For over a century, cinephiles and film scholars have had to grapple with an ugly artifact that sits at the beginnings of film history. D. W. Griffith’s profoundly racist epic, The Birth of a Nation, inspired controversy and protest at its 1915 release and was defended as both a true history of Reconstruction (although it was based on fiction) and a new achievement in cinematic art. Paul McEwan examines the long and shifting history of its reception, revealing how the film became not just a cinematic landmark but also an influential force in American aesthetics and intellectual life. In every decade since 1915, filmmakers, museums, academics, programmers, and film fans have had to figure out how to deal with this troublesome object, and their choices have profoundly influenced both film culture and the notion that films can be works of art. Some critics tried to set aside the film’s racism and concentrate on the form, while others tried to relegate that racism safely to the past. McEwan argues that from the earliest film retrospectives in the 1920s to the rise of remix culture in the present day, controversies about this film and its meaning have profoundly shaped our understandings of film, race, and art.

This book here... is it a memoir? Kind of. Is it a humor book? Yeah, a bit. Is it an instructional tome? Here and there. Perhaps best known as the snarky narrator and co-founder of the viral YouTube channel CinemaSins, Jeremy Scott cracked the code of turning a passion for film and sarcasm into a full-time job. Original Sin: From Preacher's Kid to the Creation of CinemaSins (and 3.5 billion+ views) is Jeremy's compelling story of family, career, and deep love for movies that launched him into internet stardom. In his trademark, unapologetic voice, Jeremy gives an irreverent and honest take on the wild ride to creating a YouTube sensation. This memoir-with-a-twist sprinkles readers with his personal advice on the combination of dumb luck, know-how, and je nais se quois it takes to be successful on Youtube while hilariously relaying how two friends stumbled into fame. With anecdotes of laugh-out-loud misadventures and insightful, actionable advice for aspiring YouTubers, Original Sin is the ultimate behind-the-scenes look into the inception of an internet sensation. But more than that, it's one man's love letter to humankind's greatest escape, a pastime that allows us to dream and dwell on beauty, art, and truth. Original Sin is Jeremy Scott's ode to cinema and how often life can imitate the movies.

Adam Dalgliesh takes on a baffling murder in the rarefied world of London book publishing in this masterful mystery from one of our finest novelists. • Part of the bestselling mystery series that inspired Dalgliesh on Acorn TV Commander Adam Dalgliesh and his team are confronted with a puzzle of impenetrable complexity. A murder has taken place in the offices of the Peverell Press, a venerable London publishing house located in a dramatic mock-Venetian palace on the Thames. The victim is Gerard Etienne, the brilliant but ruthless new managing director, who had vowed to restore the firm's fortunes. Etienne was clearly a man with enemies—a discarded mistress, a rejected and humiliated author, and rebellious colleagues, one of who apparently killed herself a short time earlier. Yet Etienne's death, which occurred under bizarre circumstances, is for Dalgliesh only the beginning of the mystery, as he desperately pursues the search for a killer prepared to strike and strike again.

This book investigates the Catholic Church’s film policy illuminating for the first time, by means of a systematic analysis, a vast body of documents preserved at the Vatican Secret Archives and at numerous Italian Catholic archives – some of them indexed and opened to scholars, like the Archivio Storico dell’Istituto Luigi Sturzo [Historical Archive of the Luigi Sturzo Institute] and the Archivio dell’Istituto per la storia dell’Azione Cattolica e del Movimento Cattolico in Italia Paolo VI [Archive of the Institute for the History of Catholic Action and the Catholic Movement in Italy Paul VI]; other only partially indexed like the Nazareno Taddei Archive or faced with the risk of closure, like the Associazione Cattolica Esercenti Cinema [Catholic Exhibitors’ Association] Archive.

Film is often conceived as a medium that is watched rather than experienced. Existing studies of film audiences, and of media reception more broadly, have revealed the complexity of viewing practices and cultures surrounding cinema-going and its exhibition spaces. Experiencing Cinema offers the first in-depth study of participant engagement with a range of experiential media forms derived from cinema culture. From sing-a-long screenings to theatrical extravaganzas, a broad spectrum of alternative film-going practices and immersive spaces are explored and analysed in this original audience study. Moving from intimate community gatherings to blockbuster urban venues, from isolated farmhouses to Olympic stadia, Experiencing Cinema considers the lure and value of these popular events. Often attracting a diverse, intergenerational range of participants, from early-adopter urban hipsters to DIY rural communities, the growing demand for participatory cinema within the contemporary marketplace is analysed alongside broader debates circulating around the move away from traditional tiered seating and increased audience mobility and the de-centring of the film text.

Eastern Europe has produced rich and varied film cultures--Czech, Hungarian, and Serbian among them-whose histories have been intimately tied to the transition from Soviet domination to the complexities of post-Communist life. This latest volume in the AFI Film Readers series presents a long-overdue reassessment of East European cinemas from theoretical, psychoanalytic, and gender perspectives, moving the subject beyond the traditional area studies approach to the region's films. This ambitious collection, situating Eastern Europe's many cinemas within global paradigms of film study, will be an essential work for all students of cinema and for anyone interested in the relation of film to culture and society.