Filmhistorie, filmteori og filmkritik

A love letter to women-led comedies. Based on Elizabeth Teets's program series called "Isn't She Great" at the Hollywood Theater, this anthology is a collection of the most beloved female-centric comedies and the audiences who adore them. From 9 to 5 to Romy and Michelle to the iconic Elle Woods, the essays in this collection build on our devotion to these films and continue the conversation around funny women and how these characters have shaped so many talented writers. As Elizabeth Teets reminds us, there is a specific power in a funny woman. A woman who dares to laugh at the world and at herself. These movies made us strong and smart and sexy (and bend and snap a lot). At the end of the day, we remind ourselves when the world only tries to let us have a little, a little money, a little confidence, a little joy to go out and get the whole enchilada.Isn't She Great is for anyone who loves movies and feels the glamour in pink. Cult cinema and film criticism will never be the same.

Movies That Made Me Gay is a wonderfully well-informed, witty and acerbic take on iconic Hollywood films, film-stars, and indie cult favorites from an author who is himself a Black gay icon; and is also a touching and extremely readable personal memoir of growing up gay in the early '60s, surviving the AIDS pandemic of the '80s (legendary Vito Celluloid Closet Russo was a dear friend) and the adaptation of his novel 'Blackbird' into a feature film starring Mo'nique in 2014, and still thriving today."Duplechan is a master film critic, alternately praising and scathing, with a gushing heart and acerbic wit, all the while giving the reader little known facts about the classic and not-so-classic movies that shaped his colorful life. Personal anecdotes round out this well-crafted journal of the ultimate movie fan who, above all, despite the oft caustic pen, is a romantic sentimentalist."Sam Harris, author of Ham: Slices of a Life, and The Substance of All Things."Once I started reading I couldn't stop, like eating a bucket of salted cashews. But it's far more educational than nuts."Christopher Bram, author of Gods and Monsters"Fasten your seatbelts for a wild ride through "gay" movie history with Larry Duplechan at the wheel. His enlightening, bitchy, unfiltered, pithy, and sentimental observations coaxed me to take another look at countless films, and it will for you!"Michael Gregg Michaud, author of Sal Mineo, A Biography and Inventing Troy Donahue."...full of fresh ideas, good history, and smart jokes. I laughed out loud a lot. Best of all, he weaves a fine autobiography into his movie talk, one that's honest, real, complex, and moving."Christopher Bram, author of Gods and Monsters¿¿"Larry Duplechan is the storyteller you want to sit next to at the party. His deep dive into movies that molded our youth and haunt our adulthood is funny, acerbic and personal. I dare anyone to read this book without making a list of films to see or see again. I say two snaps up!"Jewelle Gomez, author of The Gilda Stories¿¿"Black gay men's autobiographies are still vanishingly rare - the more so due to the catastrophe of the AIDS crisis. Larry's wise and witty telling of his life through his love of films both classic and obscure is to be cherished."Patrik-Ian Polk, creator of Noah's Arc

Action Scenarios: The Essential Guide to Action in Film examines all of the ways in which action is manifested in cinema, or what author Tico Romao calls the "action scenarios" of film. Loaded with detail, nuance, rare insight, and historical analysis, Action Scenarios explores how and why filmmakers use these action scenarios as a function of character development, story narrative, and much more.

"From October 1948 to October 1953, The New Yorker published humorist S.J. Perelman's "Cloudland Revisited" series: twenty-two reviews of once-popular books and silent films whose expiration dates had passed. All but forgotten even at the time, they were nonetheless part of Perelman's youth and made an indelible mark on him. ln the comic genius's biting satire they live once again: Gertrude Atherton's sensationalist fantasy Black Oxen; Sax Rohmer's supervillain blockbuster The Mystery of Dr. Fu-Manchu; the "underwater" silent film adaptation of Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea; Edgar Rice Burrough's 1914 novel Tarzan of the Apes; and George Barr McCutcheon's 1901 historical fantasy novel Graustark-the Game of Thrones of its era-which launched numerous sequels and film adaptations. Here for the first time all twenty-two of Perelman's reappraisals are collected. With self-deprecating humor and frequent embarrassment, Perelman reflects on how rereading and rewatching brings us in contact with how we, like an old book or film, have both changed and remained the same. This paperback includes a tribute to Perelman's art by another New Yorker favorite, Adam Gopnik"--Provided by publisher

