Cinema Studies, The Key Concepts (third edition) -Susan Hayward

Cinema Studies’ was written by Susan Hayward who is a professor of cinema studies at the university of Exeter. Apart from the first two edition of Cinema Studies, she also published ‘French National Cinema’ (second edition)(20055), ‘Simone Signoret; The Star as Cultural Sign’ (2004) and many others.
‘Cinema studies’ is a really good book to use for research as it explains all the key concepts in films. It’s like a dictionary for everything you need to know about films, it also includes little bit of background history, of how that concept became how it is. I looked up the section on “Comedy” to find a interesting information that I didn’t know before, I found out that Comedy was one of the earliest genres and most of the comedy back then was “gag-based” I also found this quote really interesting “as a genre, comedy deliberately goes against the demands of realism” which is quite true as most comedy includes actions which is more exaggerated and actiosn are bigger than usualy, for example elephants in the lion king, would walk with their bottoms sway from side to side, which in reality doesn’t happen.

Overall I think that it is a really useful book to all media students and its really helpful to refer to and also it gives some background information which makes it easier to understand why that concept was found and how as it used during its time. I would recommend that media students especially animations and film study students.

Cinema studies ISBN 0-415-36782-4