Category: film

Previously on some recent books on cinema (I)

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Dell’Aria, A. (2021). The Moving Image as Public Art: Sidewalk Spectators and Modes of Enchantment, Palgrave & Macmillan.

Existing outside the boundaries of mainstream cinema, the field of experimental film and artists’ moving image presents a radical challenge not only to the conventions of that cinema but also to the social and cultural norms it represents. In offering alternative ways of seeing and experiencing the world, it brings to the fore different visions and dissenting voices. In recent years, scholarship in this area has moved from a marginal to a more central position as it comes to bear upon critical topics such as medium-specificity, ontology, the future of cinema, changes in cinematic exhibition and the complex interrelationships between moving image technology, aesthetics, discourses, and institutions. This book series stakes out exciting new directions for the study of alternative film practice–from the black box to the white cube, from film to digital, crossing continents and disciplines, and developing fresh theoretical insights and revised histories. Although employing the terms ‘experimental film’ and ‘artists’ moving image’, we see these as interconnected practices and seek to interrogate the crossovers and spaces between different kinds of oppositional filmmaking.

1. Introduction
2. Enchantment: Encountering Moving Images on Urban Surfaces
3. Commercial Breaks: Intra-spectacular Public Art
4. Screen Spaces: Zones of Interaction and Recognition
5. The Light Festival Phenomenon
6. Precarious Platforms: The Paradox of Permanent Moving Images
7. Superimposition: Forms of Moving Image Site-Specificity
8. Postscript: Reflections from a Summer Without Public Space

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Combe, K. (2021), Speculative Satire in Contemporary Literature and Film: Rant Against the Regime, Routledge.

Since 1980, when neoliberal and neoconservative forces began their hostile takeover of western culture, a new type of political satire has emerged that works to unmask and deter those toxic doctrines. Literary and cultural critic Kirk Combe calls this new form of satire the Rant. The Rant is grim, highly imaginative, and complex in its blending of genres. It mixes facets of satire, science fiction, and monster tale to produce widely consumed spectacles—major studio movies, popular television/streaming series, bestselling novels—designed to disturb and to provoke. The Rant targets what Combe calls the Regime. Simply put, the Regime is the sum of the dangerous social, economic, and political orthodoxies spurred on by neoliberal and neoconservative polity. Such practices include free-market capitalism, corporatism, militarism, religiosity, imperialism, racism, patriarchy, and so on. In the Rant, then, we have a unique and wholly contemporary genre of political expression and protest: speculative satire.

1. The Briefest of Introductions: What, Why, How
2. The Rant
3. The Regime
4. Ranting Against the Regime
5. Living Under a Lousy Orthodoxy
6. Special Topic Rants
7. Neoliberal A.I.
8. The Briefest of Conclusions: So What? Why Bother?
9. How Does This Matter?

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Klecker, C. & Grabher, Gudrun M. (ed.), 2022, The Disfigured Face in American Literature, Film, and Television, Routledge.

The face, being prominent and visible, is the foremost marker of a person’s identity as well as their major tool of communication. Facial disfigurements, congenital or acquired, not only erase these significant capacities, but since ancient times, they have been conjured up as outrageous and terrifying, often connoting evil or criminality in their associations – a dark secret being suggested “behind the mask,” the disfigurement indicating punishment for sin. Complemented by an original poem by Kenneth Sherman and a plastic surgeon’s perspective on facial disfigurement, this book investigates the exploitation of these and further stereotypical tropes by literary authors, filmmakers, and showrunners, considering also the ways in which film, television, and the publishing industry have more recently tried to overcome negative codifications of facial disfigurement, in the search for an authentic self behind the veil of facial disfigurement. An exploration of fictional representations of the disfigured face, this book will appeal to scholars of sociology, cultural and media studies, American studies and literary studies with interests in representations of disfigurement and the Other.

1. Ugliness as deformity in The Life and Loves of a She-Devil and Flavor of the Month
2. Drawing a broader picture of facial disfigurement: Moving beyond “narrative prosthesis” in James Hankins’ Drawn
3. Writing against the stigma: Facial disfigurement in R. J. Palacio’s Wonder
4. Song of my self or “I become the wounded person”: Kenneth Sherman’s poetic tribute to Elephant Man
5. Loving the monster: The Elephant Man as modern fable
6. Facial disfigurement on screen: James Bond and the politics of portraying the post-9/11 terrorist
7. Masculinity and facial disfigurement in contemporary US television characters
8. Fictional ‘dissections’ of a medical curiosity? Facial disfigurement in Grey’s Anatomy

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Law, H. L. (2021), Ambiguity and Film Criticism: Reasonable Doubt, Palgrave Macmillan.

This book defends an account of ambiguity which illuminates the aesthetic possibilities of film and the nature of film criticism. Ambiguity typically describes the condition of multiple meanings. But we can find multiple meanings in what appears unambiguous to us. So, what makes ambiguity ambiguous? This study argues that a sense of uncertainty is vital to the concept. Ambiguity is what presses us to inquire into our puzzlement over a movie, to persistently ask “why is it as it is?” Notably, this account of the concept is also an account of its criticism. It recognises that a satisfying assessment of what is ambiguous involves both our reason and doubt; that is, reason and doubt can work together in our practice of reading. This book, then, considers ambiguity as a form of reasonable doubt, one that invites us to reflect on our critical efforts, rethinking the operation of film criticism.

1. Introduction: Why Is It as It Is?
2. Difficulty of Reading
3. Perplexity of Style
4. Depth of Suggestion
5. Uncertainty of Viewpoint
6. Threat of Insignificance
7. Concluding Remarks: Reasonable Doubt

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Jayamanne, L. (2021), Poetic Cinema and the Spirit of the Gift in the Films of Pabst, Parajanov, Kubrick, and Ruiz, Amsterdam University Press.

Poetic Cinema and the Spirit of the Gift in the Films of Pabst, Parajanov, Kubrick and Ruiz explores the poetic thinking of these master filmmakers. It examines theoretical ideas, including Maori anthropology of the gift and Sufi philosophy of the image, to conceive film as abundant gift. Elaborating on how this gift may be received, this book imagines film as our indispensable mentor – a wild mentor who teaches us how to think with moving images by learning to perceive evanescent forms that simply appear and disappear.

1. Foreword: In Memory of Thomas Elsaesser
2. Introduction: Spirit of the Gift: Cinematic Reciprocity
3. A Gift Economy: G. W. Pabst’s Pandora’s Box (1929)
4. Fabric of Thought: Sergei Parajanov
5. Nicole Kidman in Blue Light: Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut (1999)
6. Ornamentation and Pathology: Raúl Ruiz’s Klimt (2006)
7. Afterword: Poetics of Film Pedagogy