Is it really necessary to learn How to Read a Film? Obviously, anyone over the age of two can – more or less – grasp the basic content of a movie, a disc, a radio or television program without any special training.

However, precisely because the media so closely mimics reality, we perceive them more than we understand them. Cinema and electronic media have drastically changed the way we perceive the world – and ourselves – over the last century, yet we all completely naturally accept the enormous volume of information they deliver to us in massive doses without questioning the way they use it to tell us what they tell us.

How We Read a Film is an attempt to understand this vital process on many levels.