Historical Dictionary of African American Cinema PDF Download

Author: S. Torriano Berry
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1442247029
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 568

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Book Description
As early as 1909, African Americans were utilizing the new medium of cinema to catalogue the world around them, using the film camera as a device to capture their lives and their history. The daunting subject of race and ethnicity permeated life in America at the turn of the twentieth century and due to the effect of certain early films, specific television images, and an often-biased news media, it still plagues us today. As new technologies bring the power of the moving image to the masses, African Americans will shoot and edit on laptop computers and share their stories with a global audience via the World Wide Web. These independently produced visions will add to the diverse cache of African American images being displayed on an ever-expanding silver screen. This wide range of stories, topics, views, and genres will finally give the world a glimpse of African American life that has long been ignored and has yet to be seen. This second edition of Historical Dictionary of African American Cinema covers its history through a chronology, an introductory essay, appendixes, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 1400 cross-referenced entries on actors, actresses, movies, producers, organizations, awards, and terminology, this book provides a better understanding of the role African Americans played in film history. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about African American cinema.

Author: Kathleen Fearn-Banks
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 0810879174
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 641

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Book Description
From Amos 'n' Andy to The Jeffersons to Family Matters to Chappelle's Show, this volume has all different genres—animation, documentaries, sitcoms, sports, talk shows, and variety shows—and performers such as Muhammad Ali, Louis Armstrong, Bill Cosby, and Oprah Winfrey. Additionally, information can be found on general issues ranging from African American audiences and stereotypes through the related networks and organizations. This second edition covers the history of African Americans on television from the beginning of national television through the present day including: chronology introductory essay appendixes bibliography over 1000 cross-referenced entries on actors, performers, producers, directors, news and sports journalists entries on series, specials and movies relevant to African American themes and African American casts This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about the history of African-Americans and their impact on television.

Author: Andrew Spicer
Publisher: Scarecrow Press
ISBN: 0810873788
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 533

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Book Description
Film noir_literally 'black cinema'_is the label customarily given to a group of black and white American films, mostly crime thrillers, made between 1940 and 1959. Today there is considerable dispute about what are the shared features that classify a noir film, and therefore which films should be included in this category. These problems are partly caused because film noir is a retrospective label that was not used in the 1940s or 1950s by the film industry as a production category and therefore its existence and features cannot be established through reference to trade documents. The Historical Dictionary of Film Noir is a comprehensive guide that ranges from 1940 to present day neo-noir. It consists of a chronology, an introductory essay, a bibliography, a filmography, and over 400 cross-referenced dictionary entries on every aspect of film noir and neo-noir, including key films, personnel (actors, cinematographers, composers, directors, producers, set designers, and writers), themes, issues, influences, visual style, cycles of films (e.g. amnesiac noirs), the representation of the city and gender, other forms (comics/graphic novels, television, and videogames), and noir's presence in world cinema. It is an essential reference work for all those interested in this important cultural phenomenon.

Author: M. Keith Booker
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1538130122
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 655

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Book Description
One of the most powerful forces in world culture, American cinema has a long and complex history that stretches through more than a century. This history not only includes a legacy of hundreds of important films but also the evolution of the film industry itself, which is in many ways a microcosm of the history of American society. Historical Dictionary of American Cinema, Second Edition contains a chronology, an introduction, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has more than 600 cross-referenced entries covering people, films, companies, techniques, themes, and subgenres that have made American cinema such a vital part of world culture.

Author: Torriano Berry
Publisher: Citadel Press
ISBN: 9780806521336
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 324

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Book Description
A plentifully illustrated guide to the most popular and socially significant movies made for, by, and about African Americans from 1900 to today. Also includes incisive interviews with Hollywood greats such as Ossie Davis and Ivan Dixon.

Author: Keith Aspley
Publisher: Scarecrow Press
ISBN: 0810858479
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 575

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Book Description
Despite surrealism's celebration of the subconscious and eschewal of reason, the movement was nevertheless concerned with definitions. Andre Breton included a dictionary-style entry for surrealisme in his 1924 Manifeste du surrealisme and later explored juxtapositions of the absurd and the mundane in the 1938 Dictionnaire abrege du surrealisme. To the mountain of literature that seeks to organize the far-reaching intellectual movement, Aspley (honorary fellow, Univ. of Edinburgh) adds this handy volume that organizes the breadth of surrealism into concise entries on artists, writers, artworks, and themes. A chronology highlights events that sparked the surrealist imagination, activities of formal surrealist groups, and exhibitions. An introductory essay and extensive bibliography are included. One of the few English-language reference sources about surrealism published in the last decade, Aspley's dictionary is useful for quick access to key terms and biographies. For a book devoted to a movement characterized by arresting visual imagery, the lack of illustrations is annoying. Even Rene Passeron's 1978 Phaidon Encyclopedia of Surrealism (CH, May'79) reprints artworks in color. For a richly illustrated and comprehensive history, see Gerard Durozi's History of the Surrealist Movement (CH, Nov'02, 40-1316). Summing Up: Recommended. Lower-level undergraduates through graduate students. Lower-division Undergraduates; Upper-division Undergraduates; Graduate Students. Reviewed by A. H. Simmons.

