Film theory : rational reconstructions / Warren Buckland.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Buckland, Warren.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Motion pictures--Philosophy.

Motion pictures.

Film criticism.

Physical Description:

ix, 193 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

New York, NY : Routledge, 2012.

Summary:

In Film theory: Rational Reconstructions, Warren Buckland asks a series of questions about how film theory gets written in the first place:'

How does it select its objects of study and its methods of inquiry?

How does it make discoveries and explain filmic phenomena?

How does it formulate and solve theoretical problems?

He asks these questions of film theory through a rational reconstruction and a classical commentary. Both frameworks clarify and reformulate vague and inexact expressions, redefine obscure concepts and examine the underlying logic of film theory arguments. This not only subjects film theory to rigorous examination: it also teaches students how to write theory by enabling them to question and critically interrogate the logic of previous film theory arguments.

The book consists of nine chapters that closely examine a series of canonical film books and essays in great detail, by Peter Wollen, Laura Mulvey, Thomas Elsaesser, Stephen Heath, and Slavoj zizek among others. Book jacket.

Contents:

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.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780415590976

0415590973

9780415590983

0415590981

9780203143667

0203143663

OCLC:

742512430