The French film critic Stéphane Delorme, in Les Cahiers du Cinéma, writes that “horror is the unexpected answer to the question: how to create myths nowadays?” (2008: 11). This quotation is the starting-point for this thesis which aims to discuss and analyse the implications of his statement that cinema is a vehicle for myths, and most specifically, for those associated with what he calls “horror”, which we have interpreted as “cruelty”. The implications of this change will be discussed in the thesis. The thesis will set out the implications of the concepts both of “cruelty” and of “myth” in a context of representation. One theoretical starting point for this research is necessarily the writings of Antonin Artaud, fundamental for analysing cruelty in a context of spectacle (theatre or film). The introduction of this thesis will explore Artaud’s writings and their relevance to cinema. This thesis is about cinema; nevertheless, to speak about cinema and cruelty, we will first study Artaud’s writings to which cruelty is the heart of a theatre that he calls “Théâtre de la Cruauté”. Artaud elaborates his ideas from theatre, and the theatre, like cinema, can be a vehicle for myths. The importance of Artaud’s theories of spectacle should explain why we will research connections between cruelty, myths and cinema initially in the light of theatre. In fact, our analysis will show that cruelty in cinema, as we will define it here, is always linked to theatricality in the way in which it creates a relation between the audience, the film and the moviemaker. We will explore its lineaments through its development in a number of key films of the 1990s/2000s. As regards myths, our objective is, firstly, to understand how cinema can give rise to modern myths, and how they form and transform themselves. We will establish not only what a myth is, but also what “the myth of cruelty” may represent nowadays, and how this contemporary myth has been represented by the moviemakers. We consider that cinema, and not specifically horror cinema, may be one specific sort of collective myth. Then, however, we will consider how cinema, surprisingly for a vehicle for myths, questions its own myths and fights them. The main part of this thesis will focus on a corpus of films which will serve to show the evidence of definable myths of cruelty in the cinema. These films are: Trouble Every Day (2001) by Claire Denis Dans Ma Peau (2002) by Marina de Van Funny Games (1997), La Pianiste (2001), Caché (2005) by Michael Haneke Medea (1988) and Dogville (2003) by Lars von Trier The concept of cruelty, and its myths, will be discussed through an analysis of physical cruelty (Trouble Every Day and Dans Ma Peau), psychological cruelty (Funny Games and La Pianiste), social cruelty (Medea, Dogville and Caché), and myths and repetitions in the cinema of cruelty. The theoretical corpus of this thesis will include, apart from Artaud, the haptic vision theorised by Laura U. Marks and its relation to cruelty, Julia Kristeva’s work on abjection, Jean-Paul Sartre and Maurice Blanchot on sadomasochism, but also the work of Michel Serres, Mireille Rosello and Artaud’s theory of “humour-destruction”. The most important findings of this research concern films as a possible replacement for the function of sacrifice (mythic and cruel), the dangers of overestimating this (both because the actors are not fully engaged, and because a myth of cruelty is itself dangerous) but most of all, the possibility of the films to undermine their own mythic status (a process in itself cruel, since myths are consoling) and the possible effect of substituting a state of melancholia. Obviously, the destruction of myths may imply for the audience its replacement by the counter-myth of melancolia, as much cruel. Melancholia appears to be a principle of cruelty, seen by the moviemakers, which acts on the conception of modern spectators. Lucid cruelty takes part in the construction of committed spectators; producing what we may call heroism of conscience.

The 1980s Hollywood teen genre is a topic which has not attracted significant academic interest in the context of doctoral research. Only recently have writers focused on this period in wider scholarly texts, often positioned in relation to other periods of the teen genre, but not extensively concentrating on the 1980s. This research will address what is a lack of detailed analysis of this cinematic era and offer a contribution to knowledge in terms of Hollywood genre cinema. The aim of this thesis is to argue that teen films produced during the 1980s effectively represent youth concerns and the coming-of-age process, for example, in terms of adolescent identity, the different 'roles' the characters play, sexuality, gender, relationships, class issues and the generational divide. These concerns will often resonate with the wider sociopolitical and economic landscape of the Reagan era. The research will investigate these themes in individual films and then go on to analyse them using several films across the generic spectrum to show how the genre achieves a unity and synergy, despite differences in tone and attitude of the films under scrutiny. The films covered herein will be a selection from the subgenres of the 1980s teen films: the teen sex comedies examined were produced during the first half of the decade; the more romantic comedies and dramas were generally made from the mid-1980s onwards. Also scrutinised will be several delinquent teen films. One of the methodologies used to underpin the central argument is related to the structuralist theories and their binary oppositional factors. This will attempt to make sense of the portrayal of a youth culture by exposing its contradictions. This approach will be merged with film genre theories, for instance, in relation to a film's semantic/syntactic axis and the symbolic use of generic sites and iconography. Ideas relating to adolescence and its phases will also form part of the analysis. The principal conclusions from this debate will be that the 1980s teen genre is a topic worthy of rigorous academic interrogation, despite often being critically neglected and sometimes maligned. The genre has the potential to represent and articulate youth cultural concerns and wider societal implications, and the films therein should be considered important media documents.

