Results by title
279 books match the query 'Film & Video' and 46 start with w
Watch this Space
Exploring Cinematic Intersections Between the Body, Architecture and the CityEdited by Howard Griffin and Maciej Stasiowski
Intellect Books, 2024
A collection that explores evolving interdisciplinary rhetoric across spatial design disciplines.
Watch this Space examines key emerging and evolving practices, theories, and methodologies that operate in the blurred boundary between spatial design disciplines and moving image studies more broadly. The collection is premised on the argument that the understanding of “space” in these areas continues to expand, reaching the point in which it blurs with multiple other disciplines including media art, cultural studies, art practice, and more. The result of this evolving interdisciplinary understating of space in design disciplines and moving image studies is an expanded field of haptic-visual practice and theory that can be investigated as both a material and an image-based construct.
The work engages with an evolving set of ideas, underlining how each of its primary discipline areas now increasingly incorporates tools and methodologies from each other’s fields. For example, architects routinely engage with cinematic practice as a means of exploring space; cultural theorists inspect filmic space as a two-dimensional surrogate of the real; media artists incorporate knowledge of spatial design in video installations; and filmmakers create spaces on screen that are informed by architectural theory. This all follows what can be defined as a discursive turn in our view of spatial relationships across disciplines which, by definition, is complex, eclectic, occasionally contradictory, and at times characterized by surprising confluences.
The varied essays collected here explore the diversity of how we today define, understand, and engage with notions of the body in architectural–urban space. It does so through a triadic structure that progresses from haptic relationships of the body in architectural space, through film readings of represented space in mainstream cinema, to experimental spatial projects inspired by film and the moving image. This tripartite structure specifically encourages a look across disciplines, broadening architectural, urbanist, media, and cinematic concerns through insightful case studies.
Watch this Space examines key emerging and evolving practices, theories, and methodologies that operate in the blurred boundary between spatial design disciplines and moving image studies more broadly. The collection is premised on the argument that the understanding of “space” in these areas continues to expand, reaching the point in which it blurs with multiple other disciplines including media art, cultural studies, art practice, and more. The result of this evolving interdisciplinary understating of space in design disciplines and moving image studies is an expanded field of haptic-visual practice and theory that can be investigated as both a material and an image-based construct.
The work engages with an evolving set of ideas, underlining how each of its primary discipline areas now increasingly incorporates tools and methodologies from each other’s fields. For example, architects routinely engage with cinematic practice as a means of exploring space; cultural theorists inspect filmic space as a two-dimensional surrogate of the real; media artists incorporate knowledge of spatial design in video installations; and filmmakers create spaces on screen that are informed by architectural theory. This all follows what can be defined as a discursive turn in our view of spatial relationships across disciplines which, by definition, is complex, eclectic, occasionally contradictory, and at times characterized by surprising confluences.
The varied essays collected here explore the diversity of how we today define, understand, and engage with notions of the body in architectural–urban space. It does so through a triadic structure that progresses from haptic relationships of the body in architectural space, through film readings of represented space in mainstream cinema, to experimental spatial projects inspired by film and the moving image. This tripartite structure specifically encourages a look across disciplines, broadening architectural, urbanist, media, and cinematic concerns through insightful case studies.
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West African Screen Media
Comedy, TV Series, and TransnationalizationBoukary Sawadogo
Michigan State University Press, 2019
The culturally rooted comic traditions of koteba theater and joking kinship have shaped West African comedies through various forms of humor. Débrouillardise (hustle) has turned the urban scene into a comic scene, a site for individual realization. To highlight the ever-growing production and success of comedies and other popular genres, West African Screen Media: Comedy, TV Series, and Transnationalization explores the distribution and reception of selected productions by emphasizing the public’s strong resonance with local stories and a character-based comedy involving popular comedians. In contrast to art films or “auteur films” that tend to be confined to the festival circuit, comedies and popular genres reach a far wider audience through local distribution networks, satellite TV channels, pirated DVDs, and online distribution platforms. This book engages a discussion of contemporary African media productions as seen outside the usual frameworks of cinéma engagé, the art house, or auteur approaches. While examining production and distribution through the lenses of proximity, appropriation, and transnationalization, this volume invites readers to reconsider the way genre films, as well as other kinds of productions, have been previously evaluated and in doing so addresses the critical neglect of comedy and other popular genres in the scholarship on African cinema.
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What Music Did
The Story of Numerocracy in the WestTony Conrad. Edited by Patrick Nickleson
University of Michigan Press, 2026
In What Music Did, experimental filmmaker and violinist Tony Conrad explores in depth the relationship between music and mathematics. A work of decades that was left unfinished at the time of his death in 2016, Conrad’s expansive history of the interrelationship of music and mathematics is published here for the first time. Editor Patrick Nickleson describes Conrad’s method as that of an anarchic, interarts haberdasher; much of the research comes from musty and out-of-print sources, giving the impression that Conrad followed paths opened up for him in used book shops and conversations, rather than seeking a direct scholarly argument.
Throughout the book, readers encounter scenes from over two thousand years of history, mathematics, and music: Pythagoras using pebbles to articulate didactic number games to his disciples; Galileo fretting a hill and listening with a musician’s ear to calculate the rate of acceleration under gravity; Rameau trapping Western music in a five-limit tuning system, and what could have been if he were more adept with numbers. Even when drawing on classical sources to explore canonical figures like Saint Augustine, What Music Did offers idiosyncratic critical insights that highlight our ongoing cultural reverence when answers result in simple whole number ratios like 3:2, 4:3, or 5:4. What Music Did is Tony Conrad’s extended indictment of music’s role, from the Pythagoreans to the twentieth century, in upholding the use of number as a clandestine and circumscribed armature of power.
Throughout the book, readers encounter scenes from over two thousand years of history, mathematics, and music: Pythagoras using pebbles to articulate didactic number games to his disciples; Galileo fretting a hill and listening with a musician’s ear to calculate the rate of acceleration under gravity; Rameau trapping Western music in a five-limit tuning system, and what could have been if he were more adept with numbers. Even when drawing on classical sources to explore canonical figures like Saint Augustine, What Music Did offers idiosyncratic critical insights that highlight our ongoing cultural reverence when answers result in simple whole number ratios like 3:2, 4:3, or 5:4. What Music Did is Tony Conrad’s extended indictment of music’s role, from the Pythagoreans to the twentieth century, in upholding the use of number as a clandestine and circumscribed armature of power.
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White Gypsies
Race and Stardom in Spanish MusicalsEva Woods Peiró
University of Minnesota Press, 2012
Little has been written about the Spanish film musical, a genre usually associated with the early Franco dictatorship and dismissed by critics as reactionary, escapist fare. A timely and valuable corrective, White Gypsies shows how the Spanish folkloric musical films of the 1940s and ’50s are inextricably tied to anxious concerns about race—especially, but not only, Gypsiness.
Focusing on the processes of identity formation in twentieth-century Spain—with multifaceted readings of the cinematic construction of class, gender, and sexuality—Eva Woods Peiró explores how these popular films allowed audiences to negotiate and imaginatively, at times problematically, resolve complex social contradictions. The intricate interweaving of race and modernity is particularly evident in her scrutiny of a striking popular phenomenon: how the musicals progressively whitened their stars, even as their story lines became increasingly Andalusianized and Gypsified.
White Gypsies reveals how these imaginary individuals constituted a veritable cultural barometer of how racial thinking was projected and understood across a broad swath of popular Spanish cinema.
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Without Empathy
Irony and the Satirical Impulse in Eight Major FilmmakersMK Raghavendra
Intellect Books, 2025
From apparent melodrama and eroticism to fantasy and horror, these eight directors redefine satire’s limits, providing evidence that irony in cinema often goes unrecognized.
