Kategoria BISAC: Performing Arts >> Film - Direction & Production

The massive investments made in Hollywood today mandate tight studio controls on mainstream cinema. As a result, one must often look to alternative outlets in order to see a movie intended primarily as art--or even as a sincere effort at entertainment--instead of as a simple source of revenue. Foreign and independent movies thus often play the role of bellwether for the Hollywood studios that are unable to experiment themselves: behind the look of the studio smash "Sin City," for instance, was the rigorous pulp style of "Road to Perdition"; before the sadism and cynicism of many current...

Derek Jarman was the most important independent filmmaker in England during the 1980s. Using emblems and symbols in associative contexts, rather than conventional, cause-and-effect narrative, he created films noteworthy for their lyricism and poetic feeling and for their exploration of the gay experience. His style of filmmaking also links Jarman with other prominent directors of lyric film, including Pier Paolo Pasolini, Andrei Tarkovsky, Jean Cocteau, and Jean Genet.

This pathfinding book places Derek Jarman in the tradition of lyric film and offers incisive readings of all eleven...

Sound is half the picture, and since the 1960s, film sound not only has rivaled the innovative imagery of contemporary Hollywood cinema, but in some ways has surpassed it in status and privilege because of the emergence of sound design.

This in-depth study by William Whittington considers the evolution of sound design not only through cultural and technological developments during the last four decades, but also through the attitudes and expectations of filmgoers. Fans of recent blockbuster films, in particular science fiction films, have come to expect a more advanced and refined...

Filmmaker Lourdes Portillo sees her mission as "channeling the hopes and dreams of a people." Clearly, political commitment has inspired her choice of subjects. With themes ranging from state repression to AIDS, Portillo's films include: Despues del Terremoto, the Oscar-nominated Las Madres: The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, La Ofrenda: The Days of the Dead, The Devil Never Sleeps, and Corpus: A Home Movie for Selena.

The first study of Portillo and her films, this collection is collaborative and multifaceted in...

Women filmmakers in Mexico were rare until the 1980s and 1990s, when women began to direct feature films in unprecedented numbers. Their films have won acclaim at home and abroad, and the filmmakers have become key figures in contemporary Mexican cinema. In this book, Elissa Rashkin documents how and why women filmmakers have achieved these successes, as she explores how the women's movement, film studies programs, governmental film policy, and the transformation of the intellectual sector since the 1960s have all affected women's filmmaking in Mexico.

After a historical overview of...

Theories of film have traditionally dealt with either narrative or industrial issues, with the consequence that the physical content of the graphic frame has often been ignored or relegated to the sidelines. By contrast, C. S. Tashiro foregrounds the visual aspect of cinema in this book, drawing on his experiences as a designer and filmmaker, as well as on contemporary theory, to show how production design can support or contradict narrative structure, or exist in an entirely parallel realm of meaning.

Tashiro looks at cinematic production design from a broadly interdisciplinary...

Winner, Clifford G. Christians Ethics Research Award, sponsored by the Carl Couch Center for Social and Internet Research, 2004

Kids around the world love Disney animated films, and many of their parents trust the Disney corporation to provide wholesome, moral entertainment for their children. Yet frequent protests and even boycotts of Disney products and practices reveal a widespread unease with the sometimes mixed and inconsistent moral values espoused in Disney films as the company attempts to appeal to the largest possible audience.

In this book, Annalee R. Ward uses...

Gaffers, Grips, and Best Boys goes way beyond the usual Hollywood glamour and hype to explain every aspect of who does what in the making of a motion picture--from conception and casting to production, postproduction, advertising, and marketing here and abroad. A veteran film-industry insider, Taub takes readers through the labyrinthine world of today's studio system, sharing the candid and revealing interviews he's conducted with some of Tinseltown's most successful actors, directors, producers, and so forth. Each of Taub's subjects offers behind-the-scenes accounts of the precise...

Lloyd Kaufman, the writer/producer/director of such cult-classic films as The Toxic Avenger, Class of Nuke 'Em High, and Tromeo and Juliet, offers a guide to movie-making unlike any other available anywhere. In 25 years, Kaufman, along with partner Michael Herz, has built Troma Studios up from a company struggling to find its voice in a field crowded with competitors to its current--and legendary--status as a lone survivor, a bastion of true cinematic independence, and the world's greatest collection of camp on film.

As entertaining and funny as it is informative...

Classic storytelling about one of Hollywood's darkest masterpieces, Close-up on Sunset Boulevard goes behind the scenes to reveal everything about the making of this movie and the larger-than-life personalities of its creators and stars. Close-up on Sunset Boulevard features unforgettable anecdotes about every player: from silent queen Gloria Swanson in her poignant comeback to the cheerful ingenue Nancy Olson (who had never heard of the great and glamorous Gloria), from henpecked, handsome---and hungover---William Holden to the raucous writing team of Billy Wilder and...