Transnational connections in European crime film series (1908–1914)

This article addresses the issue of ‘European popular cinema’ by discussing a very specific phenomenon, i.e. the crime series produced in the years immediately preceding World War I (e.g. Victorin Jasset’s Nick Carter, Viggo Larsen’s Arsène Lupin contra Sherlock, Ubaldo Maria del Colle’s Raffles, il ladro misterioso, Louis Feuillade’s Fantômas, George Pearson’s Ultus). On the one hand, the transnational circulation of these films is seen as the result of the development of the European cultural industries since the late nineteenth century; on the other hand, the rapid decline of this genre testifies of the historical peculiarity of this production. In particular, the popular heroic figure of the ‘gentleman thief’ seems to express at the same time the liberating, anti-hierarchial ethos of modernization and the dream of a quiet conciliation of the new and the traditional values: as a consequence, it might be regarded as a telling example of the economical, social and ideological transformations of that crucial phase in European history, when the development of the second industrial revolution and the first phase of ‘globalization’ pointed at the birth of a supranational sphere before the outbreak of World War I, which would temporarily stop this process.

Invaders, Launchpads and Hybrids: The Importance of Transmediality in British Science Fiction Film in the 1950s

With its origins in the trick films of the 1890s and early 1900s, British science fiction film has a long history. While Things to Come (1936) is often identified as significant for being written by H.G.Wells, one of the fathers of science fiction as a genre, the importance of the interactions between media in the development of British science fiction film are often set aside. This chapter examines the importance of broadcast media to film-making in Britain, focusing on the 1950s as a period often valourised in writings about American science fiction, to the detriment of other national expressions of the genre. This period is key to the development of the genre in Britain, however, with the establishment of television as a popular medium incorporating the development of domestic science fiction television alongside the import of American products, together with the spread of the very term ‘science fiction’ through books, pulps and comics as well as radio, television and cinema. It was also the time of a backlash against the perceived threat of American soft cultural power embodied in the attractive shine of science fiction with its promise of a bright technological future. In particular, this chapter examines the significance of the relationship between the BBC television and radio services and the film production company Hammer, which was responsible for multiple adaptations of BBC properties, including a number of science fiction texts. The Hammer adaptation of the television serial The Quatermass Experiment proved to be the first major success for the company, moving it towards its most famous identity as producer of horror texts, though often horror with an underlying scientific element, as with their successful series of Frankenstein films. This chapter thus argues that the interaction between film and broadcast media in relation to science fiction was crucial at this historical juncture, not only in helping promote the identities of filmmakers like Hammer, but also in supporting the identity of the BBC and its properties, and in acting as a nexus for the then current debates on taste and national identity.

Framed Memories of Berlin:Film, Remembrance and Architecture

In The City of Collective Memory, urban historian Christina Boyer (1994) defines the image of a city as an abstracted concept, an imaginary (re)constructed form. This urban image is created from many aspects, one of which is the framed and edited views and experiences found in films situated in or about a particular city. In this study, to explore the collective memory of the city of Berlin from an architectural point of view, one film from each of the major historical periods of Berlin since the invention of cinema is examined: pre-WWI, interwar period, the Nazi period, post-WWII, Berlin Wall/Cold War, and the reunification period. Memory-making in the city is studied following the footsteps of the protagonists in the films, concluding that film-making and memory-making make use of similar processes, the editing of fragmented pieces of so-called reality, to create its own reality.

Cinema-going at the Southampton Odeon: Exhibition Data and Popular Taste

Cinemagoing data from the 1970s. A case study of the data from the Southampton Odeon

Retro, faux-vintage, and anachronism: When cinema looks back at Its Analogue Past

This article explores the definition of ‘vintage cinema’ and specifically re-evaluates the fetishism for the past and its regurgitation in the present by providing a taxonomy of the phenomenon in recent film production. Our contribution identifies three aesthetic categories: the faux-vintage, the retro and the anachronistic and by illustrating their overlapping and discrepancies, it argues that the past remains a powerful negotiator of meaning for the present and the future. Drawing on studies of memory and digital nostalgia, this article focuses on the latter category: anachronism and unravel the persistence of and the filmic fascination for obsolete analogue objects through an analysis of Only Lovers Left Alive (Jim Jarmusch, 2013).

