This book is a lively and provoking introduction to film theory. It is suitable for students from any discipline but is particularly aimed at students studying film and literature as it examines issues common to both subjects such as realism, illusionism, narration, point of view, style, semiotics, psychoanalysis and multiculturalism. It also includes coverage of theorists common to both, Barthes, Lacan and Bakhtin among others. Robert Stam, renowned for his clarity of writing, will also include studies of cinema specialists providing readers with a depth of reference not generally available outside the field of film studies itself. Other material covered includes film adaptations of works of literature and analogies between literary and film criticism.

'What is Film Theory? is an introduction to the key elements of film theory. So, what is film theory as a subject? Film studies is divided in to key subjects and themes: there's film art which looks at the aesthetics of film; cinema studies which looks at institutions, films themeselves and the industry; film theory which looks at the concepts, philosophies and disciplines which underline film studies. As such, the book will look at subjects including semiotics and strucutalism, psychoanalysis, formalist film theory, cognitive approaches and neoformalism. In the light of the readers' reports it will also address more 'cultural' issues such as queer theory, ethnicity, postcolonialism and world cinema..

Concepts in Film Theory is a continuation of Dudley Andrew's classic, The Major Film Theories. In writing now about contemporary theory, Andrew focuses on the key concepts in film study -- perception, representation, signification, narrative structure, adaptation, evaluation, identification, figuration, and interpretation. Beginning with an introductory chapter on the current state of film theory, Andrew goes on to build an overall view of film, presenting his own ideas on each concept, and giving a sense of the interdependence of these concepts. Andrew provides lucid explanations of theories which involve perceptual psychology and structuralism; semiotics and psychoanalysis; hermeneutics and genre study. His clear approach to these often obscure theories enables students to acquire the background they need to enrich their understanding of film -- and of art.

Béla Balázs was a Hungarian Jewish film theorist, author, screenwriter and film director who was at the forefront of Hungarian literary life before being forced into exile for Communist activity after 1919. His German-language theoretical essays on film date from the mid-1920s to the mid-1930s, the period of his early exile in Vienna and Berlin"-- Publisher description

What is the relationship between cinema and spectator? That is the central question for film theory, and renowned film scholars Thomas Elsaesser and Malte Hagener use this question to guide students through all of the major film theories – from the classical period to today – in this insightful, engaging book. Every kind of cinema (and film theory) imagines an ideal spectator, and then imagines a certain relationship between the mind and body of that spectator and the screen. Using seven distinctive configurations of spectator and screen that move progressively from ‘exterior’ to ‘interior’ relationships, the authors retrace the most important stages of film theory from 1945 to the present, from neo-realist and modernist theories to psychoanalytic, ‘apparatus’, phenomenological and cognitivist theories.

Film Theory addresses the core concepts and arguments created or used by academics, critical film theorists, and filmmakers, including the work of Dudley Andrew, Raymond Bellour, Mary Ann Doane, Miriam Hansen, bell hooks, Siegfried Kracauer, Raul Ruiz, P. Adams Sitney, Bernard Stiegler, and Pier Paolo Pasolini. This volume takes the position that film theory is a form of writing that produces a unique cinematic grammar; and like all grammars, it forms part of the system of rules that govern a language, and is thus applicable to wider range of media forms. In their creation of authorial trends, identification of the technology of cinema as a creative force, and production of films as aesthetic markers, film theories contribute an epistemological resource that connects the technologies of filmmaking and film composition. This book explores these connections through film theorisations of processes of the diagrammatisation (the systems, methodologies, concepts, histories) of cinematic matters of the filmic world.

This volume of specially commissioned work by experts in the field of film studies provides a comprehensive overview of the field. Its international and interdisciplinary approach will have a broad appeal to those interested in this multifaceted subject. Provides a major collection of specially commissioned work by experts in the field of film studies. Represents material under a variety of headings, including class, race, gender, queer theory, nation, stars, ethnography, authorship, and spectatorship. Offers an international approach to the subject, including coverage of topics such as genre, image, sound, editing, culture industries, early cinema, classical Hollywood, and TV relations and technology. Includes concise chapter-by-chapter accounts of the background and current approaches to each topic, followed by a prognostication on the future. Considers cinema studies in relation to other forms of knowledge, such as critical studies, anthropology, and literature.