Introduction to Projections: David Bordwell's Contributions to the Study of Film

David Bordwell's passing in 2024 reverberates throughout film studies, but especially for his many colleagues, mentees, former students, and cinephiles generally. It would be hard to exaggerate David Bordwell's role in the development of cognitive film studies. His work pointed the way for many of us in its rigor and precision. His attention to form and style and how they relate to viewer psychology has been unsurpassed. Bordwell was a tireless writer and blogger, and his work has a central place in film scholarship. He showed how fruitful the combination of cinema poetics and cognitive psychology could be. In fact, a poetics of film that ignores viewer perception and comprehension now seems thin and incomplete.