Film Fables traces the history of modern cinema. Encyclopedic in scope, Film Fables is that rare work that manages to combine extraordinary breadth and analysis with a lyricism which attests time and again to a love of cinema.

Jacques Ranciere moves effortlessly from Eisenstein's and Murnau's transition from theatre to film to Fritz Lang's confrontation with television, from the classical poetics of Mann's Westerns to Ray's romantic poetics of the image, from Rossellini's neo-realism to Deleuze's philosophy of the cinema and Marker's documentaries.

The Film Fable shows us how, between its images and its stories, the cinema tells its truth.

Jacques Ranciere is Professor of Aesthetics and Politics at the University of Paris-VIII (St. Denis). His translated works include: The Politics of Aesthetics: The Limits of Art and Politics, The Philosopher and his Poor, Dis-agreement: Politics and Philosophy, and The Names of History.

Translated from the French by Emiliano Battista, a doctoral student in Philosophy at the Catholic University of Leuven and a free-lance translator.