American Independent Horror

2019 ◽  
pp. 139-158
Author(s):  
Bryan Turnock
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
Attractive Alternative ◽  
Independent Film ◽  
Feature Film ◽  
Horror Genre ◽  
American Cinema ◽  
Living Dead ◽  
American Horror Film ◽  
Social Turmoil ◽  
Film Making

This chapter assesses the emergence of American independent horror, looking at George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead (1968). By the mid-1960s, the traditional Hollywood studio system was responsible for only around 20 per cent of America's film production. The remainder came from independent film-makers and from films made outside of the United States, where labour and locations were cheaper. The 'New Wave' movements in countries such as Japan, France, Britain, and Czechoslovakia introduced new styles of film-making to American cinemagoers, who found them an attractive alternative to the classical Hollywood feature film. As such, the late 1960s saw enormous changes in American cinema, including within the horror genre. Influenced by social, political and cultural upheavals occurring in the country at the time, 1968 is often cited as the dawn of the 'modern American horror film'. The chapter considers how political and social turmoil in America led to a growing number of independent film-makers actively working against the industry establishment, taking advantage of the heavily diminished influence of the major studios, and producing films which rejected Hollywood conservatism and deliberately pushed the boundaries of acceptability.

CAREERS, COMMUNITIES, AND INDUSTRY EVOLUTION: LINKS TO COMPLEXITY THEORY

2001 ◽  
Vol 05 (02) ◽  
pp. 239-255 ◽  
Author(s):  
MICHAEL B. ARTHUR ◽  
ROBERT J. DEFILLIPPI ◽  
VALERIE J. LINDSAY
Keyword(s):  
Complexity Theory ◽  
Ways Of Knowing ◽  
Industry Evolution ◽  
Alternative View ◽  
Building Industry ◽  
Independent Film ◽  
Unit Of Analysis ◽  
Boat Building ◽  
Film Making ◽  
Principal Unit

Traditional views of industry evolution focus on the company as their principal unit of analysis. We offer an alternative view that links between workers' careers and successive community, company and industry effects. We apply this view to evidence from independent film-making, and suggest a conception of the career, involving three "ways of knowing", to underlie these links. We next explore two more industry examples, the New Zealand boat building industry and the Linux operating system in the software industry, which provide further support for the alternative view proposed, as well as extending it to consider the influence of the World Wide Web. We see all three industry examples as illustrating a range of ideas in complexity theory. We propose that a career-centric view provides a useful basis for the further exploration and application of complexity theory to industrial life.

African Cinema in the American Video Market

1992 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 38-41
Author(s):  
Cornelius Moore
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Feature Film ◽  
African Cinema ◽  
The World ◽  
Film Market ◽  
The U.S

There are probably a billion videocassettes in the United States. Yet few, probably under a thousand, are African films. I want to ask why this is and describe a strategy to change it.How can one of the least known and most under-funded cinemas in the world, African cinema, find a place in the most lavishly promoted and capitalized media marketplaces on earth, the U.S. feature film market?

Rob Roy: Britain’s First Feature Film

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Caroline Merz
Keyword(s):  
Language Production ◽  
English Language ◽  
Film Production ◽  
Feature Film ◽  
Study Approach ◽  
Feature Films ◽  
Production History ◽  
History Of ◽  
Film Making

What was the potential for the development of a Scottish film industry? Current histories largely ignore the contribution of Scotland to British film production, focusing on a few amateur attempts at narrative film-making. In this chapter, Caroline Merz offers a richer and more complex view of Scotland’s incursion into film production,. Using a case-study approach, it details a production history of Rob Roy, produced by a Scottish company, United Films, in 1911, indicating the experience on which it drew, placing it in the context of other successful British feature films such as Beerbohm’s Henry VIII, and noting both its success in Australia and New Zealand and its relative failure on the home market faced with competition from other English-language production companies.

