March 2023 MBR The Theatre/Cinema/TV Shelf

The Theatre/Cinema/TV Shelf

A Companion to Experimental Cinema
Federico Windhausen, editor
Wiley-Blackwell
www.wiley.com/wiley-blackwell
9781119107903, $195.00, HC, 480pp

https://www.amazon.com/Companion-Experimental-Cinema-Federico-Windhausen/dp/1119107903

Synopsis: Knowledgeably compiled and deftly edited by Federico Windhausen, "A Companion to Experimental Cinema" is a collection of original essays organized around both theoretical and historical issues of concern to film scholars, programmers, filmmakers, and viewers. Newly-commissioned essays written by specialists in the field, along with dialogues conducted with a diverse range of practitioners, focus on core subjects to present an international array of overlapping and contrasting perspectives. This unique volume not only provides detailed accounts of particular films and filmmakers, but also discusses new approaches of understanding, characterizing, and shaping experimental cinema.

"A Companion to Experimental Cinema" offers film students and fans an accessible point of entry to the material while seeking to contribute to scholarly debates. The featured essays explore a wide range of topics within the realm of experimental film, including the shift from traditional biography to broader contexts, the increased attention afforded to local and transnational circuits of exchange, and the deepening of theoretical considerations regarding cultural identity and cinematic aesthetics. Key themes and concepts are inter-woven throughout the text, offering fresh perspectives on experimental cinema's dialogues with other modes and practices of film and video, its interactions with the non-cinematic arts, its responses to changing technological landscapes, and more.

"A Companion to Experimental Cinema": Balances introductory summaries and scholarly dialogue with existing literature; Explores how the study of experimental cinema can benefit from scholarship in other disciplines; Includes numerous analyses of films that are readily available to view via digital media; Discusses both canonical and obscure or neglected works; Examines the effects of the growing diversification of experimental film scholarship.

Critique: "A Companion to Experimental Cinema" is a seminal and valued resource for scholars of film studies and cinematic art history, curators and programmers, critics and bloggers, filmmakers and artists, and nonspecialist general readers interested in exploring experimental or avant-garde cinema. While available for personal reading lists in a digital book format, "A Companion to Experimental Cinema" is unreservedly recommended as a major addition to professional, community, and academic library Cinematic History & Movie Theory/Criticism collections.

Editorial Note: Federico Windhausen is a film historian and curator. His scholarly articles have been published in journals such as October, MIRAJ, Hitchcock Annual, Grey Room, and The Moving Image. He has programmed for the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, Ambulante, the London Film Festival, L' ge d'Or Festival, and various other venues.

A Companion to Indian Cinema
Neepa Majumdar, editor
Ranjani Mazumdar, editor
Wiley-Blackwell
www.wiley.com/wiley-blackwell
9781119048190, $185.00, HC, 624pp

https://www.amazon.com/Companion-Blackwell-Companions-National-Cinemas/dp/1119048192

Synopsis: With the publication of "A Companion to Indian Cinema", film scholars and co-editors Neepa Majumdar and Ranjani Mazumdar (long with 25 established and emerging scholars), deliver new research on contemporary and historical questions on Indian cinema. The collection considers Indian cinema's widespread presence both within and outside the country, and pays particular attention to regional cinemas such as Bhojpuri, Bengali, Malayalam, Manipuri, and Marathi. The volume also reflects on the changing dimensions of technology, aesthetics, and the archival impulse of film. The editors have included scholarship that discusses a range of films and film experiences that include commercial cinema, art cinema, and non-fiction film.

Even as scholarship on earlier decades of Indian cinema is challenged by the absence of documentation and films, the innovative archival and field work in ""A Companion to Indian Cinema" extends from cinema in early twentieth century India to a historicized engagement with new technologies and contemporary cinematic practices. There is a focus on production cultures and circulation, material cultures, media aesthetics, censorship, stardom, non-fiction practices, new technologies, and the transnational networks relevant to Indian cinema.

