Filmhistorie, filmteori og filmkritik

Susan Seidelman's career is one of firsts, yet little is written about her. This collection begins filling that gap while opening the door for additional scholarship, making this a valuable text for years to come. As the first volume dedicated entirely to her work, ReFocus: The Films of Susan Seidelman includes never before published archival material and an interview with insights into her process and thoughts on #timesup and the future of the industry. Seidelman's first feature film, Smithereens, was the first American independent film to compete for the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 1982. Her talent for casting became an asset to her films since she first insisted on Madonna for Desperately Seeking Susan early in her fame. Seidelman directed Meryl Streep and John Malkovich in their first comedy features, Roseanne Barr in her first feature film and Laverne Cox in one of her earliest features. Susan Santha Kerns is Associate Professor of Cinema and Television Arts at Columbia College Chicago.

"Timed for the film's 30th anniversary, the oral history of Disney's Hocus Pocus by entertainment journalist Shannon Carlin. In July 1993, Disney's Hocus Pocus, starring Bette Midler, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Kathy Najimy, did not immediately find success, with box office numbers falling far below the now largely forgotten Dennis the Menace. Yet somehow the Halloween movie released in the middle of the summer to little fanfare has become an enduring and widely loved classic. Nearly three decades after the film's initial release, it's a yearly holiday viewing tradition in households around the world. Beyond the movie itself, the Sanderson sisters have inspired Halloween costumes, Carvel ice cream shakes, scented candles, a makeup collection, drinks on Starbucks' secret menu, a Walt Disney World holiday show, and numerous drag brunches across the United States. Hocus Pocus has become a not-so-scary rite of passage for kids and their parents, many of whom grew up watching the film about the resurrected witchy trio with their own parents. It's a movie that has few if any comparisons; it manages to span a generational divide, uniting Boomers and Zoomers in their nostalgic love for the boundary-pushing supernatural comedy that in some ways seemed a little too risque for the kids it was originally intended for. So how did a movie that didn't catch an initial spark end up casting such a spell on mainstream culture? Witches Run Amok: The Oral History of Disney's Hocus Pocus will answer that question and more using interviews from the cast and creative team behind the heartwarming Halloween staple. The book is a love letter to Hocus Pocus' millions of devoted fans and a fascinating read for anyone who wants to understand how the Disney movie became a pop culture phenomenon"--

Zum ersten Mal widmen sich zehn deutschsprachige Wissenschaftler mit unterschiedlichen Forschungsschwerpunkten dem Gesamtwerk Michael Manns. Dabei werden die Leser*innen zu einer zweifachen Reise eingeladen: Auf einem faszinierenden Tauchgang in die Filmwelt des gefeierten Regisseurs treten zentrale Themen, Figurenkonstellationen, kulturelle Hintergründe und Wirkungseinheiten zutage, die einen völlig neuen Blick auf seine Kunst eröffnen: Wie schafft es Michael Mann seit mehr als 40 Jahren, ein weltweites Publikum zu fesseln und immer wieder aufs Neue in den Kinosaal zu locken? Was verraten seine Filme dadurch über die unbewussten Sehnsüchte, Obsessionen und Widerstände in unserer Kultur? Gleichzeitig entwickelt sich ein spannender Dialog zwischen den verschiedenen Deutungsansätzen: Anhand populärer Kinofilme wie HEAT oder COLLATERAL wecken die wichtigsten Disziplinen - von der Morphologie bis zur Seduktionstheorie - Neugier auf den Facettenreichtum der deutschsprachigen Filmwissenschaft. Auf diese Weise entsteht ein Buch über die Kunst des Films und seiner Interpretation.

Author Donald Willis continues his insights into horror film history with his new tome on the 1940s. Yes, we had vampires and the Frankenstein Monster, mummies, a new villain-the Wolf Man, dark moody Val Lewton films and a slew of comic monster rallies.If the 1930s was Universal and monsters, the 1940s was RKO and mood-states of mind. The Palladists in The Seventh Victim, Kyra (Helene Thimig), inIsle of the Dead and (outside RKO) Count Fosco (Sydney Greenstreet) in TheWoman in White-all work on their victims psychologically-to the point of death.They wear down their chosen prey mentally. Meanwhile, Universal in the 1940s could be seen to have been spinning its wheels for about seven years, until the logical, comic outcome in 1948: Abbott andCostello Meet Frankenstein.

