Bøger i Film Culture in Transition serien

This collection departs from the observation that online forms of communication¿the email, blog, text message, tweet¿are actually haunted by old epistolary forms: the letter and the diary. By examining the omnipresence of writing across a variety of media, the collection adds the category of Epistolary Screens to genres of self-expression, both literary (letters, diaries, auto-biographies) and screenic (romance dramas, intercultural cinema, essay films, artists¿ videos and online media). The category Epistolary encapsulates an increasingly paradoxical relation between writing and the self: first, it describes selves that are written in graphic detail via letters, diaries, blogs, texts, emails and tweets; second, it acknowledges that absence complicates communication, bringing people together in an entangled rather than ordered way. The collection concerns itself with the changing visual/textual texture of screen media and examines what is at stake for our understanding of self-expression when it takes Epistolary forms.

This study traces the evolution of early film societies in Germany and Austria, from the emergence of mass movie theaters in the 1910s to the turbulent years of the late Weimar Republic. Examining a diverse array of groups, it approaches film societies as formations designed to assimilate and influence a new medium: a project emerging from the world of amateur science before taking new directions into industry, art and politics. Through an interdisciplinary approach‿in dialogue with social history, print history and media archaeology‿it also transforms our theoretical understanding of what a film society was and how it operated. Far from representing a mere collection of pre-formed cinephiles, film societies were, according to the book‿s central argument, productive social formations, which taught people how to nurture their passion for the movies, how to engage with cinema, and how to interact with each other. Ultimately, the study argues that examining film societies can help to reveal the diffuse agency by which generative ideas of cinema take shape.

The Aesthetics and Politics of Cinematic Pedestrianism: Walking in Films offers a rich exploration of the cinematic aesthetics that filmmakers devised to reflect the corporeal and affective experience of walking in the city. Drawing from literature in urban studies, film theory, and aesthetic philosophy, it is the first monograph to approach the history of cinema from the perspective of walking. A series of case studies providing nuanced analyses of widely referenced figures, such as the flaneur/flâneuse, vagabond, and nomad, reveal how filmmakers articulated their objection to repressive structures through depictions of walking: a common, everyday act yet transgressive, bold, and indomitable. Through the lens of Henri Lefebvre‿s theory of space, Michel de Certeau‿s concept of pedestrian acts, and Jacques Ranciÿre‿s treatment of the politics of aesthetics, Walking in Films traces how cinema evolved in conversation with the mobile body and the new images, styles, and techniques that emerged with it.

Advertising has played a central role in shaping the history of modern media. While often identified with American consumerism and the rise of the 'Information Society', motion picture advertising has been part of European visual culture since the late nineteenth century. With the global spread of ad agencies, moving image advertisements became a privileged cultural form to make people experience the qualities and uses of branded commodities, to articulate visions of a 'good life', and to incite social relationships. Abandoning a conventional delineation of fields by medium, country, or period, this book suggests a lateral view. It charts the audiovisual history of advertising by focussing on objects (products and services), screens (exhibition, programming, physical media), practices (production, marketing), and intermediaries (ad agencies). In this way, the book develops new historical, methodological, and theoretical perspectives.

With changing technologies and social habits, the communal cinema experience would seem to be a legacy from another era. However, the 2010s saw a surge in interest for screening films in other temporary public settings. This desire to turn ruins, pubs, galleries, parks, village halls, and even boats into ephemeral cinema spaces is a search for ways of being and working together, using cinema as a framework for social encounter. This book documents contemporary practices of pop-up and sitespecific cinema exhibition in the UK (with a focus on Scotland), tracing their links with historical forms of non-theatrical exhibition such as public hall cinema and fairground bioscopes. Through archival research, observation and interviews with film exhibitors and programmers, the book explores how exhibitors create ephemeral social spaces, how they negotiate the various uses and configurations of films and venues, and how they reinvent cinemagoing from its margins.

This book presents a comprehensive analysis of the work of twenty-one of the most well-known South Korean films of the twenty-first century from eight major directors.

The current study is the fruit of some twenty years of research and writing at the interface of film history, media theory and media archaeology by one of the acknowledged pioneers of the 'new film history' and 'media archaeology'.

A fascinating insight on avant-garde film director Walter Ruttmann, the first in English of its kind.

 This spirited volume explores the history and diversity of improvisation in the cinema, including works by Jean Renoir, Jean-Luc Godard, and Nobuhiro Suwa. Gilles Moullic examines improvisational practices that can be specifically attributed to the cinema and argues in favors of their powers as instigators of unprecedented forms of expression. Improvising Cinema reflects both on the permanence of attempting improvisation and the relationship between technology and aesthetics. Moullic concludes preservation becomes even more invaluable in the case of improvisation, as the creative act exists only within the brief time span of the performance. 

 Once at the margins of the art world, film now occupies a prominent place in museums and galleries. Exhibiting Cinema in Contemporary Art explores the emergence of cinema as a primary medium of artistic production, offering an in-depth inquiry into its genesis, its defining features, and its ramifications. Erika Balsom also tackles cinema studies' great disciplinary obsession-namely, what cinema was, is, and will become in a digital future. Rich in theoretical reflections and critical analyses, Exhibiting Cinema in Contemporary Art offers insights into the whole history of cinema from the vantage point of today's art. 

Through a detailed analysis of the films of Straub and Huillet, the works they adapted, and Objectivist poems and essays, Benoit Turquety locates the impact of their work from a search for radical objectivity.

The volume spotlights post-war Italian film culture by locating a series of crossroads, i.e. topics barely examined when discussing neorealism: nation, memory and trauma, visual culture, stardom, and performance.

This book explores how digital image-making is integral to emergent modes of metaphysical reflection - to speculative futurism, optimistic nihilism, and ethical plasticity.

This book traces the history from the days of silent screen heroines to the sound era's daring adventure serials, unearthing a thriving film culture beyond the self-contained feature.