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<p> Film d'Art, the French production company responsible for the development of Henri Lav&eacute;dan's <i>L'Assassinat du Duc de Guise</i> (1908), demonstrated a forward-thinking vision for film and music. Through their innovations, the company combined many elements of cinematography with new standards for quality productions. This project report will investigate the goals of Film d'Art and its unusually high ambitions, standard music practices in the silent film era, the issues revolving around the instrumentation to Saint-Sa&euml;ns' score to Henri Lav&eacute;dan's<i> L'Assassinat de Duc de Guise</i> (1908), and the performance of my arrangement in a graduate recital.</p>

This dissertation offers an analysis of the cinematic (un)homely. Loosely based on Freud's concept of the uncanny – that frightful and inexplicable experience of the home as a foreign and strange space – the (un)homely is a poignant sign of the times, a contemporary trope of the various kinds of spatial dislocation, transience, homelessness and disempowerment symptomatic of contemporary global societies. In short the (un)homely conjures up the decline of family, its faltering role as the moral center of the world and all the unpleasant ramifications that come from the destabilization of the home. The (un)homely speaks to the breakdown of what is deemed proper – the distinction between public and private space, the unraveling of gender norms, the troubling de-localization of mobile technologies. While the uncanny nature of the home is a mainstay in many science fiction and horror films, my analysis uses the concept of the (un)homely to explore a wide range of contemporary films that explore every day domestic environments and the way the home is the site for a wide range of devastating intrusions – from the precarious nature of the nation in an age of globalization to the way mobile work seeps into the protective spaces of the home. These intrusions I contend provide themes and images related to the ways in which contemporary social relations, work and new technologies prevent characters from ever finding their way home. However, while an encounter with the (un)homely represents a painful experience with the loss of home, the (un)homely can offer an ethics of dwelling, as the impossibility of narrative closure or the shift in power relations offer new and more hopeful ways of dwelling in the world. / Cette thèse présente une analyse du « (un)homely » filmique. Vaguement basée sur le concept de Freud sur l'étrange – cette expérience inexplicable et effroyable du foyer familial vu en tant qu'espace étranger et bizarre – le « (un)homely » est un signe poignant des temps, un trope contemporain des divers types de dislocations spatiales, de déplacements, d'itinérance et de la privation de pouvoir, symptomatiques des sociétés globales contemporaines. En bref, « (un)homely » évoque le déclin de la famille, son rôle incertain en tant que centre moral du monde, ainsi que toutes les ramifications désagréables qui découlent de la déstabilisation du foyer familial. « (un)homely » fait référence à la dégradation de ce qui est jugé convenable – la distinction entre l'espace public et privé, le démantèlement des normes du genre, la délocalisation inquiétante des technologies mobiles. Bien que l'étrange nature du foyer familial soit représentée comme un des piliers de base dans un grand nombre de films de science-fiction et d'horreur, mon analyse utilise le concept de « (un)homely » pour examiner un vaste ensemble de films contemporains qui explorent les environnements quotidiens et la façon dont le foyer est le lieu d'un ensemble étendu d'intrusions dévastatrices – allant de la nature précaire de la nation dans un âge de globalisation, jusqu'à la façon dont le travail mobile s'insère dans les espaces protégés du foyer. J'avance que ces intrusions procurent des thèmes et des images liés aux façons dont les relations sociales contemporaines, le travail et les nouvelles technologies empêchent les personnages de trouver à jamais leur chemin vers leur foyer. Néanmoins, bien qu'une rencontre avec le « (un)homely » constitue l'expérience douloureuse de la perte de son foyer, « (un)homely » peut offrir une éthique du logement, étant donné que l'impossibilité de conclusion narrative ou le changement dans les relations de pouvoir offrent des façons nouvelles et plus optimistes d'établir une résidence dans le monde.