"Tracking the link between film and song through the past fifty years, Nate Patrin reveals the power of music used in movies to move the needle in popular culture. As he surveys the scene-musical and cinematic-across the decades, expanding into the deeper origins, wider connections, and echoed histories that come into play, The Needle and the Lens offers a new way of seeing, and hearing, these iconic soundtrack moments"--

Offers a fresh approach to the problem of the human figure in an age of digital cinema.

"I want to be Gregory, walking through the concrete and asphalt of a grey housing estate on a summer's evening. At least once, I want to be in every one of those places from the film: the corrugated underpass on the way to school, the red ash sports pitches, under the clock in the Plaza."In 1980, a 34 year-old Glaswegian got the chance to turn his first screenplay into a feature film. With a small budget and support from a youth theatre in an area of 'multiple social deprivation', Bill Forsyth made a film which still holds a luminous place in the minds of audiences around the world.This is a book about the singular, unappreciated talent of Forsyth - and the impossibility of Gregory's Girl, how it shouldn't really exist. There's much more to the film's unique formula than a story about first love and football: French New Wave cinema; Vladimir Nabokov; Preston Sturges; the Glasgow Youth Theatre; the new town strangeness of Cumbernauld; and most of all, the magic of ordinary life. "This is a fantastic read about one of the most important Scottish films ever made. We all knew we were involved in something special - but no-one knew just how special."Rab Buchanan (Andy) "A fascinating read...a journey over the rainbow to that magical land of youth."Douglas Sannachan (Billy) "Tim's illuminating book delves into the ephemeral and enigmatic universe of Gregory's Girl and its creator. Contextualised within the zeitgeist of the late '70s and early '80s, it's a compelling read for cinephiles, cultural historians, and, perhaps especially, those people of Scotland whose own coming-of-age experiences were echoed by the much-loved film. It grants us a tantalising wee keek into the ordinary magic of being human."Gerry Clark, director/producer, One For The Album: The Story of the Glasgow Youth Theatre

Rick Winston's lifelong love of movies led to the creation of one of Vermont's leading cultural institutions, the Savoy Theater in Montpelier, Vermont. With humor and heart, he takes us behind the scenes of the hard and rewarding work of building a film venue over decades in a grateful community. Save Me a Seat! is the story of how a vibrant film culture took root in unlikely surroundings, and the story of how a boy from the New York City suburbs landed in Vermont and became a preeminent film programmer and historian in the Green Mountain State.

Farīd ad-Dīn-e ʿAṭṭār's Persian folk tale The Conference of the Birds relates the quest by thousands of pilgrim birds for an ideal king, the mythical bird called Sīmorgh. At the end of the quest, the surviving birds recognise that the longed-for king is nothing other than the reflection of their own existence. But what about those other birds that were not able to become part of the final representation? This groundbreaking book calls them 'counter-memories'; memories that are barred from hegemonic history, but are, nevertheless present in cinematic forms. Due to the strategic and artistic interventions of a range of Iranian filmmakers, such as Abbas Kiarostami and Shahram Mokri, Ali Hatami and Tahmineh Milani, Kianoush Ayari and Rakshan Banietemad, the history of post-revolutionary Iranian Cinema is also structured by counter-memories, with the potential to destabilise officially fabricated success stories of revolution, war and sacred defence. Counter-Memories in Iranian Cinema establishes a new framework for understanding the tensions between censorship and resistance, helping to carve out resistant points of remembering both within and outside state-controlled cinema. Matthias Wittmann is a researcher on media (especially film), curator, and writer. He was Research Associate and Chief Assistant at the Seminar for Media Studies (University of Basel) and Visiting Professor in Vienna. He has just finished a book about the Octopus (Die Gesellschaft des Tentakels, 2021) and is currently writing a book on Martyrographies in Iranian Cinema. Ute Holl is Professor for Media Aesthetics at the Seminar for Media Studies, University of Basel

Anthroposcreens frames the 'climate unconscious' as a reading strategy for film and television productions during the Anthropocene. Drawing attention to the affects of climate change and the broader environmental damage of the Anthropocene, this study mobilizes its frame in concert with other tools from cultural and film studies¿such as debates over Black representation¿to provide readings of the underlying environmental themes in Black American and Norwegian screen texts. These bodies of work provide a useful counterpoint to the dominance of white Anglo-American stories in cli-fi while also ranging beyond the boundaries of the cli-fi genre to show how the climate unconscious lens functions in a broader set of texts. Working across film studies, cultural studies, Black studies, and the environmental humanities, Anthroposcreens establishes a cross-disciplinary reading strategy of the 'climate unconscious' for contemporary film and television productions. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

