Author: Hoi Lun Law
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030629457
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 190
Book Description
This book defends an account of ambiguity which illuminates the aesthetic possibilities of film and the nature of film criticism. Ambiguity typically describes the condition of multiple meanings. But we can find multiple meanings in what appears unambiguous to us. So, what makes ambiguity ambiguous? This study argues that a sense of uncertainty is vital to the concept. Ambiguity is what presses us to inquire into our puzzlement over a movie, to persistently ask “why is it as it is?” Notably, this account of the concept is also an account of its criticism. It recognises that a satisfying assessment of what is ambiguous involves both our reason and doubt; that is, reason and doubt can work together in our practice of reading. This book, then, considers ambiguity as a form of reasonable doubt, one that invites us to reflect on our critical efforts, rethinking the operation of film criticism.
Ambiguity and Film Criticism
Author: Hoi Lun Law
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030629457
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 190
Book Description
This book defends an account of ambiguity which illuminates the aesthetic possibilities of film and the nature of film criticism. Ambiguity typically describes the condition of multiple meanings. But we can find multiple meanings in what appears unambiguous to us. So, what makes ambiguity ambiguous? This study argues that a sense of uncertainty is vital to the concept. Ambiguity is what presses us to inquire into our puzzlement over a movie, to persistently ask “why is it as it is?” Notably, this account of the concept is also an account of its criticism. It recognises that a satisfying assessment of what is ambiguous involves both our reason and doubt; that is, reason and doubt can work together in our practice of reading. This book, then, considers ambiguity as a form of reasonable doubt, one that invites us to reflect on our critical efforts, rethinking the operation of film criticism.
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030629457
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 190
Book Description
This book defends an account of ambiguity which illuminates the aesthetic possibilities of film and the nature of film criticism. Ambiguity typically describes the condition of multiple meanings. But we can find multiple meanings in what appears unambiguous to us. So, what makes ambiguity ambiguous? This study argues that a sense of uncertainty is vital to the concept. Ambiguity is what presses us to inquire into our puzzlement over a movie, to persistently ask “why is it as it is?” Notably, this account of the concept is also an account of its criticism. It recognises that a satisfying assessment of what is ambiguous involves both our reason and doubt; that is, reason and doubt can work together in our practice of reading. This book, then, considers ambiguity as a form of reasonable doubt, one that invites us to reflect on our critical efforts, rethinking the operation of film criticism.
Cinesexuality
Author: Patricia MacCormack
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317166175
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 193
Book Description
Cinesexuality explores the queerness of cinema spectatorship, arguing that cinema spectatorship represents a unique encounter of desire, pleasure and perversion beyond dialectics of subject/object and image/meaning; an extraordinary 'cinesexual' relationship, that encompasses each event of cinema spectatorship in excess of gender, hetero- or homosexuality, encouraging all spectators to challenge traditional notions of what elicits pleasure and constitutes desiring subjectivity. Through a variety of cinematic examples, including abstract film, extreme films and films which present perverse sexuality and corporeal reconfiguration, Cinesexuality encourages a radical shift to spectatorship as itself inherently queer beyond what is watched and who watches. Film as its own form of philosophy invokes spectatorship thought as an ethics of desire. Original, exciting and theoretically sophisticated - focusing on continental philosophy, particularly Guattari, Deleuze, Blanchot, Foucault, Lyotard, Irigaray and Serres - the book will be of interest to scholars and students of queer, gender and feminist studies, film and aesthetics theory, cultural studies, media and communication, post-structural theory and contemporary philosophical thought.
