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Medieval film
by Anke Bernau and Bettina BildhauerMedieval film explores theoretical questions about the ideological, artistic, emotional and financial investments inhering in cinematic renditions of the medieval period. What does it mean to create and watch a 'medieval film'? What is a medieval film and why are they successful? This is the first work that attempts to answer these questions, drawing, for instance, on film theory, postcolonial theory, cultural studies and the growing body of work on medievalism. Contributors investigate British, German, Italian, Australian, French, Swedish and American film, exploring topics such translation, temporality, film noir, framing and period film - and find the medieval lurking in inexpected corners. In addition it provides in-depth studies of individual films from different countries including The Birth of a Nation to Nosferatu, and Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. Medieval Film will be of interest to medievalists working in disciplines including literature, history, to scholars working on film and in cultural studies. It will also be of interest to undergraduates, postgraduates and to an informed enthusiast in film or/and medieval culture.
Medieval film
by Anke Bernau Bettina BildhauerMedieval film explores theoretical questions about the ideological, artistic, emotional and financial investments inhering in cinematic renditions of the medieval period. What does it mean to create and watch a ‘medieval film’? What is a medieval film and why are they successful? This is the first work that attempts to answer these questions, drawing, for instance, on film theory, postcolonial theory, cultural studies and the growing body of work on medievalism. Contributors investigate British, German, Italian, Australian, French, Swedish and American film, exploring topics such translation, temporality, film noir, framing and period film – and find the medieval lurking in unexpected corners. In addition it provides in-depth studies of individual films from different countries including The Birth of a Nation to Nosferatu, and Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. Medieval film will be of interest to medievalists working in disciplines including literature, history, art history, to scholars working on film and in cultural studies. It will also be of interest to undergraduates, postgraduates and to an informed enthusiast in film or/and medieval culture.
The Medieval Motion Picture: The Politics of Adaptation (The New Middle Ages)
by Andrew James Johnston Margitta Rouse Philipp HinzProviding new and challenging ways of understanding the medieval in the modern and vice versa, this volume highlights how medieval aesthetic experience breathes life into contemporary cinema. Engaging with the subject of time and temporality, the essays examine the politics of adaptation and our contemporary entanglement with the medieval.
MEDIA IN MIND C
by Daniel ReynoldsWhere do you end, and where do media begin? In Media in Mind, author Daniel Reynolds draws upon naturalist philosophies of the mind from John Dewey through contemporary theories of embodied and extended cognition to make the case that the lines separating media from the minds of their users are not blurry or variable so much as they never existed to begin with. Through analyses of films and video games from 1900 to the present, Media in Mind shows how media forms and technologies challenge dominant models of perception and mental representation, and how they complicate theoretical understanding of concepts like the platform and the interface. In order to do justice to the profound and literally mind-changing power of media, Reynolds argues, we need to think not so much about the relationship between media and the mind as about the roles that media play in our minds. Through this crucial distinction, Media in Mind surveys more than a century of media theory to illustrate the ways that scholars of film and digital media have situated and reconsidered a series of divisions between media, user, and world, and how these conceptual divisions have reflected and inflected their ways of understanding the mind.
A Medium Seen Otherwise: Photography in Documentary Film
by Roger HallasThrough a new look at how political, historical, and art documentaries engage with photographic images, objects, and archives, A Medium Seen Otherwise argues that film allows us to better understand what people do with analog and digital photographs as material objects that enable social and political relations through multisensory experience. Moreover, as a time-based medium with sound, film can bring the event of photography into fuller view, demonstrating how no single participant in it (photographer, subject, camera, photograph, or viewer) has sovereignty over its affect, meaning, or value. The book thus explores the ways in which the innovative incorporation of photography into documentary film permits us to see both of these media otherwise. Photographs, whether professional or vernacular, are conventionally understood to furnish documentaries with indexical evidence and visual illustration of history, yet the spatio-temporal and aural dimensions of film permit documentaries to illuminate photography's wider capacities beyond the merely representational. Combining new critical perspectives on well-known documentary filmmakers and photographers (Agnès Varda, Rithy Panh, Edward Burtynsky, Malick Sidibé, Vivian Maier, JR, Ken Burns, Errol Morris, and Akram Zaatari) with analyses of lesser known, but important, documentaries, author Roger Hallas investigates a global range of documentary and vernacular photographic contexts, including Lebanon, Palestine, Mali, Congo, Cambodia, Ireland, Spain, Mexico, Chile, Canada, and the US. While authorship and representation remain common rhetorical frameworks for documentaries about photography, A Medium Seen Otherwise offers a compelling account of how the intermediality between documentary film and photography can posit far more expansive conceptions of both media. A companion website shows clips of films discussed in the book.
