feminist Film Studies is a readable, yet comprehensive textbook for introductory classes in feminist film theory and criticism. Karen Hollinger provides an accessible overview of women's representation and involvement in film, complemented by analyses of key texts that illustrate major topics in the field. Key areas include: a brief history of the development of feminist film theory the theorization of the male gaze and the female spectator women in genre films and literary adaptations the female biopic feminism and avant-garde and documentary film women as auteurs lesbian representation women in Third Cinema. Each chapter includes a "Films in Focus" section, which analyzes key texts related to the chapter's major topic, including examples from classical Hollywood, world cinema, and the contemporary period. This book provides students in both film and gender/women's studies with a clear introduction to the field of feminist film theory and criticism.
The Films of Martin Scorsese and Robert de Niro by
In 1973, early in their careers, Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro collaborated for the first time. Over the next few decades, they worked together on seven more movies, many of which brought them both acclaim and awards. And while successful director and actor pairings have occurred throughout the history of film, few have fashioned so many works of enduring value as these two artists. In little more than two decades, Scorsese and De Niro produced eight features, including the classics Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, and GoodFellas. In The Films of Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro, Andrew J. Rausch examines the creative output of this remarkable pair, from their initial offering, Mean Streets, to their most recent film together, Casino. Rausch looks at their relationship as individual artists who worked together to create cinematic magic, as well as the friendship that was forged nearly 40 years ago. Drawing upon interviews and other sources, Rausch goes behind the scenes of their eight films, providing insight and analysis on all their collaborations, including New York, New York, The King of Comedy, and Cape Fear. A rare glimpse into the moviemaking process of these two legends, The Films of Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro will appeal to both scholars and fans alike.
Gangster Priest: The Italian American Cinema of Martin Scorsese by
Bringing a wealth of scholarship and insight into Scorsese's work, Casillo's study will captivate readers interested in the director's magisterial artistry, the rich social history of Southern Italy, Italian American ethnicity, and the sociology and history of the Mafia in both Sicily and the United States.
Gendered Frames, Embodied Cameras: Varda, Akerman, Cabrera, Calle, and Maïwenn by
Gendered Frames, Embodied Cameras: Varda, Akerman, Cabrera, Calle, and Ma wenn is the first book to link these five filmmakers together through an analysis of the relationship between filming one's own body and the creative body. Through engaged artistic practices, these female filmmakers turn the camera to their bodies as a way to show the process of artistic creation and to produce themselves as filmmakers and artists in their work from 1987-2009. By making visible their bodies, they offer a wider range of representation of women in French film. Through avant-garde form, in which tangible corporeal elements are made image, they transform representational content and produce new cinematic bodies with the power to influence signifying practices in contemporary French culture. By rendering visible their artistic practice and praxis and their camera in their work--reflexive practices that also unite these filmmakers--these women also visually claim the role of filmmaker and creative subject. Thus they establish their authority in a film industry in which women's participation and recognition of their achievements have historically been lower than that of their male counterparts.
The Gendered Screen by
This book is the first major study of Canadian women filmmakers since the groundbreaking Gendering the Nation (1999). The Gendered Screen updates the subject with discussions of important filmmakers such as Deepa Mehta, Anne Wheeler, Mina Shum, Lynne Stopkewich, Léa Pool, and Patricia Rozema, whose careers have produced major bodies of work. It also introduces critical studies of newer filmmakers such as Andrea Dorfman and Sylvia Hamilton and new media video artists. Feminist scholars are re-examining the ways in which authorship, nationality, and gender interconnect. Contributors to this volume emphasize a diverse feminist study of film that is open, inclusive, and self-critical. Issues of hybridity and transnationality as well as race and sexual orientation challenge older forms of discourse on national cinema. Essays address the transnational filmmaker, the queer filmmaker, the feminist filmmaker, the documentarist, and the video artist--just some of the diverse identities of Canadian women filmmakers working in both commercial and art cinema today.
