Film History & Theory

Indigeneity and the Decolonizing Gaze

Transnational Imaginaries, Media Aesthetics, and Social Thought

Robert Stam, New York University, USA Against the long historical backdrop of 1492, Columbus, and the Conquest, Robert Stam's wide-ranging study traces a trajectory from the representation of indigenous peoples by others to self-representation by indigenous peoples, often as a form of resistance and rebellion to colonialist or neoliberal capitalism, across an eclectic range of forms of media, arts, and social philosophy.

UK December 2022 • US December 2022 • 368 pages PB 9781350282353 • £24.99 / $34.95 • HB 9781350282360 • £75.00 / $100.00 ePub 9781350282377 • £22.49 / $31.59 ePdf 9781350282384 • £22.49 / $31.59 Bloomsbury Academic Edited by Ian Dixon, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore & Brendan Black, Independent scholar, Australia For the first time, Bowie’s considerable filmography is systematically examined. Classic films such as The Prestige and Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence, cult hits Labyrinth and The Man Who Fell To Earth, as well as lesser-known roles in The Image, Christiane F. and Broadway hit The Elephant Man are viewed, not simply through the lens of Bowie’s mega-stardom, but as the work of a serious actor with inimitable talent. Including tributes to Bowie’s performance craft in other media forms this compelling analysis celebrates the risk-taking intelligence and bravura of David Bowie: actor, mime, mimic and icon.

UK August 2022 • US August 2022 • 304 pages • 56 bw illus HB 9781501368684 • £95.00 / $130.00 ePub 9781501368677 • £85.90 / $117.00 ePdf 9781501368660 • £85.90 / $117.00 Bloomsbury Academic

The Biopic and Beyond

Celebrities as Characters in Screen Media

Melanie Piper, University of Queensland, Australia Using case studies such as Mark Zuckerberg and The Social Network, Sarah Palin and Saturday Night Live, and Louis C.K. and Louie, The Biopic and Beyond uncovers the process that turns the distant public figures that populate news and entertainment into screen characters that we can engage with and try to understand a little better. Biopics and docudramas are not the only places on screen that give us access to the fake person behind the real person, with media as varied as sketch comedy, fan fiction, and the celebrity cameo contributing to the ways we understand media figures.

UK August 2022 • US August 2022 • 192 pages PB 9781501393990 • £28.99 / $39.95 • HB 9781501361494 • £80.00 / $110.00 ePub 9781501361487 • £72.79 / $99.00 ePdf 9781501361470 • £72.79 / $99.00 Bloomsbury Academic

Hollywood Independent

How the Mirisch Company Changed Cinema

Paul Kerr, Middlesex University, UK Hollywood Independent dissects the Mirisch Company, one of the most successful employers of the package-unit system of film production, producing films like Some Like it Hot (1959) and West Side Story (1961) as irresistible talent packages. Whilst they helped make the names of a new generation of stars and banked on the reputations of established auteurs, they were also pioneers in attracting new audiences with films about race, gender and sexuality. The Mirisch Company bridges the gap between the end of the studio system (1960) and the emergence of a new cinema (mid-1970s) dominated by the Movie Brats.

UK March 2023 • US March 2023 • 240 pages HB 9781501336751 • £96.00 / $120.00 ePub 9781501336768 • £79.34 / $108.00 ePdf 9781501336775 • £79.34 / $108.00 Bloomsbury Academic

Intimacy and the Anxieties of Cinematic Flesh

Between Phenomenology and Psychoanalysis

Patrick Fuery, Chapman University, USA Combining two distinct philosophical fields to the study of cinema, Patrick Fuery shows how phenomenology and psychoanalysis, so often seen as contradistinctive, are explored through their commonalities rather than differences. Using three interconnected themes—intimacy, anxiety, and flesh—, he illustrates that anxiety is a driving process in all cinema, and for it to take place there must be a relationship of intimacy. Discussing such films as Tree of Life, Don’t Look Now, Gravity and Roma, Fuery demonstrates why combining phenomenology and psychoanalysis to the study of cinema is necessary for studying film.

UK March 2023 • US March 2023 • 240 pages HB 9781501376351 • £90.00 / $120.00 ePub 9781501376344 • £79.34 / $108.00 ePdf 9781501376337 • £79.34 / $108.00 Bloomsbury Academic

Cinema Memories

A People's History of Cinema-going in 1960s Britain

Melvyn Stokes, University College London, UK, Matthew Jones, De Montfort University, UK & Emma Pett, University of York, UK Drawing on first-hand memories from over 1000 cinema-goers, Cinema Memories reveals what it 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 April 2022 • US June 2022 • 256 pages • 10 bw illus HB 9781911239895 • £85.00 / $115.00 ePub 9781911239918 • £76.50 / $105.78 ePdf 9781911239888 • £76.50 / $105.78 British Film Institute

Agonies of the Viewing Experience

Murray Pomerance, Independent scholar, Canada Murray Pomerance's new book explores a wide range of films and television shows to demonstrate how difficult the process of conveying the experience of viewing cinema through words and the medium of text is. The book begins with this problem before delving into three exploratory ‘movements’ arranged to challenge, inspire, and confound the reader. Through several case studies, Pomerance presents the moments where the viewer is faced with disturbances, ruptures, and surprises that occur, analyzing each so that we reconsider what we do and do not (or, possibly, cannot) know, particularly as we think, talk, and write about cinema.

