How do we understand types of cinema that offer experiences of discomfort, awkwardness or disquieting uncertainty? This book examines a number of examples of such work at the heart of contemporary art and indie film. While the commercial mainstream tends to offer comforting viewing experiences – or moments of discomfort that exist largely to be overcome – The Cinema of Discomfort analyses films in which discomfort is offered in a sustained manner. Cinema of this kind confronts us with material such as distinctly uncomfortable sexual encounters. It invites us into uncertain relationships with awkward and sometimes unlikable characters. It presents us with challenging behaviour or what are presented as uncomfortable realities. It often refuses information on which to base judgments. More discomfortingly, cinema of this kind tends to provoke uncertainty at the level of what emotional responses we are encouraged to have towards difficult, sometimes controversial, characters or events. The Cinema of Discomfort examines a number of case-studies, including Palindromes by Todd Solondz (US) and Dogtooth from Yorgos Lanthimos (Greece), along with other examples from Austria, Sweden, the UK, the US and Germany. Offering close textual analysis of the manner in which discomfort is generated, it also asks how we should understand the appeal of such work to certain viewers and how the existence of films of this kind can be explained, as products of both their socio-cultural context and the more particular institutional realms of art and indie film.

How do we understand types of cinema that offer experiences of discomfort, awkwardness or disquieting uncertainty? This book examines a number of examples of such work at the heart of contemporary art and indie film. While the commercial mainstream tends to offer comforting viewing experiences – or moments of discomfort that exist largely to be overcome – The Cinema of Discomfort analyses films in which discomfort is offered in a sustained manner. Cinema of this kind confronts us with material such as distinctly uncomfortable sexual encounters. It invites us into uncertain relationships with awkward and sometimes unlikable characters. It presents us with challenging behaviour or what are presented as uncomfortable realities. It often refuses information on which to base judgments. More discomfortingly, cinema of this kind tends to provoke uncertainty at the level of what emotional responses we are encouraged to have towards difficult, sometimes controversial, characters or events. The Cinema of Discomfort examines a number of case-studies, including Palindromes by Todd Solondz (US) and Dogtooth from Yorgos Lanthimos (Greece), along with other examples from Austria, Sweden, the UK, the US and Germany. Offering close textual analysis of the manner in which discomfort is generated, it also asks how we should understand the appeal of such work to certain viewers and how the existence of films of this kind can be explained, as products of both their socio-cultural context and the more particular institutional realms of art and indie film.

Since the defeat of the pro-sovereigntists in the 1995 Quebec referendum, the loss of a cohesive nationalistic vision in the province has led many Québécois to use their ancestral origins to inject meaning into their everyday lives. A Cinema of Pain argues that this phenomenon is observable in a pervasive sense of nostalgia in Quebec culture and is especially present in the province’s vibrant but deeply wistful cinema. In Québécois cinema, nostalgia not only denotes a sentimental longing for the bucolic pleasures of bygone French-Canadian traditions, but, as this edited collection suggests, it evokes the etymological sense of the term, which underscores the element of pain (algos) associated with the longing for a return home (nostos). Whether it is in grandiloquent historical melodramas such as Séraphin: un homme et son péché (Binamé 2002), intimate realist dramas like Tout ce que tu possèdes (Émond 2012), charming art films like C.R.A.Z.Y. (Vallée 2005), or even gory horror movies like Sur le Seuil (Tessier 2003), the contemporary Québécois screen projects an image of shared suffering that unites the nation through a melancholy search for home.

From Tattoo to Saw, this book considers mainstream cinema's representation of the viscerally dominated and marked body. Examining a shift in the late twentieth century to narratives that highlight subjection, endurance and willed-acquiescence, it probes the confluence of pain, pleasure and consent to analyse the implications of the change.

The films of Darren Aronofsky invite emotional engagement by means of affective resonance between the film and the spectator’s lived body. Aronofsky’s films, which include a rich range of production from Requiem for a Dream to Black Swan, are often considered “cerebral” because they explore topics like mathematics, madness, hallucinations, obsessions, social anxiety, addiction, psychosis, schizophrenia, and neuroscience. Yet this interest in intelligence and mental processes is deeply embedded in the operations of the body, shared with the spectator by means of a distinctively corporeal audiovisual style. Bodies in Pain looks at how Aronofsky’s films engage the spectator in an affective form of viewing that involves all the senses, ultimately engendering a process of (self) reflection through their emotional dynamics.

