front cover of Cinemas and Cinema-Going in the United Kingdom
Cinemas and Cinema-Going in the United Kingdom
Decades of Decline, 1945–1965
Sam Manning
University of London Press, 2020
Cinema-going was the most popular commercial leisure activity in the United Kingdom during the first half of the twentieth century, with attendance growing significantly during World War II and peaking in 1946 with 1.6 billion recorded admissions. Though “going to the pictures” remained a popular pastime for the remainder of the forties, the transition from war to peacetime altered citizens’ leisure habits. During the fifties, a range of factors led to rapid declines in attendance, and by 1965, admissions had plummeted to 327 million.

Cinema attendance fell in all regions, but the speed, nature, and extent of this decline varied widely across the United Kingdom. By presenting detailed case studies of two similarly-sized industrial cities, Belfast and Sheffield, this book adds nuance and detail to the discussion of regional variations in film exhibition and audience habits. Using a wide range of sources, such as oral testimony, box-office data, newspapers, and trade journals, Cinemas and Cinema-Going in the United Kingdom conveys the diverse and ever-changing nature of the cinema industry.
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Cinemas in Transition in Central and Eastern Europe after 1989
Catherine Portuges
Temple University Press, 2013
The cinemas of Eastern and Central Europe have been moving away from earlier Cold War perspectives and iconographies toward identifications more closely linked to a redefined Europe. Cinemas in Transition in Central and Eastern Europe after 1989 studies the shifts in the dynamics between film production, exhibition, and reception in Eastern bloc countries as they moved from state-sponsored systems toward the free market.
 
The contributors and editors of this exciting volume examine the interrelations between thematic, aesthetic, and infrastructural changes; the globalization of the international cinema marketplace; and the problems and promises arising from the privatization of national cinemas. 

Cinemas in Transition in Central and Eastern Europe after 1989 also addresses the strategies employed for preserving national cinemas and cultures through an analysis of films from the Czech and Slovak republics, the former German Democratic Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Ukraine, and the former Yugoslavia. The study provides a picture of Eastern European cinema at a critical juncture as well as its connections to the emergent world of transnational media.

Contributors include Barton Byg, Alexandra Foamente, Andrew Horton, Dina Iordanova, Ewa Mazierska, Bohdan Y. Nebesio, and Bogdan Stefanescu,

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Cinemas of the Other
A Personal Journey with Film-Makers from Central Asia
Gönül Dönmez-Colin
Intellect Books, 2012
Updated collections of recent interviews with filmmakers whose works represent trends in the film industries of Central Asia and the Middle East, these two new geospecific editions expand upon the earlier volume Cinemas of the Other: A Personal Journey with Film-Makers from the Middle East and Central Asia.
 
Following an introduction delineating the histories of the film industries of the countries that make up the Middle East and Central Asia—including Iran, Turkey, and the Central Asian republics of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikstan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan—both books contain interviews stretching over a decade, which position the filmmakers and their creative concerns within the social or political context of their respective countries. The striking variety of approaches toward each interview creates a rich diversity of tone and opens the door to a better understanding of images of “otherness” in film. In addition to transcripts of the interviews, each chapter also includes stills from important films discussed, biographical information about the filmmakers, and filmographies of their works.
 
Gönül Dönmez-Colin offers in these expanded editions a carefully researched and richly detailed firsthand account of the developments and trends in these regional film industries that is sure to be appreciated by film scholars and researchers of the Middle East and Central Asia.
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Cinemas of the Other
A Personal Journey with Film-Makers from Iran and Turkey
Gönül Dönmez-Colin
Intellect Books, 2012
Updated collections of recent interviews with filmmakers whose works represent trends in the film industries of Central Asia and the Middle East, these two new geospecific editions expand upon the earlier volume Cinemas of the Other: A Personal Journey with Film-Makers from the Middle East and Central Asia.
 
Following an introduction delineating the histories of the film industries of the countries that make up the Middle East and Central Asia—including Iran, Turkey, and the Central Asian republics of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikstan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan—both books contain interviews stretching over a decade, which position the filmmakers and their creative concerns within the social or political context of their respective countries. The striking variety of approaches toward each interview creates a rich diversity of tone and opens the door to a better understanding of images of “otherness” in film. In addition to transcripts of the interviews, each chapter also includes stills from important films discussed, biographical information about the filmmakers, and filmographies of their works.
 
