Traditions in World Cinema

Over the last three decades, Russian filmmakers and audiences have engaged with documentary cinema with an intensity unseen since the 1920s, when Soviet documentarians helped pioneer the mode. What started as a trickle of artistically minded films in the 1990s, expanded in the 2000s to include a broad range of works, chief among them films seeking to re-evaluate the country’s past and take stock of its present. This efflorescence went hand in hand with the creation of new institutions—film schools, festivals, and online platforms. The rise of YouTube, in particular, helped propel documentary into the cultural mainstream. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022 and the Kremlin’s subsequent crackdown on independent media put an end to all this. The New Russian Documentary thus seeks to introduce readers to the key figures, institutions, and practices involved in this vibrant, if ultimately doomed, oppositionary movement.

Applys a noir lens to films which defy easy generic categorization

• Revaluation of classical-era international films through focus on noir elements in films otherwise not considered film noir
• Consideration of liminality as a driving feature of film noir, including genre, cultural norm, border, and boundary crossings
• A case study approach that explores individual film examples within critical, production, and historical contexts

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, involving more debates than consensus about what constitutes a noir.

This collection 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 emphasis on issues of liminality. Through illuminating case studies of single films from nations including Argentina, the former Czechoslovakia, France, Great Britain, Poland, Spain, and the US, authors 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.

Examines Thai horror film and the central role this genre plays in Thailand’s film industry

• The first book to study the prolific horror genre of Southeast Asia’s most internationally renowned film industry
• Provides an alternative way to examine Thai cinema through narrative structure and viewing context
• Considers how the social changes in Thailand since the post-WW2 period have impacted upon Thai film style
• Provides a new international case study of the horror genre
• Examines the changing political position of Thai horror
• Highlights the continuing significance of Thai horror films in the digital age and throughout the Southeast Asia region

This book focuses on the most significant and dominant characteristic of Thai cinema throughout its history: the Thai incarnation of the horror genre and the central role this plays in Thailand’s film industry.

Tracing the development of Thai cinema throughout wider contextual changes, the book 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 (both formal and thematic) that have shaped Thai cinema as a national industry. Looking at these films through 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.

Compares censorship’s distinct and varying profiles across five different national contexts - U.S.A., Britain, Canada, Australia and France

• Historical analysis of causes and consequences of the transition away from formal censor boards and toward current practices of classification and ratings
• Detailed textual analysis of the relevant films to contextualize and evaluate rhetorical arguments put forth against them in controversial public receptions
• Draws parallels between the rhetorical practices of censors, and those of the critics, distributors, and advertisers that have assumed the social control of film culture

Film Regulation in a Cultural Context examines cinematic works that provoked censorious impulses throughout the shift away from formal film censorship in the late modern West. The public controversies surrounding Fat Girl, Irreìversible, Ken Park, The Brown Bunny, Wolf Creek and Welcome to New York, each highlight significant stages in this cultural shift, which necessitated policy revision within Britain, Canada and Australia’s institutions of film censorship.

Sacco draws parallels and distinctions between governmental film regulation policies and the social control mechanisms at work within a wider network of institutions, including news media, film festivals and advocacy groups. He examines the means by, and ends to which the social control of film content persists in a national ‘post-censorship’ media landscape, and how concepts of film ‘classification’ manifest in commercial market contexts, journalistic criticism and practices of distribution and advertising.

Offers an important insight into the formative moments of transnational film culture in Australia

• Provides vibrant textual studies of under-evaluated Australian international pictures
• Develops an understanding of international film production in the years following WWII and before the Australian film revival of the 1970s
• Corrects the perception that there was no significant feature film production in Australia after the 1930s and before the revival
• Offers background and important precedents for the more recent practices of global co-productions and ‘Hollywood Down-under’

Australian International Pictures examines the concept and definition of Australian film in relation to a range of local, international and global practices and trends that blur neat categorisations of national cinema. Although international co-production is particularly acute in the present day, this book examines the porous nature of Australian International filmmaking, and the intriguing transnational and cross-cultural formations created by globally targeted but locally focussed films made in Australia in the period 1946–75.

Case Studies:

• The Overlanders (1946) and Ealing Down Under
• Kangaroo (1952)
• On the Beach (1959)
• The Sundowners (1960)
• The Drifting Avenger (1968)
• Age of Consent (1969)
• Color Me Dead (1970)
• Ned Kelly (1970)
• Walkabout (1971)
• Wake in Fright (1971)
The Man from Hong Kong (1975)

Offers a sustained analysis of a cluster of French films made during, and in response to, the Algerian War of Independence

• Identifies and analyses a previously unidentified trend in modern French cinema
• Addresses a ‘late-colonial’ gap in scholarship on cultural histories of de-colonisation, between the colonial and the post-colonial
• Defines late-colonial cinema as trans-generic ‘body’ of films, bound up with various cinematic traditions and tendencies, including the French New Wave, film noir, the World War Two combat film, observational documentaries, Soviet Montage cinema, parallel cinema, and settler cinema
• Combines textual analysis of fifteen case studies with contextual analysis of late-colonial French culture, politics and society
• Deploys a different critical approach in each chapter. These include star studies, documentary studies, gender studies and space studies, among others

Deploying the term ‘late-colonial’ to describe a body of largely French films made during, and in response to, the Algerian War of Independence (1954-1962), this book revolves around one question – what is late-colonial French cinema? – generating two answers.

Firstly, Sharpe argues that late-colonial cinema represents a formally and thematically important, yet unappreciated tendency in French cinema; one that has largely been overshadowed by a scholarly focus on the French New Wave. Secondly, Sharpe contends that whilst late-colonial French cinema cannot be seen as a coherent cinematic movement, school of filmmaking, or genre, it can be seen as a coherent ethical trend, with many of the fifteen central case studies explored in Late-colonial French Cinema filtering the Algerian War of Independence through a discourse of ‘redemptive pacifism’.

