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      • Trusted Partner
        The Arts
        January 2019

        Hispanic and Lusophone women filmmakers

        Theory, practice and difference

        by Parvati Nair, Julian Gutierrez-Albilla

        This volume examines the films of Hispanic and Lusophone women filmmakers from the 1930s to the present day. It establishes productive connections between film practices across these geographical areas by identifying common areas of concern on the part of these female filmmakers. Focusing on aesthetic, theoretical and socio-historical analyses, it questions the manifest or latent gender and sexual politics that inform and structure the emerging cinematic productions by women filmmakers in Portugal, Spain, Latin America and the US. With a combination of scholars from the UK, the US, Spain and Latin America, the volume documents and interprets a fascinating corpus of films made by Hispanic and Lusophone women and proposes research strategies and methodologies that can expand our understanding of socio-cultural and psychic constructions of gender and sexual politics. An essential resource to rethink notions of gender identity and subjectivity, it is a unique contribution to Spanish and Latin American Film Studies and Film Studies.

      • Trusted Partner
        March 2023

        “Witness to the Mutilations of the Sky”

        Fiction and testimony in the work of Mohammed Dib

        by Hervé Sanson

        From his earliest writings, Algerian writer Mohammed Dib (1920-2003) never gave in to the use of didactic, transparent language, nor to the expectations of so-called “commissioned” literature. It's the work of the language in its syntactic cutting, the weighing of the letter, that's important. In fact, the Dibian witness is masked: he conceals within himself what I'd like to call a literary witness, i.e. a textual device, plural in its declensions, which, going against the expected, allows for other times, (re)plays the texts in their unspoken, questions the memory of the texts, renews the very conception of the witness and asks the following question: what witness when fiction gets involved? This essay, covering fifty years of uninterrupted creation, sets out to delineate the various passages of witness that Dib's work encourages, but cannot avoid questioning the very nature of exegesis and the position of the exegete: do I become, at the end of this relay, the ultimate witness who wishes, from the depths of his heart, to pass the baton to a new guarantor? Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

      • Trusted Partner
        November 2022

        The Doors of the Poem

        Tribute to Habib Tengour

        by Sagawe Regina Keil, Hervé Sanson

        The twenty-seven contributions gathered here and superbly illustrated by Hamid Tibouchi - critical studies and creative texts - pay tribute to a work that is at the forefront of Algerian and, more broadly, contemporary letters, but paradoxically still little-known. On the occasion of Habib Tengour's seventy-fifth birthday, this volume is intended to open up new avenues of research into this work, and provide a more accurate understanding of the issues at stake. Tributes from his peers - poets from all over the world - give the book an affective, carnal dimension, extending the researchers' analyses with unexpected echoes. “Tengour warns us: “Only those with the right intention enter the poem! LES PORTES DU POEME thus opens on one of the most important poetic voices of his generation (Prix Dante in 2016, Prix Benjamin Fondane in 2022, Prix Dante Alighieri in 2023, for his body of work).

      • Trusted Partner
        The Arts
        December 2012

        Hispanic and Lusophone women filmmakers

        Theory, practice and difference

        by Parvati Nair, Julian Gutierrez-Albilla

        This volume examines the films of Hispanic and Lusophone women filmmakers from the 1930s to the present day. It establishes productive connections between film practices across these geographical areas by identifying common areas of concern on the part of these female filmmakers. Focusing on aesthetic, theoretical and socio-historical analyses, it questions the manifest or latent gender and sexual politics that inform and structure the emerging cinematic productions by women filmmakers in Portugal, Spain, Latin America and the US. With a combination of scholars from the UK, the US, Spain and Latin America, the volume documents and interprets a fascinating corpus of films made by Hispanic and Lusophone women and proposes research strategies and methodologies that can expand our understanding of socio-cultural and psychic constructions of gender and sexual politics. An essential resource to rethink notions of gender identity and subjectivity, it is a unique contribution to Spanish and Latin American Film Studies and Film Studies. ;

      • Trusted Partner
        The Arts
        August 2016

        Algerian national cinema

        by Guy Austin

      • Trusted Partner
        The Arts
        January 2019

        Reframing difference

        Beur and banlieue filmmaking in France

        by Carrie Tarr

        Reframing difference is the first major study of two overlapping strands of contemporary French cinema, cinema beur (films by young directors of Maghrebi immigrant origin) and cinema de banlieue (films set in France's disadvantaged outer-city estates). Carrie Tarr's insightful account draws on a wide range of films, from directors such as Mehdi Charef, Mathieu Kassovitz and Djamel Bensalah. Her analyses compare the work of male and female, majority and minority film-makers, and emphasise the significance of authorship in the representation of gender and ethnicity. Foregrounding such issues as the quest for identity, the negotiation of space and the recourse to memory and history, she argues that these films challenge and reframe the symbolic spaces of French culture, addressing issues of ethnicity and difference which are central to today's debates about what it means to be French. This timely book is essential reading for anyone interested in the relationship between cinema and citizenship in a multicultural society.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        July 2022

