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In recent years Palestinian cinema is evidently growing, as more films emerge from diverse sites of production: the Palestinian Authority, the different Palestinian diasporas and inside Israel. While scholars have often discussed Palestinian cinema without necessarily differentiating between the various sites of production, this thesis offers an in-depth analysis of Palestinian filmmaking inside Israel by Palestinians citizens of Israel. It addresses a lacuna in the research of Palestinian cinema by examining in detail the context of production of Palestinian films within the Israeli film industry, outlining the structural conditions and the discursive environment within which Palestinian filmmakers in Israel work. Moreover, through a close reading of key films, and references to others, this thesis identifies shared thematic characteristics of this body of work, and discusses the ways in which the films relate to both the Zionist and the Palestinian national discourses. Broadly, my analysis shows that while as with Palestinian cinema at large the films discussed in this thesis engage with issues of history, space and resistance they are nuanced in ways which relate to the specific circumstances of Palestinians in Israel. Concerns of ‘belonging’ and identity consume much of the films’ production and distribution processes as well as their thematic focus. Their production within Israel problematises the categories of both Israeli and Palestinian cinemas as ‘national’ cinemas, since their hybridity on the one hand exposes the ambivalence of the Zionist discourse and disturbs notions of Palestinian national resistance on the other. Thematically, many of the films’ narratives, especially of the younger generation, feature processes of ‘becoming’, as the films’ subjects search for places of belonging and identity positions. In so doing, the films often functioned as ‘sites’ through which conflicting discourses of identity, culture and politics were negotiated. In the films, and through the process of making the films, the filmmakers examined, scrutinized and often positioned themselves in relation to dominant Palestinian and Israeli/Zionist discourses, within the wider cultural trajectories of East and West.

Once criticised as ‘seemingly’ oblivious of the political and historical concerns of the state (Osofisan, 2007; Adesokan, 2009b; Alamu, 2010; Okome, 2010; Mistry & Ellapen, 2013), some southern Nigerian filmmakers have begun reversing such critical narratives through negotiated images of the country’s political history. In spite of that, academic attention to such videos remains on the margins of textual or isolated audience analyses. This research questions the motivations, narrative techniques, underlying ideologies and reception of video films that construct Nigeria’s political past between 1967 and 1998, two significant moments in the country’s postcolonial history. This is achieved through contextual and post-structuralist readings of the films as popular art as well as semi-structured interviews of filmmakers and film journalists. The study found that historicizing an ethnically-diverse postcolonial state such as Nigeria through the agency of film is fraught with potential dangers, most of which cannot be mitigated by the filmmakers. Each stage of the production/consumption process is compounded by societal factors including filmmaker’s background, finance, audience and censorship. Also evident from the findings is that popular Nigerian videos sustain and subvert the dominant narratives on popular arts to gain economic advantage. Whereas some filmmakers endorse politicians’ practices, others subvert authoritarian regimes through metaphoric filmic codes (negotiated images) intelligible to audiences and deployed by the producers in order to circumvent censorship. Interrogating film journalists in addition to filmmakers served as an antidote to film producers’ self-reporting. By examining the reception of films through the lens of journalists, this study makes no generalisable claims on audiences, but delivers an original methodological approach to understanding films made in the past, about the past. Thus, the study proposes opening up the methodological approaches to Nollywood to accommodate film texts, producers and audiences rather than lone textual analyses that silence creators and consumers.

This PhD by publication examines selected practice-based audio-visual works made by the author over a ten-year period, placing them in a critical context. Central to the publications, and the focus of the thesis, is an exploration of the role of sound in the creation of dialectic tension between the audio, the visual and the audience. By first analysing a number of texts (films/videos and key writings) the thesis locates the principal issues and debates around the use of audio in artists’ moving image practice. From this it is argued that asynchronism, first advocated in 1929 by Pudovkin as a response to the advent of synchronised sound, can be used to articulate audio-visual relationships. Central to asynchronism’s application in this paper is a recognition of the propensity for sound and image to adhere, and in visual music for there to be a literal equation of audio with the visual, often married with a quest for the synaesthetic. These elements can either be used in an illusionist fashion, or employed as part of an anti-illusionist strategy for realising dialectic. Using this as a theoretical basis, the paper examines how the publications implement asynchronism, including digital mapping to facilitate innovative reciprocal sound and image combinations, and the asynchronous use of ‘found sound’ from a range of online sources to reframe the moving image. The synthesis of publications and practice demonstrates that asynchronism can both underpin the creation of dialectic, and be an integral component in an audio-visual anti-illusionist methodology.

