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  3. ReFocus: The American Directors Series

This series aims to produce new critical volumes from an interdisciplinary perspective which bring influential, yet neglected, American directors to the attention of a new audience of scholars and students in both film studies and American studies.

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5 results in ReFocus: The American Directors Series

ReFocus: The Films of Wes Craven
  • Edited by Calum Waddell
  • Published by:
    Edinburgh University Press
    Published online:
    05 March 2025
    Print publication:
    04 July 2023
  • This edited collection provides an insightful look at the career and output of American horror director Wes Craven, whose most famous films - such as 'The Last House on the Left' (1972), 'A Nightmare on Elm Street' (1984) and 'Scream' (1996) - came to define the form in the later decades of the twentieth century. Also paying attention to Craven's more underrated work, from 'Deadly Friend' (1986) through to his melodrama 'Music of the Heart' (1999), this academic study argues that the filmmaker's influence can still be felt on cinema today, many years after his passing. Featuring sixteen chapters and an extensive introduction, this addition to the ReFocus line will prove to be essential reading for scary movie connoisseurs and brings a valuable contribution to the growing field of horror film studies.

ReFocus: The Films of William Wyler
  • Edited by John M. Price
  • Published by:
    Edinburgh University Press
    Published online:
    04 March 2025
    Print publication:
    31 March 2023
  • In his forty-five-year career, William Wyler not only traversed the silent and the sound eras, but also connected classic Hollywood to 'new Hollywood.' The range of his films also spans a wide spectrum of genres: from westerns to adaptations of classic literature, from crime thrillers to rom-coms, and from controversial topics to musicals. His three Oscars for Best Director are an achievement surpassed only by John Ford. His life experience as one of Hollywood's early immigrant artists also speaks to the foreign influence on classic Hollywood. Yet despite his awards and commercial success, artistic recognition has mostly eluded Wyler. This volume of the ReFocus series attempts to analyze this Wyler paradox and also seeks to contextualize and theorize selections from Wyler's canon and his relationship to American cinematic history and American culture. This collection has gathered contributions from international authors from extremely diverse backgrounds, and therefore differing perspectives on Wyler and his work.

ReFocus: The Films of Wallace Fox
  • Edited by Gary D. Rhodes, Joanna Hearne
  • Published by:
    Edinburgh University Press
    Published online:
    26 October 2023
    Print publication:
    31 July 2022
  • Born in Oklahoma into the Chickasaw Nation, Wallace Fox directed films over the span of four decades. Known primarily for Westerns and mystery films, his output starred such famed actors as Bela Lugosi, Bob Steele, and Lon Chaney. ReFocus: The Films of Wallace Fox includes analysis of some of his best known films, including 'Wild Beauty', 'Gun Town', 'The Corpse Vanishes', 'Bowery at Midnight', 'Career Girl' and 'Brenda Starr, Reporter'. It reclaims the history and artistry of this major talent.

ReFocus: The Films of Roberta Findlay
  • Edited by Peter Alilunas, Whitney Strub
  • Published by:
    Edinburgh University Press
    Published online:
    20 October 2023
    Print publication:
    31 January 2023
  • ReFocus: The Films of Roberta Findlay covers a variety of angles, using queer, feminist, historical, and close textual reading methods to grapple with the complicated and contradictory politics and meanings of this pioneering culture-worker. Chapters examine Findlay's marketing strategies, the gender politics of her exploitation and hardcore films, 1980s horror productions, and several case studies of key individual films, in addition to a new interview with Findlay reflecting on her life and career.

ReFocus: The Films of Richard Linklater
  • Edited by Kim Wilkins, Timotheus Vermeulen
  • Published by:
    Edinburgh University Press
    Published online:
    19 October 2023
    Print publication:
    31 December 2022
  • Richard Linklater is a popular American filmmaker who is widely celebrated for the breadth of his oeuvre. Over the past three decades, Linklater has directed more than twenty features, ranging from non-linear independent films to Hollywood genre entertainment. Despite the popularity of Linklater's rich and varied body of work - and perhaps also because of this generic diversity - he remains under-represented in critical and scholarly fora.

    ReFocus: The Films of Richard Linklater addresses this oversight, bringing together twelve original essays attending to Linklater as a filmmaker whose work engages with contemporary debates in American politics, gender, youth, and activism as well as significant concepts in film studies, including time and duration, rhythm, and movement. Together these essays form a dialogue on Linklater's ongoing role in contemporary American popular culture, and the impact his work has on discussions within (and beyond) film studies.