AFI Film Readers
About the Book Series
AFI Film Readers, published in cooperation with the American Film Institute, focus on important issues and themes in film and media scholarship.
Cinema of Exploration: Essays on an Adventurous Film Practice
1st Edition
Edited
By James Leo Cahill, Luca Caminati
August 01, 2022
Drawing together 18 contributions from leading international scholars, this book conceptualizes the history and theory of cinema’s century-long relationship to modes of exploration in its many forms, from colonialist expeditions to decolonial radical cinemas to the perceptual voyage of the ...
The City Symphony Phenomenon: Cinema, Art, and Urban Modernity Between the Wars
1st Edition
Edited
By Steven Jacobs, Eva Hielscher, Anthony Kinik
March 31, 2021
The 1920s and 1930s saw the rise of the city symphony, an experimental film form that presented the city as protagonist instead of mere decor. Combining experimental, documentary, and narrative practices, these films were marked by a high level of abstraction reminiscent of high-modernist ...
Teaching Transnational Cinema: Politics and Pedagogy
1st Edition
Edited
By Katarzyna Marciniak, Bruce Bennett
March 14, 2017
This collection of essays offers a pioneering analysis of the political and conceptual complexities of teaching transnational cinema in university classrooms around the world. In their exploration of a wide range of films from different national and regional contexts, contributors reflect on the ...
New Silent Cinema
1st Edition
Edited
By Katherine Groo, Paul Flaig
October 05, 2015
With the success of Martin Scorsese’s Hugo (2011) and Michel Hazanavicius’s The Artist (2011) nothing seems more contemporary in recent film than the styles, forms, and histories of early and silent cinemas. This collection considers the latest return to silent film alongside the larger historical ...
Endangering Science Fiction Film
1st Edition
Edited
By Sean Redmond, Leon Marvell
July 08, 2015
Endangering Science Fiction Film explores the ways in which science fiction film is a dangerous and endangering genre. The collection argues that science fiction's cinematic power rests in its ability to imagine ‘Other’ worlds that challenge and disturb the lived conditions of the ‘real’ ...
Hollywood Puzzle Films
1st Edition
Edited
By Warren Buckland
June 02, 2014
From Inception to The Lake House, moviegoers are increasingly flocking to narratologically complex puzzle films. These puzzle movies borrow techniques—like fragmented spatio-temporal reality, time loops, unstable characters with split identities or unreliable narrators—more commonly attributed to ...
Cognitive Media Theory
1st Edition
Edited
By Ted Nannicelli, Paul Taberham
March 18, 2014
Across the academy, scholars are debating the question of what bearing scientific inquiry has upon the humanities. The latest addition to the AFI Film Readers series, Cognitive Media Theory takes up this question in the context of film and media studies. This collection of essays by internationally...
The Biopic in Contemporary Film Culture
1st Edition
Edited
By Tom Brown, Belén Vidal
December 07, 2013
The biographical film or biopic is a staple of film production in all major film industries and yet, within film studies, its generic, aesthetic, and cultural significance has remained underexplored. The Biopic in Contemporary Film Culture fills this gap, conceptualizing the biopic with a ...
Pervasive Animation
1st Edition
Edited
By Suzanne Buchan
July 15, 2013
This new addition to the AFI Film Readers series brings together original scholarship on animation in contemporary moving image culture, from classic experimental and independent shorts to digital animation and installation. The collection - that is also a philosophy of animation - foregrounds new ...
Media Authorship
1st Edition
Edited
By Cynthia Chris, David A Gerstner
December 10, 2012
Contemporary media authorship is frequently collaborative, participatory, non-site specific, or quite simply goes unrecognized. In this volume, media and film scholars explore the theoretical debates around authorship, intention, and identity within the rapidly transforming and globalized culture ...
Color and the Moving Image: History, Theory, Aesthetics, Archive
1st Edition
Edited
By Simon Brown, Sarah Street, Liz Watkins
November 19, 2012
This new AFI Film Reader is the first comprehensive collection of original essays on the use of color in film. Contributors from diverse film studies backgrounds consider the importance of color throughout the history of the medium, assessing not only the theoretical implications of color on the ...
Ecocinema Theory and Practice
1st Edition
Edited
By Stephen Rust, Salma Monani, Sean Cubitt
August 25, 2012
Ecocinema Theory and Practice is the first collection of its kind—an anthology that offers a comprehensive introduction to the rapidly growing field of eco-film criticism, a branch of critical scholarship that investigates cinema’s intersections with environmental understandings. It references ...