Expresiones audiovisuales

Esta obra reúne diferentes artículos de investigadores y profesiones del cine relatando sus experiencias y poniendo en debate el tema del Cine y la Comunicación. Se trata también de un registro de XXVIII Coloquio de la Escuela Latinoamericana de Comunicación (CELACOM), realizado por la Cátedra UNESCO de Comunicación, evento que reunió académicos, profesionales del cine y autoridades políticas en torno a un mismo objetivo: entender el cine, más allá del arte, como un proceso comunicacional emancipador. Es por ello que se trata de una obra emblemática para la discusión del Cine en América Latina, desde una perspectiva comunicacional.

El grafiti es parte de la panoplia comunicacional alternativa a las expresiones de poder, una expresión polemológica, transgresora, antihegemónica, o, como lo propone el autor, "una escritura o representación de lo prohibido". Una expresión que con el paso del tiempo se manifiesta no solo como estrategia política sino como tatuaje citadino generador de estéticas y de realidades.

A través de las páginas de este texto sugerente, el autor termina por ser un poco ese historiador que acumula el archivo precioso de lo que está a punto de desaparecer; nos regala su visión del mundo: lúcida y siempre sorprendente a través de los tatuajes de las ciudades.

The Highway Horror Film argues that 'Highway Horror' is a hither-to overlooked sub-genre of the American horror movie that articulates profound unease about the increasingly transitory nature of modern American life, as well as the wider impact of mass automobility. Along with the establishment of the suburbs, the post1956 construction of the Interstate Highway System represents one of the most dramatic innovations of post-war American society. The new network of well-maintained and well-constructed roads provided Americans with a freedom to move around the entire nation that had previously been denied to them. In addition, the car assumed the vitally important practical and symbolic function it holds to this day. Both of these innovations are questioned in this landmark study. In Highway Horror films, the American landscape is by its very accessibility rendered terrifyingly hostile, and encounters with other travellers (and with those whose roadside businesses depend on highway traffic) almost always have sinister outcomes.

Screenwriting in a Digital Era examines the practices of writing for the screen from early Hollywood to Dogme, the new realism and beyond. Looking back to prehistories of the form, Kathryn Millard links screenwriting to visual and oral storytelling. From the shadow playwrights of twelfth century Egypt to semi-improvised ensemble films played out on the streets of cities around the globe, she draws on a wealth of insights from music, photography, performance, writing, psychology and organisational studies to explore the creative processes underlying writing for the screen. Looking also to the future, Screenwriting in a Digital Era examines the blurring of genres, production stages and roles in digital ecologies and the rise of sustainable screenwriting.

In response to the significant increase of judgment and judgmentalism in contemporary film and television, A Critique of Judgment in Film and Television investigates the evolving connections between the aesthetics and ethics of judgment. The volume ultimately contemplates whether we should, and can, do without judgment, questions that are just the beginning of a much-needed re-examination. The individual contributions of the collection all work towards a very specific focus on judgment that is unprecedented in its transdisciplinary composition and contemporary relevance. By exploring examples of entertainment that aim to instigate judgment, A Critique of Judgment in Film and Television advances the as yet underdeveloped area of research into television and philosophy.

Nonfiction cinema in Latin America has undergone remarkable changes in the last thirty years. Documentary film was part of the ambitious movements that helped shape the region's cinematic landscape half a century ago, and it has for many years influenced socially committed filmmaking worldwide. The past three decades have taken this tradition in new directions. In this volume, contributors highlight the significance of recent Latin American documentaries and explore contrasts and parallels with works made in previous decades. Examining the vast breadth and diversity of contemporary documentary production, while also situating nonfiction film and video within the cultural, political, and socio-economic history of the region, this book addresses topics such as documentary aesthetics, indigenous media, and transnational filmmaking.

An interdisciplinary work in philosophy and film studies, Joseph Kupfer investigates narrative theory through the analysis of five films that have narrative as their subject matter and where stories and storytelling are central: A River Runs Through It, Wonder Boys, Ordinary People, The Shape of Things and Unforgiven. Kupfer's readings of the films explore the role of story creation in knowing ourselves and planning our future, in structuring social relationships, and in sharpening our experience of popular culture – including mass-marketed films.

Body, Soul and Cyberspace explores how recent science-fiction cinema addresses questions about the connections between body and soul, virtuality, and the ways in which we engage with spirituality in the digital age. The book investigates notions of love, life and death, taking an interdisciplinary approach by combining cinematic themes with religious, philosophical and ethical ideas. Magerstädt argues how even the most spectacle-driven mainstream films such as Avatar, The Matrix and Terminator can raise interesting and important questions about the human self and our interaction with the world. Apart from these well-known science fiction epics, her analysis also draws on recent works, such as Inception, The Thirteenth Floor, eXistenZ, Aeon Flux, Total Recall (2112), Transcendence and TRON: Legacy. These films stimulate an engaging discussion on what makes us human, the role memory plays in understanding ourselves, and how virtual realities challenge the moral concepts that govern human relationships.

Using the four tissue types (connective, epithelial, nervous, and muscular), Dudenhoeffer expands, complicates, and reconceptualizes the subgenre of "body horror." Changing the emphasis from the contents of the film, from its monsters and violence, to the "organicity" of its visual and affective registers, he addresses the application of psychoanalysis, phenomenology, object-ontology, and cyborgism to film studies. Examining the various body tissues in thrillers like Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho, self-conscious art films like Lars Von Trier's Antichrist, and relatively splatter-free "found footage" films like Paranormal Activity, the study redraws the scope of the subgenre and uses these films as texts to think through the shock, discomfort, and other affective charges that come about when one tissue type within a film's audiovisual register dramatically assumes more of an emphasis than the others.

Though screenwriting is an essential part of the film production process, in Britain it is yet to be fully recognised as a form in itself. In this original study, Jill Nelmes brings the art of screenwriting into sharp focus, foregrounding the role of the screenwriter in British cinema from the 1931s to the present day.

Drawing on otherwise unseen drafts of screenplays, correspondence and related material held in the Special Collections of the BFI National Archive, Nelmes's close textual analysis of the screenplay in its many forms illuminates both the writing and the production process. With case studies of a diverse range of key writers – from individuals such as Muriel Box, Robert Bolt and Paul Laverty, to teams such as the Carry On writers – Nelmes exposes the depth and breadth of this thriving field.