Author Archive for: ‘Mas Generis’

Marnie Hughes-Warrington, History Goes to the Movies: Studying History on Film. Abingdon: Routledge, 2007. ISBN: 0 415 32827 6 (hb) US$90 ISBN: 0 415 32828 4 (pb) US$28.95 218pp (Review copy supplied by Routledge) Marnie Hughes-Warrington is a Senior Lecturer in Modern History at Macquarie University. Her book is not an historian’s account of how the movies get history wrong, …

Ray Carney and Leonard Quart. The Films of Mike Leigh: Embracing the World. Cambridge Film Classics Series. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. ISBN: 0 521 48518 5 (pb) 292pp Au$34.95 (Review copy supplied by Cambridge University Press) Ray Carney likes Mike Leigh’s films. The blurb on the back cover claims that Leigh’s major works will be “shown to be among …

Joram ten Brink (ed), Building Bridges: The Cinema of Jean Rouch (Preface by Michael Renov). London: Wallflower Press, 2007 ISBN: 978-1-905674-47-3 US$29.50 (pb) 324pp (Review copy supplied by Wallflower Press) The film returns to past people and places, but in fact it does not seem to be a film in search of the past. … Is it Rouch’s way of refusing …

Steve F. Anderson, Technologies of History: Visual Media and the Eccentricity of the Past Hanover, New Hampshire: Dartmouth College Press, 2011. ISBN: 9 781611680 034 US$35 (pb) 210pp (Review copy supplied by Dartmouth College Press) Steve F. Anderson’s book is a very valuable contribution to the field of film history, although one of the points Anderson makes is that “film …

Mike Wayne (ed.), Understanding Film: Marxist Perspectives. London and Ann Arbor, Mich.: Pluto Press, 2005. ISBN: 0 7453 1993 9 (hb) US$85.00 ISBN: 0 7453 1992 0 (pb) US$29.95 253pp (Review copy supplied by Pluto Press) In his introduction to Understanding Film: Marxist Perspectives, the editor Mike Wayne sets out the contribution Marxism can offer to film studies: an emphasis on …

Jonathan Rosenbaum & Adrian Martin (eds.) Movie Mutations: The Changing Face of World Cinephilia. London: BFI, 2003. ISBN: 0 85170 984 2 (pb) £15.99 ISBN: 0 85170 983 4 (hb) £48.00 208pp (Review copy supplied by BFI Publishing) First of all, take hold of this book by the two handles Jonathan Rosenbaum and Adrian Martin give us in the title: …

Deborah Allison, The cinema of Michael Winterbottom Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, 2013 ISBN: 9780739125847 US$32.99 (pb) 224pp (Review copy supplied by Lexington Books) This is the second book-length study devoted to Michael Winterbottom’s films. It was commissioned as part of a “Genre Film Auteurs” series (with the other books in the series to date on John Dahl and Michael Mann), …

Beumers, Birgit (ed.), Russia on Reels: The Russian Idea in Post-Soviet Cinema. Kino: The Russian cinema series. London and New York: I.B. Tauris Publishers, 1999. ISBN: 1 86064 390 6 219pp £14.95 (pb) (Review copy supplied by I.B. Tauris Publishers) It will be quite normal, perhaps even remarkable, if, with time, Russian cinema can take the same place that cinema …

Marijke de Valck and Malte Hagener (eds), Cinephilia: Movies, Love and Memory. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2005. ISBN: 90 5356 768 2 236pp US$33.25 (pb) (Review copy supplied by Amsterdam University Press) Cinephilia Now In the introduction to this collection of essays, the editors Marijke de Valck and Malte Hagener set out their definition of and approach to cinephilia, and …

Belinda Smaill, The Documentary: Politics, Emotion, Culture London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. ISBN: 9780230237513 US$80.00 (hb) 221pp (Review copy supplied by Palgrave Macmillan) One of the strengths of Belinda Smaill’s book is the range of documentaries it discusses: pornography documentaries; a focus on the work of Kim Longinotto; Asian Australian documentaries; and the 2008 season of the Australian Idol television program. …