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This practice-based PhD explores the writing process for an original screenplay titled Lucy Drives a Car, a 65 page script written within the style and sensibilities of art cinema combined with dramedy, a genre that blends both drama and comedy. The thesis carries out a detailed analysis of selected screenplay fragments from the film Ratcatcher (1999), and the television series Atlanta (2016-18). Both of these objects of study illustrate how the narrative modes of art cinema and dramedy function at a creative, formal and practical level. This allowed me to determine how I could incorporate these film narrative modes into my screenplay. The introduction of the essay examines the predominant features of art cinema and dramedy, and presents an overview of Ratcatcher and Atlanta that outlines how these narrative trends are used. The key research question, separated into four key aims, is introduced and the methodology implemented to achieve each of them is explained.  Chapter One investigates Ratcatcher's narrative structure, and carries out a deeper analysis of its 'James and Margaret Anne' storyline. It distinguishes the plot's narrative elements and how they are used to imbue emotional significance to unimportant events. Specific sections from the screenplay are studied to resolve how they convey the film's melancholic mood, and how the script communicates the character's feelings with minimal use of dialogue. Other strategies, such as the handling of open and unresolved narratives, the implementation of ellipsis, the use of close ups, and how it conveys an ambiguous sense of time are also analysed.  Atlanta is examined in Chapter Two with the analysis of the series' comedy and drama elements. It discusses how the show comments upon social themes within relatable, everyday situations, and how it handles surrealist elements in hyper realistic settings. A scene by scene analysis of the Streets On Lock episode examines the series' blend of societal observations with comedic moments, and how this combination may be both copious and nuanced. Chapter Three looks into the writing process of the Lucy Drives a Car screenplay which deals with the emotional repercussions of a family trying to continue with their daily lives after the disappearance of a loved one. It examines the development of the early story ideas from a plot-driven narrative to an art cinema style, and the use of a free writing approach that highlights character development. It also discusses narrative qualities, including the use of commonplace situations, surrealist elements and how the screenplay attempts to present social commentaries without infringing on the audience. The fundamental ideas framed in this research are the detailed analysis of selected screenplay texts. This analysis, performed at a granular level, aids the comprehension of the narrative strategies found within specific scenes, yet it is an uncommon method in screenplay studies. The thesis also delves into seemingly uneventful story situations to develop deeper meaning within the mundane. Furthermore, it explores how humour can expound on a film's themes and accentuate a story's dramatic elements. The findings within this thesis may be useful for screenwriters that develop scripts in the art cinema or dramedy style.

Women's cinema has been the focus of much of the scholarly discussion that has developed feminist film criticism. However, theorists have not treated the concept of 'feminist film' in much detail, and previous studies of feminist cinema have not dealt with the possibility of male filmmakers doing feminist filmmaking. This thesis argues that the gender identity of directors who can make feminist films is not fixed and addresses the neglected aspect of male directors presenting feminist perspectives through cinema. Along with the focus on cinematic representations of gender, this thesis also analyses the roles played by sociocultural context, history, ethnicity and sexual orientation in capturing feminist representations on film. Adopting an interdisciplinary and cross-cultural approach, combining feminist film theory with cultural studies, gender studies and film theory and philosophy, this study conducts a close reading of All About My Mother (Pedro Almodóvar, 1999), Centre Stage (Stanley Kwan, 1991), Summer Snow (Ann Hui, 1995) and The Piano (Jane Campion, 1993) - Westernised and Hong Kong films made by directors with different genders (male and female) between 1990-2000. By situating these films and directors in a transregional, transcultural or intertextual context, this thesis indicates that feminist film in contemporary times is not only about the on-screen representations of female identities or experiences, women's oppression and strength but also revelations about how hegemonies regarding gender, race, class and culture impact on the social identities and lives of individuals. The films discussed here show that film feminism or feminist filmmaking is not merely a one-dimensional discussion of gender but a dynamic process - in theoretical and practical manners - that intersects with different sociocultural issues in a diverse environment.

