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      • Trusted Partner
        The Arts
        July 2024

        Public information films

        British government film units, 1928–52

        by Alan Harding

        In the years after the First World War the British government had to adapt its communication policy to connect with the new mass electorate. This book examines the government's own Film Units and their slow development of the Public Information Film. By reviewing the entire film catalogue produced by the Empire Marketing Board, the General Post Office and Crown Film Units, particular themes are identified which not only reflect the demands of the Units' sponsors but also the anxieties and concerns of the 1930s and 1940s. The impact of the films is explored through the contemporary reaction of the audiences to them. By the time the Crown Film Unit was closed in 1952 a style of Public Information Film had been developed and continued into the 1970s.

      • Trusted Partner
        The Arts
        June 2021

        Contemporary French cinema

        An introduction (revised edition)

        by Guy Austin

        Contemporary French cinema is an essential introduction to popular French film of the last 35 years. It charts recent developments in all genres of French cinema with analyses of over 120 movies, from Les Valseuses to Caché. Reflecting the diversity of French film production since the New Wave, this clear and perceptive study includes chapters on the heritage film, the thriller and the war movie, alongside the 'cinéma du look', representations of sexuality, comedies, the work of women film makers and le jeune cinéma. Each chapter introduces the public reception and critical debates surrounding a given genre, interwoven with detailed accounts of relevant films. Confirmed as a major contribution to both Film Studies and French Studies, this book is a fascinating volume for students and fans of French film alike.

      • Trusted Partner
        The Arts
        January 2019

        Contemporary French cinema

        An introduction (revised edition)

        by Guy Austin

        Contemporary French cinema is an essential introduction to popular French film of the last 35 years. It charts recent developments in all genres of French cinema with analyses of over 120 movies, from Les Valseuses to Caché. Reflecting the diversity of French film production since the New Wave, this clear and perceptive study includes chapters on the heritage film, the thriller and the war movie, alongside the 'cinéma du look', representations of sexuality, comedies, the work of women film makers and le jeune cinéma. Each chapter introduces the public reception and critical debates surrounding a given genre, interwoven with detailed accounts of relevant films. Confirmed as a major contribution to both Film Studies and French Studies, this book is a fascinating volume for students and fans of French film alike.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        July 2021

        Post-everything

        An intellectual history of post-concepts

        by Herman Paul, Adriaan van Veldhuizen

        Postmodern, postcolonial and post-truth are broadly used terms. But where do they come from? When and why did the habit of interpreting the world in post-terms emerge? And who exactly were the 'post boys' responsible for this? Post-everything examines why post-Christian, post-industrial and post-bourgeois were terms that resonated, not only among academics, but also in the popular press. It delves into the historical roots of postmodern and poststructuralist, while also subjecting more recent post-constructions (posthumanist, postfeminist) to critical scrutiny. This study is the first to offer a comprehensive history of post-concepts. In tracing how these concepts found their way into a broad range of genres and disciplines, Post-everything contributes to a rapprochement between the history of the humanities and the history of the social sciences.

      • Trusted Partner
        The Arts
        February 2019

        Bertrand Tavernier

        by Lynn Anthony Higgins

        Bertrand Tavernier is widely recognized as the leading French filmmaker of his generation. Both a consummate artist and a controversial public figure, he is a passionate advocate for social causes and also a tireless defender of world cinema in general and the French cinematic heritage in particular. Lynn Higgins' book offers a guided tour through Tavernier's oeuvre, taking into account both its prodigious diversity and its unifying themes. It explores his use of genre and adaptation, his work with actors and his affection for characters, his treatment of France's colonial history, his explorations of the powers of art and the complexities of intergenerational relations, both among fictional characters and within French cinema history. This is the most comprehensive and up-to-date scholarly book about Tavernier. Original and lively, sophisticated and engaging, the book will appeal to anyone interested in film studies, gender studies, and French cultural studies including academics, students, cinema enthusiasts, and Tavernier fans.

      • Trusted Partner
        The Arts
        January 2019

        The war that won't die

        The Spanish Civil War in cinema

        by David Archibald

        The war that won't die charts the changing nature of cinematic depictions of the Spanish Civil War. In 1936, a significant number of artists, filmmakers and writers - from George Orwell and Pablo Picasso to Joris Ivens and Joan Miró - rallied to support the country's democratically-elected Republican government. The arts have played an important role in shaping popular understandings of the Spanish Civil War and this book examines the specific role cinema has played in this process. The book's focus is on fictional feature films produced within Spain and beyond its borders between the 1940s and the early years of the twenty-first century - including Hollywood blockbusters, East European films, the work of the avant garde in Paris and films produced under Franco's censorial dictatorship. The book will appeal to scholars and students of Film, Media and Hispanic Studies, but also to historians and, indeed, anyone interested in why the Spanish Civil War remains such a contested political topic.

