Film and History

Tijelo kao film | Body as Film | Body and Sexuality in Short Feature Film; Retrospective at Croatian Film Days 2015 curated by Željko Luketić. Featuring works from Ante Babaja, Miroslav Mikuljan, Mišo Budisavljević, Neven Korda, Tomislav Gotovac, Dasen Štambuk, etc.

A History of Italian Cinema, 2nd edition is the much anticipated update from the author of the bestselling Italian Cinema – which has been published in four landmark editions and will celebrate its 35th anniversary in 2018. Building upon decades of research, Peter Bondanella and Federico Pacchioni reorganize the current History in order to keep the book fresh and responsive not only to the actual films being created in Italy in the twenty-first century but also to the rapidly changing priorities of Italian film studies and film scholars. The new edition brings the definitive history of the subject, from the birth of cinema to the present day, up to date with a revised filmography as well as more focused attention on the melodrama, the crime film, and the historical drama. The book is expanded to include a new generation of directors as well as to highlight themes such as gender issues, immigration, and media politics. Accessible, comprehensive, and heavily illustrated throughout, this is an essential purchase for any fan of Italian film.

In this (very early) research paper, I explore the history of product placement, and argue that the famous deployment of Reese's Pieces in Spielberg's beloved feature film, E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, while not a rupture, marks a significant pivot point in the development of the practice.

This book takes a comparative approach to contemporary Irish and Spanish cinema in order to examine the ways in which the films produced have been marked by Ireland and Spain’s distinctive encounters with modernity. In successive chapters, the book explores the representation of gender, sexuality, space and history within contemporary Irish and Spanish film, arguing that these representations should be read in relation to the particular process of modernisation which occurred within Ireland and Spain, whereby an insular, conservative national culture was supplanted within a short period of time by an urbanised, European secularism. Within these representations, it argues, can be uncovered attempts to reconstruct a national narrative within this new cultural context. It traces these cultural shifts through a detailed analysis of the aesthetic strategies and thematic concerns of the films which have emerged from Ireland and Spain over the last fifteen years.

By establishing specific idiosyncratic features shared by Irish and Spanish films, this book places Ireland’s cultural and cinematic development firmly within a European context. By concentrating on genre films, it illustrates how films which are not specifically concerned with issues of nation are nevertheless marked by their national context. Furthermore, it argues for the importance of reinstating the nation as an interpretative category, one which allows the assertion of a politicised national identity within an increasingly globalised entertainment cinema.

Texto en castellano

DE ESCIPIÓN A BERLUSCONI. UNA HISTORIA DE ITALIA EN 50 PELÍCULAS
Cuenta André Breton que, cuando el grupo surrealista acudía al cine, acostumbraba a entrar comenzada la proyección, y la abandonaba al poco tiempo para volver a irrumpir en otra sala, donde se exhibía otra película, en cualquier momento de la función. Al final de la jornada, las secuencias dispersas, cubiertos los huecos en la imaginación, iban construyendo en la memoria un nuevo argumento, a partir de la lógica irracional, fragmentaria y elíptica del inconsciente. Algo de la visión «sonámbula», y profundamente liberadora, que reivindicaba el surrealismo, subyace en el viaje por el imaginario histórico a través del cine italiano que recorre las páginas de este libro. Los autores proponen un itinerario punteado de elipsis, saltos, pasadizos subterráneos, flashbacks y flashforwards, un recorrido transhistórico que se apoya en el asincronismo entre el tiempo que señalan las tramas, a partir del cual se ha ordenado la selección de los films, y el de su producción y estreno en sala. En resumen, lo que este volumen plantea es una de tantas historias posibles de Italia —tantas como antologías probables— a través del objetivo de la cámara.

UFOs, ESP, Bigfoot, often the subjects of folk science, are rarely investigated by normal science. Additionally, the methods of and rationale for folk science are neglected by folklorists perhaps because, as David Hufford writes in "Traditions of Disbelief," academics have presumed at the onset that the beliefs held by its proponents are in error.  Whether or not the beliefs held by folk science are in error is less relevant to the study of folklore than an understanding of the import of those beliefs, the relationship between folk science and belief legend, and the conflict between folk science and normal science.