Genre, Authorship and Contemporary Women Filmmakers by
Examining the significance of women's work in popular film genres, Genre, Authorship and Contemporary Women Filmmakers sheds light on women's contribution to genre cinema through an exploration of filmmakers like Kathryn Bigelow, Diablo Cody, Sofia Coppola and Kelly Reichard. Exploring genres as diverse as horror, the war movie, the Western, the costume biopic and the romantic comedy, the book interrogates questions of authorial subversion, gendered concepts of film authorship and male/female genre divisions, as well as re-evaluating certain genres as a space worthy of feminist criticism. By offering an analysis of the films themselves and the circumstances of production and reception, this book redefines political, theoretical and commercial conceptualisations of women's cinema, and offers new perspectives on how women filmmakers explore the aesthetic and imaginative power of genre.
Hollywood's New Yorker: The Making of Martin Scorsese by
A fresh look at the director's career. When Martin Scorsese finally won an Academy Award in 2007, for The Departed, it was widely viewed as the crowning achievement of a remarkable film career. But what it also represented was an acceptance by Hollywood of a man who became a prestigious auteur precisely because of his status as an outsider from New York. For someone with a high-culture reputation like Scorsese's, this middlebrow sign of respectability was not about cultural standing; rather, it was about using and even sacrificing his distinctive outsider status for a greater share of industry authority within the world of Hollywood. In Hollywood's New Yorker, Marc Raymond offers a fresh look at Scorsese's career in relation to the critical and social environment of the past fifty years. He traces Scorsese's career and films through his association with various cultural institutions, from his role as a student and instructor at New York University, to his move to Hollywood and his relationship with the studio system, to his relationship with prestigious institutions like the Museum of Modern Art. This sociological approach to film authorship provides analysis of previously overlooked Scorsese projects, particularly his documentary work, and gives importance to the role his extracurricular activities in the film preservation movement have played in the rise of his reputation. Hollywood's New Yorker places Scorsese and his films firmly within the various time periods of his career and compares the director with his peers, from fellow New Yorkers like Brian De Palma and Woody Allen to New Hollywood movie brats such as Francis Ford Coppola and Steven Spielberg. The result is a complete picture of Scorsese and the post-World War II American film culture he has both shaped and been shaped by. Marc Raymond is Lecturer at the International Language Center at Gachon University in Seongnam, South Korea.
Ida Lupino, Director: Her Art and Resilience in Times of Transition by
Dominated by men and bound by the restrictive Hays Code, postwar Hollywood offered little support for a female director who sought to make unique films on controversial subjects. But Ida Lupino bucked the system, writing and directing a string of movies that exposed the dark underside of American society, on topics such as rape, polio, unwed motherhood, bigamy, exploitative sports, and serial murder. The first in-depth study devoted to Lupino's directorial work, this book makes a strong case for her as a trailblazing feminist auteur, a filmmaker with a clear signature style and an abiding interest in depicting the plights of postwar American women. Ida Lupino, Director not only examines her work as a cinematic auteur, but also offers a serious consideration of her diverse and long-ranging career, getting her start in Hollywood as an actress in her teens and twenties, directing her first films in her early thirties, and later working as an acclaimed director of television westerns, sitcoms, and suspense dramas. It also demonstrates how Lupino fused generic elements of film noir and the social problem film to create a distinctive directorial style that was both highly expressionistic and grittily realistic. Ida Lupino, Director thus shines a long-awaited spotlight on one of our greatest filmmakers.
