Shadow Cinema

The Historical and Production Contexts of Unmade Films

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Edited by James Fenwick, Kieran Foster and David Eldridge

Type: Stories
Subject: On Films > Lost/unmade films
Keywords: unmade films
Publishing date: 2022
Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
1st publishing: 2020
Language: English

Relative size

Physical desc.

Paperback • 280 pages
6 x 9 inches (15 x 23 cm)

ISBN

978-1-5013-7096-0

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Book Presentation:
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.

About the authors:
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. He has also co-written a chapter on an unmade Loch-Ness monster film- Nessie, for a recently published book entitled Beasts of the Deep: Sea Creatures in Popular Culture. In 2016, he presented the keynote at the Bram Stoker Film Festival in Whitby, and helped organise the Hammer Film Exhibtion at De Montfort University, where over its 12 month run, he did a number of public talks and tours on Hammer's unmade films. Last July, he was part of a DMU Global/AHRC funded 12-day research trip to the Margaret Herrick and Warner Brothers Archive in Los Angeles.David Eldridge is 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. His other publications on this subject include “Some Like It Hot and the Virtues of Not Taking History Too Seriously” in Hollywood and the American Historical Film, ed. J.E Smyth (2012), and “Bennett, Breen and the Birdman of Alcatraz,” in Film History 28.2 (2016).

Press Reviews:
"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 Krämer, author of BFI Film Classics on 2001: A Space Odyssey (2020), Dr. Strangelove (2014) and The General (2016)

See the publisher website: Bloomsbury Academic

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