Kirstin Thompson

Kristin Thompson (born 1950) is an American film theorist and author whose research interests include the close formal analysis of films, the history of film styles, and "quality television," a genre akin to art film. She wrote two scholarly books in the 1980s which used an analytical technique called neoformalism. As well, she has co-authored two widely used film studies textbooks with her husband David Bordwell.

Thompson earned her master's degree in film studies at the University of Iowa (1973) and a Ph.D. in film studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. She has held teaching positions at the University of Wisconsin, the University of Iowa, Indiana University, the University of Amsterdam, and the University of Stockholm.

She co-wrote the film textbook, Film Art: An Introduction, with husband David Bordwell. Film Art, with a tenth edition published in 2013, was originally published in 1979 and has become a standard in the field of film aesthetics. To date, it has been translated into seven languages.

Thompson predominantly relies on an analytical method drawn from Russian Formalism known as neoformalism. This method formed the basis for her dissertation, which subsequently became her first scholarly book, Eisenstein's "Ivan the Terrible": A Neoformalist Analysis. Neoformalism is also the basis for the later, Breaking the Glass Armor.

In 1994, she co-wrote another textbook with Bordwell, Film History. In early 2001 she did a series of lectures at Oxford University. She holds an honorary fellowship in the Department of Communication Arts at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

Thompson argues that a small number of television shows stand out as quality television shows, due to their use of "...a quality pedigree, a large ensemble cast, a series memory, creation of a new genre through recombination of older ones, self-consciousness, and pronounced tendencies toward the controversial and the realistic." She claims that television shows such as Twin Peaks, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Sopranos, and The Simpsons exhibit traits also found in art films, such as psychological realism, narrative complexity, and ambiguous plotlines.

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