This is a book about secrecy, militarism, manipulation, and censorship at the heart of the world's leading democracy-and about those who try to fight them. Using thousands of pages of documents acquired through the Freedom of Information Act National Security Cinema exclusively reveals that the national security state-led by the CIA and Pentagon-has worked on more than eight-hundred Hollywood films and over a thousand network television shows. The latest scholarship has underestimated the size of this operation, in part because the government has gone to considerable lengths to prevent data emerging, especially in the 21st Century, as the practice of government-Hollywood cooperation has escalated and become more aggressive. National Security Cinema reveals for the first time specific script changes made by the government for political reasons on dozens of blockbusting films and franchises like Transformers, Avatar, Meet the Parents, and The Terminator. These forces have suppressed important narratives about: CIA drug trafficking; illegal arms sales; military creation of bio-weapons; the interaction of private armies and oil companies; government treatment of minorities; torture; coups; assassinations, and the failure to prevent 9/11.

Hollywood is often characterized as a stronghold of left-liberal ideals. In Reel Power, Matthew Alford shows it is in fact deeply complicit in serving the interests of the most regressive U.S. corporate and political forces. Films like Transformers, Terminator: Salvation and Black Hawk Down are constructed with Defense Department assistance as explicit cheerleaders for the U.S. military, but Matthew Alford also emphasizes how so-called radical films like Three Kings, Hotel Rwanda and Avatar present watered-down alternative visions of American politics that serve a similar function. Reel Power is the first book to examine the internal workings of contemporary Hollywood as a politicized industry as well as scores of films across all genres. No matter what the progressive impulses of some celebrities and artists, Alford shows how they are part of a system that is hard-wired to encourage American global supremacy and frequently the use of state violence.

Directors of war and action movies receive access to billions of dollars worth of military equipment and personnel, but it comes with a hidden cost. As a veteran Hollywood journalist shows, the final product is often not just what the director intends but also what the powers-that-be in the military want to project about America's armed forces.

"Jenkins's book raises serious ethical and legal questions about the relationship between the CIA and Hollywood and the extent to which we consume propaganda from one through the other. . . . Should the CIA be authorized to target American public opinion? If our artists don't confront [the question] more directly, and soon, the Agency will only continue to infiltrate our vulnerable film and television screens—and our minds." —Tom Hayden, Los Angeles Review of Books "The book makes a strong case that the CIA should not be in Hollywood at all, but that if it is, it cannot pick and choose which movies it wishes to support. Well written and researched, this study examines a subject that has not received enough scholarly or critical attention. Highly recommended." —Choice "A fascinating, highly readable, and original new work. . . . Incorporating effective, illustrative case studies, The CIA in Hollywood is definitely recommended to students of film, media relations, the CIA, and U.S. interagency relations." —H-Net Reviews

A concerned investigation of the curious relationship between Hollywood and the US Department of Defense that exposes some distressing collaborations.

This comprehensively revised, updated and significantly extended edition introduces German film history from its beginnings to the present day, covering key periods and movements including early and silent cinema, Weimar cinema, Nazi cinema, the New German Cinema, the Berlin School, the cinema of migration, and moving images in the digital era. Contributions by leading international scholars are grouped into sections that focus on genre; stars; authorship; film production, distribution and exhibition; theory and politics, including women's and queer cinema; and transnational connections. Spotlight articles within each section offer key case studies, including of individual films that illuminate larger histories (Heimat, Downfall, The Lives of Others, The Edge of Heaven and many more); stars from Ossi Oswalda and Hans Albers, to Hanna Schygulla and Nina Hoss; directors including F.W. Murnau, Walter Ruttmann, Wim Wenders and Helke Sander; and film theorists including Siegfried Kracauer and Béla Balázs. The volume provides a methodological template for the study of a national cinema in a transnational horizon.

Since the silent days of cinema, Westerns have been one of the most popular genres, not just in the United States but around the world. International filmmakers have been so taken by westerns that many directors have produced versions of their own, despite lacking access to the American West. Nowhere has the Western been more embraced outside of the United States than Italy. In the 1960s, as Hollywood heroes like John Wayne and Randolph Scott were aging, Italian filmmakers were revitalizing the western, securing younger American actors for their productions and also making stars of homegrown talent. Movies directed and produced by Italians have been branded “spaghetti westerns”—a genre that boastsseveral hundred films. In Spaghetti Westerns: A Viewer’s Guide, Aliza S. Wong identifies the most significant westerns all’italiana produced as well as the individuals who significantly contributed to the genre. The author profiles such American actors as Clint Eastwood, Eli Wallach, and Lee Van Cleef; composers including Ennio Morricone and Carlo Rustichelli; and, of course, directors like Sergio Corbucci and Sergio Leone. The most memorable movies of the genre are also examined, includingCompañeros, Django; A Fistful of Dollars; The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly; and They Call Me Trinity. In addition to citing pivotal films and filmmakers, this volume also highlights other relevant aspects of the genre, including popular shooting locations, subgenres like the Zapata western, and the films and filmmakers who were inspired by the spaghetti western, including Quentin Tarantino, Richard Rodriguez, and Takashi Miike. An introduction to a unique homage of American cinema, Spaghetti Westerns: A Viewer’s Guide allows fans and scholars alike to learn more about a genre that continues to fascinate audiences.