A Medium Seen Otherwise: Photography in Documentary Film
by Roger HallasThrough a new look at how political, historical, and art documentaries engage with photographic images, objects, and archives, A Medium Seen Otherwise argues that film allows us to better understand what people do with analog and digital photographs as material objects that enable social and political relations through multisensory experience. Moreover, as a time-based medium with sound, film can bring the event of photography into fuller view, demonstrating how no single participant in it (photographer, subject, camera, photograph, or viewer) has sovereignty over its affect, meaning, or value. The book thus explores the ways in which the innovative incorporation of photography into documentary film permits us to see both of these media otherwise. Photographs, whether professional or vernacular, are conventionally understood to furnish documentaries with indexical evidence and visual illustration of history, yet the spatio-temporal and aural dimensions of film permit documentaries to illuminate photography's wider capacities beyond the merely representational. Combining new critical perspectives on well-known documentary filmmakers and photographers (Agnès Varda, Rithy Panh, Edward Burtynsky, Malick Sidibé, Vivian Maier, JR, Ken Burns, Errol Morris, and Akram Zaatari) with analyses of lesser known, but important, documentaries, author Roger Hallas investigates a global range of documentary and vernacular photographic contexts, including Lebanon, Palestine, Mali, Congo, Cambodia, Ireland, Spain, Mexico, Chile, Canada, and the US. While authorship and representation remain common rhetorical frameworks for documentaries about photography, A Medium Seen Otherwise offers a compelling account of how the intermediality between documentary film and photography can posit far more expansive conceptions of both media. A companion website shows clips of films discussed in the book.
MEDIA VENTRILOQUISM C: How Audiovisual Technologies Transform the Voice-Body Relationship
by Jaimie Baron, Jennifer Fleeger, and Shannon Wong LernerThe word "ventriloquism" has traditionally referred to the act of throwing one's voice into an object that appears to speak. Media Ventriloquism repurposes the term to reflect our complex vocal relationship with media technologies. The 21st century has offered an array of technological means to separate voice from body, practices which have been used for good and ill. We currently zoom about the internet, in conversations full of audio glitches, using tools that make it possible to live life at a distance. Yet at the same time, these technologies subject us to the potential for audiovisual manipulation. But this voice/body split is not new. Radio, cinema, television, video games, digital technologies, and other media have each fundamentally transformed the relationship between voice and body in myriad and often unexpected ways. This book explores some of these experiences of ventriloquism and considers the political and ethical implications of separating bodies from voices. The essays in the collection, which represent a variety of academic disciplines, demonstrate not only how particular bodies and voices have been (mis)represented through media ventriloquism, but also how marginalized groups - racialized, gendered, and queered, among them - have used media ventriloquism to claim their agency and power.
Meet Me in St. Louis (BFI Film Classics)
by Gerald KaufmanIn 'Meet Me in St Louis', one of the most popular MGM musicals, Judy Garland stars as the classic American teenager. For this book, Gerald Kaufman interviewed many of the stars. This text captures the essence of Miss Garland's performance and the machinations of the legendary MGM studios.
Meet Me in St. Louis (BFI Film Classics)
by Gerald KaufmanIn 'Meet Me in St Louis', one of the most popular MGM musicals, Judy Garland stars as the classic American teenager. For this book, Gerald Kaufman interviewed many of the stars. This text captures the essence of Miss Garland's performance and the machinations of the legendary MGM studios.
The Meeting
by Charlotte JonesTeach me the language of your hands.Rachel has been the voice for her deaf mother since she was born, but now she is restless to be heard for herself. Together, they have found sanctuary in a Quaker community that reveres silence. But the world is at war and it is becoming ever harder to live in Friendship. When a stranger arrives in their midst, their fragile peace is set to shatter.The Meeting by Charlotte Jones premiered at Chichester Festival Theatre in July 2018.
