Through intimate encounters with the life and work of five contemporary gay male directors, this book develops a framework for interpreting what it means to make a gay film or adopt a gay point of view. For most of the twentieth century, gay characters and gay themes were both underrepresented and misrepresented in mainstream cinema. Since the 1970s, however, a new generation of openly gay directors has turned the closet inside out, bringing a new...

The decades following the civil rights and decolonization movements of the sixties and seventies-termed the post-soul era-created new ways to understand the aesthetics of global racial representation. Daphne Lamothe shows that beginning around 1980 and continuing to the present day, Black literature, art, and music resisted the pull of singular and universal notions of racial identity. Developing the idea of "Black aesthetic time"-a multipronged theoretical...

This book examines the complexities and dynamics in the relationship between intangible cultural heritage (ICH) and tourism, taking as a focus the ICH at the World Cultural Heritage site in Lijiang, China. It explores the tensions between the protection of authenticity of ICH and the use of ICH in tourism commodification, and considers the perspectives of governmental officials, experts, local ICH practitioners and community members. The volume aims...

In 1968, Suzuki Seijun-a low-budget genre filmmaker known for movies including Branded to Kill, Tokyo Drifter, and Youth of the Beast-was unceremoniously fired by Nikkatsu Studios. Soon to be known as the "Suzuki Seijun Incident," his dismissal became a cause for leftist student protestors and a burgeoning group of cinephiles to rally around. His films rapidly emerged as central to debates over politics and aesthetics in Japanese cinema. William...

Foreword by John Boyega Just in time for the next blockbuster, Star Wars: The Last Jedi, this unique and beautifully designed compendium with removable features traces one of the franchise's most iconic characters-the storm trooper-from initial development through all nine Star Wars movies to their many iterations in TV, comics, videogames, novels, and pop-culture. Star Wars: A New Hope, the very first installment in the beloved science-fiction series,...

Robert Kiely goes through major sections of the Gospels, pausing with the Italian painters to consider Jesus, how he looks, how he stands or sits, how he interacts with other figures and the viewer, how his actions and teachings are interpreted and translated by artists into forms without words. Though seasoned with comments by theologians, and references to poetry and music, painters and their paintings are the guides to Kiely's text-beguiling, challenging,...

Could Buster Keaton have starred in Battleship Potemkin? Did Trotsky plan to write the great Soviet comedy? And why did Lenin love circus clowns? The Chaplin Machine reveals the lighter side of the Communist avant-garde and its unlikely passion for American slapstick. Set against the backdrop of the great Russian revolutionary experiment, Owen Hatherley tells the tragic-comedic story of the cinema, art and architecture of the early...

An artist shares his love of trees with his brilliant paintings and thoughtful words. According to Peter Stone, "any book about trees can't help but be a book about people," and so his book is about our connection to the magnificence, the transcendence, and the essential nature of trees. Throughout human history, they have served as shelter and as symbol. And today, more than ever, our destiny is tied to theirs. The Untouchable Tree is a unique exploration...

The intensely political cultural production that erupted during Hungary's short-lived Soviet Republic of 1919 encompassed music, art, literature, film and theatre. Painting the Town Red is the little-known history of these developments. The book opens with an overview of the political context in Hungary after the First World War and how the Soviet Republic emerged in the chaotic months which followed the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Dual...

Art about glaciers, queer relationships, political anxiety, and the meaning of Blackness in open space-Borealis is a shapeshifting logbook of Aisha Sabatini Sloan's experiences moving through the Alaskan outdoors. In Borealis, Aisha Sabatini Sloan observes shorelines, mountains, bald eagles, and Black fellow travelers while feeling menaced by the specter of nature writing. She considers the meaning of open spaces versus enclosed ones and maps out...