Gönül Dönmez-Colin offers in these expanded editions a carefully researched and richly detailed firsthand account of the developments and trends in these regional film industries that is sure to be appreciated by film scholars and researchers of the Middle East and Central Asia.
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Cinemas of the World
Film and Society from 1895 to the Present
James Chapman
Reaktion Books, 2003
The cinema has been the pre-eminent popular art form of the 20th century. In Cinemas of the World, James Chapman examines the relationship between film and society in the modern world: film as entertainment medium, film as a reflection of national cultures and preoccupations, film as an instrument of propaganda. He also explores two interrelated issues that have recurred throughout the history of cinema: the economic and cultural hegemony of Hollywood on the one hand, and, on the other, the attempts of film-makers elsewhere to establish indigenous national cinemas drawing on their own cultures and societies.

Chapman examines the rise to dominance of Hollywood cinema in the silent and early sound periods. He discusses the characteristic themes of American movies from the Depression to the end of the Cold War especially those found in the western and film noir – genres that are often used as vehicles for exploring issues central to us society and politics. He looks at national cinemas in various European countries in the period between the end of the First World War and the end of the Second, which all exhibit the formal and aesthetic properties of modernism. The emergence of the so-called "new cinemas" of Europe and the wider world since 1960 are also explored.

"Chapman is a tough-thinking, original writer . . . an engaging, excellent piece of work."—David Lancaster, Film and History
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Cinemas of Therapeutic Activism
Depression and the Politics of Existence
Adam Szymanski
Amsterdam University Press, 2020
The hegemonic meaning of depression as a universal mental illness embodied by an individualized subject is propped up by psychiatry’s clinical gaze. Cinemas of Therapeutic Activism turns to the work of contemporary filmmakers who express a shared concern for mental health under global capitalism to explore how else depression can be perceived. In taking their critical visions as intercessors for thought, Adam Szymanski proposes a thoroughly relational understanding of depression attentive to eventful, collective and contingent qualities of subjectivity. What emerges is a melancholy aesthetics attuned to the existential contours and political stakes of health. Cinemas of Therapeutic Activism adventurously builds affinities across the lines of national, linguistic and cultural difference. The films of Angela Schanelec, Kelly Reichardt, Apichatpong Weerasethakul and Kanakan Balintagos are grouped together for the first time, constituting a polystylistic common front of artist-physicians who live, work, and create on the belief that life can be more liveable.
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Multiple Modernities
Cinemas & Popular Media In Transcultural East Asia
Jenny Lau
Temple University Press, 2002
Multiple Modernities explores the cultural terrain of East Asia. Arguing that becoming modern happens differently in different places, the contributors examines popular culture—most notable cinema and television—to see how modernization, as both a response to the West and as a process that is unique in its own right in the region, operates on a mass level.Included in this collection are significant explorations of popular culture in East Asia, including Chinese new cinema and rock music, Korean cinema, Taiwanese television, as well as discussions of alternative arts in general.While each essay focuses on specific nations or cinemas, the collected effect of reading them is to offer a comprehensive, in-depth picture of how popular culture in East Asia operates to both generate and reflect the immense change this significant region of the world is undergoing.
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The Visceral Screen
Between the Cinemas of John Cassavetes and David Cronenberg
Robert Furze
Intellect Books, 2015
Narrative and spectacle describe two extremes of film content, but the oeuvres of John Cassavetes and David Cronenberg resist such categorization. Instead, Robert Furze argues, the defining characteristic of these directors’ respective approaches is that of “visceral” cinema—a term that illustrates the anxiety these filmmakers provoke in their audiences. Cassavetes demonstrates this through disregard for plot structure and character coherence, while Cronenberg's focus is on graphic depictions of mutilation, extreme forms of bodily transformation, and violence.

The Visceral Screen sets out to articulate alternative ways of appreciating film aesthetics outside the narrative/spectacle continuum. Cassavetes and Cronenberg are established auteurs, but the elements of their films that appear to be barriers to their artistic status—for example, slipshod method and lingering violence or pre-digital special effects—are reassessed here as other indicators of creativity. In this way, Furze encourages debates of what makes a film good or bad—beyond how much it is seen to adhere to particular, established models of filmmaking. 
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