Outline of the History of Western Film Theory

Author: Hu Xingliang, Editor-in-Chief
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-06-01
Features: This book strives to break through existing interpretive frameworks and instead reconstruct the history of Western film theory. Briefly speaking, what is called film theory is the theoretical interpretation of film, while what is called the history of film theory is the interpretation and evaluation of the development history of film theory made by researchers based on a certain concept as a judgment standard. Obviously, to interpret and evaluate the development history of film theory, the first issue involved is how to understand "film" and "film theory." However, "film" is a relatively complex concept. Film is both an aesthetic phenomenon and a social phenomenon, a technology and a business, a medium and a language. From capital and production to distribution and screening, from politics and economics to history and law, from philosophy and aesthetics to literature and art, from educational films and newsreels to science and technology films and feature films, etc., they can all independently form systems, containing rich, multi-layered connotations; similarly, they can also study and interpret film from these different aspects, thereby forming "film theory" with different connotations.