America on Film: Modernism, Documentary, and a Changing America Sam B. Girgus (Vanderbilt University, Tennessee) 9780521009317

In America on Film, first published in 2002, Sam Girgus examines a selection of films made in the last quarter of the twentieth century in an effort to trace how the notion of 'American' has changed drastically from that portrayed in American cinema up to the 1950s. In works such as Mississippi Masala, Lone Star, Malcolm X, Raging Bull, When We Were Kings, and Bugsy he finds a new and ethnically varied array of characters that embody American values, ideals, and conflicts; and a transformation in the relationship of American identity and culture to race and ethnicity, as well as to sexuality, gender, and the body. America on Film charts these changes through analysis of cinematic tensions between fiction, documentary, and modernism. An art form that combines fragments of reality with imagination, film, Girgus maintains, connects the documentary realism of the photographic image to the abstraction and non-representation of modernism.

America on Film, first published in 2002, examines how the notion of 'American' has changed from American cinema up to the 1950s.
Reviews
"A useful text for anyone interested in understanding how American cinema both produces and reflects stories and images about national ideologies and identities." American Studies



Book Information
ISBN 9780521009317
Author Sam B. Girgus
Format Paperback
Page Count 240
Imprint Cambridge University Press
Publisher Cambridge University Press
Weight(grams) 381g
Dimensions(mm) 228mm * 152mm * 19mm