Books in the Traditions in World Cinema series

While few can deny its incalculable influence on popular filmmaking during and after World War II, film noir has been and remains one of the most contentious categories of cinema, providing more debate than consensus about what constitutes a noir. Liminal Noir in Classical World Cinema explores the amorphous parameters of this dark cinematic phenomenon by utilising an expanded, nuanced definition of film noir which reaches beyond traditional conceptions of genre, style and cycle to examine its complex international origins and issues of liminality. Through illuminating case studies of single films from Argentina, the former Czechoslovakia, France, Great Britain, Poland, Spain and the US, this collection consider elements of genre hybridity, border crossing, boundary breaching and other signifiers of liminality to reassess classical-era films that defy conventional generic and stylistic categorisation. Elyce Rae Helford is Professor of English at Middle Tennessee State University Christopher Weedman is Assistant Professor of English at Middle Tennessee State University

Contemporary Thai Horror Film focuses on the most significant and dominant characteristic of Thai cinema throughout its history: the Thai incarnation of the horror genre and its central role in Thailand's film industry. Tracing the development of Thai cinema throughout wider contextual changes, Ainslie explores the influence of audiences and viewing scenarios from previous decades upon this industry today. Most evident in the popular horror genre, close analysis of films demonstrates a specific style of Thai cinema as well as the wider social forces that have shaped Thai cinema as a national industry. By examining these films with a framework built from horror theory, this book questions our understanding of 'horror' as a generic category when we move outside of its traditional Euro-American origins and the voyeuristic viewing scenario often associated with the genre. Mary Jane Ainslie is Associate Professor in Film and Media at the University of Nottingham Ningbo China Campus.

Greek Film Noir offers a fresh look at underrated and neglected cultural products that provide insights into the workings of the genre within the Greek context, while simultaneously revealing the affinities between established Greek auteurs and the tradition of film noir. This collection explores the influence of American and European film noir in Greece, discussing noir and neo-noir within Mediterranean and European cinematic framework, with the aim of putting Greece on the international film noir map. Readers will enrich their knowledge of Greek cinema, while confirming the long-lasting influence of a genre that transcends national and cultural boundaries. Anna Poupou teaches film history and theory at the National & Kapodistrian University of Athens. She is co-editor of three collective volumes: City and Cinema: Theoretical and Methodological Approaches (2011), Athens: World Film Locations (2014), The Lost Highway of Greek Cinema 1960-1990 (2019). Her research interests focus on the history of Greek cinema, film and history, urban spaces and cinema, and film noir. Nikitas Fessas holds a PhD in Political and Social Sciences: Communication Sciences from Ghent University, Belgium. He has published numerous cultural criticism essays in both Greek and English-language media, as well as academic articles on Greek film noir in peer-reviewed journals. Maria Chalkou is the principal editor of Filmicon: Journal of Greek Film Studies. She holds a PhD in film theory and history from University of Glasgow. She is currently a post-doctoral researcher at Panteion University, while teaching film history, theory and documentary at Ionian University. She has published on Greek cinema, film censorship, film criticism and cinematic representations of the past.

A study of Palestinian cinema and its response to political and social transformations in the Middle East.

American Smart Cinema examines a contemporary type of US filmmaking that exists at the intersection of mainstream, art and independent cinema and often gives rise to absurd, darkly comic and nihilistic effects.Connecting the 'smart' sensibility to issues of expressive irony, generational divide and therapeutic culture, this bold new book describes a recent critical tradition in commercial-independent American filmmaking by exploring the unstable tone and dysfunctional themes of such films as The Royal Tenenbaums, Adaptation, The Squid and the Whale, Palindromes, The Last Days of Disco, Flirt, Ghost World, Your Friends and Neighbors, Donnie Darko and The Savages. Acknowledging the loaded forms of expression employed by these films, American Smart Cinema provides new directions for their study by discussing the self-conscious approach taken to film historical discourses of authorship, narrative and genre. Examining the smart film's taste for 'blank' style and issues of middle-class identity, the book provides a comprehensive account of smart cinema as an aesthetic category while also considering the cultural and political factors that have guaranteed it critical and popular success.

Vito and the Others (1991), Death of a Neapolitan Mathematician (1992) and Libera (1993), the debuts of three young Neapolitan filmmakers, stood out dramatically from the landscape of Italian cinema in the early 1990s. On the back of their critical success, over the next decade and a half, Naples became a thriving centre for film production. In this first study in English of one of the most vital and stimulating currents in contemporary European Cinema, Alex Marlow-Mann provides a detailed, multi-faceted and provocative study of this distinct regional tradition. In tracing the movement's relationship with the popular musical melodramas previously produced in Naples, he reveals how contemporary Neapolitan filmmakers have interrogated, subverted and reconfigured cinematic convention as part of a through-going re-examination of Neapolitan identity. Key features include: analyses of over 45 contemporary Italian films, including Paolo Sorrentino's The Consequences of Love, Mario Martone's L'amore molesto, Antonio Capuano's Pianese Nunzio: 14 in May and Vincenzo Marra's Sailing Home; a theoretical discussion of the concept of regional cinema; an examination of the movement in its broader context as both product and critique of Mayor Bassolino's 'Neapolitan Renaissance'; and a study of one European film industry in terms of legislation, production, distribution and exhibition.

Japanese Horror Cinema is a much-needed critical introduction to some of the most important Japanese horror films produced over the last fifty years and provides an insightful examination of the tradition's most significant trends and themes.

Focused on a body of films bound together through a cinematic aesthetic of slowness, this book is a pioneering effort to situate, theorise and map out slow cinema within contemporary global film production and across world cinema history.

A unique study of the film musical, a global cinema tradition.

Japanese Horror Cinema is a much-needed critical introduction to some of the most important Japanese horror films produced over the last fifty years and provides an insightful examination of the tradition's most significant trends and themes.

This is the first book to examine a new breed of film that is indebted to the punk spirit of experimentation, do-it-yourself ethos, and an uneasy, often defiant relationship with the mainstream.