AFI Film Readers, published in cooperation with the American Film Institute, focus on important issues and themes in film and media scholarship.
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 ...
Edited
By Peter Lehman
May 02, 2001
Lehman brings together new work on masculinity in film by established film scholars, new academics, performance artists, and cultural critics. The essays analyze trends from the role of gay men in saving heterosexuality to the emergence of new queer cinema....
Edited
By Eric Smoodin
March 22, 1994
Hirohito and his Mickey Mouse watch, Goofy and Donald as our "Goodwill Ambassadors:" Disney Discourse is an interdisciplinary examination of the founder and his empire. These essays use an interdisciplinary approach to read through Disney's domestic cultural production "innocent" national icons, as...
Edited
By Manthia Diawara
August 18, 1993
This is the first major collection of criticism on Black American cinema. From the pioneering work of Oscar Micheaux and Wallace Thurman to the Hollywood success of Spike Lee, Black American filmmakers have played a remarkable role in the development of the American film, both independent and ...
Edited
By Jim Collins, Ava Preacher Collins, Hilary Radner
December 21, 1992
Film Theory Goes to the Movies fills the gap in film theory literature which has failed to analyze high-grossing blockbusters. The contributors in this volume, however, discuss such popular films as The Silence of the Lambs, Dances With Wolves, Terminator II, Pretty Woman, Truth or Dare, Mystery ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...