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}}+

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  1. redirectFilm
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