This book tells inspirational stories of women who have worked with and within communities to bring stories to life through screenwriting. As such the book evidences that women’s work is important; that ‘films can change lives’. The collection divides the chapters according to worlds, in recognition of the fact that though we live on one planet, the conditions of existence are vastly different between first and third worlds; between the wealthiest and the poorest.



Each chapter shows how attitudes have shifted, policies have been rewritten, and life experiences and horizons have been altered for specific communities through these instances of screenwriting. The themes touched upon include gender, race, disability, culture, war, colonization, labour relations, political ideologies, to name a few. The parallels found amongst these themes across national, religious and cultural divides, are also telling. The book is wide in its scope, considering screenwriting a skill which can apply to games, social media, music videos, virtual reality … in fact, any of the burgeoning formats alive on our devices and through constantly evolving platforms. All are considered screenwriting.



The book is a celebration of the female writers who have told screen stories that educate and heal.



The book suits readers across disciplines, including screenwriting, filmmaking, women’s studies, history, sociology, and many other areas.

The annual Beijing Film Academy Yearbook highlights the best academic debates, discussions and research from the previous year, as previously published in the highly prestigious Journal of Beijing Film Academy. This volume brings together specially selected articles, appearing for the first time in English, to bridge the gap in cross-cultural research in cinema and media studies.

The book is the latest in the Intellect China Library series to produce work by Chinese scholars that has not previously been available to English language academia. Covering the subjects of film studies, visual arts, performing arts, media and cultural studies, the series aims to foster intellectual debate and to promote closer cross-cultural intellectual exchanges by introducing important works of Chinese scholarship to readers.

This book examines film reviewing and screenwriting as key sites of cultural mediation, providing new insights on the relationship between criticism and reviewing, as well as the way reviewers handle concepts of story, dialogue, and narrative.



Drawing on the work of Pierre Bourdieu on the cultural field, and his theory of taste, the book provides an assessment of the place of film reviewing in contemporary screen culture. The book analyses a case study comprised of ten years of television scripts of the Australian film reviewing programme, At the Movies (2004–2014). Hosted by two of Australia’s most eminent film critics, Margaret Pomeranz and David Stratton, for over two decades, this study of At the Movies provides a unique window into film reviewing, movie consumption, and wider cultural attitudes in this period of Australian cultural history. It examines the programme’s cultural significance, and the contribution of Margaret and David to screen culture.



This book makes a significant contribution to an under-studied area of media studies (the review), screenwriting research through the analysis of broadcast scripts, and cultural studies through the study of an important television programme.

Nigeria is one of the nations in which same-sex relations are still criminalized. Reflecting this sociopolitical and cultural context, Nollywood, Nigeria’s film industry, has traditionally portrayed homosexual characters in largely villainous roles. However, the industry seems to have undergone shifts from staunch heteronormative narratives with unease towards homosexuality to tolerance and even open-ended film stories. This article explores the various characterizations of LGBTQ+ persons in Nollywood to underscore the advances in the industry’s narration of LGBTQ+ individuals in Nigeria. The article engages in a qualitative study of select Nollywood films focusing on the changing thematic, characterization and narrative views of homosexuality. This article provides insights into how Nollywood cinemas may offer a glimpse into the evolving understanding of queerness in Nigerian society.

Documentary may be becoming the new science fiction, as more films set their sights on the future, which is increasingly being represented as all but lost. In this rush toward these catastrophic representations, this chapter posits a new genre to be considered: the Apocalypse documentary. Not only do these films align with the assertion that the end of the world may be easier to imagine than the end of capitalism, but they are also distinctly gendered, as if the feminized labor of “staying with the trouble” is not nearly as captivating or spectacular as envisioning our own demise.

Documentary mise-en-scène processes the camera-take circumstance. The take reflects being-there in a particular mode of existence (the reflecting one), staging to a camera that coalesces individuations. Gathered, takes make films (or series) with diverse functions of enunciation sustaining ethical ensembles. The documentary voice structures a mega-enunciator defining how audiovisual emission-ending (films) compose multiple styles of mise-en-scène (the epistemological; the recoiled voice; the interacting disposition; the reflexive auto-conscient; the sensuous touching). Documentary film can be at large with this ending, ‘body-touching’ a differential gap. The machinical camera-subject is the myriad surface of reflecting camera-monads communicating their agency through the visibility of empiricity.

This chapter argues that a polyphonic mode, particularly one based upon the act of reading and performing shared texts aloud and listening for responses across diverse and intersectional identities, can be one way to approach collaborative documentary production. This argument is evidenced in three case studies: Yours in Sisterhood (Irene Lusztig 2018), The Cancer Journals Revisited (Lana Lin 2018), and J.R. and Alice Rohrwacher's Omelia Contadina (2020). In the first two films, participants self-narrate their experience in response to temporally removed texts; in Omelia Contadina, an in-situ mourning ritual includes a performance of multiple elegiac texts as one, intertwining individual voices in a collective political action. Each filmmaker collaborates with participants to visualize and hear a latent community to confront a distinct crisis-systemic sexism, breast cancer, and the destruction of traditional farming. Classic and contemporary examples of polyphony explore the contours of the mode.