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317166175
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 193
Book Description
Cinesexuality explores the queerness of cinema spectatorship, arguing that cinema spectatorship represents a unique encounter of desire, pleasure and perversion beyond dialectics of subject/object and image/meaning; an extraordinary 'cinesexual' relationship, that encompasses each event of cinema spectatorship in excess of gender, hetero- or homosexuality, encouraging all spectators to challenge traditional notions of what elicits pleasure and constitutes desiring subjectivity. Through a variety of cinematic examples, including abstract film, extreme films and films which present perverse sexuality and corporeal reconfiguration, Cinesexuality encourages a radical shift to spectatorship as itself inherently queer beyond what is watched and who watches. Film as its own form of philosophy invokes spectatorship thought as an ethics of desire. Original, exciting and theoretically sophisticated - focusing on continental philosophy, particularly Guattari, Deleuze, Blanchot, Foucault, Lyotard, Irigaray and Serres - the book will be of interest to scholars and students of queer, gender and feminist studies, film and aesthetics theory, cultural studies, media and communication, post-structural theory and contemporary philosophical thought.
Cinema of Choice
Author: Nitzan Ben Shaul
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 0857455923
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 197
Book Description
Standard Hollywood narrative movies prescribe linear narratives that cue the viewer to expect predictable outcomes and adopt a closed state of mind. There are, however, a small number of movies that, through the presentation of alternate narrative paths, open the mind to thoughts of choice and possibility. Through the study of several key movies for which this concept is central, such as Sliding Doors, Run Lola Run, Inglourious Basterds, and Rashomon, Nitzan Ben Shaul examines the causes and implications of optional thinking and how these movies allow for more open and creative possibilities. This book examines the methods by which standard narrative movies close down thinking processes and deliver easy pleasures to the viewer whilst demonstrating that this is not the only possibility and that optional thinking can be both stimulating and rewarding.
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 0857455923
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 197
Book Description
Standard Hollywood narrative movies prescribe linear narratives that cue the viewer to expect predictable outcomes and adopt a closed state of mind. There are, however, a small number of movies that, through the presentation of alternate narrative paths, open the mind to thoughts of choice and possibility. Through the study of several key movies for which this concept is central, such as Sliding Doors, Run Lola Run, Inglourious Basterds, and Rashomon, Nitzan Ben Shaul examines the causes and implications of optional thinking and how these movies allow for more open and creative possibilities. This book examines the methods by which standard narrative movies close down thinking processes and deliver easy pleasures to the viewer whilst demonstrating that this is not the only possibility and that optional thinking can be both stimulating and rewarding.
After Authority
Author: Kalling Heck
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
ISBN: 1978806981
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 180
Book Description
Authority year zero : on Germany year zero -- The image that waits : on Satantango -- The end of authority, the end of democracy : on woman on the beach -- Force, hope, and death : on medium cool -- Coda : political modernism and the possibility for action.
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
ISBN: 1978806981
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 180
Book Description
Authority year zero : on Germany year zero -- The image that waits : on Satantango -- The end of authority, the end of democracy : on woman on the beach -- Force, hope, and death : on medium cool -- Coda : political modernism and the possibility for action.
Proximity Cinema
Author: Ilaria Pezone
Publisher: Edizioni Falsopiano
ISBN: 8893042517
Category : Photography
Languages : en
Pages : 232
Book Description
“Defining proximity cinema, a concept in which only apparently distant experiences are associated, such as private and underground cinema. This is the goal of the book: to challenge and redefine the boundaries of stale and automatic critical categories. Tracing a transversal path that combines family cinema and experimental cinema, in the name of innovation, freedom from industrial and market conventions. Mapping writings for images emancipated from the usual narrative, from the general canon. Familiar or avant-garde works, which beg to be looked at through eyes free from superstructures, devoid of both pre-packaged intellectual meanings and the contemporary perverse desire for fun at all costs. Proximity cinema goes to the beating heart of things. It is amateur cinema in the etymological, amorous sense: it asks to be experienced without prejudice, it makes a clean sweep of interpretative vices, it reveals itself openly, offering portions of life, it often reaches the abstract consistency of painting through an obstinate observation of reality. Under the aegis of Roger Odin and deployed, like Stan Brakhage, in defense of the amateur, proximity cinema looks at the production of images with the aim of restoring dignity — artistic, historical, and sociological — to simple yet extraordinarily complex, intimate, and revolutionary cinematographic gestures, which are constantly and dully underestimated if not derided." Ilaria Pezone is a teacher at Brera Academy. Since 2009, she has been dedicated to the study and practice of private cinema. She’s made short, medium, and feature-length films, including France, quasi un autoritratto (2017); Indagine su sei brani di vita rumorosa dispersi in un’estate afosa - raccolti e scomposti in cinque atti (2016); Concerto Metafisico (2015); Vedere Tra - Luigi Erba improvviso e dialogato (2014); 1510 - sogno su carta impressa con video (2013); Masse nella geometria rivelata dello spazio-tempo (2012); Andare tornando a rilievi domestici (2011); GREISTTMO (2010); Polittico Preludio Adagio Altalenante (2009); Leggerezze e gravità (2008).