In Without Empathy, MK Raghavendra investigates how irony and satire function in cinema by focusing on the work of eight visionary directors—Luis Buñuel, R.W. Fassbinder, Stanley Kubrick, Robert Altman, Paul Verhoeven, Aki Kaurismäki, Aleksei Balabanov, and David Lynch. At a time when irony is increasingly scrutinized as a mode of expression, this book reconsiders its role in film, revealing how these auteurs deploy wit and subversion in ways that unsettle audience expectations.
Through close readings of selected works, Raghavendra identifies layers of meaning beneath the surface of films often misread. The book situates these directors within broader traditions of cinematic satire, while simultaneously interrogating what their work has to say about society, culture, and human folly. Without Empathy is a lucid read for scholars and students of film studies and communication, providing a provocative lens on how satirical intent is not always recognizable today and how its actual targets can make society uncomfortable.
In Without Empathy, MK Raghavendra investigates how irony and satire function in cinema by focusing on the work of eight visionary directors—Luis Buñuel, R.W. Fassbinder, Stanley Kubrick, Robert Altman, Paul Verhoeven, Aki Kaurismäki, Aleksei Balabanov, and David Lynch. At a time when irony is increasingly scrutinized as a mode of expression, this book reconsiders its role in film, revealing how these auteurs deploy wit and subversion in ways that unsettle audience expectations.
Through close readings of selected works, Raghavendra identifies layers of meaning beneath the surface of films often misread. The book situates these directors within broader traditions of cinematic satire, while simultaneously interrogating what their work has to say about society, culture, and human folly. Without Empathy is a lucid read for scholars and students of film studies and communication, providing a provocative lens on how satirical intent is not always recognizable today and how its actual targets can make society uncomfortable.
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World Film Locations
AthensEdited by Anna Poupou, Afroditi Nikolaidou, and Eirini Sifaki
Intellect Books, 2014
A filmic guidebook of the Greek capital, World Film Locations: Athens takes readers to film locations in the central historical district, with excursions to the periphery of Athens—popular neighborhoods, poor suburbs, and slums often represented in postwar neorealist films—and then on to garden cities and upper-class suburbs, especially those preferred by the auteurs of the 1970s. Of course, no Grecian vacation would be complete without a visit to the sea, and summer resorts, hotels, and beaches near Athens are frequent backdrops for international productions. However, more recent economic strife has emptied city neighborhoods, created urban violence, and caused an increase in riots in the Mediterranean city, and representations of this on film are juxtaposed with images of the eternal and idyllic city.
Featuring both Greek and foreign productions from various genres and historical periods, the book ultimately works to establish connections between the various aesthetics of dominant representations of Athens.
Featuring both Greek and foreign productions from various genres and historical periods, the book ultimately works to establish connections between the various aesthetics of dominant representations of Athens.
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World Film Locations
BarcelonaEdited by Helio San Miguel and Lorenzo J. Torres Hortelano
Intellect Books, 2013
Barcelona is one of the world’s most beautiful cities. A permanent showcase of the work of acclaimed architect Antoni Gaudí, it also has a long and rich cinematic legacy. Great directors from all over the world—among them Woody Allen, Pedro Almodóvar, and Michelangelo Antonioni—have set their films there. World Film Locations: Barcelona is the first book of its kind to explore the rich cinematic history of this seductive Catalonian city.
The illuminating essays collected here cover essential themes of the city’s cinematic history, including the origins of cinema in Barcelona; the role of Ciutat Vella (old quarter) as a film set; the influential Barcelona School of the 1960s; the film presence of Gaudí and his work; changing attitudes and urban renewal before and after the 1992 Olympics; and the emergence of a new generation of female filmmakers that have made Barcelona the center of their cinematic explorations. This book will be a welcome addition to the libraries of anyone enchanted by the beauty of Barcelona, whether in person on the big screen.
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World Film Locations
BeijingEdited by John Berra and Liu Yang
Intellect Books, 2012
The title of Li Yu’s film Lost in Beijing evokes the experience of many first-time visitors to China’s bustling capital. The city’s sprawling structure and rapid redevelopment—embodied by the high-rise apartments taking over historic districts—render Beijing’s streets hard to navigate and its culture is just as difficult to penetrate. World Film Locations: Beijing is a revealing and engrossing introduction to both.
In a series of spotlight essays and illustrated scene reviews, a cast of seasoned scholars and fresh new voices explore the vast range of films—encompassing drama, madcap comedy, martial arts escapism, and magical realism—that have been set in Beijing. Unveiling a city of hidden courtyards, looming skyscrapers, and traditional Hutong neighborhoods, these contributors depict a distinctive urban culture that reflects the conflict and tumult of a nation in transition. With considerations of everything from the back streets of Beijing Bicycle to the forbidden palace of The Last Emperor to the tourist park of The World, this volume is a definitive cinematic guide to an ever-changing and endlessly fascinating capital city.
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World Film Locations
BerlinEdited by Susan Ingram
Intellect Books, 2012
One of the most dynamic capital cities of the twenty-first century, Berlin also has one of the most tumultuous modern histories. A city that came of age, in many senses, with the cinema, it has been captured on film during periods of exuberance, devastation, division, and reconstruction. World Film Locations: Berlin offers a broad overview of these varied cinematic representations.
Covering an array of films that ranges from early classics to contemporary star vehicles, this volume features detailed analyses of forty-six key scenes from productions shot on location across the city, as well as spotlight essays in which contributors with expertise in German studies, urban history, and film studies focus on issues central to understanding Berlin cinema. Among the topics discussed are the roles of rubble, construction sites, and music in films set and shot in Berlin, as well as key personalities, including Marlene Dietrich and Leni Riefenstahl. With the help of full-color illustrations that include film stills and contemporary location shots, World Film Locations: Berlin cinematically maps the city’s long twentieth century, taking readers behind the scenes and shedding new light on the connections between many favorite and possibly soon to be favorite films.
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World Film Locations
BostonEdited by Marcelline Block
Intellect Books, 2014
Founded by the Puritans in 1630 and the site of many of the American Revolution's major precursors and events (including the Boston Massacre, the Boston Tea Party, and Paul Revere’s midnight ride, among others), Boston has played—and continues to play—an influential role in the shaping of the historic, intellectual, cultural, and political landscapes of the United States. And Boston has a significantly rich tradition of cinematic representation. While Harvard is central to many of the films set in the Greater Boston area, World Film Locations: Boston considers the full spectrum of Boston’s abundant aesthetic potential, reviewing films located within as well as far beyond Harvard’s hallowed halls and ivy-covered gates.
Many iconic American classics, blockbusters, romantic comedies, and legal thrillers, as well as films examining Boston’s criminal underside, particularly in juxtaposition to the city’s elitist high society, were filmed on location in the city’s streets and back lots. World Film Locations: Boston looks in depth into a highly select group of forty-six films such as Love Story, Good Will Hunting, The Friends of Eddy Coyle, and The Social Network, among many others, presented at the intersection of critical analysis and stunning visual critique (with material from the films themselves as well as photographs of the contemporary city locations). Featuring articles and film scene reviews written by a variety of leading contemporary film writers, critics, and scholars, this book is a multimedia resource that will find a welcome audience in movie lovers in Beantown and beyond.