Celebrate more than 100 years of magical Disney storytelling.The ideal gift for Disney, animation, and movie fans! From Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs to Wish, Mary Poppins to The Little Mermaid, Disneyland to Tokyo DisneySea, and fireworks to fan clubs, explore the captivating worlds and creations of Disney and Pixar.Now including more than 50 new pages and updated with ten more years of magic for Disney's special 100th anniversary, The Disney Book: New Edition features groundbreaking and record-breaking creations-including Encanto, Moana, and Turning Red-and explores theme parks, experiences, memorabilia, and more. Marvel at beautiful art and artefacts from The Walt Disney Company's vast historical collections, and discover live-action and animated movie-making, enchanting parks, and fascinating collectibles. Follow Disney's history using the timeline, and delve into the incredible archives.Perfect for fans who want to know all about the magical worlds of Disney.(c) 2023 Disney

THE ECSTATIC CINEMA OF TONY CHING SIU-TUNGBy Jeremy Mark RobinsonTony Ching Siu-tung (b. 1953) started out as an actor and stuntman, working in movies in the late 1960s and 1970s; he moved into television as martial arts co-ordinator, in the late 1970s and thru the 1980s (where on several historical TV series); he moved up to directing movies with 1983's Duel To the Death. This book is fully illustrated in colour. Tony Ching Siu-tung's two signature works are probably A Chinese Ghost Story and The Swordsman 2. Critically, those two films (and their movie series, the Chinese Ghost Story series and the Swordsman series) have garnered the highest criticial accolades (and they were big hits financially), and The Swordsman 2 has been the subject of numerous analyses of gender-bending issues in cinema. The sight of Brigitte Lin in drag and later fooling around with Jet Li as a 'woman' seems to drive film critics goo-goo. Tony Ching Siu-tung has won awards for the action choreography for The Witch From Nepal, Shaolin Soccer, New Dragon Gate Inn, Hero and The Swordsman. Like the other famous action directors in Hong Kong cinema (such as Yuen Woo-ping, Sammo Hung, Corey Yuen and Yuen Bun), Tony Ching Siu-tung has worked with every single star in Hong Kong, every producer, every cameraman, designer, stylist, costumier, etc, and probably every stuntman and stuntwoman. Ching Siu-tung had provided action direction for Tsui Hark, Johnnie To, John Woo, Wong Jing, Ringo Lam, Zhang Yimou, Peter Chan, Andy Lau, Kevin Chu, and Stephen Chow, among others. That is, practically all of the major filmmakers in China. Technically, the movies directed by Tony Ching Siu-tung are breathtaking - in every department of film production, Ching's movies excel. Costumes are lavish, the sets are super-detailed, and the cinematography is stellar. Sometimes you really are looking at something very close to a classical, Chinese painting, where the billowing robes that the actors wear fit in perfectly, and are spot-on equivalents for the spiritual mood of Chinese art. Fully illustrated in colour throughout (over 290 illustrations), with images from the films of Tony Ching and other Chinese/ Hong Kong productions. With filmography, bibliography and notes. 592 pages. Hardcover, with a full colour laminate cover. www.crmoon.com

Instant New York Times bestsellerThe long-awaited first work of nonfiction from the author of the #1 New York Times bestselling Once Upon a Time in Hollywood: a deliriously entertaining, wickedly intelligent cinema book as unique and creative as anything by Quentin Tarantino.In addition to being among the most celebrated of contemporary filmmakers, Quentin Tarantino is possibly the most joyously infectious movie lover alive. For years he has touted in interviews his eventual turn to writing books about films. Now, with Cinema Speculation, the time has come, and the results are everything his passionate fans?and all movie lovers?could have hoped for. Organized around key American films from the 1970s, all of which he first saw as a young moviegoer at the time, this book is as intellectually rigorous and insightful as it is rollicking and entertaining. At once film criticism, film theory, a feat of reporting, and wonderful personal history, it is all written in the singular voice recognizable immediately as QT's and with the rare perspective about cinema possible only from one of the greatest practitioners of the artform ever.