      • Trusted Partner
        The Arts
        June 2021

        The war that won't die

        The Spanish Civil War in cinema

        by David Archibald

        The war that won't die charts the changing nature of cinematic depictions of the Spanish Civil War. In 1936, a significant number of artists, filmmakers and writers - from George Orwell and Pablo Picasso to Joris Ivens and Joan Miró - rallied to support the country's democratically-elected Republican government. The arts have played an important role in shaping popular understandings of the Spanish Civil War and this book examines the specific role cinema has played in this process. The book's focus is on fictional feature films produced within Spain and beyond its borders between the 1940s and the early years of the twenty-first century - including Hollywood blockbusters, East European films, the work of the avant garde in Paris and films produced under Franco's censorial dictatorship. The book will appeal to scholars and students of Film, Media and Hispanic Studies, but also to historians and, indeed, anyone interested in why the Spanish Civil War remains such a contested political topic.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        March 2007

        The naval war film

        Genre, history and national cinema

        by Jonathan Rayner

        This book undertakes a unique, coherent and comprehensive consideration of the depiction of naval warfare in the cinema. The films under discussion encompass all areas of naval operations in war, and highlight varying institutional and aesthetic responses to navies and the sea in popular culture. The examination of these films centres on their similarities to and differences from the conventions of the war genre and seeks to determine whether the distinctive characteristics of naval film narratives justify their categorisation as a separate genre or sub-genre in popular cinema. The explicit factual bases and drama-documentary style of many key naval films, such as In Which We Serve, They Were Expendable and Das Boot, also requires the consideration of these films as texts for popular historical transmission. Their frequent reinforcement of establishment views of the past, which derives from their conservative ideological position towards national and naval culture, makes these films key texts for the consideration of national cinemas as purveyors of contemporary history as popularly conceived by filmmakers and received by audiences. ;

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        April 2021

        Catholic nuns and sisters in a secular age

        Britain, 1945–90

        by Carmen M. Mangion

        This is the first in-depth study of post-war female religious life. It draws on archival materials and a remarkable set of eighty interviews to place Catholic sisters and nuns at the heart of the turbulent 1960s, integrating their story of social change into a larger British and international one. Shedding new light on how religious bodies engaged in modernisation, it addresses themes such as the Modern Girl and youth culture, '1968', generational discourse, post-war modernity, the voluntary sector and the women's movement. Women religious were at the forefront of the Roman Catholic Church's movement of adaptation and renewal towards the world. This volume tells their stories in their own words.

      • Trusted Partner
        The Arts
        January 2019

        Alain Resnais

        by Emma Wilson

        Alain Resnais, director of 'Hiroshima mon amour' (1959) and 'L'Annee derniere a Marienbad' (1961), has transformed the representation of memory, fantasy and desire in modern cinema. This illuminating introduction to his work, extending from his earliest documentaries to the musical films of the last decade, traces the evolving patterns of his filmmaking, its changing reflections on mortality, guilt, chance and human doubt. Exploring questions of the time-image, of trauma, of the senses, this volume sets Resnais' films in the context of important current debates in film theory, and provides a concise account of critical discussions of his work in France and beyond. Yet it also offers a highly personal and detailed engagement with individual images and scenes in Resnais' films. A passionate and partial defence of Resnais' work, old and new, this volume stands apart in its attention to the more tangible and moving pleasures of his films, their pathos, rigour and visual beauty.

      • Trusted Partner
        Teaching, Language & Reference
        December 2020

        Living politics after war

        by Johanna Söderström, Emmanuel Pierre Guittet

      • Trusted Partner
      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        January 2025

        England’s military heartland

        Preparing for war on Salisbury Plain

        by Vron Ware, Antonia Dawes, Mitra Pariyar, Alice Cree

        A considered investigation of a long-standing army base's impact on the British countryside. What is it like to live next door to a British Army base? Beyond the barracks provides an eye-opening account of the sprawling military presence on Salisbury Plain, drawing on a wide range of voices from both sides of the divide. Targeted for expansion under government plans to reorganise the UK's global defence estate, the Salisbury 'super garrison' offers a unique opportunity to explore the impact of the military footprint in a particular place. But this is no ordinary environment: as well as being the world-famous site of Stonehenge, the grasslands of Salisbury Plain are home to rare plants and wildlife. How does the army take responsibility for conserving this unique landscape as it trains young men and women to use lethal weapons? Are its claims that its presence is a positive for the environment anything more than propaganda? Beyond the barracks investigates these questions against the backdrop of a historic landscape inscribed with the legacy of perpetual war.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        January 2022

