The Film Cultures Reader

This companion reader to Film as Social Practice brings together key writings on contemporary cinema, exploring film as a social and cultural phenomenon.

"Film Cultures is thought-provoking and challenging. By opening film theory up to the many simultaneous networks of relation (that is, the cultures) of film, it asks both viewer and student to take film more seriously." - Communication Research Trends "Film Cultures weaves together insights from cultural theory and film studies to provide a complex and absorbing theoretical account of contemporary film culture. Harbord writes with authority, imagination and wit and her delicate deployment of modernist and postmodernist cultural accounts makes rewarding reading." - Christine Geraghty, Professor of Film and Television, University of Glasgow Film Cultures argues that our tastes for film connect us to social, spatial and temporal networks of exchange and meaning. Whether we view film in the multiplex, arthouse or the gallery, as cinema premiere, video hire or from a cable channel, whether we approach film as a singular object or a hypertext linked to ancillary products, our relationship to film is inhabiting a culture. Shifting the focus of film analysis from the text to paths of circulation, Film Cultures questions how film connects us to social status, and national and global affiliations.

This compilation from Film Culture magazine—the pioneering periodical in avant-garde film commentary—includes contributors like Charles Boultenhouse, Erich von Stroheim, Michael McClure, Stan Brakhage, Annette Michelson, Arthur Miller, Dylan Thomas, Andrew Sarris, Rudolph Arnheim, Jonas Mekas, and Parker Tyler. This collection covers a range of topics in twentieth century cinema, from the Auteur Theory to the commercial cinema, from Orson Welles to Kenneth Anger.

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This core teaching text provides a thorough overview of the recently emerged field of transnational film studies. Covering a range of approaches to analysing films about migrant, cross-cultural and cross-border experience, Steven Rawle demonstrates how film production has moved beyond clear national boundaries to become a product of border crossing finance and creative personnel. This comprehensive introduction brings together the key concepts and theories of transnational cinema, including genre, remakes, diasporic and exilic cinema, and the limits of thinking about cinema as a particularly national cultural artefact. It is an excellent course companion for undergraduate students of film, cinema, media and cultural studies studying transnational and global cinema, and provides both students and lovers of film alike with a strong grounding in this timely field of film studies.

From the kinetoscope, used by one viewer at a time, to the lavish movie palaces of Hollywood's golden era, the experience of watching films has varied enormously across film. Exhibition, The Film Reader traces the emergence of a culture of moviegoing, exploring the range of venues in which films have been shown and following the fluctuating status of film and the continuning struggle over audiences.

Collecting together critical essays, this anthology approaches cinematic refractions of American identity & examines some of the many US films that have underscored their role in interpreting & constituting 'America' by announcing themselves as 'American'. It is useful for the students of American cultural & film studies.

Cultures of Representation is the first book to explore the cinematic portrayal of disability in films from across the globe. Contributors explore classic and recent works from Belgium, France, Germany, India, Italy, Iran, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Netherlands, Russia, Senegal, and Spain, along with a pair of globally resonant Anglophone films. Anchored by David T. Mitchell and Sharon L. Snyder's coauthored essay on global disability-film festivals, the volume's content spans from 1950 to today, addressing socially disabling forces rendered visible in the representation of physical, developmental, cognitive, and psychiatric disabilities. Essays emphasize well-known global figures, directors, and industries – from Temple Grandin to Pedro Almodóvar, from Akira Kurosawa to Bollywood – while also shining a light on films from less frequently studied cultural locations such as those portrayed in the Iranian and Korean New Waves. Whether covering postwar Italy, postcolonial Senegal, or twenty-first century Russia, the essays in this volume will appeal to scholars, undergraduates, and general readers alike.

In any conflict the players seem to invariably view that conflict through the filter of their own cultural experiences. This collection of essays draws on a variety of disciplines to analyze fundamental assumptions about how conflict arises and how it is resolved.