The Politics of Nordsploitation

The Politics of Nordsploitation
Author: Pietari Kääpä
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 288
Release: 2021-01-14
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1501327305

The Politics of Nordsploitation takes a transnational approach to exploring Nordic 'exploitation' films in their industrial contexts, viewing them as not only political manifestations of domestic considerations but also to position Nordic film cultures in a global context. Incorporating a wide range of films, from international cult classics like They Call Her One Eye (1974), homegrown martial arts films like The Ninja Mission (1984) to contemporary crowd-sourced fan productions like Iron Sky (2012), this volume examines the remarkable diversity of genre-based, commercially and culturally exploitative film production throughout the Nordic countries – emphasized here through the term 'Nordsploitation'. This volume provides a historical exposition of largely ignored marginal films and film cultural patterns. It also outlines how influential these films have been in shaping the development of Nordic cinema. The effects are visible in the films of the new millennium as previously marginalized practices now enter the mainstream. With sharp insights and new research, The Politics of Nordsploitation redefines the concept of 'exploitation' and its role in small nation cinemas.

Animals in Narrative Film and Television

Animals in Narrative Film and Television
Author: Karin Beeler
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 239
Release: 2022-09-14
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1666904821

This book explores fictional representations and narrative functions of animal characters in animated and live-action film and television, examining the ways in which these representations intersect with a variety of social issues. Contributors cover a range of animal characters, from heroes to villains, across a variety of screen genres and formats, including anime, comedy, romance, horror, fantasy, and science fiction. Aesthetic features of these works, along with the increased latitude that fictionalized narratives and alternative worlds provide, allow existing social issues to be brought to the forefront in order to effect change in our societies. By incorporating animal figures into media, these screen narratives have gained the ability to critique actions carried out by human beings and explore dimensions of both the human/animal connection and the intersectionality of race, culture, class, gender, and ability, ultimately teaching viewers how to become more human in our interactions with the world around us. Scholars of film studies, media studies, and animal studies will find this book of particular interest.

European Cinema in the Twenty-First Century

European Cinema in the Twenty-First Century
Author: Ingrid Lewis
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 346
Release: 2020-05-23
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 3030334368

This book rethinks the study of European Cinema in a way that centres on students and their needs, in a comprehensive volume introducing undergraduates to the main discourses, directions and genres of twenty-first-century European film. Importantly, this collection is the first of its kind to apply a transversal approach to European Cinema, bringing together the East and the West, while providing a broad picture of key trends, aesthetics, genres, national identities, and transnational concerns. Lewis and Canning’s collection effectively addresses some of the most pressing questions in contemporary European film, such as ecology, migration, industry, identity, disability, memory, auteurship, genre, small cinemas, and the national and international frameworks which underpin them. Combining accessible original research with a thorough grounding in recent histories and contexts, each chapter includes key definitions, reflective group questions, and a summative case study. Overall, this book makes a strong contribution to our understanding of recent European Cinema, making it an invaluable resource for lecturers and students across a variety of film-centred modules.

A Companion to Motion Pictures and Public Value

A Companion to Motion Pictures and Public Value
Author: Mette Hjort
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 586
Release: 2022-03-03
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1119677122

A singular collection of original essays exploring the varied intersections of motion pictures and public value A Companion to Motion Pictures and Public Value presents a cross-disciplinary investigation of the past, present, and possible future contributions of the moving image to the public good. This unique volume explores the direct and indirect public value developed through motion pictures of different types, genres, and screening sites. Essays by world-renowned scholars from diverse disciplines present original conceptual work, philosophical arguments, historical discussion, empirical research, and specific case studies. Divided into seven thematically organized sections, the Companion identifies the various kinds of values that motion pictures can deliver, amongst them artistic, ethical, environmental, cultural, political, cognitive, and spiritual value. Each section includes an introduction in which the editors outline main themes and highlight connections between individual chapters. Throughout the text, probing essays interrogate the issue of public value as it relates to the cinema and provide insight into how motion pictures play a positive role in human life and society. Featuring original research essays on a pioneering topic, this innovative reference text: Brings together work by expert authors in disciplines such as Philosophy, Political Science, Cultural Studies, Film Studies, Sociology, and Environmental Studies Discusses a variety of institutional landscapes, policy formations, and types and styles of filmmaking Provides wide and inclusive coverage of cinema’s relation to public value in Africa, Asia, China, Europe, the Middle East, and the Americas Explores the role of motion pictures in community formation, nation building, and the construction of good societies Covers new and emerging topics such as cinema-based fields focused on health and wellbeing A Companion to Motion Pictures and Public Value is an ideal textbook for advanced undergraduate and graduate courses in Film, Media, and Cultural Studies, and is a valuable resource for scholars across a variety of disciplines

Let's Go Stag!

