Fantasy/Animation: David Bordwell (1947-2024)
Professor David Bordwell.
To mark the life of distinguished film theorist and historian David Bordwell (1947-2024), and to add to the many tributes from across the disciplines of film and media studies, Chris and Alex have begun to collect some of Professor Bordwell’s writings that connect to fantasy and animation both in print and on his website davidbordwell.net and accompanying blog Observations on Film Art. As Variety recently wrote upon Professor Bordwell’s passing, he was a “prolific researcher, dedicated teacher and passionate cinephile” and that for more than two decades “penned commentaries, produced visual and written essays and interviews for films in the Criterion Collection and was seen and heard on 50 episodes of “Observations on Film Art” on the Criterion Channel, who described him as a “tireless champion of cinema.”” In the spirit of collaboration, we invite readers to add their own references and citations to the short list below and to share their experience of his scholarship in relation to their reflections on - and possible links to - fantasy storytelling and the medium of animation.
on fantasy
“Aesthetics in Action: Kung Fu, Gunplay, and Cinematic Expressivity.” In Fifty Years of Electric Shadows, ed. Law Kar, 81–89. Hong Kong: Urban Council/ Hong Kong International Film Festival, 1997. Reprinted in At Full Speed: Hong Kong Cinema in a Borderless World, ed. Esther C. M. Yau, 73–93. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001.
“Intensified Continuity Visual Style in Contemporary American Film.” Film Quarterly 55, no. 3 (2002): 16-28, available here.
“Fantasy franchises or franchise fantasies?” Observations on film art (July 18, 2007), available here.
Christopher Nolan: A Labyrinth of Linkages (co-authored with Kristin Thompson). Madison: Irvington Way Institute Press, 2013.
“The viewer’s share: models of mind in explaining film,” in Psychocinematics: Exploring Cognition at the Movies, ed. Arthur P. Shimamura, 29-52. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013.
“Fantasy, flashbacks, and what-ifs: 2016 pays off the past,” Observations on film art (January 2, 2017), available here.
“Cognitive film studies: The Hamburg Variations,” Observations on film art (June 18, 2019), available here.
on animation
“Technological Change and Classical Film Style in the 1930s” (co-authored with Kristin Thompson). In Tino Balio, ed. Grand Design: Hollywood as a Modern Business Enterprise, 1930–1939, vol. 5 in The History of the American Cinema, 109–141. New York: Scribners, 1993.
“Flushed away for real?” Observations on film art (November 16, 2006), available here.
“Aardman on its own",” Observations on film art (February 3, 2007), available here.
The Way Hollywood Tells It: Story and Style in Modern Movies. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006.
On the History of Film Style. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997. 2nd ed. Madison: Irvington Way Institute Press, 2018. Available here.
“A glimpse into the Pixar kitchen,” Observations on film art (April 10, 2008), available here.
“Animation in Vancouver,” Observations on film art (October 20, 2012), available here.
Pandora’s Digital Box: Films, Files, and the Future of Movies. Madison, Wisconsin: The Irvington Way Institute Press, 2012, available here.
“German classics for the pandemic and beyond,” Observations on film art (January 24, 2021), available here.
“Tracking down Aardman creatures in 2008,” Observations on film art (December 12, 2023), available here.
**Article published: March 22, 2024**