Blaxploitation action narratives as well as politically radical films like Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song typically portrayed black women as trifling "bitches" compared to the supermacho black male heroes. But starting in 1973, the emergence of "baad bitches" and "sassy...

Since the release of Rosemary's Baby in 1968, the American horror film has become one of the most diverse, commercially successful, widely discussed, and culturally significant film genres. Drawing on a wide range of critical methods---from close textual readings and structuralist genre...

In Black City Cinema, Paula Massood shows how popular films reflected the massive social changes that resulted from the Great Migration of African Americans from the rural South to cities in the North, West, and Mid-West during the first three decades of the twentieth century. By the onset of the...

Feminist Hollywood examines the differences between commercial cinema and counter cinema by focusing on the work of contemporary women directors who have entered Hollywood from the realm of independent filmmaking. Christina Lane compares their early documentaries or avant-garde films with their...

A History of Spanish Film explores Spanish film from the beginnings of the industry to the present day by combining some of the most exciting work taking place in film studies with some of the most urgent questions that have preoccupied twentieth-century Spain. It addresses new questions in...

From King Kong to Candyman, the boundary-pushing genre of the horror film has always been a site for provocative explorations of race in American popular culture. In Horror Noire: Blacks in American Horror Films from 1890's to Present, Robin R. Means Coleman traces the history of notable...

The Invention of the Western Film ranges across literature, visual arts, social history, ideology, and legend to provide, for the first time, an in-depth exploration of the early Western, from short kinetoscopes of the 1890s through 'classic' features of the 1940s. By examining the American Indian's...

Beginning with the era of synchronized sound in the 1920s, music has been an integral part of motion pictures. Whether used to heighten the tension of a scene or evoke a subtle emotional response, scores have played a significant--if often unrealized--role in the viewer's enjoyment. ...

Concentrating on films produced during the 1970s-1980s, this study explores the social and psychological implications of horror and comedy on film in a discussion ranging from the classics of Chaplin and Hitchcock to 'movies that embrace the lowest common denominator as an aesthetic principle'.

Literature and Film is a cornucopia of vibrant essays that chart the history and confluence of literature and film. It explores in detail a wide and international spectrum of novels and adaptations, bringing together the very latest scholarship in the field.

A New History of Documentary Film, Second Edition offers a much-needed resource, considering the very rapid changes taking place within documentary media. Building upon the best-selling 2005 edition, Betsy McLane keeps the same chronological examination, factual reliability, ease of use and...

Acting as a corrective to the skewed avant-garde history that neglects women, Women and Experimental Filmmaking gathers essays by some of the top scholars in cinema studies dealing with women experimental filmmakers. Tracking the topic across racial, economic, geographic, and even...

Originally published in 1988, The Women Who Knew Too Much remains a classic work in film theory and feminist criticism. The book consists of a theoretical introduction and analyses of seven important films by Alfred Hitchcock, each of which provides a basis for an analysis of the female...