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628 results in Film

Page 1 of 32

Sergei Eisenstein in the Classical Tradition
  • Martin M. Winkler
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    September 2026
    Print publication:
    30 September 2026
  • This is the first study of Sergei Eisenstein's relationship to classical antiquity. Eisenstein regarded the cinema as a Gesamtkunstwerk and considered the ancient Greeks among its ancestors. He detected what he called “cinematism” in Homer, the Laocoon sculpture group, the Acropolis, and elsewhere. The book interprets Eisenstein's chief concept, montage, as a visual analogy to clever juxtapositions in Roman poetry and examines his conflicts with Stalin and the Communist Party over Bezhin Meadow and Ivan the Terrible alongside the classical rhetorical strategy of formidable speaking in the face of absolute power and the Russian practice of Aesopian language. Eisenstein also influenced the design of the New Acropolis Museum via an essay about the Acropolis' architectural promenade and his epic Alexander Nevsky. The cinematism of the Parthenon Frieze, American cinema architecture modeled on the Parthenon, and Eisenstein's image of the cinema as a temple reinforce his importance within the classical tradition.

Embers of Reason
  • The Secular Imagination and the Contemporary Indian Documentary
  • Veena Hariharan
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    July 2026
    Print publication:
    01 November 2027

The child in Spanish cinema
  • Sarah Wright
  • Published by:
    Manchester University Press
    Published online:
    12 May 2026
  • In the full-length treatment of the child in Spanish cinema, this book explores the ways that the cinematic child comes to represent 'prosthetic memory'. The cinematic children in the book retain traces of their mechanical origins: thus they are dolls, ventriloquists' dummies, cyborgs or automata. Moreover, by developing the monstrous undertones evoked by these mechanical traces (cinema such as 'Frankensteinian dream'), these films, in different ways, return repeatedly to a central motif. The central motif is the child's confrontation with a monster and, derivatively, the theme of the monstrous child. Through their obsessive recreation over time, the themes of the child and the monster and the monstrous child come to stand in metonymically for the confrontation of the self with the horrors of Spain's recent past. The book focuses on the cine religioso (religious cinema), in particular, Marcelino, pan y vino. The children of cine religioso appear like automata, programmed to love unconditionally an absent mother. The book then examines the Marisol's films from the 1960s and the way she was groomed by her creators to respond and engineer the economic and cultural changes of the consumerist Spain of the 1960s. It further deals with Victor Erice's El espiritu de la colmena and works through cinematic memories of this film in later works such as El laberinto del fauno, El orfanato and El espinazo del diablo. The films are seen to gesture towards the imaginary creation of a missing child.

Laurent Cantet
  • Martin O’Shaughnessy
  • Published by:
    Manchester University Press
    Published online:
    08 May 2026
  • Laurent Cantet is of one France’s leading contemporary directors. He probes the evolution and fault-lines of contemporary society from the home to the workplace and from the Republican school to globalized consumption more acutely than perhaps any other French film-maker. His films always challenge his characters’ assumptions about their world. But they also make their spectators rethink their position in relation to what they see. This is what makes Cantet such an important film-maker, the book argues. It explores Cantet’s unique working ‘method,’ his use of amateur actors and attempt to develop an egalitarian authorship that allows other voices to be heard rather than subsumed. It discusses his way of constructing films at the uneasy interface of the individual, the group and the broader social context and his recourse to melodramatic strategies and moments of shame to force social tensions into view. It shows how the roots of the well-known later films can be found in his early works. It explores the major fictions from Ressources humaines to the recent Foxfire, Confessions of a Girl Gang. It combines careful close analysis with attention to broader cinematic, social and political contexts while drawing on a range of important theorists from Pierre Bourdieu to Jacques Rancière, Michael Bakhtin and Mary Ann Doane. It concludes by examining how, resolutely contemporary of the current moment, Cantet helps us rethink the possibilities and limits of political cinema in a context in which old resistances have fallen silent and new forms of protest are only emergent.