“A Treacherous Tightrope”

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alice Lovejoy
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
American Cinema ◽  
Film Distribution ◽  
Feature Films ◽  
Psychological Warfare ◽  
Close Relationship ◽  
Central Case ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Diplomatic Relationship

This chapter, by Alice Lovejoy, chronicles the United States Office of War Information’s plans to distribute forty Hollywood feature films in liberated Europe under the auspices of the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force’s Psychological Warfare Division (PWD-SHAEF). From the comparative perspectives of OWI and the Allied countries for which the films were destined (Belgium, the Netherlands, Norway, and Czechoslovakia, its central case study), it examines the economic, ideological, and pragmatic questions that intersected in these films’ selection and distribution, focusing on the tensions caused by OWI’s close relationship with the American film industry. The chapter argues that the case study of these forty films highlights Europe’s fraught political, cultural, and diplomatic relationship with American cinema on the cusp of the Cold War, as well as the complex logics underpinning film distribution in this period.

Monster Stories/Storied Monsters

2019 ◽  
pp. 195-214
Author(s):  
Adam Charles Hart
Keyword(s):  
Video Game ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Horror Genre ◽  
High Profile ◽  
The Walking Dead ◽  
Living Dead ◽  
The Face ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Walking Dead

This final chapter continues the discussion of monsters by engaging with the writings of Robin Wood, who theorized monsters as fundamentally ambivalent figures who allow us to envision alternatives to the restrictive social order. It then realigns Wood’s terms to show how the recent horror genre has been structured around questions not simply of monstrosity, but of asserting or maintaining humanity—and recognizing the humanity of others—in the face of monstrosity and other inconceivable horrors. This is the explicit theme of The Walking Dead TV series, as is emphasized in its first video game adaptation, The Walking Dead: The Game (2012), but is there at the beginnings of the modern genre in the 1960s with a film like Night of the Living Dead (1968). The chapter concludes with a discussion of how understandings of “monstrosity” and “humanity” are redefined around questions of morality with two high-profile, integrated horror films, Get Out (2017) and The Shape of Water (2017).

New American Cinema

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura E.B Key
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Independent Film ◽  
Independent Films ◽  
American Cinema ◽  
Film Distribution

The New American Cinema was a movement to create independent films that expressed the countercultural moods and sensibilities of the late 1950s and early 1960s; these films represented a break away from the standardization and conformity of corporate Hollywood and from the ideological conservatism of the American mainstream. The term refers both to the films of the period and to the independent film distribution collective of the same name which was established in New York by some New American Cinema filmmakers.

Poking fun at heroes: American war and the death of the military comedy

2020 ◽  
pp. 175063522092227
Author(s):  
Andrew C Sparks
Keyword(s):  
Political Development ◽  
Film Studies ◽  
American Political Development ◽  
The United States ◽  
September 11 ◽  
Political Consequences ◽  
American Cinema ◽  
Marked Decline ◽  
Military Draft ◽  
The Military

Since the attacks of September 11 2001, there has been a marked decline in the number of military comedy films in American cinema. Films like Buffalo Soldiers, a film made prior to September 11 but released in 2003, show how this change first started. Whereas, prior to 2001, military comedies were generally accepted and even profitable, after 2001 the genre effectively disappeared and still to this day has not re-emerged despite military non-comedy films making a clear resurgence after 2008. In this article, the author explores how and why military comedies have declined over time by making comparisons of how popular both military comedy and non-comedy films were in prior periods and today. The purpose of this is to show how the decline of military comedies since 2001 is a symptom of a greater political trend within American political development, specifically the civil–military divide. As this divide has grown in the post-military draft period in the United States, an event like September 11 seems to have ruptured the general acceptability of laughing at the military, which remains improper in cinema to this day. Finally, he examines some of the political consequences of this lack of laughter at the military within the greater political and film studies literature, which include growing tacit support for the military and how the narratives within some of these films leave little room for American civilians to comedically view the military that defends them.

