Film Theory: An Introduction

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The book combines two strands of work – an ambitious study of colonialist discourse and Eurocentrism – and a comprehensive and transnational study of cinematic texts related to those issues. geniş kapsamlı, dönemin felsefi ve politik eğilimleri ile sinema arasındaki bağlara ağırlık veren bir yerden ele alıyor. Mobilizing Fictions: The Gulf War, the Media and the Recruitment of the Spectator," Public Culture Vol. Para mim, o grande diferencial do livro é que a cada capítulo e teoria, o Stam primeiro apresenta sua principal ideia, faz você achar ela brilhante, para logo em seguida mostrar as críticas a ela, fazer você pensar que as críticas tem razão, e aí ao fim ele também se posiciona sobre o assunto. Attempting to go beyond the methodological limitations of the then-dominant paradigm of “positive image” and “negative stereotype” analysis, Stam argued for an approach that emphasized not social accuracy or characterological merits but rather issues such as perspective, address, focalization, mediation, and the filmic orchestration of discourses.

At times Stam's summaries of other people's critical stances and theories was helpful (especially when so often you have to read confusing translations of the originals) but usually I would have preferred just an anthology of theory and the original articles rather than Stam's interpretations and opinions. With work that has ranged across a number of different fields, Stam has participated in a number of post-structuralist and postcolonial “turns” within film and cultural studies.For a more comprehensive bibliography, see Toby Miller and Robert Stam (eds), Film and Theory (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1999).

Two anthologies co-edited with Alessandra Raengo (both published by Blackwell) fleshed out the project: Literature and Film: A Guide to the Theory and Practice of Adaptation (Blackwell, 2005), and Companion to Literature and Film (Blackwell, 2004). Their Unthinking Eurocentrism: Multiculturalism and the Media (Routledge, 1994) formed part of and helped shape the surge of writing about race, colonialism, identity politics, and postcoloniality in the 1990s.A remarkable synthesis, recommended to anyone who wants to understand the questions and debates that have animated film theory in the twentieth century.

Stam has authored, co-authored and edited some seventeen books on film and cultural theory, literature and film, national cinema (French and Brazilian), aesthetic and politics, intellectual history, and comparative race studies and postcolonial studies.Robert Stam, renowned for his clarity of writing, will also include studies of cinema specialists providing readers with a depth of reference not generally available outside the field of film studies itself. Film Theory: An Introduction was published in tandem with two Blackwell anthologies co-edited with Toby Miller both from 2000: Film and Theory and A Companion to Film Theory. In 2003, Stam was honored at the Curitiba Film Festival for his "Noteworthy Service to Brazilian Cinema". Anyway, I found myself skimming over the post-silent sections of the book and only reading long passages when Stam hit on an area that I was particularly interested in.

Transnationalizing Comparison: The Uses and Abuses of Cross-Cultural Analogy," co-written with Ella Shohat. Representation, Meaning, and Experience in the Cinema: A Critical Study of Contemporary Film Theory.Unlike some other reviewers, I was glad that Stam offered summaries of the work of many theorists rather than extensive excerpts from a few in this introduction. Having never read much film theory I was looking for a broad introduction and that's exactly what this was.