BFI

Grave of the Fireflies

Alex Dudok de Wit, freelance critic specialising in animation Drawing on accounts by Ghibli staff members and untranslated Japanese sources, Alex Dudok de Wit describes the genesis of the 1998 anime masterpiece, Grave of the Fireflies, and profiles the key players involved in its making – including animation directors, background artists, colourists, voice actors and producers. He explains the influence of Akiyuki Nosaka’s source novella and provides close readings of key scenes, spotlighting the film’s sophisticated development of motifs, subtle evocation of ancient Japanese culture, and deployment of animation’s language to tell a story that would have been ill-suited to live action.

UK April 2021 • US April 2021 • 104 pages • 60 colour illus PB 9781838719241 • £11.99 / $15.95 ePub 9781838719258 • £10.79 / $13.54 ePdf 9781838719234 • £10.79 / $13.54

The Matrix

Joshua Clover, University of California, Davis, USA Starring Keanu Reeves as Neo, a computer programmer transformed into a messianic freedom fighter, the 1999 cult classic The Matrix blends science fiction with conspiracy thriller conventions and outlandish martial arts created with groundbreaking digital techniques. In this compelling study, Joshua Clover examinesThe Matrix's digital effects and how they were achieved, and shows how the film represents a melding of cinema and video games to achieve a hybrid kind of immersive entertainment. He also unpacks the movie's references to philosophy, showing how The Matrix ultimately expresses the crisis American culture faced at the end of the 1990s. PB 9781839022678 • £11.99 / $15.95 ePdf 9781839022647 • £10.79 / $13.54

10

Geoff Andrew, Programmer-at-Large for BFI Southbank Kiarostami's career, of Iranian cinema's recent renaissance, and of international film culture. Drawing on a number of detailed interviews he conducted with both Kiarostami and his lead actress, Andrew sheds light on the unusual methods used in making the film, on its political relevance, and on its remarkably subtle aesthetic. He also argues that 10 was an important turning-point in the career of a film-maker who is not only one of contemporary cinema's most accomplished practitioners but also one of its most radical experimentalists. Series: BFI Film Classics • British Film Institute

Rebecca

Patricia White, Swarthmore College, USA Patricia White takes the theme of return as her starting point for her exploration of the film Rebecca's production and reception history, drawing on original archival research. White provides a rich textual analysis, addressing the film and the novel's status as gothic romances, where the gap between perception and reality is at play, and highlighting the queer erotics of the relationship between the heroine, Mrs. Danvers, and the dead but ever-present Rebecca. White's discussion of the film's afterlives in cinema, from Citizen Kane (1941) to Carol (2015), emphasises the aesthetic and narrative impact of Hitchcock's masterpiece of memory and desire.

PB 9781911239437 • £11.99 / $16.95 ePub 9781911239444 • £10.79 / $13.54 ePdf 9781911239451 • £10.79 / $13.54 Series: BFI Film Classics • British Film Institute

UK April 2021 • US April 2021 • 104 pages • 60 colour illus ePub 9781839022661 • £10.79 / $13.54 UK May 2021 • US May 2021 • 96 pages

Series: BFI Film Classics • British Film Institute

The Terminator

Sean French Sean French places The Terminator in the context of the exploitation films in which both Cameron (in association with maverick producer Roger Corman) and Schwarzenegger learnt their craft. French discusses the making of the film, its sources and the extent of its influence. He argues that The Terminator’s visual flair, stylised acting and choreographed violence are so compelling not so much because they offer intellectual rewards but because they traffic in the darker, more visceral pleasures of movie-going.

UK May 2021 • US May 2021 • 80 pages • 60 colour illus PB 9781839022128 • £11.99 / $15.95 ePub 9781839022135 • £10.79 / $13.54 ePdf 9781839022142 • £10.79 / $13.54

In this study, Geoff Andrew looks at 10 within the context of Series: BFI Film Classics • British Film Institute

UK April 2021 • US April 2021 • 96 pages • 60 colour illus PB 9781839022616 • £11.99 / $15.95 ePub 9781839022609 • £10.79 / $13.54 ePdf 9781839022623 • £10.79 / $13.54 Series: BFI Film Classics • British Film Institute

Caravaggio

Leo Bersani, University of California, Berkeley, USA & Ulysse Dutoit, University of California, Berkeley, USA Caravaggio (1986), Derek Jarman's portrait of the Italian Baroque artist, shows the painter at work with models drawn from Rome's homeless and prostitutes. It is probably the closest Jarman came to a mainstream film. In their study of the film, Leo Bersani and Ulysse Dutoit argue that it is a uniquely complex and lucid treatment of Jarman's major concerns: violence, history, homosexuality, and the relation between film and painting. In particular, Caravaggio is unlike Jarman's other work in avoiding a sentimentalising of gay relationships and in making no neat distinction between the exercise and the suffering of violence.

