Gwendolyn Audrey Foster

Class-Passing draws on dozens of examples from popular culture, from old movie classics and contemporary films to print ads and cyberspace, to illustrate how flagrant displays of wealth that were once unacceptable under the old rules of behavior are now flaunted by class-passing celebrities. Book jacket.

Social Mobility in Film and Popular Culture

Class-passing

Wheeler W. Dixon

The history of international cinema is now available in a concise, conveniently sized, and affordable volume. Succinct yet comprehensive, A Short History of Film provides an accessible overview of the major movements, directors, studios, and genres from the 1880s to the present. More than 250 rare stills and illustrations accompany the text, bringing readers face to face with many of the key players and films that have marked the industry. Beginning with precursors of what we call moving pictures, Wheeler Winston Dixon and Gwendolyn Audrey Foster lead a fast-paced tour through the invention of the kinetoscope, the introduction of sound and color between the two world wars, and ultimately the computer generated imagery of the present day. They detail significant periods in world cinema, including the early major industries in Europe, the dominance of the Hollywood studio system in the 1930s and 1940s, and the French New Wave of the 1960s. Special attention is also given to small independent efforts in developing nations and the corresponding more personal independent film movement that briefly flourished in the United States, the significant filmmakers of all nations, censorship and regulation and how they have affected production everywhere, and a wide range of studios and genres. Along the way, the authors take great care to incorporate the stories of women and other minority filmmakers who have often been overlooked in other texts. Compact and easily readable, this is the best one-stop source for the history of world film available to students, teachers, and general audiences alike.

A Short History of Film

The culture of twenty-first century America largely revolves around narcissistic death, violence, and visions of doom. As people are bombarded with amoral metanarratives that display an almost complete lack of empathy for others on television, in films, and on the internet, their insatiable appetite for excessive pain and routine death reflects an embrace of an endlessly warring culture. Foster explores this culture of the apocalypse, from hoarding and gluttony to visions of the post-apocalyptic world.

Hoarders, Doomsday Preppers, and the Culture of Apocalypse

Katrien Jacobs

Amy L. Unterburger

This single-volume resource offers comprehensive coverage of women directors and their films as well as producers, writers and production artists. General information on the filmmaker or film is followed, where applicable, by more detailed biography, filmography, comprehensive credits, production information, awards and bibliography. The core of the entry consists of a signed, 800- to 1,000-word critical essay written by a film critic or scholar. Following introductory essays on the evolution and status of women filmmakers, 190 alphabetically arranged entries discuss women directors, producers, animators, art directors, editors, writers, and costume designers. Each entry contains a brief biography, a complete filmography, a selected bibliography of works on and by the entrant, and an expository essay by a specialist in the field. The remaining entries (approximately 60) concern films in which women filmmakers have had a major role. They include production information, lists of cast and crew, a selected bibliography of works about the film, and an essay. Contains many b & w portraits and stills.

Women Filmmakers & Their Films

Troping the Body: Gender, Etiquette, and Performance is an interdisciplinary study of etiquette texts, conduct literature, and advice books and films. Gwendolyn Audrey Foster analyzes the work of such women authors as Emily Post, Christine de Pizan, Hannah Webster Foster, Emily Brontë, Frances E. W. Harper, and Martha Stewart as well as such women filmmakers as Lois Weber and Kasi Lemmons. ?Specifically,” Foster notes, ?I was interested in the possibility of locating power and agency in the voices of popular etiquette writers.” Her investigation led her to analyze etiquette and conduct literature from the Middle Ages to the present. Within this wide scope, she redefines the boundaries of conduct literature through a theoretical examination of the gendered body as it is positioned in conduct books, etiquette texts, poetry, fiction, and film. Drawing on Bakhtin, Gates, Foucault, and the new school of performative feminism to develop an interdisciplinary approach to conduct literature?and literature as conduct?Foster brings a unique perspective to the analysis of ways in which the body has been gendered, raced, and constructed in terms of class and sexuality. Even though women writers have been actively writing conduct and etiquette texts since the medieval period, few critical examinations of such literature exist in the fields of cultural studies and literary criticism. Thus, Foster's study fills a gap and does so uniquely in the existing literature. In examining these voices of authority over the body, Foster identifies the dialogic in the texts of this discipline that both supports and disrupts the hegemonic discourse of a gendered social order.