Offers the first book-length study of Norwegian horror cinema

Since the early 2000s, Norway has produced a regular stream of horror cinema including Cold Prey, Troll Hunter, Thelma and The Innocents. Norwegian Nightmares investigates the origins of this horror wave and charts its unique characteristics in relation to the chiefly American influences that inspired it. Norwegian nature and wilderness, in particular an obsession with dark and deadly water, give shape and national identity to Norway’s tradition of horror cinema. Andresen studies the cinematic journey to the dark side of a wealthy, ostensibly peaceful and harmonious social democracy on the fringes of the Arctic.

Case studies include:

• Dark Woods and Dark Woods 2 (Pål Øie, 2003 and 2015)
• Cold Prey trilogy (Roar Uthaug et al, 2006-2010)
• Next Door and The Monitor (Pål Sletaune, 2005 and 2011)
• Thelma (Joachim Trier, 2017)
• The Innocents (Eskil Vogt, 2021)
• Troll Hunter (André Øvredal, 2010)
• Ragnarok (Mikkel Sandemose, 2013)
• Lake of Death (Nini Bull Robsahm, 2019)

Investigates how film noir has been received, adapted and developed in Greece, from the 1940s to the present

• Traces the evolution of a scholarly neglected – in the Greek context – film genre; it introduces an original corpus of texts extending from the 1940s to the present
• Offers a panoramic overview of leading Greek auteur figures, from Nikos Koundouros and Tonia Marketaki to Theo Angelopoulos and Nikos Nikolaidis, viewing their work, for the first time, from a film-noir stylistic and thematic perspective
• Presents the cultural context of a noir universe in post-WWII Greece, including: pulp fiction and crime literature, jazz and pop music, media discourses, Greek commercial cinema’s advertising and promotional strategies
• Explores the historical representations and ideological debates reflected in the Greek film noir in the aftermath of WWII and the Greek Civil War and traces the political re-appropriation of the genre by the left-wing filmmakers of New Greek Cinema during the military junta (1967-1974)
• Explains the reasons behind the post-2009 crisis revival of the noir genre in contemporary Greek cinema and the Greek Weird Wave
• Confirms noir’s particular tendency to transcend boundaries as it spills out onto other genres, producing innovative hybrids; and its ability to express the gender and socio-political anxieties of its era
• Presents an argument for the transnational character of the noir phenomenon and the complex relationship of European cinemas with Hollywood

Offering the first comprehensive study of Greek film noir, this book explores the reception and influence of U.S. and European film noir and neo-noir in Greece and their effect on Greek filmmaking. Employing theoretical frameworks from New Film History, it offers a fresh look at underrated or neglected cultural products to provide insights into Greek modernity and reveal the affinities of established Greek auteurs with the film-noir tradition. Firmly establishing Greece on the film noir cinematic map, it provides a panoramic overview of leading Greek auteurs, from Nikos Koundouros and Maria Plyta to Theo Angelopoulos and Nikos Nikolaidis, whose work is innovatively viewed from an angle of film-noir style and thematics.

Provides the first study of South Africa’s B-Scheme cinema

• Identifies a South African cinema of low-budget blaxploitation
• Features many interviews with South African filmmakers, conducted as part of the research
• Provided audiences of the time with unique, apartheid-era adaptations of popular blaxploitation films such as Shaft (1971) and Super Fly (1972)

Images of Apartheid: Filmmaking on the Fringe in the Old South Africa is an exploration of the low budget, black-action cinema that emerged in South Africa during the 1970s and led to subsequent gangster and race-conflict films that defined an era of prolific genre activity, from Joe Bullet (1973) to American Ninja 4 (1990). Contextualising and documenting the cheap, government-funded ‘B-Scheme’ films, largely unseen since the fall of the National Party, but also acknowledging the impact of international co-productions such as The Wild Geese (1978) and locally made provocation, including the classic Mapantsula (1988), this study is an exhaustive tour of race-representation and state-subsidised subversion. Also discussing the political turbulence of the era, Images of Apartheid argues that so-called ‘ZAxploitation’ should be considered within both localised and wider international paracinematic networks of genre adaptation, resulting in the identification of a uniquely South African form of trash and treasure, and schlock and awe.

Establishes the importance of the rockumentary in documentary studies and in popular music studies

• Transforms the study of rockumentaries, documentary studies and popular music studies
• Provides in-depth discussions of different sub-genres and forms
• Case studies include Long Strange Trip, Truth or Dare, Some Kind of Monster, Shut Up and Sing and I'm Not There

Mapping the Rockumentary: Images of Sound and Fury is the first anthology to explore the rockumentary as a central component of both the documentary and world cinema. The book includes case studies of bands and performers such as The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, The Clash, Madonna and Metallica and performers from Asia, Europe and the Americas, making the case for rockumentaries as part of an established and ever-evolving cinematic tradition. With an international and transdisciplinary approach, and addressing rocumentaries in film, television and on the internet, the book explores the form’s rich history from the 1950s to the present day – and beyond.

A critical and comprehensive analysis of post-2008 Balkan cinema through a transnational and cross-cultural approach

• Comprehensive account of all national cinemas from the Balkan region
• Emphasis on co-productions, transnational exchanges and global circulation
• Reference tables on national and regional film supporting institutions and film festivals
• Focus on small and as-yet underrepresented cinemas, such as Montenegro, Kosovo, North Macedonia, and Albania

The first inclusive collection to examine post-2008 developments in Balkan cinema, this book brings together a number of international scholars to explore its industrial contexts and textual dimensions. With a focus on transnational links, global networks and cross-cultural exchanges, the book addresses the role of national and supranational institutions as well as film festival networks in supporting film production, distribution and reception. It also identifies key characteristics in the subject matter and aesthetics of Balkan films made since the global economic crisis. Through critical and comprehensive country profiles, and with a focus on smaller and underrepresented cinemas from Montenegro, Kosovo, North Macedonia and Albania, the collection argues for the continuing relevance of the concept of ‘Balkan cinema’.

