In the field of Chinese cinemas studies, transnationalism has increasingly begun to draw attention, especially in studies of Taiwanese cinema. However, research regarding the Taiwanese New Cinema (TNC) has still been mainly focused on its national aspects. Why the TNC has been excluded from general studies of transnational Taiwanese cinema and why it has been largely perceived as a national cinematic movement was the initial motivation of this study. The thesis further sets out to explore the transnational nature of, and its key elements embedded within, Taiwanese cinema, focusing on but not limited to the period 1980-2000. A key research question is whether Taiwanese cinema has 'always' been transnational. By exploring this question, I challenge the trend of national cinema studies in Taiwan and conclude that it is perhaps inadequate to limit the field of inquiry; transnationalism may compensate for the critical gap by providing a broader viewpoint from which to analyse a highly hybridised art form: Chinese cinema(s). The thesis is divided into three chapters; in each one I focus on certain films and directors (including in particular Hou Hsiao-hsien and Ang Lee), foregrounding issues, themes, and contexts of transnationality in these works. Examining Taiwanese cinema through the lens of different periods and stages, the thesis employs concepts ofthe transnational at both theoretical and industrial/social levels in order to tie together periods frequently seen as distinct or separate from each other. By employing transnationalism to study Taiwanese cinema, I attempt to illuminate the fact that even the TNC, a seemingly very national movement, has transnational roots and formative elements. The final case study of Ang Lee and his career trajectory draws upon the claims of entire thesis, tying up theoretical and practical strands to show that Taiwanese cinema is not only leading in its transnational approaches, but in many respects always has been.

Although film music research has been on the rise over the last decade, most research has focused on the Hollywood tradition. An increasing number of projects focusing on film-scoring traditions other than Hollywood are nevertheless beginning to reveal the richness of localised traditions and increase our understanding of the purpose of film music elsewhere. This thesis is a study of music in Taiwan cinema, focusing on the period 1989-2009. After the 1987 lifting of martial law and the 1989 release of HOU Hsiao-hsien's celebrated A City of Sadness, restrictions on cultural production in Taiwan were relaxed and cash from other Chinese-speaking communities as well as European and American companies began to be invested in Taiwan cinema. This influx of foreign capital has combined with the cultures of multiple colonisers to create the heterogeneous approach to filmmaking and the hybrid musical cultures found in Taiwan today. How do all these changes affect our understanding of the relationship between music and moving images in Taiwan cinema? How has music in Taiwan cinema reflected and responded to changes to its internal and external environments? I shall examine these questions from three perspectives. In Part One I briefly summarise the country's cultural history in order to flesh out an argument about the environment in which film musicians were working. I also define important conceptual terms such as Taiwan cinema, Chinese-language cinema, Cultural China, transnational cooperation, and so on. In Part Two I investigate the influences of Chinese aesthetics on music in Taiwan cinema, particularly on HOU Hsiao-hsien's use of silence. In doing so, I suggest that the changing philosophy of silence in HOU's films reflects his response to political and cultural currents over the past two decades. In Part Three I examine music in martial arts films, particularly in Ang 3 LEE's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000). As an important genre in China and the first to gain popularity in the West, martial arts films have long been subject to transnational exchange; to study the role of music and musicality in martial arts films is therefore to gain a useful perspective on the shifting forces that have influenced Taiwan cinema and Chinese-language cinema over several decades. The success of Crouching Tiger has given rise to more frequent transnational exchanges in Taiwan cinema than before. In Part Four, I will examine the music in two more recent films, Cape No. 7 (2008) and Secret (2007), to examine film music's ability to reflect the struggles in today's Taiwanese society to construct its own cultural identity. 4

This thesis examines the film comedies directed by Olga Malea and released between 1997 and 2007 in Greece, in order to make a claim for the study of women’s popular cinema in Greece and beyond. Women’s popular cinema refers to films which are thematically associated with women’s cinema while operating in popular forms, such as genre. Olga Malea and her work make for a useful case study, in that they encapsulate the relationship between these two broad categories of women’s cinema and popular cinema. In addition, this thesis claims that the two categories inflect one another in interesting ways, and their intersections act as a productive framework for the analysis of women’s cinema as popular cinema, effecting a popularisation of usually marginalised themes. The introduction to this work primarily outlines the theoretical frameworks for the argument that follows, namely: women’s cinema and feminist theory; discussions around popular cinema; and considerations about authorship. The concept of national film cultures and its possible meaning in relation to Greece is also alluded to as a contextual factor. Each subsequent chapter advances the argument for women’s popular cinema through close textual analysis of the films in chronological order of their release. In particular, the analysis identifies recurrent strands and motifs in the director’s oeuvre, such as tensions between tradition and modernity, and the pervasive nature of patriarchy in informing national gender discourses. Having established the argument that women’s popular cinema is productive in popularising women’s cinema itself, the thesis concludes that, in the work of Olga Malea, its themes are conceived of, represented and perceived as prominent in the country during the period examined – and one can finally address women’s cinema as popular.

