Książki na temat „RAI Cinema (Firm)”

This book traces the historical evolution of Indian cinema through a number of key decades. The book is made up of 14 chapters with each chapter focusing on one key film, the chosen films are analysed in their wider social, political and historical context whilst a concerted engagement with various ideological strands that underpin each film is also evident. In addition to exploring the films in their wider contexts, the book analyses selected sequences through the conceptual framework common to both film and media studies. This includes a consideration of narrative, genre, representation, audience and mise en scène. The case studies run chronologically from Awaara (The Vagabond, 1951) to The Elements Trilogy: Water (2005) and include films by such key figures as Satyajit Ray (The Lonely Wife), Ritwick Ghatak (Cloud Capped Star), Yash Chopra (The Wall) and Mira Nair (Salaam Bombay!).

This chapter investigates the historical imagination of 1980s Indian women filmmakers seeking “companionship” with generations of women enduring or resisting convention in India's colonial past. Leveraging the emergence in the 1980s of an Indian women's cinema—and reflecting on the cinematic construction of gender debates in colonial India through its films, the chapter highlights the challenges they pose to establishing “national” narratives of gender or film history. Three films about gender and reform in late-nineteenth and early-twentieth-century colonial India are discussed: Phaniyamma (Prema Karanth, 1983), Rao Saheb (Vijaya Mehta, 1986), and Sati (Aparna Sen, 1989). Together these films present a constellation that supports the development of a feminist historiography of Indian cinema. The chapter also considers how literature on Indian regional cinemas, published in regional languages with little translation, has contributed to the marginalization of such cinemas in the construction of Indian film history.

India officially became ‘independent’ in 1947 and a Republic in 1950. Neither were easy transitions. The cinema would inherit all of India’s political contradictions. It would soon become apparent that India, once incapable of creating an ‘Empire’ film, was now equally unable to provide the newly free country with a properly nationalist cinema. ‘Partition and the “all-India” film’ describes India’s film industry in Bombay after the war; the arrival of the most famous stars; the success of film music; and the impact of independent auteurs Satyajit Ray, Guru Dutt, and Ritwik Ghatak, who defined local industries as they emerged from out of the shadow of Bombay.

Scholarly and popular interest in British cinema has never been stronger, with films ranging from the Merchant/Ivory pictures throughNotting Hillfinding both critical and commercial success in America. As such,The Guide to British Cinemarepresents an invaluable guide to the nation's cinematic output, including entries on major British actors, directors, and films from 1929 through the present day. The volume also highlights both major cycles such as the Gainsborough melodrama, the Ealing comedy, and the British new wave; as well as less well-defined cycles including the vein of dark melodramas that characterized the British cinema from 1945 to 1950. Such figures as Alfred Hitchcock, David Lean, and Dirk Bogarde are covered in detail, as well as Christopher Lee, Roy Ward Baker, Ray Winstone, and other long-serving but less well-known artists. TheGuidepays close attention to films includingThe Third ManandBrief Encounteras well as genre pieces such asBrighton Rock. In all, the volume represents the first full-length examination of its subject, providing an irreplaceable resource for both film scholars and historians of British culture.

Xala (1974) by the pioneering Senegalese director Ousmane Sembene, was acclaimed on its release for its scorching critique of postcolonial African society, and it cemented Sembene’s status as a wholly new kind of politically engaged, pan-African, auteur film-maker. Centring on the story of businessman El Hadji and the impotence that afflicts him on his marriage to a young third wife, Xala vividly captures the cultural and political upheaval of 1970s Senegal, while suggesting the radical potential of dissent, solidarity and collective action, embodied by El Hadji’s student daughter Rama and the group of urban ‘undesirables’ who act as a kind of raw chorus to the affairs of the neocolonial elite. James S. Williams’s lucid study traces Xala’s difficult production history and analyses its daring combination of political and domestic drama, oral narrative, social realism, symbolism, satire, documentary, mysticism and Marxist analysis. Yet from its dazzling extended opening sequence of revolution as performance to its suspended climax of redemption through ritualised spitting, Xala presents a series of conceptual and formal challenges that resist a simple reading of the film as allegory. Highlighting often overlooked elements of Sembene’s intricate, experimental film-making, including provocative shifts in mood and poetic, even subversively erotic, moments, Williams reveals Xala as a visionary work of both African cinema and Third Cinema that extended the parameters of postcolonial film practice and still resounds today with its searing inventive power.

Although informational films made for domestic audiences in 1950s Denmark sometimes circulated internationally, their primary function was to instruct the populace about national institutions and infrastructure. They help to shape and renegotiate citizenship and national identity on screen, and mediate new technologies, laws and practices. This chapter examines five such films covering a range of topics: the national rail network, public libraries, home economics training for housewives, careers advice, and sport and leisure. Of these, three were directed by Theodor Christensen, a leading figure in Danish documentary. The production history of each film is outlined and contextualised within the contemporary socio-political developments and innovations which, in most cases, triggered the film projects. The chapter also describes the national network of informational film distribution, including Statens Filmcentral, and the screening of films in a range of venues such as cinemas, libraries and leisure clubs. The distinction in the Danish context between the forfilm (for theatrical exhibition) and foreningsfilm (for use by clubs and societies) is examined.