        The looking machine

        Essays on cinema, anthropology and documentary filmmaking

        by David MacDougall

        This new collection of essays presents the latest thoughts of one of the world's leading ethnographic filmmakers and writers on cinema. It will provide essential reading for students in cinema studies, filmmaking, and visual anthropology. The dozen wide-ranging essays give unique insights into the history of documentary, how films evoke space, time and physical sensations, and the intellectual and emotional links between filmmakers and their subjects. In an era of reality television, historical re-enactments, and designer packaging, MacDougall defends the principles that inspired the earliest practitioners of documentary cinema. He urges us to consider how the form can more accurately reflect the realities of our everyday lives. Building on his own practice in filmmaking, he argues that this means resisting the pressures for self-censorship and the inherent ethnocentrism of our own society and those we film.

      • Trusted Partner
        The Arts
        June 2017

        Monstrous adaptations

        Generic and thematic mutations in horror film

        by Richard Hand, Jay McRoy

        The fifteen groundbreaking essays contained in this book address the concept of adaptation in relation to horror cinema. Adaptation is not only a key cultural practice and strategy for filmmakers, but it is also a theme of major importance within horror cinema as a hole. The history of the genre is full of adaptations that have drawn from fiction or folklore, or that have assumed the shape of remakes of pre-existing films. The horror genre itself also abounds with its own myriad transformations and transmutations. The essays within this volume engage with an impressive range of horror texts, from the earliest silent horror films by Thomas Edison and Jean Epstein through to important contemporary phenomena, such as the western appropriation of Japanese horror motifs. Classic works by Alfred Hitchcock, David Cronenberg and Abel Ferrara receive cutting-edge re-examination, as do unjustly neglected works by Mario Bava, Guillermo del Toro and Stan Brakhage.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        July 2025

        Empirical art

        Filmmaking for fieldwork in practice

        by Andy Lawrence, Martha-Cecilia Dietrich

        Empirical art: Filmmaking for fieldwork in practice is an insightful exploration of what the craft of filmmaking brings to social science research. Providing creative avenues on how to narrate encounters, relationships, and experiences during fieldwork, this comprehensive volume offers a rich tapestry of theoretical explorations and explorative methodologies. Skilfully connecting the worlds of ethnography, art and cinema, the contributors in this book act as a compass for filmmakers and researchers venturing to use a camera and microphone to relate and narrate their research collaborations and fieldsites. Drawing from the authors' extensive experience in disciplines like social anthropology, environmental humanities, and political science, "Empirical Art" breaks down the intricate process of crafting ethnographic films that departs from the researcher's subjectivity. Covering aspects of filmmaking from conceptualisation to production and distribution, readers are equipped with a treasure trove of collaborative techniques, innovative approaches, and ethical considerations necessary to generate and examine storytelling practices in contemporary fields of study. The authors discuss the significance of the multiple roles that technologies of filmmaking play in reflecting on cultural practices, social dynamics, and (beyond) human storytelling and their transformative potentials. Whether a seasoned filmmaker, an aspiring ethnographer, or an academic seeking new dimensions for their research, Empirical Art serves as a guide to integrating visual storytelling, cinema craft and empirical research.

      • Trusted Partner
        February 2021

        The Wind has Said its Name

        by Mohamed Abdallah

        “A wise malice radiated from his features, and one always had the impression that he knew more than he was willing to say, that a shrewd reflection lurked behind his smiles. His quick wit and good humor were the delight of La Mauresque and its surroundings; a reminder through his quiet charm that the world could still harbor delicacy.” Mohamed Abdallah Oran, autumn 1954. At La Mauresque, a space symbolizing a whole country in turmoil, in the heart of the indigenous city of Oran, the doubts of its occupants multiply and questions abound. Journalists, politicians, novelists, poets and artists grapple with a pivotal moment in their countries' history. The old world is dying, while the new one is slow to emerge for them. Hesitations and initiatives abound. They are trying to navigate by sight in an ocean so vast that it merges with the horizon; a horizon they sometimes seem to forget, but which the author has tried to give readers a constant view of through his novel: Le Vent a dit son Nom (The Wind Has Said Its Name). Multiplying references to emblematic figures in the awakening of consciences to freedom, Mohamed Abdallah attempts to offer a fresh look at the role that men of letters, intellectuals and, more generally, people of culture can play, at a time when a Nation is preparing to face new trials. These are themes that still resonate today.