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Residence and First Women, the first ever authorized biography of the most famous movie star of the twentieth century, Elizabeth Taylor.No celebrity rivals Elizabeth Taylor's glamour and guts or her level of fame. She was the last major star to come out of the old Hollywood studio system and she is a legend known for her beauty and her magnetic screen presence in a career that spanned most of the twentieth century and nearly sixty films. But her private life was even more compelling than her Oscar-winning on-screen performances. During her seventy-nine years of rapid-fire love and loss she was married eight times to seven different men. Above all, she was a survivor?by the time she was twenty-six she was twice divorced and once widowed. Her life was a soap opera that ended in a deeply meaningful way when she became the first major celebrity activist to lead the fight against HIV/AIDS. A co-founder of amfAR, she raised more than $100 million for research and patient care. She was also a shrewd businesswoman who made a fortune as the first celebrity perfumer who always demanded to be paid what she was worth.In the first ever authorized biography of the Hollywood icon, Kate Andersen Brower reveals the world through Elizabeth's eyes. Brower uses Elizabeth's unpublished letters, diary entries, and off-the-record interview transcripts as well as interviews with 250 of her closest friends and family to tell the full, unvarnished story of her remarkable career and her explosive private life that made headlines worldwide. Elizabeth Taylor captures this intelligent, empathetic, tenacious, volatile, and complex woman as never before, from her rise to massive fame at age twelve in National Velvet to becoming the first to negotiate a million-dollar salary for a film, from her eight marriages and enduring love affair with Richard Burton to her lifelong battle with addiction and her courageous efforts as an AIDS activist. Here is a fascinating and complete portrait worthy of the legendary star and her legacy.Elizabeth Taylor features a photo insert.

The real story of Hollywood as told by such luminaries as Steven Spielberg, Frank Capra, Katharine Hepburn, Meryl Streep, Harold Lloyd, and nearly four hundred others, assembled from the American Film Institute's treasure trove of interviews, reveals a fresh history of the American movie industry from its beginnings to today. From the archives of the American Film Institute comes a unique picture of what it was like to work in Hollywood from its beginnings to its present day. Gleaned from nearly three thousand interviews, involving four hundred voices from the industry, Hollywood: The Oral History, lets a reader ?listen in? on candid remarks from the biggest names in front of the camera?Bette Davis, Meryl Streep, Tom Hanks, Harold Lloyd?to the biggest behind it?Frank Capra, Steven Spielberg, Alfred Hitchcock, Jordan Peele, as well as the lesser known individuals that shaped what was heard and seen on screen: musicians, costumers, art directors, cinematographers, writers, sound men, editors, make-up artists, and even script timers, messengers, and publicists. The result is like a conversation among the gods and goddesses of film: lively, funny, insightful, historically accurate and, for the first time, authentically honest in its portrait of Hollywood. It's the insider's story. Legendary film scholar Jeanine Basinger and New York Times bestselling author Sam Wasson, both acclaimed storytellers in their own right, have undertaken the monumental task of digesting these tens of thousands of hours of talk and weaving it into a definitive portrait of workaday Hollywood.

"Bestselling author of Easy Riders, Raging Bulls and Down and Dirty Pictures, cultural critic Peter Biskind turns his eye toward the new golden age of television, sparked by the fall of play-it-safe network TV and the rise of boundary-busting cable followed by streaming, that overturned both-based on exclusive, candid, and colorful interviews with executives, writers, showrunners, directors, and actors"--

Dieses Buch thematisiert im Rahmen einer interdisziplinär ausgerichteten TV-Serienforschung Beiträge zum besonderen Format der Kriegsserie. Der Bogen der diskutierten Serien reicht von M*A*S*H aus der Zeit des ¿klassischen¿ Fernsehens bis zu neueren und neusten Produktionen, die über Streaming-Dienste angeboten werden wie zum Beispiel Das Boot oder die Bundeswehr-YouTube-Serien Die Rekruten und Mali. Diskutiert werden Kriegsserien in ihren Überschneidungen mit anderen Film- und TV-Genres (Krimiserie: Magnum, p.i., History-Serie: Vikings, Sciencefiction: Battlestar Galactica, Star Trek, auch Philip K. Dick¿s Electric Dreams). Im Focus steht überdies die steigende Bedeutung der Kriegsthematik in Serienproduktionen seit der Jahrtausendwende (im Zusammenhang mit den ¿neuen Kriegen¿) wie Band of Brothers, The Pacific oder Generation Kill. Neben den aktualisierenden Untersuchungen geht es schließlich auch um historische Rekonstruktion, wenn Serien wie Combat! bis Over There untersucht werden.

