Spotlight on Film Books

By:
Marialuisa Monda

The 97th Academy Awards are just around the corner! Will you be tuning in on Sunday, March 2nd at 7:00 PM Eastern?

In celebration of this star-studded night, we’ve curated a handful of book suggestions that may be perfect for you or the film lover in your life.

Want more movies? Join us March 5 for Le Conversazioni with Garth Risk Hallberg and Antonio Monda.

The cover of the New York Times's BOOK OF MOVIES

In General

The Oxford History of World Cinema edited by Geoffrey Nowell-Smith

The New York Times Book of Movies: The Essential 1,000 Films to See by A.O. Scott (Compiler), Manohla Dargis (Compiler), Wallace Schroeder (Editor)

The cover of ADAPTATIONS: FROM SHORT STORY TO BIG SCREEN

Films and Literature

Story and Discourse: Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film by Seymour Chatman

Adaptations: From Short Story to Big Screen: 35 Great Stories that have Inspired Great Films edited by Stephanie Harrison

True to the Spirit: Film Adaptation and the Question of Fidelity edited by Colin MacCabe, Kathleen Murray and Rick Warner ; [with an afterword by Fredric Jameson] edited by Stephanie Harrison

The cover of REGENERATION: BLACK CINEMA 1898-1971

Films and History

Fun City Cinema: New York City and the Movies That Made It by Jason Bailey; foreword by Matt Zoller Seitz

Regeneration: Black Cinema, 1898–1971 edited by Doris Berger, Rhea L. Combs ; contributions by Donald Bogle, Cara Caddoo, Terri Simone Francis, Michael Boyce Gillespie, J. Raúl Guzmán, Shola Lynch, Ron Magliozzi, Ellen C. Scott, Jacqueline Stewart. ; foreword by Whoopi Goldberg

Lost Illusions: American Cinema in the Shadow of Watergate and Vietnam, 1970-1979 by David A. Cook

Holding My Own in No Man's Land: Women and Men, Film and Feminists by Molly Haskell

From the Moment they Met it was Murder: Double Indemnity and the Rise of Film Noir by Alain Silver and James Ursin

The cover of HAYAO MIYAZAKI

Films and Their Creators

The Men Who Would Be King: An Almost Epic Tale of Moguls, Movies, and a Company Called DreamWorks by Nicole Laporte

Spike Lee's Gotta Have It: Inside Guerrilla Filmmaking by Spike Lee

Hayao Miyazaki by Jessica Niebel, Pete Docter, Daniel Kothenschulte ; foreword by Toshio Suzuki

Conversations with Scorsese by Richard Schickel

Cinema Speculation by Quentin Tarantino

The cover of Sergei Eisenstein's FILM FORM

Film Theory

Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings edited by Leo Braudy, Marshall Cohen

Film Form: Essays in Film Theory by Sergei Eisenstein; edited and translated by Jay Leyda