Anna Kornbluh provides an overview of Marxist approaches to film, with particular attention to three central concepts in Marxist theory in general that have special bearing on film: “the mode of production,” “ideology,” and “mediation.” In explaining how these concepts operate and how they have been used and misused in film studies, the volume employs a case study to exemplify the practice of Marxist film theory. Fight Club is an exceptionally useful text with which (...) to explore these three concepts because it so vividly and pedagogically engages with economic relations, ideological distortion, and opportunities for transformation. At the same time, it is a very typical film in terms of the conditions of its production, its marketing, and its popularity. Adapted from a novel by Chuck Palahniuk, the film is a contemporary classic that has lent itself to significant re-interpretation with every shift in the political economic landscape since its debut. Marxist Film Theory and Fight Club models a detailed cinematic interpretation that students can practice with other films, and furnishes a set of ideas about cinema and society that can be carried into other kinds of study, giving students tools for analyzing culture broadly defined. (shrink)

This book addresses a very real gap in existing introductory texts that define, explore, and apply key theoretical concepts within the field of film studies.' Alison L. McKee, Assistant Professor, Department of Television-Radio-Film-Theatre, San Jose State University, USA 'This is the book that film students have long been waiting for: a clear, well-written and accessible introduction to film theory. Lucid theoretical exposition and case study film analysis offer readers the most intelligible summary of (...) class='Hi'>theory that I have yet encountered.' Paul Sutton, Head of Media, Culture and Language, Roehampton University Film theory has a reputation for being difficult. It is challenging, it takes time and it can frequently leave students feeling inadequate and frustrated. Furthermore, theory can often seem intimidating and oldfashioned and therefore it can be difficult to appreciate its modern-day relevance. Understanding Film Theory aims to disassociate theory from these negative connotations and bring a fresh, modern and accessible approach to the discipline. Each of the fifteen chapters provides an insight into the main areas of debate by introducing key ideas and thinkers. Taking the application of theory as its central theme, the book incorporates a number of exciting and innovative features: 'Reflect and Respond' sections encourage readers to engage critically with theoretical concepts, while seminal texts are concisely summarized without oversimplifying key points. Throughout the book the authors illustrate why theory is important and demonstrate how it can be applied in a meaningful way, with relevant case studies drawn from both classic and contemporary cinema including: Once Upon a Time in the West (1968), Run Lola Run (1998), Moulin Rouge! (2001), Rabbit-Proof Fence (2002), Old Boy (2003), Brokeback Mountain (2005), Mamma Mia! (2008) and Avatar (2009). Additional case studies address key genres ('swashbucklers' and the film musical), film movements (Dogme 95), individual actors (Christian Bale, Judi Dench and Amitabh Bachchan) and directors (Alfred Hitchcock and Guillermo del Toro). Understanding Film Theory is an accessible and comprehensive introduction to film theory. It is the ideal entry point for any student studying film, using clear definitions and explaining complex ideas succinctly. Christine Etherington-Wright is a Senior Lecturer in Film Studies at University of Portsmouth (UK) where she teaches a course on Film Theory. She is the author of Gender, Professions, Discourse (Palgrave, 2008). Ruth Doughty is a Senior Lecturer in Film Studies at University of Portsmouth (UK). She is one of the co-founding editors of the journal Transnational Cinemas and co-edited Sound and Music in Film and Visual Media (2008). (shrink)

"The Film Theory Reader brings together a range of key theoretical texts, organized thematically to emphasise the development of specific critical concepts and theoretical models in the field of film theory.

This volume of new essays energizes a growing movement in film theory which questions and seeks to overturn many of the assumptions that have governed film theory for the last twenty years. The book brings together film scholars and philosophers in a united commitment to the standards of argumentation that characterize analytic philosophy rather than a single doctrinal approach. The essays address such topics as authorship, emotion, ideology, representation, and expression in film.

This volume offers a representative sampling of current research generated by both young and established film scholars from the different schools of thought ...

This book draws new connections between twentieth-century German and French film theory and practice and vitalist conceptions of life from biology and philosophy. Inga Pollmann shows how the links between the two created a modernist, experimental, and cinematic strand of vitalism in and around the movie theatre. Articulated by film theorists, filmmakers, biologists and philosophers, this cinematic vitalism maps out connections among human beings, milieus, and technologies that continue to structure our understanding of film.