An indepth study of recent and contemporary British realist cinema

• Challenges existing debates about realism and British cinema, and sets out new ground in debates around British cinema
• Covers in depth some of the key British filmmakers of the last 20 years, such as Shane Meadows, Andrea Arnold and Joanna Hogg
• Addresses recent and contemporary British films which are yet to otherwise receive sustained critical attention
• Combines close readings of the films with historically-based, contextual analysis

The tradition of British realism has changed dramatically over the last 20 years, where films by directors such as Duane Hopkins, Joanna Hogg, Andrea Arnold, Shane Meadows and Clio Barnard have suggested a markedly poetic turn. This new realism rejects the instrumentalism and didacticism of filmmakers like Ken Loach in favour of lyrical and often ambiguous encounters with place, where the physical processes of lived experience interacts with the rhythms of everyday life. Taking these 5 filmmakers as case studies, this book seeks to explore in depth this new tradition of British cinema – and in the process, it reignites debates over realism that have concerned scholars for decades.

Rethinks the transnational dimensions of the contemporary French film industry

The digitised spectacles conjured by a word like ‘blockbuster’ may create a certain cognitive dissonance with received ideas about French cinema – long celebrated as a model for philosophical, economic and aesthetic resistance to globalised popular culture. While the Gallic ‘cultural exception’ remains a forceful current to this day, this book shows how the onslaught of Hollywood mega-franchises and new media platforms since the 1980s has also provoked an overtly commercialised response from French producers eager to redefine the stakes and scope of their own traditions.

Cutting a swath through recent French-produced cinema, French Blockbusters offers the first book-length consideration of the theoretical implications, historical impact and cultural consequences of recent popular films that are rapidly changing what it means to make – or to see – a ‘French’ film today. From English-language action vehicles like Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (Besson, 2017) to revisionist historical films like Of Gods and Men (Beauvois, 2011) and crowd-pleasing comedies like Intouchables (Toledano & Nakache, 2011), the variously filiated ‘local blockbusters’ from contemporary France brim with the seeds of cultural contradiction, but also with the energy of a counter-history.

Considers transnational, national and regional concepts within contemporary francophone Belgian cinema

Francophone Belgian Cinema offers an original critical analysis of filmmaking in an oft-neglected ‘national’ and regional cinema. The book draws key distinctions between the local, national, small national, regional and transnational frameworks in both representational and industrial terms. Alongside the Dardenne brothers, this book considers four promising Francophone Belgian filmmakers who have received limited critical attention in academic publications on contemporary European cinema: Joachim Lafosse, Olivier Masset-Depasse, Lucas Belvaux and Bouli Lanners. Exploring these filmmakers’ themes of post-industrialism, paternalism, the fractured nuclear family and spatial dynamics, as well as their work in the more commercial road movie and polar genres, Jamie Steele analyses their stylistic continuities and filiation. This is complemented by an analysis of how the industrial aspects of film production, distribution and exhibition contribute to the creation of both a regional and transnational cinema.

Key features

• An industrial and representational analysis of films produced in Wallonia since the early 2000s
• Includes detailed case studies of five key filmmakers to emerge from Belgium and Wallonia: the Dardenne brothers; Joachim Lafosse; Olivier Masset-Depasse; Lucas Belvaux; and Bouli Lanners
• Provides a new outlook on European film cultures and cinemas from small nations that share linguistic partners

A globalized history of Nordic film cultures in a transnational context

• Introduces the concept of “Elsewheres” and “Cinemas of Elsewhere” – of value for many small national film cultures
• Promotes an understanding of Scandinavian cinemas as world cinemas
• Examines overlooked and little-known aspects of how Nordic cinemas have been funded, produced, circulated, received, appropriated and re-imagined outside of Scandinavia
• Addresses cinemas of exile, diaspora, migration, emigration and immigration
• Integrates examples of early and silent cinema, popular cinema, art cinema, documentary, shorts, experimental film, expanded media, the avant-garde, video art, music videos, ethnography, television and digital representation
• Engages with questions of colonialism, gender, multi-lingualism, inter- and cross-cultural representation, film practice in the diaspora and visual anthropology
• Engages with Indigenous cinemas of the North

Nordic Film Cultures and Cinemas of Elsewhere introduces a new concept to Nordic film studies as well as to other small national, transnational and world cinema traditions. Examining overlooked ‘elsewheres’, the book presents Nordic cinemas as international, cosmopolitan, diasporic and geographically dispersed, from their beginnings in the early silent period to their present 21st-century dynamics.

Exploring both canonical works by directors like Ingmar Bergman and Lars von Trier, as well as a wide range of unknown or overlooked narratives of movement, synthesis and resistance, the book offers a new model of inquiry into a multi-varied Scandinavian cultural lineage, and into small nation and pan-regional world cinemas.

Contributors

• Julie K. Allen, Brigham Young University
• Linda Badley, Middle Tennessee State University
• Ana Bento-Ribeiro, Paris Nanterre University
• Benjamin Bigelow, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities
• Mats Bjorkin, University of Gothenburg
• Ib Bondebjerg, University of Copenhagen
• Patrick Ellis, Georgia Institute of Technology
• Kim Khavar Fahlstedt, Uppsala University
• Annie Fee, University of Oslo
• Saniya Lee Ghanoui, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
• Mette Hjort, Hong Kong Baptist University
• Ingrid S. Holtar, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU)
• Gunnar Iversen, Carleton University
• Lill-Ann Körber, Aarhus University
• Mariah Larsson, Linnaeus University
• Anneli Lehtisalo, University of Tampere
• Arne Lunde, UCLA
• Scott MacKenzie, Queen’s University
• Björn Nordfjörd, St. Olaf College
• Eva Novrup Redvall, University of Copenhagen
• Anna Westerstahl Stenport, Georgia Institute of Technology
• Emil Stjernholm, Lund University
• Troy Storfjell, Pacific Lutheran University
• C. Claire Thomson, University College London
• Casper Tybjerg, University of Copenhagen
• Boel Ulfsdotter, University of Gothenburg
• Ann-Kristin Wallengren, Lund University
• Patrick Wen, UCLA
• Lynn R. Wilkinson, University of Texas at Austin

The first collection of essays to comprehensively map out New Romanian Cinema

Covering more than forty films made since 2001 – including The Death of Mr. Lazarescu, The Paper will be Blue, Police, Adjective and Beyond the Hills – this pioneering collection of essays on New Romanian Cinema is the first to contextualise it aesthetically, theoretically and historically. Scholars from across Europe and North America are brought together, reflecting on the realism, minimalism and intermedial artifice of New Romanian cinemas, on its approaches to issues of national and gender identity, and on its unique convergence of ethics and aesthetics.

