CCC Libraries has access to hundreds of books on film.
Race on the QT: blackness and the films of Quentin Tarantino by
Known for their violence and prolific profanity, including free use of the n-word, the films of Quentin Tarantino, like the director himself, chronically blurt out in polite company what is extremely problematic even when deliberated in private. Consequently, there is an uncomfortable and often awkward frankness associated with virtually all of Tarantino's films, particularly when it comes to race and blackness. Yet beyond the debate over whether Tarantino is or is not racist is the fact that his films effectively articulate racial anxieties circulating in American society as they engage longstanding racial discourses and hint at emerging trends. This radical racial politics--always present in Tarantino's films but kept very much on the quiet--is the subject of Race on the QT. Adilifu Nama concisely deconstructs and reassembles the racial dynamics woven into Reservoir Dogs, True Romance, Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown, Kill Bill: Vol. 1, Kill Bill: Vol. 2, Death Proof, Inglourious Basterds, and Django Unchained, as they relate to historical and current racial issues in America. Nama's eclectic fusion of cultural criticism and film analysis looks beyond the director's personal racial attitudes and focuses on what Tarantino's filmic body of work has said and is saying about race in America symbolically, metaphorically, literally, impolitely, cynically, sarcastically, crudely, controversially, and brilliantly.
A Short Guide to Writing about Film by
Doubling an introduction to film study and a practical writing guide, this brief text introduces students to film terms and the major film theories, enabling them to write more critically. Examples from newer movies provide a fresh list of references for students introduced to film study and writing films. The author presents several approaches to film analysis and writing about film-auteurs, genres, ideology, kinds of formalism, and national cinemas, and introduces students to a range of film terms and film theories. Recent movies are used to fresh examples. Multiple approaches to writing about film as well as theories about film are given. Please enter here.
Nineteenth-Century American Fiction on Screen by
The process of translating works of literature to the silver screen is a rich field of study for both students and scholars of literature and cinema. The fourteen essays collected in this 2007 volume provide a survey of the important films based on, or inspired by, nineteenth-century American fiction, from James Fenimore Cooper's The Last of the Mohicans to Owen Wister's The Virginian. Many of the major works of the American canon are included, including The Scarlet Letter, Moby Dick and Sister Carrie. The starting point of each essay is the literary text itself, moving on to describe specific aspects of the adaptation process, including details of production and reception. Written in a lively and accessible style, the book includes production stills and full filmographies. Together with its companion volume on twentieth-century fiction, the volume offers a comprehensive account of the rich tradition of American literature on screen.
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Film Moments by
Film is made of moments. In its earliest form, the cinema was a moment: mere seconds recorded and projected into the darkness. Even as film has developed into today's complex and intricate medium, it is the brief, temporary and transitory that combines to create the whole. Our memories of films are composed of the moments we deem to be crucial: touchstones for our understanding and appreciation. Moments matter. The 38 specially commissioned essays in Film Moments examine a wide selection of key scenes across a broad spectrum of national cinemas, historical periods and genres, featuring films by renowned auteurs including Alfred Hitchcock, Jean Renoir and Vincente Minnelli and important contemporary directors such as Pedro Costa, Zhang Ke Jia and Quentin Tarantino, addressing films including City Lights, Gone with the Wind, The Wizard of Oz, The Night of the Hunter, Wild Strawberries, 8 1?2, Bonnie and Clyde, Star Wars, Conte d'été, United 93 and Lord of the Rings: Return of the King. Film Moments provides both an enlightening introduction for students to the diversity of approaches and concerns in the study of film, and a dynamic and vibrant account of key film sequences for anyone interested in enhancing their understanding of cinema.
Film Worlds by
Film Worlds unpacks the significance of the "worlds" that narrative films create, offering an innovative perspective on cinema as art. Drawing on aesthetics and the philosophy of art in both the continental and analytic traditions, as well as classical and contemporary film theory, it weaves together multiple strands of thought and analysis to provide new understandings of filmic representation, fictionality, expression, self-reflexivity, style, and the full range of cinema's affective and symbolic dimensions. Always more than "fictional worlds" and "storyworlds" on account of cinema's perceptual, cognitive, and affective nature, film worlds are theorized as immersive and transformative artistic realities. As such, they are capable of fostering novel ways of seeing, feeling, and understanding experience. Engaging with the writings of Jean Mitry, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Christian Metz, David Bordwell, Gilles Deleuze, and Hans-Georg Gadamer, among other thinkers, Film Worlds extends Nelson Goodman's analytic account of symbolic and artistic "worldmaking" to cinema, expands on French philosopher Mikel Dufrenne's phenomenology of aesthetic experience in relation to films and their worlds, and addresses the hermeneutic dimensions of cinematic art. It emphasizes what both celluloid and digital filmmaking and viewing share with the creation and experience of all art, while at the same time recognizing what is unique to the moving image in aesthetic terms. The resulting framework reconciles central aspects of realist and formalist/neo-formalist positions in film theory while also moving beyond them and seeks to open new avenues of exploration in film studies and the philosophy of film.