Many iconic American classics, blockbusters, romantic comedies, and legal thrillers, as well as films examining Boston’s criminal underside, particularly in juxtaposition to the city’s elitist high society, were filmed on location in the city’s streets and back lots. World Film Locations: Boston looks in depth into a highly select group of forty-six films such as Love Story, Good Will Hunting, The Friends of Eddy Coyle, and The Social Network, among many others, presented at the intersection of critical analysis and stunning visual critique (with material from the films themselves as well as photographs of the contemporary city locations). Featuring articles and film scene reviews written by a variety of leading contemporary film writers, critics, and scholars, this book is a multimedia resource that will find a welcome audience in movie lovers in Beantown and beyond.
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World Film Locations
Buenos AiresEdited by Santiago Oyarzabal and Michael Pigott
Intellect Books, 2014
World Film Locations: Buenos Aires explores this picturesque and passionate city (the second-largest in South America) as a stage for sociopolitical transformations, and a key location in the international imagination as a site of cultural export. The book uncovers the many reasons why Buenos Aires attracts not only tourists but also artists and filmmakers, who explore the city and its iconography as well as its cultural and sociopolitical turbulence. A set of six essays anchors this volume; contributors consider a range of key topics related to the city onscreen, including tango, villas miseria (shantytowns), dictatorship and democracy, and science fiction and the future of the city. The volume is rounded out with in-depth reviews of nearly fifty key films—The Hour of the Furnaces, Nine Queens, and Evita among them—each illustrated by screen shots, current location imagery, and corresponding maps for travelers and movies buffs to use as they navigate this rich cinematic city.
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World Film Locations
ChicagoEdited by Scott Jordan Harris
Intellect Books, 2013
While some call it the Second City, Chicago is no stranger to the silver screen. Director Christopher Nolan transformed Chicago into the darkly foreboding Gotham City for The Dark Knight. Ferris Bueller rode a parade float down Dearborn and made stops during his epic day off at a host of landmarks, from Buckingham Fountain to Wrigley Field. Everyone’s favorite foul-mouthed blues act ended their film’s climactic chase by taking the Bluesmobile through the plate-glass windows of the Richard J. Daley Center.
With World Film Locations: Chicago, critic Scott Jordan Harris takes readers on a cinematic tour of the city, featuring modern blockbusters and beloved classics. Along the way, scenes from almost fifty films made or set in the city are discussed, accompanied by full-color stills and interspersed with essays examining the city’s unique character onscreen. Among the contributors are Gordon Quinn, cofounder of Chicago’s Kartemquim Films; Elizabeth Weitzman, film critic for the New York Daily News; the BBC’s Samira Ahmed; and Steve James, director of the coming-of-age classic Hoop Dreams. For readers hoping to locate landmarks from favorite films, the book also includes detailed maps that point out key scenes.
A fun and fact-packed read, World Film Locations: Chicago will be welcomed by film fans and anyone planning a trip to the Windy City.
With World Film Locations: Chicago, critic Scott Jordan Harris takes readers on a cinematic tour of the city, featuring modern blockbusters and beloved classics. Along the way, scenes from almost fifty films made or set in the city are discussed, accompanied by full-color stills and interspersed with essays examining the city’s unique character onscreen. Among the contributors are Gordon Quinn, cofounder of Chicago’s Kartemquim Films; Elizabeth Weitzman, film critic for the New York Daily News; the BBC’s Samira Ahmed; and Steve James, director of the coming-of-age classic Hoop Dreams. For readers hoping to locate landmarks from favorite films, the book also includes detailed maps that point out key scenes.
A fun and fact-packed read, World Film Locations: Chicago will be welcomed by film fans and anyone planning a trip to the Windy City.
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World Film Locations
ClevelandEdited by Alberto Zambenedetti
Intellect Books, 2016
The prototypical rust belt city, Cleveland has long served as an emblem of late twentieth-century urban decay. But recent decades have brought a cultural and economic renaissance—a revival that has been reflected and aided by the growing number of films being shot on location there.
This new entry in the World Film Locations series offers the first-ever extended look at Cleveland on screen. Richly illustrated with images from dozens of productions, it reveals Cleveland to be usefully chameleonic, appealing to some filmmakers for its modern downtown’s ability to mimic more prominent (and more expensive) cities, to others for the way its shuttered factories and decaying docks signify contemporary urban distress. With entries on such classics as The Fortune Cookie, The Deer Hunter, A Christmas Story, and Marvel’s The Avengers, as well as lesser-known films, the volume reveals Cleveland to be a far more compelling, and far more varied, on-screen presence than even most film buffs would expect.
Like all the books in this series, World Film Locations: Cleveland is designed to appeal to cinephiles and scholars alike, while also serving as a silver screen souvenir for those who make the city their home as well as for those who visit it.
This new entry in the World Film Locations series offers the first-ever extended look at Cleveland on screen. Richly illustrated with images from dozens of productions, it reveals Cleveland to be usefully chameleonic, appealing to some filmmakers for its modern downtown’s ability to mimic more prominent (and more expensive) cities, to others for the way its shuttered factories and decaying docks signify contemporary urban distress. With entries on such classics as The Fortune Cookie, The Deer Hunter, A Christmas Story, and Marvel’s The Avengers, as well as lesser-known films, the volume reveals Cleveland to be a far more compelling, and far more varied, on-screen presence than even most film buffs would expect.
Like all the books in this series, World Film Locations: Cleveland is designed to appeal to cinephiles and scholars alike, while also serving as a silver screen souvenir for those who make the city their home as well as for those who visit it.
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World Film Locations
DublinEdited by Jez Conolly and Caroline Whelan
Intellect Books, 2011
With its rich political and literary history, Dublin is a sought after destination for cinematographers who have made use of the city’s urban streetscapes and lush pastoral settings in many memorable films—among them Braveheart, The Italian Job, and the 2006 musical drama Once. World Film Locations: Dublin offers an engaging look at the many incarnations of the city onscreen through fifty synopses of the key scenes—either shot or set in Dublin—accompanied by a generous selection of full-color film stills.
Throughout the book, a series of essays by leading film scholars spotlight familiar actors, producers, and directors as well as some of the themes common to films shot in Dublin, including literature, politics, the city’s thriving music scene, and its long history of organized crime. Also included is a look at the representations of Dublin before, during, and after the Celtic Tiger era. Sophisticated yet accessible, this volume will undoubtedly take its place on the shelves of film buffs and those interested in Irish culture.
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World Film Locations
FlorenceEdited by Alberto Zambenedetti
Intellect Books, 2014
Florence, with its rich history, privileged place in the canon of Western art, and long-standing relationship with the moving image, is a cinematic city equal to Venice or Rome. This edition in the well-established World Film Locations series explores Florence as it is manifested in the minds of filmmakers and filmgoers. Contributors to the collection consider a wide range of topics, including the tourist’s perception of Florence, representations of art and artists on screen, the camera-friendly Tuscan countryside and mouthwatering local cuisine, and filmic adaptations of canonical Italian literature. Through scene reviews of films including Bobby Deerfield, A Room with a View, Tea with Mussolini, and Under the Tuscan Sun, contributors delve deeper into the makeup of the city, looking at both familiar and unfamiliar locations through the lens of such filmmakers as Roberto Rossellini, Mario Monicelli, Brian DePalma, and Ridley Scott.
From the Duomo to the Uffizi gallery, Florence is filled with history, art, and culture. For those who crave a passport to this Tuscan capital, World Film Locations: Florence will take you there without you ever having to leave your library.
From the Duomo to the Uffizi gallery, Florence is filled with history, art, and culture. For those who crave a passport to this Tuscan capital, World Film Locations: Florence will take you there without you ever having to leave your library.
