From one of cinema’s wisest and most penetrating observers, an arresting new perspective on the sweep of film history.

David Thomson has been called “the greatest living writer on the movies.” Here is a career capstone of sorts—a one-volume history of film and screens as illuminating and provocative as his classic Biographical Dictionary of Film. In tracing the progress, from the Lumiere Brothers to the Coens, Thomson glories in the great movies, but admits to increasing unease over what the medium has done to us—promoting fantasy, misleading models of sexual identity, the cult of authority, power, and happy endings.

This revisionist history is as alert to technology and business as it is to art and fun in tracing our pursuit of the lifelike instead of life. By turns trenchant, lyrical, and comic, Thomson uncovers our addiction to voyeurism and villainy, and a habit of passivity that has betrayed our political and cultural identity. In a survey that reaches from Metropolis to Rear Window to Anora, this will redirect ideas about film everywhere. As The New York Times has put it, “Thomson proves anew that he is irreplaceable.”

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KIER-LA JANISSE is an author, critic, film programmer, podcaster, publisher and producer with an emphasis on genre cinema.

Video Watchdog’s Tim Lucas referred to her book House of Psychotic Women as one of the 10 “most vital” horror film books of all time, and Ian MacAllister-McDonald of the LA Review of Books called it “the next step in genre theory, as well as the most frightening and heart-rending memoir I’ve read in years.”

Her book on Monte Hellman's infamous film Cockfighter is stunning. Visit her website here for more on her writing, her films and podcasts.

John Bleasdale's Connery A Novel is available to buy NOW.

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Samira Ahmed is a journalist, writer, and BBC broadcaster. She presents Front Row on Radio 4, Newswatch on BBC News, and regularly hosts radio documentaries. In 2020, she was named British Broadcasting Press Guild's Audio Presenter of the Year. Ahmed has written for The Guardian, The Independent, and other publications, and she writes a regular column for New Humanist.

Read her blog here.

Samira Ahmed's BFI Classics: A Hard Days Night is available here.

John Bleasdale's Connery: A Novel is available here.

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