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Nothing That Is
Millennial Cinema and the "Blair Witch" Controversies

Edited by Sarah L. Higley and Jeffrey A. Weinstock Essays exploring the Blair Witch phenomenon
Daniel Myric and Eduardo Sanchez's The Blair Witch Project seemingly appeared from nowhere to become one of 1999's highest grossing films. While generating revenue as a low budget movie backed by a media blitz, The Blair Witch Project, which backed itself as "real" footage of a supernatural event, also generated controversy and made a mockery of the Hollywood industry.
Nothing That Is examines these and other debates, and raises some questions of its own about American taste for horror, hoax, independent films, and the direction of cinema in the 21st century. These essays, from many diverse perspectives, also look at The Blair Witch Project's manipulation of cinematic codes, its view on technology and the occult, its film progenitors, and even the film's effects on its setting of Burkittsville, Maryland. Nothing That Is will interest both film scholars and fans of this unexpected blockbuster that emerged from, if not "nothing," a complex brew of culture, technology, and ingenuity.		 “Nothing That Is masterfully combines diverse voices to explore one of the most significant films at the turn of the millennia. The Blair Witch Project and all of its accompanying ancillary texts heralds a marked change in how spectators understand narrative storytelling, and signals the evolution of web-based marketing as crucial to reaching a more savvy, ironic, postmodern audience. This anthology conveys that same enthusiastic fervor for all things Blair Witch, compelling the reader to re-examine the film in order to understand a complex moment in cinematic and cultural history.”
— Nina K. Martin, Emory University
 
Contemporary Approaches to Film and Television Series

$27.95s paper / ISBN 0-8143-3064-9

256 pages
10 illustrations

2003

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