Film theory
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- | {{Template}} | + | #redirect[[Film]] |
- | :''[[David Bordwell vs Slavoj Žižek]]'' | + | |
- | '''Film theory''' debates the essence of the [[film|cinema]] and provides conceptual frameworks for understanding film's relationship to [[reality]], the other [[art]]s, individual viewers, and [[society]] at large. Film theory is generally distinguished from [[film criticism]], which concentrates on evaluating individual films. | + | |
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- | ==History== | + | |
- | In some respects, French philosopher [[Henri Bergson]]'s ''[[Matter and Memory]]'' anticipated the development of film theory at a time that the cinema was just being born as a new medium—the early 1900s. He commented on the need for new ways of thinking about movement, and coined the terms "the movement-image" and "the time-image". However, in his 1906 essay ''L'illusion cinématographique'' (in ''L'évolution créatrice''), he rejects film as an exemplification of what he had in mind. Nonetheless, decades later, in ''[[Cinema 1|Cinéma I]] and Cinema II'' (1983-1985), the philosopher [[Gilles Deleuze]] took ''Matter and Memory'' as the basis of his philosophy of film and revisited Bergson's concepts, combining them with the [[semiotics]] of [[Charles Sanders Peirce]]. | + | |
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- | Early film theory arose in the [[silent era]] and was mostly concerned with defining the crucial elements of the medium. It largely evolved from the works of directors like [[Germaine Dulac]], [[Louis Delluc]], [[Jean Epstein]], [[Sergei Eisenstein]], [[Lev Kuleshov]], and [[Dziga Vertov]] and film theorists like [[Rudolf Arnheim]], [[Béla Balázs]] and [[Siegfried Kracauer]].<ref>[[Robert Stam]], ''Film Theory: an introduction", Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2000.</ref> These individuals emphasized how film differed from reality and how it might be considered a valid art form. | + | |
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- | In the years after [[World War II]], the French film critic and theorist [[André Bazin]] reacted against this approach to the cinema, arguing that film's essence lay in its ability to mechanically reproduce reality, not in its difference from reality.<ref>[[André Bazin]], ''What is Cinema?'' essays selected and translated by Hugh Gray, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971.</ref> | + | |
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- | In the 1960s and 1970s, film theory took up residence in academe, importing concepts from established disciplines like [[psychoanalysis]], [[gender studies]], [[anthropology]], [[literary theory]], [[semiotics]] and [[linguistics]]. | + | |
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- | During the 1990s the digital revolution in image technologies has had an impact on film theory in various ways. There has been a refocus onto celluloid film's ability to capture an indexical image of a moment in time by theorists like [[Mary Ann Doane]], Philip Rosen and [[Laura Mulvey]] who was informed by [[psychoanalysis]]. From a psychoanalytical perspective, after the [[Lacan]]ian notion of the Real, [[Slavoj Žižek]] offered new aspects of the [[gaze]] extensively used in contemporary film analysis.<ref>[[Slavoj Žižek]], ''Welcome to the Desert of the Real'', London: Verso, 2000.</ref> There has also been a historical revisiting of early cinema screenings, practices and spectatorship modes by writers [[Tom Gunning (writer)|Tom Gunning]], Miriam Hansen and Yuri Tsivian. | + | |
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- | ==Specific theories of film== | + | |
- | *[[Apparatus theory]] | + | |
- | *[[Auteur theory]] | + | |
- | *[[Feminist film theory]] | + | |
- | *[[Formalist film theory]] | + | |
- | *[[Marxist film theory]] | + | |
- | *[[Philosophy of language film analysis]] | + | |
- | *[[Psychoanalytical film theory]] | + | |
- | *[[Screen theory]] | + | |
- | *[[Structuralist film theory]] | + | |
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- | ==See also== | + | |
- | *[[Philosophy of film]] | + | |
- | *[[Film journals and magazines]] | + | |
- | *[[Film]] | + | |
- | *[[Fictional film]] | + | |
- | *[[List of film-related topics|List of motion picture-related topics]] | + | |
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- | ==Further reading== | + | |
- | *[[Dudley Andrew]], ''Concepts in Film Theory'', Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 1984. | + | |
- | *[[Francesco Casetti]], ''Theories of Cinema, 1945-1990'', Austin: University of Texas Press, 1999. | + | |
- | * [[Stanley Cavell]], [http://books.google.com/books?id=Ro23ozNGdzQC&printsec=frontcover&dq=stanley+cavell&ei=NsO5SNm_EIbMywSB3aiuAw&sig=ACfU3U2CBJE_tKHfu5Oa5bUbmh93DafQXQ#PPP1,M11 ''The World Viewed: Reflections on the Ontology of Film''] (1971); 2nd enlarged edn. (1979) | + | |
- | *[[Bill Nichols]], ''Representing Reality. Issues and Concepts in Documentary'', Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991. | + | |
- | *''The Oxford Guide to Film Studies'', [[Oxford University Press]], 1998. | + | |
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- | == List of film theorists == | + | |
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- | * [[Rudolf Arnheim]] | + | |
- | * [[Béla Balázs]] | + | |
- | * [[André Bazin]] | + | |
- | * [[Walter Benjamin]] | + | |
- | * [[David Bordwell]] | + | |
- | * [[Riciotto Canudo]] | + | |
- | * [[Gilles Deleuze]] | + | |
- | * [[Louis Delluc]] | + | |
- | * [[Sergei Eisenstein]] | + | |
- | * [[Alexander Kluge]] | + | |
- | * [[Siegfried Kracauer]] | + | |
- | * [[Teresa de Lauretis]] | + | |
- | * [[Christian Metz]] | + | |
- | * [[Laura Mulvey]] | + | |
- | * [[Hugo Münsterberg]] | + | |
- | * [[Vivian Sobchack]] | + | |
- | * [[Slavoj Žižek]] | + | |
- | * [[Georg Lukacs]] | + | |
- | * [[Vsevolod Pudovkin]] | + | |
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- | ==Specific theories of film== | + | |
- | *[[Apparatus theory]] | + | |
- | *[[Auteur theory]] | + | |
- | *[[Feminist film theory]] | + | |
- | *[[Formalist film theory]] | + | |
- | *[[Marxist film theory]] | + | |
- | *[[Psychoanalytical film theory]] | + | |
- | *[[Socialist realism]] | + | |
- | *[[Screen theory]] | + | |
- | *[[Structuralist film theory]] | + | |
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- | == See also == | + | |
- | *[[Auteur theory]] | + | |
- | *[[Surrealism and film]] | + | |
- | *[[David Bordwell vs Slavoj Žižek]] | + | |
- | *[[Oneiric (film theory)]] | + | |
- | *[[Feminist film theory]] | + | |
- | *[[Psychoanalytical film theory]] | + | |
- | *[[Film as a Subversive Art]] | + | |
- | *[[Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema]] | + | |
- | {{GFDL}} | + |
Current revision
- redirectFilm