This thesis conducts a study of stardom in contemporary Hollywood cinema through the conceptual models offered by political economy and performance analysis. It suggests that a fuller understanding of the meaning of star texts involves a consideration of industry, of performance, and of interpretative frameworks adopted by audiences. The thesis is structured in two sections: the first examines the political economy of stardom in contemporary Hollywood, presenting an evaluation of industrial changes over the last forty years. The following section builds upon this analysis, focusing on issues of performance and stardom. In Section One, Chapter Two examines stars as both a form of labour and capital, and assesses the extent to which the contemporary freelancing star is able to exploit his or her star image under the package-unit mode of production in Hollywood. It examines how contemporary stars have gained substantial power through the publicity value they accumulate, and argues that their importance to the industry has been underestimated in existing research. It argues that the shift from production as a major activity towards licensing, distribution, and ancillary markets has changed the function of stars in the industry. The importance of the Screen Actors Guild and talent agencies is used as an example of the reconfiguration of this relationship. Chapter Three outlines theories of post-Fordism and considers whether they are able to explain the function of stars in contemporary Hollywood?s mode of production. Turning to questions of property rights, it suggests that the recognition in US law of the right of publicity, and the rise of flexible contracting, had the effect of conferring industrial power on stars. In doing so, it argues that the power of stars was consolidated by the flexible package-unit mode of production and the legal recognition of the right of publicity in US law.

In the field of Greek film studies, the 1960's are widely seen as the heyday of the 'Old Greek Cinema' (PEK), while the binary model 'Old/mainstream' versus 'New/artistic' still dominates historical, theoretical and critical discourse on Greek film. The contribution of this thesis is that, on the one hand, it considers the 1960s under the light of the rise of 'New Greek Cinema' (NEK) and, on the other, complicates the relationship of PEK and NEK by focusing on the culture surrounding Greek cinema of the time and by exploring the continuities and interrelations between the 'Old' and the 'New'. Particular emphasis is given to the debates about 'quality' national cinema, including issues of realism, Greekness' and 'popular authenticity', the crucial contribution of state policies and institutions such as the 'Week of the Greek Cinema' in Thessaloniki and cine clubs, the establishment of international art film in the domestic market, and the emergence of a young generation of film critics and cinephiles who promoted the idea of an indigenous art-house film culture. This thesis highlights also the 'Old Greek Cinema's' attempts to raise the cultural status of commercial film and address international audiences and its subsequent openness to formal, thematic and artistic experimentation normally associated with NEK. The rise of history as a thematic concern of Greek cinema of the 1960s is another main focus of this thesis, which attempts to reveal how the Civil-War trauma, and oppositional historical perspectives (typically associated with NEK) found way in disguised forms in the narratives of mainstream films. Finally, through a close examination of the thematic and stylistic concerns of short films made in the 1960s (which include the early works of some of the major NEK figures) it demonstrates the continuity between the cinematic developments of the 1960s and the 1970s.

This thesis examines the relationship between feminism and cinema in the context of the women's movement and women's films of the 1980s. In focusing on the nature and implications of the representation of women constructed in Turkish cinema and the issues addressed by the women's movement, it argues that there are connections to be made on an analytical and theoretical level between the two sets of practices. The thesis argues that the enforced depoliticisation introduced after the coup (on 12th September 1980) by the incoming military government is responsible for uniting feminism and film. First, the feminist movement was able to flourish precisely because it was not perceived as political or politically significant. In a parallel move in the films of the 1980s there was an increased tendency to focus on women's issues and lives in order to avoid the overtly political. Secondly, women's films of the 1980s do not merely reflect a unitary patriarchal logic but are also sites of power relations and political processes through which gender hierarchies are both created and contested. The films of the 1980s empower women by dealing with women's issues and representing them as strong characters; however, at the same time they marginalise and objectify women with their cinematic style. turkish cinema reveals powerful cross-currents producing complex and often contradictory effects, acting both to reinforce and to mitigate against the manifestations of male dominance in different narratives and contexts. However despite these complexities, gender asymmetry in Turkish society is produced, represented and reproduced through filmic texts. There has been very little scholarly work done on the representation of women in Turkish cinema in the 1980s. The existing resources not onlylack focus on the shifts in the representation of women within socio-political context, but also fail to make a strong link between feminism and cinema. Moreover, in resources under scrutiny there is no sustained focus on mise-en-scene. The aim of this thesis is to fill this gap and explain the changes in the cultural, the social and the political, while linking feminism and cinema by examining films using close textual analysis.