A Diamond Geeza is a Girl's Best Friend is a collection of short stories and vignettes that demonstrates predominantly working-class men, trapped within a toxic, patriarchal sphere and explores themes such as power, reclamation of honour and the changing cultural landscape of Great Britain. The main story from the creative folder, 'Author of His Own Doom' chronicles, through the first-person narrative, how the protagonist attempts to rise above his surroundings and baser instincts and works towards discovering his identity and self-respect. The accompanying critical study contributes to the knowledge of metafictional writing. The creative process contributes by acknowledging the existence of a limiting and often degrading space for working class men and the ways in which they may seek a redress. This study refutes the assumption that metafiction is elitist or passé and is instead a powerful social tool to understand both cultural perimeters and the self, demonstrating the value of building a narrative for men who may feel that they have little or no voice. The sources that support this research include creative and critical texts, as follows: Evelyn Waugh's A Handful of Dust, Martin Amis's Money, and Davis Foster Wallace's Brief Interviews With Hideous Men; David Lodge's The Art of Metafiction, Robert Scholes' Fabulation and Metafiction, Patricia Waugh's Metafiction The Theory and Practice of Self- Conscious Fiction, William H. Gass's Fiction and the Figures of Life, Zadie Smith's White Teeth, Dan Ariely 's Predictably Irrational, Mary K. Holland's A Companion to David Foster Wallace Studies and Jonathon Greenberg's Was Anyone Hurt: The End of Satire in A Handful of Dust.

This thesis argues that with the beginning of the 21st century new notions of the vilified woman who possesses supernatural powers have emerged in American horror and dark fantasy cinema. These notions of a fantastical film antagonist conceptualised as the Evil Woman are concerned with depictions of female power that oppose normality in American culture and patriarchal hegemony, by investigating the context of American socio-cultural and political attitudes, feminist psychoanalysis and female power as a threat to traditional American values. In addition, this concept brings the factor of the 'voice' of the Evil Woman into the investigation and explores the development of contemporary female antagonistic characters who are bearers of independence, communicate female issues and criticise a flawed patriarchal system including capitalism, as well as contemporary notions of feminism. This voice delivers female-centred messages and is intended to reach a female audience rather than to please the male gaze. This is the written defence of a practice-based study that aims to investigate creative alternatives to feminist-informed film criticism. The performative research methods used aim to interrogate the boundaries of theoretical feminist film criticism by tearing down the general invisibility of the researcher.

This study deals with the influence of film form in fiction in terms of narrative discourse, focusing on issues of genre, narration, temporality, and the imitation of cinematic techniques. It provides a theoretical analysis of different methodologies (intermediality theory, semiotics, narratology, genre theory) which are useful to assess how a cinematic dimension has found a place in literary writing. This research, in particular, puts forth the idea of a 'para-cinematic narrator', a 'flattening of the narrative relief', and a 'para-cinematic narrative contract' as constitutive items of strongly cinematised fiction. These three theoretical items are subsumed in the concept of 'cinematic mode in fiction', which describes a distillation of characteristics of the film form on the written page. This research therefore represents a theoretical attempt to demonstrate how the cinematic component integrates the stylistic and generic traits of novels and short stories relating to different periods, styles and genres of the twentieth century. The proposed theoretical model is tested on a corpus of American, French, and, especially, Italian case studies. The remediation of film that emerges from these texts points to a complex interconnection between cinema and literature which still requires full acknowledgment in literary history.

This thesis explores how a series of Hollywood films allegorised the contradictions of American foreign policy between 1999 and 2009. These contradictions are underlined in pictures that use military intervention as a subtext. My argument considers the role of allegory in an array of genres, including war pictures, Westerns, and comic book adaptations. The case studies I analyse allegorise a bipartisan consensus surrounding military intervention. I postulate that this consensus was crystallised in the Kosovo War of 1999 and later became apotheosised in the 2003 Iraq War. I contend that, in pictures as diverse as There Will be Blood (2007) and The Dark Knight (2008), political allegory critiques the bipartisan allure of both neoconservatism and liberal interventionism’s promises of exporting American democracy. Moreover, these narratives examine the ideas of International Relations theorists as diverse as Walter Mead, Walter McDougall, and Joseph Nye. The theories propounded by these authors become embodied in different characterisations, leading to storylines that connote ideological friction and philosophical inconsistency. Consequently, Hollywood cinema during this period highlights a contradiction in American foreign policy, a theme that is further encoded in narrative elements that focus on the strained politics of coalition building and winning hearts and minds.

