Film Directors and Emotion

<p> Cinema is an affective medium. Films move us to feel wonder joy and love as well as fear anger and hatred. Today we are living through a new age of sensibility when emotion is given priority over reason. Yet there is a counter-cultural current in contemporary American cinema that offers a more nuanced treatment of emotion. Both aesthetically and eidetically this new cinema of affect allows viewers to make up their own minds about what they feel and think.</p><p> This book focuses on key films by important auteur-directors--David Fincher Bryan Singer Christopher Nolan Kathryn Bigelow Richard Linklater Barry Jenkins Greta Gerwig and Pete Docter--who are to the forefront of this new cinema. It explores how they anatomize affect and how it functions in the creation or degradation of character and society.</p>