Fascinating documentation of one of the most important film societies in American history.

In his preface the author states: "The cinema is now one of the main objects on which efforts should be concentrated in order to conduct the revolution in art and literature. The cinema occupies an important place in the overall development of art and literature. As such it is a powerful ideological weapon for the revolution and construction. Therefore, concentrating efforts on the cinema, making breakthroughs and following up success in all areas of art and literature is the basic principle that we must adhere to in revolutionizing art and literature."Kim Jong Il (1942- ) is leader of North Korea (1994- ). Kim Jong Il succeeded his father, Kim Il Sung, who had ruled North Korea since 1948.

"Art Cinema" explores how artists have used film to explode cinematic conventions and convey a truly expressive format that uses rhythm, color, structure, and content to express a staggering array of ideas and feelings.

The visual image is the common denominator of cinema and painting, and indeed many filmmakers have used the imagery of paintings to shape or enrich the meaning of their films. In this discerning new approach to cinema studies, Angela Dalle Vacche discusses how the use of pictorial sources in film enables eight filmmakers to comment on the interplay between the arts, on the dialectic of word and image, on the relationship between artistic creativity and sexual difference, and on the tension between tradition and modernity. Specifically, Dalle Vacche explores Jean-Luc Godard's iconophobia (Pierrot Le Fou) and Andrei Tarkovsky's iconophilia (Andrei Rubleov), Kenji Mizoguchi's split allegiances between East and West (Five Women around Utamaro), Michelangelo Antonioni's melodramatic sensibility (Red Desert), Eric Rohmer's project to convey interiority through images (The Marquise of O), F. W. Murnau's debt to Romantic landscape painting (Nosferatu), Vincente Minnelli's affinities with American Abstract Expressionism (An American in Paris), and Alain Cavalier's use of still life and the close-up to explore the realms of mysticism and femininity (Thérèse). While addressing issues of influence and intentionality, Dalle Vacche concludes that intertextuality is central to an appreciation of the dialogical nature of the filmic medium, which, in appropriating or rejecting art history, defines itself in relation to national traditions and broadly shared visual cultures.

This is the first book to provide a direct and comprehensive account of British art cinema. Film history has tended to view British filmmakers as aesthetically conservative, but the truth is they have a long tradition of experiment and artistry, both within and beyond the mainstream. Beginning with the silent period and running up to the 2010s, the book draws attention to this tradition while acknowledging that art cinema in Britain is a complex and fluid concept that needs to be considered within broader concerns. It will be of particular interest to scholars and students of British cinema history, film genre, experimental filmmaking, and British cultural history.

In this book leading scholars from Europe and North-America trace expanded cinema from its origins in early abstract film to post-war happenings and live events in Europe and the US; the first video and multi-media experiments of the 1960s; the fusion of multi-screen art with sonic art and music from the 1970s onwards, right up to the digital age. It brings new perspectives to bear on the work of established American pioneers such as Carolee Schneemann and Stan Vanderbeek as well as exploring expanded cinema in Western and Central Europe, the influence of video art on new media technologies, and the role of British expanded cinema from the 1970s to the present day. It shows how artists challenged the conventions of spectatorship, the viewing space and the audience, to explore a new participatory and performative cinema beyond the single screen.

As a film-maker and film historian, B.D. Garga has closely witnessed and participated in the growth of Indian cinema from the early 1940s. With more than fifty years’ experience as a film journalist, and having served on various national and international film festival juries, he is probably India’s foremost authority on the subject of cinema. In this extraordinary collection of essays, Garga delves into the vast repertoire of his scholarship and experience to provide an insider’s view of Indian and international cinema over the years. Even as he discusses the contribution of men behind the screen—the director, editor, cinematographer—he profiles some of the greatest masters of Indian cinema, like Himansu Rai and P.C. Barua, Bimal Roy and Raj Kapoor, while critically analysing some classic films from the golden era of cinema in India—Devdas (1935) and Sant Tukaram (1936) to Mother India (1957) and Mughal-e-Azam (1960). Embellished with over forty exquisite and vintage photographs from the author’s private collection, The Making of Great Cinema also contains fascinating essays that highlight the contribution of the Soviet masters to international cinema; address important issues like film censorship, sex in Indian films and the relationship between film and politics; and provide a memorable account of the origins of cinema in India and the country’s many cinematic milestones.