Critique: It may be a surprise to learn that Bollywood produces more movies each year than Hollywood. An impressively informative compendium of erudite and insightful commentaries that will be a highly valued resource for undergraduate and graduate students of film and media studies, South Asian studies, and cinematic history, "A Companion to Indian Cinema" is also an important new resource for scholars with an interest in the context and theoretical framework for the study of India's moving image cultures. While especially recommended as a seminal and critically important addition to personal, professional, community, and academic library Cinematic History & Film Criticism collections, it should be noted for the personal reading lists of film students, academia, and non-specialist general readers with an interest in the subject that "A Companion to Indian Cinema" is also available in a digital book format (Kindle, $148.00).

Editorial Note #1: Neepa Majumdar (https://www.filmandmedia.pitt.edu/people/neepa-majumdar is Associate Professor of Film & Media Studies in the English Department at the University of Pittsburgh. She is the author of Wanted Cultured Ladies Only! Female Stardom and Cinema in India, 1930s to 1950s (University of Illinois Press, 2009). Her research interests include film sound, star studies, South Asian early cinema, and documentary film. She is co-editor of the journals [In]Transition: Journal of Videographic Film and Moving Image Studies and Music, Sound, and the Moving Image. (https://www.filmandmedia.pitt.edu/people/neepa-majumdar)

Editorial Note #2: Ranjani Mazumdar (https://www.jnu.ac.in/Faculty/rmazumdar) is Professor of Cinema Studies at the School of Arts & Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi. She is the author of Bombay Cinema: An Archive of the City (University of Minnesota Press, 2007) and guest editor of a special issue of Bioscope on cinema and techno materiality (2013). Her current research interests include globalization and film culture, intermedial encounters, and the intersection of technology, travel, design, and color in 1960s Bombay Cinema.

China's Millennial Digital Generation
Karen Ma
Long River Press
c/o China Books & Periodicals, Inc.
360 Swift Avenue, Suite #48, South San Francisco, CA 94080
www.chinabooks.com
9781592652488, $28.95, PB, 260pp

https://www.amazon.com/Chinas-Millennial-Digital-Generation-Conversations/dp/1592652484

Synopsis: With the publication of "China's Millennial Digital Generation: Conversations with Balinghou (Post-1980s) Indie Filmmakers", Karen Ma presents a collection of creative and inspiring interviews with 7 young Chinese film directors, revealing new trends that are not fully acknowledged in Western scholarship.

Many balinghou (born in post-1980s) filmmakers are grassroots artists from smaller towns or in rural China not formally trained at film academies. In addition, these younger directors are among the first generation to have benefitted hugely from new technology, including affordable digital video cameras, cell phones, and the internet, which significantly lowered the barriers for artists entering the industry, allowing them to turn their passion into a profession.

More importantly, most of their stories can be traced to their rural hometowns, bringing a fresh repertoire to Chinese independent film. While rural themes are hardly new in Chinese film history, these tended in the past to be told mostly from a top-down, urban-elite perspective. The rural narratives of balinghou filmmakers, on the other hand, tend to be based on people from their neighborhoods, revealing a sense of social and cultural intimacy not often encountered before.

Critique: Featuring black/white photographic illustrations, "China's Millennial Digital Generation: Conversations with Balinghou (Post-1980s) Indie Filmmakers" is unique, seminal and ground introduction to a vital aspect of the Chinese cinematic industry in the form of the independent film makers with access to new technologies that 19th and 20th century Chinese film makers did not have. Inherently fascinating, exceptionally informative, and with a deftly organized presentation, "China's Millennial Digital Generation" is an critically important and recommended addition to personal, professional, community, and academic library Chinese Cinematic History collections and supplemental curriculum studies lists.

Editorial Note: Karen Ma (https://theworld.org/people/karen-ma) is also the author of "The Modern Madame Butterfly" and "Excess Baggage, A Novel".