      • Trusted Partner
        The Arts
        January 2019

        Postcolonial African cinema

        Ten directors

        by David Murphy, Patrick Williams

        This is the first introduction of its kind to an important cross-section of postcolonial African filmmakers from the 1950s to the present. Building on previous critical work in the field, this volume will bring together ideas from a range of disciplines - film studies, African cultural studies, and, in particular, postcolonial studies - in order to combine the in-depth analysis of individual films and bodies of work by individual directors with a sustained interrogation of these films in relation to important theoretical concepts. Structurally, the book is straightforward, though the aim is to incorporate diversity and complexity of approach within the overall simplicity of format. Chapters provide both an overview of the director's output to date, and the necessary background - personal or national, cultural or political - to enable readers to achieve a better understanding of the director's choice of subject matter, aesthetic or formal strategies, or ideological stance. They also offer a particular reading of one or more films, in which the authors aim to situate African cinema in relation to important critical and theoretical debates. This book thus constitutes a new departure in African film studies, recognising the maturity of the field, and the need for complex yet accessible approaches to it, which move beyond the purely descriptive while refusing to get bogged down in theoretical jargon. Consequently, the volume should be of interest not only to specialists but also to the general reader.

      • Trusted Partner
        February 2021

        The Stage and the Story

        by Djawad Rostom Touati

        ‘‘So he thought of writing a play inspired by the residents' strike, which was in full swing. He was in his fifth year of medical school and his future was directly affected by the outcome of this movement, for which he was enthusiastic. However, when he wanted to take an interest in the nuts and bolts, the details he could incorporate into his art, an indefinable discomfort overcame him, and he couldn't quite grasp the cause. The project remained at half-mast in a corner of his mind, and the end of the strike finished by gathering the dust of oblivion on it.’’ Dj. R. Touati The one is multiple, and that which unites, after the moment of egregore, becomes that which divides; irreconcilably. At a time when the failure of the intuition of diversity has never been so prevalent, so widespread, it seemed salubrious to the author to show - without seeking to demonstrate - through the painting of an aesthetic reality, that if a historical moment has given rise to debate and division within the same class, then nothing is more absurd - or more specious - than the claim to unanimity within an entire people. Against the schizophrenic false identification, attempting to grasp the totality appears to be the only way to confront totalitarianism, which is, as those who denounce it pretend to ignore in order to exonerate themselves, THE PART THAT TAKES ITSELF FOR THE WHOLE. On stage, Molière, Brecht, Kateb, Alloula and others play out history... against a backdrop of burgundy-red curtains, where a dialogue of the deaf imposes blindness on the actors in action. Far from the imposing “noise” of movement, La scène et l'histoire, like a “socio-temporal” filter, sets the historical record straight: curtain up. Theater teacher Nadji, on the lookout for the old days, Rahim and Lamia, the pretenders of a politically better future, and all the others... followers of culture, that's us..., (are) beating the floor of the present.

      • Trusted Partner
        The Arts
        July 2025

        Ida Lupino

        Multifaceted performer and cinematic pioneer

        by Gillian Kelly

        This book contributes to a welcome new wave focusing on the importance of female filmmakers, providing a reappraisal of Ida Lupino, a cinematic figure of significant importance. Given her ability to move between popular and independent cinemas and her status as both a Hollywood star and director/writer/producer of socially relevant films overlooked by the mainstream, Lupino is a particularly interesting case study. Employing a range of critical approaches, including feminist theory, auteur theory and critical theory, this book investigates key themes and motifs that developed across Lupino's unusual and unique career as one of the most significant female players in film history. Investigating her oeuvre as actress, director, writer and producer, it discusses Lupino as a complex and important filmmaker whose career, on both sides of the camera, requires substantially more critical attention than it has been awarded thus far.

      • Trusted Partner
        The Arts
        December 2019

        Screening the Paris suburbs

        From the silent era to the 1990s

        by Philippe Met, Annie Fourcaut, Roland-François Lack, Jean-Louis Pautrot, Keith Reader, Margaret Flinn, Eric Bullot, Tristan Jean, Malcolm Turvey, Elisabeth Cardonne-Arlyck, Térésa Faucon, Philippe Met, Camille Canteux, Derek Schilling, Guillaume Soulez, David Vasse, Derek Schilling

        Decades before the emergence of a French self-styled 'hood' film around 1995, French filmmakers looked beyond the gates of the capital for inspiration and content. In the Paris suburbs they found an inexhaustible reservoir of forms, landscapes and social types in which to anchor their fictions, from bourgeois villas and bucolic riverside cafés to post-war housing estates and postmodern new towns. For the first time in English, contributors to this volume address key aspects of this long film history, marked by such towering figures as Jean Renoir, Jacques Tati and Jean-Luc Godard. Idyllic or menacing, expansive or claustrophobic, the suburb served divergent aesthetic and ideological programmes across the better part of a century. Themes central to French cultural modernity - class conflict, leisure, boredom and anti-authoritarianism - cut across the fifteen chapters.

