Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Providing a comprehensively detailed history and critique of cinema animation produced around the world, this reference book is divided according to the major filmmakers and national cinemas. It covers over 70 countries, 2000 animators and 3000 films.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Introduction
• Preface: Elegy to Animated Film
• I Animation Cinema--The First Four Decades (1888-1929)
• 1 The beginning
• 2 Animation in the Untied States of America
• 3 The European Individualists
• 4 Argentina: The world's first animated feature film
• 5 United States of America: Breaking the sound barrier
• 6 Walt Disney: The world's most successful animation studio
• II Animation In The 1930S
• 7 Europe
• 8 United States of America: Animation heads West
• 9 Talent in Other Countries
• 10 The Masters of Animation
• III Animation Over The Next Three Decades 91940-1970)
• 11 The United States of America
• 12 The Canadian Phenomenon
• 13 Western Europe
• 14 Eastern Europe
• 15 Animation in Asia
• 16 Animation in Latin America
• IV A New Wave In Animation (1970S And 1980S)
• 17 United States of America
• 18 Canada
• 19 Western Europe: The new generation
• 20 Eastern Europe
• 21 Latin America
• 22 Africa
• 23 New REalities in Asia
• 24 Australasia
• 25 The Globe Trotters of Animation
• V Afterword
• 26 The Electronic Age
• 27 Computers and Animators
• VI Reference
• Bibliography
• Indexes - Names & Film Titles

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

This chronological history analyzes animated film as an autonomous art form that has nevertheless been affected by the economics of live-action cinema as well as social and political forces (e.g., the dislocation of Continental Europe's animators by World War II). This comprehensive study describes concepts and practice, profiles innumerable animators, and concludes with a chapter on computer animation. Because of truly global coverage (from Mali to Mongolia), Cartoons introduces such important animators as Russia's Alexandre Alexeieff and Scotland-born Canadian master Norma McLaren while providing details on familiar names like Disney, Walter Lantz, and Tex Avery. Despite the subject's popularity, this should not be considered a coffee-table book but a scholarly reference whose notes and bibliography are valuable sources for further study. Purchase for comprehensive film and art collections.-Kim Holston, American Inst. for Chartered Property Casualty Underwriters, Malvern, Pa. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

CHOICE Review

Few works have been so anticipated as Anna Taraboletti-Segre's splendid translation of Bendazzi's comprehensive history of animation cinema. This work reviews the decades of development in animation, from individuals like Emile Reynaud and Emile Cohl through the studios of Disney and the National Film Board of Canada into the revolutionary realm of computer animation. The thoroughness of Cartoons is evident in its international scope, for example, its inclusion of the exciting and neglected work produced in Latin America and Asia. This marvelous encyclopedia is brilliantly illustrated with dazzling color plates. Its scholarly breadth, richness, and attention to detail, along with its amazingly readable and engaging narrative, make this the most indispensable text on world animation history. Enthusiastically recommended as both a fascinating story and an incredible reference resource for both scholars and aficionados of the art of film. T. Lindvall Regent University

Booklist Review

Although animation has finally begun to be thought worthy of serious attention, the spate of books on it in recent years has focused primarily on commercial Hollywood animation. Bendazzi ambitiously attempts to fill the gap. He covers more than a century's worth of animation, from the 1888 th{{‚}}e{{Æ¿}}atre optique (a device for projecting moving painted images that predates motion picture pioneers Edison and Lumi{{Å }}ere) to today's cutting edge computer-animation technology. He covers American animation, of course, but also describes developments in more than 70 other countries, in many of which animation emerged more as an art form than a box office draw. His work is not without shortcomings: the writing (the translation, anyway) is occasionally awkward, and despite or because of its exhaustive depth and scholarly approach, the text seldom conveys the delightfulness that makes the best cartoons so compelling. Carping aside, this valuable effort, already well received in France and Italy, promises to be the basic reference on its subject for some time to come. (Reviewed January 1, 1995)0253311683Gordon Flagg

Kirkus Book Review

This massive history of film animation is inclusive to distraction and makes for awkward prose. Readability aside, its encyclopedic style will find it a place in the library of everyone interested in the subject. From the outset, Bendazzi, a founding member of the Society for Animation Studies, makes clear his preference for European art animation, with its simpler styles and its predilection for abstraction. But his historical intentions require him to tell the full story, with all its emphasis on the marketplace for moving images. Beginning with the origins of animation in French pantomimes lumineuses (circa 1890), Bendazzi recounts the turn-of-the-century filming of ``chalk talks'' and lightning sketches done by speed artists. The French filmmaker George Melies blurred the line between live and animated action to develop supernatural effects for narrative movies. Italian Futurists painted abstracts directly on nitrate, while the Americans began experiments with plain storytelling and eventually standardized the studio system for mass production, the cel process, and the slash method. Meanwhile, European art filmmakers such as Fritz Lang were incorporating animation into their films. Bendazzi tells the stories of the great American animators with much ambivalence, but they're all here: the Fleischer Brothers and ``Betty Boop''; Otto Messmer and ``Felix the Cat''; Paul Terry and ``Terrytoons''; Walter Lanz and ``Woody Woodpecker''; and, of course, Walt Disney and ``Mickey.'' Bendazzi resents Disney's dominance, claiming that he stifled more artistic animation in America. Though Bendazzi extols the American avant- garde animators (from Jordan Belson to Van Der Beek), he fails to see the full genius of those schooled by Disney, from Tex Avery to Chuck Jones, and he completely misinterprets American products such as ``The Simpsons'' and Ernest Pintoff's ``The Critic.'' Every country that has ever produced a cartoon will find it listed here, with a one-sentence description. A videotape or CD-ROM is the only thing missing from this exhaustive project. (95 color plates, 150 b&w photos)