Cinema Of The Dark Side

A ground-breaking comparative analysis of cinematic images of atrocity, combining critical perspectives on contemporary film and human rights.A few days after 9/11, US Vice-President Dick Cheney invoked the need for the USA to work 'the dark side' in its global 'War on Terror'. Cinema of the Dark Side explores how contemporary cinema treats state-sponsored atrocity, evoking multiple landscapes of state terror. Investigating the ethical potential of cinematic atrocity images, this book argues that while films help to create and confirm normative perceptions about atrocities, they can also disrupt those perceptions and build alternative ones. Asserting a crucial distinction between morality and ethics, it proposes a new conceptualisation of human rights cinema, one that repositions human rights morality within an ethical framework that reflects upon the causes and contexts of violence. It builds upon theories of embodied perception to offer a new perspective on the ethics of spectatorship, providing readers with fresh insights into how we respond to atrocity images and the ethical issues at stake.Covering a diverse spectrum of 21st century cinema, this book deals with documentary and fictional representations of atrocity such as state-sanctioned torture, genocide, enforced disappearance, deportation, and apartheid. It features close analysis of contemporary films, including Zero Dark Thirty, Standard Operating Procedure, Hotel Rwanda, Sometimes in April, Nostalgia for the Light, Chronicle of an Escape, Children of Men, District 9, Waltz With Bashir, and Paradise Now.

From the shocking and controversial, to the banned and censored, scary or just plain weird, CINEMAGEDDON takes readers on a guided tour of a century of horror and cult cinema. Compiled from previous volumes - Beyond the Darkness, Shock Movies, and Phenomena - along with more than a hundred new reviews that haven't appeared anywhere else, this book offers 950 reviews in total, covering everything from mainstream hits to lurid underground shockers, and everything in between. Includes 'video nasties,' torture porn, out-of-print VHS, vigilantes, mutants, body horror, vampires, ultra-violence, perversities, true crime, aliens, psychotic women, slasher movies, mad doctors, Nazisploitation, satire, possessions, Satanic cults, serial killers, killer bugs, killer kids, killer cops and killer clowns, interlopers, psychopaths, cannibals, rape-revenge, zombies, gialli, pandemics, excessive gore, pseudo-snuff, haunted houses, documentaries, TV terrors, monsters of all shapes and sizes, demons, curses, home invasions, apocalypse, mass murders, backwoods horrors, and other assorted maniacs. Also included are details of actors, directors and other key personnel, details of censorship hassles, constant cross-referencing to put the films in context within their particular sub-genres, and the availability of uncut materials. Six years in the making, and presented on large-format, double-columned pages, no film fan's bookshelf is complete without CINEMAGEDDON...

A few days after 9/11, US Vice-President Dick Cheney invoked the need for the USA to work 'the dark side' in its global 'War on Terror'. In Cinema of the Dark Side, Samatho kally explores how contemporary cinema treats state-sponsored atrocity, evoking multiple landscapes of state terror. She investigates the ethical potential of cinematic atrocity images, arguing that while films help to create and confirm normative perceptions about atrocities, they can also disrupt those perceptions and build different ones. Asserting a crucial distinction between morality and ethics, the book proposes a new conceptualisation of human rights cinema that repositions human rights morality within an ethical framework that reflects upon the causes and contexts of violence. It builds upon theories of embodied spectatorship to explore how films can implicate us in histories that may appear to be distant and unrelated to us, and how they draw connections between past and present patterns of oppression. The book covers a diverse spectrum of 21st century cinema dealing with documentary or fictional representations of atrocity such as state-sanctioned torture, genocide, enforced disappearance, deportation, and apartheid, including Zero Dark Thirty (2012), Standard Operating Procedure (2008), Hotel Rwanda (2004), Sometimes in April (2005), Nostalgia for the Light (2010), Chronicle of an Escape (2006), Children of Men (2006), District 9 (2009), Waltz With Bashir (2008), and Paradise Now (2005). Cinema of the Dark Side provides readers with fresh insights into how we respond to atrocity images and the ethical issues at stake.