The principal aim of this research is to investigate the role of site, place and location in screendance practice, applying methods and perspectives developed through site-sensitive dance practice to the making and screening of moving image work. Through practical investigation and critical analysis, this research traces a line of attention to questions of place that leads from the three-dimensional, physical space inhabited by artist(s) on location, through the partial, conical space created by the camera, on through that malleable, imagined space the parameters of which are defined in the edit, to the situation and contextualisation of flat screen space within the wider socio-political space of the screening as event. The writing is structured in three parts, gathering the key research questions, explorations and findings of this project around the three key sites where screendance practice 'takes place': on location, in the edit and at the screening. In this way, the structure of this writing intentionally emphasises the proposal inherent in this research, that screendance practice prompts questions around place not only through the activities that occur on location, but also through the exploration and arrangement of this material within editing and screening contexts. Informed by existing and evolving discourses in screendance practice and research, which seek to articulate the variety of modes of interaction between dance and screen media being pursued under the umbrella term 'screendance', the original contribution of this research to ongoing developments and debates in the field is to maintain a tight focus on one highly particular methodology for making and screening screendance, that is, an attention to site, place and location, claiming this as a recognisable and distinctive strand or genre of screendance practice. Through my consideration of the implications of applying site-sensitive, somatic knowledges to the practice of filmmaking, it becomes possible to draw from this intentionally narrow focal point observations pertinent both to the wider field of screendance, and more generally to contemporary choreographic practice, whether it occurs on screen or in the flesh. This submission is presented through practice and in writing: three short films accompany and enrich the following body of text.

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This research examines Italian horror cinema from its origins (1957) until the late 1980s, with particular focus on the productions of three Italian directors: Riccardo Freda, Mario Bava and Dario Argento. My research is divided into two distinct parts: theoretical and analytical. By adopting a variety of theories, which mainly follow three hermeneutic traditions – psychoanalytical (Freud, 1919; Abraham & Torok, 1994), pragmatist (Wiley, 1994) and social interactionist (Collins, 2000, 2004) – the first section of my project aims to outline three distinct phases of the circulation of horror symbols. The second part is devoted to a series of case studies, which function as exemplary illustrations of the elaborated theoretical framework. In order to define the field of analysis, my attention focuses on four thematic discourses: spaces, objects, identities and actions. A critical examination of selected films from Freda, Bava and Argento’s productions delineate the directors’ constant and extensive use of intertextual references to symbols already circulated at a first level. The theoretical framework of this thesis, in conjunction with filmic analysis, will contribute to a more exhaustive understanding of the archaeology of the genre. After establishing that singular theories do not supply sufficient information on genre issues, this study aims to address the gap in critical knowledge, reviewing the potentiality of the Italian horror cinema through a multidisciplinary discourse. An interpretation of the Italian horror genre can only exist in relation to a series of interplays with a multitude of factors. Hence, discussing the genre through filmic and extra-filmic schemes (including editing and marketing processes, censorship and spectatorship issues and intertextual references to external and internal archives of horror), this work acknowledges interactionism as a space of debate, which, encompassing several perspectives at a time (psychoanalytic, pragmatist, sociologic, etc.) allows a dialogic and exhaustive investigation of the Italian horror genre.

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The work focuses on representation of the marginal, drawing a parallel between the politics of representation, and the formal strategies adopted by contemporary filmmakers. Through detailed analysis of particular examples, it attempts to underline the existence of latent messages and of contradictory discourses. Although the study as a whole mentions a large number of movies, each of the chapters centres on a particular film, whilst highlighting a specific aspect of the marginal and its representation in film. The approach is based on the theories and recent debates which characterise much of the contemporary Anglo-Saxon artistic, social and political schools of thought, and which have informed the development of the field of Cultural Studies in particular. These theoretical tools developed in the Anglo-Saxon context are applied to recent trends of film making from France - where these grids of critical analysis have been largely ignored in favour of more formalist approaches, allowing, in conclusion, for a reassessment of some of the recent trends which mark contemporary French Cinema.

This dissertation explores the correlations between planned/constructed urban environments and the depiction of the city in films. The research focuses on the changing image of the socialist city in two broadly conceived modernist periods: the 1920s and the 1960s. Adhering to the methodologies of visual, film and urban studies after the ‘spatial turn’ in the humanities, my thesis charts the interdependency of two fields – urbanism and cinema – in the production of Soviet urban space. The theoretical contributions of my study include: (1) revisiting the theory of dispositif and the subject it produces with regard to the Soviet context; (2) identifying the category of the socialist city symphony as a cinematic sub-genre in the 1920s; (3) re-affirming the productivity of the concept of the ‘thing’ in relation to the cinematography of the 1920s; (4) reconceptualizing utopian impulses and the inherent dialectical movement of the Soviet understanding of technology. This dissertation mirrors the theory of the ‘linear city’ proposed by Nikolai Miliutin in 1930: a scheme for the parallel disposition of industrial and living spaces, which are divided by a green zone along the lines of transport infrastructure. The three parts that form this thesis are accordingly structured around the following conceptual entities: dispositif (philosophical and film theory concepts; its application towards the railway, city and the cinema); living spaces of the socialist city (architectural and screen byt [way of life]); working spaces of the socialist city and the dialectics of technology on the cinema screen. The main findings of my work are: the explication of the affinities between the New Soviet Subject and the production strategies of urbanism and cinema; establishing the stylistic, ideological and rhetorical similarities between the modernisms of the 1920s and 1960s; and analyzing the panoply of utopian impulses embodied in urban and film material which are easily missed if the Soviet experience is only viewed as the cultural production of totalitarianism.