Publisher: Edizioni Falsopiano
ISBN: 8893042517
Category : Photography
Languages : en
Pages : 232
Book Description
“Defining proximity cinema, a concept in which only apparently distant experiences are associated, such as private and underground cinema. This is the goal of the book: to challenge and redefine the boundaries of stale and automatic critical categories. Tracing a transversal path that combines family cinema and experimental cinema, in the name of innovation, freedom from industrial and market conventions. Mapping writings for images emancipated from the usual narrative, from the general canon. Familiar or avant-garde works, which beg to be looked at through eyes free from superstructures, devoid of both pre-packaged intellectual meanings and the contemporary perverse desire for fun at all costs. Proximity cinema goes to the beating heart of things. It is amateur cinema in the etymological, amorous sense: it asks to be experienced without prejudice, it makes a clean sweep of interpretative vices, it reveals itself openly, offering portions of life, it often reaches the abstract consistency of painting through an obstinate observation of reality. Under the aegis of Roger Odin and deployed, like Stan Brakhage, in defense of the amateur, proximity cinema looks at the production of images with the aim of restoring dignity — artistic, historical, and sociological — to simple yet extraordinarily complex, intimate, and revolutionary cinematographic gestures, which are constantly and dully underestimated if not derided." Ilaria Pezone is a teacher at Brera Academy. Since 2009, she has been dedicated to the study and practice of private cinema. She’s made short, medium, and feature-length films, including France, quasi un autoritratto (2017); Indagine su sei brani di vita rumorosa dispersi in un’estate afosa - raccolti e scomposti in cinque atti (2016); Concerto Metafisico (2015); Vedere Tra - Luigi Erba improvviso e dialogato (2014); 1510 - sogno su carta impressa con video (2013); Masse nella geometria rivelata dello spazio-tempo (2012); Andare tornando a rilievi domestici (2011); GREISTTMO (2010); Polittico Preludio Adagio Altalenante (2009); Leggerezze e gravità (2008).
Chinese Ecocinema
Author: Sheldon H. Lu
Publisher: Hong Kong University Press
ISBN: 9622090869
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 384
Book Description
This anthology is a book-length study of China's ecosystem through the lens of cinema. Proposing 'ecocinema' as a new critical framework, the volume collectively investigates a wide range of urgent topics in today's world.
Publisher: Hong Kong University Press
ISBN: 9622090869
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 384
Book Description
This anthology is a book-length study of China's ecosystem through the lens of cinema. Proposing 'ecocinema' as a new critical framework, the volume collectively investigates a wide range of urgent topics in today's world.