Lost Transmissions weaves amongst brambled pathways to take in the haunted soundscapes of electronica, the rise of the occult in the 1970s, cinema and television's dystopian dreamscapes and hauntological work which creates and gives a glimpse into parallel worlds. It is a recording of a personal journey that delves amongst both the esoteric fringes and mainstream of culture, and which at times holds a shadowed scrying mirror up to the modern world and some of its ills, while also reflecting visions of a hopeful future in its depths.Alongside other experimenters in electronic sound the book explores Boards of Canada's invoking of "the past inside the present"; Paul Weller's visiting of Ghost Box Records' elsewhere universe; work by Cosey Fanni Tutti, Hannah Peel and the reformed Radiophonic Workshop, and their collaborations across time with electronic music pioneer Delia Derbyshire; Dominik Scherrer and Natasha Khan's summoning of "pastoral spook" via a hidden language of angels; and takes a trip in the company of fairground and rural ghosts conjured up on records released by Castles in Space.Alongside these it examines the paranormal and "worlds beyond" via the semi-lost supernatural-orientated television series Leap in the Dark which included work by Alan Garner and David Rudkin, Sharron Kraus' contemporary investigations into the preternatural and the conjuring of modern-day phantasms in Luciana Haill's artwork.The book also includes an intertwined consideration of the "deluxe dystopias" that can be found in films such as Rollerball and Andrew Niccol's Gattaca and prescient views of the future's past & media collusion in film and television including Nigel Kneale's work and the overlooked corners of science fiction.

While histories of Czech cinema often highlight the quality of Czechoslovak New Wave films made in the 1960s, post-socialist Czech cinema receives little attention. Through a methodology of historical reception, Stories between Tears and Laughter explores how attitudes towards post-socialist Czech cinema have shifted from viewing it as radical "art cinema" and more towards popular cinema. By analyzing publicity materials, reviews, and articles, Richard Vojvoda offers a new perspective on the notions of cultural value and quality that have been shaping the history of post-socialist Czech cinema.

Luchino Visconti's The Leopard (Il Gattopardo, 1963) tells the story of an aristocratic Sicilian family adjusting to the realities of political and commercial modernity after the unification Italy during the Risorgimento.The film, starring Claudia Cardinale, Burt Lancaster and Alain Delon, met with success upon its initial release, winning the Palme d'Or at Cannes and having a successful theatrical run in Europe. Despite this, however, it did not do well with English-speaking audiences, and eventually even fell out of favour with Italian audiences, who took issue with the way Risorgimento history was represented. David Weir's study of the film seeks to understand the film's paradoxical place in Italian film history. He argues that Visconti's use of artifice, narrative and history, all aspects that came to be criticised, were in fact, essential to his cinematic art, and can all be understood as strengths of the film. Providing a scene-by-scene analysis of the film, as well as illuminating its relationship to the Lampedusa novel from which it was adapted, Weir suggests that Visconti's film goes beyond mere adaptation, using the form of the novel for cinematic purposes and making The Leopard a cinematic novel in its own right. He goes on to situate the film within Visconti's career, questioning whether the uneven reception of the film reflects the paradox of Visconti's social status as a Marxist aristocrat and his position as an auteur director whose films borrowed heavily from the decadent tradition, while at the same time professing allegiance to the Italian Communist Party.

Ken Loach's 1969 drama Kes, considered one of the finest examples of British social realism, tells the story of Billy, a working class boy who finds escape and meaning when he takes a fledgling kestrel from its nest.David Forrest's study of the film examines the genesis of the original novel, Barry Hines' A Kestrel for a Knave (1968), the eventual collaboration that brought it to the screen, and the film's funding and production processes. He provides an in depth analysis of key scenes and draws on archival sources to shed new light on the film's most celebrated moments. He goes on to consider the film's lasting legacy, having influenced films like Ratcatcher (1999) and This is England (2006), both in terms of its contribution to film history and as a document of political and cultural value. He makes a case for the film's renewed relevance in our present era of systemic economic (and regional) inequality, alienated labour, increasingly narrow educational systems, toxic masculinity, and ecological crisis. Kes endures, he argues, because it points towards the possibility for emancipation and fulfilment through a more responsive and nurturing approach to education, a more delicate and symbiotic relationship with landscape and the non-human, and an emotional articulacy and sensitivity shorn of the rigid expectations of gender.