UK November 2022 • US November 2022 • 320 pages • 60 bw illus HB 9781501398742 • £95.00 / $130.00 ePub 9781501398759 • £85.90 / $117.00 ePdf 9781501398766 • £85.90 / $117.00 Bloomsbury Academic

Movies with Stanley Cavell in Mind

Edited by David LaRocca, Cornell University, USA In Movies with Stanley Cavell in Mind, scholars who have become essential for our understanding of Stanley Cavell’s writing on film gather to use his landmark contributions to help us read new films— from Hollywood and elsewhere—that exist beyond his immediate reach and reading. Through a series of interpretive vignettes, the contributers situate, for the expert and beginner alike, how Cavell’s writing on film can enrich one’s experience of cinema and also inform how we might continue the practice of serious philosophical criticism of specific films, mindful of his sensibility.

UK December 2022 • US December 2022 • 360 pages PB 9781501380167 • £28.99 / $39.95 Previously published in HB 9781501351914 ePub 9781501351938 • £85.90 / $117.00 ePdf 9781501351921 • £85.90 / $117.00 Bloomsbury Academic

Cinematic Modernism and Contemporary Film

Aesthetics and Narrative in the International Art Film

Howard Finn, Queen Mary, University of London, UK Drawing on a broad range of examples, including Soviet montage, Italian neorealism, postwar new waves and the ‘new cinema’ of Taiwan and Iran, Cinematic Modernism and Contemporary Film explores the cultural significance of modernism and its lasting influence over cinema. Howard Finn provides concise accounts of how theorists such as André Bazin, Siegfried Kracauer, Gilles Deleuze and Jacques Rancière have discussed the cinematic aesthetic, clarifying debates over terms such as ‘realism’, ‘classical’ and ‘avantgarde’ as well as recent controversies over terms such as ‘slow cinema’ and ‘vernacular modernism’.

UK November 2022 • US November 2022 • 336 pages • 30 bw illus PB 9781350349582 • £28.99 / $39.95 • HB 9781788312738 • £85.00 / $115.00 ePub 9781350242579 • £76.50 / $105.78 ePdf 9781350242586 • £76.50 / $105.78 Bloomsbury Academic

The Eisenstein Universe

Edited by Ian Christie, Birkbeck, University of London, UK & Julia Vassilieva, Monash University, Australia In this ground-breaking collection, 16 international scholars explore not only the still-expanding universe of Eisenstein’s pioneering researches in aesthetics, anthropology and psychology, and his roots in different philosophical traditions, but also his continuing place in the contemporary world of film and audiovisual media.

UK November 2022 • US November 2022 • 312 pages • 27 bw illus PB 9781350239616 • £28.99 / $39.95 Previously published in HB 9781350142107 ePub 9781350142114 • £76.50 / $105.78 ePdf 9781350142091 • £76.50 / $105.78 Bloomsbury Academic

The Reenactment in Contemporary Screen Culture

Performance, Mediation, Repetition

Megan Carrigy, NYU Sydney, Australia Working with an eclectic collection of case studies from Milk, Monster, Boys Don’t Cry, and The Battle of Orgreave to CSI and the video of police assaulting Rodney King, this book examines the relationship between the status of theatricality in the reenactment and the ways in which its relationships to reference are performed. Carrigy shows that while the practice of reenactment predates technically reproducible media, and continues to exist in both live and mediated forms, it has been thoroughly transformed through its incorporation within forms of technical media.

UK December 2022 • US December 2022 • 208 pages • 20 bw illus PB 9781501380174 • £28.99 / $39.95 Previously published in HB 9781501359385 ePub 9781501359378 • £79.34 / $108.00 ePdf 9781501359361 • £79.34 / $108.00 Bloomsbury Academic

Divergent Tracks

How Three Film Communities Revolutionized Digital Film Sound

Vanessa Theme Ament, Independent Scholar, USA A unique perspective through the author's personal experience of the three main American sound communities of Hollywood, New York, and the San Francisco Bay Area's transition from analogue to digital postproduction in the 1990s. Using three case studies of essential films - Barton Fink, Bram Stoker's Dracula and The English Patient - it becomes clear the 1990s was an era in which sound professionals became more visible as artists, collaborated in sound design authorship, and influenced this digital transition to better accomodate their needs and desires in their work.

UK November 2022 • US November 2022 • 176 pages • 27 colour illus PB 9781501378539 • £28.99 / $39.95 Previously published in HB 9781501359224 ePub 9781501359217 • £72.79 / $99.00 ePdf 9781501359200 • £72.79 / $99.00 Bloomsbury Academic