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The Hidden Meaning of Mass Communications: Cinema, Books, and Television in the Age of Computers
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Author: Fereydoun Hoveyda
List Price: $65.95
Our Price: Click to see the latest and low price
ISBN: 0275969967
Publisher: Praeger Publishers (30 July, 2000)
Edition: Hardcover
Sales Rank: 1,267,335
Average Customer Rating: 4.67 out of 5
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Customer ReviewsRating: 5 out of 5
WONDERFUL ENTERTAINTMENT
Don't seek any academic insights from this book. This is a piece of pure entertainment, full of memories and anecdotes that can brighten up a hundred dinner tables over the years. Hoveyda was a founder of France's snootiest film review, the Cahiers du Cinema, but writes with the ease and wit of a free spirit. While recalling his friendship with many of the innovative film-makers of the last century, Hoveyda also debunks some of the myths about the New Wave and independent cinema. A READER IN LONDON
Rating: 5 out of 5
Thought provoking observations on media and life
This is a charming collection of a lifetime of thoughts about cinema, literature and TV by one of the founders of the famous Cahier de Cinema. Hoveyda was a film critic for years, and tells personal anecdotes about Truffaut, Godard, Rosselini, etc.Some of the more whimsical thoughts are: cinema did not follow literature! It actually came before books, in the form of dreams in which we use cinematic techniques. And Sheherezade, in 1001 Nights, provided the "late show" (minus the TV set) for her insomniac husband, who had no opportunity to dream.
Rating: 4 out of 5
Hidden Meaning of Mass Communications, a must read...
With the "Hidden Meaning of Mass Communications," Exiled Iranian diplomat-writer Fereydoun Hoveyda has come out with a refreshing and most enticing undertaking on the Cinema and other stirring subjects affecting contemporary society. Hoveyda is a former contributor and renowned critic of the Cahiers du Cinéma, a French magazine that has highly influenced contemporary cinematic theory and technique. According to Hoveyda who has always refused to be a censor, "criticism can achieve responsible objectives by shifting in time, by taking place not at the beginning but towards the end of a film's run. It is not a matter of predetermining the viewer's choice, but of engaging in a dialogue with him about the work he has seen." In this new book, Hoveyda's many delightful anecdotes, observations and memories are enticing, and remarkably his revealing relationship between film and dreams are new and very stimulating ideas. Do you know that when you sleep, you become a cinematographer, directing and inventing your mental images? Thus, it could be that exiled Hoveyda presently lives in one land but may well dream in another! That's a wonderful idea and there are many more in the book. For example, "light" being a character in a film! The last chapter too is of high interest for it deals on how the computer age has changed film, art, literature and our entire way of life. We are no longer in the age of the Cahiers du Cinéma. Much research went into this very personal and useful work, surely with the advent of wonderful new techniques it may well turn into an e-book made available to all, with all the amazing photographs included. Guy Revol Paris - October 17, 2000
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