Cinema 2.0 : modalidades de produção cinematográfica do tempo do digital

Tese de doutoramento, Sociologia (Cultura, Comunicação e Estilos de Vida), Universidade de Lisboa, Instituto de Ciências Sociais, 2014

Hollywood and world cinema influences: tracing intertextuality in the works of two contemporary filmmakers from Francophone Africa; Mahamat Saleh Haroun and Abderrahmane Sissako

Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass Anton Chekhov Representations of Africa in cinema are almost as old as cinema itself and date back to Hollywood’s silent era. Most early examples feature the continent as a mere exotic backdrop and include The Sheik (Melford 1921), soon followed, in 1926, by George Fitzmaurice’s Son of the Sheik starring Rudolph Valentino. The next decade brought Van Dyke’s Tarzan movies, Robert Stevenson’s King Solomon’s Mines (1937), and, on the European side, Duvivier’s Pépé le Moko (1936). For representations of Francophone Africa by Africans themselves, the viewing public more or less had to wait, however, until decolonisation in the 1960s (with, for example, Sembene Ousmane’s Borom Sarret and La Noire de…, both released in 1966 and, in 1968, Mandabi). Since then Francophone African cinema has come a long way and has diversified into various strands. Between Borom Sarret and Mahamat-Saleh Haroun’s 2006 Daratt, Saison sèche - or the same director’s Un homme qui crie, almost half a century has elapsed. Over this period, films inevitably have addressed a spectrum of visual, ideological and political tropes. They range from unadorned depictions of the newly independent states and their societies to highly aestheticised productions, not to mention surreal and poetic visions as displayed for instance in Djibril Diop Mambéty’s Touki Bouki (1973). Most of the early films send an overt socio-political message which is a clear and explicit denunciation of a corrupt state of affairs (Souleymane Cissé’s Baara, 1977). They aim to trigger strong emotional and political responses from the viewer, in unambiguous support for the film-maker’s stand. Sembene himself declared: “I consider cinema a means of political action” (Murphy 2000: 221). Similarly, the Mauritanian director Med Hondo wishes to “take up this technical medium and to make it a mouthpiece on behalf of [his] fellow Africans and Arabs” (Jeffries 2002: 11). All this echoes the claims of the Fédération Panafricaine des Cinéastes (FEPACI, founded in 1969), an organisation “dedicated to the liberation of Africa”. In sharp contrast to the incipient momentum given Francophonie by Bourguiba, the Nigerien Hamani Diori and the Senegalese Senghor, who invoked a worldwide communauté organique francophone, FEPACI called for “the creation of an aesthetics of disalienation… [using] didactic... forms to denounce the alienation of countries that were politically independent but culturally and economically dependent on the West” (Diawara 1996: 40). Sembene’s Xala (1974) became the blueprint for this, to this day the best-known vein of Francophone African cinema. Thus considered, this pedigree seems a million miles from mainstream global cinema with its overriding mission to entertain. A question therefore arises: to what extent can a cinema that sprang from such beginnings be seen to interface in any meaningful way with a global film industry that, overwhelmingly and for a century, has indeed entertained the world – with Hollywood at its centre?

A loucura e o cinema: representações cinematográficas de personalidade limite

Dissertação apresentada à Escola Superior de Comunicação Social como parte dos requisitos para obtenção de grau de mestre em Audiovisual e Multimédia.

Cinema na primeira pessoa: auto-representação e auto reflexividade no documentário contemporâneo: trabalho de projecto

Trabalho de Projeto submetido à Escola Superior de Teatro e Cinema para cumprimento dos requisitos necessários à obtenção do grau de Mestre em Desenvolvimento do Projeto Cinematográfico - especialização em Dramaturgia e Realização.

O cinema ibérico e os óscares: razões para a não selecção dos filmes portugueses ao óscar de melhor filme em língua estrangeira, através da análise comparativa entre as cinematografias de Espanha, Portugal e o modelo de produção de Hollywood

Dissertação apresentada à Escola Superior de Comunicação Social como parte dos requisitos para obtenção de grau de mestre em Audiovisual e Multimédia.

