The 153 paintings that San Antonio-based artist Mel Casas calls Humanscapes were inspired by a glimpse of a drive-in movie screen. This article treats the first three years of work on this series, a period in which the artist referenced cinematic settings and audiences while registering aspects of the sexual revolution. Marshall McLuhan's…

The stress given to film directors and stars in current academic cinema studies unjustifiably ignores the artistic contributions of cinematographers. Frequently, cinematographers are responsible for much of the artistic expression and inventiveness in films. Although determination of the extent of the cinematographer's contribution is difficult,…

The thesis of this classic, the major part of which was originally published in 1933, is that the peculiar virtues of film as art derive from an exploitation of the limitations of the medium: the absence of sound, the absence of color, the lack of three-dimensional depth. Silent-film artists made virtues of these necessities and were on their way…

The author prefaces his consideration of films as an art form with a discussion of the mechanics of filmmaking. He describes the division of talent on a movie set, details the history of the tools of filmmakers, and explains the production and reproduction of a film. The influence of film techniques on plot development in a fiction film is…

This collection of essays by filmmakers, theorists, and scholars studies the fundamental resources and processes of film expression. Essays on the image deal with elements that make an image meaningful, as well as with the subjectivity of the motion picture camera. Other key resources of film that are discussed here include the movement of the…

If the best criticism of art is another work of art, studying the act of translation (the movement of ideas from one area or method of expression to another, such as between languages, between ancient and modern, between literature and life) can be of value to the English teacher. Bad translations, as exemplified in the condensation and…

Thanks to film, graphic artists can now create over time as well as in space. An essay discusses the influence of cinema on still paintings (e.g., Duchamp's "Nude Descending a Staircase" and the increasing combination of animation and live action in films. New techniques that are available in animation and in special visual effects are explained,…