"Playing with Memories" is the first collection of scholarly essays on the work of internationally acclaimed Canadian filmmaker Guy Maddin. It offers extensive perspectives on his career to date, from the early experimentation of "The Dead Father "(1986) to the intensely intimate revelations of "My Winnipeg "(2007). Featuring new and updated essays from American, Canadian, and Australian scholars, collaborators, and critics, as well as an in-depth interview with Maddin, this collection explores the aesthetics and politics behind Maddin s work, firmly situating his films within ongoing...

Holiday Musical Comedy / Characters: 7m, 6f / Simple Set Judy Garland is primed for her biggest comeback ever - the dazzling star of her own TV special, broadcast live on Christmas Eve, 1959. Judy's guests include Bing Crosby (making some holiday "grog"), Ethel Merman (plugging her Hawaiian album), and Liberace (with a handsome sailor in tow). However, mysterious snafus behind the scenes and cameo appearances by commie-baiting Vice President Richard Nixon (who performs a magic act) and blacklisted writer, Lillian Hellman, (who's forced to read "Children's Letter to Santa" with a puppet) throw...

Too often dismissed as nothing more than 'trash cinema', exploitation films have become both earnestly appreciated cult objects and home video items that are more accessible than ever. In this wide-ranging new study, David Church explores how the history of drive-in theatres and urban grind houses has descended to the home video formats that keep these lurid movies fondly alive today.
Arguing for the importance of cultural memory in contemporary fan practices, Church focuses on both the re-release of archival exploitation films on DVD and the recent cycle of 'retrosploitation' films like...

From early twentieth-century stag films to 1960s sexploitation pictures to the boom in 1970s "porno chic," adult cinema's vintage forms are now being reappraised by a new generation of historians, fans, preservationists, and home video entrepreneurs-all of whom depend on and help shape the archive of film history. But what is the present-day allure of these artifacts that have since become eroticized more for their "pastness" than the explicit acts they show? And what are the political implications of recovering these rare but still-visceral films from a less "enlightened," pre-feminist past?...

From early twentieth-century stag films to 1960s sexploitation pictures to the boom in 1970s "porno chic," adult cinema's vintage forms are now being reappraised by a new generation of historians, fans, preservationists, and home video entrepreneurs-all of whom depend on and help shape the archive of film history. But what is the present-day allure of these artifacts that have since become eroticized more for their "pastness" than the explicit acts they show? And what are the political implications of recovering these rare but still-visceral films from a less "enlightened," pre-feminist past?...