Film

:This article is about motion pictures. For other uses of "film", see photographic film or film (disambiguation)

Film theory

Main article: Film theory

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Film theory seeks to develop concise, systematic concepts that apply to the study of film/cinema as art. Classical film theory provides a structural framework to address classical issues of techniques, narrativity, diegesis, cinematic codes, "the image", genre, subjectivity, and authorship. More recent analysis has given rise to psychoanalytic film theory, structuralist film theory, feminist film theory, and theories of documentary, new media, third cinema, and new queer cinema, to name just a few.

Related Topics:
Art - Narrativity - Diegesis - Genre - Structuralist - Feminist - Third cinema - Queer

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History

The Italian futurist Ricciotto Canudo (1879-1923) is considered to be the very first theoretician of cinema. He published his manifesto The Birth of the Seventh Art in 1911. Another early attempt was The Photoplay (1916) by the psychologist Hugo Münsterberg.

Related Topics:
Futurist - Ricciotto Canudo - 1911 - Hugo Münsterberg

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Classical film theory took shape during the era of silent film. It emerged from the works of directors like Germaine Dulac, Louis Delluc, Jean Epstein, Sergei Eisenstein, Lev Kuleshov, Dziga Vertov,Paul Rotha and film critics like Rudolf Arnheim, Béla Balázs and Siegfried Kracauer. It was not an academic discipline.

Related Topics:
Germaine Dulac - Louis Delluc - Jean Epstein - Sergei Eisenstein - Lev Kuleshov - Dziga Vertov - Paul Rotha - Rudolf Arnheim - Béla Balázs - Siegfried Kracauer

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In the 1960s film theory took up residence in academe, importing concepts from established disciplines like psychoanalysis, literary studies and linguistics.

Related Topics:
Psychoanalysis - Literary studies - Linguistics

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In the seventies the british journal «Screen» was very influential.

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Specific theories, styles and movements in film

• Apparatus Theory
• Art film
• Auteur theory
• Feminist film theory
• Formalist film theory
• Genre film theory
• Film noir
• German Expressionism
• Surrealist Film
• French Impressionist Cinema
• Horror film
• Italian Neorealism
• Marxist film theory
• French New Wave
• Psychoanalytical film theory
• Structuralist film theory
• No Wave Cinema
• Remodernist Film