Colonial Tactics and Everyday Life
Yuxin Ma
University of Wisconsin Press
728 State Street, Suite 443, Madison, WI 53706-1418
www.uwpress.wisc.edu
9780299340209, $79.95, HC, 360pp

https://www.amazon.com/Colonial-Tactics-Everyday-Life-Association/dp/0299340201

Synopsis: Following the Japanese invasion of northeast China in 1931, the occupying authorities established the Manchuria Film Association to promote film production efficiency and serve Japan's propaganda needs. The Manchuria Film Association had two tasks: to make "national policy films" as part of a cultural mission of educating Chinese in Manchukuo (the puppet state created in 1932) on the special relationship between Japan and the region, and to block the exhibition of Chinese films from Shanghai that contained anti-Japanese messages.

The corporation relied on Japanese capital, technology, and film expertise, but it also employed many Chinese filmmakers. After the withdrawal of Japanese forces in 1945, many of these individuals were portrayed as either exploited victims or traitorous collaborators. With the publication of "Colonial Tactics and Everyday Life: Workers of the Manchuria Film Association" Professor Yuxin Ma seeks to move the conversation beyond such simplistic and inaccurate depictions.

By focusing on the daily challenges and experiences of the Chinese workers at the corporation, Professor Ma examines how life was actually lived by people navigating between practical and ideological concerns. She illustrates how the inhabitants of Manchukuo navigated social opportunities, economic depression, educational reforms, fascist rule, commercial interests, practical daily needs, and more -- revealing ways in which these conflicting preoccupations sometimes manifested as tension and ambiguity on screen.

In the battle between repression and expression, these Chinese actors, directors, writers, and technicians adopted defensive and opportunistic tactics. They did so in colonial spaces, often rejecting modernist representations of Manchukuo in favor of venerating traditional Chinese culture and values. The expertise, skills, and professional networks they developed extended well beyond the occupation into the postwar period, and may individuals reestablished themselves as cinema professionals in the socialist era.

Critique: A unique and seminal study of meticulous scholarship, "Colonial Tactics and Everyday Life: Workers of the Manchuria Film Association" by Professor Yuxin Ma is informatively enhanced for the reader with the inclusion of two Appendices (Sketches of Key Figures & Filmography with Synopsis), forty-four pages of Notes, a fourteen page Bibliography, and a fifteen page Index. Expertly organized and presented, "Colonial Tactics and Everyday Life: Workers of the Manchuria Film Association" is highly recommended as a core addition to professional, community, and academic library Chinese Cinematic History collections and supplemental Cinematic History curriculum study lists.

Editorial Note: Yuxin Ma (https://louisville.edu/history/our-people/faculty/yuxin-ma) is an associate professor of history at the University of Louisville and the author of "Women Journalists and Feminism in China, 1898 - 1937".

Pac-Man: The First Animated TV Show Based Upon a Video Game
Mark Arnold
Bear Manor Media
BearManorMedia.com
9798370756986 $22.22 pbk
9781629339382, $33.33 hc

https://www.amazon.com/Pac-Man-First-Animated-Based-Video/dp/B0BVPFKQTD

Synopsis: With this book, Pop Culture Historian Mark Arnold takes an in-depth look at the history of Pac-Man, the classic character that spawned the very first animated cartoon series based upon a video game.

Pac-Man: The First Animated TV Show Based Upon a Video Game goes through the entire history of the Hanna-Barbera animation studios, the history of video games pre Pac-Man, the history of Pac-Man, the character, the video game, the spin-offs, the merchandise and the TV series. Each and every episode of the classic 1980s series is covered and examined.

Plus, author Arnold covers how Pac-Man has been honored on various anniversaries including his most recent 40th anniversary milestone in 2021. A fun read for casual and hardcore Pac-Man and video game fans alike featuring many character model sheets and other images.

Critique: Pac-Man: The First Animated TV Show Based Upon a Video Game is a pop culture history, tour, and celebration of the first children's cartoon to transform video game characters into the medium of animated television. A brief history of animation studio Hanna-Barbera Productions, arcade video games, and the Pac-Man video game precedes a more thorough examination of the animated show, a detailed episode guide with credits and extensive plot summaries, and black-and-white illustrations including official model sheets. Pac-Man: The First Animated TV Show Based Upon a Video game is a treasure for connoisseurs of video game media in general, and Pac-Man media fans in particular.

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