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.
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 ...
Arnheim for Film and Media Studies
1st Edition
Edited
By Scott Higgins
September 27, 2010
Rudolf Arnheim (1904-2007) was a pioneering figure in film studies, best known for his landmark book on silent cinema Film as Art. He ultimately became more famous as a scholar in the fields of art and art history, largely abandoning his theoretical work on cinema. However, his later aesthetic ...
The Epic Film in World Culture
1st Edition
Edited
By Robert Burgoyne
July 06, 2010
With the recent release of spectacular blockbuster films from Gladiator to The Lord of the Rings trilogy, the epic has once again become a major form in contemporary cinema. This new volume in the AFI Film Readers series explores the rebirth of the epic film genre in the contemporary period, a ...
Slapstick Comedy
1st Edition
Edited
By Tom Paulus, Rob King
April 19, 2010
From Chaplin’s tramp to the Bathing Beauties, from madcap chases to skyscraper perils, slapstick comedy supplied many of the most enduring icons of American cinema in the silent era. This collection of fourteen essays by prominent film scholars challenges longstanding critical dogma and offers new ...
Documentary Testimonies: Global Archives of Suffering
1st Edition
Edited
By Bhaskar Sarkar, Janet Walker
November 11, 2009
Documentary Testimonies examines documentary films that compel us to bear witness, move us to anger or tears, and possibly mobilize us to action. Comprising ten new essays and a substantive introduction, this interdisciplinary volume examines audiovisual testimonial practices, forms, and ...
World Cinemas, Transnational Perspectives
1st Edition
Edited
By Nataša Durovicová, Kathleen E. Newman
September 01, 2009
SCMS Award Winner "Best Edited Collection" The standard analytical category of "national cinema" has increasingly been called into question by the category of the "transnational." This anthology examines the premises and consequences of the coexistence of these two categories and the parameters of ...
Film Theory and Contemporary Hollywood Movies
1st Edition
Edited
By Warren Buckland
May 26, 2009
Film theory no longer gets top billing or plays a starring role in film studies today, as critics proclaim that theory is dead and we are living in a post-theory moment. While theory may be out of the limelight, it remains an essential key to understanding the full complexity of cinema, one that ...
European Film Theory
1st Edition
Edited
By Temenuga Trifonova
October 28, 2008
European Film Theory explores the ‘Europeanness’ of European film theory, its philosophical origins, the ‘culture wars’ between ‘Continental’ and ‘Analytical’ film theory and philosophy, the major discursive and epistemological shifts in the history of Continental film theory, the relationship ...
Landscape and Film
1st Edition
Edited
By Martin Lefebvre
May 30, 2006
Landscape is everywhere in film, but it has been largely overlooked in theory and criticism. This volume of new work will address fundamental questions: What kind of landscape is cinematic landscape? How is cinematic landscape different from landscape painting? How is landscape deployed in the work...
East European Cinemas
1st Edition
Edited
By Anikó Imre
September 14, 2005
Eastern Europe has produced rich and varied film cultures--Czech, Hungarian, and Serbian among them-whose histories have been intimately tied to the transition from Soviet domination to the complexities of post-Communist life. This latest volume in the AFI Film Readers series presents a ...