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 have 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.

The collection explores various methods of screen-writing for essay film, through a diverse set of reflections and analyses of canonical and unconventional approaches of essay filmmaking. It includes contributions from filmmakers and practice-led researchers, who reflect on their production process in the form of production diaries or self-critique, and analyses from scholars who investigate the production contexts of essay film, as well as interviews with filmmakers on how their practices are conceptualised and contextualised. Overall, it takes essay film as an expression of personal camera, collaborative/collective work, and experimental work where the boundaries between different art forms blurs and merges.

Irony and the satirical impulse in cinema have gradually lost favor, mockery increasingly more selective in its choice of targets. As Linda Hutcheon notes, irony is becoming a problematic mode of expression in the 21st century.



The book examines the work of eight film auteurs: Luis Bunuel, RW Fassbinder, Stanley Kubrick, Robert Altman, Paul Verhoeven, Aki Kaurismaki, Aleksei Balabanov and David Lynch, much of whose work is not always regarded thus and the films examined are often more ironic than satirical. From apparent melodrama and eroticism to fantasy and horror, these eight directors redefine satire’s limits, providing evidence that irony in cinema often goes unrecognised.



The introduction examines the various categories of satire, and the chapters then study the filmmakers individually through selected works, offering interpretations of films and identifying a consistent approach. Since the work is often ambiguous the book speculates on each film’s purport, engaging in textual interpretation of individual works to understand concerns underneath the most obvious. The Afterword tries to find common targets and strategies on the filmmakers’ part.

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

World Film Locations: Los Angeles Volume 2 is an engaging and highly visual city-wide tour of both well known and slightly lesser known films shot on location in one of the birthplaces of cinema and the ‘screen spectacle’. It pairs 50 synopses of carefully chosen film scenes with evocative full-colour film stills.

When the World Film Locations series was launched in 2011, with volumes on Los Angeles, New York, Paris and Tokyo, the world was a different place. Although interest in film locations has grown steadily for years as people seek to walk in the footsteps of their cinematic idols by visiting sites from their favorite movies – the recent global lockdown seems to have only increased an appetite for cinetourism; prompting us to consider a second volume for one of the world’s most evocative and enduring locations. The city of Los Angeles, with its meandering sun-baked sweep and beautifully fractured topography, continues to lure filmmakers into its clutches – affording an endless panoply of locations to prop up both character and story. Since 2011, thousands of new productions have made the most of what the city has to offer; using, reusing and discovering places that will surely become sites of pilgrimage in years to come - and while this volume includes just 50 of them, our modest selection is carefully curated to compliment volume 1 and further reveal both the well-known and more hidden parts of a Los Angeles in constant flux. 

The heart of Hollywood’s star-studded film industry for more than a century, Los Angeles and its abundant and ever-changing locales – from the Santa Monica Pier to the infamous and now-defunct Ambassador Hotel – have set the scene for a wide variety of cinematic treasures, from Chinatown to Forrest Gump, Falling Down to the coming-of-age classic Boyz n The Hood.



This second volume marks an engaging citywide tour of the many films shot on location in this birthplace of cinema and the screen spectacle. World Film Locations: Los Angeles Vol 2 pairs fifty incisive synopses of carefully chosen film scenes – both famous and lesser-known – with an accompanying array of evocative full-colour film stills, demonstrating how motion pictures have contributed to the multifarious role of the city in our collective consciousness, as well as how key cinematic moments reveal aspects of its life and culture that are otherwise largely hidden from view.



Insightful essays and interviews throughout turn the spotlight on the important directors, iconic locations, thematic elements and historical periods that provide insight into Los Angeles and its vibrant cinematic culture. Rounding out this information are city maps with information on how to locate key features, as well as photographs showing featured locations as they appear now.



A guided tour of the City of Angels conducted by the likes of John Cassavetes, Robert Altman, Nicholas Ray, Michael Mann and Roman Polanski, World Film Locations: Los Angeles Vol 2 is a concise and user-friendly guide to how Los Angeles has captured the imaginations of both filmmakers and those of us sitting transfixed in theatres worldwide.