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World Film Locations
GlasgowEdited by Nicola Balkind
Intellect Books, 2013
World Film Locations: Glasgow explores Scotland’s biggest city and the many locations in which its films are viewed, set, and shot. Taking in the important moments and movements in its rich cinematic history, this book seeks to discover the city’s culture, character, and comedy through its cinematic identity. Essays cover a variety of topics including a background of Glasgow’s cinema-goers and picture houses, the evolution of Scots comedy, and the role of the city as inspiration for grassroots and underground filmmakers, as well as big Hollywood productions. Thirty-eight films are featured, from classics like Forsyth’s Gregory’s Girl and Loach’s Carla’s Song to cult hits like Boyle’s Trainspotting. Bollywood is also represented, alongside European titles and grim Scots realism like Sweet Sixteen, My Name is Joe, and Red Road, and new titles including Fast Romance, Perfect Sense, and NEDs, making this an essential guide to Scotland in film.
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World Film Locations
HavanaEdited by Ann Marie Stock
Intellect Books, 2014
Havana is among the world’s leading cinematic locales. In films made beyond the island as well as those created by local cineastes, Havana is depicted as a vibrant Caribbean city. The quantity and quality of the works representing this tropical cityscape attest to the prominence of this film location and underscore the need for a book dedicated to it.
World Film Locations: Havana situates Havana as a modern city in prerevolutionary times, noting the architectural and cultural shifts evident during the revolution, and comments on recent reconfigurations of the city and its inhabitants in the wake of global forces. Among the forty-six scene reviews chosen to show the city in all its multifaceted glory, films such as Our Man in Havana, I Am Cuba, Hello Hemingway, Habana Blues and Chico and Rita are bookended by seven insightful essays. The essays look at the history of revolutionary cinema in Cuba and consider documentary films, from the Latin American Newsreel to avant-garde experimental work, including the island’s documentary tradition showcasing local faces and places that have paved the way for present-day media and audiovisual art. The essays also explore the multifaceted film culture of the capital, the cine club movement, historic cinemas and film venues around the city, the abundance of film festivals such as the International Festival of New Latin American Cinema, and film-themed cafeterias, restaurants, bookstores, and markets.
World Film Locations: Havana situates Havana as a modern city in prerevolutionary times, noting the architectural and cultural shifts evident during the revolution, and comments on recent reconfigurations of the city and its inhabitants in the wake of global forces. Among the forty-six scene reviews chosen to show the city in all its multifaceted glory, films such as Our Man in Havana, I Am Cuba, Hello Hemingway, Habana Blues and Chico and Rita are bookended by seven insightful essays. The essays look at the history of revolutionary cinema in Cuba and consider documentary films, from the Latin American Newsreel to avant-garde experimental work, including the island’s documentary tradition showcasing local faces and places that have paved the way for present-day media and audiovisual art. The essays also explore the multifaceted film culture of the capital, the cine club movement, historic cinemas and film venues around the city, the abundance of film festivals such as the International Festival of New Latin American Cinema, and film-themed cafeterias, restaurants, bookstores, and markets.
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World Film Locations
HelsinkiEdited by Pietari Kääpä and Silja Laine
Intellect Books, 2013
Part of Intellect’s World Film Locations series, World Film Locations: Helsinki explores the relationship between the city, cinema, and Finnish cultural history. Cinematic representations of Helsinki range from depictions of a northern periphery to a space of cosmopolitanism, from a touristic destination to a substitute for Moscow and St. Petersburg during the Cold War. The city also looks different depending on one’s perspective, and World Film Locations: Helsinki illustrates this complexity by providing a visual collection of cinematic views of Helsinki.
This cinematic city is a collective work where individual pieces construct a whole, and one which we, as viewers, then shape according to our perspectives. The contributors emphasize the role of the city in identity and cultural politics throughout Finnish film history and its central role as the locus for negotiating Finland’s globalization.
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World Film Locations
Hong KongEdited by Linda Chiu-Han Lai and Kimburley Wing-Yee Choi
Intellect Books, 2013
The rapid development of Hong Kong has occasioned the demolition of buildings and landscapes of historic significance, but film acts as a repository for memories of lost places, vanished vistas, and material objects. Location shoots in Hong Kong have preserved many disappearing landmarks of the city, and the resulting films function as valuable and irreplaceable archives of the city’s evolution.
Far more than a simple collection of movie locations, this book delivers a rare glimpse into the history of film production practices in Hong Kong. The locations described here are often not the most iconic; rather, they are the anonymous streets and back alleys used by local film studios in the 1960s and 70. They are the garden cafes with outdoor seating near the Chinese University of Hong Kong where moments of conflict in romantic comedies erupt and dissipate. They are the old Kai Tak Airport, which channels rage and desire, and the tenement housing, which splits citizens into greedy landlords and the diligent working class and embodies old-day communal values. Modern Hong Kong horror films draw their power from the material character of home-grown convenient stores, shopping arcades, and lost mansions found under modern high rises.
As in the films of Wong Kar-wai and Johnnie To, readers will drift and dash through the streets of Central to the district’s periphery, almost recklessly, automatically, or for the sheer pleasure of roaming. The first of its kind in English, this book is more than a city guide to Hong Kong through the medium of film; it is a unique exploration of relationship between location and place and genre innovations in Hong Kong cinema.
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World Film Locations
IstanbulEdited by Özlem Köksal
Intellect Books, 2012
From Head-On to Murder on the Orient Express, World Film Locations: Istanbul offers a compelling look at the many films shot on location in this multicultural metropolis on the Black Sea. Central to this volume are the film industry’s changing representations of Istanbul, which have ranged from progressive cultural center to the authoritarian police state of Alan Parker’s Midnight Express. Evident in both in films made in the West and throughout Turkey over time, these divergent accounts are analyzed with regard to their role in continually reshaping our perception of the city. Essays explore this topic and many others, including the significance of Istanbul to the works of critically-acclaimed directors, among them Nuri Bilge Ceylan.
Illustrated throughout with film stills as well as photographs of featured locations as they appear today, World Film Locations: Istanbul visits all of the important cinematic landmarks, including the Topkapi Palace and the Haydarpasa train station and offers a vivid picture of this historic and culturally stimulating city.
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World Film Locations
Las VegasEdited by Marcelline Block
Intellect Books, 2011
Sin and redemption. The ridiculous and the sublime. The carnivalesque excess of the Strip and the barrenness of the desert surrounding the city. Visited by millions of fortune seekers—and starry-eyed lovers—each year, Las Vegas is a city with as many apparent contradictions as Elvis impersonators, and this complexity is reflected in the diversity of films that have been shot on location there.
A copiously illustrated retrospective of Vegas’s appearances on the big screen, this new volume in Intellect’sWorld Film Locations series presents synopses of scenes from a broad selection of films—from big-budget blockbusters like Oceans 11 to acclaimed classics Rain Man,Casino, and The Godfather to cult favorites like Showgirls and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Insightful essays throughout explore a range of topics, including the Rat Pack’s Las Vegas, the cinematized Strip, Las Vegas as a frequent backdrop for science fiction, and the various film portrayals of iconic pop-cultural figures like Elvis and Frank Sinatra. Rounding out this information are film stills juxtaposed with photographs of the locations as they appear today.
World Film Locations: Las Vegas goes beyond the clichés of Sin City to examine what Hal Rothman and Mike Davis called “the grit beneath the glitter,” thus providing an opportunity to find out more about the unique position Vegas occupies in the popular imagination.
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World Film Locations
LiverpoolEdited by Jez Conolly and Caroline Whelan
Intellect Books, 2013
Outside of the capital London, no other British city has attracted more filmmakers than Liverpool. Sometimes standing in for London, New York, Chicago, Paris, Rome, or Moscow, and sometimes playing itself—or a version of its own past in Beatles biopics—Liverpool is an adaptable filmic backdrop that has attracted filmmakers to its ports for decades. A place of passion, humor, and pride, Liverpool evokes caverns and cathedrals, ferries and football grounds; it is a city so vivid we see it clearly even if we’ve never been there. From the earliest makers of moving images—among them the Mitchell & Kenyon film company, the Lumière brothers, and pioneering early cinematographer Claude Friese-Greene—who preserved the city, the river, the docks, the streets, and the people, Liverpool has endured as a cinematic destination. This collection celebrates that survival instinct and will be welcomed by enthusiasts of British cities, films, and culture.
