Helen Franklin's journey is fraught with challenges as she navigates her role as a space pilot on the Discovery mission. Her passionate relationship with Jack Watkins leads to the birth of their son, but her life is complicated by fate's relentless pursuit. As she travels from Acarian to Mars and back to her origins on Tiwana, the enigmatic Kaza from the emerald temples of Kazan may hold a key to the apocalyptic visions threatening her family and the universe.
The Franklin dynasty is characterized by its complex legacy, marked by power struggles, ambition, and the pursuit of influence. The narrative explores the family's rise to prominence, delving into the personal and political dynamics that shaped their fortunes. Key themes include loyalty, betrayal, and the impact of historical events on familial relationships. Through vivid storytelling, the book uncovers the intricacies of the Franklins' lives, revealing how their decisions resonate through generations and affect those around them.
Produced in the aftermath of the Second World War, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's A Matter of Life and Death (1946) stars David Niven as an RAF pilot poised between life and death, his love for the American radio operator June (Kim Hunter) threatened by medical, political and ultimately celestial forces. The film is a magical, profound fantasy and a moving evocation of English history and the wartime experience, with virtuoso Technicolor special effects. In the United States it was released under the title Stairway to Heaven, referencing one of its most famous images, a moving stairway between earth and the afterlife. Ian Christie's study of the film shows how its creators drew upon many sources and traditions to create a unique form of modern masque, treating contemporary issues with witty allegory and enormous visual imagination. He stresses the teamwork of Powell and Pressburger's gifted collaborators, among them Director of Photography Jack Cardiff, production designer Alfred Junge, and costume designer Hein Heckroth, and explores the history of both British and international responses to the film. Christie argues that the film deserves to be thought of as one of the greatest achievements of British cinema, but of all cinema
History no longer belongs only to historians, but is woven into the fabric and discourse of daily life. This fresh and wide-ranging survey explores how new media and new historiographic approaches are dramatically expanding what we understand by “history” today. Controversy about the aims and limits of historical analysis has raged ever since the rise of postmodern history in the 1970s. But these debates have rarely affected the understanding of history in Central and Eastern Europe. The volume confirms the crucial importance of audiovisual and mass media, from film to television and radio to comics, but does not exclude literary scholars and art historians who are also rethinking their methods, taking note of their new consumers. If history formerly appeared to be a one-way transmission of expertise, it is increasingly a dynamic engagement between researchers and audiences.
Following the release of Gangs of New York, this is an updated edition of the study of America's foremost film director. It offers Martin Scorsese in his own words and is an insight into a body of work that is perhaps the most personal achievement in modern American cinema. číst celé
Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger formed one of the greatest creative partnerships in the history of British cinema - The Archers. This book is a comprehensive analysis of their films and a useful guide to their work.
The early years of film were dominated by competition between inventors in America and France, especially Thomas Edison and the Lumière brothers . But while these have generally been considered the foremost pioneers of film, they were not the only crucial figures in its inception. Telling the story of the white-hot years of filmmaking in the 1890s, Robert Paul and the Origins of British Cinema seeks to restore Robert Paul, Britain’s most important early innovator in film, to his rightful place. From improving upon Edison’s Kinetoscope to cocreating the first movie camera in Britain to building England’s first film studio and launching the country’s motion-picture industry, Paul played a key part in the history of cinema worldwide. It’s not only Paul’s story, however, that historian Ian Christie tells here. Robert Paul and the Origins of British Cinema also details the race among inventors to develop lucrative technologies and the jumbled culture of patent-snatching, showmanship, and music halls that prevailed in the last decade of the nineteenth century. Both an in-depth biography and a magnificent look at early cinema and fin-de-siècle Britain, Robert Paul and the Origins of British Cinema is a first-rate cultural history of a fascinating era of global invention, and the revelation of one of its undervalued contributors.