Feminist philosophy of film is a young field that is rapidly growing but that has as yet no distinct disciplinary presence within philosophy. Articles by feminist philosophers on film began appearing in aesthetics journals and anthologies in English only in the late 1980s and 1990s. In film studies, as in aesthetics more generally, disciplinary boundaries are fluid. Writers from many fields – literature, art, communications, cultural studies – make critical contributions on film, addressing philosophical issues and (...) drawing upon philosophical theories. Many questions discussed in the general field of film theory are philosophical ones, and among these are topics important for feminist philosophy and aesthetics: Is film an art, and if so why? What is the essence of film? How does film depict subjectivity? What is the nature of our emotional reactions to and interest in film? How is the photographic nature of film used in constructing realistic or other forms of representations of the world? How is ideology at work in the Hollywood production system and in the circulation of filmic images in the popular culture industry? It would be not only difficult, but arbitrary and misleading, to restrict the label or practice of “feminist philosophy of film” to professional philosophers. It is best to approach this subject, then, by situating it in relation to other fields, including feminist film theory, film theory in general, philosophical work on film, and feminist aesthetics. Feminist philosophy of film is rapidly expanding as philosophers with diverse interests turn their attention to film. The inclusion of feminist essays by philosophers in two anthologies on film in the mid‐1990s, together with the appearance of the first issue of the journal Film and Philosophy, suggest that this field is on the brink of a period of rapid growth and change. I will discuss possible new directions of growth, and connections with feminist philosophy broadly considered in the conclusion. (shrink)

The introduction discusses the influence of two kinds of philosophy to film theory. It describes and clarifies the characteristic methods and strategies of analytic philosophy and film theory, and continental philosophy and film theory. It is concerned with the description of methods, debates, and principles of analytic philosophy with reference to the contributions of philosophy to film theory. It informs and provides indication of issues, methods, and doctrines. It examines, criticizes, and defends (...) the use of exponents of analytic and continental philosophy. All throughout the introduction, it is noted that analytic philosophy is conceived as a pedantic, conservative discipline by scholars of film, media, and culture while continental philosophy is seen as having more imaginative richness and being more focused on moral and ideological issues. However, the aim of analysing film theory is not to stop the pursuit of any specific doctrine but to improve the rigor with its pursuit. (shrink)

This book is a lively and provoking introduction to film theory.

In contemporary film theory, body and mind have been central to explorations of film form, representation, and spectatorship. While the soul may seem to have no place here, the history of film theory and its legacy to the present suggest otherwise. From the origins of film theory - from Hugo Münsterberg through French Impressionism to writings of the Weimar Republic - to the mid-twentieth century work of Henri Agel and Amédée Ayfre and Henri (...) Agel, as well as Edgar Morin, the soul emerges as a multi-faceted, if contested, concept. By revisiting such key moments in the history of film theory, and tracing the survival of this concept through to a range of cutting-edge debates today, from the work of Vivian Sobchack to Jean-Luc Nancy, Gilles Deleuze to Torben Grodal, The Soul of Film Theory tells the heretofore tacit tale of the relation between cinema and the soul, from classical to contemporary times, in dialogue with philosophy, religion, and science. (shrink)

Film Theory addresses the core concepts and arguments created or used by academics, critical film theorists, and filmmakers, including the work of Dudley Andrew, Raymond Bellour, Mary Ann Doane, Miriam Hansen, bell hooks, Siegfried Kracauer, Raul Ruiz, P. Adams Sitney, Bernard Stiegler, and Pier Paolo Pasolini. This volume takes the position that film theory is a form of writing that produces a unique cinematic grammar; and like all grammars, it forms part of the system of (...) rules that govern a language, and is thus applicable to wider range of media forms. In their creation of authorial trends, identification of the technology of cinema as a creative force, and production of films as aesthetic markers, film theories contribute an epistemological resource that connects the technologies of filmmaking and film composition. This book explores these connections through film theorisations of processes of the diagrammatisation of cinematic matters of the filmic world. (shrink)

