Books in the Film Cultures series

This volume examines representations of travel ideals in contemporary international cinema. It explores the link between filmed spaces and real locations, as well as the fantasy and exoticism that arise through an idealisation of the locations and their transformational impact on the protagonists who travel there.

More than Fifteen Minutes of Fame tracks screen performance's trajectory from dominant discourses of realism and authenticity towards increasingly acute degrees of self-referentiality and self-reflexivity. Exploring the symbiotic relationship between changing forms of onscreen representation and our shifting status as social subjects, the book provides an original perspective through international examples from cinema, experimental production, documentary, television, and the burgeoning landscape of online screen performance. In an emerging culture of participatory media, the creation of a screen-based presence for our own performances of identity has become a currency through which we validate ourselves as subjects of the contemporary, hyper-mediatized world. In this post-dramatic, post-Warhol climate, the author's contention is that we are becoming increasingly wedded to screen media - not just as consumers but as producers and performers.

In the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu, all five of the Chief Ministers since 1967 have been former actors. This provocative book debunks the notion of Bollywood as the synecdoche of Indian cinema to explore the hitherto less studied, yet highly influential cinema in South Asia. Developing the concept of the politics of sentiment, the author examines the ways in which actor-politicians constructed their cinematic charisma, projecting themselves as messiahs saving the people from injustices, to create a political appeal to voters. The resilience of cinematic charisma, as Indian society undergoes massive socio-economic changes, provides a compelling study of modern politics, cinema, celebrity and the culture of the subcontinent.

Cet ouvrage parait en complement de Litterature et cinema : la culture visuelle en partage (co-edite par les memes auteurs). Les deux volumes s'inscrivent dans la nouvelle serie " Studies in Film & Literature Cultures " consacree a l'etude des rapports entre le cinema et la litterature au sein de la collection Film Cultures de Peter Lang.