Rockumentary: Style, Performance, and Sound in a Documentary Genre is the comprehensive study of an audio-visual genre concerned with the nonfictional representation of rock music and related idioms. Sparked by the explosive rise in popularity of rock music in the 1960s, rockumentary follows a trajectory tracing the broader history of documentary practice, at times serving to reshape that history and at others providing the clearest examples of documentary's limits and potentials. It both captures and contributes to histories of documentary film and popular music generally, and rock music and rock culture specifically. It is noteworthy for its visual style, innovation in the area of film sound technology, and the complex industrial interactions which in part foster its development. Moreover, rockumentary serves as an early and ongoing example of the negotiation of the presence of stars and staged spectacles in the context of nonfiction film and video. It is the site where the anxieties about sound and the documentary image—an unease which runs throughout the history of cinema and has specific implications within the context of nonfiction film—are particularly acute, and the various conceptual and sociological issues surrounding film as a mediation of live experience versus a wholly constructed entity are crystallized most concretely. This dissertation presents rockumentary as an audio-visual genre with both artistic relevance and commercial appeal, and poses questions about the role of pleasure as a means of differentiating the corpus from other nonfiction film and video genres. Through textual analysis, reception studies, and documentary research, this dissertation contributes to film, media, and popular music studies, and lays the foundation for the study of nonfiction representations of popular music in contemporary moving images and new media. / Rockumentary: Style, Performance, and Sound in a Documentary Genre est une étude approfondie d'un genre audio-visuel dédié à la représentation non-fictive de la musique rock et de ses idiomes. Née de l'explosive croissance de popularité de la musique rock dans les années 60, le rockumentaire évolue en bordure de l'historique plus large de la pratique documentaire, se trouvant parfois à la remodeler et parfois à démontrer les limites et le potentiel du genre. Le rockumentaire contribue à l'histoire du documentaire et de la musique populaire en général, ainsi qu'à celle de la culture et de la musique rock. Il se démarque par son style visuel, son innovation dans le domaine de la technologie sonore cinématographique et par les relations industrielles complexes qui ont favorisé son développement. En outre, le rockumentaire met en évidence les tractations entre la présence de prestations misent en scène et de vedettes dans le cadre de films et de vidéos de non-fiction. Le rockumentaire est un lieu où les angoisses liées au son et à l'image documentaire – un malaise qui traverse l'histoire du cinéma et qui a des implications précises dans le contexte du cinéma de non-fiction – sont particulièrement vives. Également, les questions conceptuelles et sociologiques qui entourent le cinéma en tant que médiation de l'expérience en direct par rapport à une entité fabriquée y sont cristalisées de manière des plus concrètes. Cette dissertation présente le rockumentaire comme un genre audio-visuel ayant à la fois une pertinence artistique et un attrait commercial qui remet en question le rôle du plaisir comme manière de différencier le corpus des autres genres de films et de vidéos de non-fiction. Avec l'aide de l'analyse textuelle, d'études de réception et de recherche documentée, cette dissertation est un apport dans le domaine des études cinématographiques, médiatiques ainsi que des études de la musique populaire, puisqu'elle jette les bases sur l'étude des représentations non-fictives de la musique populaire dans les nouveaux médias et les images contemporaines.

This study proposes that aspects primary to film festival operation be identified and logically linked through established system-based theories. Researchers are then able to establish a foundational comprehension of film festivals and overcome areas that are currently nebulous and detrimental to the field of study.

PhD / The influential theorist, David Bordwell, talks about various modes of watching film: the intellectual, the casual, or the obsessive interaction with cinema practiced by the film-buff. This thesis is an attempt to come to terms with film and film culture in a number of ways. It is first an attempt at reinscribing a notion of aesthetics into film studies. This is not an easy task. I argue that film theory is not adequately equipped to discuss film in affective terms, and that instead, it emphasises ways of thinking about film and culture quite removed from the act of film ‘spectating’ – individually, or perhaps even more crucially, collectively. To my mind, film theory increasingly needs to ask: are theorists and the various subjectivities about whom they theorise watching the same films, and in the same way? My experience of film is, as Tara Brabazon writes about her own experience of film, a profoundly emotional one. Film is a stream of quotation in my own life. It is inextricably wrapped up inside memory (and what Hutcheon calls postmodern nostalgia). Film is experience. I would not know how to communicate what Sergio Leone ‘means’ or The Godfather ‘represents’ without engaging what Barbara Kennedy calls the ‘aesthetic impulse.’ In this thesis, I extrapolate from what film means to me to what it might mean to an abstract notion of culture. For this reason, Chapters Three and Four are necessarily abstract and tentatively bring together an analysis of The Matrix franchise and Quentin Tarantino’s brand of metacinema. I focus on an aesthetics of cinema rather than its politics or ideological fabric. This is not to marginalise such studies (which, in any case, this thesis could not do) but to make space for another perspective, another way of considering film, a new way of recuperating affect.

This thesis examines the social construction of disability in Australian national cinema throughout the 1990s. During that decade, disability was an issue that remained in the background of many film narratives and is (still) under-theorised in academic scholarship. Disability continues to be tangential to many social critiques, particularly in relation to cultural diversity and national identity. When it is foregrounded, as in Liz Ferrier’s (2001) work, its theoretical premise is chiefly located in a damaged body, rather than examined through the lens of cultural construction. The growing number of culturally diverse filmmakers in the Australian film industry during the 1990s initiated a critical focus on diversity, multiculturalism and minority group interests. However, an examination of the social construction of disability is conspicuously absent. I argue that a disability identity that focuses attention away from the body and onto society should be incorporated into notions of diversity concerning Australian national cinema. In this thesis I investigate both thematic and stylistic representations of disability with reference to socio-political contexts and influences. A disability identity — as it is included or excluded from Australian national identity — is explored through a variety of close readings of local films. I examine the methods filmmakers employ to problematise diversity in relation to the limitations of dominant representations of disability. This thesis recognises the historical lack of scholarship in relation to disability as a diversity issue in Australian national cinema of the 1990s and is an attempt to open up this field to new modes of criticism.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of Communication and Culture, 2007. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 68-09, Section: A, page: 3642. Adviser: Barbara Klinger. Title from dissertation home page (viewed Apr. 30, 2008).

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Maryland, College Park, 2006. / (UnM)AAI3212044. Adviser: Phyllis Peres. Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 67-03, Section: A, page: 0927.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Depts. of Communication and Culture and American Studies, 2007. / Adviser: James Naremore.