Skip to main content
We’re so back. See what’s new for the 2026-2027 school year →

📺Film and Media Theory
Key Terms

335 essential vocabulary terms and definitions to know for your Film and Media Theory exam

Study Film and Media Theory →

Browse All A-Z

A

Action blockbusters
Action-comedy
Activist cinema
Activist media
Actor-network theory
Adaptation theory
Adoor Gopalakrishnan
Advertising commodification
Affect theory
African Cinema
Agnes Varda
Aids crisis
Akira Kurosawa
Alfred Hitchcock
American Film Institute Code of Ethics
Andrew Sarris
André Bazin
Antonio Gramsci
Arjun Appadurai
Arthouse films
Aspect Ratio
Associational montage
Audience Agency
Audience commodity
Audience expectations
Audience fragmentation
Audience manipulation
Audience perception
Audience positioning
Audience Reception
Audience reception theory
Augmented Reality
Avant-garde cinema
Average shot length

B

Bechdel Test
Bill Nichols
Binary Oppositions
Black feminist film criticism
Bollywood Cinema
Box office performance
Box office revenue
Brand extension
Bury your gays trope
Butch lesbian stereotype

C

Camp aesthetics
Castration anxiety
Casual fandom
Chantal Akerman
Character Arc
Christian Metz
Circular narrative
Claire Johnston
Close-up
Cognitive Film Theory
Cognitivism
Collective filmmaking
Collective intelligence
Colonial imagery
Color grading
Color temperature
Coming out narratives
Creative labor
Crime drama
Critical Race Theory
Critical reception
Critical theory
Cross-cultural audience
Cross-cutting
Cuban Cinema
Cult following
Cultivation Theory
Cultural capital
Cultural Consumption
Cultural Critique
Cultural displacement