This chapter is a manifesto of the film theory of Gregory Currie. He thinks that his work brings a connection between film and cognitive psychology. The chapter begins with a glimpse of an ideal theoretical structure and his opinion on the philosophical background against the manifesto itself. Then the theses and the arguments on film theory and the philosophy of film, moving pictures, convention, intention, and genre, and the viewer is laid out. The description (...) includes an outline of what he thinks is the ideal abstract structure for the film theory. He hoped that by doing this, he would contribute to the exemplification of the structure. The manifesto aims to promote the following: open criticism from the outside, struggle for inner coherence, comprehensiveness, and intuitive judgment. It is evident that his work is in a top-down mode which is why it is called a nervous manifesto. (shrink)

An ideal introduction for students, Film, Theory and Philosophy brings together leading scholars to provide a clear, detailed overview of the key thinkers who have shaped the field of film philosophy. From continental philosophers to analytical philosophers, film-makers, film reviewers, sociologists, and cultural theorists, the essays reveal how philosophy can be applied to film analysis and how film can be used to illustrate philosophical problems. But most importantly, the essays explore how cinema has (...) shaped contemporary philosophy and how philosophy has led to a reappraisal of film. This collection will prove an invaluable reference and guide to readers interested in a deeper understanding of the issues and insights presented by the philosophy of film. (shrink)

This is the first collection of translations of Chinese film theory to be published in English. By using translations rather than summaries, as other works have done, Chinese Film Theory provides readers with an introduction to the issues current in China's film circles. It includes eighteen chapters written by a broad range of writers--from well established scholars to young people at the beginning of their involvement in film in China. This collection indicates a trend (...) away from the study of external qualities of film and toward a study of the film itself. The volume has been carefully organized so that major issues are interrelated; thus, the book comprises an ongoing debate of film theory issues, progressing from earlier to most recent issues, following the debate concerning the relationship of film to literary arts, and looking at the debate over the relationship of film to culture. The book concludes that for the time being, debate has virtually ended because of the political situation in China. This book is an important new source to anyone interested in film studies, film theory, or Chinese studies. (shrink)

Despite changes in the media landscape, film remains a vital force in contemporary culture, as do our ideas of what "a movie" or "the cinematic" are. Indeed, we might say that the category of film now only exists in theory. Whereas film-theoretical discussion at the turn of the 21st century was preoccupied, understandably, by digital technology's permeation of virtually all aspects of the film object, this volume moves the conversation away from a focus on (...) class='Hi'>film's materiality towards timely questions concerning the ethics, politics, and even aesthetics of thinking about the medium of cinema. To put it another way, this collection narrows in on the subject of film, not with a nostalgic sensibility, but with the recognition that what constitutes a film is historically contingent, in dialogue with the vicissitudes of entertainment, art, and empire. The volume is divided into six sections: Meta-Theory; Film Theory's Project of Emancipation; Apparatus and Perception; Audiovisuality; How Close is Close Reading?; and The Turn to Experience. (shrink)

This substantial book presents essays by nineteen authors exploring intersections between film theory and philosophy on topics of representation, authorship, ideology, aesthetics, and emotion. The editors explain that film studies has reached a crisis of method after a growth period founded on structural linguistics, psychoanalysis, and Continental philosophy. They wish to alter this foundation and “give momentum to work in an analytic vein”, which requires them to correct the misconception of analytic philosophy in film studies as (...) narrow and conservative, a “toxic waste dump.”. (shrink)

Introduction -- Theory before theory, 1915-1960 -- French theory, 1949-1968 -- Screen theory, 1969-1996 -- Post-theory, 1996-2015 -- Summary.

The primary aim of this article is to point up an essential attitude, an anxiety even, that has inflected – and perhaps inhibited - our engagement with film. Film theory has been marked by a ‘refusal to see, a looking away’ (Mulvey & Wollen 1976, 36), and my suggestion is that this has achieved its fullest expression in those strands of film theory heavily influenced by psychoanalysis. These, in turn, have remained within a gendered conceptual (...) framework whereby the discursive or the narrative is associated with the masculine, and the image or spectacle is aligned with the feminine. This is not to reject these applications out of hand but rather to revisit this area with its blind spots in mind and to consider aspects that are perhaps at once obvious but often overlooked. (shrink)

