Libros

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.