New tunisian cinema

Tunisian cinema is often described as the most daring of all Arab cinemas. For many, Tunisia appeared to be a model of equipoise between "East" and "West," and yet, during Zine El Abidine Ben Ali's presidency, from 1987 to 2011, the country became the most repressive state in the Maghreb. Against...

Parallel lines

Describes how post-9/11 cinema, from Spike Lee’s 25th Hour (2002) to Kathryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty (2012), relates to different, and competing, versions of US national identity in the aftermath of the September 11th terrorist attacks

Plastic reality

Julie A. Turnock tracks the use and evolution of special effects in 1970s filmmaking, a development as revolutionary to film as the form’s transition to sound in the 1920s.

Play time

Malcolm Turvey examines Jacques Tati’s unique comedic style and evaluates its significance for the history of film and modernism. Richly illustrated with images from the director’s films, Play Time offers an illuminating and original understanding of Tati’s work.

Production design

Production Design: Architects of the Screen explores the role of the production designer through a historical overview that maps out landmark film and television designs. From the familiar environs of television soap operas to the elaborate and disorientating Velvet Goldmine. Jane Barnwell consid...

Rewriting indie cinema

In Rewriting Indie Cinema, J. J. Murphy explores alternative forms of scripting and how they have shaped American film from the 1950s to the present. He traces a strain of indie cinema that used improvisation and psychodrama, a therapeutic form of improvised acting based on a performer’s own life...

Satyajit ray on cinema

Satyajit Ray, one of the greatest auteurs of twentieth century cinema, was a Bengali motion-picture director, writer, and illustrator who set a new standard for Indian cinema with his Apu Trilogy: Pather Panchali (Song of the Little Road) (1955), Aparajito (The Unvanquished) (1956), and Apur Sans...

Screaming and conjuring

LIMITED DELUXE EDITION (first 5,000 copies worldwide) has black foil gilded page edges, textured cover spot varnish, and is printed on heavyweight paper stock. As featured in People, Variety, Entertainment Weekly, The Economist, Empire, Sight and Sound, Deadline, New York Post, Fangoria, and more...

Sentimental songs, melodrama and filmic narrative in bollywood’s golden age (1951–1963)

The way in which the spectator responds to the song and how narrative, lyrics, music, mise-en-scènes, all come together to accentuate sentimentality and melodrama in the Golden Age of Bollywood cinema (1951–1963) is the book’s key thematic concern.

Serenity

Joss Whedon’s Serenity (2005) is at once a symbol of failure and a triumphant success of fan activism. This book examines the relationship between the film and its peculiar cult following and situates the film in relation to the series Firefly and its other transmedia continuations to plumb the s...

Shinji higuchi special effect's field notes

Studios before the system

The first book to retell the history of film studio architecture, Studios Before the System expands the social and cultural footprint of cinema’s virtual worlds and their contribution to wider developments

Sweet and lowdown

Tracing the recurrent theme of regret from his stand-up comedy through classics like Annie Hall as well as less esteemed accomplishments, this volume argues that it is ultimately the shallowness of his protagonists' regret—their lack of deeply felt, sustained remorse—that defines Woody Allen’s vi...

The cinema of agnès varda

Agnès Varda, a pioneer of the French New Wave, has been making radical films for over half a century. Many of these are considered by scholars, filmmakers, and audiences alike, as audacious, seminal, and unforgettable. This volume considers her production as a whole, revisiting overlooked films l...

The cinema of aki kaurismäki

Aki Kaurismäki is an enigma, an eminent auteur who claims his films are a joke. Since 1983, Kaurismäki has produced classically-styled films filled with cinephilic references to film history. He has earned an international art-house audience and many prizes, influencing such directors as Jim Jarm...

The cinema of alexander sokurov

Through contextualization and close readings of each of his feature fiction films, this volume unearths a vision of Sokurov's film.

The cinema of ang lee

Suggestive readings of gender and identity explore the international appeal of Ang Lee

The cinema of béla tarr

The Cinema of Béla Tarr is a critical analysis of the work of Hungary's most prominent and internationally best known film director, written by a scholar who has followed Bela Tarr's career through a close personal and professional relationship for more than twenty-five years. András Bálint Kovác...

The cinema of clint eastwood

From A Fistful of Dollars and Dirty Harry to Million Dollar Baby and beyond, takes a close-up look at one of the screen’s most influential and charismatic stars.

The cinema of george a. romero

Explores the relevance of Romero's films within American cultural traditions and explains the potency of such work beyond 'splatter movie' models.

The cinema of james cameron

Explores the massively popular cinema of writer-director James Cameron

The cinema of jonathan demme

This book offers an in-depth look at Jonathan Demme’s four decades of filmmaking, tracing the core elements that unite the disparate strands of his work.