Having had a time-travel-like experience of witnessing an audience response at a Disney 4D screen performance in 2010 that mirrored that at the fabled screening of L’Arrivée d’un train en gare de la Ciotat in 1895, this thesis argues that there is an inherent quality of time-travel in cinema. This thesis investigates if Film Studies and concepts of time travel can inform one another to create new ideas on film spectatorship. The natural place to start is to study films that feature time-travel narratives. Time travel in films has three key characteristics, each of which is tackled by individual chapters: (1) complicated narrative structures; (2) an aesthetic of repeats; and (3) adherence to a strict cause-and-effect logic. First, this thesis studies narrative structures developing on David Bordwell’s cognitivist work, and, combining with ideas from analytic philosopher Jack W Meiland, continental philosopher Henri Bergson and mathematician Hermann Minkowski, this thesis presents graphical representations of time travel and film narration. Next, the thesis deals with the idea of revisits and repeats, where the Freudian concept of nachträglichkeit (“deferred action”) is useful in trying to understand ‘repeating’ cinematic experiences, such as the knowledge of ‘twist’ endings (à la The Usual Suspects) during repeated viewings. The fact that this thesis uses a psychoanalytic concept to complement a Post-Theory cognitive approach is an attempt to reconcile the dichotomy between the two often antagonistic paradigms. Finally, two opposing systems of thinking, of cause-and-effect and of chance, are pitted against one another; it is then argued that cinema is where these two incompatible logics coexist harmoniously, making cinema a time machine and the spectator a time traveller.

The director Wong Kar-wai has been widely recognized as a key figure in contemporary Hong Kong cinema. His films have been seen through a number of critical lenses: as auteurist artworks (Brunette, 2005); as creative popular cinema (Bordwell, 2000); as highly political texts responding directly to the 1997 handover (Stokes and Hoover, 1999). Rather than focusing on an aesthetic, technical or political (in a narrow sense) interpretation, this thesis, using the approach of textual and contextual analysis, seeks to bring Wong's films into dialogue with contemporary cultural theories about the nature of space, mobility, gender and nostalgia. In this way I hope both to re-position the films within the cultural context to which and of which they speak, and to show the ways in which they also speak to contemporary cultural concerns which far exceed it. Thus my argument is that these are globally significant films because of the paradigmatic nature of the specific Hong Kong culture which they explore, a culture which embodies in heightened form characteristics seen as typifying modern urban experience. In light of Bhabha's theories of post-colonial culture (1994), Abbas' suggestion of Hong Kong culture as indefinable “postculture” (1997), and Rey Chow's analysis of Hong Kong's post-colonial self-writing (1998), this thesis seeks to show how a marginal culture not only survives, but also creates a speaking position for today's global culture through Wong's cinema. The thesis is structured around three major themes, those of mobility, gender construction and nostalgia, all of which are both regionally specific concerns and global issues. Today, we see the dual trends of nationalism and globalization; the former brings exclusivity and the latter brings homogeneity. Wong's films displays the creativity of Hong Kong's post-colonial culture, whose hybridity and ambivalence defy these conservative trends and shed light on the future of global culture.

This thesis explores the early years of the British documentary movement as it formed within the Empire Marketing Board between 1926 and 1933. I begin by offering new insights into this formation by focusing on key institutions that have been under-researched in existing literature. The movement started with government money and resources, in a position formalised by the EMB's use of the Imperial Institute, a Victorian institution with an established history of public education, exhibition and research. Within this official institutional framework the EMB's filmmakers enjoyed an extraordinary level of creative freedom. They were simultaneously embedded within the'alternative' film culture that had developed from the independent screenings of the London Film Society (1925-1939). The Society offered coverage of the art and history of film for the first time in Britain, alongside showcasing a wealth of contemporaneous experimental and avant-Barde fiction and non-fiction work. Drawing on a variety of primary archival sources (some of which have not been previously explored) in the first three chapters I examine how the EMB's film unit developed in a relationship between the Board, the Imperial Institute and the Film Society. This position defined the work they produced, and the style and the content of their films for the EMB. The filmmakers were part of an Imperial discourse that aimed to promote Britain and the British Empire, however they were also engaging with, and contributing to, an international movement of filmmakers and intellectuals who were using documentary film to look closely at contemporary society from new perspectives. The fourth and fifth chapters offer fresh insights into filmmaking at the EMB, with a personal study based on new research into the life and work of Basil Wright. Although he was a central figure at the EMB, his role has remained under-researched. The material I present here offers a new account of the early formation of the documentary movement at the EMB and the original resources that the Board and its filmmakers drew upon.