Film modernism
  • Sam Rohdie
  • Published by:
    Manchester University Press
    Published online:
    07 May 2026
  • This book consists of 50 categories arranged in alphabetical order centred on film modernism. Each category, though autonomous, interacts, intersects, juxtaposes with the others, entering into a dialogue with them and in so doing creates connections, illuminations, associations and rhymes which may not have arisen in a more conventional framework. The categories refer to particular films and directors that raise questions related to modernism, and, inevitably thereby to classicism. The book is more in the way of questions and speculations than answers and conclusions. Its intention is to stimulate not simply by the substance of what is said, but by the way it is said and structured. Most attention is given to the works of Michelangelo Antonioni, Bernardo Bertolucci, John Ford, Jean-Luc Godard, Howard Hawks, Alfred Hitchcock, João César Monteiro, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Nicholas Ray, Alain Resnais, Roberto Rossellini, Luchino Visconti and Orson Welles. The apparent arbitrary order and openness of the book, based as it is on the alphabet is indebted to Jean-Luc Godard’s interrogation of History and of film history especially true in his stunning Histoire(s) du cinema.

Regarding the real
  • Cinema, documentary, and the visual arts
  • Des O’Rawe
  • Published by:
    Manchester University Press
    Published online:
    07 May 2026
  • Regarding the real: cinema, documentary, and the visual arts develops an approach to the study of documentary film focussing on its aesthetic and cultural relations to the modern visual arts, especially: animation, assemblage, photography, painting, and architecture. In particular, it examines how documentary practices have often incorporated methods and expressive techniques derived from these art forms. Combining close analysis with cultural history, the book re-assesses the influence of the modern visual arts in subverting the structures of realism typically associated with documentary film, and considers the work of figures whose preferred film language is associative, and fragmentary, and for whom the documentary remains an open form, an unstable expressive phenomenon that at its best interrogates its own narratives, and intentions. In the course of its discussion, the book charts a path that leads from Len Lye to Hiroshi Teshigahara, and includes along the way figures such as Joseph Cornell, Johan van der Keuken, William Klein, Jean-Luc Godard, Jonas Mekas, Raymond Depardon.

Classical Hollywood cinema
  • Point of view and communication
  • James Zborowski
  • Published by:
    Manchester University Press
    Published online:
    07 May 2026
  • This book explores the theoretical and critical concept of filmic point of view. Its case studies are six acclaimed and accomplished instances of ‘classical Hollywood cinema’: Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (Capra, 1936), Only Angels Have Wings (Hawks, 1939), Letter from an Unknown Woman (Ophuls, 1948), Vertigo (Hitchcock, 1958), Anatomy of a Murder (Preminger, 1959), and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (Ford, 1962). The book’s particular contributions to the study of filmic point of view are to use ‘communication’ as an idea which permits new ways of approaching this topic, and to offer detailed explorations of the filmic representation of character experience (including character ‘consciousness’ and interaction), and of the relationship of film to other media of communication (especially print media and the novel). With respect to character experience, it is argued that the often-held distinction between an inner realm of thought and feeling and an outer realm of behaviour and objects fails to do justice to the human experience of ‘being-in-the-world’ and film’s ability to represent it. With respect to film’s relationship to other media, it explores the traversing of the public, the private and the social that narrative fiction film represents, in a way that aligns the medium with the novel. The book is offered as a demonstration and defence of the value of a ‘conversational’ critical method that entails detailed scrutiny of our film-viewing experiences and of the language we use to describe those experiences, and eschews the construction of a taxonomy designed for general applicability.

Men with stakes
  • Masculinity and the gothic in US television
  • Julia M. Wright
  • Published by:
    Manchester University Press
    Published online:
    07 May 2026
  • Men with Stakes examines the ways in which the gothic mode is deployed specifically to call into question televisual realism and, with it, conventional depictions of masculinity, especially in relation to agency, power, and legitimated forms of knowledge (science in particular). In this context, it discusses in some depth seven series from the last two decades: American Gothic (CBS, 1995-1996), Millennium (Fox, 1996-1999), Angel (WB, 1999-2004), Carnivàle (HBO, 2003, 2005), Point Pleasant (Fox, 2005-2006), Supernatural (WB, 2005-2006; CW, 2006- ), and American Horror Story (FX, 2011- ). Instead of considering gothic television in terms of its adaptation of gothic literary precedents (another significant thread in gothic film and television studies), this study considers these series in light of gothic studies’ conclusions about the mode itself—from Edmund Burke’s idea of obscurity to the organization of the gothic around different gender questions, and from its allusiveness and challenge to verisimilitude to its emphasis on simulation and fakery.

