Biography
Professor Nichols has lectured in numerous countries, served on film festival juries on different continents, consults regularly on a variety of filmmaking projects, and has published over 100 articles. He is former President of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies, a former advisor to the American Film Institute and has served as Department Chair in Canada and the United States. The Encyclopedia of Documentary Film describes his place within film studies as "the most significant documentary scholar in the world". His early work shared with other film scholars a degree of difficulty as it tried to apply elaborate theories to popular films but, as with the field generally, the intensity of theoretical investigation diminishes in his later work as the emotional impact of specific works takes on greater importance. Not a film historian in the traditional sense, Nichols has offered fresh views of historical assumptions but his main contribution has been to offer a conceptual framework for the study and production of documentary film.
Read more about this topic: Bill Nichols
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