Books in the AFI Film Readers series

The Western is the first book to consider seriously the historical meanings and functions of the Western film genre.

Drawing together 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 senses made possible by the cinematic apparatus.

Revisits Rudolf Arnheim's legacy for film and media studies. This title brings Arnheim's later work on the visual arts to bear on film and media, while also reassessing the implications of his film theory to help refine our grasp of his landmark work Film as Art, among his other texts.

Examines documentary films. This title features the essays that analyze questions regarding the usefulness and legitimacy of documentary testimony: What is the value of the historical archive the televised public hearings or activist online videos constitute? And is it made part of the official record, or dismissed as renegade or ephemeral?

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 title offers a collection of fourteen essays that presents conceptual frameworks for thinking about silent comedy's place in film history and American culture.

From Chaplin's tramp to the Bathing Beauties slapstick comedy supplied many of the most enduring icons of American cinema in the silent era. This collection of fourteen essays by film scholars challenges longstanding critical dogma and offers new conceptual frameworks for thinking about silent comedy's place in film history and American culture.

What is the value of the historical archive the televised public hearings or activist online videos constitute? How do the documentary testimonies compensate for or account for the frailty of memory? The title features essays that analyze questions regarding the usefulness and legitimacy of documentary testimony.

The standard analytical category of "national cinema" has been called into question by the category of the "transnational." This work examines the premises and consequences of the coexistence of these two categories and the parameters of historiographical approaches that cross the borders of nation states.

Black American Cinema demonstrates the wealth of Black contribution to American film and the complex course that contribution has taken.

Explores popular movies through the lens of film theory, beginning with industrial-economic analysis before moving into a predominately aesthetic and interpretive framework.

Bringing together articles by scholars from the disciplines of Film Studies, Philosophy, Critical and Visual Studies, Romance Languages and Literatures, and Aesthetics, this title inquires into the 'Europeanness' of European film theory. It also explores the philosophical origins of European film theory.

The standard analytical category of "national cinema" has been called into question by the category of the "transnational." This work examines the premises and consequences of the coexistence of these two categories and the parameters of historiographical approaches that cross the borders of nation states.

Applies the recent 'return to history' in film studies to the genre of classical Hollywood comedy as well as broadening the definition of those works considered central in this field.

Landscape is everywhere in film, but it has been largely overlooked in theory and criticism. This book addresses questions, such as: What kind of landscape is cinematic landscape? How is cinematic landscape different from landscape painting? And, how is cinematic landscape related to the idea of a national cinema and questions of identity.

Gathered here are noted scholars and critics, as well as the film/video makers themselves who offer insight into the work of underexplored artists.

Presents a reassessment of East European cinemas from theoretical, psychoanalytic and gender perspectives. Charting the changes and the continuities that have characterized the cinemas of Eastern Europe, this collection of essays questions and re-evaluates such notions as the 'European', 'post communism' and 'national cinema.

This book examines the relationship that exists between fantasy cinema and the medium of animation.

An interdisciplinary examination of Walt Disney and his empire. Examining Disney at a time of expansion with new mall stores and theme parks, these essays look at its domestic cultural production and global politics.

A collection of essays that looks at specific issues related to the film documentary form. Types of documentary include educational TV, personality profiles, ethnography and polemic tracts. The authors address such questions as "What is documentary?" and "How fictional is non-fiction?".

his volume of new writings revitalises the question of authorship by connecting it to wider issues of identity - in film, in the marketplace, in society and culture.

These fifteen essays by well-known scholars demonstrate the vitality and variety of psychoanalytic film criticism, as well as the crucial role feminist theory has played in its development.

This latest volume in our successful AFI Film Readers series analyzes violence, examining its nature, its effects, and its cinematic and social meaning.

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 screen, but also the ways in which developments in cinematographic technologies transformed the aesthetics of color and the nature of film archiving and restoration. Color and the Moving Image includes new writing on key directors whose work is already associated with colorΓÇösuch as Hitchcock, Jarman and SirkΓÇöas well as others whose use of color has not yet been explored in such detailΓÇöincluding Eric Rohmer and the Coen Brothers. This volume is an excellent resource for a variety of film studies courses and the global film archiving community at large.

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 screen, but also the ways in which developments in cinematographic technologies transformed the aesthetics of color and the nature of film archiving and restoration. Color and the Moving Image includes new writing on key directors whose work is already associated with colorΓÇösuch as Hitchcock, Jarman and SirkΓÇöas well as others whose use of color has not yet been explored in such detailΓÇöincluding Eric Rohmer and the Coen Brothers. This volume is an excellent resource for a variety of film studies courses and the global film archiving community at large.

Lehman brings together new work on masculinity in film by established film scholars, new academics, performance artists and cultural critics.

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 particular eye toward the "life" of the genre internationally. New theoretical approaches combine with specially commissioned chapters on contemporary biographical film production in India, Italy, South Korea, France, Russia, Great Britain, and the US, in order to present a selective but well-rounded portrait of the biopic¿s place in film culture. From Marie Antoinette to The Social Network, the pieces in this volume critically examine the place of the biopic within ongoing debates about how cinema can and should represent history and "real lives." Contributors discuss the biopic¿s grounding in the conventions of the historical film, and explore the genre¿s defining traits as well as its potential for innovation. The Biopic in Contemporary Film Culture expands the critical boundaries of this evolving, versatile genre.

Film theory no longer gets top billing or plays a starring role in film studies, as critics proclaim that theory is dead and we are living in a post-theory moment. This volume explores popular movies through the lens of film theory, beginning with industrial-economic analysis before moving into a predominately aesthetic and interpretive framework.

This collection redresses the absence of scholarly attention to the modern day blockbuster, with provocative studies of such major films as Silence of the Lambs, Terminator II and Pretty Woman.