Gender, Etiquette, and Performance

Troping the Body

An examination of the works of six contemporary black and Asian women filmmakers, including Zeinabue Irene Davis, Ngozi Onwurah, Julie Dash, Pratibha Parmar, Minh-ha and Mira Nair. It also includes a detailed introduction and a chapter entitled "Other Voices", documenting the work of other black and asian filmmakers.

Decolonizing the Gaze, Locating Subjectivity

Women Filmmakers of the African & Asian Diaspora

Explores how whiteness is culturally constructed in American films.

Postmodern Re/Constructions in the Cinema

Performing Whiteness

Examines the film industry's fascination with bondage and captivity.

Postcolonial Subjectivity in Cinema

Captive Bodies

Wheeler Winston Dixon

They are shot on high-definition digital cameras—with computer-generated effects added in postproduction—and transmitted to theaters, websites, and video-on-demand networks worldwide. They are viewed on laptop, iPod, and cell phone screens. They are movies in the 21st century—the product of digital technologies that have revolutionized media production, content distribution, and the experience of moviegoing itself. 21st-Century Hollywood introduces readers to these global transformations and describes the decisive roles that Hollywood is playing in determining the digital future for world cinema. It offers clear, concise explanations of a major paradigm shift that continues to reshape our relationship to the moving image. Filled with numerous detailed examples, the book will both educate and entertain film students and movie fans alike.

Movies in the Era of Transformation

21st-Century Hollywood

With more than 250 images, new information on international cinema—especially Polish, Chinese, Russian, Canadian, and Iranian filmmakers—an expanded section on African-American filmmakers, updated discussions of new works by major American directors, and a new section on the rise of comic book movies and computer generated special effects, this is the most up to date resource for film history courses in the twenty-first century.

A Short History of Film, Third Edition

This volume provides a comprehensive guide to the long tradition of American avant-garde cinema, from its origins in the 1920s to the work of contemporary film and video artists. The Reader addresses major movements and key figures of the avant-garde, including filmmakers such as Andy Warhol, Kenneth Anger, Isaac Julien and Julie Dash, investigates how underground films have explored issues of gender, sexuality and race, and foreground technical innovations such as the use of Super 8mm and video.

The Film Reader

Experimental Cinema

Considered to be one of the most influential auteurs in French cinema today, Chantal Akerman has had a profound impact on both feminist filmmaking discourse and avant-garde film. She has shown herself to be an uncompromising and dedicated practitioner of the cinematic arts in works such as I…You…He…She (Je tu il elle,1974); Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975); Meetings with Anna (Les Rendez-vous d’Anna,1978); American Stories/Food, Family, and Philosophy (Histoires d’Amérique,1989); and From the East (D’Est,1993). Akerman has continued to create new and unexpected films that explore ideas about image, gaze, space, performance, and narration. This collection of essays edited by Gwendolyn Audrey Foster assesses Akerman’s wide-ranging oeuvre, particularly her exploration of identity and memory, and considers her development as an artist and as a social force. Along with a detailed filmography and bibliography, both compiled by Foster, ten of the key figures in contemporary feminist moving-image discourse explore the themes with which Akerman is preoccupied: sexuality and lesbian identity, subjectivity, alterity, quotidian reality, the mother-daughter relationship, and Jewish diasporic identity. The contributors include Maureen Turim, Sandy Flitterman-Lewis, Jennifer M. Barker, Ivone Margulies, Catherine Fowler, Janet Bergstrom, Ginette Vincendeau, Gwendolyn Audrey Foster, Judith Mayne, and Kristine Butler. Originally published in the United Kingdom by Flicks Books, this marks the first United States edition of Identity and Memory: The Films of Chantal Akerman.

The Films of Chantal Akerman

Identity and Memory

Features the history and work of the most important women in the world of fictional narrative filmmaking--authoritative, historical, international.

Gwendolyn Audrey Foster

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