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There are two things that most people know about the ‘video nasties.’ The first is that prior to 1984 the video industry was completely unregulated and the absence of any regulation allowed a space for immoral and disreputable elements of the businesses to thrive. The second is that a series of public complaints about the advertising used to promote the ‘video nasties’ triggered a moral panic that led to introduction of the Video Recordings Act in 1984. Neither of these statements is entirely true, but both have allowed a popular history to persist that continues to hold the independent distributor directly accountable for the events that led to a scheme of government sanctioned censorship that continues to this day. Through exploring the marketing and distribution of the ‘video nasties’, this thesis will challenge this established history and will contextualise the ‘video nasties’ within the emerging landscape of the wider home video industry. Moving beyond the explicitly social readings that have dominated these histories and that have positioned them as an explicitly British concern, this study offers a reading that considers the ‘video nasties’ as part of, and not separate from, a broader global film industry and wider industrial practice. This will be accomplished over three sections. In the first section I will detail the established social history before reconsidering the accuracy of this narrative when it is considered alongside a previously neglected economic and technological history. This context will provide the foundation for the rest of the thesis, providing a basis that reconceptualises the ‘video nasties’ both historically and as part of wider film markets. In the second section I will return to the claims made against the promotional strategies of the early distributors and historicise this type of promotion, tracing a lineage to the ballyhoo of William Castle and the early promotions of P.T Barnum. This will provide context for a study that considers the marketing and branding of both the films and the companies that produced them, following the market through Video, DVD and Blu-ray. The final section documents the evolution of both the product and the marketplace, considering how theoretical constructs arising from film studies can help us understand the marketplace of the ‘video nasties’. The thesis is a revisionist history that reconsiders the birth of the independent video industry in the United Kingdom through the films and distributors that were marginalised and castigated.

This thesis contextualises and historicises the contribution of DreamWorks Animation to the dominant aesthetic of contemporary American feature animation from the early 2000s to the present day. Specifically, it aims to justify the claim that mainstream feature animation has shifted away from hyperrealism and towards a form of ‘narrative-cartoonalism’ predicated on non-visual departures from realism. The thesis introduces this term to counteract the focus on the visual in conceptions of animated realism, and aims to identify the extent to which the DreamWorks studio played a key role in this shift, particularly through its use of intertextuality. Tracing the history of intertextuality in animation from the 1920s to the present day, the thesis looks to establish DreamWorks’ position within this lineage by closely examining the studio’s use of star performances, contemporary music, generic pastiche and allusive comedic gags in its features, and discussing the various diegetic contradictions that result. Ultimately, I intend for this thesis to contribute a crucial approach to understanding one of the key studios working during a hugely significant period of western feature animation, not only illuminating the output of Dreamworks but of this period as a whole. Culturally important yet critically neglected, research into the aesthetics of this modern era is essential to the progression of animation studies.

This thesis aims to be a critical investigation into the representation of bullfighting in the history of Spanish cinema, through the framework of Antonio Gramsci’s concept of cultural hegemony (Gramsci [1929-1935] 2007), including the concept of ‘orientalism’ (Said 1978), and the study of identity in film genre and national cinema. I explore how some dominant cultural elements, such as male virility, ultra-conservative Catholicism and political nationalism, exerted their influence on films about bullfighting throughout history. With a close textual analysis of an extended filmic corpus of cine taurino, which includes fictions and documentaries, popular films and cinéma d’essai, and comparative studies with other national cinemas, I investigate which predominant meanings have been conveyed through visual representations of bulls, bullfighters and bullrings, and how these meanings can find their roots in bullfighting culture itself and in cultural movements of 20th Century Spain. As a brand-new study in the field of Spanish Film Studies, with little literature available, the investigation explores all the three major eras of Spanish film history, which correspond to specific political situations in the Spanish state: - The pre-Franco era (1896-1939), focused on the genesis of the cinematic genre and subgenre and on the controversies about the macro-genre of the filmic españolada in silent films (Navarrete Cardero 2009); - The Francoist dictatorship (1939-1975), focused on the political evolution of bullfighting representation in national cinema as a metaphor for class struggle; - Post-Franco cinema (1975 - 2012), focused on the new wave of filmmakers who portrayed gender reversal in virility, bravery and strength (now conferred to the literal or symbolic matadora), using formal elements of the stereotypical representation of Spanishness.

