The Child in Cinema

The Child in Cinema
Author: Karen Lury
Publisher: British Film Institute
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2022-09-22
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1844575128

This anthology is organised into five distinct sections which address the significance, qualities and characteristics speaking to the figure of the child in film. The 'child' is understood as a figure that refers to real children, representations of childhood, the memories of imagined and actual childhoods as well as more abstract or theoretical and historical conceptions of the child in relation to subjectivity and agency. Following an introductory essay by the editor, the first section, 'Working children', establishes perhaps the most familiar context for the child in film - Hollywood cinema - and provides examples of the child actor's labour observing a loose chronology - from the 1930s 'prodigies', to the 'juvenile' supporting actor in the 1940s, to the exceptional career of one of the most well known 'child stars' - Jodie Foster. In all these instances the child's 'work' and performance is scrutinised and assessed in relation to popular understandings of what and who children are in relation to specific historical and cultural contexts. In the second section, 'Relations and representations', the effect of the child on different film's constructions and representation of time and space are considered. How does each film represent how the child apparently 'sees' and experiences its world? How successfully - or not - are the peculiar relations of the child to space and time managed and mediated by either live action or animated film? In the third section, 'The child in history', three case studies of different national cinemas (Post-Yugoslavian, Tamil, Brazilian) offer analyses of how the figure of the child may enable film-makers to portray alternative versions of history, or 'ways of telling' history, that reach toward alternative understandings of political conflicts and the formation of national identities. In the fourth section, 'Subjectivity, performance and the voice of the child', each essay seeks to uncover how the child's subjectivity (their agency and sense of self) is mediated and performed in both fictional and non-fictional films while understanding that the child's 'interiority' is often understood to be both precarious and elusive. In the fifth and final section, 'The didactic and nostalgic child' the essays refer explicitly to the use and function of the child for cinema, and indicates how the study of cinema may be enhanced by looking beyond commercial film-making. In this section essays address didactic or educational films made to directly influence the behaviour of children (or their caregivers) and a number of avant-garde and video installations in which memories of childhood are used and re-staged.

The Child in World Cinema

The Child in World Cinema
Author: Debbie Olson
Publisher: Lexington Books
Total Pages: 515
Release: 2018-02-19
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1498563813

This collection seeks to broaden the discussion of the child image by close analysis of the child and childhood as depicted in non-Western cinemas. Each essay offers a counter-narrative to Western notions of childhood by looking critically at alternative visions of childhood that does not privilege a Western ideal. Rather, this collection seeks to broaden our ideas about children, childhood, and the child’s place in the global community. This collection features a wide variety of contributors from around the world who offer compelling analyses of non-Western, non-Hollywood films starring children.

The Uncanny Child in Transnational Cinema

The Uncanny Child in Transnational Cinema
Author: Jessica Balanzategui
Publisher: Amsterdam University Press
Total Pages: 341
Release: 2018-12-11
Genre: Art
ISBN: 9048537797

This book illustrates how global horror film images of children re-conceptualised childhood at the beginning of the twenty-first century, unravelling the child's long entrenched binding to ideologies of growth, futurity, and progress. The Uncanny Child in Transnational Cinema analyses an influential body of horror films featuring subversive depictions of children that emerged at the beginning of the twenty-first century, and considers the cultural conditions surrounding their emergence. The book proposes that complex cultural and industrial shifts at the turn of the millennium resulted in potent cinematic renegotiations of the concept of childhood. In these transnational films-largely stemming from Spain, Japan, and America-the child resists embodying growth and futurity, concepts to which the child's symbolic function is typically bound. By demonstrating both the culturally specific and globally resonant properties of these frightening visions of children who refuse to grow up, the book outlines the conceptual and aesthetic mechanisms by which long entrenched ideologies of futurity, national progress, and teleological history started to waver at the turn of the twenty-first century.

Childhood and Cinema

Childhood and Cinema
Author: Vicky Lebeau
Publisher: Reaktion Books
Total Pages: 228
Release: 2008-05-15
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 9781861893529

Vicky Lebeau investigates how films use children to probe such themes as sexuality, death, imagination, the terrors of childhood, and hope.