This thesis, Amateur Cinema: History, Theory, and Genre (1930-1980), draws largely on primary material from the Scottish Screen Archive and related museum sources. The project establishes a critical dialogue between university-based Film Studies and the archive sector, via a series of case studies of influential groups, individuals, and movements. Prefaced by a chapter entitled 'Theorising Amateur Film: Limitations and Possibilities' detailing the domination of amateur cinema studies by discussion of the 'home mode', I suggest that work to date has obscured an understanding of films made by cine-clubs within the highly organised film culture of the British amateur cine movement. The main body of the thesis consists of four chapters exploring the most popular generic practices of 'institutionalised' amateur filmmakers, focusing on: art cinema, the 'film play', community filmmaking, and the amateur heritage picture. I argue that these production strands were formed by discourses circulating within amateur film journals, 'how to do it' manuals and amateur film festivals. Amateur cinema was viewed throughout as a parallel cine movement existing alongside professional practices, enjoying an ambivalent relationship to inherited professional standards. The final chapter, 'Amateur Film Re-Located', proposed a fresh theorisation of 'local' amateur production within a national film culture, marked by distinctly cosmopolitan connections.

The thesis examines the way that different agents, organisations and institutions intervene in the cinema practice of South America. Using Argentina, Bolivia, Chile and Peru as case studies, the thesis outlines the way state and institutional organisations, commercial bodies, international interests and alternative practices have converged, even with individual discrepancies, to develop a national and regional cinematic culture at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Practices from funding and production through to distribution and exhibition are investigated in order to provide an overview of the most significant factors shaping the way cinematic culture currently operates in the region. I argue that on the one hand, state-run initiatives (heritage drives, film councils, cinematecas, anti-piracy enforcement) attempt to reterritorialize cinema practice and create a national context for films. On the other hand, commercial bodies, international organisations and alternative practices frequently complicate or deterritorialize cinematic culture. Their various actions have an effect on the types of films that are circulated and disseminated amongst publics on the continent and in the global sphere. The complex relations between these intervening interests mean that cinematic culture is determined by various conflicting ownership claims. Furthermore, the way in which which some organisations and practices gain strength over others determines the type of access that local publics have to films and that which filmmakers have to audiences. The findings in this thesis are drawn from extensive field-work in the region and are supported by theoretical frameworks and paradigms that are relevant to the study of cinematic culture. I have made use of published literature from text books, press articles, and official websites documenting various aspects of cinematic culture in South America to literature documenting a global film context that has relevance to my field of study. Participant-observation techniques and interviews with practitioners in the region have provided me with grounded, primary-research material, while trade reports citing statistical evidence such as production figures, box office data and investments in funding have strengthened my findings.

This thesis seeks to analyse the ways in which the spoken word is used in two French minority cinemas – cinema de banlieue and gay cinema – between 1990 and 2000, in order to express an engagement with the complex, layered, and fractured identities of France’s citizens in the late twentieth century. This analysis will be conducted through three prisms which correspond to the three central chapters of the thesis: ethnicity, gender, and sexuality. These three areas of analysis were chosen because the particular aspects of individual and collective identity with which they engage embody the three central challenges to contemporary republican values which have emerged in 1990s debates. Each chapter will present a detailed examination of a series of onscreen verbal exchanges drawn from four key films, with supplementary reference to other works from the two genres studied here. These examinations will be placed against the socio-political backdrop of 1990s France in order to highlight their specific relevance to broader ongoing debates regarding the nature of French republicanism as critically interpreted. The first chapter will focus on verbal exchanges through the prism of ethnicity, and specifically on conflictual verbal encounters, as illustrated, in particular, in Hexagone (Chibane, 1994), La Haine (Kassovitz, 1995), Raï (Gilou, 1995), and La Squale (Généstal, 2000). The second chapter will examine constructions of gendered identities in Gazon maudit (Balasko, 1995), Douce maudit (Balasko, 1995), Douce France (Chibane, 1995), Ma 6-T va crack-er (Richet, 1997), and Belle Maman (Aghion, 1999), concentrating on verbal exchanges around parent-child relationships. Analysis in the final central chapter will be conducted through the prism of sexuality, examining onscreen exchanges involving friends and lovers in Pédale douce (Aghion, 1996), Le Ciel, les oiseaux et.. ta mère! (Bensalah, 1999), Le Derrière (Lemercier, 1999), and Drôle de Félix (Ducastel and Martineau, 2000). These chapters will pave the way to an attempt to come to terms with the question: Does the use of the spoken word in gay and banlieue cinema merely reaffirm the identity of separate communities, or does it rather function as a site for construction and reconstruction?

