Böcker av Helen Hughes

How have nuclear issues been covered in documentary since the end of the Cold War? This original new book explores how the sometimes elusive, sometimes dramatic effects of uranium products on the landscape, on architecture and on social organisation continue to show up on-screen, maintaining a record of moving images that goes back to the early twentieth century.It is the first book to analyse independent documentary films about nuclear energy - it suggests an approach to documentary films as agents of change.Each chapter of this book focuses on one of ten different documentary films made in Europe and North America since 1989. Each of these films works the material and the ideological heritage of the nuclear power industry into visions of the future. Dealing with the legacy of how ignorance and neglect led to accidents and failures the films offer different ways of understanding and moving on from the past. The documentary form itself can be understood as a collective means for the discovery of creative solutions and the communication of new narratives. In the case of these films the concepts of radioactivity and deep time in particular are used to bring together narrative and formal aesthetics in the process of reimagining the relationships between people and their environments.Focusing on the representation of radioactive spaces in documentary and experimental art films, the study shows how moving images do more than communicate the risks and opportunities, and the tumultuous history, associated with atomic energy. They embody the effects of Cold War technologies as they persist into the present, acting as a reminder that the story is not over yet.Primary readership will be academics and students working in environmental communication and in environmental humanities more broadly. For students of independent film or documentary it will also provide a clear picture of contemporary themes and creative practice.

Explores the ways in which romance authors have sought to represent our fantasies of life in the past ever since the first "cloak and dagger" tales of the 1930's. It examines how, with the social upheaval of the war, these cut-and-thrust swashbucklers gave way to the female-oriented romances.

Described as one of Australia's most inventive artists, Mikala Dwyer creates objects and installations that are both playful and provocative, re-imagining familiar materials and what they say to us about the world in which we live. Mikala Dwyer: A Shape of Thought looks at Dwyer's work over the past three decades documenting the evolution of her practice and her influences. Her work is characterized by a playful and excessive accumulation of elements - she has created installations out of fabric, play dough, stockings, felt, vinyl, plastic, organza and nail varnish. Her choice of materials has been identified as feminine and by extension as a subtle feminist critique of recent art history. However her teasing references to modernist abstraction, the more organic forms of minimalism and to pop art (such as the saggy Kenneth Noland-like target forms and Oldenburg-esque baggy vinyl shapes in 'Hanging eyes') are an acknowledgment of antecedents rather than necessarily having a critical agenda. Dwyer's highly engaging sculptures explore ideas about shelter, childhood play, modernist design and the relationship between people and objects. Often beguiling in their colour and profusion, her works incorporate raw materials and found objects in inventive and unexpected ways that transform their architectural settings.

This is the first book-length study of environmental documentary filmmaking, offering an analysis of controversial and high-profile documentary films. With analyses that include the wider context of this filmmaking about local rural communities in Britain and Europe, this book also contributes to the ongoing debate on representing the crisis.