Cinematically Speaking: The Orality-Literacy Paradigm for Visual Narrative (The Hampton Press Commuincation Series: Media Ecology)

Most people think of film narrative in fundamentally visual terms. But what if visuality is only one component of a larger espistmic framework for how film narrative "works'? In this book, the author argues just that, laying out the comprehensive terrain for what has already been described as a "controversial new theory of cinematic literacy". Proposing that orality and literacy play a fundamental role in shaping visual storytelling. Between close reading of 1950s - 1960s Bollywood cinema and modernist art cinema, as well as many cinemas in between, this book casts a pioneering lens on what goes into shaping screen stories worldwide. It is a theoretical work certain to alter our understanding and future exploration of the narrative-film species.