This book examines the recent trend in global cinema to feature infectious disease. As the global crisis of the COVID-19 pandemic materialised the anxieties and discourses of world risk that had long been portrayed in popular media, the book provides a novel definition of the epidemic film genre and offers a systematic look into the narrative and stylistic conventions that characterise it. Epidemic Cinema traces the evolution of the genre from its early cinematic origins to establish the founding principles of a genre standing at the crossroads between science-fiction and horror. It draws on close textual analysis to show how the pandemic reified one of the central predicaments of epidemic narratives: the constant tension existing between free-floating phenomena and the impulse to control and resist such phenomena, ultimately epitomised by the trope of the border. Showing how infectious diseases offer a rich allegorical frame which cinema uses to articulate timely anxieties of growingly invisible and deterritorialised risks, the author presents the prevalence of contagion in popular culture as a symptom of this growingly viral and virus-ridden context, both in its most literal and metaphorical sense. This insightful study will interest students and scholars of film studies, global cinema, science-fiction, horror, popular culture and genre theory.

Epidemic cinema remains an enduring genre of contemporary film, ranging from medical dramas to post-apocalyptic thrillers. Using a vast filmography, Zaniello not only details the incredible variety of epidemics and their role in popular culture, but also demonstrates how epidemics, as a rule, have been confronted without proper preparation or deployment of resources in different forms of media. Therefore, Epidemic Films to Die For is the first and the only book that extensively analyzes the history and deployment of films and TV series towards a chronicle of epidemic films. In addition to providing an overview of how widespread disease and illness have been historically depicted via film and media, this book skillfully contextualizes the contemporary ongoing moment in which filmmakers and producers grapple with the cultural imaginary surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Cinema of the Precariat is the first book to lay out the incredible range of the precariat (the social class suffering from precarity) as well as a detailed report on the cinematic record of their work and lives.It discusses a thorough and definitive selection of more than 250 films and related visual media that take the measure of the precariat worldwide. For example, thousands of Haitians, including children, harvest sugar cane in the Dominican Republic (The Price of Sugar), while illegal Afghan refugees work in Iran (Delbaran). More familiar are the millions of Latino immigrants, legal or not, of all ages, that work in the United States (Food Chains). Each chapter focuses on a sub-class of the precariat or a contested zone of labor or the evolving political manifestation of the struggles of the unorganized and the dispossessed. Among the hundreds of bewildering film choices available nowadays this book offers the reader reliable guidance to the films bringing to life the economic, political, and social dilemmas faced by millions of the world's global workforce and their families.

B. Ruby Rich designated a brand new genre, the New Queer Cinema (NQC), in her groundbreaking article in the Village Voice in 1992. This movement in film and video was intensely political and aesthetically innovative, made possible by the debut of the camcorder, and driven initially by outrage over the unchecked spread of AIDS. The genre has grown to include an entire generation of queer artists, filmmakers, and activists. As a critic, curator, journalist, and scholar, Rich has been inextricably linked to the New Queer Cinema from its inception. This volume presents her new thoughts on the topic, as well as bringing together the best of her writing on the NQC. She follows this cinematic movement from its origins in the mid-1980s all the way to the present in essays and articles directed at a range of audiences, from readers of academic journals to popular glossies and weekly newspapers. She presents her insights into such NQC pioneers as Derek Jarman and Isaac Julien and investigates such celebrated films as Go Fish, Brokeback Mountain, Itty Bitty Titty Committee, and Milk. In addition to exploring less-known films and international cinemas (including Latin American and French films and videos), she documents the more recent incarnations of the NQC on screen, on the web, and in art galleries.

Ten years ago, a technological revolution swept through cinemas around the world, as analogue projectors were replaced with digital equipment. It was not just the plastic medium of film that was removed from projection boxes during this transformation; most cinemas took this opportunity to also evict the human projectionists who were hitherto in charge of screenings. Projectionists had been hidden from the sight of audiences for most of the history of photographic moving image projection, and their redundancies went largely unnoticed and unremarked upon. This book focuses attention on what has been happening behind film spectators' heads for the past 130 years, and attempts to write the history of cinema in Britain from the perspective of its habitually overlooked and undervalued projectionists, beginning in the silent era and continuing to the present day. Drawing upon extensive archival research and lengthy interviews with former projectionists, it documents the key facets and challenges of their work, and how these evolved in response to previous waves of significant technological change. It evaluates how projectionists helped to design and maintain key aesthetic characteristics of the 20th century big screen experience. It shows how the institution of cinema in Britain has been historically underpinned by the harsh exploitation of projectionists by many employers, detailing inadequate wage levels and poor working conditions that formerly provoked government investigation, and explaining why these problems were never successfully ameliorated by trade unions. It also charts in depth the recent fateful transition to digital projection, delineating how and why projectionists were so swiftly and ruthlessly consigned to the past, and assessing whether this form of entertainment should be considered diminished by their super session.

Cinema can both reflect the world as it is and offer escape from it. In Modernity at the Movies, Camila Gatica Mizala explores the ideas of reflection versus escapism and examines how modes of understanding the current moment emerged through the practice of going to the movies in Santiago and Buenos Aires between 1915 and 1945. Using cinema and variety magazines published in both cities, she analyzes the technology, architecture, attendance, behavior, language, censorship, and overall experience of cinema-going. These publications regularly engaged with important topics such as morality and urbanization and helped build a cinematographic audience. Gatica Mizala brings together the perception and reception of cinema as a modern art form, shifting the focus from the production of films to the experience of the audience when viewing them. By focusing on the audience instead of the films, this study is able to articulate the ways that cinema, as a modern activity, was incorporated into everyday life and discuss what it meant to be modern in early to midcentury Latin America.

This book studies a grouping of films set in New York City between 1965 and 1995, reflecting a town besieged by rampant criminality, social distress and physical decay. "Fear City" is a term the NYPD used to label New York as a frightening environment, incapable of securing the safety of its residents. This book not only deals with the social problems evident in New York during this period, but also provides a study of how independent filmmakers were able to capture unsettling urban imagery, capitalizing on feelings of paranoia and dread. The author explores how the tone of these films reflects upon the anti-urbanism that led to the War on Crime, the mass exodus of working-class people from the city and mass incarceration of young Black men.

The disturbing and intense films of Lars von Trier are often dismissed as misogynist, misanthropic, or anti-humanist. This book, however, invites us to engage with his work to found a new feminist vision and discover what might be distinctively hopeful for the future of our fragile human condition.

Dogma 95, the avant-garde filmmaking movement founded by the Danish director Lars von Trier and three of his fellow directors, was launched in 1995 at an elite cinema conference in Paris—when von Trier was called upon to speak about the future of film but instead showered the audience with pamphlets announcing the new movement and its manifesto. A refreshingly original critical commentary on the director and his practice, Playing the Waves is a paramount addition to one of new media’s most provocative genres: games and gaming. Playing the Waves cleverly puns on the title of one of von Trier’s most famous features and argues that Dogma 95, like much of the director’s low-budget realist productions, is a game that takes cinema beyond the traditional confines of film aesthetics and dramatic rules. Simons articulates the ways in which von Trier redefines the practice of filmmaking as a rule-bound activity, and stipulates the forms and structures of games von Trier brings to bear on his films, as well as the sobering lessons he draws from economic and evolutionary game theory. Much like the director’s films, this fascinating volume takes the traditional point of view of film theory and film aesthetics to the next level and demonstrates we have much to learn from the perspective of game studies and game theory.