The cinema of Álex de la Iglesia
  • Peter Buse, Núria Triana Toribio, Andy Willis
  • Published by:
    Manchester University Press
    Published online:
    30 April 2026
  • Álex de la Iglesia, initially championed by Pedro Almodóvar, and at one time the enfant terrible of Spanish film, still makes film critics nervous. The director of some of the most important films of the Post-Franco era – Acción mutante, El día de la bestia, Muertos de risa – de la Iglesia receives here a full-length study of his work. Breaking away from the pious tradition of acclaiming art-house auteurs, the book tackles a new sort of beast: the popular auteur, who brings the provocation of the avant-garde to popular genres such as horror and comedy. It brings together Anglo-American film theory, an exploration of the legal and economic history of Spanish audio-visual culture, and a comprehensive knowledge of Spanish cultural forms and traditions (esperpento, sainete costumbrista) with a detailed textual analysis of all of de la Iglesia's seven feature films.

The wounds of nations
  • Horror cinema, historical trauma and national identity
  • Linnie Blake
  • Published by:
    Manchester University Press
    Published online:
    30 April 2026
  • This book explores the ways in which the unashamedly disturbing conventions of international horror cinema allow audiences to engage with the traumatic legacy of the recent past in a manner that has serious implications for the ways in which we conceive of ourselves both as gendered individuals and as members of a particular nation-state. Exploring a wide range of stylistically distinctive and generically diverse film texts, its analysis ranges from the body horror of the American 1970s to the avant-garde proclivities of German Reunification horror, from the vengeful supernaturalism of recent Japanese chillers and their American remakes to the post-Thatcherite masculinity horror of the UK and the resurgence of hillbilly horror in the period following 9/11 USA. In each case, it is argued that horror cinema forces us to look again at the wounds inflicted on individuals, families, communities and nations by traumatic events such as genocide and war, terrorist outrage and seismic political change, wounds that are all too often concealed beneath ideologically expedient discourses of national cohesion. Thus proffering a radical critique of the nation-state and the ideologies of identity it promulgates, horror cinema is seen to offer us a disturbing, yet perversely life affirming, means of working through the traumatic legacy of recent times.

Using film as a source
  • Sian Barber
  • Published by:
    Manchester University Press
    Published online:
    29 April 2026
  • This study guide is intended to provide a starting point for those seeking to use film as a source. It is aimed at those who want to use film and moving image as the basis for research and offers advice on research methods, theory and methodology, archival work and film-based analysis. Everything included here is also intended to be good practice, whether it be conducting an interview, visiting an archive, undertaking textual analysis or defining a research question. It draws on the disciplines of film and history to offer advice for students and researchers in these fields.

Jack Rosenthal
  • Sue Vice
  • Published by:
    Manchester University Press
    Published online:
    28 April 2026
  • This is a critical work on Jack Rosenthal, the highly regarded British television dramatist. His career began with Coronation Street in the 1960s and he became famous for his popular sitcoms, including The Lovers and The Dustbinmen. During what is often known as the ‘golden age’ of British television drama, Rosenthal wrote such plays as The Knowledge, The Chain, Spend, Spend, Spend and P'tang, Yang, Kipperbang, as well as the pilot for the series London's Burning. This study offers a close analysis of all his best-known works, drawing on archival material as well as interviews with his collaborators, including Jonathan Lynn and Don Black. The book places Rosenthal's plays in their historical and televisual context, and does so by tracing the events that informed his writing – ranging from his comic take on the ‘permissive society’ of the 1960s, to recession in the 1970s and Thatcherism in the 1980s. His distinctive brand of melancholy humour is contrasted throughout with the work of contemporaries such as Dennis Potter, Alan Bleasdale and Johnny Speight, and his influence on contemporary television and film is analysed. Rosenthal is not usually placed in the canon of Anglo-Jewish writing, but the book argues this case by focusing on his prize-winning Plays for Today, The Evacuees and Bar Mitzvah Boy.

