Critical Mass: Social Documentary in France From the Silent Era to New Wave
Author: Steven Ungar File Type: pdf Thirty-five years of nonfiction films offer a unique lens on twentieth-century French social issues Critical Mass is the first sustained study to trace the origins of social documentary filmmaking in France back to the late 1920s. Steven Ungar argues that socially engaged nonfiction cinema produced in France between 1945 and 1963 can be seen as a delayed response to what filmmaker Jean Vigo referred to in 1930 as a social cinema whose documented point of view would open the eyes of spectators to provocative subjects of the moment. Ungar identifies Vigos manifesto, his 1930 short A propos de Nice, and late silent-era films by Georges Lacombe, Boris Kaufman, Andre Sauvage, and Marcel Carne as antecedents of postwar documentaries by Eli Lotar, Rene Vautier, Alain Resnais, Chris Marker, and Jean Rouch, associated with critiques of colonialism and modernization in Fourth and early Fifth Republic France. Close readings of individual films alternate with transitions to address transnational practices as well as state- and industry-wide reforms between 1935 and 1960. Critical Mass is an indispensable complement to studies of nonfiction film in France, from Georges Lacombes La Zone (1928) to Chris Markers Le Joli Mai (1963). ****
Author: Janet Todd
File Type: pdf
Covering many aspects of Jane Austens life, works and historical context, this collection of essays provides the most complete one volume introduction to her life and times. The generously illustrated collection of concise contributions is arranged alphabetically, and covers topics ranging from biography to portraits, critical responses to translations, agriculture to transport. An essay on the reception of Austens work is also included, showing how criticism of Austen has responded to literary movements and fashions.ReviewJane Austen deserves, and here gets, the reward of other peoples skillful work on her little bit of ivory, two inches wide.... The Cambridge Edition justifies its claim to the the first ever scholarly edition of the works of Jane Austen, and is a fine tribute to her for the twenty-first century. -Jane Austen Society Newsletter Book DescriptionJane Austen in Context is a generously illustrated collection of short, lively contributions arranged alphabetically, and covering topics from biography to portraits, critical responses to translations, agriculture to transport. An essay on the reception of Austens work is also included, showing how criticism of Austen has responded to literary movements and fashions. This is a work of reference that readers and scholars of Austen will turn to again and again.
Author: Amy Rust
File Type: pdf
Investigates the cultural value of film violence. Passionate Detachments investigates the rise of graphic violence in American films of the late 1960s and early 1970s and the popular aesthetics and critical responses this violence inspired. Amy Rust examines four technologies adopted by commercial American cinema after the fall of the Hollywood Production Code multiple-camera montage, squibs (small explosive devices) and artificial blood, freeze-frames, and zooms. Approaching these technologies as figures, as opposed to mere tools, Rust traces the encounters they mediate between perception (what one sees, hears, and feels) and representation (how those sights, sounds, and feelings make meaning). These technologies, she argues, lend shape to film violence while organizing viewers on- and off-screen relationships to it. The result proves meaningful for an era self-consciously and perilously preoccupied with bloodshed. The post-Code period found Americans across the political spectrum demanding visualand increasingly violentdemonstrations of presumably authentic realities. Corroborating fantasies of authenticity from military to counterculture, these technologies challenge them as well, pointing, however unwittingly, to the violently classed, gendered, and racialized blind spots such fantasies harbor. More broadly, the technologies answer concerns that films control violence too much or too little. Offering neither mere discoursenor mere thrills, they recover sense and sensation for all, not some, or even most, depictions of bloodshed. As figures, the devices also remediate vision and violence for film theory, which exhibits distrust for each in spite of the complexities phenomenology and psychoanalysis have brought to cinematic perception and pleasure.
Author: Nancy Bauer
File Type: pdf
Feminist philosophers have made important strides in altering the overwhelmingly male-centric discipline of philosophy. Yet, in Nancy Bauers view, most are still content to work within theoretical frameworks that are fundamentally false to human beings everyday experiences. This is particularly intolerable for a species of philosophy whose central aspiration is to make the world a less sexist place. How to Do Things with Pornography models a new way to write philosophically about pornography, womens self-objectification, hook-up culture, and other contemporary phenomena. Unafraid to ask what philosophy contributes to our lives, Bauer argues that the professions lack of interest in this question threatens to make its enterprise irrelevant.Bauer criticizes two paradigmatic models of Western philosophizing the Great Man model, according to which philosophy is the product of rare genius and the scientistic model, according to which a community of researchers works together to discover once-and-for-all truths. The philosophers job is neither to perpetuate the inevitably sexist trope of the philosopher-genius nor to get things right. Rather, it is to compete with the Zeitgeist and attract people to the endeavor of reflecting on their settled ways of perceiving and understanding the world.How to Do Things with Pornography boldly enlists J. L. Austins How to Do Things with Words, showing that it should be read not as a theory of speech acts but as a revolutionary conception of what philosophers can do in the world with their words.**
Author: Pema Chodron
File Type: epub
StartWhere You Areis an indispensable handbook for cultivating fearlessness and awakening acompassionate heart. With insight and humor, Pema Chodron presentsdown-to-earth guidance on how we can start where we areembracingrather than denying the painful aspects of our lives. Pema Chodronframes her teachings on compassion around fifty-nine traditional TibetanBuddhist maxims, or slogans, such as Always apply only a joyful state ofmind, Dont seek others pain as the limbs of your ownhappiness, and Always meditate on whatever provokes resentment. Workingwith these slogans and through the practice of meditation, StartWhere You Areshows how we can all develop the courage to work with our inner pain anddiscover joy, well-being, and confidence.**
Author: David Edward Rose
File Type: pdf
Free Will and Continental Philosophy explores the concepts of free-will and self-determination in the Continental philosophical tradition. David Rose examines the ways in which Continental philosophy offers a viable alternative to the hegemonic scientistic approach taken by analytic philosophy. Rose claims that the problem of free-will is only a problem if one makes an unnecessary assumption consistent with scientific rationalism. In the sphere of human action we assume that, since action is a physical event, it must be reducible to the laws and concepts of science. Hence, the problematic nature of free will raises its head, since the concept of free will is intrinsically contradictory to such a reductionist outlook. This book suggests that the Continental thinkers offer a compelling alternative by concentrating on the phenomena of human action and self-determination in order to offer the truth of freedom in different terms. Thus Rose offers a revealing investigation into the appropriate concepts and categories of human freedom and action.**
Author: William Parry
File Type: pdf
Featuring the work of acclaimed artists such as Banksy, Ron English, and Blu, as well as Palestinian artists and activists, the photographs in this collection express outrage, compassion, and touching humor while illustrating the lives and livelihoods of the tens of thousands of people affected by Israels wall. This stunning book of photographs details the graffiti and art that have transformed Israels Wall of Separation into a canvas of symbolic resistance and solidarity. The compelling images are interspersed with vignettes of the people whose lives are affected by the wall and who suffer due to a lack of work, education, and vital medical care.