In seinem neuen Filmbuch Trauma-TV reist Filmkritiker und Podcaster Patrick Lohmeier zurück in seine Kindheit. Dort begegnet er all den Filmen wieder, die ihn als kleinen Hosenscheißer um den Schlaf brachten - aber auch prägten. Von Klassikern des verstörenden Jugendkinos wie Unten am Fluss (1978) und E.T. - Der Außerirdische (1982) über verstrahlte Fernsehfilme wie Der Tag danach (1983) und Threads (1984) bis hin zum Nachtprogramm im Privatfernsehen mit reitenden Leichen und mörderischen Alpträumen: In knapp hundert Rezensionen seiner meistgefürchteten Film- und Serienerfahrungen im Alter von sechs bis 13 Jahren sucht der Autor nach Antworten auf die wirklich wichtigen Fragen des Lebens. Filmkritikerin Sonja Hartl (Zeilenkino) und Psychologin Christiane Attig (Brainflicks) stehen ihm dabei mit all ihrer Kompentenz zur Seite. Vor allem will Patrick wissen, welche Schrecken zeitlos sind ... oder ob sie so vergänglich wie--- Aaargh!!!Pressestimmen zu Veröffentlichungen des Autors: "Nach der Lektüre dieses Standardwerks für die nächsten hundert Jahre sind einfach alle wesentlichen Fragen beantwortet." (epd Film über Columbo, Columbo) *** "Für alle, die das Kino in all seinen Formen lieben." (Cinema über Bahnhofskino) *** "Ein saftiges Stück Film- und Fernsehgeschichte." (CrimeMag über Columbo, Columbo) *** "Beeindruckend." (Daniel Schröckert [Kino+] über den Audiokommentar zu Mandy [2018] *** "Ein kleines Wunder." (nd.aktuell über Columbo, Columbo)

Gennem mere end 90 år har Disney indfanget de mest fantastiske fantasier og skabt banebrydende underholdning for hele familien.Fra Snehvide til Frost, fra Mary Poppins til Pirates of the Caribbean og fra Disneyland til Tokyo DisneySea – tag på en uforglemmelig rejse gennem hele Disneys eventyrlige univers i denne omfattende bog, som er fyldt med interessante historier, flotte billeder og sjove facts. Få indblik i sjældne øjeblikke fra Disneys historie gennem en mageløs række af kunstværker og artefakter fra Disneys arkiver, og oplev magien folde sig ud!

By the time of his death in 1973, John Ford was probably the most celebrated director of Hollywood's golden age. The winner of four best director Oscars, he was the first filmmaker to be awarded his country's highest civilian honour, the Medal of Freedom, and the man chosen by the American Film Institute to receive its first life achievement award.In his work, Ford returned regularly to the same themes, employed the same actors and had a visual style that was personal and distinctive. This volume explores his preoccupations throughout his long, garlanded career, showing how he attempted to come to terms with American history, with how America kept changing its relationship with history and with how many of the myths of the 'West' were just that - myths.

By exploring German film history with the tools of the Environmental Humanities, this book offers a case study of the power of film within processes of environmental transformation.

"George Lucas is an innovative and talented director, producer, screenwriter, and filmmaker whose prolific career spans decades. While he is best known as the creative mind behind the Star Wars franchise, Lucas first gained notoriety with his 1973 film American Graffiti, which received five Academy Award nominations, including Best Director and Best Picture. When Star Wars (1977) was released, the groundbreaking motion picture won six Academy Awards, became the highest grossing film at the time, and started a cultural revolution that continues to inspire generations of fans. Three decades and countless successes later, Lucas announced semiretirement in 2012 and sold his highly successful production company, Lucasfilm, to Disney. His achievements have earned him the Academy's Irving G. Thalberg Award, the American Film Institute's Life Achievement Award, induction into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame and the California Hall of Fame, and a National Medal of Arts presented by President Barack Obama. Lucas: His Hollywood Legacy is the first collection to bring a sustained scholarly perspective to the iconic filmmaker and his legacy beyond the Star Wars films. Edited by Richard Ravalli, this volume analyzes Lucas's overall contribution and importance to the film industry, diving deep into his use and development of modern special effects technologies, the history of his Skywalker Ranch production facilities, and more. With clearly written and enlightening critiques by experts consulting rare collections and archival materials, this book is an original and robust project that sets the standard for historical and cultural studies of Lucas"--

