Jim Jarmusch

The first major English-language study of Jarmusch At a time when gimmicky, action-driven blockbusters ruled Hollywood, Jim Jarmusch spearheaded a boom in independent cinema by making now-classic low-budget films like Stranger than Paradise, Down by Law, and Mystery Train. Jarmusch's films focused on intimacy, character, and new takes on classical narratives. His minimal form, peculiar pacing, wry humor, and blank affect have since been adopted by directors like Sofia Coppola, Hal Hartley, Richard Linklater, and Tsai Ming-liang. Juan A. Suárez identifies and describes an abundance of aesthetic influences on Jarmusch, delving into the director's links to punk, Structural film, classic street photography, hip-hop, beat literature and art, and the New York pop vanguard of the late 1970s. At the same time, he analyzes Jarmusch's work from three mutually implicated perspectives: in relation to independent filmmaking from the 1980s to the present; as a form of cultural production that appropriates existing icons, genres, and motifs; and as an instance of postmodern politics. A volume in the series Contemporary Film Directors, edited by James R. Naremore

Although Jim Jarmusch is best known for his storied career in independent cinema, over the years he has produced hundreds of pieces of collage art, the majority of which has been rarely seen by the public. Drawing inspiration from the largest medium of cultural documentation--newspapers--Jarmusch delicately crafts each work by layering newsprints on cardstock. Doppelgänger Andy Warhols are posed in a vast tunnel not unlike the depths of the Large Hadron Collider, Patty Hearst's mugshots drift across Edwardian portraits, and a man's identity is disguised with a coyote's head: maybe he was a celebrity, politician, perp, or all three. In Some Collages, these small-scale (notecard-size) pieces are a reminder of how even the most mundane stock photography can be hijacked to create work that is scary-funny.

Publisher description

Collected interviews with the American independent film director of Permanent Vacation, Stranger Than Paradise, and Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai

Jim Jarmusch: Music, Words and Noise is the first book to examine the films of Jim Jarmusch from a sound-oriented perspective. The three essential acoustic elements that structure a film— music, words and noise—propel this book’s fascinating journey through his work. Exploring the director’s extensive back catalogue, including Stranger Than Paradise, Down By Law, Dead Man, and Only Lovers Left Alive, Sara Piazza’s unique reading reveals how Jarmusch created a form of “sound democracy” in film, in which all acoustic layers are capable of infiltrating each other and in which sound is not subordinate to the visual. In his cultural melting pot, hierarchies are irrelevant: Schubert and Japanese noise-bands, Marlowe and Betty Boop, can coexist easily side-by-side. Developing the innovative idea of a “silent-sound film,” Piazza identifies prefiguring elements from pre-sound-era film in Jarmusch’s work. Highlighting the importance of Jarmusch’s treatment of sound, Piazza investigates how the director’s distinctive reputation consolidated itself over the course of a thirty-year career. Based in New York, Jarmusch was able to develop a fiercely personal vision far from the commercial pressures of Hollywood. The book uses wide-ranging examples from music, film, literature, and visual art, and features interviews with many prominent figures, including Ennio Morricone, Luc Sante, Roberto Benigni, John Lurie, and Jarmusch himself. An innovative account of a much-admired body of work, Jim Jarmusch will appeal not only to the many fans of the director but all those interested in the connections between sound and film. Visit the author's page for this book: http://jimjarmusch-musicwordsandnoise.com

Who killed Uncle Bill? Alafair W Tucker is desperate to find out. One August evening in 1914, a bushwhacker ended a pleasant outing by blowing a hole in Bill McBride, kidnapping and ravaging Bill's fiance, and wounding Alafair's daughter Mary. Does Mary know who did the low-down deed? If she does, the bullet that grazed her knocked that information right out of her head. All she remembers is that it has something to do with the Fourth of July. Or is there more? The answer seems to be floating piece by tiny piece to the surface of Mary's consciousness. Several malicious acts testify to the fact that Bill's killer is still around and attempting to cover his tracks. The question is, can Mary remember before the murderer manages to eliminate everyone who could identify him? The law is hot on the bushwhacker's trail. Alafair thinks there is little she can do to help the sheriff, but that will never stop her from trying. She has no qualms about driving Mary to distraction with her persistent snooping and constant hovering. If there's a chance she can protect Mary from further harm or help her remember, she'll do anything she can. Even confront a vicious killer.

This book explores how three contemporary American artists through the mediums of film, literature and popular music have contributed to the tradition of American progressivism, and provides an invaluable companion to the understanding of complex issues such as inequality and social and economic decline that are apparent in America today. Connecting the works of these artists through a fictional country – the ‘Other America’ – the book shows how they have refuted middle-class values and goals of success, money and social affirmation to unveil the less celebrated, dark side of contemporary America, which, despite the troubles currently faced, never loses hope for a better future. This utopic vision in the face of adversity is explored through the plots, characters and mis-en-scène of Auster and Jarmusch’s work and Waits’s lyrics and sound. This vision challenges the dominant narratives of America as the land of opportunity and values democracy, civic engagement, communitarianism and egalitarianism. Offering an important new perspective to literature on contemporary American culture, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of American studies, film studies, popular music, postmodern literature, cultural studies and sociology.

Seminar paper from the year 1998 in the subject Film Science, grade: 1, University of Aberdeen (English Department), course: American Film Renaissance, 10 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: The term 'postmodern' has been used in different areas of study to describe similar phenomena. However, one must differentiate between postmodernism as a historical period, a cultural theory and an aesthetic category. The latter two uses will be the most important ones for my essay. It is essential for my discussion to include theories on postmodern culture, because the relationship between the real and its representation, and the zeitgeist as presented in film, is of vital importance for postmodern film. I will not define the term postmodernism here, on the one hand because the brevity of this essay does not allow my entering this ongoing debate, and, on the other hand, because the term itself escapes any fixed definition - it is rather a set of different tendencies. The terms 'postmodernism' or 'the postmodern' are less precise categories than different versions of an all-embracing gesture which sums up a spirit of the times, an atmosphere.1 However, to be able to discuss whether or not Jim Jarmusch's and David Lynch's films are postmodern, I must first find a definition for 'postmodern film'. One would expect a postmodern film to tackle the postmodern condition, life in postmodernity, as its subject matter. Since the differences in class, gender and ethnicity are central to the discussion of postmodernism,2 one can assume that these categories are equally important for the plot of a postmodern film. However, Down and Out in Beverly Hills is a film about life in the postmodern city and deals with questions of class and gender, but it is conventional in its style and structure, and obviously far from being a postmodern film. Thus not only the subject matter, but also the audiovisual style and narrative structure of a film should display postmodern charac