The Film Theory Reader ─ Debates and Arguments

"An excellent collection of provocative and compelling debates, expertly and elegantly arranged. Essays new and old form a dynamic and accessible portrait of ideas foundational to contemporary thinking about film. This book is sure to inspire."
Haidee Wasson, Concordia University, Montreal

"Marc Furstenau retraces the most important issues in film theory, and makes them interact with the current debate on cinema and post-cinema. A historical legacy becomes a living source - and the site of a passionate debate."

Francesco Casetti, Catholic University of Milan and Yale University.
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.
Each section presents well-known or significant texts, which have introduced a particularly influential concept, followed by texts that have developed or extended the concept, or that have offered explicit critiques or arguments against the original model. The collection thus represents and reproduces the debates and arguments that have shaped the theoretical landscape of film studies, guiding the reader through the complex terrain of theoretical debate, and offering suggestions for further reading and research.
An Introduction from the editor contextualises the essays and provides a logical guide to the book, clarifying the links between articles and tracing the development of key arguments. The notes to the Introduction include extensive references, for readers to explore and further their own studies, as they are guided through the history of debate in film theory.

Marc Furstenau is Assistant Professor of Film Studies at Carleton University, Canada. Recent publications include (ed. with Bruce Bennett and Adrian Mackenzie) Cinema and Technology: Cultures, Theories, Practices (2008), and he has also published on the topics of cinema and semiotics, film theory, the philosophical cinema of Terrence Malick and the photographic theory of Susan Sontag. His current research interests include film theory and film history; new digital media and documentary cinema.

Selected Contents: Acknowledgements. Introduction 1. Film Theory: A History of Debates Marc Furstenau. I. The Future of Film Theory: A Debate 2. An Elegy for Theory D.N. Rodowick 3. Theory, Philosophy, and Film Studies Malcolm Turvey. II. Arguments with Early Film Theory 4. The Psychology of the Photoplay Hugo Münsterberg 5. Film/Mind Analogies: The Case of Hugo Münsterberg Noël Carroll 6. Visible Man, or the Culture of Film Béla Bálazs 7. Bálazs: Realist or Modernist? Malcolm Turvey 8. The Ontology of the Photographic Image André Bazin 9. The Evolution of the Language of Cinema André Bazin 10. Rethinking Bazin: Ontology and Realist Aesthetics Daniel Morgan. III. Classic Debates 11. The Cinema: Language or Language System? Christian Metz 12. The Semiology of the Cinema Peter Wollen 13. Recapitulation of Images and Signs Gilles Deleuze 14. Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema Laura Mulvey 15. Is the Gaze Male? E. Ann Kaplan 16. Afterthoughts on ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’ Laura Mulvey 17. The Oppositional Gaze: Black Female Spectators bell hooks. IV. Recent Arguments 18. Digital Cinema and the History of a Moving Image Lev Manovich 19. Moving Away from the Index: Cinema and the Impression of Reality Tom Gunning 20. The End of Cinema: Multimedia and Technological Change Anne Friedberg 21. Digital Cinema: A False Revolution John Belton