Foster Hirsch's Dark Side of the Screen is by far the most thorough and entertaining study of the themes, visual motifs, character types, actors, directors, and films in this genre ever published. From Billy Wilder, Douglas Sirk, Robert Aldrich, and Howard Hawkes to Martin Scorsese, Roman Polanski, and Paul Schrader, the noir themes of dread, paranoia, steamy sex, double-crossing women, and menacing cityscapes have held a fascination. The features that make Burt Lancaster, Joan Crawford, Robert Mitchum, and Humphrey Bogart into noir heroes and heroines are carefully detailed here, as well as those camera angles, lighting effects, and story lines that characterize Fritz Lang, Samuel Fuller, and Orson Welles as noir directors.For the current rediscovery of film noir, this comprehensive history with its list of credits to 112 outstanding films and its many illustrations will be a valuable reference and a source of inspiration for further research.

Hollywood's representation of blacks has been consistently misleading, promoting an artificially constructed mythology in place of historical fact. But how, James Snead asks, did black skin on screen develop into a complex code for various types of white supremacist discourse? In these essays, completed shortly before his death in 1989, James Snead offers a thoughtful inquiry into the intricate modes of racial coding in Hollywood cinema from 1915 to 1985. Snead presents three major methods through which the racist ideology within film functions: mythification, in which black images are correlated in a larger sceme of semiotic valuation where the dominant I needs the marginal other in order to function effectively; marking, in which the color black is repeatedly over-determined and redundantly marked, as if to force the viewer to register the image's difference from white; and omission--the repetition of black absence from positions of autonomy and importance. White Screens/Black Images offers an array of film texts, drawn from both classical Hollywood cinema and black independent film culture. Individual chapters analyze Birth of a Nation , King Kong , Shirley Temple in The Littlest Rebel and The Little Colonel , Mae West in I'm No Angel , Marlene Dietrich in Blonde Venus , Bette Davis in Jezebel , the racism of Disney's Song of the South , and Taxi Driver . Making skillful use of developments in both structuralist and post-structuralist film theory, Snead's work speaks not only to the centrality of race in Hollywood films, but to its centrality in the formation of modern American culture.

Why might interdependence, the idea that we are made up of our relations, be horrifying? Philosophy, Film, and the Dark Side of Interdependence argues that philosophy can outline the contours of dark specter of interdependence and that film can shine a light on its shadowy details, together revealing a horror of relations. The contributors interrogate the question of interdependence through analyses of contemporary film, giving voice to new perspectives on its meaning. Conceived before and written during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic and through a period of deep social unrest, this volume reveals a reality both perennial and timely.

Sometimes there's just nothing more absorbing than watching a movie that truly looks at life on the dark side, revealing those dark parts of human nature that we find so facinating. In Roger Ebert's picks of 27 Movies from the Dark Side, he offers a varied selection from a look at the seamy side of life in L.A. in Chinatown to a backwoods murder gone wrong in Blood Simple. Throw in two classics from Alfred Hitchcock, Notorious and Strangers on a Train, and two French tours de force, Bob le Flambeur and Touchez Pas au Grisbiand you've got the primer on film noir.

For anyone who has ever wondered how cameras work, this book is a pleasant way to learn. It is generously endowed with enough fundamentals to satisfy the technical specialist, without intimidating the casual but curious amateur photographer. The author has repaired, modified, and designed and analyzed cameras for the past forty five years. With this background, he goes beyond describing camera functions based on advertised data, instead the book explains how various cameras really work. The book peels off the cover panels and lets you look into the dark side of the lens. The dozen or so formulas use simple math and the drawings alone are worth the price of admission. Describes how cameras work and how well they overcome the difficulties in making a technically perfect photo Covers causes of image faults Presents unique methods for testing cameras Covers integration of optics, electronics, and mechanics in contemporary cameras

Irreverent stories about running an alternative, locally owned, independent movie theater in a small Oregon town; appreciations of fiercely loyal patrons; and rants about the peculiar business of dealing with movie studios. Paul also writes about his earlier experiences running movie theaters, some of which are now gone forever, and his forays into the American West, as seen from the seat of his motorcycle. Movies and motorcycles, twin passions for Paul, provide a never-ending supply of inspiration for Paul's creativity.