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World Film Locations
LondonEdited by Neil Mitchell
Intellect Books, 2011
An exciting and visually focused tour of the diverse range of films shot on location in London, World Film Locations: London presents contributions spanning the Victorian era, the swinging ’60s, and the politically charged atmosphere following the 2005 subway bombings. Essays exploring key directors, themes, and historical periods are complemented by reviews of important scenes that offer particular insight into London's relationship to cinema. The book is illustrated throughout with full-color film stills and photographs of cinematic landmarks as they appear now—as well as city maps to aid those keen to investigate them.
From Terror on the Underground to Thames Tales to Richard Curtis's affectionate portrayal of the city in Love Actually, this user-friendly guide explores the diversity and distinctiveness of films shot in location in London.
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World Film Locations
Los AngelesEdited by Gabriel Solomons
Intellect Books, 2011
The heart of Hollywood’s star-studded film industry for more than a century, Los Angeles and its abundant and ever-changing locales—from the Santa Monica Pier to the infamous and now-defunct Ambassador Hotel—have set the scene for a wide variety of cinematic treasures, from Chinatown to Forrest Gump, Falling Down to the coming-of-age classic Boyz n The Hood. This volume marks an engaging citywide tour of the many films shot on location in this birthplace of cinema and the screen spectacle.
World Film Locations: Los Angeles pairs fifty incisive synopses of carefully chosen film scenes—both famous and lesser-known—with an accompanying array of evocative full-color film stills, demonstrating how motion pictures have contributed to the multifarious role of the city in our collective consciousness, as well as how key cinematic moments reveal aspects of its life and culture that are otherwise largely hidden from view. Insightful essays throughout turn the spotlight on the important directors, thematic elements, and historical periods that provide insight into Los Angeles and its vibrant cinematic culture. Rounding out this information are city maps with information on how to locate key features, as well as photographs showing featured locations as they appear now.
A guided tour of the City of Angels conducted by the likes of Robert Altman, Nicholas Ray, Michael Mann, and Roman Polanski, World Film Locations: Los Angeles is moreover a concise and user-friendly guide to how Los Angeles has captured the imaginations of both filmmakers and those of us sitting transfixed in theatres worldwide.
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World Film Locations
MadridEdited by Lorenzo J. Torres Hortelano
Intellect Books, 2011
From Death of a Cyclist to Open Your Eyes to The Limits of Control, Madrid has graced the big screen countless times across a wide variety of genres enacted by a similarly eclectic array of directors, including Carlos Saura, Luis Buñuel, and Pedro Almodovar. With the aim of capturing the full range of portrayals of the city onscreen, this volume pairs short synopses of scenes from fifty films with an accompanying array of dynamic full-color film stills. These scenes are set in context through a series of incisive essays that examine significant periods from Madrid’s rich film history, as well as its key industry figures and recurring themes.
Packed with fun facts, World Film Locations: Madrid offers a fascinating—and often surprising—tour of the many film representations of Madrid. For jetsetters planning a jaunt to this richly cinematic city, the book also includes photographs of locations as they appear now and city maps with information on how to locate key features.
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World Film Locations
MaltaEdited by Jean Pierre Borg and Charlie Cauchi
Intellect Books, 2015
Malta has served as a beautiful backdrop for films for nearly as long as there has been a film industry. This entry in the World Film Locations series traces the history of Malta on screen, from big-budget blockbusters to modest indie pictures. The locations Malta offers range widely, from grand fortified harbors and stunning cliffs to quaint villages and Baroque palaces. That diversity has enabled the island to double for countless locations, including ancient Troy and Alexandria, as well as Greece, Israel, and other Mediterranean and Middle Eastern regions, while its well-known water tanks have proved to be perfect for shooting ocean scenes. Packed with illustrations, World Film Locations: Malta examines a number of films made in Malta to date, and will be a must-read for tourists, film buffs, and scholars alike.
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World Film Locations
MarseillesEdited by Marcelline Block
Intellect Books, 2013
As France’s oldest city, Marseilles has a significant cinematic culture, dating back to the 1890s when the Lumière brothers shot many films there. Due to its prolific film industry in the 1920s, Marseilles was referred to as “the French Los Angeles.”
World Film Locations: Marseilles examines the representations of this port city in cinema, through essays and film scene reviews devoted to an exploration of its topography as depicted by Jean Epstein, Jean-Luc Godard, Jean-Pierre Melville, Jean Renoir, Jean-Jacques Beineix, and many others. This volume showcases Marseilles’s diversity as articulated onscreen: from the winding streets of the Panier to the Old Port’s noisy markets, from the bustling Canebière to the dockyards of the Grand Port Maritime, from the cliffs of Provençal encircling the city to sun-drenched calanques leading to the dazzling cerulean sea. World Film Locations: Marseilles features maps of film scenes, high-quality screengrabs, and images of movie locations as they appear today, accompanied by original texts penned by leading international film scholars and critics and an interview with Marseillais director Robert Guédiguian. Marseilles has been named a 2013–14 European Capital of Culture and this book is a fitting and timely tribute.
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World Film Locations
MelbourneEdited by Neil Mitchell
Intellect Books, 2012
Tracing cinematic depictions of life in Melbourne from the Victorian era to the present day, World Film Locations: Melbourne serves as an illuminating and visually rich guide to films set wholly or partially in one of Australia’s most diverse and culturally important cities.
In a series of short analyses of iconic scenes and longer essays focusing on key directors, recurring themes, and notable locations, the contributors examine the city’s relationship to cinema from a variety of angles. Covering everything from sporting dramas to representations of the outlaw Ned Kelly to the coming-of-age films of the 1980s and beyond, this accessible trip around the birthplace of Australian cinema validates Melbourne’s reputation as a creative hotbed and reveals the true significance of the films and filmmakers associated with the city. Illustrated throughout with full-color film stills and photographs of the locations as they are now, World Film Locations: Melbourne also contains city maps for those wishing to explore Melbourne’s cinematic streets with this volume’s expert guidance.
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World Film Locations
MoscowEdited by Birgit Beumers
Intellect Books, 2014
A megalopolis of more than twelve million inhabitants, Moscow is a city with a rich and varied history. In 1918, following the Revolution, Moscow became the capital of the Soviet Union, and it remained capital of the Russian Federation after 1991. Moscow’s status as capital, from 1918 to the present, more or less coincides with its life on the silver screen, since there are very few preserved filmic depictions of the city from pre-Revolutionary years. In the Soviet era, film often served propaganda purposes; therefore, the image of Moscow on celluloid echoes the political ambitions of the country, and film locations and settings reflect the cultural agenda of the times.
World Film Locations: Moscow compares and contrasts images from the past and present, giving the forty-six carefully selected scene reviews and seven spotlight essays a historical focus. With an inside look at the city’s film studio, Mosfilm, the book is essential for all armchair travelers and cinephiles alike.
World Film Locations: Moscow compares and contrasts images from the past and present, giving the forty-six carefully selected scene reviews and seven spotlight essays a historical focus. With an inside look at the city’s film studio, Mosfilm, the book is essential for all armchair travelers and cinephiles alike.
