Film and Media Studies - Recent Titles from Ohio University Press

Black and White in Colour

Thu, 15 Mar 2007

Black and White in Colour (2007)
African History on Screen

By Vivian Bickford-Smith and Richard Mendelsohn

Black and White in Colour: African History on Screen considers how the African past has been represented in a wide range of historical films. Written by a team of eminent international scholars, the volume provides extensive coverage of both place and time and deals with major issues in the written history of Africa. Themes include the slave trade, imperialism and colonialism, racism, and anticolonial resistance. Many of the films will be familiar to readers: they include Out of Africa, Hotel Rwanda, Breaker Morant, Cry Freedom, The Battle of Algiers, and Chocolat.

This collection of essays is a highly original and useful contribution to African historiography, as well as a significant addition to the growing body of work within the emerging subdiscipline of “film and history.” It will appeal to those interested in African history and the ways in which films use the past to raise questions about the present.

For more information about this book visit ohioswallow.com/book/Black+and+White+in+Colour.
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Immigration, Diversity, and Broadcasting in the United States 1990—2001

Thu, 30 Dec 2004

Immigration, Diversity, and Broadcasting in the United States 1990—2001 (2004)

By Vibert C. Cambridge

The last decade of the twentieth century brought a maturing of the new racial and ethnic communities in the United States and the emergence of diversity and multiculturalism as dominant fields of discourse in legal, educational, and cultural contexts. Immigration, Diversity, and Broadcasting in the United States, 1990—2001 is a contribution to our understanding of the web of relationships that existed at the intersection of immigration, race, ethnicity, and broadcasting in America during this period.

Professor Vibert C. Cambridge investigates and questions how broadcasting in the United States responded to the changing racial and ethnic composition of the society. What patterns could be drawn from these responses? What roles were served? What roles are currently being served? What stimulated the changing of roles?

Ultimately, Immigration, Diversity, and Broadcasting in the United States evaluates the performance of the American broadcasting industry. The answers to this book's core questions provide insights into how the American broadcasting industry responded to freedom, equality, diversity, information quality, social order, and solidarity at century’s end.

For more information about this book visit ohioswallow.com/book/Immigration%2C+Diversity%2C+and+Broadcasting+in+the+United+States+1990%E2%80%942001.
For a look at new releases from Ohio University Press visit ohioswallow.com/new_releases.

Shakespeare at the Cineplex

Mon, 22 Sep 2003

Shakespeare at the Cineplex (2003)
The Kenneth Branagh Era

By Samuel Crowl

Samuel Crowl's Shakespeare at the Cineplex: The Kenneth Branagh Era is the first thorough exploration of the fifteen major Shakespeare films released since the surprising success of Kenneth Branagh's Henry V (1989). Crowl presents the rich variety of these films in the "long decade: between the fall of the Berlin Wall and the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001." The productions range from Hollywood-saturated films such as Franco Zeffirelli's Hamlet and Michael Hoffman's A Midsummer Night's Dream to more modest, experimental offerings, such as Christine Edzard's As You Like It. Now available in paperback, Shakespeare at the Cineplex will be welcome reading for fans, students, and scholars of Shakespeare in performance.

For more information about this book visit ohioswallow.com/book/Shakespeare+at+the+Cineplex.
For a look at new releases from Ohio University Press visit ohioswallow.com/new_releases.

Flickering Shadows

Mon, 15 Apr 2002

Flickering Shadows (2002)
Cinema and Identity in Colonial Zimbabwe

By J. M. Burns

Every European power in Africa made motion pictures for its subjects, but no state invested as heavily in these films, and expected as much from them, as the British colony of Southern Rhodesia. Flickering Shadows is the first book to explore this little-known world of colonial cinema.

J. M. Burns pieces together the history of the cinema in Rhodesia, examining film production, audience reception, and state censorship, to reconstruct the story of how Africans in one nation became consumers of motion pictures. Movies were a valued "tool of empire" designed to assimilate Africans into a new colonial order. Inspired by an inflated confidence in the medium, Rhodesian government offcials created an African Film industry that was unprecedented in its size and scope.

