Cinema & Media Studies - Research Guide: Encyclopedias

This volume covers acting techniques from all over the world.

Since the 1980s, pop culture has focused on what makes a villain a villain--The Joker, Darth Vader, Hannibal Lecter. American Villain: Encyclopedia seeks to collect stories into one comprehensive volume, with essays about villains in popular culture, followed by 100 A-Z entries on the most notorious bad guys, along with glossary of key terms and a bibliography.

The Companion Encyclopedia of Middle Eastern and North African Film illuminates a fascinating variety of cinema little known elsewhere. Each chapter covers the history and major issues of film within an area or country, as well as providing bibliographies of the leading films, directors and actors.

This comprehensive guide is an ideal reference work for film specialists and enthusiasts. First published in 1984 but continuously updated ever since, CineGraph is the most authoritative and comprehensive encyclopedia on German-speaking cinema.

A comprehensive and penetrating look into the history of Arab women's filmmaking, as well as the political and social background of the countries, biographies, filmographies, and discussions of important works.

This fourth edition of The Encyclopedia of British Film is a fully updated invaluable reference guide to the British film industry. It is the most authoritative volume yet, stretching from the inception of the industry to the present day, with detailed listings of the producers, directors, actors and studios.

The Encyclopedia of Chinese Film, one of the first ever encyclopedias in this area, provides alphabetically organized entries on directors, genres, themes, and actors and actresses from mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan as well as 300 film synopses.

The Encyclopedia of the Documentary Film is a fully international reference work on the history of the documentary film from the Lumière brothers' Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory (1885) to Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 911 (2004).

This encyclopedia presents a wealth of information on early cinema history, with coverage of the techniques and equipment of film production, profiles of the pioneering directors and producers, analysis of individual films and the rapid growth of distinct film genres, and the emergence of something the world had never seen before - the movie star. The work also focuses on how the nature of film exhibition changed as the industry grew, and how the public's reception to films also changed.

The Encyclopedia of Film Composers features entries on more than 250 movie composers from around the world. It not only provides facts about these artists but also explains what makes each composer notable and discusses his or her music in detail.

The authors examine the debate surrounding the parameters of the genre and the many different ways it is defined. They discuss the Noir City, its setting and backdrop, and also the cultural (WWII) and institutional (the House UnAmerican Activities Committee, and the Production Code Administration) influences on the subgenres. An analysis of the low budget and series film noirs provides information on those cult classics. With over 200 entries on films, directors, and actors, the Encyclopedia of Film Noir is the most complete resource for film fans, students, and scholars.

This work includes over 670 entires on a variety of film themes, settings, and series. Each entry contains a mini-essay that defines the topic, followed by a chronological list of representative films. Example entries are alcoholism, the RBI, oil wells and twins.

All major films with a primary focus on athletic endeavor are contained in Encyclopedia of Sports Films. In this volume, more than 200 fictional feature-length movies released between 1925 and 2010 are described, including comedies, dramas, and biopics. While the focus is on Hollywood productions, independent films and foreign releases are also represented. Though boxing and baseball films have tended to dominate the genre, many other sports are also included here.

The Oxford Encyclopedia of Communication and Critical Cultural Studies is a compendium of touchstone articles by prominent communication, rhetorical, and cultural studies scholars about topics of interest to scholars and critics of popular and political culture.

Taking us from a time when LGBTQ characters were often represented as either caricatures or figures of farce, this lively yet authoritative reference explores the sea change ushered in by such stars as Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich in the 1930s and '40s, androgynous figures such as Montgomery Clift, James Dean, and Marlon Brando in the '50s, and closeted gay men such as Rock Hudson and Liberace, whose double lives were exposed by the scourge of AIDS. Included are alphabetically arranged entries on stars, directors, films, themes, and other topics related to queer cinema.

In Reel Women: An International Directory of Contemporary Feature Films about Women, media librarian Jane Sloan has assembled an impressive list of more than 2400 films--from nearly 100 countries--that feature female protagonists. Each entry includes a brief description of the film and cites key artistic personnel, particularly female directors, producers, and screenwriters involved in its production.

The Routledge Encyclopedia of Film Theory is an international reference work representing the essential ideas and concepts at the centre of film theory from the beginning of the twentieth century, to the beginning of the twenty-first.

This balanced examination looks at America's pervasive celebrity culture, concentrating on the period from 1950 to the present day. This encyclopedia covers American celebrity culture, examining its various aspects--and its impact--through 86 entries by 30 expert contributors.