Reinventing Film Studies

Christine Gledhill is Professor in Film Studies, at the University of Sunderland, UK.

• Part 1: Really useful theory; from aesthetics to semiotics and half-way back again; why theory?; film theory and the revolt against master narratives; case study - "Singin' in the Rain" - a study of interpretation; who (and what) is it for? Part 2: Film as mass culture; dream factory; the publicness of cinema; case study - the political culture of address in a "Transitional Cinema" - Indian popular cinema; reception theory and audience research - the mystery of the vampire's kiss; re-examining stardom - questions of texts, bodies, and performances. Part 3: questions of aesthetics; after the classic, the classical and ideology - the difference of realism; rethinking genre; case study - judging audiences, the case of the trial movie; introducing film evaluation; "Style" posture and idiom - Tarantino's figures of masculinity. Part 4: The return to history; what is film history?; "Animated Pictures" - tales of cinema's forgotten future, after one hundred years of film; the mass production of the senses - classical cinema as cenacular modernism; case study - discipline and fun - psycho and postmodern cinema. Part 5: Cinema in the age of global multi-media; film theory and spectatorship in the age of the "posts"; case study - digging an old well - the labour of social fantasy in a contemporary Chinese film; facing up to Hollywood; the end of cinema - multi-media and technological change.

'In this rich collection, a large and varied group of prominent scholars covers the state of the field in Film Studies. The book presents the reader with a dynamic tissue of discussions, positions and proposals that are methodological, theoretical, historiographic, aesthetic, and political. This is the kind of constellation that originally energized the relatively young discipline of Film Studies, but even in its references to the history of film scholarship there is nothing nostalgic about Reinventing Film Studies. Its writers are some of the most innovative and influential figures in the field, and their accounts of the present are fundamentally aimed at mapping future directions. Their contributions are at once authoritative, rigorous and polemical. This volume will be a central reference point for anyone concerned with film and media scholarship for years to come.' Professor Philip Rosen, Department of Modern Cultu 'At this moment of technological change, film studies is entering an exciting new phase in which it faces many challenges, not least the demand that it reinvent itself once again. This stimulating anthology will play an indispensable part in that process, and I have no hesitation in recommending it.' Pam Cook, Professor of European Film and Media, Un 'I found the articles to be informative and theoretically sophisticated. I would highly recommend this anthology to both students and scholars interested in exploring theoretical frameworks which are 'really useful' in analysing film today.' Film-Philosophy