Mei Lanfang and the Twentieth-Century International Stage: Chinese Theatre Placed and Displaced (Palgrave Studies in Theatre and Performance History)
by M. TianThe first book-length study in any language of the presence and influence of Mei Lanfang, the internationally known Chinese actor who specialized in female roles on the twentieth-century international stage. Tian investigates Mei Lanfang's presence and influence and the transnational and intercultural appropriations of his art.
Meisner and Mindfulness: Authentic and Truthful Solutions for the Challenges of Modern Acting
by Royce SparksMeisner and Mindfulness: Authentic and Truthful Solutions for the Challenges of Modern Acting is the first book that reveals how Meisner and mindfulness can be united to create strong results for actors and help them navigate the challenges of the digital age. The twenty-first century has created an entirely new set of demands and pressures on the working actor, including an acceleration of the digital age and the complications of COVID-19, which have led to auditions, rehearsals, and even whole performances happening entirely in isolation. This book combines a modern rethinking of the Meisner technique with a complementary set of tools from mindfulness meditation to offer profound solutions to these growing challenges, addressing the demands of a post-coronavirus industry as well as the pressures of acting in the digital era. In this ground-breaking expansion of the technique, readers will discover how it is possible to train some of the deepest values of living truthfully under a given set of circumstances, both with other actors and whilst alone. Since the 1950s the Meisner technique has aided the actor in navigating the demands unique to their time. This book is a powerful reminder that, even in the midst of so many changes and challenges, the truthfulness that has defined outstanding performances across generations is still within reach. Full of easily accessible mindfulness and Meisner exercises and principles for practice-based support, Meisner and Mindfulness will be illuminating to working actors, directors, students and instructors of acting, and practitioners of the Meisner technique looking to develop the authenticity, immediateness, and closeness essential to great acting. The book also includes access to an online supplement featuring additional exercises and concepts, including new ways to incorporate Meisner exercises into training sessions, suggestions for how Meisner-oriented companies can use exercises such as repetition in rehearsals, and discussions for how to set up a facilitated Meisner group.
Meisner and Mindfulness: Authentic and Truthful Solutions for the Challenges of Modern Acting
by Royce SparksMeisner and Mindfulness: Authentic and Truthful Solutions for the Challenges of Modern Acting is the first book that reveals how Meisner and mindfulness can be united to create strong results for actors and help them navigate the challenges of the digital age. The twenty-first century has created an entirely new set of demands and pressures on the working actor, including an acceleration of the digital age and the complications of COVID-19, which have led to auditions, rehearsals, and even whole performances happening entirely in isolation. This book combines a modern rethinking of the Meisner technique with a complementary set of tools from mindfulness meditation to offer profound solutions to these growing challenges, addressing the demands of a post-coronavirus industry as well as the pressures of acting in the digital era. In this ground-breaking expansion of the technique, readers will discover how it is possible to train some of the deepest values of living truthfully under a given set of circumstances, both with other actors and whilst alone. Since the 1950s the Meisner technique has aided the actor in navigating the demands unique to their time. This book is a powerful reminder that, even in the midst of so many changes and challenges, the truthfulness that has defined outstanding performances across generations is still within reach. Full of easily accessible mindfulness and Meisner exercises and principles for practice-based support, Meisner and Mindfulness will be illuminating to working actors, directors, students and instructors of acting, and practitioners of the Meisner technique looking to develop the authenticity, immediateness, and closeness essential to great acting. The book also includes access to an online supplement featuring additional exercises and concepts, including new ways to incorporate Meisner exercises into training sessions, suggestions for how Meisner-oriented companies can use exercises such as repetition in rehearsals, and discussions for how to set up a facilitated Meisner group.
Mel Brooks: Disobedient Jew (Jewish Lives)
by Jeremy DauberA spirited dive into the life and career of a performer, writer, and director who dominated twentieth-century American comedy Mel Brooks, born Melvin Kaminsky in Brooklyn in 1926, is one of the great comic voices of the twentieth century. Having won almost every entertainment award there is, Brooks has straddled the line between outsider and insider, obedient and rebellious, throughout his career, making out-of-bounds comedy the American mainstream. Jeremy Dauber argues that throughout Brooks’s extensive body of work—from Your Show of Shows to Blazing Saddles to Young Frankenstein to Spaceballs—the comedian has seen the most success when he found a balance between his unflagging, subversive, manic energy and the constraints imposed by comedic partners, the Hollywood system, and American cultural mores. Dauber also explores how Brooks’s American Jewish humor went from being solely for niche audiences to an essential part of the American mainstream, paving the way for generations of Jewish (and other) comedians to come.
