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Purpose Depression, physical health, well-being, sleep and physical activity are interlinked. Healthy levels of physical activity and effective night-time sleep can reduce depressive symptoms. In the context of their lives and symptoms of depression, this paper aims to understand participants’ experiences of using a Fitbit, physical activity and sleep and the barriers and facilitators for healthy sleep and physical activity. Design/methodology/approach Qualitative methods were used to conduct interviews with 19 patients (4 male; 15 female) diagnosed with treatment-resistant depression undergoing transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) treatment for depression. Reflexive thematic analysis was used. Findings Healthy sleep and physical activity levels are interlinked and reduce depressive symptoms as well as improving well-being and physical health. A Fitbit is useful to enhance physical activity, self-awareness, motivation, healthier lifestyles and effective sleep. Barriers to healthy sleep and physical activity levels included depressive symptoms, environmental factors and anxieties. Facilitators for healthy sleep and physical activity levels included knowledge of the benefits, support from family and friends and applying sleep hygiene. Practical implications There is a need to provide interventions using wearable activity trackers that build on the links between increased physical activity, improved sleep, enhanced well-being, better physical health and lower depressive symptoms. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first time that patients undergoing TMS have had their experiences of sleep, activity and using a Fitbit investigated and reported.

Asiatic black bears (Ursus thibetanus) face chronic stress in bile farms. In this study, we investigated whether bile-farmed bears show significantly high levels of stress at rescue and whether stress levels reduce over time in a bear sanctuary where the bears are supported with environmental enrichment and veterinary care to improve animal welfare. We measured stress hormone levels using faecal cortisol metabolites (FCM) in 16 Asiatic black bears freshly rescued from bile farms in Vietnam. Fresh faeces were collected from each bear on the rescue truck and on a weekly basis for a 22-week study period at a bear sanctuary in Vietnam. Results showed that for all 16 rescued bears (with one exception) individual FCM levels from truck samples were above mean baseline FCMs of bears previously rehabilitated to a bear sanctuary. This suggested the majority of the rescued bears were still capable of showing a stress endocrine response during the rescue operation despite being exposed to conditions causing chronic stress in bears on bile farms. Results showed that mean FCM levels of the rescued bears differed significantly between time-periods (higher at the rescue [on truck samples] compared to week 22 samples) and mean FCM levels showed an overall decline over the first 22 weeks after they arrived at the bear sanctuary. The bears also demonstrated acute FCM stress responses to management interventions at the sanctuary, such as veterinary health checks and transportation. In conclusion, rescued bears tend to modulate their stress endocrine response after rehoming at the bear sanctuary. This is an important result, indicating that the rescue effort and rehabilitation of bile-farm bears is effective. Whether this also coincides with behavioural adjustments in rehabilitating bears (eg lessening of stereotypic behaviour) warrants further investigation.

This chapter considers the shifting industrial patterns of distributing and exhibiting Chinese-language films in the UK in the twenty-first century. Drawing upon their experiences as film curators, Willis and Elliott provide a detailed analysis of two new models, namely the cultural and the commercial. Although existing predominantly within the UK’s independent film exhibition sector, the cultural model intends to articulate the important position of genre films in providing Chinese language films a space that moves away from the perceived elitism associated with the term ‘art-house’ cinema. In comparison, the commercial model not only intends to capitalize on the commercial value of genre films by targeting overseas Chinese audiences but also attempts to reposition those films within the cultural debates of UK markets.

From the Shaw Brothers production line to the clones of Bruce Lee, Hong Kong cinema has long been seen as driven by raw commercial concerns. Like many other commercial film industries, most notably Hollywood, production in the Hong Kong film industry has also been focused on popular cycles of production. These have included phases when family melodramas, historical swordplay and kung-fu films, screwball comedies and triad based crime films have all proved successful at the domestic and regional box-office. As with other commercially focused film industries there has also been a low budget sector within Hong Kong industry. Here producers and directors have fashioned energetic, populist films that were designed to appeal to audiences’ desire for films that contained sex and violence. The horror genre seemed the perfect vehicle to satiate these needs. This chapter explores the work of filmmakers who worked at this rougher end of Hong Kong horror in the 80s and 90s. As well as placing them into this exploitation context of production, this chapter discusses their excessive content and the visual style employed by directors such as Kuei Chih-hung (Killer Snakes, Hex) and Herman Yau (The Untold Story, Ebola Syndrome) to deliver their exploitative content.

