Motion Picture Biographies

Author : John Cones
Publisher : Algora Publishing
Page : 202 pages
File Size : 40,9 Mb
Release : 2015-04-01
Category : Art
ISBN : 9781628941166

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Motion Picture Biographies by John Cones Pdf

Hollywood movies are famous for promoting negative stereotypes of all kinds, especially against minorities, women, Southerners, and Christians. To what extent are biographical films selected for production according to certain biases, conscious or unconscious, among the Hollywood elite? An expert on the U.S. film industry gives readers brief synopses of Hollywood biopics produced and/ or released from 1912 through 1994. This survey provides the basis for discussion and analysis. Tracking these one-sided depictions over a longer period of time, the patterns of bias - and the source of the problem - become more clear. The problem appears to be that most of the people who have green-light authority in the U.S. film industry - for either the production and/or distribution of a motion picture - share a common ethnic/religious/cultural background. Thus, the stories of their own cohort and those of all other ethnic, religious and/or cultural groups (whose members seldom achieve positions of power in Hollywood) are being filtered through the cultural sensibilities of a single group. John Cones suggests that the solution could lie in increasing diversity at the highest levels in the U.S. film industry.

Author : Stan Brakhage
Publisher : Turtle Island Foundation, Netzahaulcoyotl Historical
Page : 304 pages
File Size : 41,7 Mb
Release : 1977
Category : Motion picture actors and actresses
ISBN : UCSC:32106005477382

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Film Biographies by Stan Brakhage Pdf

Author : Ira H. Gallen
Publisher : FriesenPress
Page : 582 pages
File Size : 46,5 Mb
Release : 2015-12-15
Category : Performing Arts
ISBN : 9781460260999

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D.W. Griffith: Master of Cinema by Ira H. Gallen Pdf

Exhaustively researched and accessibly written, D.W. Griffith: Master of Cinema is a remarkably comprehensive biography of the legendary director and his days creating his craft at the American Biograph Company between 1908 through 1913. Meticulously detailed, utilizing a wealth of archival documents and photographs, the book effectively details Griffith’s place as a film pioneer. Even a casual film fan can see the lines being drawn from the techniques Griffith developed to modern cinematic experience. Ira Gallen’s exploration of Griffith’s family and his early life sets the stage for his career, and give great context for who he would become. His intricate details about early stage and film paint such a vivid and evocative picture of the time that you will be truly drawn into another world while reading it.

Author : George Frederick Custen
Publisher : Rutgers University Press
Page : 72 pages
File Size : 47,9 Mb
Release : 1992
Category : Performing Arts
ISBN : 0813517540

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Bio/pics by George Frederick Custen Pdf

On biographical films

Author : Paul Fischer
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
Page : 416 pages
File Size : 40,7 Mb
Release : 2022-04-19
Category : History
ISBN : 9781982114855

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The Man Who Invented Motion Pictures by Paul Fischer Pdf

One of the New York Times Best True Crime of 2022 A “spellbinding, thriller-like” (Shelf Awareness) history about the invention of the motion picture and the mysterious, forgotten man behind it—detailing his life, work, disappearance, and legacy. The year is 1888, and Louis Le Prince is finally testing his “taker” or “receiver” device for his family on the front lawn. The device is meant to capture ten to twelve images per second on film, creating a reproduction of reality that can be replayed as many times as desired. In an otherwise separate and detached world, occurrences from one end of the globe could now be viewable with only a few days delay on the other side of the world. No human experience—from the most mundane to the most momentous—would need to be lost to history. In 1890, Le Prince was granted patents in four countries ahead of other inventors who were rushing to accomplish the same task. But just weeks before unveiling his invention to the world, he mysteriously disappeared and was never seen or heard from again. Three and half years later, Thomas Edison, Le Prince’s rival, made the device public, claiming to have invented it himself. And the man who had dedicated his life to preserving memories was himself lost to history—until now. The Man Who Invented Motion Pictures pulls back the curtain and presents a “passionate, detailed defense of Louis Le Prince…unfurled with all the cliffhangers and red herrings of a scripted melodrama” (The New York Times Book Review). This “fascinating, informative, skillfully articulated narrative” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review) presents the never-before-told history of the motion picture and sheds light on the unsolved mystery of Le Prince’s disappearance.

Author : Victor H. Green
Publisher : Colchis Books
Page : 235 pages
File Size : 53,5 Mb
Release : 2024-06-29
Category : History
ISBN : 8210379456XXX

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The Negro Motorist Green Book by Victor H. Green Pdf

The Negro Motorist Green Book was a groundbreaking guide that provided African American travelers with crucial information on safe places to stay, eat, and visit during the era of segregation in the United States. This essential resource, originally published from 1936 to 1966, offered a lifeline to black motorists navigating a deeply divided nation, helping them avoid the dangers and indignities of racism on the road. More than just a travel guide, The Negro Motorist Green Book stands as a powerful symbol of resilience and resistance in the face of oppression, offering a poignant glimpse into the challenges and triumphs of the African American experience in the 20th century.