The portrayal of historical atrocity in fiction, film, and popular culture can reveal much about the function of individual memory and the shifting status of national identity. In the context of Chinese culture, films such as Hou Hsiao-hsien's City of Sadness and Lou Ye's Summer Palace and novels such as Ye Zhaoyan's Nanjing 1937: A Love Story and Wang Xiaobo's The Golden Age collectively reimagine past horrors and give rise to new historical narratives. Michael Berry takes an innovative look at the representation of six specific historical traumas in modern Chinese history: the Musha Incident (1930); the Rape of Nanjing (1937-38); the February 28 Incident (1947); the Cultural Revolution (1966-76); Tiananmen Square (1989); and the Handover of Hong Kong (1997). He identifies two primary modes of restaging historical violence: centripetal trauma, or violence inflicted from the outside that inspires a reexamination of the Chinese nation, and centrifugal trauma, which, originating from within, inspires traumatic narratives that are projected out onto a transnational vision of global dreams and, sometimes, nightmares. These modes allow Berry to connect portrayals of mass violence to ideas of modernity and the nation. He also illuminates the relationship between historical atrocity on a national scale and the pain experienced by the individual; the function of film and literature as historical testimony; the intersection between politics and art, history and memory; and the particular advantages of modern media, which have found new means of narrating the burden of historical violence. As Chinese artists began to probe previously taboo aspects of their nation's history in the final decades of the twentieth century, they created texts that prefigured, echoed, or subverted social, political, and cultural trends. A History of Pain acknowledges the far-reaching influence of this art and addresses its profound role in shaping the public imagination and conception-as well as misconception-of modern Chinese history.

At a time when what it means to watch movies keeps changing, this book offers a case study that rethinks the institutional, ideological, and cultural role of film exhibition, demonstrating that film exhibition can produce meaning in itself apart from the films being shown. Cinema Off Screen advances the idea that cinema takes place off screen as much as on screen by exploring film exhibition in China from the founding of the People’s Republic in 1949 to the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s. Drawing on original archival research, interviews, and audience recollections, Cinema Off Screen decenters the filmic text and offers a study of institutional operations and lived experiences. Chenshu Zhou details how the screening space, media technology, and the human body mediate encounters with cinema in ways that have not been fully recognized, opening new conceptual avenues for rethinking the ever-changing institution of cinema.

Do you suffer from chronic pain? If so, you’re not alone. In fact, more than 100 million Americans deal with this life-changing issue every day. And if you’re like most of them, you’ve tried all the normal "solutions": doctors, injections, medications, and surgeries. While these all have a place in healing, they have fallen short in dealing with the pain epidemic. So what can you do? In The Tapping Solution for Pain Relief, Nick Ortner presents a startling alternative. He lays out a step-by-step plan that teaches you how to use tapping, or EFT (emotional freedom techniques), to reduce or eliminate chronic pain. Looking at the scientific research surrounding pain, stress, and tapping, he opens your eyes to just how powerful tapping can be, and then outlines tips and techniques to address pain in both the short and long term. Nick guides you on a journey that begins on the surface – tapping to address the pain itself – and moves to the deeper issues that often affect pain. With easy-to-follow tapping scripts and exercises, Nick helps you heal the emotional pain and underlying beliefs that often keep people stuck. He also addresses topics that you may not think of as associated with chronic pain, such as: • Creating personal boundaries • Dealing with toxic relationships • Clearing resistance to change • Understanding the power of a diagnosis • Working through anger There are many ways the brain and body can create, increase, and prolong pain. After reading this book, you’ll not only understand what’s causing your pain but also how to achieve complete and lasting relief. But let’s face it; this is about more than just pain relief. It’s about empowering yourself to take back your body in order to live the life you want.

This book explores traumatic loss, grief, and recovery through the thoughtful combination of Abraham & Torok’s ‘crypt’ theory, Jungian thought, and film theory to guide readers through the darkest places of the human psyche. Focusing on both the destructive and reconstructive choices people can make, the book explores prolonged grief disorder, complicated mourning, post-traumatic stress disorder, embitterment, disenfranchised grief, trauma-related rumination as well as mental, emotional and physical pain. Presented with real life examples and fictional ones, the book connects the psychoanalytic concepts of intrapsychic tomb and theoretra with Jungian concepts such as teleological model of the psyche, dreams, alchemical operations, shadow, archetypes, enantiodromia, symbols, and compensation on the canvas of modern grief theory. Traumatic Loss and Recovery in Jungian Studies and Cinema is important reading for psychoanalysts, Jungian analysts, and psychotherapists with an interest in popular culture, as well as cinema students, scholars, and general readers interested in psychology, counselling, mental health and media studies.

One in six people suffer from chronic pain. There are no shortage of practitioners promising to cure it, from doctors and therapists to acupuncturists and hypnotists. But with so many different options on offer, many sufferers find themselves bewildered by their choices and unable to move forward. This jargon-free and accessible guide to overcoming chronic pain will enable you to understand the potential benefits of all the options available to you, and work with your medical professionals to make informed choices about your pain relief. It covers: * prescription and non-prescription painkillers * mental techniques, including hypnosis and NLP * food therapies * posture, movement and exercise to offer a comprehensive range of solutions, whatever the source of your pain.