Valerie and Her Week of Wonders

Author: Vítězslav Nezval
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 238

Book Description
"Written in 1935 at the height of Czech Surrealism but not published until 1945, Valerie and Her Week of Wonders is a bizarre erotic fantasy of a young girl's maturation into womanhood. Drawing on Matthew Lewis's The Monk, Sade's Justine, K. H. Macha's May, and Murnau's Nosferatu as well as the form and language of the pulp serial novel, Nezval has constructed a lyrical, menacing dream of sexual awakening involving a vampire with a taste for chicken blood, changelings, a lecherous priest, a malicious grandmother desiring her lost youth, and an androgynous merging of brother with sister. Part fairy tale, part Gothic horror, the novel is a meditation on youth and age, sexuality and death - an exploration of the grotesque that juxtaposes high and low genres with shifting registers of language and moods, thus placing it squarely in the tradition of the Czech avant-garde."--BOOK JACKET.

Visions of Paradise

Author: Wheeler W. Dixon
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
ISBN: 0813537983
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 233

Book Description
Illustrated throughout with rare stills, and organized so as to provide historical context, this book surveys an array of films that have offered us glimpses of a life that is meaningful, free from strife, devoid of pain and privation, and full of harmony in every sense.

Avant-garde to New Wave

Author: Jonathan L. Owen
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 0857451278
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 255

Book Description
The cultural liberalization of communist Czechoslovakia in the 1960s produced many artistic accomplishments, not least the celebrated films of the Czech New Wave. This movement saw filmmakers use their new freedom to engage with traditions of the avant-garde, especially Surrealism. This book explores the avant-garde's influence over the New Wave and considers the political implications of that influence. The close analysis of selected films, ranging from the Oscar-winning Closely Observed Trains to the aesthetically challenging Daisies, is contextualized by an account of the Czech avant-garde and a discussion of the films' immediate cultural and political background.

Media, Materiality and Memory

Author: Elodie A. Roy
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317098749
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 234

Book Description
Media, Materiality and Memory: Grounding the Groove examines the entwinement of material music objects, technology and memory in relation to a range of independent record labels, including Sarah Records, Ghost Box and Finders Keepers. Moving from Edison’s phonograph to digital music files, from record collections to online archives, Roy argues that materiality plays a crucial role in constructing and understanding the territory of recorded sound. How do musical objects ‘write’ cultural narratives? How can we unearth and reactivate past histories by looking at yesterday’s media formats? What is the nature, and fate, of the physical archive in an increasingly dematerialized world? In what ways do physical and digital musical objects coexist and intersect? With its innovative theoretical approach, the book explores the implications of materialization in the fashioning of a musical world and its cultural transmission. A substantial contribution to the field of music and material culture studies, Media, Materiality and Memory also provides a nuanced and timely reflection on nostalgia and forgetting in the digital age.

Surrealism and Cinema

Author: Michael Richardson
Publisher: Berg
ISBN: 1845202260
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 208

Book Description
Tracing the work of Luis Buänuel, Jacques Prâevert, Nelly Kaplan, Walerian Borowcyzk, Jan Svankmajer, Raul Ruiz and Alejandro Jodorowsky, this work charts the history of surrealist film-making in both Europe and Hollywood from the 1920s to 2005.

The Politics of Gender Culture under State Socialism

Author: Hana Havelková
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 131781908X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 278

Book Description
Though there has been much research on the incomplete emancipation project of state socialism in East and Central Europe, very little has been published on how the state and its institutions conceived of gender as a concept. This book seeks to understand if and how this conceptualization developed in the second half of the twentieth century, and what impact it had on everyday life and on culture. This study moves beyond the dichotomous gender perspectives and towards a nuanced understanding of the diverse discursive negotiations, agendas, actors and agency involved in state-socialist gender practices. Including a detailed case study on Czechoslovakia, contributors explore these issues in a series of independent, but collaboratively developed studies, placing their research in the context of other East Central European countries. The studies collected in the volume bring to light fresh material and consider it from the combined perspective of current gender theory and internal ideological dynamics of state socialism, breaking new ground in gender theory, cultural theory and studies of state socialism. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of gender studies, socialism, Cold-War politics and Eastern European politics and culture.

Folk Horror Revival: Field Studies - Second Edition

Author: Folk Horror Revival
Publisher: Lulu.com
ISBN: 0244068305
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 550

Book Description
A new and revised edition of the seminal tome Folk Horror Revival: Field Studies. A collection of essays, interviews and artwork by a host of talents exploring the weird fields of folk horror, urban wyrd and other strange edges. Contributors include Robin Hardy, Ronald Hutton, Alan Lee, Philip Pullman, Thomas Ligotti, Kim Newman, Adam Scovell, Gary Lachman, Susan Cooper and a whole host of other intriguing and vastly talented souls. An indispensable companion for all explorers of the strange cinematic, televisual, literary and folkloric realms. This edition contains numerous extra interviews and essays as well as updating some information and presented with improved design. 100% of all sales profits of this book are charitably donated at quarterly intervals to The Wildlife Trusts.

Czech and Slovak Cinema

Author: Peter Hames
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
ISBN: 0748686835
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 273

Book Description
Examines the key themes and traditions of Czech and Slovak cinema, linking inter-war and post-war cinemas together with developments in the post-Communist period.

Gender, Generations, and Communism in Central and Eastern Europe and Beyond

Author: Anna Artwińska
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000095142
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 282

Book Description
Communism in twentieth-century Europe is predominantly narrated as a totalitarian movement and/or regime. This book aims to go beyond this narrative and provide an alternative framework to describe the communist past. This reframing is possible thanks to the concepts of generation and gender, which are used in the book as analytical categories in an intersectional overlap. The publication covers twentieth-century Poland, Czechoslovakia/Czech Republic, the Soviet Union/Russia, former Yugoslavia, Turkish communities in West Germany, Italy, and Cuba (as a comparative point of reference). It provides a theoretical frame and overview chapters on several important gender and generation narratives about communism, anticommunism, and postcommunism. Its starting point is the belief that although methodological reflection on communism, as well as on generations and gender, is conducted extensively in contemporary research, the overlapping of these three terms is still rare. The main focus in the first part is on methodological issues. The second part features studies which depict the possibility of generational-gender interpretations of history. The third part is informed by biographical perspectives. The last part shows how the problem of generations and gender is staged via the medium of literature and how it can be narrated.

Lindsay Anderson Diaries

Author: Lindsay Anderson
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1408150093
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 545

Book Description
The extraordinary and revealing diaries of the revolutionary British film and theatre director who became one of the major cultural figures of his time As a director, critic, writer and actor, Lindsay Anderson established a reputation as one of the most innovative, impassioned and fiercely independent British artists of the twentieth century. In directing films such as If, This Sporting Life and O Lucky Man he championed a new wave of social responsiveness in British cinema, while as director at the Royal Court he was responsible for establishing the reputation of a number of groundbreaking plays. Throughout his life Anderson stood in opposition to the establishment of his day. Published for the first time, his diaries provide a uniquely personal document of his artistic integrity and vision, his work, and his personal and public struggles. Peopled by a myriad of artists and stars - Malcolm McDowell, Richard Harris, Albert Finney, Anthony Hopkins Brian Cox, Karel Reisz, Arthur Miller, George Michael - the Diaries provide a fascinating account of one of the most creative periods of British cultural life. Gripping Daily Express "Vicious and velvety in roughly equal measure ... Demands reading at a single sitting" Daily Telegraph "the reader of this book is richly rewarded" Daily Mail