While Utilitarian film has often been viewed as a sub-set or close relation of documentary studies, this chapter considers the distinctions between the two, and the informative and productive ways that these distinct fields shore up each other's definitional boundaries.

The recent Utilitarian Filmmaking in Australia (1945-1980) research project offers concrete examples of how several different kinds of Utilitarian film (sponsored works by commercial entities and government bodies, ‘data’ and scientific filmmaking, raw footage) are related to documentary forms. It also demonstrates the way this oft-maligned film form stands adjacent to documentary politics and poetics. In considering utilitarian films through a media archaeological lens, these works offer the reminder of documentary's broad ranging, multimedia history throughout the 20th century.

In March 2021 Seaspiracy launched on Netflix and quickly became one of the ten most watched films on the platform. Produced and directed by British independent documentary maker Ali Tabrizi, the documentary Șinvestigation’ dramatically catalogues the human and environmental impacts of commercial fishing, revealing corruption, slavery and cruelty. Seaspiracy is a call to action, and many appear to have heeded the call, pledging to give up fish or ‘joining the movement’ via social media. There is even the option to buy Seaspiracy merchandise or purchase a vegan meal planning service. Celebrities and influencers have helped to spread the word, as have environmental activists and community groups. The filmmakers have been able to leverage this interest to raise funds and garner support for political action. We will explore Seaspiracy as exemplary of a new mode of political documentary that explicitly seeks to produce audience engagements, leveraged within a specific political context. Drawing on recent explorations of media engagement we consider the ‘push-pull’ dynamics (Hill 2019) between audiences and producers, as well as the increasingly porous boundaries between private spaces of media consumption and opportunities to act within the public sphere.

Producers have been drawn to virtual reality (VR) for its potential to render vivid experiences of nonfiction content. The politics of the platform's affective operation, particularly in relation to distant human others, has been analysed and critiqued. This chapter explores what is at play when that affective potential is deployed within mediated encounters with non-human species and speculative worlds. It considers case studies of VR projects that engage the temporal imagination and that reflect human entanglement with some of the other life forms that we share the planet with. In some of these projects, I argue, we can see the affective power of VR harnessed, not simply to provoke feeling, instead to trouble dominant ‘structures of feeling’ and support new formations of consciousness.

This article looks at the development of teaching on documentary from the perspective of the author's own experience, beginning in the 1970s. It considers the construction of a syllabus, and both the range of readings and of screenings used in what became a rapidly expanding area of study. It reflects on the aims and theories that informed study, the key texts that helped development and examines the difference between Film Studies approaches and the broader frameworks used in media research. Finally, it considers what the formative periods of documentary studies might indicate about the direction and shape of its future.

The two worst disasters in the history of nuclear energy at Chernobyl in the former Soviet Union in 1986 and Fukushima in Japan in 2011 were followed by reports calling for greater transparency in the interests of the safety of the planet. Part of the response to this call was to give access to documentary filmmakers to the nuclear landscapes created by these accidents. A wider effect has also involved greater access to operating sites with the recognition that the public consent required to operate, close, remediate, and renew nuclear sites requires openness. This chapter explores how the social issue documentary has evolved within the ‘zone of alienation’ and the ‘no man's zone’ and nuclear sites undergoing change. In so doing, the chapter discusses documentary filmmaking as an integral part of a liberal democracy or the “risk society”, as theorized by Ulrich Beck.

This paper reflects on the relationships established between the audio-moving image and Indigenous communities in Brazil, from the arrival and appropriation of video technologies to the development of documentary strategies. It is about expanding the ways of seeing and narrating with Indigenous people, engaging in a radical movement of image production aimed at allowing these subjects, traditionally objects of alterity, to ally themselves with filmmakers and develop their own images resulting in a cinema of action. Brazilian indigenous cinema is thus constituted as a complex field, mainly promoted by the ‘Vídeo nas Aldeias’ (Video in the Villages VNA) project. This paper explores the conceptual aspects involved in these practices, contextualizing their development, and focusing on its testimonial nature, considered as one of the strong axes of its execution.

The Handbook of Documentary is an important go-to resource for practitioners, scholars and students in this burgeoning field. It tackles key topics and debates – from the role of documentary in post-truth culture to the rise of streaming giants (and the implications for national documentary cultures) and the shifting (increasingly hybrid) practices of documentary activism and the professionalization of impact. Featuring work by key figures in international documentary scholarship and talented emerging scholars, the Handbook is a landmark publication for documentary studies in the twenty-first century.

The Handbook is broad in its scope, incorporating historical, theoretical, empirical, and practical scholarship. It is organized around ten key themes/debates: What and where is documentary (studies)?; Documentary in an Age of epistemic uncertainty; Documentary histories; Documentary and the Archive; Audio/Visualities; Documentary Relationalities; Beyond the Anthropocene?; Digital/documentary practices; Documentary and (new) politics?; A golden age? Documentary distribution and funding. Importantly, the Handbook challenges the dominance of Western voices in documentary scholarship, incorporating the voices and practices of practitioners from the Global South.