Indie Reframed by
Explores the films, practitioners, production and distribution contexts that currently represent American women's independent cinema With the consolidation of 'indie' culture in the 21st century, female filmmakers face an increasingly indifferent climate. Within this sector, women work across all aspects of writing, direction, production, editing and design, yet the dominant narrative continues to construe 'maverick' white male auteurs such as Quentin Tarantino or Wes Anderson as the face of indie discourse. Defying the formulaic myths of the mainstream 'chick flick' and the ideological and experimental radicalism of feminist counter-cinema alike, women's indie filmmaking is neither ironic, popular nor political enough to be readily absorbed into pre-existing categories. 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. Through a variety of case studies of directors, writers and producers such as Ava DuVernay, Lena Dunham and Christine Vachon, contributors explore the innovation of a range of female practitioners by attending to the sensibilities, ideologies and industrial practices that distinguish their work - while embracing the 'in-between' space in which the narratives they represent and embody can be revealed. Key Features Covers American women's independent cinema since the late 1970s Analyses the work of acclaimed but critically overlooked female practitioners such as Kelly Reichardt, Christine Vachon, Miranda July, Kasi Lemmons, Nicole Holofcener, Mira Nair, Lisa Cholodenko, Megan Ellison, Lynn Shelton, Ava DuVernay, Mary Harron and Debra Granik Distinguishes four different approaches to analysing women's independent cinema through: production and industry perspectives; genre and other classificatory modalities; political, cultural, social and professional identities; and collaborative and collectivist practices Contributors John Alberti, Northern Kentucky University Linda Badley, Middle Tennessee State University Cynthia Baron, Bowling Green State University Shelley Cobb, University of Southampton Corinn Columpar, University of Toronto Chris Holmlund, University of Tennessee-Knoxville Geoff King, Brunel University, London Christina Lane, University of Miami James Lyons, University of Exeter Kathleen A. McHugh, UCLA Kent A. Ono, University of Utah Lydia Papadimitriou, Liverpool John Moores University Claudia Costa Pederson, Wichita State University Claire Perkins, Monash University Sarah Projansky, University of Utah Maria San Filippo, Goucher College Michele Schreiber, Emory University Sarah E. S. Sinwell, University of Utah Yannis Tzioumakis, University of Liverpool Patricia White, Swarthmore College Patricia R. Zimmermann, Ithaca College
Jane Campion by
Jane Campion is one of the most celebrated auteurs of modern cinema and was the first female director to be awarded the prestigious Palme d'Or. Throughout her relatively short career, Campion has received extraordinary attention from the media and scholars alike and has provoked fierce debates on issues such as feminism, colonialism, and nationalism. In this detailed account of Jane Campion's career as a filmmaker,nbsp;Deb Verhoevennbsp;examines specifically how contemporary film directors 'fashion' themselves as auteursnbsp;- through their personal interactions with the media, in their choice of projects, in their emphasis on particular filmmaking techniques and finally in the promotion of their films. Through analysis of key approaches to Campion's films, such as The Piano; In the Cut; Sweetie; An Angel at My Table; and Holy Smoke Deb Verhoeven introduces students to the passionate debates surrounding this controversial and often experimental director Featuring a career overview, a filmography, scene by scene analysis and an extended interview with Campion on her approach to creativity, this is a great introduction to one of the most important directors of contemporary cinema.
Jane Campion: Authorship and Personal Cinema by
Alistair Fox explores the dynamics of the creative process involved in cinematic representation in the films of Jane Campion, one of the most highly regarded of contemporary filmmakers. Utilizing a wealth of new material--including interviews with Campion and her sister and personal writings of her mother--Fox traces the connections between the filmmaker's complex background and the thematic preoccupations of her films, from her earliest short, Peel, to 2009's Bright Star. He establishes how Campion's deep investment in family relationships informs her aesthetic strategies, revealed in everything from the handling of shots and lighting, to the complex system of symbolic images repeated from one film to the next.
Latin American Women Filmmakers: Social and Cultural Perspectives by
Women are noticeably marginalized from the Latin American film industry, with lower budgets and inadequate distribution, and they often rely on their creativity to make more interesting films. This book highlights the voices and stories of some of these directors from Brazil, Chile, Argentina, and Mexico. Roberts-Camps's insightful exploration is the most broad-ranging account of its kind, making the book relevant to the study of literature as well as film.
Liberating Hollywood by
Winner of the 2018 Richard Wall Memorial Award​ from the Theater Library Association Liberating Hollywood examines the professional experiences and creative output of women filmmakers during a unique moment in history when the social justice movements that defined the 1960s and 1970s challenged the enduring culture of sexism and racism in the U.S. film industry. Throughout the 1970s feminist reform efforts resulted in a noticeable rise in the number of women directors, yet at the same time the institutionalized sexism of Hollywood continued to create obstacles to closing the gender gap. Maya Montañez Smukler reveals that during this era there were an estimated sixteen women making independent and studio films: Penny Allen, Karen Arthur, Anne Bancroft, Joan Darling, Lee Grant, Barbara Loden, Elaine May, Barbara Peeters, Joan Rivers, Stephanie Rothman, Beverly Sebastian, Joan Micklin Silver, Joan Tewkesbury, Jane Wagner, Nancy Walker, and Claudia Weill. Drawing on interviews conducted by the author, Liberating Hollywood is the first study of women directors within the intersection of second wave feminism, civil rights legislation, and Hollywood to investigate the remarkable careers of these filmmakers during one of the most mythologized periods in American film history.
