Gaumont

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Robert Phillip Kolker, Peter Beicken

The Films of Wim Wenders traces the development of one of the most well known directors of the New German Cinema, which flourished in the seventies and early eighties. Examining Wenders career from his early film-school productions, through his mature works of the seventies, this book also analyzes his more recent films, as well as the themes and preoccupations that unite his oeuvre. As the authors note, Wenders' works have been profoundly influenced by American films, especially the "road movie" genre. They often feature characters who are always on the move in an attempt to capture a glimpse of their identity and place in the world. They also represent a generation of postwar Germans seeking to redeem themselves and the history of their country by turning to American popular culture, particularly its music and movies. In such films as The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick, Alice in the Cities, Kings of the Road, and The American Friend, Wenders offers an articulate cinematic vision of the emotional landscape of postwar Germany. In his most recent films, such as Paris, Texas, Wings of Desire, and Until the End of the World, Wenders continues his quest for certainty for a safe domestic and romantic haven, in a style that transforms modernism into post-modern pastiche and in which such elements as melodrama, fantasy and desire are fused. Providing close analyses of Wenders' most important works, The Films of Wim Wenders serves as a useful introduction to a serious filmmaker for whom cinema represents nothing less than the redemption of the imagination and reclamation of history.

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Andrew Utterson

Uncovers the early history of cinema and computers and looks at how filmmakers first encountered the defining technology of the digital age. --from publisher description.

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Alan Gordon

"Historians have long engaged in passionate debate about collective memory and the building of national identities. Alan Gordon focuses on one national hero - Jacques Cartier - to explore how notions about the past have been created, passed on through the generations, and used to present particular ideas about the world in English- and French-speaking Canada. He reveals that the cult of celebrity surrounding Cartier by the mid-nineteenth century reflected a particular understanding of history, one which accompanied the arrival of modernity in North America. This new sensibility shaped the political and cultural currents of nation building in Canada. Cartier was a point of contact between English and French Canadian nationalism, but the nature of that contact had profound limitations."--BOOK JACKET.

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Paul A. Shackel and Barbara J. Little

The Chesapeake Bay area's economy, ecology, and history have made it an extraordinarily rich area for archaeological study for nearly a century. Ranging across many methods of historical archaeology, this volume represents current work on the Chesapeake's western shore dealing with early European settlements, plantations and landscapes, and eighteenth- and nineteenth-century life. Historical Archaeology of the Chesapeake presents a history of past excavations, as well as a sampling of recent historical archaeological discoveries. The essays include an examination of seventeenth-century decorated tobacco pipes as evidence of possible African-made material culture, a detailed analysis of the decline of Alexandria's sugar industry, and a comparison of household objects from a working-class neighborhood with those of the nearby Hooker's Division, once the red-light district of Washington, D.C. Using an array of theoretical orientations, the contributors analyze relationships among Native Americans, Europeans, and Africans, as well as among economic and occupational groups. Their findings illuminate changing social and political situations, including stratification within cities, between urban and rural areas, and between the Old and New Worlds.