British Chinese films have struggled to find a significant presence in the writings of British cinema history, even within debates on minority cinemas, such as Black British or British Asian cinema, which have since the 1980s established a canon of margins of sorts. This chapter argues for an inclusive historiography that places British Chinese filmmaking within these wider debates, through the analysis of films such as Ping Pong (1986), Soursweet (1988), Peggy Su (1997), and Cut Sleeve Boys (2006), which not only intersect with issues of representation and various film funding initiatives that have encouraged new voices but also highlight questions of distribution and exhibition for small films in the construction of national cinemas.

From its initial inception as a focus for arts and culture within the Chinese community of Manchester and the Northwest, to its recent rebranding as the Centre for Chinese Contemporary Art, the Chinese Arts Centre’s history has intersected with a number of shifts and changes within the arts in the United Kingdom. Here we ask: What can looking at an institution such as the Chinese Arts Centre tell us about the shifting debates and arguments about the place and role of (Chinese) culture within society and the cultural geography of a city? What can such a case study tell us about what artists, styles, and taste formations are dominant at particular historical moments, and what insights can it offer into the political economy of arts funding at these junctures?

A critique is presented of the films "Hustle" directed by Robert Aldrich and "Night Moves" directed by Arthur Penn, focusing on the films' relation to American film noir from the 1940s and 1950s. The social and political aspects of films, social change in motion pictures, and the history of the U.S. film industry are discussed, as well as themes of masculinity, American society, and class conflict in the films.

The 21st century revival in Spanish horror film production has seen both a resurgence of interest in the genre’s Iberian past and an interest in transnational film remakes for North American audiences. This chapter will consider the cultural politics of remaking Spanish horror through two case studies - Quarantine (2008), the US remake of [REC] (2007), and Come Out and Play (2012), the Mexican remake of Who Can Kill a Child? (1976). The chapter argues that Who Can Kill a Child? might profitably be read as an engagement with the legacy of Francoist Spain, and that [REC] could be productively understood in relation to Spain’s recent tensions surrounding immigration. Through a discussion of the potential political readings of these films, the chapter argues that the North American remakes are divested of the most urgent political aspects of their Spanish counterparts in an endeavour to create globally marketable horror films.

Legal drama series have been a mainstay of British television for many years, their format often allowing for the exploration of a range of social, cultural and political issues. In many instances the legal settings of these series allow writers to investigate moments when those who are socially marginalised interact with one of British society’s major institutions. At the heart of these interactions is a representation of class and more recently race. Through a genre-based (the legal drama) analysis of the Leeds-set North Square (2000) and the Manchester-based New Street Law (2006–2007), this chapter considers how representations of class operate through the regional and workplace settings of these legal dramas. It concludes by discussing Outlaws (2004), a series set in a small northern town and which, rarely for British television, had a black legal professional at its centre, providing the opportunity to explore social issues around race and class.

This chapter investigates the issues and politics related to international film festivals and film marketing/distribution/exhibition. It focuses on Hong Kong cinema's re-positioning vis--vis the expansion of Chinese national cinema in the twenty-first century. A good case in point in these respects is Ann Hui's recent film A Simple Life. Its popularity with audiences came as a surprise to the filmmakers. The chapter looks at the production background of A Simple Life and reviews some basic concepts and latest debates about film festivals as effective distribution and exhibition channels for films that might otherwise not be able to reach their target audiences. It provides a discussion on the presence of Chinese-language films at important international film festivals in the West. The chapter concludes with an analysis of how A Simple Life presents the perspective and sense of dislocation of diasporic Chinese people as well as filmmakers in Hong Kong, and how this representation has been reinforced via film festivals.

