"Kathryn Bigelow is one of Hollywood's most significant female film-makers, well known in popular terms for films such as 'Near dark', 'Blue steel' and 'Point break', yet remaining relatively unexplored in academia... Placing particular emphasis on 'Strange days', her most ambitious and controversial picture to date, this collection explores Bigelow's role within New Hollywood as a film-maker that blurs genre conventions, reinscribes gender identities and produces a breathless cinema of attractions." -- Back cover.

Interviews with the Oscar-winning director of The Hurt Locker and many other films

Director of Zero Dark Thirty, The Hurt Locker, and other films, Bigelow was the first female to win the Academy Award for Best Director.

This book is aimed at helping media and film studies teachers introduce the basics of feminist film theory, a complex area that is nonetheless essential for studying the moving image. No prior knowledge of the theory is required as author Terri Murray explains key terminology and the contributions of influential authors whose seminal texts have influenced understanding of gender representation in the visual media, such as John Berger and Laura Mulvey, all illustrated with useful case studies. Films and filmmakers discussed include Blonde Venus, Psycho, Double Indemnity, Mildred Pierce, The Last Seduction, Strange Days, Beau Travail, and 'unexpected heroes' of feminist film--Paul Verhoeven (Basic Instinct) and Spike Lee (She Hate Me).

Auteurs and Authorship: A Film Reader offers students an introductory and comprehensive view of perhaps the most central concept in film studies. This unique anthology addresses the aesthetic and historical debates surrounding auteurship while providing author criticism and analysis in practice. Examines a number of mainstream and established directors, including John Ford, Alfred Hitchcock, Howard Hawks, Douglas Sirk, Frank Capra, Kathryn Bigelow, and Spike Lee Features historically important, foundational texts as well as contemporary pieces Includes numerous student features, such as a general editor's introduction, short prefaces to each of the sections, bibliography, alternative tables of contents, and boxed features Each essay deliberately focuses across film makers’ oeuvres, rather than on one specific film, to enable lecturers to have flexibility in constructing their syllabi

This is a comprehensive introduction to post-classical American film. Covering American cinema since 1960, the text looks at both Hollywood and non-mainstream cinema.

When Thelma and Louise outfought the men who had tormented them, women across America discovered what male fans of action movies have long known—the empowering rush of movie violence. Yet the duo's escapades also provoked censure across a wide range of viewers, from conservatives who felt threatened by the up-ending of women's traditional roles to feminists who saw the pair's use of male-style violence as yet another instance of women's co-option by the patriarchy. In the first book-length study of violent women in movies, Reel Knockouts makes feminist sense of violent women in films from Hollywood to Hong Kong, from top-grossing to direct-to-video, and from cop-action movies to X-rated skin flicks. Contributors from a variety of disciplines analyze violent women's respective places in the history of cinema, in the lives of viewers, and in the feminist response to male violence against women. The essays in part one, "Genre Films," turn to film cycles in which violent women have routinely appeared. The essays in part two, "New Bonds and New Communities," analyze movies singly or in pairs to determine how women's movie brutality fosters solidarity amongst the characters or their audiences. All of the contributions look at films not simply in terms of whether they properly represent women or feminist principles, but also as texts with social contexts and possible uses in the re-construction of masculinity and femininity.

Whether we stream them on our laptops, enjoy them in theaters, or slide them into DVD players to watch on our TVs, movies are part of what it means to be socially connected in the twenty-first century. Despite its significant role in our lives, the act of watching films remains an area of social activity that is little studied, and thus, little understood.In "Watching Films," an international cast of contributors correct this problem with a comprehensive investigation of movie going, cinema exhibition, and film reception around the world. With a focus on the social, economic, and cultural factors that influence how we watch and think about movies, this volume centers its investigations on four areas of inquiry: Who watches films? Under what circumstances? What consequences and affects follow? And what do these acts of consumption mean? Responding to these questions, the contributors provide both historical perspective and fresh insights about the ways in which new viewing arrangements and technologies influence how films get watched everywhere from Canada to China to Ireland.A long-overdue consideration of an important topic, "Watching Films" provides an engrossing overview of how we do just that in our homes and across the globe."

Description: Le Figarocalls it "l'antichambre du paradis," and indeed Art Basel Miami Beach, the sister-event of Art Basel (in Basel, natch), is one of the hottest fairs around. With an exclusive selection of 160 leading international galleries exhibiting 20th and 21st century work by over 1,000 artists, the fair--and the accompanying catalogue--provides an essential reference for professionals and collectors with a special focus on the Americas.