Martin Scorsese's Raging Bull by
Raging Bull (1980) represents American film making at its best. Since its initial release, the film has been called the greatest film of the 1980s, the greatest boxing film ever made, the greatest sports film ever made, and, indeed, one of the greatest films of all time. Raging Bull: A Cambridge Film Handbook presents the fullest critical appreciation of Scorsese's film available. The introduction tells the story of how the film came about, examining its inspirations and positioning Raging Bull within the history of cinema. Subsequent chapters, each written by contributors from different disciplines - film studies, literary history, theater history - discuss the film from a variety of perspectives. Though primarily directed toward undergraduate and graduate film courses, this collection should enhance appreciation of Raging Bull for all readers. Contributors to this volume have been issued a challenge: to write chapters that contain fundamental information for students, to include new information and ideas for seasoned film scholars, and to write in a jargon-free style that all readers can appreciate.
Maya Deren: Incomplete Control by
Maya Deren (1917-1961) was a Russian-born American filmmaker, theorist, poet, and photographer working at the forefront of the American avant-garde in the 1940s and 1950s. Influenced by Jean Cocteau and Marcel Duchamp, she is best known for her seminal film Meshes of the Afternoon (1943), a dream-like experiment with time and symbol, looped narrative and provocative imagery, setting the stage for the twentieth-century's groundbreaking aesthetic movements and films. Maya Deren assesses both the filmmaker's completed work and her numerous unfinished projects, arguing Deren's overarching aesthetic is founded on principles of incompletion, contingency, and openness. Combining the contrasting approaches of documentary, experimental, and creative film, Deren created a wholly original experience for film audiences that disrupted the subjectivity of cinema, its standards of continuity, and its dubious facility with promoting categories of realism. This critical retrospective reflects on the development of Deren's career and the productive tensions she initiated that continue to energize film.
The Philosophy of Martin Scorsese by
Academy Award--winning director Martin Scorsese is one of the most significant American filmmakers in the history of cinema. Although best known for his movies about gangsters and violence, such as Mean Streets, Goodfellas, Casino, and Taxi Driver, Scorsese has addressed a much wider range of themes and topics in the four decades of his career. In The Philosophy of Martin Scorsese, an impressive cast of contributors explores the complex themes and philosophical underpinnings of Martin Scorsese's films. The essays concerning Scorsese's films about crime and violence investigate the nature of friendship, the ethics of vigilantism, and the nature of unhappiness. The authors delve deeply into the minds of Scorsese's tortured characters and explore how the men and women he depicts grapple with moral codes and their emotions. Several of the essays explore specific themes in individual films. The authors describe how Scorsese addresses the nuances of social mores and values in The Age of Innocence, the nature of temptation and self-sacrifice in The Last Temptation of Christ and Bringing Out the Dead, and the complexities of innovation and ambition in The Aviator. Other chapters in the collection examine larger philosophical questions. In a world where everything can be interpreted as meaningful, Scorsese at times uses his films to teach audiences about the meaning in life beyond the everyday world depicted in the cinema. For example, his films touching on religious subjects, such as Kundun and The Last Temptation of Christ, allow the director to explore spiritualism and peaceful ways of responding to the chaos in the world.Filled with penetrating insights on Scorsese's body of work, The Philosophy of Martin Scorsese shows the director engaging with many of the most basic questions about our humanity and how we relate to one another in a complex world.