Maurice Pialat
  • Marja Warehime
  • Published by:
    Manchester University Press
    Published online:
    28 April 2026
  • One of the most gifted directors of the post New Wave, Maurice Pialat is frequently compared to such legendary filmmakers as Jean Renoir and Robert Bresson. A quintessentially realist filmmaker, who, like Bresson, was trained as a painter, his particular form of realism influenced an entire generation of young filmmakers in the 1990s. This study of Pialat's cinema in English provides an introduction to a complex and difficult director, who saw himself as a marginal and marginalised filmmaker, but whose films are deeply rooted in French society and culture. Pialat was long considered the only major filmmaker to portray ‘la France profonde’, the heart of France—the people who, as he put it, ‘take the subway’. Taken as a whole, his work can be seen both as an oblique autobiography and the portrait of a fundamental institution—the family—over several generations, from the Third Republic through the end of the nineties. The power of Pialat's realism has often overshadowed his formal originality, and this study gives equal attention to formal issues, including the crucial role of montage in the elaboration of his filmic narratives. It provides a brief biographical sketch of the filmmaker, situating his work in relation to the New Wave and the popular Saturday night cinema of his childhood, as well as giving an overview of the major themes and formal preoccupations of his work. Subsequent chapters provide readings of each of Pialat's full-length films.

Tony Garnett
  • Stephen Lacey
  • Published by:
    Manchester University Press
    Published online:
    28 April 2026
  • This is a book-length study of one of the most respected and prolific producers working in British television. From ground-breaking dramas from the 1960s such as Up the Junction and Cathy Come Home to the ‘must-see’ series in the 1990s and 2000s such as This Life and The Cops, Tony Garnett has produced some of the most important and influential British television drama. This book charts his career from his early days as an actor to his position as executive producer and head of World Productions, focusing on the ways in which he has helped to define the role of the creative producer, shaping the distinctive politics and aesthetics of the drama he has produced, and enabling and facilitating the contributions of others. Garnett's distinctive contribution to the development of a social realist aesthetic is also examined, through the documentary-inspired early single plays to the subversion of genre within popular drama series.

Anthony Asquith
  • Tom Ryall
  • Published by:
    Manchester University Press
    Published online:
    28 April 2026
  • This is a comprehensive critical study of Anthony Asquith. The author sets the director's work in the context of British cinema from the silent period to the 1960s, and examines the artistic and cultural influences within which his films can be understood. Asquith's silent films were compared favourably to those of his eminent contemporary Alfred Hitchcock, but his career faltered during the 1930s. However, the success of Pygmalion (1938) and French Without Tears (1939), based on plays by George Bernard Shaw and Terence Rattigan respectively, together with his significant contributions to wartime British cinema, re-established him as one of Britain's leading film makers. Asquith's post-war career includes several pictures in collaboration with Rattigan, and the definitive adaptation of Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest (1951), but his versatility is demonstrated effectively in a number of modest genre films including The Woman in Question (1950), The Young Lovers (1954) and Orders to Kill (1958).

Armchair Cinema
  • A History of Feature Films on British Television, 1929-1981
  • Sheldon Hall
  • Published by:
    Edinburgh University Press
    Published online:
    25 April 2026
    Print publication:
    30 June 2024
  • Since broadcast television first emerged as a serious alternative to the cinema, more people have seen films on TV than by any other means. Feature films originally made for the big screen were initially withheld from TV by the film industry in the competition for audiences. Struggles between film and television interests settled into a truce in the mid-1960s, since when thousands of films have been shown on British terrestrial television each year. They assumed particular importance in the 1970s and 1980s, when cinema blockbusters became major TV events and themed seasons gave viewers access to many older movies.

