Drawing from Michel de Certeau’s notion of the production of space as a practice, this dissertation examines the production of space in Pang Ho-Cheung’s Love in a Puff (2010) and Love in the Buff (2012) in three aspects: 1) smoking in daily life, 2) Hong Kong-mainland co-productions in the film industry, and 3) the affective space produced in “non-place.” First, in Love in a Puff, the spatial practice of smokers smoking in back alleys produces a space for them to deflect the power of Hong Kong’s Smoking Ordinance, which can be interpreted as a form of victory of ordinary people over an oppressive system. This mode of resistance can be read allegorically as a tactic of Hong Kong filmmakers working in the space of co-production between Hong Kong and Mainland China, as illustrated by an analysis of the film Love in the Buff. Third, both films are set in globalized urban cities that are full of “non-places” of consumption and transportation. This “non-place”ful space of ambivalence and detachment is in juxtaposition with the protagonists’ practice to develop relationships, generate emotions and resolve their interpersonal problems. Space production opens up alternative ways to understand the world and our daily life. This dissertation attempts to offer an interpretation of the two films in light of de Certeau’s spatial theories. / published_or_final_version / Literary and Cultural Studies / Master / Master of Arts

In the past decade, Ann Hui as a well-known filmmaker has produced several films concerning women in their middle and older age. My research examines two of her films, The Postmodern Life of My Aunt(2006)and All About Love(2010). By carefully reading and analyzing the two texts, my research reveal show Chinese middle-aged women construct their gender identities and develop their visions of home in Shanghai and Hong Kong respectively. It focuses on how this group of women experience inner and social contradictions in the process of establishing individual subjectivities as well as how they deal with tensions and difficulties in the domestic sphere. I argue that the two films represent middle-aged females’ fractured identities and their intense struggles between individual desires and domestic obligations. They have created alternative meanings for femininity and home, subverting the traditional image of women as dutiful wives and mothers as well as the romanticized vision of home as a haven for security and comfort. Moreover, the ambivalence and multiplicity of meanings in the two texts may lead us to reflect upon the complexity of middle-aged women’s lived experiences amidst unrelenting economic development and confining social norms. By studying Ann Hui’s cinematic representation of aging women’s lives, it is significant for us to explore possible ways for females to challenge conventional gender roles, to create new meanings of home, as well as to realize gender equality and sexual diversity in society. / published_or_final_version / Literary and Cultural Studies / Master / Master of Arts

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This thesis conducts a study of stardom in contemporary Hollywood cinema through the conceptual models offered by political economy and performance analysis. It suggests that a fuller understanding of the meaning of star texts involves a consideration of industry, of performance, and of interpretative frameworks adopted by audiences. The thesis is structured in two sections: the first examines the political economy of stardom in contemporary Hollywood, presenting an evaluation of industrial changes over the last forty years. The following section builds upon this analysis, focusing on issues of performance and stardom. In Section One, Chapter Two examines stars as both a form of labour and capital, and assesses the extent to which the contemporary freelancing star is able to exploit his or her star image under the package-unit mode of production in Hollywood. It examines how contemporary stars have gained substantial power through the publicity value they accumulate, and argues that their importance to the industry has been underestimated in existing research. It argues that the shift from production as a major activity towards licensing, distribution, and ancillary markets has changed the function of stars in the industry. The importance of the Screen Actors Guild and talent agencies is used as an example of the reconfiguration of this relationship. Chapter Three outlines theories of post-Fordism and considers whether they are able to explain the function of stars in contemporary Hollywood?s mode of production. Turning to questions of property rights, it suggests that the recognition in US law of the right of publicity, and the rise of flexible contracting, had the effect of conferring industrial power on stars. In doing so, it argues that the power of stars was consolidated by the flexible package-unit mode of production and the legal recognition of the right of publicity in US law.