"The author of The Butler and Showdown examines 100 years of Black movies--using the struggles and triumphs of the artists, and the films themselves, as a prism to explore Black culture and the civil rights movement in America. Beginning in 1915 with D.W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation--which glorified the Ku Klux Klan and became Hollywood's first blockbuster--Wil Haygood gives us an incisive, fascinating, little-known history, spanning more than a century, of Black artists in the film business, onscreen and behind the scenes. He makes clear the effects of changing social realities and events on the business of making movies and on what was represented on the screen: from Jim Crow and segregation to white flight and interracial relationships, from the assassination of Malcolm X to the O.J. Simpson trial to the Black Lives Matter movement. He considers the films themselves--including The Imitation of Life, Gone With the Wind, Porgy & Bess, the Blaxploitation films of the 70s, Do The Right Thing, 12 Years a Slave, and Black Panther. And he brings to new light the careers and significance of a wide range of historic and contemporary figures: Hattie McDaniel, Sidney Poitier, Berry Gordy, Alex Haley, Spike Lee, Billy Dee Willliams, Richard Pryor, Halle Berry, Ava Duvernay, and Jordan Peele, among many others. An important, timely book, Colorization gives us both an unprecedented history of Black cinema, and a groundbreaking perspective on racism in modern America"--

Chris Wade explores the film career of movie icon Bela Lugosi. From his silent films in Europe, his early American movies, the iconic roles in the likes of Dracula, The Black Cat, and White Zombie, through the low budget B movies of the 1940s, up to his final screen work for Ed Wood, Wade celebrates the great man's performances in a series of essays, examining the career of a man who never escaped the Dracula persona but whose films are now highly regarded by his legions of fans. The book also features Q and As with those who knew and worked with him. Other films explored include: The Raven, Murders in the Rue Morgue, The Devil Bat, Son of Frankenstein, The Corpse Vanishes, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, and many more...

In the 1960s, psychiatrists and psychologists intervened in and influenced cinema culture in unprecedented ways, changing how films were conceived, produced, censored, exhibited and received by audiences. Demons of the Mind provides the first interdisciplinary account of these complex contestations and cross-pollinations of the 'psy' sciences and cinema in Britain and America during the defining long 1960s period of the late-1950s to early-1970s. This book incorporates expertise from film studies, history of science and medicine, and science communication, focusing particularly on the situated practices and interplay between ideas, expertise and professionals that constitute the fields of mental health and media. Tim Snelson is an Associate Professor in Media History at the University of East Anglia. William R. Macauley is a Lecturer at the University of Manchester and Senior Research Associate at the Science Museum, London. David A. Kirby is Chair of the Department of Interdisciplinary Studies in the Liberal Arts and Professor in Science and Technology Studies at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo.

Despite the enormous cultural impact of Nosferatu (1922) on modern entertainment, the history of vampires in silent film is largely unknown. Vampires in Silent Cinema covers the subject from 1896-1931, reclaiming a large array of forgotten films from countries ranging from the United States and France to Hungary and Russia. Drawing on thousands of primary sources, Rhodes explores vampirism in all of its manifestations, from the supernatural undead to the natural vamp. Gary D. Rhodes is Professor of Media, Oklahoma Baptist University. He is the author of Emerald Illusions: The Irish in Early American Cinema (2012), The Perils of Moviegoing in America (2012) and The Birth of the American Horror Film (2018). He is a founding editor of Horror Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal. Rhodes is also the writer-director of the documentary films Lugosi: Hollywood's Dracula (1997) and Banned in Oklahoma (2004).

Recent film theory has reframed genre as a discursive gesture, and pressures the idea of a national cinema by bringing to light local, regional, and transnational practices. In French Westerns: On the Frontier of Film Genre and National Cinema, Timothy Scheie explores the volatile arena where the acts of imagination to which 'French' and 'Western' owe their coherence fail repeatedly, productively, and at times spectacularly. Each chapter illuminates this unstable conjunction with a close reading of representative films that position the Western genre alongside French referents: landscapes, regional traditions, post-war modernization, language, stars and the events of May 1968. The films span the history of cinema, and include vehicles for stars like Fernandel, Johnny Hallyday and Brigitte Bardot, as well as the work of directors Christian-Jaque, Louis Malle and Jean-Luc Godard. Scheie traces how the encounter of the Western genre and French cinema persists into the twenty-first century as both a discordant provocation and a generator of possibilities. Timothy Scheie in an Associate Professor of French at University of Rochester.

