The world watches commercials. This volume explores this aesthetic and cultural presence, the intermedial relationship and phenomena of international broadcast commercials as film art. Whether sitting in front of a television set in Egypt, Belgium or Portugal, ‘surfing’ across streaming services in Hungary, the Philippines or Chile, or glancing at messages broadcast on electronic billboards in Japan, India, Germany or in movie theatres and television screens in the United States, the question remains relevant: what are we looking at?

Consuming Global Images: The International Television Commercial as Short Film addresses the theoretical, industrial and creative gap in the history and criticism of the international broadcast commercial in respective media cultures as it reads the advertisement as a short film.