Film & Media Studies

Each volume interprets and celebrates landmarks of world cinema.

From Russia With Love

Llewella Chapman

Drawing on a broad range of archival sources, Chapman explores the film's political, social and cultural significance at the time of its release, its place within the genre of spy films and British cinema, and its lasting impact on later films. In doing so, she asserts the film's lasting cultural legacy, not only as a series film, but also as a stand-alone film in its own right. October 2022 60 colour illus 112 pages Word count: 25,000 9781839024535 British Film Institute

Tokyo Story

Alastair Phillips

The first single-authored study of Yasujiro Ozu’s moving family drama, universally acknowledged as one of the most significant Japanese films ever made, and regularly cited as one of the greatest films of all time in polls of world-leading critics and filmmakers.

November 2022 60 mono illus 96 pages Word count: 27,600 9781911239239 British Film Institute Picnic at Hanging Rock

Anna Backman Rogers

Rogers considers Peter Weir’s haunting and allusive film from feminist, psychoanalytic and decolonialising perspectives, exploring its setting in a colonised bushland in which the Aboriginal people are a spectral presence in a landscape stolen from them in pursuit of the white man's 'terra nullius'.

October 2022 50 colour illus 104 pages Word count: 23,500 9781839023354 British Film Institute

Withnail and I

Kevin Jackson

Kevin Jackson's in-depth study gives a full account of the film’s origins and production history. But his main focus is the mood and magic of the film, its aesthetics and sensibility, seeking to show, without ever detracting from the film's comic brilliance, just how much more there is to Withnail than drunkenness and swearing. November 2022 60 colour illus 104 pages Word count: 29,138 2nd edition 9781839025457 British Film Institute Sunset Boulevard

Steven Cohan

This study of the 1950 noir classic draws on original archival research to shed new light on the film's production history, and the contribution to the film's success and meanings of director Wilder, stars Holden and Swanson, costumier Edith Head, and composer Franz Waxman. September 2022 60 mono illus 104 pages Word count 21,600 9781839024085 British Film Institute

Y Tu Mamá También

Paul Julian Smith

This study of Alfonso Cuarón's sensual 2001 road movie argues that it not only addresses major issues of gender, race, class, and space, but that the film’s apparently casual aesthetic masks a sophisticated audiovisual style. Smith makes an argument for Cuarón’s film as an enduring masterpiece that hides in plain sight as an ephemeral teen movie. September 2022 60 colour illus 104 pages Word count: 21,800 9781839025204 British Film Institute The Lives of Others (Das Leben der Anderen)

Annie Ring

A fresh approach to the remarkable German film, known for its compelling representation of a Stasi surveillance officer and the moral and ethical turmoil that results when he is ordered to spy on a playwright and his actress lover. Ring explores the film’s formal and aesthetic qualities, sets it in its historical and intertextual contexts, and evaluates the heated politics surrounding its reception. October 2022 50 colour illus 104 pages Word count: 22,400 9781839025303 British Film Institute