Kinder has published more than one hundred essays and ten books. Her first essay, titled, "Antonioni in Transit," on the 1966 filmBlow-up and its relationship to Michelangelo Antonioni's earlier films made in Italy, was published in the British film journal Sight & Sound in 1967. Kinder first two books, Close Up: A Critical Perspective on Film and Self and Cinema: A Transformalist Perspective, were written in collaboration with Beverle Houston. She is best known for her works on Spanish cinema and culture, which include Blood Cinema: The Reconstruction of National Identity in Spain, with a companion CD, Refiguring Spain: Cinema, Media, Representation, and Luis Buñuel's The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie. Kinder's works on children's media culture include Playing with Power in Movies, Television and Video Games: From Muppet Babies to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and Kids' Media Culture. Kinder was founding editor of the journal Dreamworks, a winner of a Pushcart Prize, and a contributor to The Spectator. Since 1977, she has served on the editorial board of Film Quarterly. In 1995 Kinder received the USC Associates Award for Creativity in Scholarship, and in 2001 was named a University Professor for her innovative interdisciplinary research.
Labyrinth projects
In 1997, Kinder founded The Labyrinth Project at USC, a research initiative on database narrative. At Labyrinth she produced database documentaries, archival cultural histories and other new models of digital scholarship in collaboration with media artists, filmmakers, writers, scholars, scientists, archivists, and cultural institutions. Combining cultural historyand theory with the sensory language of the cinematic arts, these database documentaries are presented as transmedia networks. One of Kinder's first projects was with filmmaker Nina Menkes, entitled THE CRAZY BLOODY FEMALE CENTER. Menkes was allegedly unhappy that Kinder took liberties with her work, for example, adding shots to her work without her permission. Menkes' CD-ROM premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. Many Labyrinth projects have been featured at museums, film and new media festivals, and conferences worldwide and have won prestigious awards, including: the New Media Invision Award for best design; the British Academy Award for best interactive project in the learning category; and, the Jury Award at Sundance for New Narrative Forms. Three Labyrinth projects were featured in Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe's "Future Cinema" exhibition in Germany in 2002: Tracing the Decay of Fiction: Encounters with a Film by Pat O’Neill ; Bleeding Through Layers of Los Angeles, 1920 – 1986 ; and, The Danube Exodus: The Rippling Currents of the River. The latter work was an installation made in collaboration with Hungarian artist Péter Forgács, which premiered at the Los Angeles Getty Center in 2002 and is still touring worldwide. Others projects have focused on science and health education: Three Winters in the Sun: Einstein in California, which was exhibited at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles, and A Tale of Two MAO Genes: Exploring the Biology and Culture of Aggression and Anxiety, a project produced in collaboration with noted molecular biologist Professor Jean Chen Shih. Labyrinth's most recent work is Jewish Homegrown History: Immigration, Identity and Intermarriage, which is a presented both as an on-line archive where users can upload stories and images of their family and a museum installation featuring large-scale projections of home movies. This installation had its premiere run at the Skirball Cultural Center. Kinder is also a co-investigator with Mark Jonathan Harris on Interacting with Autism, a translational health-education website. These Labyrinth projects have been supported by grants from the Annenberg Foundation, the Alan Casden Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Getty Foundation, the Haas Foundation, the James Irvine Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Righteous Persons Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Skirball Foundation; and from AHRQ.