From the Shaw Brothers production line to the clones of Bruce Lee, Hong Kong cinema has long been seen as driven by raw commercial concerns. Like many other commercial film industries, most notably Hollywood, production in the Hong Kong film industry has also been focused on popular cycles of production. These have included phases when family melodramas, historical swordplay and kung-fu films, screwball comedies and triad based crime films have all proved successful at the domestic and regional box-office. As with other commercially focused film industries there has also been a low budget sector within Hong Kong industry. Here producers and directors have fashioned energetic, populist films that were designed to appeal to audiences’ desire for films that contained sex and violence. The horror genre seemed the perfect vehicle to satiate these needs. This chapter explores the work of filmmakers who worked at this rougher end of Hong Kong horror in the 80s and 90s. As well as placing them into this exploitation context of production, this chapter discusses their excessive content and the visual style employed by directors such as Kuei Chih-hung (Killer Snakes, Hex) and Herman Yau (The Untold Story, Ebola Syndrome) to deliver their exploitative content.

This chapter examines the status and work of women in the early Bombay film industry (1930s–1940s), using the historiographic productivity of actresses embroiled in scandals as an entry point. It reconstructs scandal narratives in a jigsaw fashion using a variety of sources, including film magazines, biographies, creative nonfiction writing, fan letters, and interviews conducted in Bombay from 2008 to 2013. The chapter considers how the film historian might use “illegitimate” sources of history to approach lived histories of Indian cinema's work culture. It approaches scandal as a discursive form that proliferates textually and orally rather than as a temporally contained mediatized event. Taking two Bombay actresses of the 1930s and 1940s, Devika Rani and Naseem Banu, as case studies, and moving outward from the initial scandal narratives, the chapter re-imagines the possibilities and pressures that stars like them encountered in the film studio as well as in the public eye. It argues that the early film actress should be seen as a manifestation of, and model for, the urban working woman in 1930s and 1940s Bombay.

Classic American Filmsexplores the origin and development of many of the most influential and revered films in cinema history, and does so with the aid and insight of the people who actually wrote the screenplays. These lively, candid, in-depth interviews are filled with fascinating new material (details, anecdotes, judgments, and opinions) about the creative and collaborative processes that went into the making of these extraordinary films. In the past, Hollywood screenwriters—the original artists—have often been overlooked. This book is a special tribute to the invaluable contributions of these cinematic visionaries, many of whom are considered among the greatest screenwriters in American film history. As Orson Welles once said, In my opinion, the writer should have the first and last word in filmmaking. This book allows them to have that exciting opportunity. Some of the highlights from these interviews include: Betty Comden and Adolph Green's explaining how a nightclub skit became the premise forSingin' in the Rain; Ernest Lehman's description of how, while in conversation with Hitchcock, his unconscious suddenly solved the plot problems inNorth by Northwest; Carl Gottlieb's remembrance of the terrible pressure involved with writing the script forJawswhile shooting was already underway; and Sylvester Stallone's account of how he received final approval to star inRockyfrom studio executives who thought he was just another actor.

By the early 1950s, Jane Russell (1921-2011) should have been forgotten. Her career was launched on what is arguably the most notorious advertising campaign in cinema history, which invited filmgoers to see Howard Hughes's The Outlaw (1943) and to "tussle with Russell." Throughout the 1940s, she was nicknamed the "motionless picture actress" and had only three films in theaters. With such a slow, inauspicious start, most aspiring actresses would have given up or faded away. Instead, Russell carved out a place for herself in Hollywood and became a memorable and enduring star.Christina Rice offers the first biography of the actress and activist perhaps most well-known for her role in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953). Despite the fact that her movie career was stalled for nearly a decade, Russell's filmography is respectable. She worked with some of Hollywood's most talented directors—including Howard Hawks, Raoul Walsh, Nicholas Ray, and Josef von Sternberg—and held her own alongside costars such as Marilyn Monroe, Robert Mitchum, Clark Gable, Vincent Price, and Bob Hope. She also learned how to fight back against Howard Hughes, her boss for more than thirty-five years, and his marketing campaigns that exploited her physical appearance.Beyond the screen, Rice reveals Russell as a complex and confident woman. She explores the star's years as a spokeswoman for Playtex as well as her deep faith and work as a Christian vocalist. Rice also discusses Russell's leadership and patronage of the WAIF foundation, which for many years served as the fundraising arm of the International Social Service (ISS) agency. WAIF raised hundreds of thousands of dollars, successfully lobbied Congress to change laws, and resulted in the adoption of tens of thousands of orphaned children. For Russell, the work she did to help unite families overshadowed any of her onscreen achievements.On the surface, Jane Russell seemed to live a charmed life, but Rice illuminates her darker moments and her personal struggles, including her empowered reactions to the controversies surrounding her films and her feelings about being portrayed as a sex symbol. This stunning first biography offers a fresh perspective on a star whose legacy endures not simply because she forged a notable film career, but also because she effectively used her celebrity to benefit others.