With its thorough bibliographic and filmographic references, and a comprehensive historical overview, the anthology represents a systematic guide to New Romanian Cinema as a consolidated cinematic movement, and highlights its potential as a rich interdisciplinary field of study.

Contributors

• Melinda Blos-Jáni, Sapientia University, Cluj-Napoca
• Mircea Deaca, University of Bucharest
• Dana Duma, Bucharest National University of Theatre and Film
• Kalling Heck, University of Redlands
• Raluca Iacob, independent researcher and film curator
• Liviu Lutas, Linnaeus Universit
• Dominique Nasta, Université Libre de Bruxelles
• Ágnes Pethő, Sapientia Hungarian University, Cluj-Napoca
• Doru Pop, Babeş-Bolyai University, Cluj
• Katalin Sándor, Babeş-Bolyai University, Cluj
• Christina Stojanova, University of Regina
• Irina Trocan, Bucharest National University of Theatre and Film
• Marian Țuțui, Hyperion University
• Ioana Uricaru, Middlebury College
• Andrea Virginás, Sapientia University, Cluj-Napoca

The first book-length study in English of a national corpus of state-sponsored informational film

For three decades, state-sponsored short filmmaking educated Danish citizens, promoted Denmark to the world, and shaped the careers of renowned directors like Carl Th. Dreyer. 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. Examining the life cycle of a representative selection of films, and discussing their preservation and mediation in the digital age, this book presents a detailed case study of how informational cinema is shaped by, and indeed shapes, its cultural, political and technological contexts.

Key features

• Combines close textual analysis of a broad range of films with detailed accounts of their commissioning, production, distribution and reception in Denmark and abroad
• Considers a broad range of genres and sub-genres, including industrial process films, public information films, art films, the city symphony, the essay film, and many more
• Maps international networks of informational and documentary films in the post-war period
• Explores the role of informational film in Danish cultural and political history

Access additional resources on the Danish Film Institute website

Claire Thomson discusses Danish public information films on the BBC podcast

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Explores the neglected subject of Gothic B-movies in the Americas, Europe, Asia and Africa

• Examines the Gothic in B-movie narratives and techniques in different national cinemas
• Covers US, British, Spanish, Turkish and Japanese Gothic, as well as the influence of Gothic on Scandinavian, Chinese, Tanzanian and Indian low-budget cinema
• Includes chapters on the transnational tradition of B-movie Gothic from the 1950s to the present
• Explores how modes and tropes from Gothic fiction have been integrated into B-movies

Following the Second World War, low-budget B-movies that explored and exploited Gothic narratives and aesthetics became a significant cinematic expression of social and cultural anxieties. Influencing new trends in European, Asian and African filmmaking, these films carried on the tradition established by the Gothic novel, and yet they remain part of a largely neglected subject. B-Movie Gothic: International Perspectives examines the influence of Gothic B-movies on the cinematic traditions of the United States, Britain, Scandinavia, Spain, Turkey, Japan, Hong Kong and India, highlighting their transgressive, transnational and provocative nature. It shows how B-movie Gothic is a relentlessly creative form, filled with political tensions and moving from shocking conservatism to profound social critique.

A fresh perspective on the hugely successful Latin American films released at the turn of the 21st century

In the late 1990s and early 2000s Latin American films like Amores perros, Y tu mamá también and Cidade de Deus enjoyed an unprecedented level of critical and commercial success in the world market. Benefitting from external financial and/or creative input, these films were considered examples of transnational cinema. Through a textual analysis of six filmmakers (Alejandro González Iñárritu, Alfonso Cuarón, Guillermo del Toro, Fernando Meirelles, Walter Salles and Juan José Campanella), this book examines these transnational films and the subsequent wave of commercially successful ‘deterritorialised’ films by the same directors. It argues that although films produced within the structures of the United States film industry may have been commercially successful, they are not necessarily apolitical or totally divorced from key notions of national or continental identity. Bringing a new perspective to the films of Latin America’s transnational auteurs, this is a major contribution towards understanding how different genres function across different cultures.

Examines how Singapore cinema functions as a national 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. Set against the context of Singapore’s own trajectory of development, the book poses two central questions: how can the films of each period be considered ‘Singapore’ films, and how is this cinema specifically national? The book argues that the films of these three periods collectively constitute a national cinema through different performances of Singapore, offering a critical framework for understanding this cinema and its history in relation to the development of the country and the national.

Key Features

• The first full length, critical study of Singapore cinema
• Includes case studies of films from the golden age of the 1950s and 60s, the post-studio 1970s, and the revival from the 1990s onwards
• Considers Singapore's cinema history and relationship with the national, building on developments in transnational cinema studies

Examines the coming-of-age genre – its themes, stylistic characteristics and cultural function in New Zealand’s national cinema

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. With chapters on landmark films like An Angel at My Table, Heavenly Creatures, Once Were Warriors and Boy, this book explores the influence of the French New Wave and European art cinema, and examines the dialogue between national cinema and a nation’s literature. Looking at the characteristics of an indigenous “Fourth Cinema,” as well as different perspectives on gendered and sexual identities, Coming-of-Age Cinema in New Zealand considers the evidence that these films provide of significant cultural shifts that have taken place or are in the process of taking place as New Zealanders’ discover their emerging national identity.

