A one-stop guide to the major movements that have shaped the sense of what cinema is and can be. It introduces founding concepts in Film Studies such as authorship and genre, technological impacts and the rise of digital cinema, social influences, notions of the avant-garde and cinema's emergence as a major art form. It explores, in concise and clear sections, how major works from the classic French realist La Regle du Jeu to the dazzling animation of Norman McLaren or the documentary Shoah were conceived, developed and eventually received by the public, critics and film history.