Soviet Science Fiction Cinema and the Space Age
Author: Natalija Majsova
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1793609322
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 257
Book Description
This book interrogates the relations between nostalgias of today and past utopias in the context of the space age of the 20th century and its cinematic representations in the USSR and in post-Soviet Russia. Once an enthusiastic projection, then a promising and uncanny present, and eventually an assemblage of nostalgic signifiers, in the history of world cinema, this space age has been linked primarily to the genre of science fiction. Here, aspects of the space age such as humanity’s imminent expansion to space, interplanetary travel, contact with extraterrestrial intelligence, and intergalactic governance and economy were both celebrated and critically interrogated as cosmopolitan ideals and nation-branding strategies. This book presents the contemporary relevance of this genre as heritage and legacy, archive and canon, and a nest of forgotten ideals and warnings, as well as nostalgic anchoring points. The author analyzes over 30 Soviet science fiction films, foregrounding their structures of utopia and their evolution over time, in order to trace both their transnational positionalities, transmedial resonance, and impact on post-Soviet Russian films about the space age. Concepts, crucial to the understanding of space futures of the past, such as utopianism, otherness, liminality, and no(w)stalgia are activated to draw out the fictional tenants of the memory of the Soviet space age, and to establish the limits and potentialities of Soviet (exra)terraformative ambitions.
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1793609322
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 257
Book Description
This book interrogates the relations between nostalgias of today and past utopias in the context of the space age of the 20th century and its cinematic representations in the USSR and in post-Soviet Russia. Once an enthusiastic projection, then a promising and uncanny present, and eventually an assemblage of nostalgic signifiers, in the history of world cinema, this space age has been linked primarily to the genre of science fiction. Here, aspects of the space age such as humanity’s imminent expansion to space, interplanetary travel, contact with extraterrestrial intelligence, and intergalactic governance and economy were both celebrated and critically interrogated as cosmopolitan ideals and nation-branding strategies. This book presents the contemporary relevance of this genre as heritage and legacy, archive and canon, and a nest of forgotten ideals and warnings, as well as nostalgic anchoring points. The author analyzes over 30 Soviet science fiction films, foregrounding their structures of utopia and their evolution over time, in order to trace both their transnational positionalities, transmedial resonance, and impact on post-Soviet Russian films about the space age. Concepts, crucial to the understanding of space futures of the past, such as utopianism, otherness, liminality, and no(w)stalgia are activated to draw out the fictional tenants of the memory of the Soviet space age, and to establish the limits and potentialities of Soviet (exra)terraformative ambitions.
The Cinema of Cuba
Author: Ann Marie Stock
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 178673253X
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 338
Book Description
Contemporary Cuba is opening up to the rest of the world. Its colonial past and the Communist revolution have left a lasting imprint on society, yet there is a tangible sense of rapid change which is reflected in the island's national cinema. New screen technologies and digital distribution media have supported the efficacy and global reach of Cuban filmmakers whose work, somewhat in lieu of adequate distribution and traditional screening facilities in Cuba itself, is often disseminated via 'flash' (USB memory sticks).Channelling an energetic DIY attitude through grassroots movements and ad-hoc resourcefulness, the new filmmakers of Cuba have inspired the editors of this book to embrace their contagious enthusiasm through essays on authentic Cuban cinema. Whilst the book provides a comprehensive overview of the history behind current practices, it also moves beyond this to examine key case studies as well as 'snapshots' of individuals working within the industry today. Chapters celebrate the shared creativity as well as diversity of Cuban cinema, including both productions of the Cuban Film Institute's (ICAIC) as well as those from the industry margins. The films discussed demonstrate a driving cinematic force through social criticism, the emphasis of debate and historical change through film, reassessments of gender relations, the use of new technologies and much more.
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 178673253X
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 338
Book Description
Contemporary Cuba is opening up to the rest of the world. Its colonial past and the Communist revolution have left a lasting imprint on society, yet there is a tangible sense of rapid change which is reflected in the island's national cinema. New screen technologies and digital distribution media have supported the efficacy and global reach of Cuban filmmakers whose work, somewhat in lieu of adequate distribution and traditional screening facilities in Cuba itself, is often disseminated via 'flash' (USB memory sticks).Channelling an energetic DIY attitude through grassroots movements and ad-hoc resourcefulness, the new filmmakers of Cuba have inspired the editors of this book to embrace their contagious enthusiasm through essays on authentic Cuban cinema. Whilst the book provides a comprehensive overview of the history behind current practices, it also moves beyond this to examine key case studies as well as 'snapshots' of individuals working within the industry today. Chapters celebrate the shared creativity as well as diversity of Cuban cinema, including both productions of the Cuban Film Institute's (ICAIC) as well as those from the industry margins. The films discussed demonstrate a driving cinematic force through social criticism, the emphasis of debate and historical change through film, reassessments of gender relations, the use of new technologies and much more.
