Afghanistan in the Cinema By Mark Graham
2010 | 208 Pages | ISBN: 0252035275 | PDF | 2 MB
In this timely critical introduction to the representation of Afghanistan in film, Mark Graham examines the often surprising combination of propaganda and poetry in films made in Hollywood and the East. Through the lenses of postcolonial theory and historical reassessment, Graham analyzes what these films say about Afghanistan, Islam, and the West and argues that they are integral tools for forming discourse on Afghanistan, a means for understanding and avoiding past mistakes, and symbols of the country's shaky but promising future. Thoughtfully addressing many of the misperceptions about Afghanistan perpetuated in the West, Afghanistan in the Cinema incorporates incisive analysis of the market factors, funding sources, and political agendas that have shaped the films. The book considers a range of films, beginning with the 1970s epics The Man Who Would Become King and The Horsemen and following the shifts in representation of the Muslim world during the Russian War in films such as The Beast and Rambo III. Graham then moves on to Taliban-era films such as Kandahar, Osama, and Ellipsis, the first Afghan film directed by a woman. Lastly, the book discusses imperialist nostalgia in films such as Charlie Wilson's War and destabilizing visions represented in contemporary works such as The Kite Runner.

Home Cinema Choice Issue 329-March 2022
English | 118 Pages | PDF | 17.63 MB

Gender in Cuban Cinema: From the Modern to the Postmodern By Guy Baron
2011 | 326 Pages | ISBN: 3034302290 | PDF | 3 MB
A film institute was the first cultural institution to be created by the new Cuban revolutionary government in 1959. One of its aims was to create a new cinema to suit the needs of the Revolution in a climate of transformation and renewal. During the same period, issues of gender equality and gender relations became important as the Revolution attempted to eradicate some of the negative social tendencies of the past. Through the prism of the gender debate, Cuban cinema both reflected and shaped some of the central ideological concerns on the island at this time. This book brings together these two extremely significant aspects of the Cuban revolutionary process by examining issues of gender and gender relations in six Cuban films produced between 1974 and 1990. Using close textual analysis and theoretical insights from feminism and postmodernism, the author argues that the portrayal of aspects of gender relations in Cuban cinema developed along a progressive path, from expressions of the modern to expressions of the postmodern.

Discomfort and Joy: The Cinema of Bill Forsyth By Jonathan Murray
2011 | 260 Pages | ISBN: 3039113917 | PDF | 2 MB
Filmmaker Bill Forsyth is one of the most important and fondly regarded of all living Scottish artists. His filmmaking career, beginning with That Sinking Feeling (1979), paved the way for the emergence of an indigenous Scottish cinema. It also established Forsyth as one of the most distinctive and original voices in late twentieth-century European film. This book offers the first integrated and comprehensive study of the director's complete œuvre. Through extended textual analysis and contextual discussion of each of Forsyth's eight features, it traces the key formal and thematic characteristics of a remarkable career, one which encompasses both three-figure production budgets in Glasgow and multi-million-dollar adventures in the heart of Hollywood. The book also uses Forsyth's films to explore the diverse range of film industrial contexts the director has worked within. Most importantly, it sheds light upon the hitherto under-documented zero-budget travails of 1970s Scotland and inflated expectations of early-1980s British film.

Tragedia all'italiana: Italian Cinema and Italian Terrorisms, 1970-2010 By Alan O'Leary
2011 | 284 Pages | ISBN: 303911574X | PDF | 3 MB
Cinema has played a key role in articulating the impact and legacies of the so-called anni di piombo in Italy, the years of intra-national political terrorism that lasted from 1969 until well into the 1980s. Tragedia all'italiana offers an analytical exploration of Italian cinema's representation and refraction of those years, showing how a substantial and still growing corpus of films has shaped the ways in which Italians have assimilated and remembered the events of this period. This is the first monograph in English on terrorism and film in Italy, a topic that is attracting the interest of a wide range of scholars of film, cultural studies and critical terrorism studies. It provides novel analytical categories for an intriguing corpus of films and offers careful accounts of works and genres as diverse as La meglio gioventú, Buongiorno, notte, the poliziottesco (cop film) and the commedia all'italiana. The author argues that fiction film can provide an effective frame for the elaboration of historical experience but that the cinema is symptomatic both of its time and of the codes of the medium itself - in terms of its elisions, omissions and evasions as well as its emphases. The book is a study of a body of films that has elaborated the experience of terrorism as a fascinating and even essential part of the heritage of modern Italy.

Shi'i Islam in Iranian Cinema: Religion and Spirituality in Film By Nacim Pak-Shiraz
2011 | 288 Pages | ISBN: 1848855109 | PDF | 4 MB
In recent years there has been a remarkable surge in Iranian films expressing contentious issues which would otherwise be very difficult to discuss publicly inside the Islamic Republic of Iran -- such as the role of clergy in Iranian society. Nacim Pak-Shiraz here highlights how many Iranian film directors concern themselves with the content of the religious and historical narratives of culture and society, sparking debate about the medium's compatibility or incongruity with religion and spirituality. She explores the various ways that Shi'i discourse emerges on screen, and offers groundbreaking insights into both the role of film in Iranian culture and society, and how it has become a medium for exploring what it means to be Iranian and Muslim after thirty years of Islamic rule. This is invaluable reading students and scholars of Film Studies and contemporary Iranian cinema, but also of the culture and identity of Iran more widely.

Millennial Cinema: Memory in Global Film By Amresh Sinha, Terence McSweeney
2012 | 256 Pages | ISBN: 0231161921 | PDF | 4 MB
In spite of the overwhelming interest in the study of memory and trauma, no single volume has yet explored the centrality of memory to films of this era in a global context; this volume is the first anthology devoted exclusively to the study of memory in twenty-first-century cinema. Combining individual readings and interdisciplinary methodologies, this book offers new analyses of memory and trauma in some of the most discussed and debated films of the new millennium: Pan's Labyrinth (2006), The Namesake (2006), Hidden (2005), Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), Oldboy (2003), City of God (2002), Irréversible (2002), Mulholland Drive (2001), Memento (2000), and In the Mood for Love (2000).

Cinema at the City's Edge: Film and Urban Networks in East Asia By Yomi Braester
2010 | 216 Pages | ISBN: 9622099831 | PDF | 2 MB
The book traces common concerns among East Asian cinemas of Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, the PRC, and Taiwan, and goes beyond the now familiar notion that the Asian metropolises are successful iterations of local identity within a global network.

The New Neapolitan Cinema By Alex Marlow-Mann
2011 | 256 Pages | ISBN: 0748640665 | PDF | 2 MB
Vito and the Others (1991), Death of a Neapolitan Mathematician (1992) and Libera (1993), the debuts of three young Neapolitan filmmakers, stood out dramatically from the landscape of Italian cinema in the early 1990s. On the back of their critical success, over the next decade and a half, Naples became a thriving centre for film production.In this first study in English of one of the most vital and stimulating currents in contemporary European Cinema, Alex Marlow-Mann provides a detailed, multi-faceted and provocative study of this distinct regional tradition. In tracing the movement's relationship with the popular musical melodramas previously produced in Naples, he reveals how contemporary Neapolitan filmmakers have interrogated, subverted and reconfigured cinematic convention as part of a through-going re-examination of Neapolitan identity.

Questions of Colour in Cinema: From Paintbrush to Pixel By Wendy Everett
2007 | 242 Pages | ISBN: 3039113534 | PDF | 10 MB