“Brutality” has long been held up by critics to be one of the defining features of the Italian filoni; a body of popular genre film cycles (peplum mythological epics, horror films, giallo thrillers, poliziotteschi crime dramas, westerns and others) released during a frenzied period of film production between the late 1950s and mid 1980s. A disproportionate emphasis on scenes of often extreme violence and spectacle can be traced across all of the cycles, resulting in a habitual “weakening” of narrative and disruption of the filmic continuities fundamental to mainstream cinema. This emphasis and the uneasy pleasures that it provides have led to a distinct ghettoisation of the filoni within English-language film criticism, with historical accounts of Italian cinema ignoring the films completely, dismissing them as “trash” or portraying them as parasitic counterfeits of “authentic” Hollywood genre films. Furthermore, such accounts typically fail to address the question of what it is that makes these films so violent, limiting their descriptions to blanket terms such as “brutal”, “exploitative” and “sadistic”, in the process reaffirming the idea that the filoni are simply not worthy of further study. As a result, the suggestion that the films could provide pleasures which are distinctly different from those established by mainstream cinema remains largely unaddressed. This thesis seeks to reconcile the gap between my own personal engagement with the films and the lack of attention that has been devoted to them within critical Anglo-American discourses. Drawing on the “paracinematic” approach highlighted by Sconce (1995), I seek to demonstrate that it is precisely in the filoni’s often violent deviations from mainstream cinema’s established continuities where their most remarkable features lie, using Thompson’s (1986) concept of “cinematic excess” to illustrate the films’ overwhelming prioritisation of formal elements that exceed the limits of narrative motivation. Using narrative and close textual analysis of a representative body of filoni to identify patterns of violence, spectacle and excess across the films’ structures, I shall also illustrate the benefits of using film theories outwith their original context to shed light on non-mainstream films like the filoni, drawing in particular on the work of musical theorists Altman (1978) and Mellencamp (1977) to identify a “dual focus” in the films between scenes of narrative and more excessive violent “numbers”. Combining my analysis of specific filoni with an examination of representative mainstream films and Anglo-American genre theory, I shall demonstrate that while the regulation of cinematic excess is vital to the narrative pleasures engendered by the latter (suspense, characterisation, drama), in the filoni such pleasures are typically debunked in favour of the more immediate pleasures and curiosities provoked by viewing (and listening to) spectacular and violent acts that threaten the continuities surrounding them. As my analysis chapters will indicate, the filoni are far more productively analysed using theories derived from early cinema: by drawing on Gunning’s (1986) concept of cinematic “attractions” – non-narrative spectacles which exhibit a similar emphasis on the primacy of the image and the pleasures that it provides – I shall illustrate how a central viewing pleasure prioritised by the filoni arises from the frequent revelation of the filmic apparatus during scenes of spectacle and violence, where spatio-temporal continuities are frequently abandoned. By going beyond the blanket generalisations of “brutality” that have resulted in the filoni’s habitual marginalisation within film studies, this thesis shall exemplify a long-overdue “closer” approach to the films that seeks to highlight their distinctive features, study their structures and investigate the specific (dis)continuities and (dis)pleasures that they provide, at the same time exploring the possibilities of exactly what is meant by “violence” in cinema.

