Books on Cinema

David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson are a couple of film historians and film theorists who have written two widely used film textbooks, Film Art: An Introduction and Film History.  They keep updating their blog  Observations on Film Art  with outstanding analysis that discuss “film techniques, formal strategies, stylistic choices, norms and transformations of them, and genre conventions” that serve as a complement to their book  Film Art .  Film History: An Introduction is a detailed history of world cinema, from the invention of the first pre-film optical toys to the digital era. Bordwell and Thompson discuss the development of each genre, possibly all film movements, the changes in movie theaters since nickelodeons, various types of censorship, studios policies in the formal constructions of films (cinematography, editing, screenplays' narrative structure) and marketing strategies. A very ambitious book that does not look at the cinema as something indiv...

David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson are a couple of film historians and film theorists who have written two widely used film textbooks, Film Art: An Introduction and Film History . They keep updating their blog Observations on Film Art with outstanding analysis that discuss “film techniques, formal strategies, stylistic choices, norms and transformations of them, and genre conventions” that serve as a complement to their book Film Art .  This book, originally published in 1979, is already in the 11th edition and has become, possibly, the best starting point if you want to engage in film criticism or even filmmaking activity. It contains the correct terms to make a film analysis of mise en scène , cinematography, editing and sound. With them, Bordwell and Thompson construct a series of analyzes of some classics as well as recent films, using stills of diverse scenes and discussing the effects that film directors achieve through filmic elements and how they help the vie...