The Empire Strikes Back. Russian National Cinema After 2005The paper provides critical analysis of the latest wave of Russian national cinema (2005-2013), considered one of key instruments of Vladimir Putin’s nation-building cultural policy. The analysis, focused mostly on historical film and war film, reveals the concept of an ‘imperial nation’ as the main concept underlying this policy. The new Russian nation-concept is calculated to binding elements from two former Russian imperial traditions: tradition of the Russian Empire and the Soviet tradition, thus trying to overcome the identity crisis in contemporary Russia. Imperium kontratakuje. Rosyjskie kino narodowe po 2005 rokuArtykuł zajmuje się krytyczną analizą filmów najnowszej fali rosyjskiego kina narodowego (2005-2013), uważanej tu za jedno z kluczowych narzędzi polityki kulturalnej Władimira Putina obliczonej na budowanie narodu. Autorzy artykułu skupiają się przede wszystkim na filmie historycznym i wojennym, odsłaniając p...

This paper posits that the contemporary (re)configuration of the generic white woman of Hindi cinema solely as a spectacle was produced by the nationalist discourse during the colonial encounter. This essay explores both the textual analyses and aesthetic strategies employed in the construction of national imagery of white female subjectivities. My approach is twofold: (i) to chart the historical specificities of the representational construct of the white woman through discontinuous changes occurring across Bombay cinema, and (ii) to explore the white female subjectivities across specific historical and cultural milieu. This paper probes the historicity of the ‘Otherness’ of the white woman in Hindi cinema reviews and re-examines how Hindi cinema constitutes female whiteness. I posit that the representation of the white woman in Hindi cinema as promiscuous and sexually available was constructed within the nationalist discourse of the colonial era and is a continuation of the white memsahib in her absence. It is my position that all that was ‘repressed’ in the Hindu woman resurfaces in the white woman – the racial, sexual ‘Other’, onto whom everything repressed within the self could be projected.

Global Cinema Networks investigates the evolving aesthetic forms, technological and industrial conditions, and social impacts of cinema in the twenty-first century. The collection’s esteemed contributors excavate sites of global filmmaking in an era of digital reproduction and amidst new modes of circulation and aesthetic convergence, focusing primarily on recent films made across Europe, Africa, Latin America, Asia, and the Middle East. Moving beyond the digital as a harbinger of transformation, the volume offers new ways of thinking about cinema networks in a historical continuum, from “international” to “world” to “transnational” to “global” frames. 
Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Introduction: Global Cinemas in a Time of Networks
Elena Gorfinkel, King’s College London (U.K.)

Part 1: Cartographies, Geopolitics, Aesthetics

Chapter 2: Beyond and Beneath the Map of World Cinema
Dudley Andrew, Yale University

Chapter 3: Frame
Adrian Martin, Monash University (Australia)

Chapter 4: Abstraction and the Geopolitical: Lessons from Antonioni’s Trip to China
John David Rhodes, University of Cambridge

Chapter 5: The City of Bits and Urban Rule: Media Archaeology, Urban Space, and Contemporary Chinese Documentary
James Tweedie, University of Washington

Part 2: Global Ideality, History, Representation

Chapter 6: Toward an Archeology of Global Rhythms: Melodie der Welt (Melody of the World, 1929) and its Reception in France
Laurent Guido, University of Lille (France)

Chapter 7: When Cinema was Humanism
Karl Schoonover, University of Warwick

Chapter 8: African Cinema: Digital Media and Expanding Frames of Representation
N. Frank Ukadike, Tulane University, New Orleans

Chapter 9: Changing Circumstances: Global Flows of Lesbian Cinema
Patricia White, Swarthmore College

Part 3: Kinships, Identifications, Genres

Chapter 10: Hermano and La hora cero: Violence and Transgressive Subjectivities in Venezuelan Youth Cinema
Luisela Alvaray, DePaul University

Chapter 11: Between Love and the Moral Law: The Fatal Mother in Park Chan-wook’s Sympathy for Lady Vengeance
Peter Y. Paik, Yonsei University (Korea)

