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  • The Cinema of Converging Lives: Complex Films and Intersecting Stories in an Isolated World

    The Cinema of Converging Lives by Fischer, Lucy;

    Complex Films and Intersecting Stories in an Isolated World

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      • Publisher's listprice GBP 64.00
      • The price is estimated because at the time of ordering we do not know what conversion rates will apply to HUF / product currency when the book arrives. In case HUF is weaker, the price increases slightly, in case HUF is stronger, the price goes lower slightly.

        30 576 Ft (29 120 Ft + 5% VAT)
      • Discount 10% (cc. 3 058 Ft off)
      • Discounted price 27 518 Ft (26 208 Ft + 5% VAT)

    30 576 Ft

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    Product details:

    • Publisher OUP USA
    • Date of Publication 8 November 2025

    • ISBN 9780197768655
    • Binding Hardback
    • No. of pages232 pages
    • Size 17x156x235 mm
    • Weight 430 g
    • Language English
    • Illustrations 33 b/w film stills
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    Short description:

    What happens when strangers meet in film? In this book, Lucy Fischer analyzes films by a diverse and international group of directors which portray the seemingly random intersection of separate lives. Exploring this important category of the complex film genre, she dissects the different narrative forces which bring the characters together and considers the relationship between this genre and rising loneliness and isolation worldwide.

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    Long description:

    What happens when strangers meet in film? The Cinema of Converging Lives explores a group of films within an important category of complex film, a genre that critics have hailed as proliferating worldwide in the 1980s and 1990s and continuing today. Lucy Fischer examines a recurring trope within this category which portrays disparate characters, mostly unacquainted and introduced separately, who eventually and often unexpectedly cross paths.
    The book focuses on underlying causes in each movie that drive the intersection of characters forward. It looks to 23 films by a diverse and international group of directors to consider how chance, coincidence, accident, history, geography, and the supernatural, as well as formal structures like metafiction and the circulation of possessions, drive these narratives. The book also highlights the irony of our clear interest in stories of converging lives on screen in an age of increasing isolation and loneliness. Finally, it offers a new look at complex film as a genre, including a discussion of the wide variety of plot patterns beyond those defined in this book. Providing in-depth case studies of this vital form of contemporary movie, a new conceptual approach to the investigation of the complex film, a summary of prior academic work on the topic, and important socio-cultural insight into the opposing notions of convergence and isolation, The Cinema of Converging Lives will appeal to students and experienced film scholars alike.

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    Table of Contents:

    Introduction
    Part 1. Causations
    Chance and Films of Converging Lives
    Coincidence and Films of Converging Lives
    Accident and Films of Converging Lives
    The Supernatural: The Afterlife and Films of Converging Lives
    History and Films of Converging Lives
    Part 2. Geographies
    The Local/Urban and Films of Converging Lives
    International and Global Convergences
    Part 3. Formations
    Circulating Possessions and Films of Converging Lives
    Metafiction and Films of Converging Lives

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