    This book provides a comprehensive history and analysis of the ways in which cinema films have figured in TV programming in the UK and the role that British television has played in changing the consumption of film entertainment.

The reality of film
  • Theories of filmic reality
  • Richard Rushton
  • Published by:
    Manchester University Press
    Published online:
    25 April 2026
  • In formulating a notion of filmic reality, this book offers a novel way of understanding our relationship with cinema. It argues that cinema need not be understood in terms of its capacities to refer to, reproduce or represent reality, but should be understood in terms of the kinds of realities it has the ability to create. The book investigates filmic reality by way of six key film theorists: André Bazin, Christian Metz, Stanley Cavell, Gilles Deleuze, Slavoj Žižek and Jacques Rancière. In doing so, it provides comprehensive introductions to each of these thinkers, while also debunking many myths and misconceptions about them. Along the way, a notion of filmic reality is formed that radically reconfigures our understanding of cinema.

Humphrey Jennings
  • Keith Beattie
  • Published by:
    Manchester University Press
    Published online:
    24 April 2026
  • Humphrey Jennings has been described as the only real poet of British cinema. His documentary films employ a range of representational approaches – including collagist narrative structures and dramatic re-enactment – in ways that transcend accepted notions of wartime propaganda and revise the strict codes of British documentary film of the 1930s and 1940s. The resultant body of work is a remarkable record of Britain at peace and war. This study examines a productive ambiguity of meanings associated with the subtle interaction of images and sounds within Jennings' films, and considers the ideological and institutional contexts and forces that impacted on the formal structure of his films. Central and lesser-known films are analysed, including Spare Time, Words for Battle, Listen to Britain, Fires Were Started, The Silent Village, A Diary for Timothy and Family Portrait. Poet, propagandist, surrealist and documentary filmmaker – Jennings' work embodies a mix of apprehension, personal expression and representational innovation. This book examines and explains the central components of Jennings' most significant films, and considers the relevance of his filmmaking to British cinema and contemporary experience.

Greek Weird Wave
  • A Cinema of Biopolitics
  • Dimitris Papanikolaou
  • Published by:
    Edinburgh University Press
    Published online:
    23 April 2026
  • What relates the early films of Yorgos Lanthimos with Vasilis Kekatos’s 2019 Cannes triumph The Distance Between Us and the Sky? What is the lasting legacy of Panos Koutras’s 2009 trans narrative Strella: A Woman’s Way in today’s gender and sexual identity activism in Greece? What was the role of cultural collectives in the formation of a ‘weird history’ of Greek cinema? And how did cinema and other cultural forms respond to a sense of Crisis and an ever expansive management of life that we have now learnt to call biopolitics? This book uses such questions in order to establish a cinematic and cultural history of Greece during the last difficult decade in an engaged and highly original manner. It focuses on key films from the post-2009 ‘New’ or ‘Weird Wave’ of Greek cinema, proposing the Greek Weird Wave as a paradigmatic cinema movement of biopolitical realism. At once representing, reframing and reimagining the present, the Greek Weird Wave points to a much larger development in World Cinema.

Mike Leigh
  • Tony Whitehead
  • Published by:
    Manchester University Press
    Published online:
    23 April 2026
  • Mike Leigh may well be Britain's greatest living film director; his worldview has permeated our national consciousness. This book gives detailed readings of the nine feature films he has made for the cinema, as well as an overview of his work for television. Written with the co-operation of Leigh himself, it challenges the critical privileging of realism in histories of British cinema, placing the emphasis instead on the importance of comedy and humour: of jokes and their functions; of laughter as a survival mechanism; and of characterisations and situations that disrupt our preconceptions of ‘realism’. Striving for the all-important quality of truth in everything he does, Leigh has consistently shown how ordinary lives are too complex to fit snugly into the conventions of narrative art. From the bittersweet observation of Life is Sweet or Secrets and Lies, to the blistering satire of Naked and the manifest compassion of Vera Drake, he has demonstrated a matchless ability to perceive life's funny side as well as its tragedies.

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