The notion of the Sinophone according to Shu-mei Shih attempts takes the delineation of Chinese identities out of ethno-geographic boundaries into linguistic communities. In the case of Chinese cinemas, the emphasis on linguistic communities fails to address Chinese diasporic cinemas that do not necessarily employ any Chinese language, yet speak to the tensions inherent in articulating Chinese identities on foreign shores. This article will explore these issues through a study of the British Chinese films Ping Pong (Po-Chih Leong, 1986) and Soursweet (Mike Newell, 1988) and argue that an emphasis on Sinophone cinemas, as a stand-in for the polyvalencies of `Chinese' and `Chineseness', risks silencing non-Chinese-language Chinese cinemas such as British Chinese cinema. However marginalized it may be, the example of British Chinese cinema calls into question the political usefulness of a definition of Chinese identity that silences those who for artistic, cultural or economic reasons choose to work in non-Chinese languages.

This article looks at how Alex de la Iglesia can be studied using reviewed auteurist strategies. Such a study has to take into account how he constructs his persona as director in a process which deviates greatly from the images and roles allocated to directors by traditional auteurism. This persona has, in its turn, been the perfect complement to output that has often been seen as a non-legitimate part of Spanish cinema for its reliance on non-realist, popular genres and blatant ‘homages’ to Hollywood. From the constructions of his persona, we propose to look at the adjustments that both his new auteur style and his output impose on the definition of an identity in which official/unofficial discourses on Spanish cinema are continuously engaged. We also suggest that this process must involve a revision of the scholarship on Spanish auteurs that is in currency.

(2007). Filmonik: Manchester's Filmmaking ‘open-mic night’. Journal of Media Practice: Vol. 8, No. 1, pp. 93-95.

In an article published in a special issue of the Journal for Chinese Cinemas, considering the possibility of shifting transnational Chinese film studies from a diasporic framework to a Sinophonic one, we argued for the retention of the former against the latter on grounds that the notion of diaspora continues to speak to the historical and geographical dimensions of Chinese cinemas outside of China, whereas the notion of the Sinophone, delineated according to linguistic communities, may further marginalise non-Chinese-language Chinese film-making, such as films addressing the British-born Chinese experience (Chan and Willis, 2012). In that article we discussed two relatively unknown, but nevertheless significant, feature films made by or about British Chinese people: Ping Pong (dir. Po-chih Leong, 1986) and Soursweet (dir. Mike Newell, 1988). In this chapter, we extend the argument further by offering an analysis of four short films produced in the UK: Chinese Whispers (dir. David Yip, 2000), Blue Funnel (dir. Paul Mayeda Berges, 1997), Red (dir. Rosa Fong, 1995), and Granny’s Ghost (dir. Lab Ky Mo, 2008). Each of these works, despite their limited exposure at film festivals and occasionally on television, clearly speak to the challenges of minority cultural representation in British film-making.

The continued importance of stardom in relation to Hollywood cinema has become something of a discussion point in recent years, with a number of those commenting upon the US film industry noting a historically significant shift away from the traditional dominance of star power. Central to this has been the growing importance of technological spectacle in the marketing of recent Hollywood blockbusters such as Transformers (Michael Bay, 2007) and Avatar (James Cameron, 2009). Perhaps the biggest indicator of this new dependence on spectacle rather than star power can be found in the advances made by 3D technology into the global marketplace and its importance in the ‘package’ offered to audiences by many new films. In addition to this, some commentators on the American film industry have argued that the name of a well-known director, such as Michael Bay or James Cameron, with a reputation for marshalling new technologies has become more significant to Hollywood blockbusters than the stars attached to them. Perhaps the most cited example of this developing trend is Avatar. These changes in the US film industry led Mike Goodridge, then editor of Screen International to ask, ‘Are movie stars losing their power in the film business?’ (2010, n.p.). This question had occurred to Goodridge following a visit to the American Film Market, where he argued he saw a distinct move away from a commitment to high-earning stars in favour of high-concept films that utilized new technologies and which had acclaimed directors at the helm.