In the field of Greek film studies, the 1960's are widely seen as the heyday of the 'Old Greek Cinema' (PEK), while the binary model 'Old/mainstream' versus 'New/artistic' still dominates historical, theoretical and critical discourse on Greek film. The contribution of this thesis is that, on the one hand, it considers the 1960s under the light of the rise of 'New Greek Cinema' (NEK) and, on the other, complicates the relationship of PEK and NEK by focusing on the culture surrounding Greek cinema of the time and by exploring the continuities and interrelations between the 'Old' and the 'New'. Particular emphasis is given to the debates about 'quality' national cinema, including issues of realism, Greekness' and 'popular authenticity', the crucial contribution of state policies and institutions such as the 'Week of the Greek Cinema' in Thessaloniki and cine clubs, the establishment of international art film in the domestic market, and the emergence of a young generation of film critics and cinephiles who promoted the idea of an indigenous art-house film culture. This thesis highlights also the 'Old Greek Cinema's' attempts to raise the cultural status of commercial film and address international audiences and its subsequent openness to formal, thematic and artistic experimentation normally associated with NEK. The rise of history as a thematic concern of Greek cinema of the 1960s is another main focus of this thesis, which attempts to reveal how the Civil-War trauma, and oppositional historical perspectives (typically associated with NEK) found way in disguised forms in the narratives of mainstream films. Finally, through a close examination of the thematic and stylistic concerns of short films made in the 1960s (which include the early works of some of the major NEK figures) it demonstrates the continuity between the cinematic developments of the 1960s and the 1970s.

This project sets out to scrutinize three decades of feature length fiction films about the British Empire produced by American and British filmmakers beginning in the 1930s through to the end of the 1950s. It compares British and American film in these three decades because such a comparative study has yet to be done and situating such a study within the changing historical contexts is important to chart shifting patterns in filmmaking in these two cultures. Focusing on film narratives that favour sites of modern colonial conflict as setting, namely India, the African colonies and Ireland, the project will chart how American and British filmmakers started from significantly different positions regarding the British imperial project but came to share increasing homogeneity of approach during and after the Second World War. This thesis shows that the relationship of American and British filmmakers to the British Empire changed dramatically after the Second World War and followed political developments. The new special relationship which grew strong after the war had far reaching consequences to the colonial and former colonial nations: the way in which American and British filmmakers portrayed this transition has important implications within film history.

This thesis considers the role of spectacle in two modes of filmmaking in the French and American 'classical' cinemas of the 1930s. I examine the relationship of spectacle to the emotions and drama of musical films, and to the 'history-telling' of biopics, war films and other genres of historical cinema. One reason for the comparison is the hegemonic position of classical Hollywood cinema in film scholarship. Although I am respectful of the insights offered by the concept of a 'classical' cinema, a more central motivation for this study is the failure of much criticism to account for the relationship of spectacle to a concept denoting an unobtrusive, self-effacing style. An introduction is followed by a chapter surveying key literature in the field, focusing in particular on work on classical French and American cinema, cinematic spectacle and filmic, particularly generic, categories. The second chapter is divided roughly in two. The first half examines the various theatrical roots of French and American musical films of the thirties. The second half examines the 'utopian' feelings (Dyer, ([1977] 1992) musical spectacle serves. This division uncovers the greater ambivalence of French musical films, and their more circuitous approach to spectacle. Chapter three examines historical films through categories inspired by the work of Friedrich Nietzsche ([1874] 1983). I examine the prevailing 'monumental' approach to historical subjects, but also two key varieties of spectacle: the 'spectacular vista' and the 'decor of history'. I conclude by reflecting on the possibility of a critical historiography within French and American film of the thirties. Though the balance of my attention favours French examples in the chapter on musical films, my intention throughout is to compare and, where fruitful, contrast the two national cinemas. The thesis develops theoretical but, even more, practical understandings of particular kinds of spectacle; they are susceptible of the practice of close textual analysis. This is my central method of investigation. I attempt, throughout, to place the examination of films within their wider historical, industrial and critical contexts.