 

Everyone knows you need a car to get around L.A. It is, after all, a so-called “driving city.” But some L.A.-based films yank their protagonists from their cars and push them into the great unknown. Severed from an infrastructure's theoretical efficiency, these characters are isolated, unstable, unsure. They don't know where they're going, both literally and figuratively. Walking in a city of drivers becomes a means for them to begin their journeys toward something resembling clarity, if not peace.

On its reception, Call Me by Your Name (Luca Guadagnino, 2017) remained insufficiently explicit for some critics, who lamented instances such as the pan shot that takes us away from Elio (Timothée Chalamet) and Oliver (Armie Hammer) in bed together: ‘Once the two lovers begin having sex for the first time, however, the camera coyly drifts over to an open window, their early coital moans gentle in the background – the kind of tasteful dodge that practically nods to Code-era Hollywood’. This response is certainly understandable, and recalls a similar rallying cry from Rose Troche's 1994 film Go Fish: ‘What would you rather our collective lesbian image be? Hot, passionate, say-yes-to-sex-dykes or touchy-feely, soft-focus sisters of the woodlands?’ Guadagnino, in making a mainstream, high-profile adaptation, has, in the eyes of some critics, opted for the ‘touchy-feely soft-focus’ route. However, I would like to suggest that the film locates its explicitness in its sound design. This clever strategy is used to clearly convey actions which are not shown directly on screen. The film is filled with the sound of clothing slipping on and off of bodies, and with the sound of bodies in contact. In the scenes in which Oliver fellates Elio, there is audible sound design that articulates the action taking place. Drawing on work that discusses the importance of sound, audio design and affect, I would like to counter the suggestion that Call Me by Your Name is overtly coy in its display of sex. By attending to the details of the film's sound design we can see that it deliberately evokes the affect of pornography in order to amplify the film's explicitness.

Rather than being a ‘blueprint’ statement of instruction, and following propositions made by Thomas Leitch, adaptation screenplays are ‘recipes’ that both record a ‘doing’ and serve as a performance space of engagement with production teams. This is explicable in terms of how they propose a new enargeia by way of clear narrative idea that they frame through quasi-recursive recontextualization of both the literary field and the specifics of originary texts and then express via an integrated set of linguistic acts by way of axiological statement of intentionality for a film of a particular sort. The progression of this logic is explained through exploration of a seminal instance of Basque literature-to-film adaptation of Bernard Atxaga’s book Obabakoak, written as a screenplay for the film Obaba by Montxo Armendáriz.

Adapted by James Ivory from André Aciman’s novel and directed by Luca Guadagnino, the film Call Me by Your Name has been passionately received among audiences and critics ever since its 2017 release.



A love story between seventeen-year-old Elio (Timothée Chalamet) and graduate student Oliver (Armie Hammer) and set in 1983 ‘Somewhere in northern Italy’, Call Me by Your Name presents a gay relationship in a romantic idyll seemingly untroubled by outside pressures, prejudices or tragedy. While this means it offers audiences welcome opportunities to swoon in front of an LGBTQ+ romance that equals classic heterosexual romances onscreen, its relevance or political significance today may not be immediately apparent. And yet the film is abundantly infused with narrative, thematic and stylistic elements that can be interpreted as speaking powerfully to contemporary audiences on questions of sexual identity.



This edited collection addresses how the film helps inform our understanding of contemporary sexual identity and romance. How does this love story explore wider tensions that exist between the specific and the general, between the open and the hidden, and between the past and the present? The contributors to the collection explore these questions in stimulating and contemplative manners.

This introduction considers what is so appealing and acclaimed about Call Me by Your Name, as well as the primary angles this book will present. It introduces the film as a romance between Elio (Timothée Chalamet) and Oliver (Armie Hammer), as an LGBTQ+ text and as an Italian production. It emphasises the fluidity of these terms with regard to the film, and how that fluidity can be helpful to understanding of the film's openness and freshness. The introduction also explains how the collection is structured, with brief introductions for each of the three parts – Style, Themes and Reception – and each of the chapters. In doing so, it introduces the range and diversity of voices that will carry through the book to provide multiple perspectives on Call Me by Your Name.