Film and Media: Verso Student Reading

Radical takes on the world of film and media! Featuring a film-by-film assessment of Pedro Almodóvar's work, Annette Kuhn's exploration of feminist alternative cinema, Pang Laikwan's examination of how artists and thinkers found autonomy in a culture of conformity under Mao, and Paul Virilio's consideration of perception and destruction in the parallel technologies of warfare and cinema.

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In The Social Photo, social theorist Nathan Jurgenson develops bold new ways of understanding the transformations wrought by image-making and sharing technologies and the cultural objects they have ushered in: the selfie, the faux-vintage photo, the self-destructing image, the food photo.

Acclaimed philosopher Jacques Rancière looks at cinematic art in comparison to its corollary forms in literature and theatre. 

An award-winning cultural history of how we experience the world through art, film and architecture.

A brilliantly original exploration of the interface between feminism, psychoanalysis, semiotics and film theory.

The classic film-by-film assessment of Almodóvar's oeuvre, now updated to include his most recent work. Still the only study of its kind in English, it vigorously confirms its original argument that beneath Almodóvar's genius for comedy and visual pleasure lies a filmmaker whose work deserves to be taken with the utmost seriousness.

Régis Debray sums up over a decade of his research and writing on the evolution of subjects of communication and the technologically transmitted interventions of the modern intelligentsia in France. 

Reveals how racial segregation distorted the information Americans have received, even as it depicts the struggle of Black, Latino, Asian, and Native American journalists who fought to create a vibrant yet little-known alternative, democratic press.

Pang Laikwan examines the period in Chinese history when ordinary citizens read widely, traveled extensively through the country, and engaged in a range of cultural and artistic activities. The freedom they experienced, argues Pang, differs from the freedom, under Western capitalism, to express individuality through a range of consumer products.

Jacques Rancière develops a fascinating new concept of the image in contemporary art, showing how art and politics have always been intrinsically intertwined. 

Just as corporatization and the lowest-common-denominator pursuit of the bottom line have had a parlous effect on publishing, media consolidation has contributed to the ongoing demise of serious journalism in newspapers, magazines, serious broadcast news, and online journalism. 

A rich and suggestive analysis of military “ways of seeing”, revealing the convergence of perception and destruction in the parallel technologies of warfare and cinema.

This pioneering and influential work of feminist theory proposes that feminism and cinema, taken together, could provide the basis for new forms of expression, providing the opportunity for a truly feminist alternative cinema in terms of film language, of reading that language and of representing the world.

Despite its claim to be independent and impartial, and the constant accusations of a liberal bias, the BBC has always sided with the elite. As Tom Mills demonstrates, we are only getting the news that the Establishment wants aired in public.

From plasma screens to smartphones, today moving images are everywhere. How have films adapted to this new environment? And how has the experience of the spectator changed because of this proliferation? 

Until the political ferment of the Long Sixties, there were no Asian Americans. There were only isolated communities of mostly Chinese, Japanese, and Filipinos lumped together as “Orientals.” Serve the People tells the story of the social and cultural movement that knit these disparate communities into a political identity, the history of how—and why—the double consciousness of Asian America came to be.

Bernie Sanders shocked the political establishment by winning 13 million votes and a majority of young voters in the 2016 Democratic primary. Since that upset, repeated polls have judged this democratic socialist to be the most popular politician in the United States. What lessons can be drawn from his surprising insurgent campaign?

The Social Photo

by Nathan Jurgenson

With the rise of the smart phone and social media, cameras have become ubiquitous, infiltrating nearly every aspect of social life. The glowing camera screen is the lens by which many of us apprehe...

The Intervals of Cinema

by Jacques Rancière

Translated by John Howe

The cinema, like language, can be said to exist as a system of differences. In his latest book the acclaimed philosopher Jacques Rancière relates cinema to literature and theatre. With literature, ...

Atlas of Emotion

by Giuliana Bruno

Atlas of Emotion is a highly original endeavour to map a cultural history of spatio-visual arts. In an evocative montage of words and pictures, emphasises that “sight” and “site” but also “motion” ...

Sexuality in the Field of Vision

by Jacqueline Rose

A pivotal work in the history of feminism and a groundbreaking intervention into film theory, Sexuality in the Field of Vision is a brilliantly original exploration of the interface between feminis...

Desire Unlimited

by Paul Julian Smith

In the last decade, Spanish film auteur Pedro Almodóvar has grown from critical darling of the film circuit scene to mainstream success. Frequently comic, often deadly serious, always visually glor...

Media Manifestos

by Régis Debray

Translated by Eric Rauth

In this volume Régis Debray sums up over a decade of his research and writing on the evolution of subjects of communication and the technologically transmitted interventions of the modern intellige...

News for All the People

by Juan González and Joseph Torres

From colonial newspapers to the Internet age, America’s racial divisions have played a central role in the creation of the country’s media system, just as the media has contributed to—and every so ...

The Art of Cloning

by Pang Laikwan

In the 1950s, a French journalist joked that the Chinese were “blue ants under the red flag,” dressing identically and even moving in concert like robots. When the Cultural Revolution officially be...

The Future of the Image

by Jacques Rancière

Translated by Gregory Elliott

In The Future of the Image, Jacques Rancière develops a fascinating new concept of the image in contemporary art, showing how art and politics have always been intrinsically intertwined. He argues ...

Words & Money

by André Schiffrin

Ten years after the publication of The Business of Books, his groundbreaking critique of conglomeration in the book industry, André Schiffrin turns his attention to the broader crisis in the media....

War and Cinema

by Paul Virilio

Translated by Patrick Camiller

Reveals the convergence of perception and destruction in the parallel technologies of warfare and cinema.

Women's Pictures

by Annette Kuhn

This pioneering and influential work of feminist theory has been extensively updated by the author to chart the changes in feminist film theory and practice between the eighties and the nineties. R...

The BBC

by Tom Mills

The BBC is one of the most important institutions in Britain; it is also one of the most misunderstood. Despite its claim to be independent and impartial, and the constant accusations of a libera...

In Broad Daylight

by Gabriele Pedulla

From plasma screens to smartphones, today moving images are everywhere. How have films adapted to this new environment? And how has the experience of the spectator changed because of this prolifera...

Serve the People

by Karen L. Ishizuka

Foreword by Jeff Chang

The political ferment of the 1960s produced not only the Civil Rights Movement but others in its wake: women's liberation, gay rights, Chicano power, and the Asian American Movement. Here is a defi...

Crashing the Party

by Heather Gautney

Foreword by Adolph L. Reed Jr.

Senator Bernie Sanders won 13 million votes and a majority of young voters in the 2016 Democratic primary, giving a consensus unbeatable party favorite, Hillary Clinton, a shockingly close challeng...

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