        Exiting war

        The British Empire and the 1918–20 moment

        by Romain Fathi, Margaret Hutchison, Andrekos Varnava, Michael Walsh, Alan Lester

        Exiting war explores a particular 1918-20 'moment' in the British Empire's history, between the First World War's armistices of 1918, and the peace treaties of 1919 and 1920. That moment, we argue, was a challenging and transformative time for the Empire. While British authorities successfully answered some of the post-war tests they faced, such as demobilisation, repatriation, and fighting the widespread effects of the Spanish flu, the racial, social, political and economic hallmarks of their imperialism set the scene for a wide range of expressions of loyalties and disloyalties, and anticolonial movements. The book documents and conceptualises this 1918-20 'moment' and its characteristics as a crucial three-year period of transformation for and within the Empire, examining these years for the significant shifts in the imperial relationship that occurred and as laying the foundation for later change in the imperial system.

      • Trusted Partner
        The Arts
        June 2021

        Contemporary Spanish cinema and genre

        by Jay Beck, Vicente Rodríguez Ortega

        This volume is the first English-language collection exclusively dedicated to the study of genre in relation to Spanish cinema. Providing a variety of critical perspectives, the collection gives the reader a thorough account of the relationship between Spanish cinema and genre, drawing on case studies of several of the most remarkable Spanish films in recent years. The book analyses the significant changes in the aesthetics, production and reception of Spanish film from 1990 onwards. It brings together European and North American scholars to establish a critical dialogue on the topics under discussion, while providing multiple perspectives on the concepts of national cinemas and genre theory. In recent years film scholarship has attempted to negotiate the tension between the nationally specific and the internationally ubiquitous, discussing how globalisation has influenced film making and surrounding cultural practice. These broader social concerns have prompted scholars to emphasise a redefinition of national cinemas beyond strict national boundaries and to pay attention to the transnational character of any national site of film production and reception. This collection provides a thorough investigation of contemporary Spanish cinema within a transnational framework, by positing cinematic genres as the meeting spaces between a variety of diverse forces that necessarily operate within but also across territorial spaces. Paying close attention to the specifics of the Spanish cinematic and social panorama, the essays investigate the transnational economic, cultural and aesthetic forces at play in shaping Spanish film genres today.

      • Trusted Partner
        The Arts
        January 2019

        Contemporary Spanish cinema and genre

        by Jay Beck, Vicente Rodríguez Ortega

        This volume is the first English-language collection exclusively dedicated to the study of genre in relation to Spanish cinema. Providing a variety of critical perspectives, the collection gives the reader a thorough account of the relationship between Spanish cinema and genre, drawing on case studies of several of the most remarkable Spanish films in recent years. The book analyses the significant changes in the aesthetics, production and reception of Spanish film from 1990 onwards. It brings together European and North American scholars to establish a critical dialogue on the topics under discussion, while providing multiple perspectives on the concepts of national cinemas and genre theory. In recent years film scholarship has attempted to negotiate the tension between the nationally specific and the internationally ubiquitous, discussing how globalisation has influenced film making and surrounding cultural practice. These broader social concerns have prompted scholars to emphasise a redefinition of national cinemas beyond strict national boundaries and to pay attention to the transnational character of any national site of film production and reception. This collection provides a thorough investigation of contemporary Spanish cinema within a transnational framework, by positing cinematic genres as the meeting spaces between a variety of diverse forces that necessarily operate within but also across territorial spaces. Paying close attention to the specifics of the Spanish cinematic and social panorama, the essays investigate the transnational economic, cultural and aesthetic forces at play in shaping Spanish film genres today.

      • Trusted Partner
        Literature & Literary Studies
        September 2021

        Mid-century gothic

        by Lisa Mullen

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        January 2024

        The urban life of workers in post-Soviet Russia

        Engaging in everyday struggle

        by Alexandrina Vanke

        Despite the intense processes of deindustrialisation around the world, the working class continues to play an important role in post-industrial societies. However, working-class people are often stigmatised, morally judged and depicted negatively in dominant discourses. This book challenges stereotypical representations of workers, building on research into the everyday worlds of working-class and ordinary people in Russia's post-industrial cities. The urban life of workers in post-Soviet Russia is centred on the stories of local communities engaged in the everyday struggles that occur in deindustrialising settings under neoliberal neo-authoritarianism. The book suggests a novel approach to everyday life in post-industrial cities. Drawing on an ethnographic study with elements of arts-based research, the book presents a new genre of writing about workers influenced by the avant-garde documentary tradition and working-class literature.

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