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.
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 ...
New Media: Theories and Practices of Digitextuality
1st Edition
Edited
By Anna Everett, John T. Caldwell
February 28, 2003
The mushroom-like growth of new media technologies is radically challenging traditional media outlets. The proliferation of technologies like DVDs, MP3s and the Internet has freed the public from what we used to understand as mass media. In the face of such seismic shifts and ruptures, the ...
Authorship and Film
1st Edition
Edited
By David A. Gerstner, Janet Staiger
November 08, 2002
Authorship in film has been a persistent theme in the field of cinema studies. This volume of new work revitalizes the question of authorship by connecting it to larger issues of identity--in film, in the marketplace, in society, in culture. Essays range from the auteur theory and Casablanca to ...
Westerns: Films through History
1st Edition
Edited
By Janet Walker
October 12, 2001
The cowboys and Indians, sheriffs and outlaws, schoolmarms and barkeeps of Western films have wholly transformed our ideas about the reality of the American frontier. Westerns is the first book to consider seriously the historical meanings and functions of the Western film genre. In Westerns , ...