Mineola is a poetic, observational, immersive documentary centered in the town of Mineola, Texas. The film provides an intimate, first person perspective of different locations in the town as well as underlying subversive beliefs and traditions. The film’s authoritative perspective guides the viewer not only in a direction of observation but personal connection to nostalgia of small communities.

This study examines the process of theatrical direction as a communication system. Its components are described in terms of their function as elements of a communication process. The communication activities within the theatrical process are analyzed by means of four categories of theatrical communication networks: conceptual, aesthetic, observational, and social. Theories of communication have been surveyed and then applied to the theatrical process. Particular attention is paid to role functions of the director within the social and the aesthetic networks. The conclusion reached in the study is that the effectiveness of the communication networks used in theatrical directing is determined by the functional roles and the leadership styles adopted by the director as he participates in these networks.

The purpose of this study was to examine the justifications for and production problems of presenting elementary children in public performances.

This written thesis accompanies a sixteen-minute documentary video, Harbor, in which the filmmaker explores her relationship with her father who has suffered a stroke. Detailed accounts of the pre-production, production and post-production of the video allow the reader to understand the challenging and rewarding process of making an autobiographical documentary. Theoretical issues are also discussed, including the validity, criticisms, artistic nature and ethical concerns of autobiographical filmmaking. The filmmaker stresses the universality of her story, and how, despite the film's very personal nature, it is applicable for anyone who has dealt with the illness and/or disability of a parent.

This thesis examines the production process for "Camp, Vamp and Femme Fatale," performed at the University of North Texas in April of 1997. The first chapter applies Henry Jenkins's theory of textual poaching to the authors' and cast's reappropriation of cultural narratives about female vampires. The chapter goes on to survey the narrative, cinematic and critical work on women as vampires. As many of the texts were developed as part of the fantasy role-playing game Vampire: The Masquerade, this chapter also surveys how fantasy role-playing develops unpublished texts that can make fruitful ground for performance studies. The second chapter examines the rehearsal and production process in comparison to the work of Glenda Dickerson and other feminist directors.

Texas Pararnormalists mixes participatory and observational styles in an effort to portray a small community of paranormal practitioners who live and work in and around North Texas. These practitioners include psychics, ghost investigators, and other enthusiasts and seekers of the spirit world. Through the documentation of their combined perspectives, Texas Paranormalists renders a portrait of a community of outsiders with a shared belief system and an unshakeable passion for reaching out into the unknown.

Thesis submitted to the Faculty of Humanities, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in fulfillment of the requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Johannesburg, 2017 / This thesis explores the contribution and significance of Multichoice Nigeria and its Africa Magic channels in the development of the Nigerian film industry. The main objective of the study is an interrogation of the terms of Multichoice contracts with Nollywood content producers as well as a review of the effect of the programmes of Multichoice on content producers. The second key objective is to examine the development impacts of these initiatives on the Nigerian film industry. Semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted with industry practitioners, representatives of the Multichoice and officials of government agencies in Nigeria in addition to analysis of policy documents. The thesis is influenced by critical political economy and the critical media industry studies approach developed by Haves, Lotz and Tinic (2009) whose study of creative and entertainment industries focuses on content producers and cultures of production in media corporations. The study examines Multichoice’s production initiatives as perceived by Nollywood content producers, and provides situated accounts of Nollywood filmmakers’ experiences, encounters, pressures and tensions which undermine Multichoice’s apparent social objectives. It modifies the production culture to the culture of business in the media industry and exposes the need for industry practitioners to engage intellectual property lawyers in their business dealings with Multichoice and other corporate agencies in order to forestall exploitation. While highlighting the complexities, contradictions and ambiguities in the Multichoice-Nollywood relationship, as well as the challenges confronting Nollywood, I argue that contrary to the reservations of the content producers, the industry has benefited from Multichoice in direct and indirect ways. These include improved quality of film production, the increased online presence of Nollywood films, enhancing the local tourism and hospitality industry and promoting professionalism. The study therefore recommends government intervention to address the existing mistrust between Multichoice and Nollywood. The study inspires the “early bird theory” to interpret the Multichoice-Nollywood relationship and experience; studying similar relationships between media corporations and the local film industries in Third World nations. This thesis makes original contribution to knowledge by providing resource material to the scarce literature in critical media industry studies with particular regard to the African film industry. / XL2018

