Supercinema

Drawing on a variety of popular films, including Avatar, Enter the Void, Fight Club, The Matrix, Speed Racer, X-Men and War of the Worlds, Supercinema studies the ways in which digital special effects and editing techniques require a new theoretical framework in order to be properly understood. Here William Brown proposes that while analogue cinema often tried to hide the technological limitations of its creation through ingenious methods, digital cinema hides its technological omnipotence through the use of continued conventions more suited to analogue cinema, in a way that is analogous to that of Superman hiding his powers behind the persona of Clark Kent. Locating itself on the cusp of film theory, film-philosophy and cognitive approaches to cinema, Supercinema also looks at the relationship between the spectator and film that utilizes digital technology to maximum, ‘supercinematic’ effect.

Italian Colonialism is a pioneering anthology of texts by scholars from seven countries who represent the best of classical and newer approaches to the study of Italian colonization. Essays on the political, economic, and military aspects of Italian colonialism are featured alongside works that reflect the insights of anthropology, race and gender studies, film, architecture, and oral and cultural history. The volume includes many essays by Italian and African scholars that have never been translated into English. It is a unique resource that offers students and scholars a comprehensive view of the field.

The Second World War wreaked unprecedented devastation throughout Europe, necessitating monumental reconstruction efforts that burdened not only governments, but the lives of ordinary citizens. War, Massacre, and Recovery in Central Italy, 1943-1948 examines this transitional period in the province of Arezzo by detailing the daily experiences of civilians through the traumas of war and the difficulties of recovery. Studying the aftermath of war in a new and insightful way, Victoria C. Belco shifts the perspective from the national to the local level. With this localized focus, she provides valuable insight into the ways in which civilians coped with an overwhelming range of problems - from adjusting to Allied occupation and widespread displacement to rampant unemployment and the restructuring of local administrations and institutions after fascism. Recreating the post-war atmosphere of disorder, need, and political upheaval, Belco shows how the competing community interests caused social fragmentations that impeded change, while the unity of a shared past prevented civil war.

In the spring of 1986, Julian and Virginia Watson, a retired couple, live on the top floor of the Excelsior, an old apartment building on the edge of downtown Des Moines. Mrs. Watson suffers from agoraphobia and has not ventured outside the Excelsior in several years. Her devoted husband and Ms. Duncan, the building's janitor, are her only contacts with the outside world. Because of Virginia's fragile mental status, Julian only absents himself to run some errands or to take a daily walk to a nearby park. However, Julian's monotonous routine is suddenly altered by his chance encounter with an autograph-seeking lady who mistakes him for Clyde Ballantine, a reclusive Des Moines-born actor he has never heard about. In the following days, Julian's life is marred by a series of odd and frightening events that only an old article in The Des Moines Register could help explain. Or maybe notA[a¬A]

Vol. no. 1 covers the Indian film industry from 1896-2001.