Tag: Film and Television Studies

25th Anniversary of the Fall of the Wall

From 1961 to 1989, the city of Berlin was divided by the most visible sign of the Cold War: a wall more than 140km (87 miles) long. On 9 November 1989, East German authorities announced they would allow free access between east and west Berlin. Crowds of euphoric East Germans crossed and climbed on to the wall, leading to a reunited Germany.

 

Berlin is marking the 25th anniversary of the fall of the wall by “rebuilding” it with glowing white balloons. Some 8,000 illuminated helium balloons will trace a 15km-long section of the wall, snaking around the city, for just one weekend (7 to 9 November). The installation will come to an end on the evening of 9 November, when volunteers will release the balloons and set them free, soaring into the night sky to the strains of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony, played by the European Youth Orchestra. The balloons are made out of a biodegradable material so will not harm the environment. For a full story and more information on the event please visit ibtimes.co.uk

 

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Browse Berghahn relevant titles:

 

THE PATH TO THE BERLIN WALL
Critical Stages in the History of Divided Germany
Manfred Wilke
Translated from the German by Sophie Perl

Continue reading “25th Anniversary of the Fall of the Wall” →

Cameras on the Nation’s Darkest Hour

Recent BBC Culture article, Christian Petzold: How Germans today confront the Nazis, takes a look at how the attitude of German filmmakers has changed in the past 15 years and how the cinema is turning the cameras on the nation’s darkest hour in films and TV. Read more on what Nina Hoss, an actress in the latest German film to address the war and its aftermath Christian Petzold’s Phoenix, has to say bbc.com/culture

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Browse some of Berghahn’s relevant titles on the topic of Nazi portrayal and postwar cinema in Germany & Europe.

 

POLISH FILM AND THE HOLOCAUST
Politics and Memory
Marek Haltof

Continue reading “Cameras on the Nation’s Darkest Hour” →

Simulated Shelves: Browse September’s New Books

We are delighted to present a selection of our newly published, and soon to be published, September titles from our core subjects of Conflict Studies, Film Studies, Gender Studies, Genocide Studies, History and Religious Studies along with a selection of our New in Paperback titles.

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FOOD IN ZONES OF CONFLICT
Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives
Edited by Paul Collinson and Helen Macbeth
Foreword by Hugo Slim

Volume 8, Anthropology of Food & Nutrition Continue reading “Simulated Shelves: Browse September’s New Books” →

Venice Film Festival Kicking Off the Fall Movie Festival Season

The 71st Venice International Film Festival, organized by La Biennale di Venezia, opens today and runs through September 6th 2014, on the island of the Lido, Venice, Italy. Twenty films will be competing for the Golden Lion prize, and several dozen more will wrestle for the attention of critics and audiences.

 

The Venice Film Festival or Venice International Film Festival (Italian: Mostra Internazionale d’Arte Cinematografica della Biennale di Venezia, “International Exhibition of Cinematographic Art of the Venice Biennale”) is the oldest international film festival in the world. Founded by Count Giuseppe Volpi in 1932 as the “Esposizione Internazionale d’Arte Cinematografica”, the festival has since taken place every year in late August or early September on the island

For this year’s festival line-up, screening schedule and other information please visit Venice Film Festival official website.

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In the interim, Berghahn is delighted to present its own line-up of Film Studies titles:

 

THE JOURNEY OF G. MASTORNA
The Film Fellini Didn’t Make
Federico Fellini
With the collaboration of Dino Buzzati, Brunello Rondi, and Bernardino Zapponi
Translated with a commentary by Marcus Perryman

Continue reading “Venice Film Festival Kicking Off the Fall Movie Festival Season” →

The Political Backdrop of French Film

Fifty years of French cinema get their close-up in Hugo Frey’s Nationalism and the Cinema in France: Political Mythologies and Film Events, 1945-1995, published in July. Following, the author offers readers a new angle on the volume, which is itself a fresh perspective on French film against a nationalistic backdrop.

 

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Why did you write this book? What were your original aims?

 

The motivations for undertaking this research are complicated and now date from some time ago. Having written a study of the director Louis Malle (2004), I wanted to continue to develop my knowledge of French cinema, while still connecting to my other interests in national historiography and the collective memory of the Vichy period. However, I did not want to work on a conventional book about either ‘great French films of recent times’ or indeed something that just rehashed familiar debates already presented in titles such as Henry Rousso’s The Vichy Syndrome.

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Simulated Shelves: Browse August’s New Books

We are delighted to present a selection of our newly published, and soon to be published, August titles from our core subjects of Anthropology, Environmental Studies, Film Studies, History and Politics, along with a selection of our New in Paperback titles.

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BLOOD AND FIRE
Toward a Global Anthropology of Labor
Edited by Sharryn Kasmir and August Carbonella

Volume 13, Dislocations Series

 

Continue reading “Simulated Shelves: Browse August’s New Books” →

Cinematic Gazing ‘Beyond the Looking Glass’

Ana Salzberg’s newly published monograph, Beyond the Looking Glass: Narcissism and Female Stardom in Studio-Era Hollywood, takes a closer look into the private and public personas of classic Hollywood’s female stars. Following, the authors shares more about her subject and offers a fresh glimpse of the “narcissism” of the female star.

 

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What drew you to the study of the female star in classic cinema? And what inspired you to research and write on this topic?

 

One of the remarkable things about golden-age stars is that you meet them virtually everywhere these days: Turner Classic Movies, DVD box-sets, biographies, bio-pics – not to mention their digitally animated counterparts in commercials. On a very immediate level that we all – not just researchers – experience, old Hollywood has new life.

Continue reading “Cinematic Gazing ‘Beyond the Looking Glass’” →

Simulated Shelves: Browse July’s New Books

We are delighted to present a selection of our newly published, and soon to be published, July titles from our core subjects of Anthropology, Cultural Studies, Film Studies, History and Medical Anthropology.

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AMERICANS IN TUSCANY
Charity, Compassion, and Belonging
Catherine Trundle

 

Since the time of the Grand Tour, the Italian region of Tuscany has sustained a highly visible American and Anglo migrant community. Today American women continue to migrate there, many in order to marry Italian men. Confronted with experiences of social exclusion, unfamiliar family relations, and new cultural terrain, many women struggle to build local lives. Continue reading “Simulated Shelves: Browse July’s New Books” →

Excerpt Examines ‘Brazil’

Matthew Campora’s newly published Subjective Realist Cinema focuses in on “fragmented narratives and multiple realities” in films from Mulholland Drive to Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Following is an excerpt from the volume, which turns its gaze to Brazil. This is the second entry from the author, the first of which can be read here.

 

[N. Katherine] Hayles and [Nicholas] Gessler explore what they call “slipstream” fiction, defined as “works that occupy a borderland between mainstream and science fiction because they achieve a science-fictional feeling without the usual defamiliarization devices” (482).

Continue reading “Excerpt Examines ‘Brazil’” →

Simulated Shelves: Browse May’s New-Book Library

This month, Berghahn’s library will expand by eleven books. The soon-to-be-published titles make up a distinct lot, ranging from Abigail Loxham’s Cinema at the Edges to Anne Eriksen’s Antiquities to Heritage to Philip Ther’s The Dark Side of Nation-States. The following list of new volumes is complete with brief descriptions of the books and a peek at each cover.

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NEGOTIATING IDENTITY IN SCANDINAVIA

Women, Migration and the Disaspora

Edited by Haci Akman

Continue reading “Simulated Shelves: Browse May’s New-Book Library” →