Bernardo Bertolucci continues to be regarded as one of the most talented Italian filmmakers, and although his work has provoked controversy, his films have allowed him to enjoy an international reputation as a cinematic auteur. Critical assessments of his cinematic oenvre have tended to centre on two main perspectives: political readings of the content and style of his films which characterizes much Italian scholarship and the psychoanalytical interpretations of his work that have emerged from American academia since the 1970s. The present study proposes a different approach to Bertolucci's films, partly in terms of its scope - analysing each of the director's full-length fiction releases up to / sognatorilThe Dreamers (2003) - and partly in terms of its theoretical viewpoint, which is based on affective and cognitive theory, a transnational branch of film studies that has become influential since the mid-1990s. The project focuses on identifiable uses of the camera, music, mise-en-scene and narrative structure in his films, tracing common denominators and evolutions in his work since the early 1960s, and contexrualizing these filmic mechanisms within affective and cognitive theory. In particular this study outlines the way in which the earlier phase of Bertolucci's film-making is not bereft of emotional tonalities, whereas his later work, which is increasingly tailored to a viewing public wanting to be captivated by the filmic spectacle, still preserves certain aesthetic and intellectual elements of art cinema. These are identified in the presence of complex narrations demanding an active cognitive involvement on the part of viewers, and in films with emotion structures which, rather than being predicated on close viewer identification with characters, privilege the creation of moods ranging from melancholy to estrangement.

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Joseph E. Levine has been largely neglected by Film Studies, yet he was a uniquely important figure in the US film industry during his lifetime. As an independent producer, distributor and promoter, Levine's influence on the post-War cinematic landscape of the US was wide-ranging and profound. His versatility and multifariousness were unsurpassed during his lifetime and analysis of his abilities, strategies and influence complicates many areas of current film scholarship. Levine was a very prominent figure in the popular press where he was perceived as a master showman. His prominence and hyperbolic style undermines the traditional understanding of the cultural intermediary, a role usually associated with discretion. Levine's conspicuousness led to him becoming an easily identifiable public figure yet, due to his varied output, he resists the notions of branding that are often associated with prominent figures in the film industry. Studies of reputation building strategies are often closely aligned to critical approval, yet Levine never courted critical favour. Although Levine's output catered for many niche tastes, his public image was unabashedly populist. He would, however, utilise the critical adulation bestowed on others to bolster his own reputation as a supporter of talent, providing an ideal case study for the complex political interactions of reputational assessment. As a pioneer of industrial strategy and practice, Levine was hugely influential. He pioneered saturation publicity and opening tactics and was an early advocator of the use of television in movie marketing, and therein he represents a vital missing link in the evolution of blockbuster marketing techniques. He was similarly influential regarding the marketing and distribution of art cinema and, in the 1960s and 1970s, he helped to redefine the role of the independent producer. All these factors combine to make Levine an ideal vantage point for surveying cultural and filmic mores of the post-War US. His career was one of extraordinary contradictions and complexities. An analysis of his career provides a deepening of understanding of film historiography of this era and calls into question many commonly held scholarly assumptions regarding taste cultures, cultural boundaries and the supposed demarcation between independent and major studio film production.

The central aim of this thesis is to examine five of Norma Shearer's pre-Code films - all made between 1930 and 1934 - and to place these films and their accompanying fan magazine rhetoric into a wider context, both within Shearer's career and within Hollywood history. It does this for two reasons. Firstly, it hopes to problematise the now commonly held view of Shearer as a noble, respectable, but ultimately rather dull star by demonstrating the ways in which these films allowed her to become an active advocate for a particular brand of often sexually transgressive modernity, in which she embraced consumer and leisure culture, female employment, companionate marriage and even the sexual single standard. Secondly, the thesis examines the fan magazine rhetoric on the star alongside these films and shows how her successful and happy marriage to MGM Head of Production Irving G. Thalberg served to strengthen, rather than soften, her position as a quintessential modern both on and off screen. After all, the marriage, in which Shearer and Thalberg were professional as well as romantic partners, allowed Shearer to promote a certain kind of companionate marriage, complete with mutual professional satisfaction, successful parenthood, and sexual compatibility. At the height of her fame, Shearer was the star who demonstrated to her female fans that a woman, in the brave new world of the early 20th century, should be able to have it all. Finally, then, the thesis examines how Shearer's ultra-modern reputation came to an end in the mid-1930s, and attributes this development primarily to two influences, one historical and one biographical. Firstly, in July 1934, the Hays Production Code was enforced; particularly targeting female sexual transgression on screen, this censorship text would make it virtually impossible for Shearer to make the types of films she had become most famous for. Secondly, then, in September 1936, Shearer's husband's premature death ensured that the star, who had previously been characterised as a modern wife, now became identified as a tragic, aristocratic, noble widow. Since her films no longer allowed her to develop an alternative persona, this is how Shearer remained known after her retirement, after her death, and to this day.