Artistic, intellectual, and appreciably avant-garde, the French film industry has, perhaps more than any other national cinema, been perennially at the center of international filmmaking. With its vigorous business and wide-ranging film culture, France has also been home historically to some of the most influential filmmakers and movements – and, indeed, the very first motion picture was screened in Paris in 1895.
This volume addresses the great directors and key artistic movements, but also ventures beyond these well-established films and figures, broadening the canon through an examination of many neglected but intriguing French films. Framing essays explore the salient stylistic elements, cultural contexts, and the various conceptions of cinema in France, from avant-gardes to filmmaking by women, from documentary and realism to the Tradition of Quality, as well as genres like comedy, crime film, and horror. Illustrated by screen shots, film reviews by leading international experts offer original approaches to both overlooked titles and acknowledged classics. Readers wishing to explore particular topics in greater depth will be grateful for the book’s reading recommendations and comprehensive filmography.
A visually engaging journey through one of the most dynamic, variegated, and idiosyncratic film industries, Directory of World Cinema: France is a must-have for Francophiles and cinema savants.
The last five years have witnessed a surge in publications on Spanish cinema and Spanish cultural studies, but the subject of consumer culture in Spain has been neglected until now. The Mobile Nation: España cambia de piel (1954–1964) presents the first systematic treatment of this crucial period during Spain’s transition to modernity and highlights the forces that converged during this dramatic decade to change the face of Spain. Drawing from the methodologies of literature, film studies, cultural studies, feminist theory, and history, España cambia de piel explores consumer culture in Spanish media, mass tourism, and the national automobile manufacturing industry from 1954 to 1964 and offers valuable insight to postmodern Spain’s transformation and trends.
Slapstick comedy is the primary mode of performance for clowns, and in Serious Play, drama scholar Louise Peacock explores the evolution over the past fifty years of this unique brand of physical comedy. Though an analysis of clowning in a range of settings—theaters, circuses, hospitals, refugee camps, and churches—Peacock offers a framework for the evaluation of clowning, and she examines the therapeutic potential of the comedic performance. This is the first book to consider clowning venues and styles in light of play theory, including comparisons of traditional clown comedy and contemporary circuses like Cirque du Soleil. A distinctive study, Serious Play also provides authoritative definitions of clowns and clown performance styles that establishes a critical vocabulary for clowning performance.
Urban Cinematics surveys the mechanisms by which cinema contributes to our understanding of cities to address two key issues: How do filmmakers make use of urban spaces, and how do urban spaces make use of cinema? Merging the disciplines of architecture, landscape design, and urban planning with film studies, this book explores the potential of cinema as a tool to investigate the communal narratives of cities. A series of dialogues with filmmakers rounds out this insightful and methodologically innovative volume.
Acts of Dramaturgy is a critical frame for Michael Pinchbeck’s The Shakespeare Trilogy, a recent touring project comprising three performances—The Beginning, The Middle, and The End—that explored the role of the dramaturg. This book sets the playtexts in dialogue with reflexive essays and provocations on contemporary dramaturgy from a range of contributors.
Weaving together different modes of writing, the volume reflects on the politics of dramaturgy, authorship, adaptation, performance, and the use of Shakespeare as a stimulus for making contemporary theater. The resulting work is as much a reflection on the entanglements of processes, lineages, and relations that have shaped the work and its reception as it is an exploration of ways of reflecting and being with practice now. A valuable new contribution to the study of contemporary dramaturgy, the book will be of interest to makers and scholars of theater and performance and anyone interested in practice research and creative critical writing.
Design Integrations calls for an innovative rethinking of design education, one that recognizes the changing modes of design and the shifting forms of user experience. The contributors urge new methods of approach that focus on interdisciplinary collaboration between the academic and business worlds. These essays, among the first to focus on the future of design, often in-depth explorations of inter-institutional projects, cross-cultural learning experiences, and a multinational healthcare project. Design Integrations will be of interest to design teachers and practitioners alike.
Much like the rest of the traditional television industry, children’s programming is undergoing a revolution. In this book, Anna Potter provides a detailed insider account of the creative circumstances that are transforming contemporary children’s screen content and reshaping the surrounding digital media landscape. Drawing on extended interviews with leading screen industry figures, Potter explores television’s distribution revolution and reveals how creative practices, funding models, and production norms in children’s TV have adapted to fit the changing times.
Combining comprehensive case studies, scholarly research, and industry perspectives, Potter presents a rigorous study of success stories in the children’s screen production sector. The book explores effects on the industry from disruptions by streaming giants like Netflix, Amazon, and YouTube, and describes the challenges faced by public service broadcasters like the BBC in their efforts to stay relevant to adolescent culture in the UK. Interdisciplinary and informative, this volume is compulsory reading for anyone struggling to make sense of television’s distribution revolution and what it means for children and young people.
“Slow TV” refers to a form of broadcasting long events for their entire duration, preferably in real time. Popularized by the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation (NRK), the form became a phenomenon in 2009 after NRK’s broadcast of a seven-hour train ride between Bergen and Oslo. Since then, slow TV programming has gained traction outside of Norway on television stations around the world and via streaming services like Netflix.
In this academic study, Roel Puijk combines quantitative and qualitative research methods to explore different aspects of the Norwegian slow TV phenomenon, from the programming’s production and development to its viewing and ultimate reception. Puijk relates slow TV to media events and media tourism, discussing its effects on cultural and economic developments and its evolving relationship to local and national identity. The result is an illuminating interdisciplinary study of media innovation and its effects on contemporary culture.
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