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Considers the nature and status of contemporary cinema by way of a series of technological reflections on its past Argues for a progressive historiography that looks forward, moving beyond the sense of anxiety and loss that has dominated accounts of cinema's postulated demise Draws on the latest thinking on evolving screen technologies and media archaeology and the development of cognate areas such as memory studies Charts the historical memory of cinema, with a view to considering how our engagement with, and understanding of, this history might be reconfigured in the present. Channelling a focus on the history of cinema into the present and beyond, Persistent Images: Encountering Film Hist...
Andrew Utterson brings together key theoretical texts spanning more than a century of writing on cinema technologies.
"We are all astronauts", the American architect and thinker Richard Buckminster Fuller wrote in 1968 in his book Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth, where he compared Earth to a spaceship, provided only with exhaustible resources while flying through space. These words show the presence the phenomenon of the astronaut and the cosmonaut had in the public mind from the second half of the twentieth century on: Buckminster Fuller was able to drive his point home by asking his audience to identify with one of the most prominent figures in the public sphere then: the space traveler. At the same time, Buckminster Fuller's words themselves seem to have played a significant role in further shaping the space-exploring human as a symbol and an image of humankind in general. The twelve contributions in this book by authors from the fields of literature, music, politics, history, the visual arts, film, computer games, comics, social sciences, and media theory track the development, changes and dynamics of this symbol by analyzing the various images of the astronaut and the cosmonaut as constructed throughout the different decades of space exploration, from its beginning to the present day.
What role does love—of cinema, of cinema studies, of teaching and learning—play in teaching film? For the Love of Cinema brings together a wide range of film scholars to explore the relationship between cinephilia and pedagogy. All of them ask whether cine-love can inform the serious study of cinema. Chapter by chapter, writers approach this question from various perspectives: some draw on aspects of students' love of cinema as a starting point for rethinking familiar films or generating new kinds of analyses about the medium itself; others reflect on how their own cinephilia informs the way they teach cinema; and still others offer new ways of writing (both verbally and audiovisually) with a love of cinema in the age of new media. Together, they form a collection that is as much a guide for teaching cinephilia as it is an energetic dialogue about the ways that cinephilia and pedagogy enliven and rejuvenate one another.
Whether paying tribute to silent films in Hugo and The Artist or celebrating arcade games in Tron: Legacy and Wreck-It-Ralph, Hollywood suddenly seems to be experiencing a wave of intense nostalgia for outmoded technologies. To what extent is that a sincere lament for modes of artistic production that have nearly vanished in an all-digital era? And to what extent is it simply a cynical marketing ploy, built on the notion that nostalgia has always been one of Hollywood’s top-selling products? In Flickers of Film, Jason Sperb offers nuanced and unexpected answers to these questions, examining the benefits of certain types of film nostalgia, while also critiquing how Hollywood’s nostalgic r...
As monstrous bodies on-screen signal a wide range of subversive destabilization of the notions of identity and community, this anthology asks what meanings monsters and monstrosity convey in relation to our recent circumstances shaped by neoliberalism and the pandemic that have led to the intensified tightening of border controls by nation-states, the intensive categorization of (un)identifiable bodies, and subsequent forms of isolations and detachments imposed by social distancing and the rapid transition of sociality from reality to virtual reality. Presenting various thinkings along the lines of the body and its representations as cultural text, together with popular or recent media produ...
“Ball’s lucid and timely book offers a portal into a new realm.”—The Economist "The term “Metaverse” is thirty years old, yet only recently entered mainstream conversation, attracting both fascinating and skepticism. While some have promised its imminent arrival, in fact it will take a series of technological and societal leaps to realize its full potential. In The Metaverse, pioneering theorist, former tech executive, and acclaimed entrepreneur Matthew Ball offers an expansive tour of the “next internet”: he presents a comprehensive definition of the Metaverse (going far beyond mere virtual reality headsets), explains the technologies that will power it, addresses governance challenges, and predicts Metaverse winners and losers. Bringing clarity and authority to a frequently misunderstood concept, this revised and updated edition of Ball’s authoritative work demonstrates how the Metaverse will radically reshape society. “A comprehensive guide to every aspect of the metaverse.”—John Thornhill, Financial Times “Offers a better understanding of the metaverse than the novel that coined the term—1992’s Snow Crash.”—Cecilia D’Anastasio, Bloomberg
La India María—a humble and stubborn indigenous Mexican woman—is one of the most popular characters of the Mexican stage, television, and film. Created and portrayed by María Elena Velasco, La India María has delighted audiences since the late 1960s with slapstick humor that slyly critiques discrimination and the powerful. At the same time, however, many critics have derided the iconic figure as a racist depiction of a negative stereotype and dismissed the India María films as exploitation cinema unworthy of serious attention. By contrast, La India María builds a convincing case for María Elena Velasco as an artist whose work as a director and producer—rare for women in Mexican c...
This book provides a sustained engagement with contemporary Indian feature films from outside the mainstream, including Aaranaya Kaandam, I.D., Kaul, Chauthi Koot, Cosmic Sex, and Gaali Beeja, to undercut the dominance of Bollywood focused film studies. Gopalan assembles films from Bangalore, Chennai, Delhi, Kolkata, and Trivandrum, in addition to independent productions in Bombay cinema, as a way of privileging understudied works that deserve critical attention. The book uses close readings of films and a deep investigation of film style to draw attention to the advent of digital technologies while remaining fully cognizant of ‘the digital’ as a cryptic formulation for considering the sea change in the global circulation of film and finance. This dual focus on both the techno-material conditions of Indian cinema and the film narrative offers a fulsome picture of changing narratives and shifting genres and styles.
Community Without Community in Digital Culture presents the view that our digital culture is determined not by greater connection, but by the separation and gap that is a necessary concomitant of our fundamental technicity.