The Attractions of the Moving Image

An essential collection of new and selected essays by influential cinema and media studies scholar Tom Gunning. Tom Gunning is the author of multiple books and nearly two hundred essays that have defined the field of cinema and media studies. His works have transformed our understanding of early cinema and the American avant-garde and reset the terms of many central debates in film and media history and theory. His 1986 essay The Cinema of Attractions is among the most cited essays on film ever published. Gunnings writings articulate a distinctive and powerful model for thinking about cinemas history and likely future, addressing the full range of moving-image media, from film to still photography to digital media. His discussions draw on stage melodrama and magic lantern shows, as well as criminology, worlds fairs, and Spiritualism, surveying the medium as a cultural phenomenon informed by the industrial and information ages, psychiatry, urban experience, discourses on art and aesthetics, and more. This collection brings together twenty-six essays that showcase the depth and range of Gunnings scholarship, including four that have never before been published. Together, they solidify Gunnings place as a scholar who has transformed the way generations of scholars, archivists, critics, and artists think about cinema.