Chapter 12: The Queer Mexican Cinema of Julián Hernández
Gilberto M. Blasini, University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee

Chapter 13: The Gangster Film as World Cinema
Jian Xu, University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee

Chapter 14: Epilogue: 24 Frames: Regarding the Past and Future of Global Cinema
Tami Williams, University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee

https://www.rutgersuniversitypress.org/global-cinema-networks/9780813592725

Although the modernization process had begun in Western Europe, it has expanded and affected Turkish society deeply like the rest of the world. The question of modernity appears in various representation medium as much as it appears in the different social structure entities. In this research, it is approached to modernization – cinema relationship as a two-way relationship. Firstly, Republican modernization process’s approach to cinema and cinema’s position in this movement until the 1950s is analyzed through a historical, social, and economic perspective. Secondly, it is analyzed the representation of modernity, modernization and modernization thought in this era’s Turkish films, around the historical-social conditions and the modernization discussions of the period. Previously, in order to achieve this goal and defining a theoretical frame, concepts in modernization, modernization thought, and processes are discussed.

Resumo: O presente artigo busca entender como o cinema se desenvolveu no litoral catarinense nas duas primeiras duas décadas do século XX, em especial, na cidade de São José. Para isso, analisaremos fontes de jornais, atas de reuniões e as atividades da associação católica denominada Liga Josephense que esteve presente entre os anos de 1910 a 1923. Outro ponto de destaque, é compreender como a Liga através de sua rede de contatos nas mais variadas esferas da sociedade, utilizou do cinema para obter lucro e grande prestígio social, entendendo que a mesma estava inserida em uma conjuntura maior que o ambiente local. Palavras-chave: Cinema; São José-SC; Liga Josephense.

The dawn of cinema on the coast of Santa Catarina: the case of the Josephense League (1910-1923)

Abstract: This article seeks to understand how cinema was developed in the Santa Catarina coast in the first two decades of the twentieth century, especially in the city of São José. For this, we will analyze newspaper sources, meeting minutes and the activities of the Catholic association denominated Liga Josephense that was present between the years of 1910 to 1923. Another important point is to understand how the League through its network of contacts in varied layers of society, used cinema to obtain profit and great social prestige, understanding that it was inserted in a bigger conjuncture than the local environment.

O artigo recupera a trajetória do Grupo de Pesquisa
CNPq “História e Audiovisual: circularidades e formas de
comunicação”, identificando as principais questões de método
que orientam sua produção intelectual. Elenca os resultados
obtidos ao longo de seus quinze anos de existência e sintetiza os
principais avanços obtidos no campo.

Opracowanie zostało opublikowane w 2016 r., a więc nie mogło być w nim wzmianki o filmie, którego premiera planowana jest na 2020 r. Oczywiście chętnie napiszę także o nowej wersji, w której Stanisława Kaczyńskiego gra odtwórca roli Ragnara z "Wikingów". Jestem także otwarty na propozycje i zaproszenia.

In the absence of original footage from Kristallnacht, newsreels, documentaries, and feature films have employed several techniques to represent the November Pogrom.  American and British newsreels initially featured political and religious figures condemning the violence, the resettlement of Jewish refugees, or stills of broken windows of Jewish shops.  After the outbreak of World War Two, Chaplin’s The Great Dictator (1940) narrowly focused on how the pogrom affected its Jewish protagonist.  The anti-Nazi French propaganda film Mein Kampf: My Crimes (1940) intercut footage of the 1933 boycott, a still of a pillaged Jewish store, doctored pre-1938 photos of a Berlin synagogue with a dramatization of the Vom Rath assassination and Kristallnacht.  Images from the war and its atrocities overshadowed Kristallnacht in American wartime propaganda films; whereas advocacy and fundraising films devoted more attention to its significance in the evolution of Hitler’s plan to eradicate European Jewry.  Two films produced in the occupation zones of Germany immediately after the war tackled the subject with Marriage in the Shadows (1947) presenting the first dramatization of the pillaging of German Jewish shops and pummeling of Jewish owners.  Further dramatizations of Kristallnacht were not attempted in feature films until the 40th anniversary of the pogrom.  The documentaries made in the interim relied on photographs, footage of the SA boycott of Jewish businesses and the book burning, the fabricated scenes from Mein Kampf: My Crimes, footage of analogous events, or survivor interviews to depict Kristallnacht.  It was only with the discovery of German home movies of Kristallnacht that authentic footage of the rampage appeared in documentaries made in 1988 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the pogrom.