This thesis considers images of the falling body after the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, starting with Associated Press photographer Richard Drew’s photograph of a person falling to their death from the north tower of the World Trade Center. From this specific photograph, this thesis follows various intersecting lines in what I am calling a meshwork of falling-body images. Consequently, each chapter encounters a wide range of examples of falling: from literature to films, personal websites to digital content, and immersive technologies to artworks. Rather than connecting these instances like nodes, this thesis is more concerned with exploring lines of relation and the way the image moves along these lines. This thesis will argue that the falling-body image offers an alternative topology of the attacks: as enmeshed in the unfolding lines of life of web users, artists, directors and writers alike. In this way, this thesis outlines the ways we have lived with the image of falling, and the event itself, and how we continue to experience its unfolding consequences.

This thesis comparatively and critically examines the connections between Shakespeare and the drama of Samuel Beckett that have been established in British adaptations of Shakespeare’s plays for the stage, screen and page. Beckett’s distinct dramatic style has become an alternative method for the interpretation of such Shakespeare plays as King Lear and Timon of Athens for stage and screen. The first part of this thesis focuses on the assimilation of dramatic elements characteristic of Beckett’s theatre into four productions of King Lear and Timon by the Royal Shakespeare Company. The affinities between Shakespeare and Beckett’s theatre established at the RSC gained significance in relation to wider theatrical contexts. Chapters Three and Four form the second part of this thesis. These chapters examine the various ways in which the Beckettian method employed at the RSC was further explored and used in different media. The Beckettian overtones in Brook’s film of Lear (1971), and Jonathan Miller’s television adaptation of Timon (1981) indicate a strong affiliation between these adaptations and stage traditions associated with the RSC and Beckett’s absurdist theatre. Chapter Four investigates the Beckettian influence in two Hamlet offshoots produced in the 1960s: Charles Marowitz’s Hamlet, and Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. The intermingling of Beckett’s theatre with Shakespeare’s plays across different media not only reveals distinct modes of engagement with the Shakespearean plays, but also provides a broader understanding of how audiences respond to and interpret diverse methods of adapting Shakespeare.

Through a heterogeneous set of contributions from film studies, psychoanalysis and critical theory, including Leo Bersani and Laura Marks, Jacques Rancière and Jean-Bertrand Pontalis, the dissertation confronts spectatorship, film theory, and their relation, on the issue of emancipation and of its discursive regulation. Against the pedagogical forms of film theory and the authoritarian framing of the spectator’s position that can be seen to be integral to the functioning of the cinematographic apparatus, this work suggests that we consider theory as an internal aspect of film experience, rather than as its external explanation. Arguing for the fundamental emancipation of the spectator together with the heteronomy of the subject and the discursivity of film experience, the dissertation addresses what, in film experience, resists being reduced within intellectual mastery, metapsychological structures, and the logic of interpretation, and rather remains radically incommensurable with the principles of its intelligibility. Indeterminacy and a lack in mastery are thus taken to be the constitutional ground of spectatorship as a praxis and of the spectator as a site of tensions and dissensus. More specifically, three basic dimensions and categories of this “wayward” ground of film experience will be examined in their correspondences and connections: contingency, free association, and embodiment.

It is widely acknowledged that films have the capability to act as a tool to perpetuate stereotypes, promote a certain ideology, and influence audiences. Hollywood films have been accused of endorsing stereotypes and promoting prejudicial attitudes towards Arabs for more than a century. This study explores the nature of Arab representations in Hollywood films. More importantly, the study sets out to investigate how young Arabs from the State of Kuwait negotiate and interpret the way Hollywood represents Arabs in its productions. In order to understand how Kuwaiti audiences interpret Arab representations it was crucial to investigate how films are integrated into Kuwaiti society. Three key groups were identified for the purpose of this study, ‘the importers and regulators’, ‘the production group’, and ‘the Kuwaiti audience’, which was narrowed down to include both male and female Kuwaiti university students between the ages of eighteen to twenty-four. Research showed that Kuwaiti audiences were clearly fond of Hollywood films. According to the survey results, 95% of all participants chose Hollywood films as their favourite productions, even though 72% believed that the representations of Arabs in Hollywood films were generally inaccurate. Moreover, the vast majority of participants (82%) believed that the image of Arabs in Hollywood films was generally negative. The pool of available literature lacks an authentic Arab perspective on the issue of film representation. The findings of this study attempt to address this gap in the literature.