In this dissertation I explore a number of contemporary science fiction franchises in order to ascertain how the figure of the action heroine has evolved throughout her recent history. There has been a tendency in film criticism to view these strong women as ‘figuratively male’ and therefore not ‘really’ women, which, I argue, is largely due to a reliance on the psychoanalytic paradigms that have dominated feminist film theory since its beginnings. Building on Elisabeth Hills’s work on the character of Ellen Ripley of the Alien series, I explore how notions of ‘becoming’ and the ‘Body without Organs’ proposed by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari can be activated to provide a more positive set of readings of active women on screen. These readings are not limited by discussions of sex or gender, but discuss the body in terms of its increased capacities as it interacts with the world around it. I do not argue for a Deleuzian analysis of cinema as such, because this project is concerned with aspects of representation which did not form part of Deleuze’s philosophy of cinema. Rather I use Deleuze and Guattari’s work to explore alternative ways of reading the active women these franchises present and the benefits they afford. Through these explorations I demonstrate, however, that applying the Deleuzoguattarian ‘method’ is a potentially risky undertaking for feminist theory. Deconstructing notions of ‘being’ and ‘identity’ through the project of becoming may have benefits in terms of addressing ‘woman’ beyond binaristic thought, but it may also have negative consequences. What may be liberating for feminist film theory may be also be destructive. This is because through becoming we destabilise a position from which to address potentially ideologically unsound treatments of women on screen.

This thesis explores representations of landscape in Chilean fiction cinema from 2008 to 2014, through a corpus drawn from the so-called novisimo cine chileno, a generation of young filmmakers who have attracted significant critical attention both within Chile and on international festival and arthouse circuits. The thesis is built on close readings of the selected films within a conceptual framework informed by interdisciplinary perspectives from the developing field of landscape studies. It aims to show how these cinematic landscapes function beyond the limitations of narrative setting or symbolic imagery and are instead represented in ways which capture landscape's processual, experiential and polysemic nature, which in turn throws light on landscape as an approach to a wide range of thematic concerns within these films. It begins by placing the selected corpus within a broader cultural history of the Chilean landscape and maps out the conceptual framework which will be applied and developed through the thesis, considering landscape as experience and process, as well as image. The thesis then sets out the foundations for the thesis' close readings by demonstrating how such a conceptual approach can reveal the inherent tensions of film landscapes - between being inside and outside, contemplation and immersion, proximity and distance - and can also uncover the multisensory and embodied aspects of landscapes on screen, with particular attention to the roles of sound and haptic imagery. In the remainder of the thesis, this approach to landscape is developed through further close analysis of selected films in order to demonstrate how landscape functions in relation to certain thematic concerns - what contact between body and landscape reveals about materiality and mortality, how the cinematic landscape both invites and resists its framing as territory, and how film as a medium has a particular capacity to evoke the multiple temporalities at work within landscape. As a whole, the thesis works to illuminate the aesthetic, formal, narrative and thematic functions of landscape in the chosen films and argues for the usefulness of interdisciplinary conceptual approaches in the study of cinematic landscapes in order to reach a more nuanced understanding of film's representation of the relation of people and place.

The use of leitmotifs in films has often been critiqued. Theodor Adorno and Hanns Eisler went as far as to claim in 1947 that "The whole form language of current cinema music derives from advertising" and that leitmotifs were in part to blame. While I take a more neutral stance, I argue that Eisler and Adorno's critique is partly correct, especially in regards to film series produced from the 1960s onwards. The analytical work undertaken for this research suggests that multiple franchises use elements of their scores as branding tools. I argue that these melodies, which have often been referred to as leitmotifs in film music scholarship, should be described as something else: title tunes. It seems that over time, they come to represent not just one or two movies, but entire franchises. They also appear to possess a marketing value not necessarily present in leitmotifs. As such, I would argue these title tunes resemble much more sonic logos as described in the sonic branding world than leitmotifs. This thesis is an exploration of title tunes. My thesis focuses primarily on mainstream Hollywood film franchises from the 1960s onwards. Various case studies from different time periods and different movie genres are analysed to describe and understand this new category of promotional film music. This thesis first takes a historical look at the concept of title tunes, explaining how other sonic branding practices used in radio, television and cinema appear to have influenced the creation of title tunes. From the sample of films analysed for this thesis, I argue that title tunes share commonalities, yet the commonalities seem to vary slightly across movie genres. The analyses undertaken also suggest that title tunes are dynamic entities, that some title tunes are more complex than others (featuring multiple components), and that some franchises can feature more than one title tune. My interpretation of the data also suggests that these title tunes are used as emotional and nostalgic tools and that specific orchestrations and arrangements might carry additional emotional power. While the majority of this thesis explores the use of title tunes in films, their use in trailers and other commodities is discussed. Finally, I suggest how title tunes might change in the future and why certain franchises have omitted using such recurring motifs.

