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Discusses American and Italian movies based on stories from the Bible and history and mythology of ancient Greece, Rome, and medieval Europe.
An essay in literary criticism with a difference, addressing the nature of blasphemy and using selected novels by Salman Rushdie, Najib Mahfuz and Nikos Kazantzakis as case studies.
Acclaimed British director Michael Winterbottom is renowned for the abundance and diversity of his output. His films span a wide range of genres in art house and mainstream cinema alike, from the heritage film to neo-noir. Working with different genres gives Winterbottom a framework in which to explore favored themes, while incorporating new ideas and taking on new challenges. At the same time, his manner of undermining familiar generic qualities and frustrating audience expectations also refreshes the genres he explores. In The Cinema of Michael Winterbottom, Deborah Allison investigates Winterbottom's contributions to contemporary cinema, using ideas of genre as a critical tool. Focusing on eight films, Allison examines the ways he adopts, inflects, and challenges the main attributes of the films' associated genres, enriching a highly personal and idiosyncratic style of filmmaking. The potency and integrity of his authorship unites films as generically diverse as the road movie Butterfly Kiss, western drama The Claim, sci-fi romance Code 46, and docudrama The Road to Guantanamo.
New Chinese Cinema: Challenging Representations examines the ‘search for roots’ films that emerged from China in the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution. The authors contextualize the films of the so-called Fifth Generation directors who came to prominence in the 1980s and 1990s, such as Chen Kaige, Zhang Yimou, and Tian Zhuangzhuang. Including close analysis of such pivotal films as Farewell My Concubine, Raise the Red Lantern, and The Blue Kite, this book also examines the rise of contemporary Sixth Generation underground directors whose themes embrace the disaffection of urban youth.
A primary theme of the book is the effect of recent and ongoing law reform on Hong Kong commercial law. Many of the authors discuss proposals by the Law Reform Commission or other bodies. The authors also make their own proposals for improving Hong Kong's legislation and case law.
This book provides a political and cultural exploration of the Pusan International Film Festival in South Korea since its inception in 1996. By paying a particular attention to the organizers' use of an Asian regionalization strategy, SooJeong Ahn reveals how the festival staked out a unique and influential position within a rapidly changing global landscape. Very little primary empirical research has been conducted to date on non-Western film festivals, though PIFF and Tokyo and Hong Kong have swiftly grown more exciting and influential as testing grounds for global cinema innovations. The initiation, development and growth of PIFF should be understood as resulting from productive tensions ...
A new, full analysis of the Ancient World epic and how this film genre continues to comment on modern-day issues.
Out of a film culture originally starved of funds have emerged rich and eclectic works by film-makers that are now achieving the international recognition that they deserve: Barbara Albert, Michael Haneke, Ulrich Seidl, and Stefan Ruzowitzky, to give four examples. This comprehensive critical anthology, by leading scholars of Austrian film, is intended to introduce and make accessible this much under-represented phenomenon. Although the book covers the full development of the Austrian new wave it focuses on the period that has brought it global attention: 1998 to the present. New Austrian Film is the only book currently available on this topic and will be an essential reference work for academics, students and filmmakers, interested in modern Austrian film.
Discovers how the Bible was represented in cinema from the beginnings up until the end of the 'silent' era.
With the recent release of spectacular blockbuster films from Gladiator to The Lord of the Rings trilogy, the epic has once again become a major form in contemporary cinema. This new volume in the AFI Film Readers series explores the rebirth of the epic film genre in the contemporary period, a period marked by heightened and conflicting appeals to national, ethnic, and religious belonging.The orginal essays in this volume explore the tension between the evolving global context of film production and reception and the particular provenance of the epic as an expression of national mythology and aspirations, challenging our understanding of epics produced in the present as well as our perception of epic films from the past. The contributors will explore new critical approaches to contemporary as well as older epic films, drawing on ideas from cultural studies, historiography, classics, and film studies.