Abstract: The Cinema has undergone a transformation in recent years, and the societal thirst for horror begs an important question: why do so many of us enjoy being horrified, disturbed, or afraid? The virtual world of cinema's concept of utopia and dystopia has evolved. The horror genre has developed its aesthetics as a result of increased scholarship and attention over the last four to five decades. The search for the 'missing horizon' has spawned a slew of new cinematic theories. The majority of these horror film ideas are Freudian in nature, with a focus on the concepts of ‘repression’ and ‘release’. However, Noel Carroll's new concept of 'The Philosophy of Horror' examines the pleasure of horror films. He claims that the source of this pleasure is a special curiosity that produces a sense of ‘hope’. ‘Horror’ can be analysed form the dichotomy of Utopia and Dystopia- Heart and Hopes. This paper examines the most iconic and cult film, Robert Wiene's 'The Cabinet of Dr. Caligary'. The film has a powerful storyline of hope and despair, transporting spectators to 'La Shangrila land,' and then resolving the paradox to the simple joy of gore. It provides ‘spectacle horror' with fine camerawork, pacing, and an artistic splitter that add to the pure Hope in the pure Performance.

Money, Copy, Quotation, Motive, Genre.
The treatise is a reflection on the phenomenon of the remake, which plays a very exposed role in cinema, puts it in relation to the other arts and tries to find a system behind the decisions of film directors and producers when a remake makes sense and when it does not.

O que faz um historiador quando escreve sobre um  lme contemporâneo baseado em fatos históricos? Granjeia autoridade de crítico de cinema ao propor uma leitura formal? Reserva-se à função de juiz do passado, identi cando erros e acertos? Ou ainda, na condição de intelectual autorizado, comenta a dimensão política deste “evento” contemporâneo? Estas são questões que envolvem respostas complexas, situadas ora no polo positivo, ora no negativo, e que conectam alguns dos dilemas mais discutidos na metodo- logia histórica nas últimas décadas: narrativa e  ficção, história do tempo presente, história pública, usos pedagógicos e possibilidades metodológicas de documentos audiovisuais, entre outros.
Falarei de alguns destes temas ao analisar o  filme Twelve years a slave — traduzido no Brasil como Doze anos de escravidão —, do diretor britânico Steve McQueen. Sua ampla exibição nos cinemas, seu elenco estelar e as indicações ao Oscar® 2014 têm sido úteis para trazer à tona um debate sobre as mazelas do sistema escravista nas Américas, bem como sobre as funções e limites do cinema de história, tanto do ponto de vista historiográfico, suas normas e obrigações para com o passado, quanto cinematográ co, suas liberdades poéticas e formais, seu compromisso com o público.

HUFFINGTON POST BEST FILM BOOK OF 2016, FINALIST FOR RICHARD WALL MEMORIAL AWARD, LONGLISTED FOR KRASZNA-KRAUSA BEST MOVING IMAGE BOOK OF 2016. Marlene Dietrich, Greta Garbo, and Katharine Hepburn all made lasting impressions with the cinematic cross-dressing they performed onscreen. What few modern viewers realize, however, is that these seemingly daring performances of the 1930s actually came at the tail end of a long wave of gender-bending films that included more than 400 movies featuring women dressed as men.

Laura Horak spent a decade scouring film archives worldwide, looking at American films made between 1908 and 1934, and what she discovered could revolutionize our understanding of gender roles in the early twentieth century. Questioning the assumption that cross-dressing women were automatically viewed as transgressive, she finds that these figures were popularly regarded as wholesome and regularly appeared onscreen in the 1910s, thus lending greater respectability to the fledgling film industry. Horak also explores how and why this perception of cross-dressed women began to change in the 1920s and early 1930s, examining how cinema played a pivotal part in the representation of lesbian identity.

