The American film studies pioneer, teacher, researcher, prolific author of scholarly texts and textbooks, David Bordwell has died aged 76. Anybody who has even dabbled in the murky waters of film theory and film history will have come across David Bordwell and his books, some written by him alone but in the case of the textbooks Film Art: An Introduction and Film History: An Introduction they were written with his partner Kristin Thompson along with at least one other collective enterprise, The Classical Hollywood Cinema on which the couple were joined by Janet Staiger. But these three titles have also been joined by many others and the gargantuan blog ‘Observations on Film Art‘. It seems only right to direct you towards that blog to read the obituary written by Bordwell’s colleagues and friends at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and posted on March 1st. (Click on the title below.) I will post something about the importance of Bordwell’s work as I see it from a UK perspective a little later.

Gone but far from forgotten