Let's Go Stag!
Author: Dan Erdman
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 233
Release: 2021-11-18
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 150133302X

For much of the 20th century, the underground pornography industry - made up of amateurs and hobbyists who created hardcore, explicit "stag films" - went about its business hounded by reformers and law enforcement, from local police departments all the way up to the FBI. Rumors of this illicit activity circulated and became the stuff of urban myth, but this period of pornography history remains murky. Let's Go Stag! reveals the secrets of this underground world. Using the archives of civic groups, law enforcement, bygone government studies and similarly neglected evidence, archivist Dan Erdman reconstructs the means by which stag films were produced, distributed and exhibited, as well as demonstrate the way in which these practices changed with the times, eventually paving the way for the pornographic explosion of the 1970s and beyond. Let's Go Stag! is sure to point the way for countless future researchers and remain the standard work of history for this era of adult film for a long time to come.

Mario Bava

Mario Bava
Author: Leon Hunt
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 240
Release: 2022-02-24
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1501356526

How do we approach a figure like Mario Bava, a once obscure figure promoted to cult status? This book takes a new look at Italy's 'maestro of horror' but also uses his films to address a broader set of concerns. What issues do his films raise for film authorship, given that several of them were released in different versions and his contributions to others were not always credited? How might he be understood in relation to genre, one of which he is sometimes credited with having pioneered? This volume addresses these questions through a thorough analysis of Bava's shifting reputation as a stylist and genre pioneer and also discusses the formal and narrative properties of a filmography marked by an emphasis on spectacle and atmosphere over narrative coherence and the ways in which his lauded cinematic style intersects with different production contexts. Featuring new analysis of cult classics like Kill, Baby ... Kill (1966) and Five Dolls for an August Moon (1970), Mario Bava: The Artisan as Italian Horror Auteur sheds light on a body of films that were designed to be ephemeral but continue to fascinate us today.

The Mad Max Effect

The Mad Max Effect
Author: James Newton
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 296
Release: 2021-06-03
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1501342304

The Mad Max Effect provides an in-depth analysis of the Mad Max series, and how it began as an inventive concoction of a number of influences from a range of exploitation genres (including the biker movie, the revenge film, and the car chase cinema of the 1970s), to eventually inspiring a fresh cycle of international low budget 'road warrior' movies that appeared on home video in the 1980s. The Mad Max Effect is the first detailed academic study of the most famous and celebrated post-apocalypse film series, and examines how a humble Australian action movie came from the cultural margins of exploitation cinema to have a profound impact on the broader media landscape.

Adult Themes

Adult Themes
Author: Anne Etienne
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2023-08-24
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1501375261

Between the late 1950s and mid-1970s, British cinema experienced an explosion of X-certificated films. In parallel with an era marked by social, political, and sexual ferment and upheaval, British filmmakers and censors pushed and guarded the permissible limits of violence, horror, revolt, and sexuality on screen. Adult Themes is the first volume entirely devoted to the exploration of British X certificate films across this transformative period, since identified as 'the long 1960s'. How did the British Board of Film Censors, harried on one side by the censorious and moralistic, and beset on the other by demands for greater artistic freedom, oversee and manage this provocative body of films? How did the freedoms and restrictions of the X certificate hasten, determine, and reshape post-war British cinema into an artistic, exploitational, and unapologetically adult medium? Contributors to this collection consider these central questions as they take us to swinging parties, on youthful crime sprees, into local council meetings, on police raids of cinemas, and around Soho strip clubs, and introduce us to mass murderers, lesbian vampires, apoplectic protestors, eroticised middle-aged women, and rebellious working-class men. Adult Themes examines both the workings and negotiations of British film censorship, the limits of artistic expression, and a wider culture of X certificate cinema. This is an important volume for students and scholars of British Film History and censorship, Media Studies, the 1960s, and Cultural and Sexuality Studies, while simultaneously an entertaining read for all connoisseurs of British cinema at its most vivid and scandalous.

Mario Bava

Mario Bava
Author: Leon Hunt
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 370
Release: 2022-02-24
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1501356534

How do we approach a figure like Mario Bava, a once obscure figure promoted to cult status? This book takes a new look at Italy's 'maestro of horror' but also uses his films to address a broader set of concerns. What issues do his films raise for film authorship, given that several of them were released in different versions and his contributions to others were not always credited? How might he be understood in relation to genre, one of which he is sometimes credited with having pioneered? This volume addresses these questions through a thorough analysis of Bava's shifting reputation as a stylist and genre pioneer and also discusses the formal and narrative properties of a filmography marked by an emphasis on spectacle and atmosphere over narrative coherence and the ways in which his lauded cinematic style intersects with different production contexts. Featuring new analysis of cult classics like Kill, Baby ... Kill (1966) and Five Dolls for an August Moon (1970), Mario Bava: The Artisan as Italian Horror Auteur sheds light on a body of films that were designed to be ephemeral but continue to fascinate us today.

Production Studies

Production Studies
Author: Vicki Mayer
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 264
Release: 2009-09-10
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1135840164

Production Studies is the first volume to bring together a star-studded cast of interdisciplinary media scholars to examine the unique cultural practices of media production. The all-new essays collected here combine ethnographic, sociological, critical, material, and political-economic methods to explore a wide range of topics, from contemporary industrial trends such as new media and niche markets to gender and workplace hierarchies. Together, the contributors seek to understand how the entire span of "media producers"—ranging from high-profile producers and directors to anonymous stagehands and costume designers—work through professional organizations and informal networks to form communities of shared practices, languages, and cultural understandings of the world.