Case studies include:

• The God Boy (Murray Reece, 1976)
• Sleeping Dogs (Roger Donaldson, 1977)
• The Scarecrow (Sam Pillsbury, 1982)
• Vigil (Vincent Ward, 1984)
• Mauri (Merata Mita, 1988)
• An Angel at My Table (Jane Campion, 1990)
• Heavenly Creatures (Peter Jackson, 1994)
• Once Were Warriors (Lee Tamahori, 1994)
• Rain (Christine Jeffs, 2001)
• Whale Rider (Niki Caro, 2002)
• In My Father’s Den (Brad McGann, 2004)
• 50 Ways of Saying Fabulous (Stewart Main, 2005)
• Boy (Taika Waititi, 2010)
• Mahana (Lee Tamahori, 2016)
• Hunt for the Wilderpeople (Taika Waititi, 2016)

An in-depth exploration of film remakes within global media culture

Bringing together a range of international scholars, Transnational Film Remakes is the first edited collection to specifically focus on the phenomenon of cross-cultural remakes. Using a variety of case studies, from Hong Kong remakes of Japanese cinema to Bollywood remakes of Australian television, this book provides an analysis of cinematic remaking that moves beyond Hollywood to address the truly global nature of this phenomenon. Looking at iconic contemporary titles such as The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and Oldboy, as well as classics like La Bête Humaine and La Chienne, this book interrogates the fluid and dynamic ways in which texts are adapted and reworked across national borders to provide a distinctive new model for understanding these global cultural borrowings.

Read the introduction for free (pdf)

Contributors

• Carl R. Burgchardt, Colorado State University
• Kenneth Chan, University of Northern Colorado
• David Desser, University of Illinois
• David Scott Diffrient, Colorado State University
• Daniel Herbert, University of Michigan
• Michael Lawrence, University of Sussex
• Kathleen Loock, Freie Universität Berlin
• Daniel Martin, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST)
• Lucy Mazdon, University of Southampton
• R. Barton Palmer, Clemson University
• Rashna Wadia Richards, Rhodes College
• Iain Robert Smith, King’s College London
• Constantine Verevis, Monash University
• Andy Willis, University of Salford

Case studies include:

• The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011 / 2009)
• Scarlet Street (1945) / La Chienne (The Bitch, 1931)
• Human Desire (1954) / La Bête Humaine (The Human Beast, 1938)
• Quarantine (2008) / [REC] (2007)
• Come Out and Play (2012) / ¿Quién puede matar a un niño? (Who Can Kill a Child? 1976)
• Drakula İstanbul’da (Dracula in Istanbul 1953) / El Vampiro (The Vampire 1957) / Zinda Laash (The Living Corpse 1967)
• A Woman, a Gun and a Noodle Shop (2009) / Blood Simple (1984)
• Khoon Bhari Maang (Blood-Smeared Forehead, 1988) / Return to Eden (1983)
• Kaante (2002) / Reservoir Dogs (1992) / City on Fire (1987)
• The Parent Trap (1961) / Das doppelte Lottchen (1950)
• Le voyage du ballon rouge (Flight of the Red Balloon, 2007) / Le ballon rouge (The Red Balloon, 1956)
• Kuang lian shi (Summer Heat, 1968) / Kurutta Kajitsu (Crazed Fruit, 1956)
• Funny Games (2007 / 1997)
• Oldboy (2013 / 2003)

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An examination of contemporary French-language road movies within the cultural and political context of ‘New Europe’

Over the past two decades road cinema has become an increasingly popular form of expression for European directors. Focusing on a corpus of films from France, Belgium and Switzerland, including works by Ismaël Ferroukhi, Bouli Lanners, Aki Kaurismäki and Jacqueline Audry amongst many others, French-language Road Cinema contends that nowhere is the impulse to remap the spaces and identities of ‘New Europe’ more evident than in French-language cinema. Drawing on mobility studies, cultural geography and film theory, this innovative work sketches out the flexible yet distinctive parameters of contemporary French-language road cinema, and argues for an understanding of the ‘road movie’ not as a genre but as a thematic and formal template that crosses cinematic categories to bring together a wide array of films that narrate the movements of migrants, tourists and business executives.

Key Features

• The first monograph to focus on transnational French-language (from or co-produced by France, Belgium and Switzerland) European road cinema
• Each chapter analyses key formal characteristics of a carefully chosen selection of films through the optic of a significant cultural or political issue facing ‘New Europe’
• Examines the unique formal and thematic qualities of French-language European road movies in relationship to American and European traditions
• Case studies examine well-known films, as well as those that have not yet received scholarly attention but are commercially available with English subtitles
• Compares and contrasts more positive vantage points on cinematic mobility with recent migrant cinema

Read the introduction for free

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From classical to contemporary narratives, this book redefines the expressionist aesthetic

One of the most visually striking traditions in cinema, for too long Expressionism has been a neglected critical category of research in film history and aesthetics. The fifteen essays in this anthology remedies this by revisiting key German films like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) and Nosferatu (1922), and also provides original critical research into more obscure titles like Nerven (1919) and The Phantom Carriage (1921), films that were produced in the silent and early sound era in countries ranging from France, Sweden and Hungary, to the United States and Mexico.

An innovative and wide-ranging collection, Expressionism in the Cinema re-canonizes the classical Expressionist aesthetic, extending the critical and historical discussion beyond pre-existing scholarship into comparative and interdisciplinary areas of film research that reach across national boundaries.

Contributors

• Steve Choe, University of Iowa
• Paul Cuff, University of Warwick
• Thomas Elsaesser, University of Amsterdam
• Robert Guffey, California State University-Long Beach
• Graeme Harper, Oakland University (Michigan)
• David J. Hogan, Independent Scholar
• Mirjam Kappes, Independent Scholar
• Bernard McCarron, Independent Scholar
• Daniel Rafaelic, Independent Scholar
• Robert Singer, CUNY Graduate Center
• Philip Sipiora, University of South Florida
• John Soister, Independent Scholar

Situates, theorises and maps out cinematic slowness within contemporary global film production and across world cinema history

In the context of a frantic world that celebrates instantaneity and speed, a number of cinemas steeped in contemplation, silence and duration have garnered significant critical attention in recent years, thus resonating with a larger sociocultural movement whose aim is to rescue extended temporal structures from the accelerated tempo of late-capitalism. Although not part of a structured film movement, directors such as Carlos Reygadas, Tsai Ming-liang, Béla Tarr, Pedro Costa and Kelly Reichardt have been largely subsumed under the term ‘slow cinema’. But what exactly is slow cinema? Is it a strictly recent phenomenon or an overarching cinematic tradition? And how exactly do slow cinemas interrelate on an aesthetic, technical and political level?