Transforming the lives of their subjects through cinema proved more complicated than white officials had anticipated. Although Africans embraced the medium with enthusiasm, they expressed critical opinions and demonstrated decided tastes that left colonial officials puzzled and alarmed.

Flickering Shadows tells the fascinating story of how motion pictures were introduced and negotiated in a colonial setting. In doing so, it casts light on the history of the globalization of the cinema. This work is based on interviews with white and black filmmakers and African audience members, extensive archival research in Africa and England, and viewings of scores of colonial films.

For more information about this book visit ohioswallow.com/book/Flickering+Shadows.
For a look at new releases from Ohio University Press visit ohioswallow.com/new_releases.

Television, Nation, and Culture in Indonesia

Wed, 15 Nov 2000

Television, Nation, and Culture in Indonesia (2000)

By Philip Kitley

The culture of television in Indonesia began with its establishment in 1962 as a public broadcasting service. From that time, through the deregulation of television broadcasting in 1990 and the establishment of commercial channels, television can be understood, Philip Kitley argues, as a part of the New Order's national culture project, designed to legitimate an idealized Indonesian national cultural identity. But Professor Kitley suggests that it also has become a site for the contestation of elements of the New Order's cultural policies. Based on his studies, he further speculates on the increasingly significant role that television is destined to play as a site of cultural and political struggle.

For more information about this book visit ohioswallow.com/book/Television%2C+Nation%2C+and+Culture+in+Indonesia.
For a look at new releases from Ohio University Press visit ohioswallow.com/new_releases.

Nigerian Video Films

Wed, 30 Aug 2000

Nigerian Video Films (2000)
Revised and Expanded Edition

Edited by Jonathan Haynes

Nigerian video films—dramatic features shot on video and sold as cassettes—are being produced at the rate of nearly one a day, making them the major contemporary art form in Nigeria. The history of African film offers no precedent for such a huge, popularly based industry.

The contributors to this volume, who include film and television directors, an anthropologist, and scholars of film studies and literature, take a variety of approaches to this flourishing popular art. Topics include aesthetic forms and distribution; the configurations of various ethnic audiences; the new media environment dominated by cassette technology; the video's materialism in a period of economic collapse; transformation of the traditional Yoruba traveling theater; individualism and the moral crisis in Igbo society; Hausa cultural values; the negotiation of gender roles, and the genre of Christian videos.

For more information about this book visit ohioswallow.com/book/Nigerian+Video+Films.
For a look at new releases from Ohio University Press visit ohioswallow.com/new_releases.

Framing Shakespeare on Film

Mon, 15 May 2000

Framing Shakespeare on Film (2000)
How the Frame Reveals Meaning

By Kathy M. Howlett

The aesthetics of frame theory form the basis of Framing Shakespeare on Film. This groundbreaking work expands on the discussion of film constructivists in its claim that the spectacle of Shakespeare on film is a problem-solving activity.

Kathy Howlett demonstrates convincingly how viewers' expectations for understanding Shakespeare on film can be manipulated by the director's cinematic technique. Emphasizing that the successful film can transform Shakespeare's text while remaining rooted in Shakespearean conceptions, Howlett raises the question of how directors and audiences understand the genre of Shakespeare on film and reveals how the medium alters the patterns through which the audience views Shakespeare.

For more information about this book visit ohioswallow.com/book/Framing+Shakespeare+on+Film.
For a look at new releases from Ohio University Press visit ohioswallow.com/new_releases.

Shakespeare Observed

Sat, 01 Jan 2000

Shakespeare Observed (2000)
Studies in Performance on Stage and Screen

By Samuel Crowl

In this lively study of both modern film and stage productions of Shakespeare, Samuel Crowl provides fascinating insights into the ways in which these productions have been influenced by one another as well as by contemporary developments in critical approaches to Shakespeare's plays.

