TEHRAN (IBNA) -- ‘A World History of Film’ (2002), a book by American historian and author ‎specializing in the history of cinema Robert Sklar has been published in Persian and is ‎available in Iranian bookstores. ‎
The book has been translated into Persian by Setareh Notaj. Iran’s Academy of Arts Press has released ‘A World History of Film’ in 308 pages and 500 copies.
This book presents the entire history of motion pictures, from pre-cinema to the present. Providing a complete analysis of the principal films, directors, and national cinemas, it supplies a thorough grounding in the social, economic, and political circumstances critical to an understanding of film as both art and industry.
In a highly readable narrative, Robert Sklar, one of the field’s most eminent scholars, covers all significant periods and styles- not only commercial films and classical Hollywood cinema but also animation, documentaries, international art cinema, and the cinematic avant-garde.
With emphasis on the international relationships among film communities, chapters are devoted to such critical nodes of film history as early cinema, Soviet silent cinema, Hollywood genres, Italian neorealism, and the French New Wave. Substantial sections are also devoted to the films of Eastern Europe, Latin America, Japan, China, Africa, the Middle East, and India. Informative sidebars complement the main text, and cross-cultural timelines introduce the book’s seven main parts.
The beginning of film’s second century has been mostly marked by a lamentable lack of quality in both American and European films. This book is a timely reminder that film remains a truly worldwide art form, nourished and renewed from diverse and unexpected sources most recently, Australia, China, and Iran. Sklar (‘Movie-Made America: A Cultural History of American Movies’) here attempts the impossible, compressing over 100 years of film history into one oversized volume.
Robert Sklar (1936-2011) was also a critic, and professor emeritus of cinema at Tisch School of the Arts, New York University. He was also the author of the prize-winning film history books “Movie-Made America: A Cultural History of American Movies” and “Film: An International History of the Mediu”, as well as several other books.