Werner Herzog

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brad Prager
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Los Angeles ◽  
San Francisco ◽  
The United States ◽  
Feature Film ◽  
Werner Herzog ◽  
Wim Wenders ◽  
Bay Area ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Grand Prize

Werner Herzog was born in Munich in 1942. Before the end of World War II Herzog’s family moved to Sachrang, a small town in Bavaria not far from the Austrian border. Herzog started making films in his late teens with a camera he claims to have stolen from the Munich Film School. After making several short films and his first feature film, Signs of Life (1968), his work connected with that of filmmakers such as Wim Wenders and Rainer Werner Fassbinder, who were of the same generation and who also began making films at a young age. He has expressed respectful words for these other auteurs, but he has rejected most direct association with them and with the New German Cinema movement, underscoring his independence, his reluctance to lend his name to political causes, and his identification not as German but more regionally as a Bavarian. Herzog received international recognition for Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972) and won the Jury Grand Prize at Cannes for The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (1974). He encountered intense criticism for Fitzcarraldo (1982), for which he was rumored to have harmed the native Amazonians who participated in his project. Herzog countered these accusations, but the air of controversy lingered. A documentary made about the making of Fitzcarraldo, Les Blank’s Burden of Dreams (1982), showcased Herzog as a charismatic performer and mesmerizing speaker. Throughout the following years Herzog worked less and less in Germany, ultimately resettling in California in the 1990s, first in the San Francisco Bay Area and then in Los Angeles. During his time in the United States he continued to make both documentaries and feature-length fiction films, including Rescue Dawn (2006) and Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call—New Orleans (2009). He received widespread acclaim for his documentary work, particularly for Grizzly Man (2005) and Cave of Forgotten Dreams (2010), the last of which was a much praised foray into 3D filmmaking. Herzog was nominated for an Academy Award for the documentary feature Encounters at the End of the World (2007). Although he remains well known for the bold exploits connected with his early works, his tumultuous relationship with the actor Klaus Kinski, and his willingness to push cinematic boundaries, he is best known for his capacity to express himself philosophically on a wide range of topics and for his sage Germanic voice, which he has lent to diverse projects.

Nordic Noir

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Annette Hill ◽  
Susan Turnbull
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Interviews ◽  
The United States ◽  
Crime Fiction ◽  
Multiple Perspectives ◽  
Feature Film ◽  
Audience Studies ◽  
Film And Television ◽  
Global Brand ◽  
Institutional Contexts ◽  
The Look

Nordic noir is an emerging crime genre that draws on crime fiction, feature film, and television drama. The term Nordic noir is associated with a region (Scandinavia), with a mood (gloomy and bleak), with a look (dark and grim), and with strong characters and a compelling narrative. Such is the popularity of Nordic noir as a brand for crime that it can also, and somewhat confusingly, be associated with disparate, bleak dramas set in particular locations outside the Scandinavian region (Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Iceland, and Finland), such as Wales, Italy, France, Mexico, and the United States. As such, Nordic noir is a global brand that attracts transnational audiences, and at the same time, it is a genre that offers a specific style of storytelling that has the look and feel of a regional, moody, and compelling crime narrative. The approach to Nordic noir taken in this article analyzes the genre as multidimensional, involving production and institutional contexts, creative practices, and the practices of audiences and fans. The research uses empirical and theoretical analysis drawing on genre analysis, as well as production and audience studies, including qualitative interviews and participant observations with executive and creative producers, viewers, and fans. Nordic noir is not a fixed genre; rather, it is in a constant process of iteration as it mutates, hybridizes and migrates from one location to another, where it may be received and understood in different ways. The concept of “genre work” is useful in helping to capture and critically analyze Nordic noir from multiple perspectives, taking into account the complex ways in which this genre is a cocreation between industries and audiences. This is particularly evident in the case of the Danish-Swedish coproduction Broen/Bron/The Bridge (2011), which provides an illuminating case study of these processes at work. It is this constantly ongoing notion of genre work that illuminates the fluidity of Nordic noir, where its meaning and symbolic power is cocreated by institutions, producers, and audiences.

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