Performing Arts
James Ivory in Conversation
James Ivory in Conversation is an exclusive series of interviews with a director known for the international scope of his filmmaking on several continents.
Migrating to the Movies
The rise of cinema as the predominant American entertainment around the turn of the last century coincided with the migration of hundreds of thousands of African Americans from the South to the urban "land of hope" in the North.
Mimomania
When Nietzsche dubbed Richard Wagner "the most enthusiastic mimomaniac" ever to exist, he was objecting to a hollowness he felt in the music, a crowding out of any true dramatic impulse by extravagant poses and constant nervous movements.
Museum Movies
Haidee Wasson provides a rich cultural history of cinema's transformation from a passing amusement to an enduring art form by mapping the creation of the Film Library of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, established in 1935.
No Place Like Home
This is the first comprehensive account of Germany's most enduring film genre, the Heimatfilm, which has offered idyllic variations on the idea that "there is no place like home" since cinema's early days.
Overhearing Film Dialogue
Since the birth of cinema, film has been lauded as a visual rather than a verbal medium; this sentiment was epitomized by John Ford's assertion in 1964 that, "When a motion picture is at its best, it is long on action and short on dialogue.
Performance Artists Talking in the Eighties
Performance artist Linda Montano, curious about the influence childhood experience has on adult work, invited other performance artists to consider how early events associated with sex, food, money/fame, or death/ritual resurfaced in their later work.
Playing to the World’s Biggest Audience
Delineates the globalizing pressures and opportunities that have dramatically transformed the terrain of Chinese film and television, including the end of the cold war, the rise of the World Trade Organization, and the escalation of democracy movements.
Revealing Masks
W. Anthony Sheppard considers a wide-ranging constellation of important musical works in this fascinating exploration of ritualized performance in twentieth-century music.
Scenes of Instruction
This engaging book chronicles the first classes on the art and industry of cinema and the colorful pioneers who taught, wrote, and advocated on behalf of the new art form.