Deploying the concept of slowness as an umbrella category under which filmmakers and traditions from different historical and geographical backgrounds can fruitfully converge, this innovative collection of essays interrogates and expands the frameworks that have generally informed slow cinema debates. Repositioning the term in a broader theoretical space, the book combines an array of fine-grained studies that will provide valuable insight into the notion of slowness in the cinema, while mapping out past and contemporary slow films across the globe.

Key features

• Establishes the significance of slow cinema studies in film scholarship
• Illuminates the interconnectedness of past and present-day world cinemas through the methodological and comparative prism of slowness
• Provides in-depth critical analyses of a wide variety of world cinema traditions and practices
• Intervenes in, and contributes to, key debates in current film scholarship: new technologies, art cinema, realism

Contributors

• Martin Brady teaches in the German and Film Studies Departments at King’s College London
• William Brown is Senior Lecturer in Film at the University of Roehampton, London
• Paul Cooke is Professor of German Cultural Studies and Director of the Centre for World Cinemas at the University of Leeds
• Glyn Davis is Chancellor’s Fellow and Reader in Screen Studies at the University of Edinburgh
• Elena Gorfinkel is Assistant Professor of Art History and Film Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
• Michael Gott is Assistant Professor of French at the University of Cincinnati, where he teaches courses in French and Francophone literature and cinema, European Studies, and film
• Asbjørn Grønstad is Professor of Visual Culture at the University of Bergen, where he is also founding director of the Nomadikon Center for Visual Culture
• Song Hwee Lim is Senior Lecturer in Film Studies at the University of Exeter
• Stephanie Lam is a PhD candidate in the Film and Visual Studies program at Harvard University
• Philippa Lovatt is a Lecturer in Media and Communications at the University of Stirling and also teaches at the University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Ho Chi Minh City
• Cecília Mello is Lecturer in Film Studies in the Department of Film, Radio and Television, University of São Paulo, and FAPESP Senior Research Fellow in the Department of History of Art, Federal University of São Paulo, Brazil
• Matilda Mroz is Senior Lecturer in Film and Visual Culture at the University of Greenwich
• Lúcia Nagib is Professor of Film at the University of Reading
• Jacques Rancière is Professor Emeritus at the Université de Paris (St. Denis)
• Justin Remes is an assistant professor of film studies at Iowa State University
• Julian Ross is a researcher, curator and writer based in Amsterdam
• Karl Schoonover is Associate Professor of Film and Television Studies at the University of Warwick
• Patrick Brian Smith is a Frederick H. Lowy Doctoral Fellow in the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema at Concordia University
• Rob Stone is Professor of European Film at the University of Birmingham and Director of B-Film: The Birmingham Centre for Film Studies
• Julian Stringer is Associate Professor in Film and Television Studies at the University of Nottingham, UK
• C. Claire Thomson is a Senior Lecturer in Scandinavian Film at UCL
• Michael Walsh is Associate Professor, University of Hartford

This is the first comprehensive, fully-researched account of the historical and contemporary development of the traditional martial arts genre in the Chinese cinema known as wuxia (literal translation: martial chivalry) - a genre which audiences around the world became familiar with through the phenomenal 'crossover' hit Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000). The book unveils rich layers of the wuxia tradition as it developed in the early Shanghai cinema in the late 1920s, and from the 1950s onwards, in the Hong Kong and Taiwan film industries.

Key attractions of the book are analyses of:

• The history of the tradition as it began in the Shanghai cinema, its rise and popularity as a serialized form in the silent cinema of the late 1920s, and its eventual prohibition by the government in 1931.
• The fantastic characteristics of the genre, their relationship with folklore, myth and religion, and their similarities and differences with the kung fu sub-genre of martial arts cinema.
• The protagonists and heroes of the genre, in particular the figure of the female knight-errant.
• The chief personalities and masterpieces of the genre - directors such as King Hu, Chu Yuan, Zhang Che, Ang Lee, Zhang Yimou, and films such as Come Drink With Me (1966), The One-Armed Swordsman (1967), A Touch of Zen (1970-71), Hero (2002), House of Flying Daggers (2004), and Curse of the Golden Flower (2006).

Updates the story of Japanese cinema for the 21st century

Yakuza, samurai and horror films have been some of the most popular genres in Japanese cinema over the last two decades, with a clearly defined generic lineage in the country’s cinematic tradition. Studying these genres through a close analysis of their most representative films, this innovative study examines the way individual films have either adapted to or drawn away from their own genre conventions, or, in the case of ‘magic realist’ films, have introduced significant new developments which have little real precedence in Japanese filmmaking. With close textual analysis, this study looks at the prevalence of repetition and variation in these contemporary Japanese genres, offering for the first time in English an academic appreciation and overview of popular Japanese cinema. Looking at the work of directors as varied as Kitano ‘Beat’ Takeshi and Kurosawa Kiyoshi, and films as iconic as Hana-Bi and The Bird People in China, this book provides an invaluable resource for film students and scholars alike.

Key Features

• Considers and analyses numerous films and filmmakers that have yet to feature predominantly in western discourse on Japanese cinema
• first study of the significant developments in Japanese genre filmmaking since the turn of the new millennium
• Analyses in detail the dialogue that can be seen between new Japanese cinema and the significant trends and practices of past generations
• Includes for the first time in western discourse a discussion of the modern state of the Japanese documentary feature, based on interviews with some of its leading practitioners
• Includes a review of Japanese-language criticism and a consideration of how the country’s cinema has been perceived within Japan

A comparative approach to contemporary popular Nordic genre film

Nordic Genre Film offers a transnational approach to studying contemporary genre production in Nordic cinema. It discusses a range of internationally renowned examples, from Nordic noir such as the television show The Bridge and films like Insomnia (1997) to high concept ‘video generation’ productions such as Iron Sky (2012). Yet, genre, at least in this context, indicates both a complex strategy for domestic and international competition as well as an analytical means to identify the Nordic film cultures’ relationships to international trends. Conceptualizing Nordic genre film as an industrial and cultural phenomenon, other contributions focus on road movies, the horror film, autobiographical films, the quirky comedy, musicals, historical epics and pornography. These are contextualized by discussion of their place in their respective national film and media histories as well as their influence on other Nordic countries and beyond.

