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The film "Brokeback Mountain" was released in December of 2005 into mainstream theaters and to general audiences. Director Ang Lee, screenwriters Diana Ossana and Larry McMurtry, and actors Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal made this film in which the storyline revolves around two men falling in love and how this forbidden love would affect the rest of their lives. The shock of having a film with two men kissing and having sex in the theaters seemed to have struck a nerve with many viewers. Some were very positive, hailing the film as a new step in mainstream films to show a queer relationship, others were negative, criticizing the film even at times condemning what was shown on the screen. The impact of the film made debate and conversations about queer content available to a public forum, in this case newspapers from around the country.

PhD. theis is based on a meda nalzsis of a film space by Frederick Kiesler from 1929.

The late nineteenth century and early twentieth century were an important period for popular shows involving the moving and projected image, yet there have been few sustained studies that have mapped optical entertainments systematically outside London or that have analysed the influence of such shows on early film exhibition. This thesis has profiled the popular and visual culture of five contrasting South West locations during this period, tracing the development and distribution of magic lantern shows and dioramas as well as identifying the local and touring companies who hosted film on its arrival in the region. Using the local press, the trade press, contemporary publications and ephemera, this thesis has reconstructed an account of local shows and culture which not only deepens our understanding of popular visual entertainments in regional contexts, but which also serves to stand as a comparison to other established urban and metropolitan paradigms and thus to contribute to a wider and more complex national picture. It advances the argument for a broader classification of such shows in response to local findings and for a more nuanced and detailed appraisal and understanding of their provenance and profiles, and the role film played within them. In addition, this thesis interrogates early film exhibition in these resorts following the move to fixed-venue cinemas in the late 1900s and investigates the arrival of cinema and its emergence as a fledgling industry in the region. It offers an overview of investment into the business locally and evidences the varied set of partnerships and individuals responsible for financing the first cinemas here. Responses to the new technologies and local modifications to business models for cinemas and film exhibition are analysed and their diversity examined. Managerial relationships with communities are evidenced as an important contributory factor to the success of many local cinemas, permitting adaptations to the needs of patrons which boosted audiences and increased revenue. The variety of local interpretations of cinema discovered here reflects the social and cultural diversity of these selected sites, and is a key finding of this thesis.

This thesis examines the way in which imponderable problems are mediated in the everyday work of commercial film production in Egypt. By 'imponderable problem', I mean a working problem encountered in an extended production process whereby the individual worker, in the present, cannot account for all courses of action leading onto the process's expected outcome. I argue that workers in film production can never entirely solve this kind of problem: they 'mediate' it. They rely on various assumptions and material mediators to break this overall imponderability into a series of contingent tasks, thereby modifying the expected outcome. I situate this mediation in the wider context of the contemporary Egyptian film industry, with its interpersonal mode of interaction, its labor hierarchy, its socio-technical process of production, and its technological implements. This thesis analyzes three imponderable problems in particular: how to coordinate a shooting day; how to visualize the film; and how to anticipate the audience's composition and reaction. The overall argument is situated within media anthropology, where media production tends to be examined as a 'social' phenomenon inscribed on an invisible technological substratum, without exploring the material implications of everyday technological objects in a temporally extended process of production. This literature, moreover, tends to be inattentive to the gap between the way in which the film unfolds and the way in which social agents involved in its making anticipate this unfolding. This thesis, by contrast, considers how Egyptian filmmakers try to anticipate the future of their activity. In addition to being an ethnographic account of the Egyptian film industry, this thesis contributes to the anthropological literature on media production by exploring how workers concretely mediate between the present and the near-/far-future.

Konferenzbeitrag zum Anglistentag 2010 Saarbrücken

Independent documentary films in contemporary China articulate a vision of Chinese politics and society that deviates from official state discourse. This thesis explores how China’s New Documentary Movement (NDM) – a spontaneous, independent phenomenon in Chinese cinema – serves as an important arena to study state and society struggles in the aftermath of the post-Mao reforms. This study first explores the politicalization of Chinese national cinema to demonstrate how the degree of control exerted over filmmaking and the documentary genre functions as a useful indicator of Chinese state-society relations. Focusing on the contentious issue of land disputes and rural rightful resistance in two documentaries – Feng Yan’s "Bing Ai" as well as Zhang Ke and Dong Yu’s "Where is the Way" – it contrasts the lived reality of displaced peasants to the official rhetoric disseminated in the state media. Also discussed is the state’s response to the NDM and its implications for greater societal autonomy in contemporary China.

Independent documentary films in contemporary China articulate a vision of Chinese politics and society that deviates from official state discourse. This thesis explores how China’s New Documentary Movement (NDM) – a spontaneous, independent phenomenon in Chinese cinema – serves as an important arena to study state and society struggles in the aftermath of the post-Mao reforms. This study first explores the politicalization of Chinese national cinema to demonstrate how the degree of control exerted over filmmaking and the documentary genre functions as a useful indicator of Chinese state-society relations. Focusing on the contentious issue of land disputes and rural rightful resistance in two documentaries – Feng Yan’s "Bing Ai" as well as Zhang Ke and Dong Yu’s "Where is the Way" – it contrasts the lived reality of displaced peasants to the official rhetoric disseminated in the state media. Also discussed is the state’s response to the NDM and its implications for greater societal autonomy in contemporary China.