British Universities Film & Video Council

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Media Screen Roundup – June 2015

The monthly roundup of film and television publications compiled by Simon Baker, Institute of Historical Research, & published here at the BUFVC by Linda Kaye.

This issue opens with a rather morbid work and sets the trend for other works in the issue. Michele Aaron’s Death and the moving image examines the representation of death, suicide and self-sacrifice in mainstream Western cinema. The depiction of the “living dead” – zombies, vampires, and mummies – is explored in Outi Hakola’s Rhetoric of modern death. Using the classic horror films of the 1930s, the resurgence in the 50s and 60s and present-day works the book discusses socio-cultural negotiation with death in the horror genre. A modern classic, The Walking Dead, gets the full academic treatment in a series of 13 essays in Keetley’s We’re All Infected’: Essays on AMC’s The Walking Dead and the Fate of the Human. Focussing on the violence of the series in all its manifestations the book then goes on to explore what it means to be human in a zombie world.

Charles Tepperman’s Amateur Cinema: The Rise of North American Movie Making, 1923-1960 is a fitting companion to Heather Norris Nicholson’s Amateur film: Meaning and practice c. 1927-77 which covered Britain and was featured in a previous Roundup.

Other British representation covers the Gainsborough Studios in Gary Chapman’s London’s Hollywood. James Chapman delivers A New History of British Documentary and Patti Gaal-Holmes’ A History of 1970s Experimental Film demonstrates the rich diversity in 1970s experimental filmmaking.

The after-life of stardom is featured in Lipton’s Jessie Matthews’ Construction of a Star Persona on Her Post-War Australian Tours which examines the critical and public reception of Matthews’ tours with a focus on the strategic management of her star persona, both on and off stage especially given her waning popularity in Britain.

Media Screen Roundup (Jun 2015) IHR-BUFVC (PDF)

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