By highlighting similarities and differences between the countries, as well as the often diverse production modes of each country, as well as the connections that have historically existed, the book works at the intersections of film and cultural studies and combines industrial perspectives and in depth discussion of specific films, while also offering historical perspectives on each genre as it comes to production, distribution and reception of popular contemporary genre film.

A comprehensive study of films made in a region of the world central to its future: The Arctic

The first book to address the 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. 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. Challenging dominant notions of the region in popular and political culture, it demonstrates how moving images (cinema, television, video, and digital media) have been central to the very definition of the Arctic since the end of the nineteenth century. Bringing together an international array of European, Russian, Nordic, and North American scholars, Films on Ice radically alters stereotypical views of the Arctic region, and therefore of film history itself.

‘Gathering leading scholars across the three continents meeting in the Arctic, MacKenzie and Stenport open up the utopian, dystopian and heterotopian dimensions of Arctic film, a shimmering, crystalline view not only on the contest over the meanings of polar space, but onto the possibilities for reconceptualising world cinema.’ - Sean Cubitt, Professor of Film and Television, Goldsmiths, University of London

Examines the influence of film noir on visual narrative and technique in global cinematic traditions.

Following World War II, film noir became the dominant cinematic expression of Cold War angst, influencing new trends in European and Asian filmmaking. International Noir examines film noir’s influence on the cinematic traditions of Britain, France, Scandinavia, Japan, Hong Kong, Korea, and India.

This book suggests that the film noir style continues to appeal on such a global scale because no other cinematic form has merged style and genre to effect a vision of the disturbing consequences of modernity. International noir has, however, adapted and adopted noir themes and aesthetic elements so that national cinemas can boast an independent and indigenous expression of the genre. Ranging from Japanese silent films and women’s films to French, Hong Kong, and Nordic New Waves, this book also calls into question critical assessments of noir in international cinemas. In short, it challenges prevailing film scholarship to renegotiate the concept of noir.

Ending with an examination of Hollywood’s neo-noir recontextualization of the genre, and post-noir’s reinvigorating critique of this aesthetic, International Noir offers Film Studies scholars an in-depth commentary on this influential global cinematic art form, further offering extensive bibliography and filmographies for recommended reading and viewing.

Key Features

• Examines noir's influence on film narrative and technique in several different national cinemas
• Covers British, French and Japanese noir as well as the influence of noir on Scandivavian, Chinese and Korean cinema
• Includes chapters on neo-noir and post-noir films

Places Taiwanese cinema from the 1980s onwards in both national and transnational contexts

Read and download the introduction for free here (pdf)

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.

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A comparative analysis of Maghrebi-French and North African émigré cinema in France

Since the early 1980s and the arrival of Beur cinema filmmakers of Maghrebi origin have made a key contribution French cinema's representation of issues such as immigration, integration and national identity. However, they have done so mostly from a position on the margins of the industry. In contrast, since the early 2000s, Maghrebi-French and North African émigré filmmakers have occupied an increasingly prominent position on both sides of the camera, announcing their presence on French screens in a wider range of genres and styles than ever before. This greater visibility and move to the mainstream has not, however, automatically meant that these films have lost any of the social or political relevance. Indeed in the 2000s many of these films have increasingly questioned the boundaries between national, transnational and diasporic cinema, whilst simultaneously demanding, either implicitly or explicitly, a reconsideration of the very difference that has traditionally been seen as a barrier to the successful integration of North African immigrants and their descendants into French society.

Through a detailed study of this transformative decade for Maghrebi-French and North African émigré filmmaking in France, this book argues for the emergence of a 'Post-Beur' cinema in the 2000s that is simultaneously global and local in its outlook. Its key features include:

• A comprehensive overview of the key developments in Maghrebi-French and North African émigré filmmaking in France since the 2000s: counter-heritage cinema and the memorialisation of France’s colonial past; journey narratives and the myth of return; the ‘mainstreaming’ of Maghrebi-French directors and stars; representations of Islam.
• Detailed case studies of key films from the 2000s that have yet to receive scholarly attention, such as Hors-la-loi, Dernier maquis and Vénus noire.
• An in-depth analysis of trends in production, distribution and exhibition as they relate to Maghrebi-French and North African émigré filmmakers in the 2000s.

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An absorbing introduction to this recent cinematic tradition, Post-Beur Cinema is essential reading for students and scholars in Film Studies, French Studies and Diaspora Studies.

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 Jesús Franco, Amando de Ossorio, Narciso Ibáñez Serrador, Eloy de la Iglesia, Jaume Balagueró, Nacho Cerdá and Guillermo del Toro's Spanish" films.
• A focus on critical and cult contexts of reception in Spain, Great Britain and the USA.

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Unlike countries such as 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.

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Magic Realist Cinema in East Central Europe explores the interlocking complexities of two liminal concepts: magic realism and East Central Europe. Each is a fascinating hybrid that resonates with dominant currents in contemporary thought on transnationalism, globalisation and regionalism.

In this critical and comprehensive survey, Aga Skrodzka moves the current debate over magic realism’s political impact from literary studies to film studies. Her close textual analysis of films by directors such as Jan Švankmajer, Jan Jakub Kolski, Martin Šulík, Ivo Trajkov, Dorota Kędzierzawska, Ildikó Enyedi, Béla Tarr and Emir Kusturica is accompanied by an investigation of the socio-economic and political context in order to both study and popularise an important and unique tradition in world cinema. The directors’ artistic achievements illuminate the connections between a particular aesthetics and the social structure of East Central Europe at a precise moment of contemporary history.

• Provides the first comprehensive analysis of magic realism in cinema
• Offers an examination of the post-socialist cinema as representative of the hybridised space and consciousness of East Central Europe
• Gives a chronological overview of the existing theories of magic realism to the extent in which they apply to globalised visual cultures
• Considers the cinema of East Central Europe in the context of transnationalism and postcoloniality

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.

