Smith's writing demonstrates considerable skill in its integration of informed scientific explanation, philosophical review, and application of a wide range of film examples — from classical and contemorary Hollywood as well as from European and Asian art cinema — with surprisingly productive comparisons such as between Ozu Yasujiro's The Flavour of Green Tea over Rice (1952) and the works of Stan Brakhage. I cannot tell film theorists what to read, and
even if could, why would they listen to a philosopher? But I want film theorists to pick up this book because it offers them new and rich resources for reflecting on their practices and has just the right tone to solicit the reader's collaboration. Film, Art, and the Third Culture initiates a dialogue between
natural scientists, philosophers, and film theorists, one that I very much hope will continue.
Murray Smith is Professor of Film and co-director of the Aesthetics Research Centre at the University of Kent, and a Laurance S. Rockefeller Fellow at Princeton University's Center for Human Values for 201718. He was President of the Society for Cognitive Studies of the Moving Image from 201417. He has published widely on film, art, and aesthetics. In addition to the recent Film, Art, and the Third Culture: A Naturalized Aesthetics of Film (Oxford, 2017),
his publications include Engaging Characters: Fiction, Emotion, and the Cinema (Clarendon); Trainspotting (BFI); Film Theory and Philosophy (co-edited with Richard Allen) (Clarendon); Contemporary Hollywood Cinema (co-edited with Steve Neale) (Routledge); and Thinking through Cinema (co-edited with Tom
Wartenberg) (Blackwell).