Film and Theory: An Introduction » (1st Edition)

Robert Stam is Professor in the Cinema Studies Department at New York University. His many books include Film Theory: An Introduction (Blackwell Publishers, 1999), Tropical Multiculturalism: A Comparative History of Race in Brazilian Cinema and Culture (1997), Unthinking Eurocentrism: Multiculturalism and the Media with Ella Shohat (1994), which won the Katherine Singer Kovocs 'Best Film Book Award'; and Subversive Pleasures: Bakhtin, Cultural Criticism, and Film (1992).

Rather than look at film theory in terms of schools and allegiances, the book investigates questions including: What is the cinema? What is the cinematic apparatus? How do spectators differ in their desires? What is realism? Is realism desirable? What does the spectator want? This anthology offers a collection of provocative and influential writings of film theory from the 1960s and 1970s, and presents new directions from the last two decades. An introductory essay summarizes developments in film theory from the beginning through the 1980s, while introductions to specific sections debate those issues.

Robert Stam is a Professor in the Cinema Studies Department at New York University. His many books include Tropical Multiculturalism: A Comparative History of Race in Brazilian Cinema and Culture (1997), Unthinking Eurocentrism: Multiculturalism and the Media with Ella Shohat (1994), which won the Katherine Singer Kovocs 'Best Film Book Award'; and Subversive Pleasures: Bakhtin, Cultural Criticism, and Film (1992).

Toby Miller is a professor in the Cinema Studies Department at New York University. He is the author of a wide range of work in cultural studies, including two recent books Technologies of Truth (1998) and (with Alec McHoul) Popular Culture and Everyday Life (1998). He is also co-editor of the journal Social Text.