This cutting-edge book examines the rapidly developing scene of Chinese independent documentary, arguably the most courageous player in contemporary Chinese visual culture. The authors explore two areas that are of special interest to China studies and film studies, respectively: (1) filming the everyday in twenty-first-century China to foreground contestation and diversity and (2) exploring the aesthetic of remembering in an embodied documentary practice, which turns the gaze on artists themselves and encourages the viewer’s engagement with the filmed subjects and environment. Highlighting documentary contestation in China, the book traces its cacophony of expressions, some of it featuring confrontations with domineering elites, some of it highlighting negotiations among the independent filmmakers themselves. Their goal is not a “movement” that seeks to establish and impose a single truth, but rather a creative dynamic that fosters a community of tolerance and respects diverse forms of expression. Independent documentary is quite literally a moving target that is witnessing ongoing and widening diversity and complexity when it comes to directors, themes, aesthetics, human subjects, audiences, and impact. The authors stress the enormous potential of cultural production that features non-elites (including amateurs) and that dwells on the everyday, the bottom up, the grassroots, the seemingly mundane, and the apparently marginal. The book’s emphasis on contemporary issues and its discussion of aesthetic experiments will appeal to all readers interested in China’s culture, media, politics, and society.

Tucked away in a garden on the edge of Paris is a multimedia archive like no other: Albert Kahn's Archives de la Planète (1908-1931). Kahn's vast photo-cinematographic experiment preserved world memory through the privileged lens of everyday life, and Counter-Archive situates this project in its biographic, intellectual, and cinematic contexts. Tracing the archive's key influences, such as the philosopher Henri Bergson, the geographer Jean Brunhes, and the biologist Jean Comandon, Paula Amad maps an alternative landscape of French cultural modernity in which vitalist philosophy cross-pollinated with early film theory, documentary film with the avant-garde, cinematic models of temporality with the early Annales school of history, and film's appropriation of the planet with human geography and colonial ideology. At the heart of the book is an insightful meditation upon the transformed concept of the archive in the age of cinema and an innovative argument about film's counter-archival challenge to history. The first comprehensive study of Kahn's films, Counter-Archive also offers a vital historical perspective on debates involving archives, media, and memory.

Everyday Movies documents the twentieth-century rise of portable film projectors. It demonstrates that since World War II, the vast majority of movie-watching did not happen in the glow of the large screen but rather took place alongside the glitches, distortions, and clickety-clack of small machines that transformed home, classroom, museum, community, government, industrial, and military venues into sites of moving-image display. Reorienting the history of cinema away from the magic of the movie theater, Haidee Wasson illustrates the remarkable persistence and proliferation of devices that fundamentally rejected the sleek, highly professionalized film show. She foregrounds instead another kind of apparatus, one that was accessible, affordable, adaptable, easy to use, and crucially, programmable. Revealing rich archival discoveries, this book charts a compelling and original history of film that brings to light new technologies and diverse forms of media engagement that continue to shape contemporary life.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR by Booklist • Kirkus Reviews Celebrate all the ways love makes us who we are with the romance that Entertainment Weekly calls "wise, wildly unique"--from the bestselling co-author of Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist--about a teen who wakes up every morning in a different body, living a different life. Now a major motion picture! Every day a different body. Every day a different life. Every day in love with the same girl. There’s never any warning about where it will be or who it will be. A has made peace with that, even established guidelines by which to live: Never get too attached. Avoid being noticed. Do not interfere. It’s all fine until the morning that A wakes up in the body of Justin and meets Justin’s girlfriend, Rhiannon. From that moment, the rules by which A has been living no longer apply. Because finally A has found someone he wants to be with—day in, day out, day after day. With his new novel, David Levithan, bestselling co-author of Will Grayson, Will Grayson, and Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist, has pushed himself to new creative heights. He has written a captivating story that will fascinate readers as they begin to comprehend the complexities of life and love in A’s world, as A and Rhiannon seek to discover if you can truly love someone who is destined to change every day. “A story that is always alluring, oftentimes humorous and much like love itself— splendorous.” —Los Angeles Times

Eco-disasters such as coal-mining accidents, oil spills, and food-borne diseases appear regularly in the news, making them seem nearly commonplace. These ecological crises highlight the continual tensions between human needs and the environmental impact these needs produce. Contemporary documentaries and feature films explore environmental-human conflicts by depicting the consequences of our overconsumption and dependence on nonrenewable energy. Film and Everyday Eco-disasters examines changing perspectives toward everyday eco-disasters as reflected in the work of filmmakers from the silent era forward, with an emphasis on recent films such as Dead Ahead, an HBO dramatization of the Exxon Valdez disaster; Total Recall, a science fiction action film highlighting oxygen as a commodity; The Devil Wears Prada, a comment on the fashion industry; and Food, Inc., a documentary interrogation of the food industry. The authors evaluate not only the success of these films as rhetorical arguments but also their rhetorical strategies. This interdisciplinary approach to film studies fuses cultural, economic, and literary critiques in articulating an approach to ecology that points to sustainable development as an alternative to resource exploitations and their associated everyday eco-disasters.

The movie that inspired filmmakers to direct is like the atomic bomb that went off before their eyes. The Film That Changed My Life captures that epiphany. It explores 30 directors' love of a film they saw at a particularly formative moment, how it influenced their own works, and how it made them think differently. Rebel Without a Cause inspired John Woo to comb his hair and talk like James Dean. For Richard Linklater, “something was simmering in me, but Raging Bull brought it to a boil.” Apocalypse Now inspired Danny Boyle to make larger-than-life films. A single line from The Wizard of Oz--“Who could ever have thought a good little girl like you could destroy all my beautiful wickedness?”--had a direct impact on John Waters. “That line inspired my life,” Waters says. “I sometimes say it to myself before I go to sleep, like a prayer.” In this volume, directors as diverse as John Woo, Peter Bogdanovich, Michel Gondry, and Kevin Smith examine classic movies that inspired them to tell stories. Here are 30 inspired and inspiring discussions of classic films that shaped the careers of today's directors and, in turn, cinema history.

NOW A NETFLIX SERIES • NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • TWO PEOPLE. ONE DAY. TWENTY YEARS. • What starts as a fleeting connection between two strangers soon becomes a deep bond that spans decades. • "[An] instant classic. . . . One of the most ...emotionally riveting love stories you’ll ever encounter." —People It’s 1988 and Dexter Mayhew and Emma Morley have only just met. But after only one day together, they cannot stop thinking about one another. Over twenty years, snapshots of that relationship are revealed on the same day—July 15th—of each year. They face squabbles and fights, hopes and missed opportunities, laughter and tears. Dex and Em must come to grips with the nature of love and life itself. As the years go by, the true meaning of this one crucial day is revealed. "[A] surprisingly deep romance...so thoroughly satisfying." —Entertainment Weekly