Books in French are on www.livres-cinema.info
The Cinema of Converging Lives
Complex Films and Intersecting Stories in an Isolated World
by Lucy Fischer
(0 vote)Average rating:
| 0 | rating |  = We can do without |
| 0 | rating |  = Good book |
| 0 | rating |  = Excellent book |
| 0 | rating |  = Unique / a reference |
Your rating: -
Book Presentation:
What happens when strangers meet in film? The Cinema of Converging Lives explores a group of films within an important category of complex film, a genre that critics have hailed as proliferating worldwide in the 1980s and 1990s and continuing today. Lucy Fischer examines a recurring trope within this category which portrays disparate characters, mostly unacquainted and introduced separately, who eventually and often unexpectedly cross paths.
The book focuses on underlying causes in each movie that drive the intersection of characters forward. It looks to 23 films by a diverse and international group of directors to consider how chance, coincidence, accident, history, geography, and the supernatural, as well as formal structures like metafiction and the circulation of possessions, drive these narratives. The book also highlights the irony of our clear interest in stories of converging lives on screen in an age of increasing isolation and loneliness. Finally, it offers a new look at complex film as a genre, including a discussion of the wide variety of plot patterns beyond those defined in this book. Providing in-depth case studies of this vital form of contemporary movie, a new conceptual approach to the investigation of the complex film, a summary of prior academic work on the topic, and important socio-cultural insight into the opposing notions of convergence and isolation, The Cinema of Converging Lives will appeal to students and experienced film scholars alike.
About the Author:
Lucy Fischer is a Distinguished Professor, Emerita, of Film and Media Studies at the University of Pittsburgh. She is the author of fifteen books, including Cinema by Design: Art Nouveau, Modernism, and Film History (2017), Cinemagritte: René Magritte Within the Frame of Film History, Theory and Practice (2019), Emotion Pictures: Cinema and Feelings (2023), and Recollecting Collecting: Film and Media Perspectives (2023).
See the publisher website: Oxford University Press
> From the same author:
Casting a Giant Shadow (2021)
The Transnational Shaping of Israeli Cinema
Dir. Lucy Fischer and Dan Chyutin
Cinemagritte (2019)
René Magritte Within the Frame of Film History, Theory, and Practice
by Lucy Fischer
Subject: Technique > Aesthetics
Cinema by Design (2017)
Art Nouveau, Modernism, and Film History
by Lucy Fischer
Subject: Technique > Aesthetics
Designing Women (2003)
Cinema, Art Deco, and the Female Form
by Lucy Fischer
Subject: Technique > Set Design
Imitation of Life (1991)
Douglas Sirk, Director
Dir. Lucy Fischer
Subject: One Film > Imitation of Life
> On a related topic:
Cop Knowledge (2000)
Police Power and Cultural Narrative in Twentieth-Century America
Subject: Sociology
Beyond the Stars 4 (1993)
Locales in American Popular Film
Dir. Paul Loukides and Linda K. Fuller
Subject: Sociology
Beyond the Stars 1 (1990)
Stock Characters in American Popular Film
Dir. Paul Loukides and Linda K. Fuller
Subject: Sociology
Interactional Approach to Cinematic Discourse (2022)
How Do Woody Allen's Characters Talk?
Subject: Director > Woody Allen
Back