This is a comparative consideration of the musical's role within national cinema traditions. While the musical is one cinema's few genuinely international genres, it has often functioned as an explicitly local or national form, drawing upon distinct traditions understood as 'native' rather than 'international'. Simultaneously, musicals from around the world have often imitated Hollywood models, resulting in their easy dismissal as culturally 'impure' and demonstrating the creative and ideological tension between promoting and abandoning traditional cultural forms and styles. This productive tension between local and global elements lies at the heart of international film musicals, which typically acknowledge the dominant Hollywood model while claiming their own cultural specificity.

Key Features

• Individual chapters provide succinct historical and critical discussions of musicals from fifteen major national film traditions, along with the transnational musical.
• A coda by Rick Altman, one of the genre's most prominent scholars.
• Lists of key resources offer teachers and students additional information.

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'
• a study of one European film industry in terms of legislation, production, distribution and exhibition.

Alex Marlow-Mann has taught Italian cinema at the universities of Reading, Cardiff and Leeds and has published numerous articles on the subject. He first became interested in Neapolitan cinema when living in the city.

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.

Although in recent years, the entire world has been increasingly concerned with the Middle East and Israeli-Palestinian relationship, there are few truly reliable sources of information regarding Palestinian society and culture, either concerning its relationship with Israeli society, its position between east and west or its stances in times of war and peace. One of the best sources for understanding Palestinian culture is its cinema which has devoted itself to serving the national struggle. In this book, two scholars - an Israeli and a Palestinian - in a rare and welcome collaboration, follow the development of Palestinian cinema, commenting on its response to political and social transformations. They discover that the more the social, political and economic conditions worsen and chaos and pain prevail, the more Palestinian cinema becomes involved with the national struggle. As expected, Palestinian cinema has unfolded its national narrative against the Israeli narrative, which tried to silence it.

Key Features

• The first, serious comprehensive study of Palestinian film.
• A rare collaboration between Israeli and Palestinian scholars.
• A reliable insight into Palestinian society and culture, and the Israeli-Palestinian relationship.

African Filmmaking: North and South of the Sahara is the first comprehensive study in English linking filmmaking in the Maghreb (Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia) with that in francophone West Africa and examining the factors (including Islam and the involvement of African and French governments) which have shaped post-independence production. The main focus is the development over forty years of two main traditions of African filmmaking: a social realist strand examining the nature of postcolonial society and a more experimental approach where emphasis is placed on new stylistic patterns able to embrace history, myth and magic. The work of younger filmmakers born since independence is examined in the light of these two traditions.

Key Features:

• An overview of the socio-political context shaped by Islam and French colonialism.
• A look at filmmaking in Africa before the mid-1960s.
• An examination of the inputs of African and French governments into post-independence developments North and South of the Sahara.
• A historical survey of the two major tendencies in African film production over the past 40 years.
• A detailed analysis of the work of five talented young filmmakers, representative of those born since independence.

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New Punk Cinema 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. An array of established and emerging scholars trace and map the contours of new punk cinema, from its roots in neorealism and the French New Wave, to its flowering in the work of Lars von Trier and the Dogma 95 movement. Subsequent chapters explore the potentially democratic and even anarchic forces of digital filmmaking, the influences of hypertext and other new media, the increased role of the viewer in arranging and manipulating the chronology of a film, and the role of new punk cinema in plotting a course beyond the postmodern. The book examines a range of films, including The Blair Witch Project, Time Code, Run Lola Run, Memento, The Celebration, Gummo, and Requiem for a Dream.

New Punk Cinema is ideal for classroom use at the undergraduate and graduate levels, as well as for film scholars interested in fresh approaches to the emergence of this vital new turn in cinema.

Key Features

• Offers a comprehensive examination of the term 'new punk' cinema.
• Provides several new approaches for the study of digital cinema.
• Includes close analysis of several key new punk films and directors.

The core volume in the Traditions in World Cinema series, this book brings together a colourful and wide-ranging collection of world cinematic traditions - national, regional and global - all of which are in need of introduction, investigation and, in some cases, critical reassessment. Topics include: German expressionism, Italian neorealism, French New Wave, British new wave, Czech new wave, Danish Dogma, post-Communist cinema, Brazilian post-Cinema Novo, new Argentine cinema, pre-revolutionary African traditions, Israeli persecution films, new Iranian cinema, Hindi film songs, Chinese wenyi pian melodrama, Japanese horror, new Hollywood cinema and global found footage cinema.

Key Features

• Includes a preface by Toby Miller.
• Each chapter covers a key world cinema tradition and is written by an expert in the field: Roy Armes, Nitzan Ben-Shaul, Peter Bondanella, Corey Creekmur, Adrian Danks, Peter Hames, Randal Johnson, Robert Kolker, Myrto Konstantarakos, Jay McRoy, Negar Mottahedeh, Richard Neupert, Christina Stojanova, J.P. Telotte, Stephen Teo.
• Traditions are examined from a wide range of views and include historical, social, cultural and industrial perspectives.

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A much-needed critical introduction to some of the most important Japanese horror films produced over the last fifty years, Japanese Horror Cinema provides an insightful examination of the tradition's most significant trends and themes. The book examines the genre's dominant aesthetic, cultural, political and technological underpinnings, and individual chapters address key topics such as: the debt Japanese horror films owe to various Japanese theatrical and literary traditions; the popular 'avenging spirit' motif; the impact of atomic warfare, rapid industrialisation and apocalyptic rhetoric on Japanese visual culture; the extents to which changes in the economic and social climate inform representations of monstrosity and gender; the influence of recent shifts in audience demographics; and the developing relations (and contestations) between Japanese and 'Western' (Anglo-American and European) horror film tropes and traditions. Extensive coverage of the central thematic concerns and stylistic traits of Japanese horror cinema makes this volume an indispensable text for a myriad of film and cultural studies courses.

Key Features

• Includes a preface by Christopher Sharrett
• Each chapter covers a fundamental aspect of Japanese horror cinema and is written by an expert in the field
• Case studies include internationally renowned films such as Nakata Hideo's Ringu, Ishii Takashi's Freeze Me and Fukasaku Kinji's Battle Royale
• Appendices feature an interview with maverick filmmaker Miike Takashi and a filmography of Japanese horror films currently available in the UK and US.

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