This core textbook offers a concise yet complete introduction to film, responding to shifts in the medium while addressing all of the main approaches that inform film studies. The rise of on demand internet-based video has transformed the way films are distributed and exhibited, with many previously unobtainable and obscure films becoming available for global audiences to view instantly. Interweaving historical and current theoretical approaches, Nick Lacey presents a tightly-focused and coherent overview of a discipline in transition, which can be read ‘cover to cover’ or in distinct chapters.