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World Film Locations
MumbaiEdited by Helio San Miguel
Intellect Books, 2012
Mumbai, formerly known as Bombay, is a megalopolis of dramatic diversity and heartbreaking extremes, with wealthy areas located just steps away from the searing poverty of its huge slums. The home of Bollywood, Mumbai is also the epicenter of India’s film industry and its foremost film location. Through the lens of Mumbai’s manifold cinematic representations, World Film Locations: Mumbai explores the sheer complexity of this incomparable city.
This volume comprises insightful essays and beautifully illustrated scene analyses by leading scholars and film critics who explore the ways filmmakers from India and abroad have represented Mumbai’s astonishing urban and human landscape. Taken together, these contributions show how movies have created in the imaginations of billions of spectators the vivid image of a city that constantly tempts people to escape their dreary existence and offers them chances to fulfill their dreams. The first book to focus on cinematic representations of what is perhaps the world’s most-filmed city, World Film Locations: Mumbai will be necessary reading for scholars and film buffs alike.
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World Film Locations
New OrleansEdited by Scott Jordan Harris
Intellect Books, 2012
With more and more filmmakers taking advantage of its rich and varied settings, New Orleans has earned star-studded status as the “Hollywood of the South.” From the big-screen adaptation of the stage classic A Streetcar Named Desire to the Elvis Presley musical King Creole, many well-known films have a special connection with the Big Easy, and this user-friendly guide explores the integral role of New Orleans in American film history.
World Film Locations: New Orleans features essays that reflect on the city’s long-standing relationship with the film industry. Among the topics discussed are popular depictions of Hurricane Katrina on film, the prevalence of the supernatural in New Orleans cinema, and recent changes to city ordinances that have made New Orleans even more popular as a film destination. As the most frequently filmed area of New Orleans, the French Quarter is given particular attention in this volume with synopses of scenes shot or set there, including The Big Easy, Interview with the Vampire, and the much-loved Bond film Live and Let Die. Additional synopses highlight numerous other film scenes spanning the city, and all are accompanied by evocative full-color stills.
The historic neighborhoods and landmarks of New Orleans have provided the backdrop for some of the most memorable moments in film history, and World Film Locations: New Orleans offers fans a guided tour of the many films that made the city their home.
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World Film Locations
New YorkEdited by Scott Jordan Harris
Intellect Books, 2011
Be they period films, cult classics, or elaborate directorial love letters, New York City has played—and continues to play—a central role in the imaginations of filmmakers and moviegoers worldwide. The stomping grounds of King Kong, it is also the place where young Jakie Rabinowitz of The Jazz Singer realizes his Broadway dream. Later, it is the backdrop against which taxi driver Travis Bickle exacts a grisly revenge.
The inaugural volume in an exciting new series from Intellect, World Film Locations: New York pairs incisive profiles of quintessential New York filmmakers—among them Woody Allen, Martin Scorsese, Sidney Lumet, and Spike Lee—with essays on key features of the city’s landscape that have appeared on the big screen, from the docks to Coney Island, Times Square to the Statue of Liberty. More than forty-five location-specific scenes from films made and set in New York are separately considered and illustrated with screen shots and photographs of the locations as they appear now. For film fans keen to follow the cinematic trail either physically or in the imagination, this pocket-sized guide also includes city maps with information on how to locate key features.
Presenting a varied and thought-provoking collage of the city onscreen—from the silent era to the present—World Film Locations: New York provides a fascinating and historic look back at the rich diversity of locations that have provided the backdrop for some of the most memorable films.
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World Film Locations
ParisEdited by Marcelline Block
Intellect Books, 2011
“We’ll always have Paris,” Humphrey Bogart assures Ingrid Bergman in the oft-quoted farewell scene from Casablanca in which Bogart’s character, hard-hearted restaurateur Rick Blaine, bids former lover Ilsa Lund goodbye. The backdrop against which they first fell in love, Paris later serves as a reminder of their deep mutual longings. And with a host of different realizations by filmmakers from Philip Kaufman to Julien Leclercq to Woody Allen, there is no question that Paris has likewise endured in the memories of cinephiles worldwide.
World Film Locations: Paris takes readers on an unforgettable tour of the City of Lights past and present through the many films that have been set there. Along the way, we revisit iconic tourist sites from the Eiffel Tower—whose stairs and crossbars inspired more than one famous chase scene—to the Moulin Rouge overlooking the famously seedy Place Pigalle. Other films explore lesser-known quartiers usually tucked away from the tourist’s admiring gaze. Handsomely illustrated with full-color film stills and contemporary photographs, more than fifty scenes are individually considered with special attention to their use of Paris’s topography as it intersects with characters, narrative, and plot. A host of important genres and cinematic movements are featured, including poetic realism, the New Wave, cinéma-verité, the literary works of the Left Bank Group, and Luc Besson’s slickly stylized cinéma du look. Meanwhile, essays foreground contributions from Francophone African directors and émigré filmmakers.
For centuries, Paris has reigned over the popular imagination. For those who have visited or those who have only imagined it through art, literature, and film, World Film Locations: Paris presents a wonder-filled cinematic exploration of the mythical city that fans of French cinema—and new initiates—will appreciate.
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World Film Locations
PragueEdited by Marcelline Block
Intellect Books, 2013
Prague, the “Hollywood of the East,” has played an important role in the history of cinema and World Film Locations: Prague traverses the city’s topography to examine an internationally diverse range of movies made in the Czech capital: landmark early films such as Ecstasy, controversial due to the female nudity that catapulted Hedy Lamarr into stardom in the United States; Steven Soderbergh’s biopic Kafka, starring Jeremy Irons; adaptations of Kafka’s literary works such as The Trial, with a screenplay by Harold Pinter and starring Anthony Hopkins; and action blockbusters like Mission Impossible, The Bourne Identity, and Casino Royale. Exploring legendary Prague landmarks as they appear onscreen—including the Charles Bridge, Old Town, Malá Strana, Liechtenstein Palace, Wenceslas Square, and Prague Castle—the book also discusses the intersection of the capital city and its cinematic representations; Prague and the Czech New Wave; the iconic Barrandov Studios; and the impact of political events such as the Prague Spring, the Soviet Invasion of 1968, and the Velvet Revolution on the city’s film industry.
An invaluable resource for scholars, students, and aficionados of film and cinematic psychogeography, this collection will be heralded by students of East European literary, cultural, and sociopolitical history.
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World Film Locations
ReykjavíkEdited by Jez Conolly and Caroline Whelan
Intellect Books, 2012
Though the creative community of Reykjavík, Iceland, has earned a well-deserved reputation for its unique artistic output—most notably the popular music that has emerged from the city since the 1980s—Reykjavík’s filmmakers have received less attention than they merit. World Film Locations: Reykjavík corrects this imbalance, shedding new light on the role of cinema in a country that, partly because of its small population, produces more films per capita than any other in the world.
The contributors to this volume trace cinema in Iceland from the 1979 establishment of the Icelandic Film Fund—before which the country’s film industry barely existed—through today. In a series of illuminating scene reviews, they show how rapidly the city has changed over the past thirty years. In thematic spotlight articles, they go on to explore such topics as the relationship between Iceland and its capital city; youth culture and night life; the relationship between film and the local music community; cinematic representations of Scandinavian crime; and filmmakers’ response to the 2008 banking crisis. Together, these varied contributions show how films shot in Reykjavík have been shaped both by Iceland’s remoteness from the rest of the world and by Icelandic filmmakers’ sense that the city remains forever on the brink of desolate and harsh wilderness.
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World Film Locations
RomeEdited by Gabriel Solomons
Intellect Books, 2014
This volume of the World Film Locations series explores the city of Rome, a city rich in history and culture and imbued with a realism and romanticism that has captured the imaginations of filmmakers throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. With over two and a half thousand years of continuing history, Rome has served as the setting for countless memorable films, creating a backdrop that spans all genres and emotions.