The Cinema of Alexander Sokurov
Author: Jeremi Szaniawski
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231850522
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 353
Book Description
One of the last representatives of a brand of serious, high-art cinema, Alexander Sokurov has produced a massive oeuvre exploring issues such as history, power, memory, kinship, death, the human soul, and the responsibility of the artist. Through contextualization and close readings of each of his feature fiction films (broaching many of his documentaries in the process), this volume unearths a vision of Sokurov's films as equally mournful and passionate, intellectual, and sensual, and also identifies in them a powerful, if discursively repressed, queer sensitivity, alongside a pattern of tensions and paradoxes. This book thus offers new keys to understand the lasting and ever-renewed appeal of the Russian director's Janus-like and surprisingly dynamic cinema – a deeply original and complex body of work in dialogue with the past, the present and the future.
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231850522
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 353
Book Description
One of the last representatives of a brand of serious, high-art cinema, Alexander Sokurov has produced a massive oeuvre exploring issues such as history, power, memory, kinship, death, the human soul, and the responsibility of the artist. Through contextualization and close readings of each of his feature fiction films (broaching many of his documentaries in the process), this volume unearths a vision of Sokurov's films as equally mournful and passionate, intellectual, and sensual, and also identifies in them a powerful, if discursively repressed, queer sensitivity, alongside a pattern of tensions and paradoxes. This book thus offers new keys to understand the lasting and ever-renewed appeal of the Russian director's Janus-like and surprisingly dynamic cinema – a deeply original and complex body of work in dialogue with the past, the present and the future.
A Companion to German Cinema
Author: Terri Ginsberg
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1405194367
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 618
Book Description
A Companion to German Cinema A Companion to German Cinema regards the shifting terrain of German filmmaking and film studies against their larger social contexts with twenty-two newly commissioned essays by well-established and younger scholars in the field. While several of these focus on classic topics such as Weimar cinema, Fifties cinema, New German Cinema and its legacy, and Holocaust film, the collection is distinguished by its focus on new developments and the innovative light they may shed on earlier practices. A Companion to German Cinema includes essays on Berlin Film, Neue Heimat Film, New Comedy, post-Wall documentaries, the post-Wende RAF genre, and Rabenmutter imagery, as well as on the persistently overlooked and under-theorized Indianerfilme, post-AIDS documentaries, sexploitation films, and new multicultural and transnational films produced in Germany under the auspices of the European Union. Organized into three “movements” representing the significance of these developments for their aesthetic theorization, A Companion to German Cinema challenges its readers to address critical gaps in the field with the aim of opening it further onto new terrains of intellectual engagement.
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1405194367
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 618
Book Description
A Companion to German Cinema A Companion to German Cinema regards the shifting terrain of German filmmaking and film studies against their larger social contexts with twenty-two newly commissioned essays by well-established and younger scholars in the field. While several of these focus on classic topics such as Weimar cinema, Fifties cinema, New German Cinema and its legacy, and Holocaust film, the collection is distinguished by its focus on new developments and the innovative light they may shed on earlier practices. A Companion to German Cinema includes essays on Berlin Film, Neue Heimat Film, New Comedy, post-Wall documentaries, the post-Wende RAF genre, and Rabenmutter imagery, as well as on the persistently overlooked and under-theorized Indianerfilme, post-AIDS documentaries, sexploitation films, and new multicultural and transnational films produced in Germany under the auspices of the European Union. Organized into three “movements” representing the significance of these developments for their aesthetic theorization, A Companion to German Cinema challenges its readers to address critical gaps in the field with the aim of opening it further onto new terrains of intellectual engagement.