Horror Noire by
From King Kong to Candyman, the boundary-pushing genre of horror film has always been a site for provocative explorations of race in American popular culture. This book offers a comprehensive chronological survey of Black horror from the 1890s to present day. In this second edition, Robin R. Means Coleman expands upon the history of notable characterizations of Blackness in horror cinema, with new chapters spanning the 1960s, 2000s, and 2010s to the present, and examines key levels of Black participation on screen and behind the camera. The book addresses a full range of Black horror films, including mainstream Hollywood fare, art-house films, Blaxploitation films, and U.S. hip-hop culture-inspired Nollywood films. This new edition also explores the resurgence of the Black horror genre in the last decade, examining the success of Jordan Peele's films Get Out (2017) and Us (2019), smaller independent films such as The House Invictus (2018), and Nia DaCosta's sequel to Candyman (2021). Means Coleman argues that horror offers a unique representational space for Black people to challenge negative or racist portrayals, and to portray greater diversity within the concept of Blackness itself. This book is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand how fears and anxieties about race and race relations are made manifest, and often challenged, on the silver screen.
The Return of the Epic Film by
What does the new epic film now look like? How is it classified? Why has it returned? The success of Gladiator re-launched a genre which had lain dormant for 35 years. The Return of the Epic Film is one of the first books to examine this return as a coherent body of films. Studying a range of films from Gladiator to Clash of the Titans, the various essays question how we define these new epics, their aesthetics, their relationship to history, and who decides which films should be in the canon. Over the course of 11 essays by key figures in the field, the book examines in what ways, why, and how the epic film has returned to our cinemas. By embracing a range of approaches which take into account the production process, and by questioning the canon of films conventionally accepted as epics, this book will inspire Film Studies students and scholars to rethink the epic film.
Sociology on Film by
After World War II, Hollywood's "social problem films"--tackling topical issues that included racism, crime, mental illness, and drug abuse--were hits with critics and general moviegoers alike. In an era of film famed for its reliance on pop psychology, these movies were a form of popular sociology, bringing the academic discipline's concerns to a much broader audience. Sociology on Film examines how the postwar "problem film" translated contemporary policy debates and intellectual discussions into cinematic form in order to become one of the preeminent genres of prestige drama. Chris Cagle chronicles how these movies were often politically fractious, the work of progressive directors and screenwriters who drew scrutiny from the House Un-American Activities Committee. Yet he also proposes that the genre helped to construct an abstract discourse of "society" that served to unify a middlebrow American audience. As he considers the many forms of print media that served to inspire social problem films, including journalism, realist novels, and sociological texts, Cagle also explores their distinctive cinematic aesthetics. Through a close analysis of films like Gentleman's Agreement, The Lost Weekend, and Intruder in the Dust, he presents a compelling case that the visual style of these films was intimately connected to their more expressly political and sociological aspirations. Sociology on Film demonstrates how the social problem picture both shaped and reflected the middle-class viewer's national self-image, making a lasting impact on Hollywood's aesthetic direction.
The World as Abyss: The Carribean and Critical Thought in the Anthropocene by
This book is about a distinctive 'abyssal' approach to the crisis of modernity. In this framing, influenced by contemporary critical Black studies, another understanding of the world of modernity is foregrounded - a world violently forged through the projects of Indigenous dispossession, chattel slavery and colonial world-making. Modern and colonial world-making violently forged the 'human' by dividing those with ontological security from those without, and by carving out the 'world' in a fixed grid of space and time, delineating a linear temporality of 'progress' and 'development'. The distinctiveness of abyssal thought is that it inverts the stakes of critique and brings indeterminacy into the heart of ontological assumptions of a world of entities, essences, and universal determination. This is an approach that does not focus upon tropes of rescue and salvation but upon the generative power of negation. In doing so, it highlights how Caribbean experiences and writings have been drawn upon to provide an important and distinct perspective for critical thought.
