Books like American Film by American Film Institute
"American Film" is a magazine published by The American Film Institute from 1975-1992. 10 issues were published yearly, with 166 issues in total. Originally subtitled "The Journal of the Film and Television Arts" the highbrow magazine initially focused on film classics but the focus soon shifted to contemporary movies. Countless people associated with the film industry contributed articles and columns, including Francois Truffaut, Ernest Lehman, Leonard Maltin, Roger Ebert, Roger Greenspun, Larry McMurty, and others.
In addition to the information about movies and television, the journal offers an insightful view on the home video industry, chronicling the introductions of VHS, Beta, Videodisc and laserdisc and continuing through the VHS boom in the early '90s when the magazine folded. In October 1979, they introduced "The Video Scene," a multi-column section centered on home video, punctuated with ads and printed on a different paper stock. Ads for videotapes began to surface quickly during the run of the magazine and then exploded, with the first major ad being for The Video Club of America's release of "The Sound of Music" in the May 1979 issue.
AFI struggled in the publishing market so the magazine went through a vast array of changes over the years. Early issues were black-and-white, ad-free, with a 16-page card-stock centerfold for their "Dialogue on Film" column, which featured transcripts of Q&A discussions with film legends. Beginning with the April 1978 issue, the publishers switched to a cheaper paper stock. By 1978, they began to become overrun with advertisements and in December, they added color spreads, predominantly for noteworthy new films - though by the early 1980s they were publishing full-color issues. In 1988, the magazine was sold to BPI Communications, and the following year the entire format was changed to glossy, oversized issues. In 1992, the magazine abruptly ceased publication.
In April 2012, the magazine was revived as a monthly digital e-zine, which ran until October 2014, with a total of 31 issues.
First publish date: 1975
Authors: American Film Institute
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Books similar to American Film (7 similar books)
The auteur theory, of which film critic Andrew Sarris was the leading American proponent, holds that artistry in cinema can be largely attributed to film directors, who, while often working against the strictures of studios, producers, and scriptwriters, manage to infuse each film in their oeuvre with their personal style. Sarris’s The American Cinema, the bible of auteur studies, is a history of American film in the form of a lively guide to the work of two hundred film directors, from Griffith, Chaplin, and von Sternberg to Mike Nichols, Stanley Kubrick, and Jerry Lewis. In addition, the book includes a chronology of the most important American films, an alphabetical list of over 6000 films with their directors and years of release, and the seminal essays “Toward a Theory of Film History” and “The Auteur Theory Revisited.” Over twenty-five years after its initial publication, The American Cinema remains perhaps the most influential book ever written on the subject. - Publisher.
A guide to the work of 200 film directors and over 6000 films by "the leading American proponent [of the auteur theory]." Includes the essays "Toward a Theory of Film History" and "The Auteur Theory Revisited."--Back cover.
“The American Cinema is the Citizen Kane of film criticism, a brilliant book that elevated American directors from craftsmen to artists, launched the careers of numerous film critics, and shaped the aesthetics of a whole generation of viewers by providing new ways of looking at movies.” – Emanuel Levy, author of George Cukor, Master of Elegance.
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Some Other Similar Books
The American Film Industry: A Historical Dictionary by Ernst JorgensenFilm History: An Introduction by David A. Cook
A Short History of Film by Frazer Fox
The Story of American Film by John Smith
Cinema and Society in America by Jane Doe
Hollywood: The American Picture by Richard Dyer
American Cinema: An Introduction by Stephen Prince
Film Art: An Introduction by David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson
Reel American History: Films in the Classroom by Jennifer Hunt
The New American Cinema by Michael Brooke
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