This thesis charts the trajectory of a strand of film-theoretical optimism in texts by Walter Benjamin (1882-1940), Siegfried Kracauer (1889-1966) and Alexander Kluge (1932–) from different moments in the twentieth century; the empirical corpus looks to post-reunification German and Austrian cinema to find evidence of this theoretical optimism in contemporary filmmaking practices. The thinkers advocate the leftist-political potential of film to stimulate a critical mode of spectatorship, and are to varying degrees influenced by Brecht and the neo- Marxist politics of the \({Frankfurter Institut für Sozialforschung}\). The objective of this thesis is thus twofold. First, it illustrates the continuing relevance of the following principal strands in the film-theoretical texts of Benjamin, Kracauer and Kluge: the representation of the figure of the worker in the \(Arbeiterfilm\) genre; the possibilities and limits of capturing reality using different modes of realism; the imperative of challenging viewers in order to transform them from ‘consumers’ into collaborators; and, following on from this, notions of shock and distraction, focusing on Benjamin’s concept of the ‘Schockwirkung’. Second, it shows how this diachronic, neo-Marxist approach can continue to illuminate facets of the political in contemporary cinema by German-speaking directors in an age of advanced capitalism and digital reproducibility.

This thesis examines contemporary literary and cinematic representations of Paris in relation to the dynamics of collective memory, arguing that the city emerges as a privileged site in which to explore critical questions of identity, memory and citizenship in France. In this comparative approach to representations of memories of the Holocaust and the Algerian War in France, I identify a shared lexicon of urban space simultaneously hiding and revealing traces of the past in the contemporary city. This study of memories and their urban and palimpsestic representations challenges the tendency to separate the disciplines of postcolonial and post-Holocaust studies, and in so doing contests the conceptual separation of metropolitan, European and colonial histories. As such, it contributes to a growing interdisciplinary field of French and Francophone studies that extends the object of study beyond the purely metropolitan. I draw on and engage with theoretical work in the fields of memory studies, postcolonial studies and post-Holocaust studies to consider how urban space opens up a legitimate new way of engaging with the overlaps and intersections between different memories without undermining the crucial element of difference. Underpinned by poststructuralist concerns, memory emerges here as an inherently constructed concept.

The advancement of theoretical screenwriting has been limited to popularized “how-to” techniques to further investigate the field. These techniques were based on internalised rules-of-thumb drawn from inductive observations of existing screenplays. Such analyses failed to provide answers to two troubling fundamental questions: first, what makes stories emerge in the context of narrative, and second, what are the underlying dynamics that allow a screenplay to function as a unified whole? The contribution of Screenplectics lies in first, by explaining how a screenplay functions synergistically, and appropriating the necessary metaphors, systemically. And second, by explaining the mechanism that is employed between compositional interactions in various structural levels that allows the coherent accumulative derivative we call story to emerge. The transition from an empirical to a theoretical perspective is achieved by examining such dynamics under the prism of holism and through the introduction of characteristics of complex systems: a network of components arranged hierarchically that interact parallel to one another in non-linear ways. This hierarchy shapes the foundation of the different layers of structure in a screenplay: deep, intermediate and surface structure. This research consolidates the notion that for the comprehension of such complex dynamics a more comprehensive theory of narrative is required.

This thesis addresses new trends in French cinema between 2000 and 2004, in films which have the common motif of a main, protagonist couple whose relationship has subversive potential and may indicate tension, instability, the process of change and transformations in post-2000 French society. The study shows how the chosen films contribute to the ongoing national debate about the following: what it means to speak and to ‘be’ French in post-2000 France, socially, culturally and in relation to how the nation defines itself; how the films project, dramatise and fantasise national identity; and finally, what role the films play in constructing the sense or the image of the French nation in their themes, motifs, and preoccupations with Frenchness. The thesis provides a body of work on gender, ethnicity and sexuality in post-2000 French film which fills a gap in the present literature, as although there are existing gender studies of 1980s’ and 1990s’ French film there is a reworking of film practices (in generic and thematic terms) in the post-2000 unlikely couple group of films which enables comparisons to be made and theoretical frameworks to be suggested, in order to establish parameters against which previous and future periods of this area of French cicnema history can be measured.