World Film Locations: Rome takes the reader on a cinematic journey through the city with stops at key locations that include the Pantheon, Piazza Navona, Via Veneto, Piazza del Popolo, Sant'Angelo Bridge and, of course, the Trevi Fountain, made famous worldwide in its appearances in Federico Fellini’s La Dolce Vita and Jean Negulesco’s Three Coins in the Fountain. A carefully selected compilation of forty-six key films set in Rome, including The Belly of an Architect, The Facts of Murder, The Bicycle Thief, Roman Holiday, and The Talented Mr. Ripley, is complemented by essays that further examine the relationship between the city and cinema to provide an engaging, colorful, and insightful page-turning journey for both travelers and film buffs alike.
World Film Locations: Rome takes the reader on a cinematic journey through the city with stops at key locations that include the Pantheon, Piazza Navona, Via Veneto, Piazza del Popolo, Sant'Angelo Bridge and, of course, the Trevi Fountain, made famous worldwide in its appearances in Federico Fellini’s La Dolce Vita and Jean Negulesco’s Three Coins in the Fountain. A carefully selected compilation of forty-six key films set in Rome, including The Belly of an Architect, The Facts of Murder, The Bicycle Thief, Roman Holiday, and The Talented Mr. Ripley, is complemented by essays that further examine the relationship between the city and cinema to provide an engaging, colorful, and insightful page-turning journey for both travelers and film buffs alike.
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World Film Locations
San FranciscoEdited by Scott Jordan Harris
Intellect Books, 2013
An extraordinarily beautiful city that has been celebrated, criticized, and studied in many films, San Francisco is both fragile and robust, at once a site of devastation caused by 1906 earthquake but also a symbol of indomitability in its effort to rebuild afterwards. Its beauty, both natural and manmade, has provided filmmakers with an iconic backdrop since the 1890s, and this guidebook offers an exciting tour through the film scenes and film locations that have made San Francisco irresistible to audiences and auteurs alike.
Gathering more than forty short pieces on specific scenes from San Franciscan films, this book includes essays on topics that dominate the history of filmmaking in the city, from depictions of the Golden Gate Bridge, to the movies Alfred Hitchcock, to the car chases that seem to be mandatory features of any thriller shot there. Some of America’s most famous movies—from Steven Spielberg’s Raiders of the Lost Ark to Hitchcock’s Vertigo to Don Siegel’s Dirty Harry —are celebrated alongside smaller movies and documentaries, such as The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill, to paint a complete picture of San Francisco in film. A range of expert contributors, including several members of the San Francisco Film Critics Circle, discuss a range of films from many genres and decades, from nineteenth-century silents to twentieth-century blockbusters
Audiences across the world, as well as many of the world’s greatest film directors—including Buster Keaton, Orson Welles, George Lucas, Francis Ford Coppola, David Fincher, and Steven Soderbergh—have been seduced by San Francisco. This book is the ideal escape to the city by the bay for arm chair travelers and cinephiles alike.
Audiences across the world, as well as many of the world’s greatest film directors—including Buster Keaton, Orson Welles, George Lucas, Francis Ford Coppola, David Fincher, and Steven Soderbergh—have been seduced by San Francisco. This book is the ideal escape to the city by the bay for arm chair travelers and cinephiles alike.
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World Film Locations
ShanghaiEdited by John Berra and Wei Ju
Intellect Books, 2014
Celebrating Shanghai’s rich cinematic history, the films covered here represent a lengthy time period, from the first Golden Age of Chinese Cinema in the 1930s to the city’s status as an international production hub in 2013. Given the enduring status of Shanghai as the “Paris of the East,” World Film Locations: Shanghai emphasizes the city’s cosmopolitan glamour through locations that are steeped in cinematic exoticism, while also probing the reality behind the image by investigating its backstreets and residential zones. To facilitate this study of Shanghai’s dual identity through reference to film locations, the book includes films from both the commercial and independent sectors, with a balance between images captured by local filmmakers and the visions of Western directors who have also utilized the city for their projects.
With numerous essays that reflect Shanghai’s relationship to film and scene reviews of such iconic titles as Street Angel, Temptress Moon, Kung Fu Hustle, and Skyfall, World Film Locations: Shanghai is essential reading for all scholars of China’s urban culture.
With numerous essays that reflect Shanghai’s relationship to film and scene reviews of such iconic titles as Street Angel, Temptress Moon, Kung Fu Hustle, and Skyfall, World Film Locations: Shanghai is essential reading for all scholars of China’s urban culture.
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World Film Locations
SingaporeEdited by Lorenzo Codelli
Intellect Books, 2014
A vibrant city and country nestled at the foot of the Malaysian peninsula, Singapore has long been a crossroads, a stopping point, and a cultural hub where goods, inventions, and ideas are shared and traded.
Though Singapore was home to a flourishing Chinese and Malay film industry in the 1950s and 1960s, between independence in 1965 and the early 1990s, few movies were made there. A new era for cinema in the sovereign city-state started with the international recognition of Eric Khoo’s first features, followed by a New Wave comprised of graduates from local film schools. In recent years the Singapore film industry has produced commercially successful fare, such as the horror movie The Maid, as well as more artistic films like Sandcastle, the first Singaporean film to be selected for International Critic’s Week at Cannes, and Ilo Ilo, which won the Caméra d’or at Cannes in 2013. Covering the myths that surround Singaporean film and exploring the realities of the movies that come from this exciting city, World Film Locations: Singapore introduces armchair travelers to a rich, but less known, national cinema.
Though Singapore was home to a flourishing Chinese and Malay film industry in the 1950s and 1960s, between independence in 1965 and the early 1990s, few movies were made there. A new era for cinema in the sovereign city-state started with the international recognition of Eric Khoo’s first features, followed by a New Wave comprised of graduates from local film schools. In recent years the Singapore film industry has produced commercially successful fare, such as the horror movie The Maid, as well as more artistic films like Sandcastle, the first Singaporean film to be selected for International Critic’s Week at Cannes, and Ilo Ilo, which won the Caméra d’or at Cannes in 2013. Covering the myths that surround Singaporean film and exploring the realities of the movies that come from this exciting city, World Film Locations: Singapore introduces armchair travelers to a rich, but less known, national cinema.
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World Film Locations
São PauloEdited by Natália Pinazza and Louis Bayman
Intellect Books, 2013
São Paulo is the largest city in South America and the powerhouse of Brazil’s economy. A multi-racial metropolis with a diverse population of Asian, Arabic, and European immigrants as well as migrants from other parts of Brazil, it is a global city with international reach. Films set in São Paulo often replace the postcard images of beautiful tropical beaches and laidback lifestyles with working environments and the search for better opportunities. Bikinis and flip flops give way to urban subcultures, sport, entertainment, and artistic movements. The ability to transcend national boundaries, and its resistance to stereotypical images of an “exotic” Brazil, make São Paulo a fascinating location in which to explore Brazil’s changing economic and cultural landscapes.
The first comprehensive guide to filmic representations of São Paulo, this book serves as an introduction to the city for film enthusiasts, visitors, and tourists while simultaneously opening scholarly debates on global concerns such as marginalization, rapid urbanization, and child poverty.