Der Band bietet eine medientheoretisch ausgerichtete Perspektive auf das Space Race. Analysiert werden Spielfilme, Dokumentationen, Live-Berichterstattung im Fernsehen, Magazine, Briefmarken, Plakate, Konfettiparaden, die das Space Race in je spezifischer Weise ins Bild setzten und von ¿Ost¿ nach ¿West¿ und von ¿West¿ nach ¿Ost¿ transnational über den ¿Eisernen Vorhang¿ hinweg in Umlauf brachten. Gezeigt wird, wie sich die Berichterstattung über das Space Race dabei zwischen 1955 und 1975 als globalisierende Bilder-Verflechtungsgeschichte während des Kalten Krieges nacherzählen lässt.

Welche Filmtheorie ist hilfreich, um eine Erkenntnisfrage zu klären? Wie wirkt sich die theoretische Perspektive auf die Filmanalyse aus? Diese Fragen bestimmen grundlegend jede Untersuchung. Um den besonderen Fokus einer Theorie offenzulegen, stellt dieses Lehrbuch einen Spielfilm ins Zentrum: Blow Up (GB, I, USA 1966) von Michelangelo Antonioni. Blow Up wird wechselweise beleuchtet aus dem Blickwinkel der Narratologie, Bildtheorie und Musiktheorie, der Stil- und Genretheorie, des Neoformalismus und der quantitativen Filmanalyse, der Psychoanalyse und Gender Studies, der Realismustheorie und des Poststrukturalismus, der Intermedialitätstheorie und der Medienkulturtheorie. Welche Konturen des Films treten im Schlaglicht einer Theorie hervor, welche werden durch sie verborgen? Wie können sich zwei Modelle ergänzen? Wo schließen sie einander aus? Die Beiträge führen in die zentralen Positionen und Kategorien jeder Theorie ein und wenden die Modelle unmittelbarauf den Film an. Um die Besonderheiten der Perspektiven herauszustellen, reflektieren die Autor*innen jeweils abschließend die Analogien, Differenzen und Synergien sowie die Vor- und Nachteile komplementärer Theorien.

This book illustrates a distinctive lineage of critical interventions in moving image culture and in the public sphere through the trajectories of a small number of film and video organizations established between the 1970s and the early 1980s in Western Europe and North America mainly by women and still operative today.¿The six case studies examined (Drac Màgic, Women Make Movies, Groupe Intervention Vidéo, Leeds Animation Workshop, bildwechsel, Centre Audiovisuel Simone de Beauvoir) have maintained a discrete yet continuing presence within an audiovisual industry and a cultural system dominated by institutionalized and corporate forms of production and distribution. Their longevity - quite a rarity in the independent circuit - makes a strong case for the sustainability of feminist/LGBTQ media activism in the public sphere, in spite of its low-key profile.¿This volume will be of interest to academicians of history and communication studies, feminist and LGBTQ topics, and gender-related cinematic culture.

Focusing on Netflix's child and family-orientated platform exclusive content, this book offers the first exploration of a controversial genre cycle of dark science fiction, horror, and fantasy television under Netflix's "Family Watch Together TV" tag.Using a ground-breaking mix of methods including audience research, interface, and textual analysis, the book demonstrates how Netflix is producing dark family telefantasy content that is both reshaping child and family-friendly TV genres and challenging earlier broadcast TV models around child-appropriate family viewing. It illuminates how Netflix encourages family audiences to "watch together" through intergenerational dynamics that work on and offscreen. The chapters in this book explore how this "Netflixication" of family television developed across landmark examples including Stranger Things, A Series of Unfortunate Events, The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance, and even Squid Game. The book outlines how Netflix is consolidating a new dark family terrain in the streaming sector, which is unsettling older concepts of family viewing, leading to considerable audience and critical confusion around target audiences and viewer expectations.This book will be of particular interest to upper-level undergraduates, graduates, and scholars in the fields of television studies, screen genre studies, childhood studies, and cultural studies.