Memory and popular film [Paperback]

One of the first books to put memory at the centre of analysis when exploring the relationship between film culture and the past. Provides a sustained, interdisciplinary perspective on memory and film from early cinema to the present, drawing from film studies, American studies and cultural studies. Adopts a resolutely cultural perspective and unlike psychoanalytic or formalist approaches to memory, explores questions of culture, power and identity. Contributes to the growing debate about the status and function of the past in cultural life and discourse, discussing issues of memory in film, and of film as memory. Considers such well known films as Forrest Gump, Pleasantville, and Jackie Brown.

Notes on contributors

Acknowledgements

Introduction: Memory and popular film - Paul Grainge

PART ONE: PUBLIC HISTORY, PRIVATE MEMORY

1. A white man's country: Yale's 'Chronicles of America' - Roberta E. Pearson

2. Civic pageantry and public memory in the silent era commemorative film: 'The Pony Express' at the Diamond Jubilee - Heidi Kenaga

3. 'Look behind you!': memories of cinema-going in the 'Golden Age' of Hollywood - Sarah Stubbings

4. Raiding the archive: Film festivals and the revival of Classic Hollywood - Julian Stringer

PART TWO: THE POLITICS OF MEMORY

5. The articulation of memory and desire: from Vietnam to the war in the Persian Gulf - John Storey

6. The movie-made Movement: civil rights of passage - Sharon Monteith

7. Prosthetic memory: the ethics and politics of memory in an age of mass culture - Alison Landsberg

8. 'Forget the Alamo': history, legend and memory in John Sayles' 'Lone Star' - Neil Campbell

PART THREE: MEDIATING MEMORY

9. 'Mortgaged to music': new retro movies in 1990s Hollywood cinema - Philip Drake

10. Colouring the past: 'Pleasantville' and the textuality of media memory - Paul Grainge

11. Memory, history, and digital imagery l³˜