Film: The Key Concepts

by Nitzan Ben-Shaul

The Key Concepts presents a coherent, clear and exciting overview of film theory for beginning readers. The book takes the reader through the often conflicting analyses that make up film theory, illustrating arguments with examples from mainstream and independent films.

Concise and comprehensive, the book guides the reader through realism, formalism, structuralism, semiotics, Marxism, psychoanalysis, feminism, cognitivism, post-colonialism, postmodernism, gender and queer film theory, stardom and film audience research. The book as a whole provides a complete overview of the evolution of film theory.

Throughout, the analysis is illustrated with lively boxed studies of key mainstream and independent films. Bulleted chapter summaries, questions and guides to further reading are also provided.

Genres: Film

192 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2007

Reviews

[Kandachamy Vijayakumaran]

An interesting book giving a comprehensive account of the various theories and concepts related to film to give a good start to anyone embarking on film studies.

[Richard]

Great book. It's nice to see the counter-arguments and critiques presented alongside established theories such as dialectic film montage and imaginary signifiers. Nice and concise too.