Engaging Cinema: An Introduction to Film Studies

by Bill Nichols

Overview

Engaging Cinema emphasizes the interactions between society and cinema and introduces students to film studies as it is actually done by scholars and critics.

In what ways do films influence and interact with society? What social forces determine the kinds of movies that get made? How do movies reinforce—and sometimes overturn—social norms? As societies evolve, do the films that were once considered ‘great’ slip into obscurity? Which ones? Why? These questions, and many others like them, represent the mainstream of scholarly film studies today. In Engaging Cinema, Bill Nichols offers the first book for introductory film students that tackles these topics head-on.

Published in a handy 'trade paperback' format, Engaging Cinema is inexpensive and utterly unique in the field—a perfect complement to or replacement for standard film texts.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393934915
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	01/28/2010
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	576
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.10(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Bill Nichols (Ph.D., UCLA) is Professor of Cinema at San Francisco State University. A leading (and founding) figure in the film studies community, Nichols is the editor of the seminal anthologies, Movies and Methods, Volumes 1 & 2 (1976; 1985) and the leading textbook in documentary film, Introduction to Documentary (2001). His other books include Ideology and the Image (1981), Representing Reality: Issues and Concepts in Documentary (1991), Blurred Boundaries: Questions of Meaning in Contemporary Culture (1995), and Maya Deren and the American Avant-Garde (ed., 2001).