Film & Theatre

This book is an essential resource for media educators working to promote critical thinking, creativity, and civic engagement through their teaching. Connecting theory and research with creative projects and analyses of pop culture, it models an integrated and practical approach to media education. In order to prepare learners to successfully navigate rapid shifts in digital technology and popular culture, media educators in both secondary and university settings need to develop fresh, innovative approaches. Integrating concepts and practices from the fields of media studies, media arts, and media literacy, this book prepares teachers to help their students make connections between their studies, uses of media, creative expression, and political participation. As educators implement the strategies in this book in their curricula and pedagogy, they will be empowered to help their students more thoughtfully engage with media culture and use their intelligence and imagination to address pressing challenges facing our world today. Making Media Matter is an engaging and accessible read for educators and scholars in the areas of media literacy, media and cultural studies, media arts, and communication studies.

The stunning portrayals of the Canadian landscape in the documentaries produced by the National Film Board of Canada, not only influenced cinematic language but shaped our perception of the environment. In the early days of the organization, nature films produced by the NFB supported the Canadian government's nation-building project and show the state as an active participant in the cultural construction of the land. By the mid-1960s however, films like Cree Hunters of Mistassini and Death of a Legend were asking provocative questions about the state's vision of nature. Filmmakers like Boyce Richardson and Bill Mason began to centre the experiences of First Nations people, contest the notion that nature should be transformed for economic gain, and challenge the idea that the North is a wild and empty landscape bereft of civilization. Author Michael Clemens describes how films produced by the NFB broadened the ecological imagination of Canadians over time and ultimately inspired an environmental movement.

In Theatre and Its Other, Elisa Ganser revisits a telling debate on the intertwined natures of dance and dramatic acting; preserved in Abhinavagupta's eleventh-century commentary on the Nāṭyaśāstra, it reflects complex historical shifts in aesthetic theory and performance practice.

This collection of essays offers a critical assessment of Labour in a Single Shot, a groundbreaking documentary video workshop. From 2011 to 2014, curator Antje Ehmann and film- and video-maker Harun Farocki produced an art project of truly global proportions. They travelled to fifteen cities around the world to conduct workshops inspired by cinema history's first film, Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory, shot in 1895 by the Lumière brothers in France. While the workshop videos are in colour and the camera was not required to remain static, Ehmann and Farocki's students were tasked with honouring the original Lumière film's basic parameters of theme and style. The fascinating result is a collection of more than 550 short videos that have appeared in international exhibitions and on an open-access website, offering the widest possible audience the opportunity to ponder contemporary labour in multiple contexts around the world.