      • Trusted Partner
        October 2014

        The education system in colonial Algeria (1833-1962)

        Statistical and historiographical review

        by Kamel Kateb

        ‘‘The means of dominating a people and assimilating it is to take possession of childhood and youth: this cannot be done by coercion, but the moral means are numerous and effective... The object of our efforts must be the extension of Arabic-French teaching: it is through this that we will take possession of the new generations almost from the cradle.’’ (Leroy-Beaulieu, 1887). (Leroy-Beaulieu, 1887). What is the record of French education in Algeria during the period of colonisation? After 132 years of French presence in Algeria (annexed to France in 1838), how many Algerians (French Muslims, indigenous French subjects) had a sufficient knowledge of the French language, and how many of them had learned to read and write in French? Was compulsory schooling for children aged 6 to 13, in accordance with the J. Ferry law of 1882, applied in Algeria? How many Algerian children attended state schools? How many went to lycée and university? What was the number of students at the time of the country's independence? How many doctors, engineers, primary and secondary school teachers did Algeria have at the time of its independence? What was the status of local languages (Arabic, dialectal Arabic, Berber) in the Algerian education system? As well as answering the questions listed above, this book attempts to analyse the objectives assigned to French schools in Algeria and to study the attitudes of the various populations to the objectives pursued. What role did education play in the various forms of colonial ‘confrontation’? What was the role of the elites produced by the colonial education system? And what role and place did they occupy in the struggle for Algerian independence? Were they the driving force behind the independence movement, as the Europeans in Algeria feared? Or did they mediate between colonisation and the mass of the colonised, as the enlightened ideologists of the colonial system hoped?

      • Trusted Partner
        History
        July 2016

        From empire to exile

        History and memory within the pied-noir and harki communities, 1962–2012

        by Series edited by Maire Cross, David Hopkin, Claire Eldridge

        This book explores the commemorative afterlives of the Algerian War of Independence (1954-62), one of the world's most iconic wars of decolonisation. It focuses on the million French settlers - pieds-noirs - and the tens of thousands of harkis - the French army's native auxiliaries - who felt compelled to migrate to France when colonial rule ended. Challenging the idea that Algeria was a 'forgotten' war that only returned to French public attention in the 1990s, this study reveals a dynamic picture of memory activism undertaken continuously since 1962 by grassroots communities connected to this conflict. Reconceptualising the ways in which the Algerian War has been debated, evaluated and commemorated in the subsequent five decades, From empire to exile makes an original contribution to important discussions surrounding the contentious issues of memory, migration and empire in contemporary France that will appeal to students and scholars of history and cultural studies.

      • Trusted Partner
        Lifestyle, Sport & Leisure
        June 2024

        Round our way

        Sam Hanna's visual legacy

        by Heather Nicholson

        Sam Hanna (1903-96), a pioneering filmmaker from Burnley, Lancashire, was dubbed the 'Lowry of filmmaking' by BBC broadcaster Brian Redhead in the 1980s. The well-meant label stuck, even though it misses the variety of Hanna's remarkable output. Hanna's intimate glimpses into the lives of strangers enable us to imagine the possible stories that lie behind the images. Away from mid-century exponents of documentary filmmaking and photography, Hanna shows us humanity and a microcosm of a world in change, where his subjects are caught up in issues far beyond their grasp that we, as onlookers years later, encounter and see afresh. Written and curated by historian Heather Norris Nicholson, Round our way combines stills, essays and archive photography to document Hanna's unique visual record on film, particularly in northern England, but also further afield, during decades of profound change.

      • Trusted Partner
        The Arts
        January 2019

        Spanish cinema 1973–2010

        Auteurism, politics, landscape and memory

        by Maria M. Delgado, Robin Fiddian

        This collection offers a new lens through which to examine Spain's cinema production following the isolation imposed by the Franco regime. The seventeen key films analysed in the volume span a period of 35 years that have been crucial in the development of Spain, Spanish democracy and Spanish cinema. They encompass different genres (horror, thriller, melodrama, social realism, documentary), both popular (Los abrazos rotos/Broken Embraces, Vicky Cristina Barcelona) and more select art house fare (En la ciudad de Sylvia/In the City of Sylvia, El espíritu de la colmena/Spirit of the Beehive) and are made in English (as both first and second language), Basque, Castilian, Catalan and French. Offering an expanded understanding of 'national' cinemas, the volume explores key works by Guillermo del Toro and Lucrecia Martel alongside an examination of the ways in which established auteurs (Almodóvar, José Garci, Carlos Saura) and younger generations of filmmakers (Cesc Gay, Amenábar, Bollaín) have harnessed cinematic language towards a commentary on the nation-state. The result is a bold new study of the ways in which film has created new prisms that have determined how Spain is positioned in the global marketplace.

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