Melancholy Emotion in Contemporary Cinema: A Spinozian Analysis of Film Experience (Routledge Advances in Film Studies)
by Francesco SticchiThis work outlines a new methodology for film analysis based on the radical materialist thought of Baruch Spinoza, re-evaluating contemporary cognitive media theory and philosophical theories on the emotional and intellectual aspects of film experience. Sticchi’s exploration of Spinozian philosophy creates an experiential constructive model to blend the affective and intellectual aspects of cognition, and to combine it with different philosophical interpretations of film theory. Spinoza’s embodied philosophy rejected logical and ethical dualisms, and established a perfect parallelism between sensation and reason and provides the opportunity to address negative emotions and sad passions without referring exclusively to traditional notions such as catharsis or sublimation, and to put forth a practical/embodied notion of Film-Philosophy. This new analytical approach is tested on four case studies, films that challenge the viewer’s emotional engagement since they display situations of cosmic failure and depict controversial and damaged characters: A Serious Man (2009); Melancholia (2011); The Act of Killing (2012) and Only Lovers Left Alive (2013). This book is an important addition to the literature in Film Studies, particularly in Cognitive Film Theory and Philosophy of Film. Its affective and semantic analyses of film experience (studies of embodied conceptualisation), connecting Spinoza’s thought to the analysis of audiovisual media, will also be of interest to Philosophy scholars and in academic courses of film theory, film-philosophy and cognitive film studies.
Melancholy Emotion in Contemporary Cinema: A Spinozian Analysis of Film Experience (Routledge Advances in Film Studies)
by Francesco SticchiThis work outlines a new methodology for film analysis based on the radical materialist thought of Baruch Spinoza, re-evaluating contemporary cognitive media theory and philosophical theories on the emotional and intellectual aspects of film experience. Sticchi’s exploration of Spinozian philosophy creates an experiential constructive model to blend the affective and intellectual aspects of cognition, and to combine it with different philosophical interpretations of film theory. Spinoza’s embodied philosophy rejected logical and ethical dualisms, and established a perfect parallelism between sensation and reason and provides the opportunity to address negative emotions and sad passions without referring exclusively to traditional notions such as catharsis or sublimation, and to put forth a practical/embodied notion of Film-Philosophy. This new analytical approach is tested on four case studies, films that challenge the viewer’s emotional engagement since they display situations of cosmic failure and depict controversial and damaged characters: A Serious Man (2009); Melancholia (2011); The Act of Killing (2012) and Only Lovers Left Alive (2013). This book is an important addition to the literature in Film Studies, particularly in Cognitive Film Theory and Philosophy of Film. Its affective and semantic analyses of film experience (studies of embodied conceptualisation), connecting Spinoza’s thought to the analysis of audiovisual media, will also be of interest to Philosophy scholars and in academic courses of film theory, film-philosophy and cognitive film studies.
The Melancholy Lens: Loss and Mourning in American Avant-Garde Cinema
by Tony PipoloThe impact of significant loss has exerted a powerful influence on several American avant-garde filmmakers . The Melancholy Lens offers a detailed look at biographical and psychological factors discernible in the art of Maya Deren, Stan Brakhage, Gregory Markopoulos, Robert Beavers, and Ernie Gehr with an aim toward a greater understanding of their work.
The Melancholy Lens: Loss and Mourning in American Avant-Garde Cinema
by Tony PipoloThe impact of significant loss has exerted a powerful influence on several American avant-garde filmmakers . The Melancholy Lens offers a detailed look at biographical and psychological factors discernible in the art of Maya Deren, Stan Brakhage, Gregory Markopoulos, Robert Beavers, and Ernie Gehr with an aim toward a greater understanding of their work.
Melodrama in Contemporary Film and Television
by Michael StewartMelodrama in Contemporary Film and Television debates the ways in which melodrama expresses and gives meaning to: trauma and pathos; memory and historical re-visioning; home and borders; gendered and queer relations; the family and psychic identities; the national and emerging public cultures; and morality and ethics.
