Family Films in Global Cinema: The World Beyond Disney (Cinema and Society) - Hardcover

Noel Brown

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1784530085 ISBN 13: 9781784530082

Publisher: I.B.Tauris, 2015

Synopsis

Thanks to their huge market success, animations from the Disney Company and blockbuster franchises like Harry Potter have dominated family film production. Yet there is a long, varied and largely untold history of films made for family audiences of adults and children outside the United States, and of non-Disney family films in Hollywood. Family Films in Global Cinema is the first serious examination of films for child and family audiences in a global context. Whereas most previous studies of children s films and family films have concerned themselves solely with Disney, this book encompasses both live-action and animated films from the Hollywood, British, Australian, East German, Russian, Indian, Japanese and Brazilian cinemas. As well as examining international family films previously ignored by scholars, the collection also presents a fresh perspective on familiar movies such as The Railway Children, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Babe and the Harry Potter series. Coinciding with a surging critical interest in children s culture, Family Films in Global Cinema brings together film and television critics and historians, children s literature scholars and folklorists. Contributors interrogate the generic aspects of family films, analysing their key formal and thematic characteristics, revealing their commonalities and variations across social and cultural borders, questioning what makes them enduringly popular for adults as well as children, and underlining their enormous richness and diversity.

About this title

Review:

In a cultural context where films and other media aimed at children are too often regarded either with contempt or as a political menace, it is exciting to find a collection of writers treating children's culture with the academic rigour it deserves. Family Films in Global Cinema is a fascinating and illuminating book which covers an extraordinarily historical and global range and makes an important contribution to debates about cinema and its audiences.

Cary Bazalgette, former Head of Media Education, British Film Institute.

Noel Brown and Bruce Babington's Family Films in Global Cinema is a valuable and important contribution to the study of children's media. By including examinations of films from various studios, genres, countries and periods, this book will be a highly valuable tool for tose studying all children's entertainment forms, as well as enriching our understanding of the film industry as a whole. --Amy M. Davis, Lecturer in Film and Animation History, University of Hull.

About the Author:

Noel Brown has a PhD in film from Newcastle University (UK), where he has taught several courses on film. Currently an independent scholar, he is author of The Hollywood Family Film: A History, from Shirley Temple to Harry Potter (I.B.Tauris, 2012) and British Children s Cinema: From The Thief of Bagdad to Wallace and Gromit (I.B.Tauris, forthcoming 2016).

About this edition

• Publisher: I.B.Tauris
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 1784530085
• ISBN 13: 9781784530082
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 304
• Editor: Noel Brown, Bruce Babington