Author: Geoff Mayer
Publisher: Scarecrow Press
ISBN: 081087900X
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 515

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Book Description
The crime film genre consists of detective films, gangster films, suspense thrillers, film noir, and caper films and is produced throughout the world. Crime film was there at the birth of cinema, and it has accompanied cinema over more than a century of history, passing from silent films to talkies, from black-and-white to color. The genre includes such classics as The Maltese Falcon, The Godfather, Gaslight, The French Connection, and Serpico, as well as more recent successes like Seven, Drive, and L.A. Confidential. The Historical Dictionary of Crime Films covers the history of this genre through a chronology, an introductory essay, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 300 cross-referenced entries on key films, directors, performers, and studios. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about crime cinema.

Author: Samson Kaunga Ndanyi
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1793649251
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 167

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Book Description
In Instructional Cinema and African Audiences in Colonial Kenya, 1926–1963, the author argues against the colonial logic instigating that films made for African audiences in Kenya influenced them to embrace certain elements of western civilization but Africans had nothing to offer in return. The author frames this logic as unidirectional approach purporting that Africans were passive recipients of colonial programs. Contrary to this understanding, the author insists that African viewers were active participants in the discourse of cinema in Kenya. Employing unorthodox means to protest mediocre films devoid of basic elements of film production, African spectators forced the colonial government to reconsider the way it produced films. The author frames the reconsideration as bidirectional approach. Instructional cinema first emerged as a tool to “educate” and “modernize” Africans, but it transformed into a contestable space of cultural and political power, a space that both sides appropriated to negotiate power and actualize their abstract ideas.

Author: S. Torriano Berry
Publisher: Scarecrow Press
ISBN: 0810870347
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 452

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Book Description
On 4 July, 1910, in 100-degree heat at an outdoor boxing ring near Reno, Nevada, film cameras recorded-and thousands of fans witnessed-former heavyweight champion Jim Jeffries' reluctant return from retirement to fight Jack Johnson, a black man. After 14 grueling rounds, Johnson knocked out Jeffries and for the first time in history, there was a black heavyweight champion of the world. At least 10 people lost their lives because of Johnson's victory and hundreds more were injured due to white retaliation and wild celebrations in the streets. Public screenings received instantaneous protests and hundreds of cities barred the film from being shown. Congress even passed a law making it a federal offense to transport moving pictures of prizefights across state lines, and thus the most powerful portrayal of a black man ever recorded on film was made virtually invisible. This is but one of the hundreds of films covered in The A to Z of African American Cinema, which includes everything from The Birth of a Nation to Crash. In addition to the films, brief biographies of African American actors and actresses such as Sidney Poitier, James Earl Jones, Halle Berry, Eddie Murphy, Whoopi Goldberg, Denzel Washington, and Jamie Foxx can be found in this reference. Through a chronology, a list of acronyms and abbreviations, an introductory essay, a bibliography, appendixes, black-&-white photos, and hundreds of cross-referenced dictionary entries on actors, actresses, movies, producers, organizations, awards, film credits, and terminology, this book provides a better understanding of the role African Americans played in film history.

Author: Lawrence Rupley
Publisher: Scarecrow Press
ISBN: 0810880105
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 395

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Book Description
Burkina Faso, known as Upper Volta until its independence from France in 1960, and locally called the “land of the upright people,” is a medium-sized land-locked country with no less than six neighbors, some of which periodically get into trouble… which makes it reasonably strategic in some ways. While it has not done as poorly as some other African states, its economic has certainly not prospered and many Burkinabe go abroad to earn a living. As for politics, it is another case of stability without democracy, even if there are periodic elections. Still, this is better than not even having stability. This third edition of Historical Dictionary of Burkina Faso covers its history through a chronology, an introductory essay, maps, appendixes, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 1000 cross-referenced entries on important personalities, politics, economy, foreign relations, religion, and culture. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about Burkina Faso.