Crowl's study demonstrates the surprising resonances between Roman Polanski's 1971 film of Macbeth and Adrian Noble's heralded recent production of the play for The Royal Shakespeare Company; argues that Orson Welles's films of Othello and Cabins at Midnight are not only brilliant remaining of Shakespeare in another art form but make a powerful contribution to our contemporary understanding of performance as interpretation; and chronicles the impact of Peter Hall's creation of the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1960 on performance approaches to Shakespeare in the past thirty years.

Shakespeare Observed provides full interpretative readings of key recent Shakespeare productions in England and includes an intimate behind-the-scenes glimpse into the rehearsal process which produced Ron Daniels's emotionally charged version of Romeo and Juliet for the RSC in 1980. The final chapter uses Kenneth Branagh's highly successful film of Henry V as a summary example of the trends and influences Crowl's study traces, seeing the film as gathering its interpretative energies from both Olivier's famous film version of the play and Adrian Noble's stage production featuring Branagh as the king.

Written in a style which places a premium on capturing the vivid and often dazzling moments of stage and film performances of Shakespeare, Crowl's study will be of interest to the avid film and theatergoer as well as to the scholar and student. Shakespeare Observed joins a growing list of recent critical works which have significantly expanded and redefined the boundaries of Shakespeare studies in our time.

For more information about this book visit ohioswallow.com/book/Shakespeare+Observed.
For a look at new releases from Ohio University Press visit ohioswallow.com/new_releases.

Dangerous Dames

Thu, 01 Jul 1999

Dangerous Dames (1999)
Women and Representation in Film Noir and the Weimar Street Film

By Jans B. Wager

Both film noir and the Weimar street film hold a continuing fascination for film spectators and film theorists alike. The female characters, especially the alluring femmes fatales, remain a focus for critical and popular attention. In the tradition of such attention, Dangerous Dames focuses on the femme fatale and her antithesis, the femme attrapée.

Unlike most theorists, Jans Wager examines these archetypes from the perspective of the female spectator and rejects the persistence of vision that allows a reading of these female characters only as representations of unstable postwar masculinity. Professor Wager suggests that the woman in the audience has always seen and understood these characters as representations of a complex aspect of her existence.

Dangerous Dames looks at the Weimar street films The Street, Variety, Asphalt, and M and the film noir movies The Maltese Falcon, Gun Crazy, and The Big Heat. This book opens the doors to spectators and theorists alike, suggesting cinematic pleasures outside the bounds of accepted readings and beyond the narrow categorization of film noir and the Weimar street film as masculine forms.

For more information about this book visit ohioswallow.com/book/Dangerous+Dames.
For a look at new releases from Ohio University Press visit ohioswallow.com/new_releases.

Shakespeare in Production

Fri, 01 Jan 1999

Shakespeare in Production (1999)
Whose History?

By H. R. Coursen

Shakespeare in Production examines a number of plays in context. Included are the 1936 Romeo and Juliet, unpopular with critics of filmed Shakespeare, but very much a "photoplay" if its time; the opening sequences of filmed Hamlets which span more than seventy years; The Comedy of Errors on television, where production of this script is almost impossible; and the Branagh Much Ado About Nothing, a "popular" film discussed in the context of comedy as a genre.

In considering Henry V, this study looks at fifty years of Pistol on film and television to illustrate how changing times shape the character, and then includes the Branagh film in discussions of recent interpretations of "history" as reflected by productions of Shakespeare's history plays. An examination of late twentieth-century production of Hamlet suggests what the script has lost and gained as it has moved toward in time. A discussion of "designer's theater" in Great Britain, where all the elements of the production are dominated by "concept," argues that the actors work within a restricting rather than a liberating artistic environment.

"Whose history?" inevitably turns out to be that of the individual observer, for regardless of the criteria deployed criticism is an intensely subjective activity, and is meant to be when it deals with drama. In this discussion of Branagh's Much Ado About Nothing, for example, the contemporary response to the film becomes the subject of the chapter. For, although the film is much more than what is said about it, it is also less, in that the critical response is part of the overall creative activity involved in a Shakespeare production.

For more information about this book visit ohioswallow.com/book/Shakespeare+in+Production.
For a look at new releases from Ohio University Press visit ohioswallow.com/new_releases.