This dissertation is a genealogical study of the intersections between popular cinema, popular religion and politics in South India. It proceeds with a particular focus on the discursive field of Telugu cinema as well as religion and politics in the state of Andhra Pradesh from roughly the 1950s to the 2000s. By discursive field of cinema, I refer to not only filmic texts, but also disciplines of film making, practices of publicity, modes of film criticism as well as practices of viewership all of which are an inalienable part of the institution of cinema. Telugu cinema continued to produce mythological and devotional films based mostly on Hindu myths and legends many decades after they ceased to be major genres in Hindi and many other Indian languages. This was initially seen simply as an example of the insufficiently modernized and secularized nature of the South Indian public, and of the enduring nature of Indian religiosity. However, these films acquired an even greater notoriety later. In 1982, N.T. Rama Rao, a film star who starred in the roles of Hindu gods like Rama and Krishna in many mythologicals set up a political party, contested and won elections, and became the Chief Minister of the state, all in the space of a year. For many political and social commentators this whirlwind success could only be explained by the power of his cinematic image as god and hero! The films thus came to be seen as major contributing factors in the unusual and undesirable alliance between cinema, religion and politics. This dissertation does not seek to refute the links between these different fields; on the contrary it argues that the cinema is a highly influential and popular cultural institution in India and as such plays a very significant role in mediating both popular religion and politics. Hence, we need a fuller critical exploration of the intersections and overlaps between these realms that we normally think ought to exist in independent spheres. This dissertation contributes to such an exploration. A central argument this dissertation makes is about the production of the figure of the citizen-devotee through cinema and other media discourses. Through the use of this hyphenated word, citizen-devotee, this study points to the mutual and fundamental imbrication of the two ideas and concepts. In our times, the citizen and devotee do not and cannot exist as independent figures but necessarily contaminate each other. On the one hand, the citizen-devotee formulation indicates that the citizen ideal is always traversed by, and shot through with other formations of subjectivity that inflect it in significant ways. On the other hand, it points to the incontrovertible fact that in modern liberal democracies, it is impossible to simply be a devotee (bhakta) where one's allegiance is only to a particular faith or mode of being. On the contrary, willingly or unwillingly one is enmeshed in the discourse of rights and duties, subjected to the governance of the state, the politics of identity and the logics of majority and minority and so on. Religion as we know it today is itself the product of an encounter with modern rationalities of power and the modern media. Hence, we cannot simply talk about the citizen or the devotee, but only of the modern hybrid formation, the citizen-devotee. The first full length study of the Telugu mythological and devotional films, this dissertation combines a historical account of Telugu cinema with an anthropology of film making and viewership practices. It draws on film and media theory to foreground the specificity of these technologies and the new kind of publics they create. Anthropological theories of religion, secularism and the formation of embodied and affective subjects are combined with political theories of citizenship and governmentality to complicate our understanding of the overlapping formations of film spectators, citizens and devotees.

This doctoral research comprises a practitioner-based reflective enquiry to bridge the gap between theory and practice and enhance my compositional output. In tandem with the composition of my chamber opera, The Exile, I have undertaken research into characterisation within the context of opera and musical theatre, with a focus on both the delineation of individual characters and the context in which they appear. Parameters of the work are discussed in comparison with canonic works of both opera and music theatre. Contemporary uses of leitmotif, representation of speech and folk music within operatic works are acknowledged and their influence on the composition is presented along with musical examples. The conventional composer-librettist partnership is discussed, along with suggestions for how respective roles for composer and librettist have evolved in recent times. An insight into the collaborative compositional process is presented in the final chapter, as my work with librettist Gillian Pencavel is discussed. The Exile is an original work informed by this research and is a contribution to the repertoire as well as an investigation into many compositional techniques presented in this thesis.

This study examines the infotainment versus social responsibility debate as it applies to local television newscasts in the United States. An overview of the concerns surrounding infotainment as news follows, including a look at a newsroom's traditional responsibilities to its viewers, as well as its current role in adding to parent company profit. Socially responsible hard news and infotainment characteristics are defined as they apply to television news broadcasts, both within the context of news story content and in presentation style. A descriptive content analysis examines these characteristics within the late night local newscasts airing in Portland, Oregon. Portland is a large broadcast news market with over one million potential local news viewers. It is also a community with an exceptionally high rate of civic engagement (Abbott, 2001; Putnam & Feldstein, 2003). Its media coverage of the city, however, has been the subject of criticism by local columnists and national journalism scholars. A socially responsible news product would provide the city's residents with the information needed to continue the trend of participation, community betterment, and overall citizenship knowledge.