UK March 2021 • US March 2021 • 104 pages • 60 colour illus PB 9781839022562 • £11.99 / $15.95 ePub 9781839022579 • £10.79 / $13.54 ePdf 9781839022586 • £10.79 / $13.54 Series: BFI Film Classics • British Film Institute

Letter From An Unknown Woman

James Naremore, Indiana University, USA James Naremore's study of Max Ophuls' classic 1948 melodrama, Letter from an Unknown Woman, provides an in-depth critical appreciation of the film, offering nuanced appreciation of specific details of mise-en-scene, camera movement, design, sound, and performances, integrating this close analyses into an overarching analysis of Letter’s “recognition plot;” a trope in which the recognition of a character’s identity creates dramatic intensity or crisis. Naremore argues that Letter's use of the recognition plot is one of the most powerful in Hollywood cinema, and compares the film's unfolding narrative with Zweig's source novella.

Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown

Peter William Evans, Queen Mary University of London, UK Peter William Evans's study of Pedro Almodovar's 1988 black comedy drama provides a formidable analysis of Almodovar's insights into gender, sexuality and subjectivity. Drawing on a wide range of psychoanalytic and critical concepts, Evans sees Women on the Verge as an account of the often tyrannical spell of sexual desire, of the anxieties of relationships and families, but also of the possibilities for personal liberation. He discusses the film in the context of the history of Spain and ties the film's concerns into the social revolution that occurred after the death of Franco.

Cinema Memories

A People's History of Cinema-going in 1960s Britain Melvyn Stokes, University College London, UK Drawing on first-hand memories from over 1000 was like to watch films in British cinemas in the 1960s. Positioning their study within debates about memory, 1960s cinema, and the seemingly transformative nature of this decade of British history, the authors reflect on the methodologies deployed, the use of memories as historical sources, and the various ways in which cinema and cinema-going came to mean something to its audiences.

UK March 2021 • US March 2021 • 96 pages • 50 bw PB 9781839022340 • £11.99 / $15.95 ePub 9781839022364 • £10.79 / $13.54 ePdf 9781839022357 • £10.79 / $13.54 Series: BFI Film Classics • British Film Institute

M

Anton Kaes, University of California, Berkeley, USA In his groundbreaking study of Fritz Lang's 1931 noir classic, Anton Kaes reconnects M's much-studied formal brilliance to its significance as an event in 1931 Germany, recapturing the film's extraordinary social and symbolic energy. Lang's vision of a city gripped with fear, haunted by surveillance and total mobillization, is still remarkably powerful today. Interweaving close reading with cultural history, Kaes reconstitutes M as a crucial modernist artwork.

UK April 2021 • US April 2021 • 96 pages • 60 bw illus PB 9781839022913 • £11.99 / $15.95 ePub 9781839022920 • £10.79 / $13.54 Series: BFI Film Classics • British Film Institute

UK May 2021 • US May 2021 • 88 pages • 60 colour illus PB 9781839022524 • £11.99 / $15.95 ePub 9781839022531 • £10.79 / $13.54 ePdf 9781839022548 • £10.79 / $13.54 Series: BFI Film Classics • British Film Institute

cinema-goers, Screen Memories reveals what it ePdf 9781839022937 • £10.79 / $13.54

UK June 2021 • US June 2021 • 208 pages HB 9781911239895 • £85.00 / $115.00 ePub 9781911239918 • £76.50 / $94.85 ePdf 9781911239888 • £76.50 / $94.85 British Film Institute

The American Comic Book Industry and Hollywood

Alisa Perren, University of Texas at Austin, USA & Gregory Steirer This is the first book to provide a broad overview of the industry side of the comic book genre and associated franchises. It synthesises and expands upon existing scholarship on the comic book and Hollywood film industries, and draws on historical documents, original interviews with industry workers, and case studies of specific properties (such as Batman, The Walking Dead and Mass Effect) and specific companies (e.g. Marvel, Avatar Press). It also provides a corrective to the popular view that the comic book industry and its ties to Hollywood revolve primarily around superheroes and the properties owned by Marvel and DC Comics.

UK June 2021 • US June 2021 • 208 pages • Up to 20 illustrations PB 9781844579419 • £21.99 / $29.95 • HB 9781844579426 • £65.00 / $90.00 ePub 9781844579433 • £22.48 / $28.32 ePdf 9781839023149 • Series: International Screen Industries • British Film Institute