Books in the Film Culture in Transition series

This anthology collects the essays of distinguished film critic Adrian Martin in one volume, offering in-depth analysis of many genres of films while providing a broad understanding of the history of cinema and the history of film criticism and culture.

Paula Albuquerque's original research and experimental films, presented in this book, expose fictionalising elements in archival webcams and explore video surveillance as an urban condition.

Rossella Catanese brings in avant-garde artists and their manifestos to show how painters and other artists turned to cinema as a model for overcoming the inherently static nature of painting in order to rethink it for a new era.

This book offers a close look at how directors such as Erich von Stroheim, Ernst Lubitsch, and Max Ophuls made use of the city of Vienna, and how the nostalgic glorification of the Habsburg era can be seen as directly tied to crucial issues of modernity.

This book takes a close look at films that deal with ghosts. Making a crucial distinction between atmospheric films and conventional horror, Michael Walker argues that they are most productively seen as ghost melodramas.

Melis Behlil examines the ownership structures and financial arrangements of today's Hollywood studios and how they are reflected in the employment of international directors.

Paul Cuff takes account of the struggle across decades to restore and reintegrate Gance's film Napoleon and challenges received opinion on this work.

An illuminating investigation on the depiction of madness from early horror films of the 20s and 30s to the proliferation of today's conspiracy thrillers.

A close reading of the colour aesthetics in film, tracing the historical development of film styles in relation to colour.

A fascinating insight on avant-garde film director Walter Ruttmann, the first in English of its kind.

The rich history of the Cannes Film Festival as seen from the inside.

A unique evaluation of the American cinema of the 1970s, including cult film directors such as Peter Bogdanovich, Robert Altman and Monte Hellman

A collection of essays by the acclaimed film scholar Thomas Elsaesser, written between 1968 and 2005, tracks the crisis of contemporary European cinema, faced by the Hollywood giant on the one hand, and the collapsing national cinema industries on the other.

The Uncanny Child in Transnational Cinema illustrates how global horror film depictions of children re-conceptualised childhood at the beginning of the twenty-first century, and considers the cultural conditions surrounding their emergence.

This book presents a comprehensive analysis of the work of twenty-one of the most well-known South Korean films of the twenty-first century from eight major directors.

This volume condenses elements of theory on melodrama by bringing into focus what it recognizes to be the locus for subjective identification within melodramatic narratives: the victim.

This collection brings together a number of leading scholars in film studies to explore viewing and listening dispositives.

 This spirited volume explores the history and diversity of improvisation in the cinema, including works by Jean Renoir, Jean-Luc Godard, and Nobuhiro Suwa. Gilles Moullic examines improvisational practices that can be specifically attributed to the cinema and argues in favors of their powers as instigators of unprecedented forms of expression. Improvising Cinema reflects both on the permanence of attempting improvisation and the relationship between technology and aesthetics. Moullic concludes preservation becomes even more invaluable in the case of improvisation, as the creative act exists only within the brief time span of the performance. 

A remarkable and wide-ranging examination of some of the crucial issues in film theory, drawing on the Foucauldian concepts of the dispositif and the episteme.

First full-length book, anthology, and annotated bibliography to explore the industrial film and its remarkable history.

The current study is the fruit of some twenty years of research and writing at the interface of film history, media theory and media archaeology by one of the acknowledged pioneers of the 'new film history' and 'media archaeology'.