Studying Unmade, Unseen, and Unreleased Film and Television
Histories, Theories, Methods
Distributed for Intellect Ltd
Studying Unmade, Unseen, and Unreleased Film and Television
Histories, Theories, Methods
Unmade, unseen, and unreleased film and television are a strikingly underexplored aspect of media history, even though significant financial investment and creative labor in these industries are devoted to projects that never reach production or distribution. This groundbreaking collection offers a comprehensive examination of this phenomenon, bringing together interdisciplinary perspectives from film history, gender and sexuality studies, industry studies, archival research, and creative practice.
Each chapter presents a state-of-the-art overview of a key theme, debate, method, or theory, drawing on illuminating case studies from different historical periods and global contexts. Together, the contributions define what it means for a work to remain unmade, unseen, or unreleased, while showcasing innovative research approaches and mapping the scale of unfinished projects in film and television. Serving as both a foundational text for students and a valuable reference for established researchers, the volume’s scope will offer an essential resource for anyone seeking to understand the hidden histories of the screen industries.
Table of Contents
Introduction: Unmade, unseen, and unreleased film and television: an unresolved problem
James Fenwick and Kieran Foster
Part one: Theorizing the unmade, unseen and, unreleased
Chapter one: Creative failure
Peter C. Kunze
Chapter two: The poetics of phantom cinema: waiting for Harry Dickson
Philippe C. Met
Chapter three: Archival absences, silences, and fragments: the unmade and film history
James Fenwick
Chapter four: Batgirl incorporated: Cancelled films, corporate strategy and questions of quality
Kieran Foster
Chapter five: Posthumous cinema: unfinished films in the archives
Monika Kin Gagnon
Chapter six: Phantom visions of the SnyderVerse: unproduction and the fan-led battle to restore Zack Snyder’s DC Extended Universe films
Ryan Greene
Chapter seven: Queer histories of the unmade
Sabrina Mittermeier
Chapter eight: Becoming unmade
Zach Karpinellison
Part two: Archives of the unmade, unseen, and unreleased
Chapter nine: Disinterring Johanna Ter Steege: Aryan Papers and the materiality of the Stanley Kubrick Archive
Cassie Brummitt and Joy McEntee
Chapter ten: The unmade films of George Pal
James Chapman
Chapter eleven: The lost crusade: Lindsay Anderson’s unmade sequel to If…. (1968)
Will Kitchen
Chapter twelve: No film to watch: Pare Lorentz and the atom bomb
Jason Potel
Chapter thirteen: Ken Russell’s unmade films 1968-1982: a critical reflection
Matthew Melia
Chapter fourteen: The case of Tizia Jus: an unmade film in post-war Austria
Hanja Dämon
Chapter fifteen: The location outtakes for Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah
Sue Vice and Dominic Williams
Part three: Creative practice and the unmade, unseen, and unreleased
Chapter sixteen: Not showing at this cinema: festivals of the unmade
Tim Brown
Chapter seventeen: Containing, transforming, transcending the story: notes from a scriptwriter’s journey
Marianne Strand
Chapter eighteen: The Unfilmables
Colm McAuliffe
Notes on contributors
Index