This thesis provides a critical enquiry into the films of Theo Angelopoulos. Dividing his films into two periods—the one running through the seventies and the other starting with the advent of the eighties—I will examine the representation of history in the first period of Angelopoulos and the metaphor of the journey in his subsequent films. Furthermore, I will trace the development of an aesthetic based on long takes which evokes a particular sense of time in his films. This aesthetic, which is based on the internal rhythm of the shot, inscribes a temporality where past, present, and future coexist in a contemporaneous image. Being free from the requirements of an evolving plot, this image is an autonomous image which allows the passing of time to be felt. Autonomy, which I will define after philosopher Cornelius Castoriadis as an immanent movement towards change, can be also used to describe the process of changing oneself or a given society from within. In exploring the resonances autonomy has, I will make a connection between the social and the cinematic; an attempt which is informed by what Angelopoulos’ films do of their own accord. In this way, I will suggest that Angelopoulos is important not only for the history of film but also for one’s modus vivendi.

This thesis presents the results of a multi-method investigation into how individuals in the film production industry manage their careers using China as a case study. Three rich hypotheses were tested against 14 in-depth interviews with inner-core decision makers and a survey questionnaire to which 119 actors and crew responded. The qualitative analysis confirmed that: (i) social networks provide vital functions for finding jobs in the film industry; (ii) personal reputation is vital for a long-term career in the film industry; and (iii) professional talent is socially determined. The findings present an alternative approach to project-based career theory. Social networks convey information on reputation and talent to facilitate the matching of people to jobs and may substitute for labour market institutions such as casting. The thesis proposes an individual career management model which links the key factors of: academic/training, professional talent, teamwork, social networks, reputation, film project, box office, career longevity, job security, self-development and career satisfaction. The model may be applicable to other countries and also to project-based creative industries.

This project reconsiders the politique des auteurs, especially the genesis, purpose and significance of that critical policy and method for film practice and criticism as conceived by François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Claude Chabrol, Jacques Rivette, Eric Rohmer and others in the pages of Cahiers du Cinéma during the 1950s. The hypothesis that the politique introduced a heuristic method for directorial personal expression is explored. Also considered are: the question of whether the designation auteur is solely within the means and authority of the director, or if the other creative collaborators, in particular the script-writer, might be designated a cinematic auteur, and, how specifically cinematic authorship might be constructed, or individual authorship might be achieved, within the collaborative process of filmmaking.

The lived experience of grief is a universal phenomenon that is both a psychological and embodied experience; it finds expression in varying art forms and is considered in multiple discourses, including psychoanalysis. This project identifies a range of responses to loss and grief and critically reflects on their value and efficacy. Through the use of a phenomenological research process, that results in the production of filmworks, the value of using film as a way of managing and processing loss is considered. The notion of a self-relfexive pilgimage is adopted as a mode of engagement with the liminal experience of grief.

The following study explores the, as-yet largely unexplored question within film studies of a ‘folk cinema’ through research and two practical film projects: the finished dramatic feature Blackbird (2013), and the 4th draft of a script for a dramatic feature in development, False Faces (2016). Drawing from aspects of Scottish folk culture, both films explore different forms of what a rooted, Scotland-based ‘folk cinema’ could be. In addition, the creation of an annual film festival – the Folk Film Gathering – has created a forum in which some of the issues of an emergent folk cinema could be explored with audiences in Scotland. The question of a folk cinema grows increasingly pertinent both globally and locally, particularly within an European cultural landscape where the traditional arts are increasingly resurgent, and upon a global stage where the indigenous peoples movement has led to reevaluations of concepts of tradition, indigeneity and autochthony. My PhD by practice attempts to explore, both theoretically and practically, some of the possible implications of a folk cinema, interlinking local and global contexts. In doing so I have made particular use of aspects of cultural studies and anthropological theory, such as the writing of James Clifford, Faye Ginsburg and Jay Ruby, which I believe to be a relatively untapped critical resource for wider film studies. Whilst opening discussion attempts to consider the question of folk cinema globally, as an issue that may be pertinent for diverse filmmaking traditions in world cinema, my practical filmmaking work is firmly rooted within a contigent and highly-localised attempt to explore such questions within Scotland. In particular, I explore the practical implications of a cinematic pursuit of ‘ethnographic verisimilitude’, and the translation of oral forms into a filmic narrative, whilst questioning the validity of ‘folk cinema’ that arises from ‘etic’ viewpoints, outside a depicted community. Ultimately, consideration of my practical work explores how the theoretical ideals of an emergent folk cinema are negotiated in the more unruly, worldy domain of filmmaking practice and whether, ultimately, an autochthonous Scottish ‘folk cinema’ is possible.