Author : Don Siegel
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 500 pages
File Size : 47,8 Mb
Release : 1996
Category : Motion picture producers and directors
ISBN : 0571178316

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A Siegel Film by Don Siegel Pdf

Don Siegel was one of Hollywood's most controversial directors. Invasion of the Body Snatchers is one of the very few acknowledged science-fiction classics, and Magnum Force - with its catch-phrase 'Make my day' - has become part of our modern consciousness. Siegel's five-film collaboration with Clint Eastwood created a body of films that are as distinctive as they are different, and enriched the reputation of both of them. This autobiography has all the fun and energy one would expect from Don Siegel. From his first days as an assistant editor in the Warner Brothers cutting rooms, Siegel charts his rich and varied career. This is a wonderful book of reminiscences, told in a lively and vivid style, whose cast of characters includes John Wayne, Lee Marvin, Steve McQueen, Bogart and Bacall, studio head Jack Warner and other luminaries of the golden age of the Hollywood studios (including a fading film star called Ronald Reagan, whose last film, The Killers, was directed by Siegel). At the centre of the book is Siegel's relationship with Clint Eastwood, whose directing career was encouraged by Siegel, and who supplies an amusing and appreciative foreword to the book.

Author : David Thomson
Publisher : Knopf
Page : 1090 pages
File Size : 53,7 Mb
Release : 2010-10-26
Category : Performing Arts
ISBN : 9780307594617

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The New Biographical Dictionary of Film by David Thomson Pdf

For almost thirty years, David Thomson’s Biographical Dictionary of Film has been not merely “the finest reference book ever written about movies” (Graham Fuller, Interview), not merely the “desert island book” of art critic David Sylvester, not merely “a great, crazy masterpiece” (Geoff Dyer, The Guardian), but also “fiendishly seductive” (Greil Marcus, Rolling Stone). This new edition updates the older entries and adds 30 new ones: Darren Aronofsky, Emmanuelle Beart, Jerry Bruckheimer, Larry Clark, Jennifer Connelly, Chris Cooper, Sofia Coppola, Alfonso Cuaron, Richard Curtis, Sir Richard Eyre, Sir Michael Gambon, Christopher Guest, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, Spike Jonze, Wong Kar-Wai, Laura Linney, Tobey Maguire, Michael Moore, Samantha Morton, Mike Myers, Christopher Nolan, Dennis Price, Adam Sandler, Kevin Smith, Kiefer Sutherland, Charlize Theron, Larry Wachowski and Andy Wachowski, Lew Wasserman, Naomi Watts, and Ray Winstone. In all, the book includes more than 1300 entries, some of them just a pungent paragraph, some of them several thousand words long. In addition to the new “musts,” Thomson has added key figures from film history–lively anatomies of Graham Greene, Eddie Cantor, Pauline Kael, Abbott and Costello, Noël Coward, Hoagy Carmichael, Dorothy Gish, Rin Tin Tin, and more. Here is a great, rare book, one that encompasses the chaos of art, entertainment, money, vulgarity, and nonsense that we call the movies. Personal, opinionated, funny, daring, provocative, and passionate, it is the one book that every filmmaker and film buff must own. Time Out named it one of the ten best books of the 1990s. Gavin Lambert recognized it as “a work of imagination in its own right.” Now better than ever–a masterwork by the man playwright David Hare called “the most stimulating and thoughtful film critic now writing.”

Author : George A. Katchmer
Publisher : McFarland
Page : 489 pages
File Size : 52,6 Mb
Release : 2009-09-22
Category : Performing Arts
ISBN : 9780786446933

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A Biographical Dictionary of Silent Film Western Actors and Actresses by George A. Katchmer Pdf

Long before sound became an essential part of motion pictures, Westerns were an established genre. The men and women who brought to life cowboys, cowgirls, villains, sidekicks, distressed damsels and outraged townspeople often continued with their film careers, finding success and fame well into the sound era--always knowing that it was in silent Westerns that their careers began. More than a thousand of these once-silent Western players are featured in this fully indexed encyclopedic work. Each entry includes a detailed biography, covering both personal and professional milestones and a complete Western filmography. A foreword is supplied by Diana Serra Cary (formerly the child star "Baby Peggy"), who performed with many of the actors herein.

Author : Library of Congress
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 1160 pages
File Size : 43,9 Mb
Release : 2013
Category : Subject headings, Library of Congress
ISBN : WISC:89122457856

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Library of Congress Subject Headings by Library of Congress Pdf

Author : Dennis Bingham
Publisher : Rutgers University Press
Page : 432 pages
File Size : 46,8 Mb
Release : 2010-03-04
Category : Performing Arts
ISBN : 0813549302

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Whose Lives Are They Anyway? by Dennis Bingham Pdf