- Chosen by Huffington Post as one of the Best Film Books of 2016
- 2016 Choice Outstanding Academic Title
- Longlisted for the Kraszna-Krausz Best Moving Image Book of 2016
- Finalist for 2016 Richard Wall Memorial Award by the Theatre Library Association
- Reviewed by: Times Higher Education, Times Literary Supplement, Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide, Women’s Studies, Journal of American History, Feminist Media Studies, The Women’s Review of Books, Publishers Weekly, Library Journal (Starred review)

1. Chaimite versus Aqui d'El Rei! Em 1953, Jorge Brum do Canto realizou Chaimite, a queda do império vátua, narrativa que evoca um conjunto de batalhas militares que ocorreram em Moçambique entre 1894-1895, com o objetivo de eliminar uma revolta que eclodira na província, sob liderança do régulo Gungunhana, campanha que ficou célebre pela forma como Mouzinho de Albuquerque aprisionou o chefe vátua. Este episódio militar inseria-se historicamente na necessidade que Portugal tinha de demonstrar a sua autoridade aos parceiros coloniais europeus, nomeadamente depois dos princípios definidos na Conferência de Berlim de 1885, através da qual ficara assente que qualquer potência colonial tinha de demonstrar autoridade e capacidade de ocupação efetiva do território para ter legitimidade à sua posse. Se a obra integra momentos plenos de exaltação imperial favoráveis aos Estado Novo, nomeadamente as batalhas e o aprisionamento do chefe da revolta, a verdade é que também contém outros que criam alguma perplexidade do ponto de vista histórico, nomeadamente o perfil com que Mouzinho de Albuquerque foi desenhado por Brum do Canto, onde por vezes está ausente um «temperamento forte, agressivo e majestático», apresentando-se paternal, afável, simpático e sentimental, aspetos nada coincidentes com a figura histórica (Seabra, 2011, p. 155). É o caso do momento em que, após o aprisionamento de Gungunhana, a mãe do régulo rasteja para Mouzinho implorando clemência para o filho. Mouzinho ampara a velha, ajuda-a a erguer-se, e coloca-lhe a mão sobre os ombros de forma paternal enquanto houve a tradução, respondendo-lhe de seguida que o destino do filho estava nas mãos do Rei de Portugal, e que ela poderia ir em paz por ter sido amiga dos portugueses (Canto, 1953, pl. 921). Sobre este pequeno episódio, aquilo que queremos salientar é que esta atitude afável, amistosa e benevolente não está de acordo com o perfil histórico da personagem, que segundo os testemunhos coevos seria «agressivo, convincente, sobranceiro e autoritário» (Seabra, 2011, p. 161), e

For many of us, we have always known and loved the world of Walt Disney. We grew up with these characters, these stories, and these songs. But how often do we ever think deeply about Disney, even discuss and analyze it at length? Studying Disney offers us a rare opportunity to consider childhood, the media industry, and American culture simultaneously. In this course, students will examine representations of race, gender, sexuality, class, and ability on screen and behind the scenes at Disney. We will also explore the wide expanse of Disney’s properties, from movies to TV to theme parks and theater. Students will also gain experience with conducting research, studying primary documents and contributing to public history. In the end, students will have a richer understanding of Disney not only as a company, but as a cultural institution.

A obra do cineasta ganês John Akomfrah foi objeto de uma mostra bem abrangente no Brasil desde o final de 2017, primeiro em Brasília e São Paulo, depois no Rio de Janeiro . Akomfrah, filho de exilados políticos que se fixaram na Inglaterra na década de 60, fez grande parte do seu trabalho vinculado ao Black Audio Film Collective, grupo de projetos multimídia fundado no início da década de 1980 pelo próprio Akomfrah e outros estudantes de cinema da Universidade de Portsmouth. Com filmes e instalações que se colocam na fronteira entre o cinema e as artes visuais de vanguarda, Akomfrah vem se afirmando como uma figura chave na construção de uma poética diaspórica audiovisual, na elaboração de imagens substanciais sobre raça, identidade e migração que nunca resvalam no meramente panfletário ou descritivo.

