Libros

El turismo es una industria de creación de imágenes que entiende la fotografía como el instrumento perfecto para dar forma a su discurso del deseo: el destino turístico es, antes que nada, una imagen ideal e irreal construida y fabricada para generar necesidad (ir, estar, disfrutar). Esta alianza tiene una explicación histórica: turismo y fotografía son manifestaciones culturales del siglo XIX, son procedimientos coetáneos diseñados para entender y transitar la realidad, y, en consecuencia, son prácticas que comparten un mismo espíritu del tiempo, una misma nueva sensibilidad que intentaba imponerse sobre un orden en crisis. De ahí que podamos hablar de unas lógicas turísticas de la fotografía pero también de unas lógicas fotográficas del turismo. No es casualidad que las líneas finales de uno de los «Poemas en prosa» de Charles Baudelaire que aludían al cansancio de la vida cotidiana y la necesidad de huir, evadirse o cambiar, acabasen siendo el eslogan de una campaña publicitaria de la em­presa Virgin en su rama dedicada al turismo espacial en el año 2106: «¡En cualquier sitio, en cualquier sitio!, ¡mientras sea fuera de este mundo!».

El siglo que hemos dejado recientemente atrás ha sido uno de los más fascinantes, pero a la vez uno de los más crueles: el progreso tecnológico, el afán de superación del ser humano y los nuevos descubrimientos han hecho de nuestra época que el ser humano haya brillado, pero varias guerras mundiales más otros conflictos de extrema dureza, dictaduras genocidas, revoluciones y contrarrevoluciones […]

Examining the role of dramatized narratives in Russian television, this book stresses the ways in which the Russian government under Putin use primetime television to express a new understanding of what it means to be Russian, answering key questions of national identity for modern Russians in dealing with their recent history: ‘What really happened to us?’ and, accordingly, ‘Why?’ […]

What does it mean to be a documentary filmmaker in today’s world?

How are new technologies changing documentary filmmaking?

What new forms of documentary are emerging?

Recent technological developments have made the making and distribution of documentary films easier and more widespread than ever before. Creative Documentary: theory and practice is an innovative and essential guide that comprehensively embraces these changing contexts and provides you with the ideas, methods, and critical understanding to support successful documentary making. It helps the aspiring ‘total filmmaker’ understand the contemporary contexts for production, equipping you also with the understanding of creativity and visual storytelling you’ll need to excel. Bridging the gap between the theory and practice, it outlines the contemporary institutional, practical and financial contexts for production, always encouraging innovation and originality.

Creative Documentary: theory and practiceis an essential guide for those engaged in the study and practice of documentary theory and making, as well as key reading for those more broadly in video, film and media theory and production.

The Amoy-dialect film industry emerged in the 1951s, producing cheap, b-grade films in Hong Kong for direct export to the theatres of Manila Chinatown, southern Taiwan and Singapore. Films made in Amoy dialect – a dialect of Chinese – reflected a particular period in the history of the Chinese diaspora, and have been little studied due to their ambiguous place within the wider realm of Chinese and East Asian film history. This book represents the first full length, critical study of the origin, significant rise and rapid decline of the Amoy-dialect film industry.

Rather than examining the industry for its own sake, however, this book focuses on its broader cultural, political and economic significance in the region. It questions many of the assumptions currently made about the ‘recentness’ of transnationalism in Chinese cultural production, particularly when addressing Chinese cinema in the Cold War years, as well as the prominence given to ‘the nation’ and ‘transnationalism’ in studies of Chinese cinemas and of the Chinese Diaspora. By examining a cinema that did not fit many of the scholarly models of ‘transnationalism’, that was not grounded in any particular national tradition of filmmaking and that was largely unconcerned with ‘nation-building’ in post-war Southeast Asia, this book challenges the ways in which the history of Chinese cinemas has been studied in the recent past.