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In 1977, George Lucas created a galaxy far, far away that somehow contained no Latinos. Forty-seven years later, Diego Luna’s Cassian Andor speaks unapologetically accented English as he leads a rebel cell against the Empire, Pedro Pascal’s Din Djarin anchors Disney’s flagship series, and Oscar Isaac’s Poe Dameron commands X-wing squadrons with a confidence that refuses to apologize for difference. The transformation didn’t happen by accident—it was fought for character by character, film by film, against resistance both corporate and cultural.

In Galactic Herencia, Christopher González uses personal, historical, and critical reflection to trace this long arc from erasure to visibility, examining how Latinx actors bring cultural resonance to roles in a fictional universe that never explicitly acknowledges their heritage—and what it means when so few performers must carry the hopes of so many. The book moves from the painful absences of the original trilogy through the breakthrough moments of Rogue One and The Mandalorian, to the current struggles over authentic representation in an era of franchise expansion and toxic fandom. By centering Latinx perspectives on a globally dominant franchise, Galactic Herencia makes visible the cultural work that representation does—demonstrating that genuine inclusion isn’t about quotas but about empowering stories that affirm our full humanity.

"Gender is an absolute ground zero for most human societies," writes David William Foster, "an absolute horizon of social subjectivity." In this book, he examines gender issues in thirteen Brazilian films made (with one exception) after the 1985 return to constitutional democracy and elimination of censorship to show how these issues arise from and comment on the sociohistorical reality of contemporary Brazilian society.

Foster organizes his study around three broad themes: construction of masculinity, constructions of feminine and feminist identities, and same-sex positionings and social power. Within his discussions of individual films ranging from Jorge um brasileiro to A hora da estrela to Beijo no asfalto, he offers new ways of understanding national ideals and stereotypes, sexual dissidence (homoeroticism and transgenderism), heroic models, U.S./Brazilian relations, revolutionary struggle, and human rights violations. As the first study of Brazilian cinematic representations of gender ideology in English or Portuguese, this book will be important reading in film and cultural studies.

Generation Multiplex (2002) was the first comprehensive study of the representation of teenagers in American cinema since David Considine’s Cinema of Adolescence in 1985. This updated and expanded edition reaffirms the idea that films about youth constitute a legitimate genre worthy of study on its own terms. Identifying four distinct subgenres—school, delinquency, horror, and romance—Timothy Shary explores hundreds of representative films while offering in-depth discussion of movies that constitute key moments in the genre, including Fast Times at Ridgemont High, A Nightmare on Elm Street, The Breakfast Club, Say Anything . . . , Boyz N the Hood, Scream, American Pie, Napoleon Dynamite, Superbad, The Twilight Saga, and The Hunger Games. Analyzing developments in teen films since 2002, Shary covers such topics as the increasing availability of movies on demand, which has given teens greater access to both popular and lesser-seen films; the recent dominance of supernatural and fantasy films as a category within the genre; and how the ongoing commodification of teen images in media affects real-life issues such as school bullying, athletic development, sexual identity, and teenage pregnancy.

An interpretive history of Asian American independent media since the 1960s

Asian American filmmakers and video artists have created a substantial, diverse, and challenging body of work that reimagines the cultural and political representation of Asian Americans. Yet much of this work remains unknown.

With the coming of glasnost to the Soviet Union, filmmakers began to explore previously forbidden themes, and distributors released films that were suppressed by pre-glasnost-era censors. Soviet cinema underwent a revolution, one that mirrors and helps interpret the social revolution that took place throughout the USSR. Glasnost—Soviet Cinema Responds is the first overall survey of the effects of this revolution on the work of Soviet filmmakers and their films.

The book is structured as a series of three essays and a filmography of the directors of glasnost cinema. The first essay, "The Age of Perestroika," describes the changes that occurred in Soviet cinema as it freed itself from the legacy of Stalinism and socialist realism. It also considers the influence of film educator and director Mikhail Romm. "Youth in Turmoil" takes a sociological look at films about youth, the most dynamic and socially revealing of glasnost-era productions. "Odysseys in Inner Space" charts a new direction in Soviet cinema as it focuses on the inner world of individuals.

The filmography includes thirty-three of the most significant glasnost-era directors, including Tengiz Abuladze, Karen Shakhnazarov, and Sergei Soloviev, with a comprehensive list of their films. Discussions of many individual films, such as Repentance, The Messenger Boy, and The Wild Pigeon, and interviews with the directors reveal the effects that glasnost and perestroika have had on the directors' lives and art.

