FILM STUDIES BUSINESS & TECHNOLOGY
ASIAN STUDIES AFRICAN AMERICAN STUDIES POPULAR CULTURE
Chronicle of a Camera
Beyond the Chinese Connection
The Arriflex 35 in North America, 1945–1972
contemporary Afro-Asian Cultural Production
Norris Pope
Crystal S. Anderson
This volume provides a history of the most consequential 35mm motion picture camera introduced in North America in the quarter century following the Second World War: the Arriflex 35. It traces the North American history of this camera from 1945 through 1972—when the first lightweight, self-blimped 35mm cameras became available. Chronicle of a Camera emphasizes theatrical film production, documenting the Arriflex’s increasingly important role in expanding the range of production choices, styles, and even content of A history of American motion pictures in this period. the lightweight The book’s exploration culminates most workhorse camera strikingly in examples found in feature films dating from the 1960s and early that transformed 1970s, including a number of films assopostwar ciated with what came to be known as cinematography the “Hollywood New Wave.” The author shows that the Arriflex prompted important innovation in three key areas: it greatly facilitated and encouraged location shooting; it gave cinematographers new options for intensifying visual style and content; and it stimulated low-budget and independent production. Films in which the Arriflex played an absolutely central role include Bullitt, The French Connection, and, most significantly, Easy Rider. Using an Arriflex for car-mounted shots, hand-held shots, and zoom-lens shots led to greater cinematic realism and personal expression.
In this study, Crystal S. Anderson explores the cultural and political exchanges between African Americans, Asian Americans, and Asians over the last four decades. To do so, Anderson examines such cultural productions as novels (Frank Chin’s Gunga Din Highway [1999], Ishmael Reed’s Japanese by Spring [1992], and Paul Beatty’s The White Boy Shuffle [1996]); films (Rush Hour 2 [2001], Unleashed [2005], and The Matrix trilogy [1999–2003]); and Japanese animation (Samurai Champloo From Bruce Lee to [2004]), all of which feature cross-cultural conversations. In exploring the ways in Samurai Champloo, which writers and artists use this transhow Asian fictions ferral, Anderson traces and tests the limfuse with African its of how Afro-Asian cultural production interrogates conceptions of race, ethnic American creative identity, politics, and transnational exsensibilities change. Ultimately, this book reads contemporary black/Asian cultural fusions through the recurrent themes established by the films of Bruce Lee, which were among the first— and certainly most popular—works to use this exchange explicitly. As a result of such films as Enter the Dragon (1973), The Chinese Connection (1972), and The Big Boss (1971), Lee emerges as both a cross-cultural hero and global cultural icon who resonates with the experiences of African American, Asian American, and Asian youth in the 1970s. Lee’s films and iconic imagery prefigure themes that reflect cross-cultural negotiations with global culture in post-1990 Afro-Asian cultural production.
Norris Pope, Palo Alto, California, is program director for scholarly
publishing at Stanford University Press. The author of Dickens and Charity, he has a doctorate in modern history from Oxford University. He owns—and often uses—an Arriflex 35. MARCH, 176 pages (approx.), 6 x 9 inches, 40 b&w illustrations, appendix, index Printed casebinding $55.00S 978-1-61703-741-2 Ebook 978-1-61703-742-9
Crystal S. Anderson, Elon, North Carolina, is an associate professor of English at Elon University. Her work has been published in African American Review, MELUS, Extrapolation, and Ethnic Studies Review.
JUNE, 240 pages (approx.), 6 x 9 inches, bibliography, index Printed casebinding $55.00S 978-1-61703-755-9 Ebook 978-1-61703-756-6
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University Press of Mississippi
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