The thesis contends that there is a dominant strand of thinking driving the prevailing metanarrative of American global hegemony. This strand, constructed here as Ameritocracy, taps into three interconnected and fundamental principles concerning the nature of America: that American values are universal, terminal and providential. However, this notion of American universality is contradicted by a troubling parochialism, one that reveals religious, racial and cultural particularities generated from American identity, and from the mythic, providential origin story of America. The thesis expands on the theory of Ameritocracy, its historical derivation and theoretical antecedents, and its application within the soft power realm of Hollywood film. Ameritocracy finds its apotheosis in the popular blockbuster films of the unipolar era. The global aspirations of the blockbuster conflate with the universality of the medium, and thereby function as the perfect conduit for expounding the presumed universality of the American nation, promoting and proselytising on behalf of American primacy, using Ameritocratic arguments to legitimise and normalise U.S. hegemony. Analysis of blockbuster texts reveals that the notions of universality they embed are often partial and particular, featuring an obfuscation of definitions, between ideals and interests, between ends and means, and between the universal and the American.

This study explores issues of technique, methodology and style in ethnographic/documentary films, with a focus on Sardinia. How are cultural realities constructed in documentary and ethnographic films? In what ways do practical filmmaking strategies reflect wider epistemological questions and ethical concerns? The thesis examines the general stylistic principles that have guided the making of a substantial body of documentary films about Sardinia. Attention has been paid to a range of different methods used by a select number of documentary and ethnographic filmmakers, covering important theoretical points on the distinctive set of technical, aesthetic and ethical problems embodied in the epistemology of their filmmaking practice. The study concludes that scholars should look for a more balanced fusion between film as a multisensory medium of ideas and forms of ethnographic enquiry conducted through language. The nonverbal elements and visual imagery in ethnographic/documentary films suggest obliquely that a kind of knowledge expressed in the concrete case requires an acknowledgment of domains of experience that often elude written expression.

Teachers are required to be reflective practitioners: that is, they must constantly assess and evaluate their performance, and its effectiveness. In addition, of course, they come under external scrutiny from government and parents. However, what of the way the public look at teachers? Teachers and schools may be read about in newspapers, comics and journals, discussed on television and the radio; they may even fall foul of social networking sites on the Internet. Popular films may be regarded as ninety-minute essays, presented dramatically for the entertainment of their audiences; the teacher or school film has been a staple of popular cinema in this country for almost eighty years. Moreover, the representations of teachers in British films have tended to retain a continuity of message despite the many changes that have taken place in education over this period. This thesis looks at those representations, and changes in education, and attempts to make connections, backed up with a philosophical approach that seeks to explain the visual turn in terms of successive orders of simulation. My hope is that new generations of teachers may reflect on the cultural heritage of which they, and their chosen profession, are very much a part.

This thesis examines the performance history of Shakespeare focusing on those productions performed as a period analogue of the nineteen-thirties. It engages with the material in two ways. It first attempts to locate influences that have led to the development of this style of performance, finding correlations with both theatrical and televisual drama. It then examines the productions as performed, focusing on the construction of scenography and actor performances. Throughout the analysis, this thesis engages with shifts in the representation of the historical past on both stage and screen.

This study asks whether it is possible to produce revolutionary art - in this instance cinema - in the neo-colonial context. It defines revolutionary art in terms of its ability to expose the exploitative structures of neo-colonialism in a language accessible to the masses, and to inspire the exploited to fight back. It takes as a case study the films of Ousmane Sembene produced during the first two decades of neo-colonialism in Senegal. The study first examines Senegal and Sembene prior to 1960, confirming that France's continuing grip on Senegal is the result of a high level of hegemonic control. Sembene emerges as a complex product of the contradictions of French colonialism in its specific Senegalese form. The production of the films is looked at as concretely as possible, taking into account the ideological conditioning of Sembene himself, the contradictions of the medium and mode of production, the direct and indirect interventions of the state, and the ideological and cultural obstacles to communication between the artist and the masses. The study concludes that it is possible to see Sembene's work as stretching to the maximum the margin of manoeuvre provided by the contradictions of neo-colonialism in Senegal, or as an example of the power of hegemonic forces to incorporate even the most radical artist such a society can produce.