Books in the Traditions in World Cinema series

In the Taiwanese film industry, the dichotomy between 'art-house' and commercially viable films is heavily emphasized. However, since the democratization of the political landscape in Taiwan, Taiwanese cinema has become internationally fluid. As the case studies in this book demonstrate, filmmakers such as Hou Hsiao-hsien, Edward Yang, Tsai Ming-liang, and Ang Lee each engage with international audience expectations. New Taiwanese Cinema in Focus therefore presents the Taiwanese New Wave and Second Wave movements with an emphasis on intertextuality, citation and trans-cultural dialogue. Wilson argues that the cinema of Taiwan since the 1980s should be read emblematically; that is, as a representation of the greater paradox that exists in national and transnational cinema studies. She argues that these unlikely relationships create the need for a new way of thinking about 'transnationalism' altogether, making this an essential read for advanced students and scholars in both Film Studies and Asian Studies.

The first book-length study in English of a national corpus of state-sponsored informational film, this book traces how Danish shorts on topics including social welfare, industry, art and architecture were commissioned, funded, produced and reviewed from the inter-war period to the 1960s.

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.

Offers a comprehensive study of films made in and about one of the world's most breathtaking landscapes - the Arctic. This book addresses vast diversity of Northern circumpolar cinemas from a transnational perspective, Films on Ice: Cinemas of the Arctic presents the region as one of great and previously overlooked cinematic diversity.

Unlike countries like France, the Czech Republic or Brazil, Italy did not have a new wave properly understood as a movement. However, while new artistic schools were emerging in many other countries, Italy was undergoing its most dramatic social and economic transformations. Those violent changes, together with the perceived necessity of renewing the aesthetic heritage of Neorealism, sparked a drastic regeneration of the cinematic language and marked the most memorable period of Italian film history.Italian Post-Neorealist Cinema explores the ferments of Italian cinema from the mid-50s to the end of the 60s, situating its wealth in the context of other national cinemas emerging at the same time. Olmi, Pasolini, Antonioni, Fellini, Visconti, the Taviani Brothers, Cavani, Rosi, Ferreri and many others all made their debut or directed their most representative works during the period. The book brings to the surface the lines of experimentation and artistic renewal appearing after the exhaustion of Neorealism, mapping complex areas of interest such as the emergence of ethical concerns, the relationship between ideology and representation, and the role of Italian counter-culture.

Offers a transnational comparative approach to contemporary popular Nordic genre film. This book analyses the production, distribution and the reception of contemporary genre films. It provides industrial perspectives and in depth discussion of specific films.

An introduction to a wide range of traditions in world cinema.

An analysis of Maghrebi-French and North African emigre cinema in France. It explores the work of these filmmakers on both sides of the camera since the 1970s, offering original perspectives and fresh interpretations of key films, both mainstream and independent.

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.

The musical is one of cinema's few genuinely international genres but it has never been studied as a global sensation. This book fills this critical gap in film studies as it brings together musicals from 15 nations in order to highlight running themes.

This book looks at some of the key genres in Japanese cinema since 1997. In several cases it considers in detail the ways in which individual films have both drawn and departed from those films that have comprised the key works and trends in these generic categories, and in others it looks at some significant recent developments that have little real precedence in filmmaking in Japan. Through close textual analysis of representative films, the study seeks to elucidate the prevalence of repetition and variation in contemporary Japanese genre cinema, to understand some of the reasons behind this paradigm, and analyze where relevant how and to what extent new modes or generic groups fit into the schema. In so doing it seeks for the first time in English language discourse to offer an academic appreciation and overview of popular Japanese of the last two decades.

How has Italian neorealist cinema changed the boundaries of cinematic narration and representation? In this new study, Torunn Haaland argues that neorealism was a cultural moment based on individual optiques. She accounts for the tradition's coherence in terms of its moral commitment to creating critical viewing experiences around underrepresented realities and marginalised people. By examining both acclaimed masterpieces and lesser known works, parallels are drawn to realist theories and to past and present cinematic traditions. The ways in which successive generations of directors have readopted, negotiated and broken with the themes and aesthetics of neorealist film are discussed and evaluated, along with neorealist tendencies in other arts, such as literature.An engaging and informative read for students and scholars in Italian Studies, Italian Neorealist Cinema presents a new approach to a key cinematic tradition, and so is essential reading for everyone working in the field of Film Studies.

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

This book is the first study in English to examine some of the key themes and traditions of Czech and Slovak cinema, linking inter-war and post-war cinemas together with developments in the post-Communist period. It examines links between theme, genre, and visual style, and looks at the ways in which a range of styles and traditions has extended across different historical periods and political regimes. Czech and Slovak Cinema provides a unique study of areas of Central European film history that have not previously been examined in English. Key Features*An overview of the development of the Czech and Slovak industries in the pre-war and post-war periods and their adaptation to privatisation in the 1990s.*A consideration of some of the key stylistic and thematic tendencies, focussing on comedy and lyricism, which are characteristics of all periods.*An examination of the political role of film, with particular emphasis on the period of the Prague Spring.*The continuing influence of the Surrealist tradition in the feature film and on the living tradition of the animated film, with particular reference to puppetry.*An analysis of representations of the Holocaust in films produced during the Communist period and more recently.*A consideration of the defining characteristics of Slovak cinema.The book will be of value to students within the field of Film and Media Studies as well as the general market, together with specialist chapters of interest to other disciplines.

Explores the development of film noir as a cultural and artistic phenomenon. This book traces the development of what we know as film noir from the proto-noir elements of Feuillade's silent French crime series and German Expressionism to the genre's mid-20th century popularization and influence on contemporary global media.

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

A study of African filmmaking

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.

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.

An introduction to a wide range of traditions in world cinema.

With chapters on polar explorer films, silent cinema, documentaries, ethnographic and indigenous film, gender and ecology, as well as Hollywood and the USSR's uses and abuses of the Arctic, this book provides a groundbreaking account of Arctic cinemas from 1898 to the present and radically alters stereotypical views of the Arctic region.

Through a textual analysis of six filmmakers (Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, Alfonso Cuaron, Guillermo del Toro, Fernando Meirelles, Walter Salles and Juan Jose Campanella), this book brings a new perspective to the films of Latin America's transnational auteurs.

Spanish Horror Film is the first in-depth exploration of the genre in Spain from the 'horror boom' of the late 1960s and early 1970s to the most recent production in the current renaissance of Spanish genre cinema, through a study of its production, circulation, regulation and consumption. The examination of this rich cinematic tradition is firmly located in relation to broader historical and cultural shifts in recent Spanish history and as an important part of the European horror film tradition and the global culture of psychotronia.Key Features*The first critical study on Spanish horror film to be published in English.*An overview of key directors, cycles and representative films as well as of more obscure and neglected horror production.*A detailed analysis of the work of directors such as Jesus Franco, Amando de Ossorio, Narciso Ibanez Serrador, Eloy de la Iglesia, Jaume Balaguero, Nacho Cerda and Guillermo del Toro's "e;Spanish"e; films.*A focus on critical and cult contexts of reception in Spain, Great Britain and USA.

This is the first book to investigate the coming-of-age genre as a significant phenomenon in New Zealand's national cinema, tracing its development and elucidating its role in cultural change.

Nordic Genre Film' offers a transnational approach to studying contemporary genre production in Nordic cinema.

Celluloid Singapore' is a ground-breaking study of the three major periods in Singapore's fragmented cinema history, namely the golden age of the 1950s and 60s, the post-studio 1970s, and the revival from the 1990s onwards.