Melodrama, Self and Nation in Post-War British Popular Film (Routledge Advances in Film Studies)
by Johanna LaitilaThis book investigates the portrayal of nationalities and sexualities in British post-Second World War crime film and melodrama. By focussing on these genres, and looking at the concept of melodrama as an analytical tool apt for the analysis of both sexuality and nation, the book offers insight into the desires, fears, and anxieties of post-war culture. The problem of returning to ‘normalcy’ after the war is one of the recurring themes discussed; alienation from society, family, and the self were central issues for both women and men in the post-war years, and the book examines the anxieties surrounding these social changes in the films of the period. In particular, it explores heterosexuality and nationality as some of the most prominent frameworks for the construction of identities in our time, structures that, for all their centrality, are made invisible in our culture.
Melodrama, Self and Nation in Post-War British Popular Film (Routledge Advances in Film Studies)
by Johanna LaitilaThis book investigates the portrayal of nationalities and sexualities in British post-Second World War crime film and melodrama. By focussing on these genres, and looking at the concept of melodrama as an analytical tool apt for the analysis of both sexuality and nation, the book offers insight into the desires, fears, and anxieties of post-war culture. The problem of returning to ‘normalcy’ after the war is one of the recurring themes discussed; alienation from society, family, and the self were central issues for both women and men in the post-war years, and the book examines the anxieties surrounding these social changes in the films of the period. In particular, it explores heterosexuality and nationality as some of the most prominent frameworks for the construction of identities in our time, structures that, for all their centrality, are made invisible in our culture.
The Melodramatic Public: Film Form and Spectatorship in Indian Cinema
by R. VasudevanWhat does it mean to say Indian movies are melodramatic? How do film audiences engage with socio-political issues? What role has cinema played in the emergence of new economic forms, consumer cultures and digital technologies in a globalizing India? Ravi Vasudevan addresses these questions in a wide-ranging analysis of Indian cinema.
Melody (Oberon Modern Plays)
by Douglas Maxwell"My heart had broken. Cracked like a paving stone tapped by a mallet. All things in life which require effort - pleasure, passion, wit and thought - are impossible when your heart is cracked. And it's also very hard to get out of bed" Tonight everything must go.Melody's got secrets. Dirty, dark, sick-to-the-bottom-of-your-stomach secrets that she's hidden away from for years. The tattoos up her arms tell part of the story, but the truth is a lot more complicated. John, the boyfriend, thinks he knows Melody but he doesn't know the half of it. To him, it's just a question of presentation. Olive, Melody's irascible almost-mother-in-law, thinks she knows all about it. She isn't afraid to put her oar in, but she's got her version of events to hide. Ashley turns up at Melody's door on a mission to reveal everything. Only she doesn't know the full picture.The pressure that's been building up for years is about to boil over. Melody premiered at the Traverse Theatre in March 2006.
Members Only (Oberon Modern Plays)
by Chris Campbell Fabrice Roger-LacanWho was it who said that a friend is someone you can phone in the middle of the night and say, "I've just killed a man" and he'll say "OK, where's the body?"Adrien and Bernard are lifelong friends and business partners. It's Bernard's fortieth birthday. But Adrien can't come. Adrien has a big night at his club.And the crash starts there.An intimate, fast moving, cruel and tender comedy about friendship, obsession and the absurdity of desire. An epic journey from small things to the big one. "There are no rules for friendship, but there are...guidelines"Members Only opened at the Trafalgar Studios in March 2006.
Memento (Philosophers on Film)
by Andrew KaniaWithin a short space of time, the film Memento has already been hailed as a modern classic. Memorably narrated in reverse, from the perspective of Leonard Shelby, the film’s central character, it follows Leonard’s chaotic and visceral quest to discover the identity of his wife’s killer and avenge her murder, despite his inability to form new long-term memories. This is the first book to explore and address the myriad philosophical questions raised by the film, concerning personal identity, free will, memory, knowledge, and action. It also explores problems in aesthetics raised by the film through its narrative structure, ontology, and genre. Beginning with a helpful introduction that places the film in context and maps out its complex structure, specially commissioned chapters examine the following topics: memory, emotion, and self-consciousness agency, free will, and responsibility personal identity narrative and popular cinema the film genre of neo-noir Memento and multimedia Including annotated further reading at the end of each chapter, Memento is essential reading for students interested in philosophy and film studies.