Cinematic Ghosts

In 1896 Maxim Gorky declared cinema the Kingdom of Shadows. In its silent ashen-grey world he saw a land of spectral and ever since then cinema has had a special relationship with the haunted and the ghostly. Cinematic Ghosts is the first collection devoted to this subject including fourteen new essays dedicated to exploring the many permutations of the movies'' phantoms.Cinematic Ghosts contains essays revisiting some classic ghost films within the genres of horror (The Haunting 1963) romance (Portrait of Jennie 1948) comedy (Beetlejuice 1988) and the art film (Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives 2010) as well as essays dealing with a number of films from around the world from Sweden to China. Cinematic Ghosts traces the archetype of the cinematic ghost from the silent era until today offering analyses from a range of historical aesthetic and theoretical dimensions.