Freie Univ., Habil.-Schr.--Berlin, 2007.

This thesis has two interrelated research objectives. First, to understand the circulation of Chinese cinema in Britain through the cultural authorities and gatekeepers responsible for the canonisation of international film. Second, to use Chinese-language films as case studies through which to deconstruct and better understand the mechanisms that make up British film cultures and their tastemaking practices. English-language Chinese film studies has long been preoccupied with the semantic issue of how to define such a loaded and diverse concept as “Chinese cinema”, with investigations generally focusing on film form and production contexts. This thesis extends these studies to include considerations of the role played by film circulation, to observe how the parameters of these analyses and the films of their focus are defined in the first instance. This thesis traces the lineage of Chinese cinema as it has appeared in Britain's film cultures from 1954 through to 2014 when this project began. Taking emblematic moments of this history as case studies to anchor the investigation, each chapter contextualises the cultures into which Chinese-language films arrived. Using the sociological theories of Pierre Bourdieu and others, these investigations note how, in addition to their negotiation of international trends, domestic skirmishes for cultural authority within Britain have had significant effects on the perceived value of Chinese cinema. This thesis considers the various social, cultural, and class contexts that support Britain's key tastemakers in the circulation of Chinese cinema. It shows not only the ways modes of evaluation and film availability are cultivated through these contexts, but that the activities therein result also from, and curate, assumptions toward Chinese as a cultural, political and ethnic signifier. Those commanding the discourse around Chinese cinema in Britain have done so with conceptions about Chineseness that result from and contribute to domestic conflicts of taste, class and social standing. The inevitable intersections between film tastes and cultural assumptions have worked to curate a parochial definition of Chinese cinema that prioritises certain kinds of films at the expense of others, dependent more on the idiosyncrasies of British film cultures than the activities of Chinese film industries.

A partire dagli anni Venti, in Italia come all'estero, iniziano a diffondersi nuovi dispositivi tecnologici per la produzione e la visione di film amatoriali. Analizzando dieci collezioni italiane di film privati e film di famiglia, realizzati da alcuni cineamatori tra il 1926 e il 1942, la ricerca si focalizza sia sui codici linguistici della rappresentazione, sia sulle pratiche sociali di realizzazione e fruizione di tali film. In particolare, lo studio della cinematografia amatoriale come pratica culturale di conservazione della memoria privata consente di aprire alcuni percorsi di ricerca, dal punto di vista teorico e semiotico. In questo senso, il concetto di memoria filmica si pone come asse di intersezione tra una problematizzazione storiografica di un settore degli studi cinematografici, che solo recentemente ha coinvolto gli studiosi, e una riflessione teorica sui processi di elaborazione di una memoria intima e familiare, che si imprime sulla pellicola cinematografica. / In Italy as abroad, the Twenties saw the establishment of new technological devices for the production and vision of amateur films. Analysing ten Italian collections of private films and home movies, made by cine-amateurs between 1926 and 1942, my research examines both the linguistic codes of representation and the social practise of realisation and reception of these films. In particular, it addresses amateur cinematography as a cultural practise of conservation of private memory. Following both a theoretical and semiotic approach, I use the concept of filmic memory as THE intersection for this new historiography. In this sense, I am establishing a new field of cinematic research, whilst offering a theoretical reflection upon the inscription of the intimate and familiar memory into film.