Only second to the Holocaust, the Rwandan genocide is the most audio-visually recreated genocide with approximately 200 films and documentaries produced in 39 countries between 1994 and 2021. Historical Media Memories of the Rwandan Genocide studies the construction, development, and recreation of the transnational historical media memory of the genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda. This comprehensive work traces the international media image and the creation of historical memories of the Rwandan genocide, starting with the day-to-day television news reporting in 1994, and continues with analyzing how the genocide has been used and reproduced in films and documentaries on a global scale as well in Rwanda, which has created its own images of the genocide in film and television production to support a new national identity. Tommy Gustafsson is Professor of Film Studies at Linnaeus University, Sweden. His books include The Politics of Nordsploitation (with Pietari Kääpä, 2021), Masculinity in the Golden Age of Swedish Cinema (2014), and the anthologies Nordic Genre Films (EUP, 2015) and Transnational Ecocinema (2013), both co-edited with Pietari Kääpä.

This Reader presents 36 essays written by the eminent Film and Scottish Studies scholar, Colin McArthur between 1966 and the present. Including 20 works now out of print, it identifies the central strands of scholarly interest and political engagement that have driven and defined the career of one of British film and Scottish cultural studies' founding figures and most influential voices. Presented chronologically, the essays make McArthur's achievements - his leading role in legitimising the study of mid-twentieth-century Hollywood cinema and popular American film genres; his leadership in establishing Scotland's cinematic representation as an important object of study within British film studies and modern Scottish cultural studies; and his imaginative interrogation of Scotland's distinctive role as a visual and material cultural signifier within a diverse range of post-18th-century international popular cultures - available to new generations of scholars. The volume also helps its reader to understand the historical emergence and evolution of Anglophone film studies and Scottish cultural studies during the late twentieth and early twenty first centuries. Colin McArthur is former Head of the Distribution Division at the British Film Institute and former Visiting Professor at Glasgow Caledonian University and Queen Margaret University. He has written extensively on Hollywood cinema, British television and Scottish culture. His most recent book is Along the Great Divide (2020). Jonathan Murray is Senior Lecturer in Film and Visual Culture at the University of Edinburgh. He is the author of The New Scottish Cinema (2015) and Discomfort and Joy (2011), a Contributing Writer for Cineaste magazine and co-Principal Editor of Journal of British Cinema and Television.

Leontine Sagan's Mädchen in Uniform (1931) is a groundbreaking German film that defied established societal norms, showcasing the power of women, both behind and in front of the camera.Adapted from Christa Winsloe's lesbian play, the story follows Manuela, an orphan in a boarding school for impoverished Prussian nobility. When her love for a female teacher is discovered, the oppressive principal punishes her, leading to a desperate suicide attempt.Barbara Mennel's compelling study firmly establishes Mädchen in the Weimar cinema canon. Breaking away from the teleological and over-determined "Caligari to Hitler" approach that has dominated the field since its inception, Mennel examines the film on its own terms within its immediate historical moment. Although it was prohibited viewing for several years, having been banned by the Nazis for its lesbian subtext and anti-authoritarian message, she asserts its central role in articulating feminist film theory in the late 1970s. Analysing its themes of democracy versus tyranny, the collective versus the individual, and expressive desire versus repressive discipline, she underscores the film's timeless impact, and why it continues to resonate with contemporary audiences.

This book demonstrates how the avenging-woman character on-screen represents cultural conversations about female agency and feminism. This critical feminist analysis analyzes the construction of female empowerment in the American avenging-woman narrative to uncover how we can understand messages about women and power in contemporary culture.

Fragilität als mehrdeutige und ambivalente Konstitution kennzeichnet Figuren, Motive und Schreibweisen in Literatur und Film. Der Fokus auf fragile Phänomene lenkt den Blick auf das Gefährdete, verlangt Aufmerksamkeit für das Schützenswerte sowie das Aushalten von Brüchigkeit. Fragile Zustände können sowohl Unsicherheit hervorrufen als auch produktive Energie freisetzen. Die verbreitete Wahrnehmung unserer Gegenwart als instabil unterstreicht die Aktualität des Begriffs, der bisher in der geisteswissenschaftlichen Forschung keine etablierte Kategorie darstellt.Der Sammelband nähert sich deshalb dem Begriff an, indem in verschiedenen literatur- und filmwissenschaftlichen Fallstudien facettenreiche Perspektiven auf Fragilität entwickelt und in ihrem jeweiligen Kontext diskutiert werden.