The Kashmir dispute has led to two wars (1947-1948, 1965), serious military encounters (1999,2001) between India and Pakistan, as well as a militant and nonmilitant separatist movement seeking independence for Kashmir (1989- ). While this conflict has been subjected to sustained analysis by academics and journalists, Kashmir's centrality to the public culture ofIndia, explored here through a study of Hindi cinema, has received little to no attention in the considerable literature on the area. The articulations of Kashmir in Hindi cinema - as a paradise on earth, sacred site of Hinduism, home ofIndia's spiritual and syncretistic traditions, pivotal to the idea of an eternal Indian civilization - help to reveal the attachments that guide 'Indian' claims on Kashmir. This study addresses the question of how, why and in what ways Kashmir is presented as a 'special' region in Hindi cinema. In doing so it initiates a discussion on region and religion in Hindi cinema, scholarship on which has long prioritized the 'nation'. As India's only Muslim-majority regional state, divided between India and Pakistan, Kashmir became a symbol of Indian secularism, a fact that is often reiterated in political discourse, as well as in academic research on the Kashmir dispute. Paradoxically, this symbol of Indian secularism, it is argued, is a site for religious contestations in Hindi cinema. The synonymy between Indian and Hindu in Kashmir films rests on the disavowal of a 'Muslim' Kashmir, so as to allay a Hindu majoritarian anxiety about a Muslim majority region in post-partition India. Therefore, the abstract equality of secularism, and the neutrality of 'national culture' remain merely 'ideals' in India's dominant form of public culture, namely Hindi cinema. The representations of Kashmir in Hindi cinema make explicit the regional and religious contestations over the national and the secular, providing a far more diverse account of history, culture and politics in India than is commonly acknowledged by 'official' discourses, mainstream historiography, and nation-centred (film) scholarship.

This project explores the ways in which film viewers engage with and respond to cinematic constructions of the female serial killer, focusing closely upon the story of Aileen Wuornos, who was executed in 2002 for the murders of seven men. Three key film texts - Monster (Patty Jenkins, 2003), Aileen: The Selling of A Serial Killer (Nick Broomfield, 1992) and Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer (Nick Broomfield, 2003) - are used as the basis for this study. Arguing that the psychodynamic complexities of the spectatorial encounter are inadequately theorised by many existing Screen theory and cultural studies accounts, I conduct a series of in-depth free-association narrative/biographical interpretive interviews (Hollway and Jefferson 2000a, Wengraf 2001) with fourteen participants. In doing so, I demonstrate how individuals are psychosocially and biographically motivated to “invest” in the three film texts on both conscious and unconscious levels. Drawing upon object-relations psychoanalysis (and Kleinian theory, in particular), I explore the unconscious anxieties, conflicts and phantasies that also bear significantly upon my participants’ filmic investments. I find that these investments are made meaningful in relation to dominant cultural ideologies and “norms”, but that they are also powerfully informed by participants’ own biographical experiences. This thesis therefore makes a valuable contribution to the field of audience studies, by providing a more nuanced understanding of the film-viewing process.

My thesis is intended as an intellectual opportunity to take what, I argue, are the "dead ends" of work on the history film in a new direction. I examine cinematic representations of the Vietnam War-era America (1964-1974) produced during the "hot" culture wars (1987-1995). I argue that disagreements among historians and commentators concerning the (mis)representation of history on screen are stymied by either an over-emphasis on factual infidelity, or by dismissal of such concerns as irrelevant. In contradistinction to such approaches, I analyse this group of films in the context of a fluid and negotiated cultural memory. I argue that the consumption of popular films becomes part of a vast intertextual mosaic of remembering and forgetting that is constantly redefining, and reimagining, the past. Representations of history in popular film affect the industrial construction of cultural memory, but Hollywood's intertextual relay of promotion and accompanying wider media discourses also contributes to a climate in which film impacts upon collective memory. I analyse the films firmly within the discursive moment of their production (the culture wars), the circulating promotional discourses that accompany them, and the always already circulating notions of their subjects. The introduction outlines my methodological approach and provides an overview of the relationship between the twinned discursive moments. Subsequent chapters focus on representations of returning veterans; representations of the counterculture and the anti-war protest movement; and the subjects foregrounded in the biopics of the period. The fourth chapter examines Forrest Gump as a meta-sixties film and as the fulcrum of my thesis. The final chapter posits that an uplifting version of the sixties has begun to dominate as the most successful type of production in the post-Gump marketplace.