The Child in Contemporary Latin American Cinema

The Child in Contemporary Latin American Cinema
Author: Deborah Martin
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 245
Release: 2019-01-04
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1137528222

What is the child for Latin American cinema? This book aims to answer that question, tracing the common tendencies of the representation of the child in the cinema of Latin American countries, and demonstrating the place of the child in the movements, genres and styles that have defined that cinema. Deborah Martin combines theoretical readings of the child in cinema and culture, with discussions of the place of the child in specific national, regional and political contexts, to develop in-depth analyses and establish regional comparisons and trends. She pays particular attention to the narrative and stylistic techniques at play in the creation of the child's perspective, and to ways in which the presence of the child precipitates experiments with film aesthetics. Bringing together fresh readings of well-known films with attention to a range of little-studied works, The Child in Contemporary Latin American Cinema examines films from the recent and contemporary period, focussing on topics such as the death of the child in ‘street child’ films, the role of the child in post-dictatorship filmmaking and the use of child characters to challenge gender and sexual ideologies. The book also aims to place those analyses in a historical context, tracing links with important precursors, and paying attention to the legacy of the child’s figuring in the mid-century movements of melodrama and the New Latin American Cinema.

Cinema's Missing Children

Cinema's Missing Children
Author: Emma Wilson
Publisher: Wallflower Press
Total Pages: 216
Release: 2003
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9781903364505

Photographs of missing children are some of the most haunting images of contemporary Western society. Wilson contends that the loss of a child is perceived as a limit-experience in contemporary cinema, where filmmakers attempt to transform their means of representation as a response to acute pain and horror. She explores the representation of missing and endangered children in a number of the key films of the last decade, including Kieslowski's Three Colours: Blue, Atom Egoyan's Exotica, Todd Solondz's Happiness, Jane Campion's The Portrait of a Lady, Lars von Trier's The Kingdom, and Almodovar's All About My Mother.

The Highly Sensitive Child

The Highly Sensitive Child
Author: Elaine N. Aron, Ph.D.
Publisher: Harmony
Total Pages: 354
Release: 2002-10-08
Genre: Family & Relationships
ISBN: 0767913906

A groundbreaking parenting guidebook addressing the trait of “high sensitivity” in children, from the psychologist and bestselling author of The Highly Sensitive Person whose books have sold more than 1 million copies With the publication of The Highly Sensitive Person, pioneering psychotherapist Dr. Elaine Aron became the first person to identify the inborn trait of “high sensitivity” and to show how it affects the lives of those who possess it. In The Highly Sensitive Child, Dr. Aron shifts her focus to the 15 to 20 percent of children who are born highly sensitive—deeply reflective, sensitive to the subtle, and easily overwhelmed. These qualities can make for smart, conscientious, creative children, but also may result in shyness, fussiness, or acting out. As Dr. Aron shows in The Highly Sensitive Child, if your child seems overly inhibited, particular, or you worry that they may have a neurodevelopmental disorder, such as ADHD or autism, they may simply be highly sensitive. And raised with proper understanding and care, highly sensitive children can grow up to be happy, healthy, well-adjusted adults. Rooted in Dr. Aron’s years of experience working with highly sensitive children and their families, as well as in her original research on child temperament, The Highly Sensitive Child explores the challenges of raising an HSC; the four keys to successfully parenting an HSC; how to help HSCs thrive in a not-so-sensitive world; and how to make school and friendships enjoyable. With chapters addressing the needs of specific age groups, from newborns to teens, The Highly Sensitive Child is the ultimate resource for parents, teachers, and the sensitive children in their lives.

Action Movie Kid

Action Movie Kid
Author: Daniel Hashimoto
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 64
Release: 2015-05-05
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
ISBN: 147679989X

"Interactive book: download the Blippar app to activate!"--Cover.

The Child in Film

The Child in Film
Author: Karen Lury
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 224
Release: 2010-03-30
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 0857711288

Ghastly and ghostly children, 'dirty little white girls', the child as witness and as victim, have always played an important part in the history of cinema, as have child performers themselves. In exploring the disruptive power of the child in films made for an adult audience across popular films, including "Taxi Driver" and Japanese horror, and 'art-house' productions like "Mirror" and "Pan's Labyrinth", Karen Lury investigates why the figure of the child has such a significant impact on the visual aspects and storytelling potential of cinema.Lury's main argument is that the child as a liminal yet powerful agent has allowed filmmakers to play adventurously with cinema's formal conventions - with far-reaching consequences. In particular, she reveals how a child's relationship to time allows it to disturb and question conventional master-narratives. She explores too the investment in the child actor and expression of child sexuality, as well as how confining and conservative existing assumptions can be in terms of commonly held beliefs as to who children 'really are'.

The Revolting Child in Horror Cinema

The Revolting Child in Horror Cinema
Author: Andrew Scahill
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 174
Release: 2015-12-27
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1137481323

The monstrous child is the allegorical queer child in various formations of horror cinema: the child with a secret, the child 'possessed' by Otherness, the changeling child, the terrible gang. This book explores the possibilities of 'not growing up' as a model for a queer praxis that confronts the notion of heternormative maturity.