The biopic presents a profound paradox—its own conventions and historical stages of development, disintegration, investigation, parody, and revival have not gained respect in the world of film studies. That is, until now. Whose Lives Are They Anyway? boldly proves a critical point: The biopic is a genuine, dynamic genre and an important one—it narrates, exhibits, and celebrates a subject's life and demonstrates, investigates, or questions his or her importance in the world; it illuminates the finer points of a personality; and, ultimately, it provides a medium for both artist and spectator to discover what it would be like to be that person, or a certain type of person. Through detailed analyses and critiques of nearly twenty biopics, Dennis Bingham explores what is at their core—the urge to dramatize real life and find a version of the truth within it. The genre's charge, which dates back to the salad days of the Hollywood studio era, is to introduce the biographical subject into the pantheon of cultural mythology and, above all, to show that he or she belongs there. It means to discover what we learn about our culture from the heroes who rise and the leaders who emerge from cinematic representations. Bingham also zooms in on distinctions between cinematic portrayals of men and women. Films about men have evolved from celebratory warts-and-all to investigatory to postmodern and parodic. At the same time, women in biopics have been burdened by myths of suffering, victimization, and failure from which they are only now being liberated. To explore the evolution and lifecycle changes of the biopic and develop an appreciation for subgenres contained within it, there is no better source than Whose Lives Are They Anyway?

Author : Library of Congress. Subject Cataloging Division
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 1548 pages
File Size : 43,8 Mb
Release : 1989
Category : Subject headings, Library of Congress
ISBN : UIUC:30112060019699

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Library of Congress Subject Headings: F-O by Library of Congress. Subject Cataloging Division Pdf

Author : Thomas S. Freeman,David L. Smith
Publisher : Springer Nature
Page : 336 pages
File Size : 55,7 Mb
Release : 2019-10-14
Category : History
ISBN : 9783319894089

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Biography and History in Film by Thomas S. Freeman,David L. Smith Pdf

The essays in this volume seek to analyze biographical films as representations of historical individuals and the times in which they lived. To do this, contributors examine the context in which certain biographical films were made, including the state of knowledge about their subjects at that moment, and what these films reveal about the values and purposes of those who created them. This is an original approach to biographical (as opposed to historical) films and one that has so far played little part in the growing literature on historical films. The films discussed here date from the 1920s to the 2010s, and deal with males and females in periods ranging from the Middle Ages to the end of the twentieth century. In the process, the book discusses how biographical films reflect changing attitudes towards issues such as race, gender and sexuality, and examines the influence of these films on popular perceptions of the past. The introduction analyses the nature of biographical films as a genre: it compares and contrasts the nature of biography on film with written biographies, and considers their relationship with the discipline of history. As the first collection of essays on this popular but understudied genre, this book will be of interest to historians as well as those in film and cultural studies.

Author : JolantaT. Pekacz
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 248 pages
File Size : 42,6 Mb
Release : 2017-07-05
Category : Music
ISBN : 9781351556965

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Musical Biography by JolantaT. Pekacz Pdf

Musical biography has rarely been an object of theoretical and methodological reflection. Our present-day perception of the lives of prominent composers and performers of the past has been largely formed by cultural and political assumptions of nineteenth-century biographers and their twentieth-century followers. While older biographies are being scrutinized for veracity and 'updated' with new evidence, their historiographical premisses and narrative techniques remain largely unchallenged. The epistemological upheavals in the humanities since the 1960s have generated a body of theoretical thought that has undermined many of the assumptions of traditional biography. Consequently, many of these assumptions have lost their hold as viable underpinnings for present-day scholarly biography. For example, the accumulation of facts is no longer believed to bring us closer to an understanding of the subject; nor are the traditional views of the unified self and the self as a foundational idea taken for granted. This volume brings together musicologists and historians who explore, through individual case studies, the rich potential of these new theories for writing musical lives. The authors of this volume examine how the insights provided by these theories illuminate our critical reassessment of older biographies - and the interpretations of musical works these biographies were used to construe - and help forge new approaches to musical biography. The authors also explore the functions musical biographies served in different historical contexts, the relevance of biography for musical criticism, the reliability of archival evidence, the ethics of biography, the demands placed on biography by feminist and gender history, and the new possibilities offered by cinema. The contributors to this volume challenge the view that biography has little importance for music history, analysis, and criticism. Collectively, they reassert biography's centrality and relevance, and dem

Author : Eileen Bowser
Publisher : Univ of California Press
Page : 356 pages
File Size : 43,7 Mb
Release : 1994-05-04
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 0520085345

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The Transformation of Cinema, 1907-1915 by Eileen Bowser Pdf

"The Transformation of Cinema chronicles the history of the American film business from the days of storefront nickelodeons to the premiere of D.W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation, complete with full symphony orchestra. Eileen Bowser here redresses the imbalance of the "Griffith did it all" cliché by discussing the efforts of countless lesser-known figures who also helped to create Hollywood and shape the growing film industry. The effect of the surroundings -- the size of the hall; whether the film was shown alone or along with vaudeville entertainment; and the size, quality, and relevance of the musical background -- are all examined for their impact on the filmgoing experience. Bowser documents the emergence of the star system, which set the stage for the classic silent-film era. By 1915 the silent film is seen as a full-fledged art form with its own style and place in the world of business."--Back cover.