This article aims to demonstrate the value of applying a star-studies approach to the examination of screenplay archives. This methodological framework is illustrated through a case study of the documents from the collection deposited by director Claude Autant-Lara at the Swiss National Film Archive that relate to the genesis of the film Love Is My Profession (1958). This film is notable for its cast, which includes two leading stars: Jean Gabin, an established actor associated with classical cinema for over two decades, and Brigitte Bardot, a rising icon of the French New Wave. The study reveals how the multiple screenplay variants for this adaptation of a Simenon novel, successively drafted by Autant-Lara, Jean Aurenche and Pierre Bost, were partly shaped by the involvement of these two stars, whose participation was planned from the project’s inception. Examining specific choices among the many possibilities envisioned highlights the significance of considering screenplays within a socio-historical perspective. This analysis draws on a rich collection of documents including, for example, scattered notes written day by day by the filmmaker, or letters exchanged between him and his producer, who insisted that the romance between the characters played by the two stars take centre stage.

Female characters in African crime films play diverse roles, influencing the progression of the stories and diegetic situations. This is particularly significant in African crime films, where male characters have dominated leading roles. Through the analysis of Kemi Adetiba’s King of Boys (2018) and Victor Gatonye’s 40 Sticks (2020), this article discusses the leading female characters’ embodiment of agency of gendered power in the context of crime genre lawlessness as a useful metaphor for representing women leadership and motherhood. The inferences drawn from observation of the films, interspersed with secondary data sourced from books, journals, online articles and behind-the-scenes documentaries, inform the discussions on female characters’ depiction in the sampled films as material to a critique of gendered antagonisms as microcosms of women within African societies.

Review of: Le cose non dette, Patrizia Fregonese de Filippo (dir.) (2023), Italy: Kalabrone Film and A.C.E.R.

Review of: Italian Gothic: An Edinburgh Companion, Marco Malvestio and Stefano Serafini (eds) (2023)

Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 255 pp.,

ISBN 978-1-47449-016-0, h/bk, £90

ISBN 978-1-47449-018-4, e-book, £24.99

Review of: Italian Cinema in the Present Tense, Millicent Marcus (2023)

Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 290 pp.,

ISBN 978-1-48754-619-9, p/bk, $39.95

Review of: Bloodstained Narratives: The Giallo Film in Italy and Abroad, Matthew Edwards and Fernando Gabriel Pagnoni Berns (eds) (2023)

Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 208 pp.,

ISBN 978-1-49684-446-0, p/bk, $30

Review of: Women’s Work in Post-War Italy: An Oral and Filmic History, Flora Derounian (2023)

Bristol: Intellect, xi+218 pp.,

ISBN 978-1-78938-812-1, h/bk, $134.95

Review of: Women and Migration in Contemporary Italian Cinema: Screening Hospitality, Giovanna Faleschini Lerner (2023)

Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 216 pp.,

ISBN 978-1-80207-721-6, h/bk, $130.00

Review of: Secret Violences: The Political Cinema of Michelangelo Antonioni 1960–1975, Sławomir Masłoń (2023)

New York and London: Bloomsbury Academic, 185 pp.,

ISBN 978-1-50139-823-0, h/bk, £81.00

Review of: Kinematografia i literatura sardyńska a tożsamość regionalna: Od Grazii Deleddy do Salvatore Mereu, Ewa Baszak (2022)

Wrocław: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Wrocławskiego, 222 pp.,

ISBN 978-8-32293-773-0, p/bk

Review of: Wandering Women: Urban Ecologies of Italian Feminist Filmmaking, Laura Di Bianco (2023)

Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 215 pp.,

ISBN 978-0-25306-464-6, p/bk, $25.00

Focusing on the incidence of the ‘Westerns’ film genre in the 120-odd years of Australian cinema history, exploring how the American genre has been adapted to the changing Australian social, political and cultural contexts of their production, including the shifting emphases in the representation of the Indigenous population.



The idea for the book came to the author while he was writing two recent articles. One was an essay for Screen Education on the western in Australian cinema of the 21st century; the other piece was the review of a book entitled Film and the Historian, for the online journal Inside Story . Between the two, he saw the interesting prospect of a book-length study of the role of the western genre in Australia’s changing political and cultural history over the last century – and the ways in which film can, without didacticism, provide evidence of such change. Key matters include the changing attitudes to and representation of Indigenous peoples and of women's roles in Australian Westerns.



When one considers that the longest narrative film then seen in Australia, and quite possibly the world was Charles Tait’s The Story of the Kelly Gang (1906), it is clear that Australia has some serious history in the genre, and Kelly has ridden again in Justin Kurzel’s 2020 adaptation of Peter Carey’s The True History of the Kelly Gang.

Of the conditions that have affected non-commodity or avant-garde filmmaking in Los Angeles, two are especially important: the capitalist film industry itself and the variety and magnificence of the California landscape: the mountains and the desert, on the one hand and the other, the unusual architectural features of the city itself. The changing interaction among these is best illuminated by an historically periodized survey