Max Scheler never published a theory of art, but his aesthetics, like the rest of his thought, occupies an intriguing position that links early phenomenology, Catholic personalist thought, and philosophical anthropology. His metaphysics of the person and theory of value, when combined with his account of the lived-body and of our access to other minds through love, translates into a powerful, humanistic theory of art. This article elaborates what Scheler’s aesthetics would look like had he developed it (...) and applied it to film. Film offers an intimate access to the lives, bodies, and minds of others that is particularly well-suited to Scheler’s idea that art reveals the moral personality—the ordo amoris or “order of love”—that makes up the value-essence of the person. The person’s unique and highest possibilities for acting, feeling, and valuing are the contents of their spiritual essence and these, often thought obscure and inaccessible, are made present in film. (shrink)

Introduction -- An improbable alliance : Peter Wollen's "The auteur theory" -- Visual stylometry : Barry Salt's "Statistical style analysis of motion pictures" -- Between Shakespeare and Sirk : Thomas Elsaesser's "Tales of sound and fury: observations on the family melodrama" -- From iconicity to semiotic articulation : Christian Metz's "cinema: language or language system?" and language and cinema -- Film as a specific signifying practice : Stephen Heath's "On screen, in frame: film and ideology" -- Against (...) theories of reflection : Laura Mulvey's "Visual pleasure and narrative cinema" -- Early cinema spectatorship : Tom Gunning's "The cinema of attraction(s): early film, its spectator, and the avant-garde" -- Another Lacan : "the universal: suture revisited" -- The death of the camera : Edward Branigan's "What is a camera?" -- Conclusion: teaching theory. (shrink)

Theory appears to have played the ideological-institutional role of enfranchiser, even if the role was ulti-mately an epiphenomenal one. Furthermore, the expectation of gold in "them thar hills" also encouraged too many university presses to invest in film publications, especially when the arcane peregrinations of Theory facilitated their rationalization of their relaxation of their traditional role as academic gatekeepers. Hence film studies has been flooded with repetitive decoctions of the Theory in search of the same (...) market in much the same way that con-sumers are confronted with so many marginally differentiated shampoos. (shrink)

When in 1958 André Bazin published the first volume of What is Cinema?, he was already recognized as French film's pre-eminent thinker. His position at Cahiers du cinéma and his influence on the young directors who were to launch the New Wave guaranteed his centrality and his influence. What is nevertheless surprising about this unparalleled success is how fundamentally conservative his writing was. His belief that ‘true realism’ constituted the ontology and the essence of cinema was remarkably out of (...) step with the major philosophical movements of his time. Paradoxically, it was not Bazin but Jean Epstein who best explained and defined the modernity of cinema. A reading of Epstein's Le Cinéma du diable will allow us to appreciate just how paradoxical it was that it was Bazin and not Epstein who was ‘selected’ to present cinema to a France immersed in existential and post-existential thought. (shrink)

Introduction: the fingerprint of spirit -- The subject/object of cinema: The Maltese falcon -- "A deeper breath": from body to spirit in Kiss me deadly -- Negative dioretix: Repo man -- "Jackie Treehorn treats objects like women!": two types of fetishism in The big Lebowski.

_Endless Night: Cinema and Psychoanalysis, Parallel Histories_ Edited by Janet Bergstrom Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999 ISBN 0-520-20747-5 (hbk); 0-520-20748-3 (pbk) 307 pp.

_Apres Deleuze: Philosophie et esthetique du cinema_ Edited by Dominique Chateau and Jacinto Lageira Paris: Dis Voir, 1996 ISBN: 2-912-308-003 152 pp.

Concepts in Film Theory is a continuation of Dudley Andrew's classic, The Major Film Theories. In writing now about contemporary theory, Andrew focuses on the key concepts in film study -- perception, representation, signification, narrative structure, adaptation, evaluation, identification, figuration, and interpretation. Beginning with an introductory chapter on the current state of film theory, Andrew goes on to build an overall view of film, presenting his own ideas on each concept, and giving (...) a sense of the interdependence of these concepts. Andrew provides lucid explanations of theories which involve perceptual psychology and structuralism; semiotics and psychoanalysis; hermeneutics and genre study. His clear approach to these often obscure theories enables students to acquire the background they need to enrich their understanding of film -- and of art. (shrink)