Alfred Hitchcock called The Lodger "the first true Hitchcock movie," the one that anticipated all the others. And yet the story of how The Lodger came to be made is shrouded in myth, often repeated and much embellished, even by Hitchcock himself. The First True Hitchcock focuses on the twelve-month period that encompassed The Lodger's production in 1926 and release in 1927, presenting a new picture of this pivotal year in
Hitchcock's life and in the wider film world. Using fresh archival discoveries, Henry K. Miller situates Hitchcock's formation as a director against the backdrop of a continent shattered by war and confronted with the looming presence of a new superpower, the United States, and its most visible export—film. The previously untold story of The Lodger's making in the London fog—and attempted remaking in the Los Angeles sun—is the story of how Hitchcock became Hitchcock.

Just as Shakespeare asserted she always would, the fascinating Cleopatra VII, Queen of Egypt, continues dazzle us. This book presents papers that consider Cleopatra and her legacies by scholars working in archaeology, art history, history and literary and film studies. The papers include discussion of Cleopatra’s obelisks; her use of traditional Egyptian imagery in sculpture; her time in Rome; her death; Egyptian themes in Augustan Rome; Cleopatra in Renaissance Rome; the afterlife of her love potions; how she is depicted by Sir Alma-Tadema; Cleomania in mass culture; and an overview of Cleopatra’s images in western painting.  The book concludes with a wonderful poem by Peter Green.

Gilbert 13:2 (October-November 2009): 9.  An essay in the Miscellany of Men feature in the magazine, this one treats of Alfred Hitchcock's life and work, with particular attention to the influence exercised on him by the work of G. K. Chesterton.

Each year less and less survivors arrive in Auschwitz to commemorate the International Holocaust Remembrance Day. In 2005, almost 1500 survivors attended the anniversary; in 2015, only 300 survivors came to Auschwitz. Therefore, as the memory of the Holocaust increasingly depends on commemoration and re-telling of the story for the sake of the new generations, various Holocaust-related educational institutions come up with innovative ways of bridging the past with the present. This fact motivates the main question of this paper: what happens when all the survivors are gone?

By focusing on a case study of the USC Shoah Foundation’s holographic testimony-based project developed with the USC Institute for Creative Technologies: New Dimensions in Testimony, this paper centers on the relationship between new technologies, visual studies, and Holocaust memory.  By technology, I mean the study of interactivity in contemporary Holocaust memory, representation, and education, as well as developments in digital media, digital humanities, and computer science. On a more abstract level, this research discusses how technology informs the way we relate to our past. The second question, therefore, that motivates this paper is: what is the future of Holocaust memory?

The film “Europa Euorpa” directed by Agnieszka Holland recounts the story of a German Jewish boy that survived the holocaust by denying his Jewish heritage to Nazi soldiers and then ultimately joining them.  Loosely based on the autobiography of holocaust survivor Solomon Perel entitled I was Hitler youth Salomen, “Europa Europa” manages to tell a survivor story in an almost surreal manner.  Similarly the book Night written by Elie Wiesel describes the life of a teenager that survived the holocaust but could not hide his identity due to the love and dedication to his family. In Night, there are times when it seems that humanity has reached its lowest point illustrated by the horrific actions in the book. Both Wiesel and Perel approached a nightmarish situation in ways that seem impossible to comprehend as truth. Perel living a lie to survive and Wiesel refusing to let go of the life that he lived even when all seemed hopeless. Stories like “Europa Europa” and Night are not just stories, and they force those that have interacted with such retelling of factual accounts to become witnesses that ask the same question that Wiesel did during his acceptance speech of the Noble Peace prize. “Can this be true? This is the twentieth century, not the Middle Ages.”  These bodies of work become testaments to events that are so alien to modern humane civilization that one would like to believe that it is all fiction, when they are truly not. Discrepancies in the historical accuracy of both works can be explained by the massive trauma sustained by their story tellers. Delving into all the gritty details to determine the whole truth only furthers the satisfaction of those interested in the macabre actions of humanity at its worst and do not add to the value of the historical record.