Film and Media Studies: Background Info

The Encyclopedia of Film Composers features more than 250 movie composers from around the world. It provides facts about these artists and also explains what makes each composer notable and discusses his or her music in detail.

The Historical Dictionary of African American Cinema covers its history through a chronology, an introductory essay, appendixes, and an extensive bibliography.

This resource contains reviews of every major production considered to be an epic film. Entries consider the characteristics of what makes an epic, including length, structure, spectacular special effects, and themes involving heroic figures and storylines relating essential episodes.

The Historical Dictionary of American Cinema provides broad coverage of the people, films, companies, techniques, themes, and genres that have made Americancinema such a vital part of world cinema.

Information is presented in five major sections: People in Film; Film Categories and Genres; Film-Producing Countries; 100 Notable Films; and Film Reference. Carefully researched factual information is combined with a measure of critical analysis, ensuring that each section can entertain as well as inform. Biographies of actors and directors offer suggested career 'highs' and 'lows'; genre and country sections give brief factual histories, alongside lists of key people and films; and the selection of notable films is designed to provoke interest and discussion, rather than representing a 'best-of' list.

This four-volume set is an exhaustive study of American film history from its late-nineteenth-century origins to the present day. Each volume begins with an introduction to some of the key individuals and groups, films, or significant developments of the period, which sets the stage for the essays that follow, and concludes with a section of summary essays that examine the relationship between the films and the culture of the era discussed.

This encyclopedia covers all aspects of scholarship on early cinema, both traditional and revisionist. It contains articles on the technological and industrial developments, the techniques of film production, the actors and filmmakers of the time, and on the changing modes of representation and narration, as well as the social and cultural contexts within which early films circulated, including topics such as distribution, exhibition, and audience.