Millennial Cinema

Millennial Cinema
Author: Amresh Sinha
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 266
Release: 2012-03-20
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 0231161921

Includes bibliographical references and index.

World Cinema and Cultural Memory

World Cinema and Cultural Memory
Author: I. Hedges
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2015-04-06
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 9781137465115

Cinema has long played a crucial role in the way that societies represent themselves. Hedges discusses the role of cinema in creating cultural memory within a global perspective that spans five continents. The book's innovative approach and approachable style should transform the way that we think of film and its social effects.

Memory and Movies

Memory and Movies
Author: John Seamon
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2015-08-07
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0262029715

How popular films from Memento to Slumdog Millionaire can help us understand how memory works. In the movie Slumdog Millionaire, the childhood memories of a young game show contestant trigger his correct answers. In Memento, the amnesiac hero uses tattoos as memory aids. In Away from Her, an older woman suffering from dementia no longer remembers who her husband is. These are compelling films that tell affecting stories about the human condition. But what can these movies teach us about memory? In this book, John Seamon shows how examining the treatment of memory in popular movies can shed new light on how human memory works. After explaining that memory is actually a diverse collection of independent systems, Seamon uses examples from movies to offer an accessible, nontechnical description of what science knows about memory function and dysfunction. In a series of lively encounters with numerous popular films, he draws on Life of Pi and Avatar, for example, to explain working memory, used for short-term retention. He describes the process of long-term memory with examples from such films as Cast Away and Groundhog Day; The Return of Martin Guerre, among other movies, informs his account of how we recognize people; the effect of emotion on autobiographical memory is illustrated by The Kite Runner, Titanic, and other films; movies including Born on the Fourth of July and Rachel Getting Married illustrate the complex pain of traumatic memories. Seamon shows us that movies rarely get amnesia right, often using strategically timed blows to the protagonist's head as a way to turn memory off and then on again (as in Desperately Seeking Susan). Finally, he uses movies including On Golden Pond and Amour to describe the memory loss that often accompanies aging, while highlighting effective ways to maintain memory function.

Cinema, Memory, Modernity

Cinema, Memory, Modernity
Author: Russell J.A. Kilbourn
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 289
Release: 2013-10-18
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1134550154

Since its inception, cinema has evolved into not merely a ‘reflection’ but an indispensable index of human experience – especially our experience of time’s passage, of the present moment, and, most importantly perhaps, of the past, in both collective and individual terms. In this volume, Kilbourn provides a comparative theorization of the representation of memory in both mainstream Hollywood and international art cinema within an increasingly transnational context of production and reception. Focusing on European, North and South American, and Asian films, Kilbourn reads cinema as providing the viewer with not only the content and form of memory, but also with its own directions for use: the required codes and conventions for understanding and implementing this crucial prosthetic technology — an art of memory for the twentieth-century and beyond.

Memory and Popular Film

Memory and Popular Film
Author: Paul Grainge
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Total Pages: 278
Release: 2003-09-06
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 9780719063756

Taking Hollywood as its focus, this timely book provides a sustained, interdisciplinary perspective on memory and film from early cinema to the present. Considering the relationship between official and popular memory, the politics of memory, and the technological and representational shifts that have come to effect memory's contemporary mediation, the book contributes to the growing debate on the status and function of the past in cultural life and discourse. By gathering key critics from film studies, American studies and cultural studies, Memory and Popular Film establishes a framework for discussing issues of memory in film and of film as memory. Together with essays on the remembered past in early film marketing, within popular reminiscence, and at film festivals, the book considers memory films such as Forrest Gump, Lone Star, Pleasantville, Rosewood and Jackie Brown.

Memory in World Cinema

Memory in World Cinema
Author: Nancy J. Membrez
Publisher: McFarland
Total Pages: 278
Release: 2019-08-30
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1476636443

Film itself is an artifact of memory. A blend of all the other fine arts, film portrays and preserves human memory, someone's memory, faulty or not, dramatically or comically, in a documentary, feature film or short. Hollywood may dominate 80 percent of cinema production but it is not the only voice. World cinema is about those other voices. Drawn initially from presentations from a series of film conferences held at the University of Texas at San Antonio, this collection of essays covers multiple geographical, linguistic, and cultural areas worldwide, emphasizing the historical and cultural interpretation of films. Appendices list films focusing on memory and invite readers to explore the films and issues raised.

Film, Music, Memory

Film, Music, Memory
Author: Berthold Hoeckner
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 287
Release: 2019-11-27
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 022664975X

Film has shaped modern society in part by changing its cultures of memory. Film, Music, Memory reveals that this change has rested in no small measure on the mnemonic powers of music. As films were consumed by growing American and European audiences, their soundtracks became an integral part of individual and collective memory. Berthold Hoeckner analyzes three critical processes through which music influenced this new culture of memory: storage, retrieval, and affect. Films store memory through an archive of cinematic scores. In turn, a few bars from a soundtrack instantly recall the image that accompanied them, and along with it, the affective experience of the movie. Hoeckner examines films that reflect directly on memory, whether by featuring an amnesic character, a traumatic event, or a surge of nostalgia. As the history of cinema unfolded, movies even began to recall their own history through quotations, remakes, and stories about how cinema contributed to the soundtrack of people’s lives. Ultimately, Film, Music, Memory demonstrates that music has transformed not only what we remember about the cinematic experience, but also how we relate to memory itself.

Palestinian Cinema

Palestinian Cinema
Author: Nurith Gertz
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Total Pages: 256
Release: 2008-01-15
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 0748634096

Although in recent years, the entire world has been increasingly concerned with the Middle East and Israeli-Palestinian relationship, there are few truly reliable sources of information regarding Palestinian society and culture, either concerning its relationship with Israeli society, its position between east and west or its stances in times of war and peace. One of the best sources for understanding Palestinian culture is its cinema which has devoted itself to serving the national struggle. In this book, two scholars--an Israeli and a Palestinian--in a rare and welcome collaboration, follow the development of Palestinian cinema, commenting on its response to political and social transformations. They discover that the more the social, political and economic conditions worsen and chaos and pain prevail, the more Palestinian cinema becomes involved with the national struggle. As expected, Palestinian cinema has unfolded its national narrative against the Israeli narrative, which tried to silence it.

Taiwan Cinema, Memory, and Modernity

Taiwan Cinema, Memory, and Modernity
Author: Ivy I-chu Chang
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 289
Release: 2019-01-04
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 9811335672

This book investigates the aesthetics and politics of Post/Taiwan-New-Cinema by examining fifteen movies by six directors and frequent award winners in international film festivals. The book considers the works of such prominent directors as Edward Yang, Tsai Ming-liang and Chang Tsuo-chi and their influence on Asian films, as well as emergent phenomenal directors such as Wei Te-sheng, Zero Chou, and Chung Mong-hong. It also explores the possibility of transnational and trans-local social sphere in the interstices of layered colonial legacies, nation-state domination, and global capitalism. Considering Taiwan cinema in the wake of globalization, it analyses how these films represent the socio-political transition among multiple colonial legacies, global capitalism, and the changing cross-strait relation between Taiwan and the Mainland China. The book discusses how these films represent nomadic urban middle class, displaced transnational migrant workers, roaming children and young gangsters, and explores how the continuity/disjuncture of globalization has not only carved into historical and personal memories and individual bodies, but also influenced the transnational production modes and marketing strategies of cinema.