In-depth survey of key debates in film and digital theory between film practitioners, involved observers, and theoreticians and philosophers. Part I surveys theories of medium specificity and of film exhibition (cinema of attraction, film as mass culture) and of film as art (Gestalt theory, French Impressionism) and as a revolutionary tool (Soviet Montage). We study the debate around the relation between film and reality in theories of realism. Part II covers film theory form the 1960s to the 1990s. Topics include structuralism and semiotics, apparatus theory, genre and authorship, psychoanalytic film theory, and the impact of debates in gender, sexuality, and race on film theory. We survey theories of oppositional gazes in their struggles against sexism, racism, classism, and colonialism. Further, we cover discourses in phenomenology, cognitive film theory and the theory of affects. Part III focuses on recent developments related to digital media. We will investigate the relationship between the digital image and reality (theories of simulacra) and consider the role of infrastructures and economies of digital distribution.

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