The cinema of louis malle

A pioneer of the French New Wave, Louis Malle went on to an acclaimed transatlantic career. This collection of essays reassesses his eclectic and subversive oeuvre to redress the critical neglect it has suffered. The volume features contributions from playwright John Guare and filmmakers Volker S...

The cinema of michael mann

Michael Mann is one of the most important American filmmakers of the past forty years. His films exhibit the existential concerns of art cinema, articulated through a conspicuous and recognizable visual style and yet integrated within classical Hollywood narrative and genre frameworks. Since his ...

The cinema of paolo sorrentino

Paolo Sorrentino has emerged as one of the most compelling figures in twenty-first-century European film. This book is a critical examination of Sorrentino’s work, focusing on his emergence as a preeminent transnational auteur.

The cinema of paul thomas anderson

This book provides the most complete account of Paul Thomas Anderson’s career to date, encompassing his evolution from a self-anointed auteur to one of his generation’s most distinctive voices. It is at once an unconventional primer on Anderson’s films and a provocative reframing of what makes hi...

The cinema of raúl ruiz

This volume maps Ruiz's cinematic trajectory across more than five decades of prolific work

The cinema of richard linklater

In this second edition of The Cinema of Richard Linklater, Rob Stone shows how Linklater’s latest films have redefined our understanding of his work, offering critical analysis of films including Before Midnight (2013) and Everybody Wants Some!! (2016), as well as new interviews with Linklater an...

The cinema of robert altman

Surveys all of Robert Altman's major films in their sociohistorical context to reposition the director as a trenchant satirist and social critic of postmodern America

The cinema of steven soderbergh

The industry's only director-cinematographer-screenwriter-producer-actor-editor, Steven Soderbergh is contemporary Hollywood's most innovative and prolific filmmaker. A Palme d'or and Academy Award-winner, Soderbergh has directed nearly thirty films, including political provocations, digital expe...

The cinema of steven spielberg

Cinema's most successful director is a commercial and cultural force demanding serious consideration. Not just triumphant marketing, this international popularity is partly a function of the movies themselves. Polarised critical attitudes largely overlook this, and evidence either unquestioning a...

The cinema of takeshi kitano

The Cinema of Takeshi Kitano: Flowering Blood is a detailed aesthetic, Deleuzian, and phenomenological exploration of Japan's finest currently-working film director, performer, and celebrity. The volume uniquely explores Kitano's oeuvre through the tropes of stillness and movement, becoming anima...

The cinema of terry gilliam

Terry Gilliam has been making movies for more than forty years, and this volume analyzes a selection of his thrilling directorial work, from his early films with Monty Python to The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnussus (2009). The frenetic genius, auteur, and social critic continues to create indelibl...

The cinema of tom dicillo

This volume considers this acclaimed director's entire oeuvre, analyzing themes such as identity, family, and masculinity and DiCillo's distinctive and influential film style. Detailed chapters on each of DiCillo's films offer a candid look at both the American independent film industry and the H...

The cinema of werner herzog

Werner Herzog is renowned for pushing the boundaries of conventional cinema, especially those between the fictional and the factual, the fantastic and the real. The Cinema of Werner Herzog: Aesthetic Ecstasy and Truth is the first study in twenty years devoted entirely to an analysis of Herzog's ...

The cinema of wes anderson

Whitney Crothers Dilley explores the filmic and literary influences that have shaped Wes Anderson’s distinctive voice, revealing what makes him one of today’s most significant filmmakers. This second edition adds discussion of the films Anderson has released since the book’s original publication ...

The films of alfred hitchcock

This book presents an engaging overview of Alfred Hitchcock’s life and work along with close studies of ten films spanning nearly five decades of his remarkable career.

The golem, how he came into the world

Provides an aesthetic and historical overview of and new critical insights into Paul Wegener's great 1920 film, recognized at the time as a breakthrough in German cinema.Actor and director Paul Wegener released his 1920 silent film The Golem, How He Came into the World in the aftermath of Germany...

The heist film

A concise introduction to the genre about that one last big score, The Heist Film: Stealing With Style traces this crime thriller's development as both a dramatic and comic vehicle growing out of film noir (Criss Cross, The Killers, The Asphalt Jungle), mutating into sleek capers in the 1960s (Oc...

The lumière galaxy

Travels from the remote corners of film history and theory to the most surprising sites on the internet and in our cities to prove the ongoing relevance of cinema

The marriage of maria braun

A new reading of Fassbinder's most popular film that highlights the roles of race and gender.The Marriage of Maria Braun is the most popular film by the enfant terrible director Rainer Werner Fassbinder, the leading exponent of the "New German Cinema" of the early sixties to early eighties. It ex...