Shadow Cinema
The Historical and Production Contexts of Unmade Films
Published on 12. November 2020
Book
Hardback
280 pages
978-1-5013-5159-4 (ISBN)
Description
Filmmakers and cinema industries across the globe invest more time, money and creative energy in projects and ideas that never get produced than in the movies that actually make it to the screens. Thousands of projects are abandoned in pre-production, halted, cut short, or even made and never distributed - a "shadow cinema" that exists only in the archives.
This collection of essays by leading scholars and researchers opens those archives to draw on a wealth of previously unexamined scripts, correspondence and production material, reconstructing many of the hidden histories of the last hundred years of world cinema. Highlighting the fact that the movies we see are actually the exception to the rule, this study uncovers the myriad reasons why 'failures' occur and considers how understanding those failures can transform the disciplines of film and media history. The first survey of this new area of empirical study across transnational borders, Shadow Cinema is a vital and fascinating demonstration of the importance of the unmade, unseen, and unknown history of cinema.
This collection of essays by leading scholars and researchers opens those archives to draw on a wealth of previously unexamined scripts, correspondence and production material, reconstructing many of the hidden histories of the last hundred years of world cinema. Highlighting the fact that the movies we see are actually the exception to the rule, this study uncovers the myriad reasons why 'failures' occur and considers how understanding those failures can transform the disciplines of film and media history. The first survey of this new area of empirical study across transnational borders, Shadow Cinema is a vital and fascinating demonstration of the importance of the unmade, unseen, and unknown history of cinema.
Reviews / Votes
This important volume will help to consolidate a rapidly growing area of research in Film Studies and related disciplines. The authors do not only provide outlines of individual films that could have been, but, more fundamentally, investigate the financial, legal, creative, political and logistical difficulties of getting films into production and onto screens. Their chapters deal, often in a wholly surprising manner, with familiar names (ranging from David O'Selznick and Hammer Films to Jean-Luc Godard and Ritwik Ghatak) and also with a wealth of lesser known personnel and companies. * Peter Kraemer, author of BFI Film Classics on 2001: A Space Odyssey (2020), Dr. Strangelove (2014) and The General (2016) *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
New York
United States
Publishing group
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Target group
College/higher education
Dimensions
Height: 235 mm
Width: 157 mm
Thickness: 20 mm
Weight
560 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-5013-5159-4 (9781501351594)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
James Fenwick | Kieran Foster | David Eldridge
Shadow Cinema
The Historical and Production Contexts of Unmade Films
E-Book
11/2020
1st Edition
Bloomsbury Academic USA
€35.49
Available for download
Persons
James Fenwick is a senior lecturer in Media and Communications at Sheffield Hallam University. He is the author of Stanley Kubrick Produces (2020) and Unproduction Studies and the American Film Industry (2021).
Kieran Foster is an AHRC funded PhD student at De Montfort University, UK. His research focuses on the British Company Hammer's Films unmade projects. He has published in peer-reviewed journals, with an piece on Hammer's failed adaptation Vlad the Impaler appearing in the Journal of Adaptation in Film and Performance.
David Eldridge is a senior lecturer in American Studies at the University of Hull, UK. He is the author of Hollywood's History Films (2008) and is currently working on a monograph concerning the impact that censorship has had on the American film industry's representations of the past.
Kieran Foster is an AHRC funded PhD student at De Montfort University, UK. His research focuses on the British Company Hammer's Films unmade projects. He has published in peer-reviewed journals, with an piece on Hammer's failed adaptation Vlad the Impaler appearing in the Journal of Adaptation in Film and Performance.
David Eldridge is a senior lecturer in American Studies at the University of Hull, UK. He is the author of Hollywood's History Films (2008) and is currently working on a monograph concerning the impact that censorship has had on the American film industry's representations of the past.
Content
Part I: Producers and production companies
1. A production strategy of overdevelopment: Kirk Douglas's Bryna Productions and the unproduced Viva Gringo!
James Fenwick
2. Gone with the winds that never were: The David O. Selznick Archive and unmade historical cinema
David Eldridge
3. Parting the Iron Curtain: Michael Klinger's attempt to make A Man and a Half
Andrew Spicer
Part II: Directors and auteurs
4. Unfinished business: Godard, cinema and theatre in the 1960s
Michael Witt
5. Ken Russell's unfinished projects and unmade films, 1956-1968: The BBC years
Matthew Melia
6. Ghatak in the shadows: Films that struggled
Sanghita Sen
Part III: Questioning the unmade
7. Herding Cats; or, the possibilities of unproduction studies
Peter C. Kunze
8. Assembling Frankenstein
Kieran Foster
9. Burning bright: Samuel Fuller's Tigrero and accidental ethnography
Andrew Howe
10. Clouzot's L'Enfer
Lucy Mazdon
11. Claude Lanzmann's Shoah and its shadow: Rescue and resistance
Sue Vice
Part IV: Reconstructing the unmade
12. The never Alice: Marilyn Manson, gothic girlhoods, and Phantasmagoria: The Visions of Lewis Carroll
Alexandra Heller-Nicholas
13. The movie producer, the feminists and the serial killer: UK feminist activism, misogynist 70s film culture and the (non) filming of the Yorkshire Ripper Murders
Hannah Hamad
14. The unmade undead: A post-mortem of the post-9/11 zombie cycle
Todd K. Platts
Index
1. A production strategy of overdevelopment: Kirk Douglas's Bryna Productions and the unproduced Viva Gringo!
James Fenwick
2. Gone with the winds that never were: The David O. Selznick Archive and unmade historical cinema
David Eldridge
3. Parting the Iron Curtain: Michael Klinger's attempt to make A Man and a Half
Andrew Spicer
Part II: Directors and auteurs
4. Unfinished business: Godard, cinema and theatre in the 1960s
Michael Witt
5. Ken Russell's unfinished projects and unmade films, 1956-1968: The BBC years
Matthew Melia
6. Ghatak in the shadows: Films that struggled
Sanghita Sen
Part III: Questioning the unmade
7. Herding Cats; or, the possibilities of unproduction studies
Peter C. Kunze
8. Assembling Frankenstein
Kieran Foster
9. Burning bright: Samuel Fuller's Tigrero and accidental ethnography
Andrew Howe
10. Clouzot's L'Enfer
Lucy Mazdon
11. Claude Lanzmann's Shoah and its shadow: Rescue and resistance
Sue Vice
Part IV: Reconstructing the unmade
12. The never Alice: Marilyn Manson, gothic girlhoods, and Phantasmagoria: The Visions of Lewis Carroll
Alexandra Heller-Nicholas
13. The movie producer, the feminists and the serial killer: UK feminist activism, misogynist 70s film culture and the (non) filming of the Yorkshire Ripper Murders
Hannah Hamad
14. The unmade undead: A post-mortem of the post-9/11 zombie cycle
Todd K. Platts
Index