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"This book is aimed at students of film studies and general readers interested in a comprehensive introduction to the field. It addresses techniques and terminology used in film production and film criticism, emphasizing thinking and writing critically and effectively about film. Organized in three parts, the text focuses on the fundamentals of film analysis before moving on to more complex topics." "Part III introduces readers to interpretive frameworks that treat cinema as a cultural institution. This section encourages readers to move beyond textual analysis and consider the relationship between film and culture. Readers learn to form sophisticated arguments about film in cultural, historical, and economic contexts."--BOOK JACKET.
Suitable for students of film studies, this book illustrates basic film concepts in context and in depth. It addresses techniques and terminology used in film production and criticism, emphasising thinking and writing critically.
Updated and expanded, this new edition is the perfect starter text for students of film studies. The book illustrates basic film concepts in context and in depth. It addresses techniques and terminology used in film production and criticism, emphasizing thinking and writing critically and effectively. With reference to 460 new and existing images, the authors discuss contemporary films and film studies scholarship, as well as recent developments in film production and exhibition, such as digital technologies and new modes of screen media.
Film: A Critical Introduction provides readers with the skills needed to successfully critique and analyze film and teaches strategies for translating ideas about film into written criticism and analysis. Intricate discussions of the current issues in film theory, from sound production to documentaries, keep readers' perspectives on film fresh and informed. Part I introduces readers to the importance of film analysis, offering helpful strategies for discerning the way films produce meaning. Part II examines the fundamental elements of film, including narrative form, mise en scène, cinematography, editing, and sound, and shows how these concepts can be used to interpret films. Part III frames the debates around ideological criticism, national and transnational cinema, and genre and auteur theory that animate contemporary film scholarship.
What makes a film a teen film? And why, when it represents such powerful and enduring ideas about youth and adolescence, is teen film usually viewed as culturally insignificant? Teen film is usually discussed as a representation of the changing American teenager, highlighting the institutions of high school and the nuclear family, and experiments in sexual development and identity formation. But not every film featuring these components is a teen film and not every teen film is American. Arguing that teen film is always a story about becoming a citizen and a subject, Teen Film presents a new history of the genre, surveys the existing body of scholarship, and introduces key critical tools for discussing teen film. Surveying a wide range of films including The Wild One, Heathers, Akira and Donnie Darko, the book's central focus is on what kind of adolescence teen film represents, and on teen film's capacity to produce new and influential images of adolescence.
European Film Theory and Cinema explores the major film theories and movements within European cinema since the early 1900s. An original and critically astute study, it considers film theory within the context of the intellectual climate of the last two centuries. Ian Aitkin focuses particularly on the two major traditions that dominate European film theory and cinema: the "intuitionist modernist and realist" tradition and the "post-Saussurian" tradition. The first originates in a philosophical lineage that encompasses German idealist philosophy, romanticism, phenomenology, and the Frankfurt School. Early intuitionist modernist film culture and later theories and practices of cinematic realism are shown to be part of one continuous tradition. The post-Saussurian tradition includes semiotics, structuralism, and post-structuralism.
Although precise definitions have not been agreed on, historical cinema tends to cut across existing genre categories and establishes an intimidatingly large group of films. In recent years, a lively body of work has developed around historical cinema, much of it proposing valuable new ways to consider the relationship between cinematic and historical representation. However, only a small proportion of this writing has paid attention to the issue of genre. In order to counter this omission, this book combines a critical analysis of the Hollywood historical film with an examination of its generic dimensions and a history of its development since the silent period. Historical Film: A Critical Introduction is concerned not simply with the formal properties of the films at hand, but also the ways in which they have been promoted, interpreted and discussed in relation to their engagement with the past.
World Cinema: A Critical Introduction is a comprehensive yet accessible guide to film industries across the globe. From the 1980s onwards, new technologies and increased globalisation have radically altered the landscape in which films are distributed and exhibited. Films are made from the large scale of India, Hollywood and Asia to the small productions in Bhutan and Morocco. They are seen in multiplexes, palatial art cinemas in Cannes, traveling theatres in rural India, and on millions of hand-held mobile screens. Deshpande and Mazaj have developed a method of charting this new world cinema that makes room for divergent perspectives, traditions and positions, while also revealing their interconnectedness and relationships of meaning. In doing so, they bring together a broad range of issues and examples�theoretical concepts, viewing and production practices, film festivals, large industries such as Nollywood and Bollywood, smaller and emerging film cultures�into a systemic yet flexible map of world cinema. The multi-layered approach of this book aims to do justics to the depth, dynamism and complexity of the phenomenon of world cinema. For students looking to films outside of their immediate context, and scholars engaged in transnational cultural production, this book offers a blueprint that will enable them to transform a casual encounter with a film into a systematic inquiry into world cinema.
Science Fiction Film develops a historical and cultural approach to the genre that moves beyond close readings of iconography and formal conventions. It explores how this increasingly influential genre has been constructed from disparate elements into a hybrid genre. Science Fiction Film goes beyond a textual exploration of these films to place them within a larger network of influences that includes studio politics and promotional discourses. The book also challenges the perceived limits of the genre - it includes a wide range of films, from canonical SF, such as Le voyage dans la lune, Star Wars and Blade Runner, to films that stretch and reshape the definition of the genre. This expansion of generic focus offers an innovative approach for students and fans of science fiction alike.