Free Download La Grande Illusion (BFI Film Classics) by Julian Jackson
English | October 13, 2009 | ISBN: 1844572854 | True EPUB | 96 pages | 10.6 MB
Jean Renoir's masterpiece La Grande Illusion (1937) tells the story of two French prisoners of war escaping through Germany towards France during World War I. Its themes of divided class, racial and national loyalties and the conflict between patriotism and pacifism made it a controversial film on its release on the eve of World War II. Goebbels, who had once declared the film 'Cinematic Public Enemy Number 1', ordered the prints to be confiscated during the Nazi Occupation of France.

Free Download The Gold Rush (BFI Film Classics) by Matthew Solomon
English | May 29, 2015 | ISBN: 184457640X | True EPUB | 112 pages | 6.8 MB
One of the biggest hits of the silent era, The Gold Rush (1925) was famously described by Charlie Chaplin - the star, writer and director of the film - as 'the picture I want to be remembered by'. Enjoying popular and critical success not once but twice, the film was given a new lease of life with sound in 1942 after Chaplin added his own narration and music.

Free Download Photofascism: Photography, Film, and Exhibition Culture in 1930s Germany and Italy (Visual Cultures and German Contexts) by Vanessa Rocco
English | December 24, 2020 | ISBN: 1501347063, 1350284246 | True PDF | 210 pages | 18.3 MB
Photography and fascism in interwar Europe developed into a highly toxic and combustible formula. Particularly in concert with aggressive display techniques, the European fascists were utterly convinced of their ability to use the medium of photography to manufacture consent among their publics. Unfortunately, as we know in hindsight, they succeeded. Other dictatorial regimes in the 1930s harnessed this powerful combination of photography and exhibitions for their own odious purposes. But this book, for the first time, focuses on the particularly consequential dialectic between Germany and Italy in the early-to-mid 1930s, and within each of those countries vis-à-vis display culture.

Free Download Los Olvidados (BFI Film Classics) by Mark Polizzotti
English | April 1, 2006 | ISBN: 1844571211 | True EPUB | 96 pages | 12.3 MB
Los Olvidados (1950) established Luis Bunuel's reputation as a world-class director. Set in the slums of Mexico City, it follows the crime-filled and violent lives of group of juvenile delinquents. The film exhibits some of Bunuel's recognisable themes of love's yearnings, social injustice, and surrealism, but with a layer of compassion that sets it apart from many of his other films. In 2003, Los Olvidados was inducted into UNESCO's Memory of the World programme, which preserves documentary heritage of world significance.

Free Download La dolce vita (BFI Film Classics), 2nd Edition by Richard Dyer
English | May 28, 2020 | ISBN: 1838719849 | True EPUB | 88 pages | 2.1 MB
Fellini's La dolce vita has been a phenomenon since before it was made, a scandal in the making and on release in 1960 and a reference point ever since. Much of what made it notorious was its incorporation of real people, events and lifestyles, making it a documentation of its time. It uses performance, camera movement, editing and music to produce a striking aesthetic mix of energy and listlessness, of exuberance and despair.

Free Download Duck Soup (BFI Film Classics) by J. Hoberman
English | October 7, 2021 | ISBN: 1839022256 | True EPUB | 104 pages | 11.3 MB
The Marx Brothers are universally considered to be classic Hollywood's preeminent comedy team and Duck Soup is generally regarded as their quintessential film. A topical satire of dictatorship and government in general, the movie was a critical failure and box-office let-down on its initial release in 1933.

Free Download City Lights (BFI Film Classics) by Charles J. Maland
English | June 27, 2007 | ISBN: 1844571750 | True EPUB | 272 pages | 18.4 MB
In 1967, Charlie Chaplin told an interviewer, "I think I like City Lights the best of all my films." Speaking of the film's famous ending, James Agee wrote that "it is enough to shrivel the heart to see." Although City Lights had a long and extremely difficult production history, the final film, in Alistair Cooke's apt words, flows "like water over pebbles, smooth and simple for all to see with no hint of the groaning pressure that had gone into it." It could easily have been otherwise.

Free Download Slava Greenberg, "Animated Film and Disability: Cripping Spectatorship"
English | ISBN: 0253064503 | 2023 | 222 pages | PDF | 12 MB
While many live-action films portray disability as a spectacle, "crip animation" (a genre of animated films that celebrates disabled people's lived experiences) uses a variety of techniques like clay animation, puppets, pixilation, and computer-generated animation to represent the inner worlds of people with disabilities. Crip animation has the potential to challenge the ableist gaze and immerse viewers in an alternative bodily experience.

Free Download Alien (BFI Film Classics) by Roger Luckhurst
English | November 14, 2014 | ISBN: 1844577880 | True EPUB | 96 pages | 8 MB
A legendary fusion of science fiction and horror, Alien (1979) is one of the most enduring modern myths of cinema - its famously visceral scenes acting like a traumatic wound we seem compelled to revisit.

Free Download Film Stories - February 2023
English | 100 pages | PDF | 72.6 MB