Psycho-sexual: Male Desire in Hitchcock, De Palma, Scorsese, and Friedkin by 
Street Smart: The New York of Lumet, Allen, Scorsese, and Lee by
New York has appeared in more movies than Michael Caine, and the resulting overfamiliarity to moviegoers poses a problem for critics and filmmakers alike. Audiences often mistake the New York image of skyscrapers and bright lights for the real thing, when in fact the City is a network of clearly defined villages, each with a unique personality. Standard film depictions of New Yorkers as a rush-hour mass of undifferentiated humanity obscure the connections formed between people and places in the City's diverse neighborhoods. Street Smart examines the cultural influences of New York's neighborhoods on the work of four quintessentially New York filmmakers: Sidney Lumet, Woody Allen, Martin Scorsese, and Spike Lee. The City's heterogeneous economic and ethnic districts, where people live, work, shop, worship, and go to school, often bear little relation to the image of New York City created by the movies. To these directors, their home city is as tangible as the smell of fried onions in the stairwell of an apartment building, and it is this New York, not the bustling, glittery illusion portrayed in earlier films, that shapes their sensibilities and receives expression in their films. Richard A. Blake shows how the Jewish enclaves on Manhattan's Lower East Side profoundly influence Sidney Lumet's most noted characters as they struggle to form and maintain their identities under challenging circumstances. Both Woody Allen's light comedies and his more serious cinematic fare reflect the director's origins in the Flatbush neighborhood in Brooklyn and the displacement he felt after relocating to Manhattan. Martin Scorsese's upbringing on Elizabeth Street in Manhattan's Little Italy resonates in his gritty portraits of urban modernity. Blake also looks at the films of Spike Lee, whose adolescence in Fort Greene, a socioeconomically diverse Brooklyn neighborhood, exposed him to widely ranging views that add depth to his complicated treatises on power, culture, and race. Lumet, Allen, Scorsese, and Lee's individual identities were shaped by their neighborhoods, and in turn, their life experiences have shaped their artistic vision. In Street Smart, Richard A. Blake examines the critical influence of "place" on the films of four of America's most accomplished contemporary filmmakers.
Women Directors: The Emergence of a New Cinema by
Quart here extends her previous writings on what she terms `the best narrative cinema: women-centered cinema' and feminist filmmaking. Quart addresses American, Western European, and Eastern European directors, closing with Third World examples. Arguing that independent filmmaking best serves the quest for a woman's voice and vision, Quart chronicles the survival of women directors. She traces a heritage of women directors inside the Hollywood system and beyond. . . . This excellent study . . . [is] recommended for undergraduates in film and women's studies. Choice The current level of activity among women directors is unequalled in the history of feature films. This unprecedented study examines major contemporary women directors of narrative feature film--their themes, their art, and the circumstances under which they work. Quart contends that women are creating a film language and film sensibility that are unique, strong, and--until now--unexplored. Her discussion centers on the ties between women directors, rather than on a survey of women who direct films. Beginning with the antecedents to today's burgeoning number of women directors, the study progresses to American women directors. Subsequent chapters focus on womenn directors in Western Europe and Eastern Europe, with some attention as well to Asia and Latin America.
Women Filmmakers by
What difference does it make when a woman wields the camera? Women Filmmakers: Refocusing casts a critical eye on the often-overlooked work of women filmmakers. It provides a rich sampling of the wealth of thought and experience of women in the film industry and brings together in a unique way the views of creators and critics from around the world.
Women Filmmakers in Mexico: The Country of which we Dream by
Women filmmakers in Mexico were rare until the 1980s and 1990s, when women began to direct feature films in unprecedented numbers. Their films have won acclaim at home and abroad, and the filmmakers have become key figures in contemporary Mexican cinema. In this book, Elissa Rashkin documents how and why women filmmakers have achieved these successes, as she explores how the women's movement, film studies programs, governmental film policy, and the transformation of the intellectual sector since the 1960s have all affected women's filmmaking in Mexico. After a historical overview of Mexican women's filmmaking from the 1930s onward, Rashkin focuses on the work of five contemporary directors--Marisa Sistach, Busi Cortés, Guita Schyfter, María Novaro, and Dana Rotberg. Portraying the filmmakers as intellectuals participating in the public life of the nation, Rashkin examines how these directors have addressed questions of national identity through their films, replacing the patriarchal images and stereotypes of the classic Mexican cinema with feminist visions of a democratic and tolerant society.
