OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

User login

Film: A Very Short Introduction [#300]
Film: A Very Short Introduction [#300]
¥1,969
(incl.tax)
  • Considers the paradoxical nature of film, such as its representation as a mass medium and fine art; as technology and fantasy; as documentary and fiction; and as amateur photography and film industry
  • Explores the history of film from its beginnings to today's digital age
  • Draws on a wide range of examples from around the world to explore its role and impact internationally

 
Film is considered by some to be the most dominant art form of the twentieth century. It is many things, but it has become above all a means of telling stories through images and sounds. The stories are often offered to us as quite false, frankly and beautifully fantastic, and they are sometimes insistently said to be true. But they are stories in both cases, and there are very few films, even in avant-garde art, that don't imply or quietly slip into narrative. This story element is important, and is closely connected with the simplest fact about moving pictures: they do move.

Even the older meanings of the word 'film' - a membrane, a covering, a veil, an emanation - now seem to have something to do with moving pictures. Many people believe films are an instrument of illusion, an emphatic way of seeing what is not there; and this capacity has been both celebrated and condemned. 'Like a movie' mostly means like some sort of fairy-tale. But what about the reverse proposition: that more than any other invention film brings us close to the world as it actually is? 'Photography is truth', a character says in a film by Jean-Luc Godard. 'And cinema is the truth twenty-four times per second'. The same claim is made every day, albeit less epigrammatically, by newsreels and surveillance cameras. 

In this Very Short Introduction Michael Wood provides a brief history and examination of the nature of the medium of film, considering its role and impact on society as well as its future in the digital age. 
 
 
REVIEWS:
"This is an excellent short guide that manages to cram in a vast amount of information into a very small space. It never pretends to offer a history of film but is a superb resource for getting students to think about film as a medium, and to think about what makes film distinct as a means of conveying information, emotion, ideas at the same time as generating wonder, admiration, controversy, or ire. An unrivalled introduction to thinking about film as a medium." -- Matthew Woodcock, University of East Anglia

Index: 

1: Frame after Frame
2: Life in the Dark
3: Story Time
4: Digital Dreams

About the author: 

Michael Wood is Charles Barnwell Start Professor of English and Professor of Comparative Literature, Princeton University. He has published many books including America in the Movies (Basic Books and Secker & Warburg, 1975), The Magician's Doubts: Nabokov and the risks of fiction (Chatto and Windus, 1994); Belle de Jour ( BFI Film Classics, British Film Institute Publishing, 2001); and The Road to Delphi: the Life and Afterlife of Oracles (Chatto & Windus, 2004).

"This is an excellent short guide that manages to cram in a vast amount of information into a very small space. It never pretends to offer a history of film but is a superb resource for getting students to think about film as a medium, and to think about what makes film distinct as a means of conveying information, emotion, ideas at the same time as generating wonder, admiration, controversy, or ire. An unrivalled introduction to thinking about film as a medium. - Matthew Woodcock, University of East Anglia"

Product details

ISBN : 9780192803535

Author: 
Michael Wood
Pages
152 Pages
Format
Paperback
Size
111 x 174 mm
Pub date
Jan 2012
Series
Very Short Introductions
Customer reviews
0
(0)

You may also like

Customer reviews

0
0
0件

まだレビューはありません

The price listed on this page is the recommended retail price for Japan. When a discount is applied, the discounted price is indicated as “Discount price”. Prices are subject to change without notice.

Film: A Very Short Introduction [#300]

Film: A Very Short Introduction [#300]

Film: A Very Short Introduction [#300]