Heroes on the home front : heroism and virtue in post-9/11 American cinema /

This thesis is intended to contribute to critical discussion of the American male hero in mainstream American war and action films post September 11, 2001 . The thesis investigates how these heroes' behaviour echoes a patriotic, conservative construction of the modern American as created through speeches given by George W. Bush in the wake of the events of September 11, 2001 . The thesis examines the hero in six primary sources: the war films We Were Soldiers, Behind Enemy Lines and The Great Raid and the action films Collateral Damage, Man on Fire and The Punisher. By analyzing the ideological subtext, political content, visual strategies and generic implications of the films, as well as the binary constructions of a selection of Bush speeches, and by reviewing historical representations of American male heroes on film produced in the wake of political events, the thesis concludes that the six films mobilize the USA's conservative viewpoint towards war and military action, and in concert with the speeches, contribute to an ongoing militarization of visual culture. Both systems echo a dangerous ideological fantasy of American history, life and patriotism.

Representations of swinging London in 1960s British cinema : Blowup (1966), Smashing Time (1967), and Performance (1970)

This thesis explores the representation of Swinging London in three examples of 1960s British cinema: Blowup (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1966), Smashing Time (Desmond Davis, 1967) and Performance (Donald Cammell and Nicolas Roeg, 1970). It suggests that the films chronologically signify the evolution, commodification and dissolution of the Swinging London era. The thesis explores how the concept of Swinging London is both critiqued and perpetuated in each film through the use of visual tropes: the reconstruction of London as a cinematic space; the Pop photographer; the dolly; representations of music performance and fashion; the appropriation of signs and symbols associated with the visual culture of Swinging London. Using fashion, music performance, consumerism and cultural symbolism as visual narratives, each film also explores the construction of youth identity through the representation of manufactured and mediated images. Ultimately, these films reinforce Swinging London as a visual economy that circulates media images as commodities within a system of exchange. With this in view, the signs and symbols that comprise the visual culture of Swinging London are as central and significant to the cultural era as their material reality. While they attempt to destabilize prevailing representations of the era through the reproduction and exchange of such symbols, Blowup, Smashing Time, and Performance nevertheless contribute to the nostalgia for Swinging London in larger cultural memory.

The ambivalent identity of Wong Kar-wai's cinema

Ayant réalisé neuf longs-métrages entre 1988 et 2007, aussi que plusieurs campagnes publicitaires, vidéo-clips, courts-métrages et projets collectifs, Wong Kar-wai est un des réalisateurs contemporains les plus importants actuellement. Issu de l'industrie cinématographique fortement commerciale de Hong Kong, Wong est parvenu à attirer l'attention du circuit international des festivals de cinéma avec son style visuel unique et son récit fragmenté. Considéré par plusieurs critiques comme le poète de la recherche d’identité de Hong Kong après 1997, Wong Kar-wai défie toutes les tentatives de catégorisation. L’étude qui se poursuivit ici a donc pour objet essentiel de fournir une analyse attentive et complète de son oeuvre, tout en se concentrant sur les traits stylistiques qui donnent à ses films une unité. Ces caractéristiques correspondent à une certaine façon de raconter des histoires, de composer des personnages et des récits, de manipuler le temps et d'utiliser des ressources techniques de sorte que ses films offrent une identité cohérente. L'objectif est d'analyser les différents composants de ses images pour découvrir comment ses films communiquent les uns avec les autres afin de créer une identité unique. Pour atteindre cet objectif, je pose comme hypothèse de travail que le cinéma de Wong est marqué par une structure dualiste qui permet à ses films de présenter des qualités contradictoires simultanément. La plupart de mes arguments se concentrent sur le travail du philosophe français Gilles Deleuze, qui a proposé une théorie du cinéma divisé entre l’image-mouvement et l’image-temps. Je considère que sa théorie fournit un cadre valide sur lequel les films de Wong peuvent être projetés. Tandis que ma recherche se concentre sur l’interprétation textuelle des films, je profiterais également d’une analyse comparative.