Peoples’s analysis ranges from abolitionist and proslavery visual culture to Do the Right Thing to “Bed Intruder Song” and the cellphone video of Derrion Albert’s murder. After identifying these moments, he considers how performances go viral in Black ways. He also thinks through the ways Black virality circulates ideas that materially affect Black life. As he shows, an interacting person’s vulnerability to racialized gender and racialized sexuality knowledge inspires how they spread a performance. Non-iconic elements of viral moments reveal hard-to-find nuances of Black life while the artists and others represented in viral moments promote both collective and individual liberation by harnessing their visibility and audibility.

Rigorous and expansive, Goin’ Viral uses Black virality as a new way to understand and frame Black performances.

    Gold Diggers of 1933, a lavish and glittering showcase for Busby Berkeley's musical production talent, was designed and produced as a Depression tonic. As Berkeley said, "In an era of breadlines, Depression, and wars, I tried to help people get away from all the misery . . . to turn their minds away to something else. I wanted to make people happy, if only for an hour.
    This book contains the full shooting script of Erwin Gelsey and James Seymour, based on the Avery Hopwood play of 1919, as well as the lyrics to the five songs of the film. Arthur Hove's introduction outlines the story concept from its initial Broadway form, through the 1923 silent movie, the 1929 talkie, and including several post-1933 versions. The concept of the good-hearted chorus girl with a penchant for separating wealthy men from some of their money has long been popular with both theatre and movie audiences.
    Hove tells much about the relationship between the story line and musical segments of the movie, about how far a writer can go before passing the baton to the director, and about how a film is actually put together.
    The film is remembered for Berkeley's musical and visual extravaganza. In the opening number, "We're in the Money," his sumptuous corps de ballet, numbering fifty-four, appeared in costumes made of fifty-four thousand "silver" coins. Five silver dollars, twenty-eight feet in diameter formed the background for the chorus.

The esteemed film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum has brought global cinema to American audiences for the last four decades. His incisive writings on individual filmmakers define film culture as a diverse and ever-evolving practice, unpredictable yet subject to analyses just as diversified as his own discriminating tastes. For Rosenbaum, there is no high or low cinema, only more interesting or less interesting films, and the pieces collected here, from an appreciation of Marilyn Monroe’s intelligence to a classic discussion on and with Jean-Luc Godard, amply testify to his broad intellect and multi-faceted talent. Goodbye Cinema, Hello Cinephilia gathers together over fifty examples of Rosenbaum’s criticism from the past four decades, each of which demonstrates his passion for the way we view movies, as well as how we write about them. Charting our changing concerns with the interconnected issues that surround video, DVDs, the Internet, and new media, the writings collected here also highlight Rosenbaum’s polemics concerning the digital age. From the rediscovery and recirculation of classic films, to the social and aesthetic impact of technological changes, Rosenbaum doesn’t disappoint in assembling a magisterial cast of little-known filmmakers as well as the familiar faces and iconic names that have helped to define our era.

As we move into this new decade of moviegoing—one in which Hollywood will continue to feel the shockwaves of the digital age—Jonathan Rosenbaum remains a valuable guide. Goodbye Cinema, Hello Cinephilia is a consummate collection of his work, not simply for fans of this seminal critic, but for all those open to the wide variety of films he embraces and helps us to elucidate.

The editors of and contributors to Governing Genealogies of International Film Education offer a critical historiographic understanding of governmentalized film education during the Cold War. Chapters examine the production of hygiene and cultural films in Travancore, India during the postcolonial period, and Michigan State University’s documentary collaboration with Iran during the 1970s, among other topics, elucidating cinema’s deployment as a state apparatus and its implications for global cultures, subject positions, and social relations.

Governing Genealogies of International Film Education investigates this distinct modality of cultural production and policy to shed necessary light on the ideological overdetermination of institutionalized film education as well as on audiovisual education as an international academic discipline. The contributors show how governmentalized film education has taught American exceptionalism, hegemony, and colonialism. They also theorize about and provide methodological examples of how film archives and film studies have framed prevailing understandings of cinema’s role in American and world history.

Contributors: Kaveh Askari, Zoë Druick, Bindu Menon Mannil, Wissam Mouawad, and the editors