This thesis analyses individual 3D texts to explore how stereography inflects the representational strategies synonymous with the various modes of cinema to which it suggests that those films are indebted. It argues that the stereoscopic spectacles of emergence and deep stereospace can be integrated into a narrative. The thesis represents an original contribution to knowledge in demonstrating that stereography can be understood as another element of mise-en-scène contributing to meaning construction in those specific films studied. The literature review considers film theory’s understanding of how the spectator’s ‘participation’ has been inflected by previous technological alterations to the cinematic image’s width and depth and the extent to which 3D has been read as an expressive element. Four case studies, each of a different contemporary stereoscopic film belonging to a different cinematic tradition, then demonstrate how that tradition is stereographically re-inflected towards expressive ends. Avatar (James Cameron, 2009) demonstrates that 3D works alongside the continuity style of the contemporary spectacular blockbuster, renegotiating its relationship to the spectator, encouraging engagement with narrative themes. Jackass 3D’s (Jeff Tremaine, 2010) stereography accentuates the ‘vaudeville aesthetic’ discernible in slapstick comedy and emphasises an exploitation of the frame similar to that found in the cinema of Buster Keaton. It argues that 3D enables an inclusion of the spectator within a carnivalesque narrative of camaraderie. Step Up 3D (Jon M. Chu) demonstrates how 3D reinforces the utopian participation of the audience typical of the Hollywood musical, to which it is indebted. The Hole in 3D (Joe Dante, 2009), re-inflects representational strategies synonymous with horror cinema to articulate a narrative about violence whose meaning construction is dependent upon a stereographically-embodied spectator. This thesis, then, argues for a more sensitive understanding of 3D’s expressive potential than has largely been the case by demonstrating how that understanding might be reached.

My doctoral thesis conducts an analysis of post-imperial Paris and London, as represented in the cinema. More specifically, this study develops a narrative of the intimate connection between the cinema and the city that parts ways from the founding story of the filmic city, which revolves around the birth of the modern metropolis and mobilities of the flâneur. This thesis engages in the exploration of the largely untold story of the relationship between empire and the cinematic city in Michael Haneke’s Code inconnu (2000) and Caché (2005), Claire Denis’ J’ai pas sommeil (1994) Stephen Frears’ Dirty Pretty Things (2002), Michael Winterbottom’s In This World (2002) and Tony Gatlif’s Exils (2004). This study investigates the lingering traces of imperial histories, spatialities, narratives and figures that can be located in more contemporary cinema. The first chapter of the dissertation entitled ‘Post-Imperial Paris’ is divided into two sections. The first investigates the construction of ‘post-imperial topographies’ in J’ai pas sommeil and Code inconnu, while the second posits dwelling spaces and their interiors as a form of city space specifically in relation to Caché. The second chapter, called ‘Post-Imperial London’, situates Dirty Pretty Things within a wider historical continuum of ‘migrant London’. This film is examined in relation to filmic depictions of Caribbean migration and settlement, in order to ascertain the way in which an older historical imaginary of the cinematic London can be detected in Dirty Pretty Things but also some of the salient differences between this film and its predecessors as related to the representation of space and place. The final chapter, titled ‘On the Road: The Journey to the City Narrative’ posits another narrative of the cinematic city concerning the depiction of migrant journeys to the city as represented in In This World and Exils.

Whilst the prominence of the sequel in contemporary American cinema is inarguable, little attempt has been made to identify its formal characteristics or to provide a comprehensive account of its historical development over the past century. Offering a corrective to this oversight, this thesis addresses three key research questions: what are the formal characteristics of the sequel in all its variations in American cinema?; to what extent have these formal characteristics changed over time?; and how are these changes related to the shifts in the economic and industrial structures of the American film industry? Drawing on a wide range of sources, the first four chapters trace the historical development of the sequel, from silent era features such as The Son of Sheik (1926) through to contemporary franchises. Building upon this historical context, the second half of the thesis is dedicated to an examination of the Hollywood sequel’s formal characteristics. Initially concerned with the manner in which the sequel form differs from and challenges the notions of closure which inform the Classical Hollywood paradigm, these chapters progress to a consideration of the dynamic between genre, stars, character and narrative as it plays out in sequels ranging from Bride Of Frankenstein (1935) to Rooster Cogburn (1975) and Rambo (2008). In placing equal emphasis on history and aesthetics, the thesis ultimately aims to both develop a typology of the sequel form, and to build a more complete picture of the many ways in which Hollywood has sought to repeat its previous successes, the historically specific conditions which have governed these repetitions, and the compositional norms which have resulted.