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World Film Locations
TokyoEdited by Chris MaGee
Intellect Books, 2011
From Tokyo Story to Godzilla, You Only Live Twice to Enter the Void, World Film Locations: Tokyo presents a kaleidoscopic view of one of the world’s most exciting cities through the lens of cinema. Illustrated throughout with dynamic screen shots, this volume in Intellect’s World Film Locations series spotlights fifty key scenes from classic and contemporary films shot in Tokyo, accompanied by insightful essays that take us from the wooden streets of pre-nineteenth-century Edo to the sprawling “what-if” megalopolis of science fiction and fantasy anime. Important themes and players—among them Akira Kurosawa, Samuel Fuller, and Sofia Coppola—are individually considered. For the film scholar, or for all those who love Japanese cinema and want to learn more, World Film Locations: Tokyo will be an essential guide.
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World Film Locations
TorontoEdited by Tom Ue
Intellect Books, 2014
Toronto is a changing city that has been a source of reflection and inspiration to writers and artists whose work focuses on the conditions and prospects of human life. A city on the move, it demands policies and regulation, and it offers the pleasures and perils of the massive and the anonymous. As a site of study, the city is inherently multidisciplinary, with natural ties to history, geography, sociology, architecture, art history, literature, and many other fields.
World Film Locations: Toronto explores and reveals the relationship between the city and cinema using a predominately visual approach. The juxtaposition of the images used in combination with insightful essays helps to demonstrate the role that the city has played in a number of hit films, including Cinderella Man, American Psycho, and X-Men and encourages the reader to frame an understanding of Toronto and the world around us. The contributors trace Toronto’s emergence as an international city and demonstrate the narrative interests that it has continued to inspire among filmmakers, both Canadian and international.
With support from experts in Canadian studies, the book’s selection of films successfully shows the many facets of Toronto and also provides insider’s access to a number of sites that are often left out of scholarship on Toronto in films, such as the Toronto International Film Festival. The 2014 release of this attractive volume will be a particularly welcome addition to the international celebrations of the city’s 180th anniversary.
World Film Locations: Toronto explores and reveals the relationship between the city and cinema using a predominately visual approach. The juxtaposition of the images used in combination with insightful essays helps to demonstrate the role that the city has played in a number of hit films, including Cinderella Man, American Psycho, and X-Men and encourages the reader to frame an understanding of Toronto and the world around us. The contributors trace Toronto’s emergence as an international city and demonstrate the narrative interests that it has continued to inspire among filmmakers, both Canadian and international.
With support from experts in Canadian studies, the book’s selection of films successfully shows the many facets of Toronto and also provides insider’s access to a number of sites that are often left out of scholarship on Toronto in films, such as the Toronto International Film Festival. The 2014 release of this attractive volume will be a particularly welcome addition to the international celebrations of the city’s 180th anniversary.
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World Film Locations
VancouverEdited by Rachel Walls
Intellect Books, 2013
Vancouver, the fourth largest film and television production center in North America, has hosted Hollywood filmmakers from Robert Altman and Dennis Hopper to Jason Reitman and Brad Bird, and is home to independent talent such as Bruce Sweeney and Mina Shum. World Film Locations: Vancouver offers insight into how so-called “runaway” productions from Hollywood use Vancouver as a stand-in for other locations and it highlights the work of Canadian filmmakers who deserve more attention. Thirty-eight analyses of different film scenes reveal the cinematic city in its myriad forms, while spotlight essays provide insight into the creativity and contradictions of Vancouver’s film industry throughout the ages. The volume presents Vancouver’s rich diversity and complexity, where magnificent marine and mountain views are both showcased and masked, downtown landmarks provide the backdrop for thrilling sequences, and lesser-known neighborhoods frame intriguing characters and plotlines. This book offers new perspectives on the relationship between the movies and the metropolis.
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World Film Locations
VeniceEdited by Michael Pigott
Intellect Books, 2013
This book explores the rich history of films that have used the floating city as evocative backdrop and integral character. Few cities are as densely packed with picturesque cinematic locations. Extensively illustrated with maps, film stills, and present-day location photos, this book provides both a colorful guide to, and an incisive examination of, Venice on film. It contains insightful film entries describing carefully chosen scenes from each film, as well as six thematic essays, written by an impressive international selection of film critics, academics, and Venice experts. The grand and familiar tourist spots take on new significances, and the book highlights less well-known spots beyond the tourist trail, including gondola repair yards and legendary, but well-hidden, restaurants. From one of the earliest mobile shots in film history—a voyage up the Grand Canal shot in 1896—to classic depictions of the city like Summertime, Death in Venice, and Don’t Look Now, as well as recent big budget productions such as The Tourist, this book spans the history of filmmaking in Venice.
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World Film Locations
ViennaEdited by Robert Dassanowsky
Intellect Books, 2012
Vienna appears in cinema as, among other things, a historical crossroads, a source of great music, and a site of world-famous architecture ranging from gothic cathedrals and baroque palaces to landmark modern structures. A panorama that encompasses all these perspectives, World Film Locations: Vienna sheds new light on the movies shot in the former imperial capital—and on the city itself.
The first English-language book to explore Vienna’s relationship with film beyond the waltz fantasies once shot in studios around the world, this volume shows how specific urban sites contribute to films that, in turn, play a role in our changing ideas about the city. In addition to reviews of key scenes from forty-six films from the silent era to the present, contributors explore such wide-ranging topics as the Austro-Hungarian Empire as cinematic myth; the Viennese film and Golden Age Hollywood; Jewish filmmakers and their take on lost cultural imagery; postwar nation building through film: and the startling “other Vienna” in the New Wave films of Michael Haneke, Barbara Albert, Ulrich Seidl, and Götz Spielmann. Illuminating the rich multicultural cinematic history that eventually gave rise to the new Austrian films that began to capture international attention more than a decade ago, World Film Locations: Vienna will fascinate readers interested in film, art, architecture, literature, music, Jewish studies, or Central European history.
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World Film Locations
Washington D.C.Edited by Katherine Larsen
Intellect Books, 2015
Freedom and democracy. Bills and laws. Bureaucracy and red tape. Washington, DC, the capital of the United States, is known for many things, mostof them related to the inner workings of the government. But it is also a city of carefully planned parks, trees exploding with cherry blossoms in spring, and bright sunshine polishing the gleaming white of stately memorials. With no shortage of iconic American landscapes, such as the vast National Mall; buildings, from the White House and the Capitol to the Watergate Hotel and the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts; and monuments, including the Washington Monument and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, it is at once synonymous with the country it governs and a world apart.
This friction animates and attracts filmmakers, who use the District's landmarks as a shorthand to express and investigate contemporary ideals and concerns about American society. Films set there both celebrate and castigate the grand American experiment it symbolizes. From Frank Capra’s 1939 Mr. Smith Goes to Washington to the alien invasion blockbuster Independence Day, films set in Washington depict our most ardent hopes and bring to life our darkest fears.
World Film Locations: Washington, D.C., collects essays and articles about Washington film history and locations. Featuring explorations of carefully chosen film scenes and key historical periods, the book examines themes, directors, and depictions and is illustrated with evocative movie stills, city maps, and location photographs. Taken as a whole, this is essential reading for any cinephile who has ever wondered how a bill becomes a law.
This friction animates and attracts filmmakers, who use the District's landmarks as a shorthand to express and investigate contemporary ideals and concerns about American society. Films set there both celebrate and castigate the grand American experiment it symbolizes. From Frank Capra’s 1939 Mr. Smith Goes to Washington to the alien invasion blockbuster Independence Day, films set in Washington depict our most ardent hopes and bring to life our darkest fears.
World Film Locations: Washington, D.C., collects essays and articles about Washington film history and locations. Featuring explorations of carefully chosen film scenes and key historical periods, the book examines themes, directors, and depictions and is illustrated with evocative movie stills, city maps, and location photographs. Taken as a whole, this is essential reading for any cinephile who has ever wondered how a bill becomes a law.
[more]