Taking “Heroes” (2006-10), the popular drama series about a group of ordinary human beings with superhuman abilities, as a case study allows us to expand on these ideas. This chapter aims at contributing to a stylistic analysis of the series without attempting to examine every major stylistic feature of the series in detail. Instead, the scope of…[Read more]

The fourth issue of “Cinema” addresses the topic of philosophy of religion and its connections with cinematic art. Film and religion have been fruitful research topics taken in conjunction. Researchers in this specific field have focused on particular periods (like the censorship era in the USA), on representations of religious traditions and pra…[Read more]

The fourth issue of “Cinema” addresses the topic of philosophy of religion and its connections with cinematic art. Film and religion have been fruitful research topics taken in conjunction. Researchers in this specific field have focused on particular periods (like the censorship era in the USA), on representations of religious traditions and pra…[Read more]

This paper is a reading of André Bazin’s article “Cinema and Theology”, an appraisal of “Cielo sulla palude” (“Heaven Over the Marshes”, 1949) that also reflects on the relation between film and theology. The reading takes into account Bazin’s ontology of cinema, which has been at times simplistically described as a belief in the simple transpare…[Read more]

The idea of a sci-fi ghetto that “Battlestar Galactica” tried to escape from suggests a fruitful way of analysing the show. Genres, especially those that are popular simultaneously in television and film, are defined and definable through a repertoire of elements: characters, plot, setting, iconography, and style. Since the focus of this cha…[Read more]

If Guy Maddin were a scientist, he would be a mad scientist. Perhaps, then, he is a mad artist, effusively mixing images that appear to come from the silent era and sounds that seem to come from the first talkies. The metaphor is apt—and not just because of the weird, frenzied scientist father in “Brand upon the Brain!” (2006). It is apt becau…[Read more]

If Guy Maddin were a scientist, he would be a mad scientist. Perhaps, then, he is a mad artist, effusively mixing images that appear to come from the silent era and sounds that seem to come from the first talkies. The metaphor is apt—and not just because of the weird, frenzied scientist father in “Brand upon the Brain!” (2006). It is apt becau…[Read more]

This analysis of the HBO television series ‘Carnivàle’ focuses on its overarching style as well as on its abrupt ending after two seasons.

This essay focuses on moments that stress the significance of inhabitation (of living in a space and finding a place in it) and duration (of experiencing time and valuing it) in classical American sitcoms. “Sitcom” is short for situation comedy and it is usually defined as a type of series in which an established set of characters are involved in…[Read more]

The encounter in the 1960s and 70s between Marxism and film studies, as an institutionally recognised academic field, was a radically incomplete and perhaps even a rather superficial and unsatisfactory affair. The work of cross-fertilisation between Marxism and film and their critical sifting of concepts and perspectives had hardly begun when for…[Read more]

This essay gives a historical/theoretical account of the interaction between psychoanalytic theory and American film culture. Through an analysis of the popularization and sensationalization of psychoanalytic theory and practice in the 1950s in America, the article argues that psychoanalytic theory in a neoliberal age is no longer seen as modern…[Read more]

Discussion of the historiography of the reception of Edward Yang’s film and the specificity of it in terms of documenting Cold War Taipei, a tightly surveilled city torn and its emergence as a modern city with a critique of Fredric Jameson’s reading of the film.

Franz Waxman composed over 150 film scores, the most famous of which is Billy Wilder’s film noir Sunset Boulevard (1950). The film plot bears a striking resemblance to Rod Serling’s teleplay for The Twilight Zone, “The Sixteen-Millimeter Shrine” (1959). Waxman, composer of the film, was approached to compose a score for a television episode…[Read more]

English title: “Transmedia Storytelling in the narrative universe of ‘Game of Thrones'” — This essay’s aim is to briefly introduce the concept of Transmedia Storytelling and to provide a showcase analysis and review of the serial TV narrative of GAME OF THRONES in order to show how a television series’ narrative universe, driven by both producers…[Read more]

Syllabus of BA seminar “Historische Entwicklung US-amerikanischer Fernsehserien von 1950 bis heute” aka. “TV or not TV? Historical Development of US American Serial Television from the 1950s up to today” held during Winter semester 2013/14 at Universität Hamburg, Germany.

Syllabus of BA seminar “Historische Entwicklung US-amerikanischer Fernsehserien von 1950 bis heute” aka. “TV or not TV? Historical Development of US American Serial Television from the 1950s up to today” held during Winter semester 2013/14 at Universität Hamburg, Germany.

Editorial Article to the special issue “Mise en geste. Studies of Gesture in Cinema” (ed. by Ana Hedberg Olenina and Irina Schulzki) in journal “Apparatus. Film, Media and Digital Cultures in Central and Eastern Europe” 5 (2017). 1. Gesture as a Figure of Speech. About this Issue 2. Liberated Gestures: Theories of Bodily Statements beyond the…[Read more]