Film Subject Overview
The Film Section includes entries on a variety of modernist genres, periods, movements, directors, films, and critical modes aligned with modernist aims and intellectual attitudes.…
Search Results 1 - 25 of 161
Expressionism
Expressionism was one of the foremost modernist movements to emerge in Europe in the early years of the twentieth-century. It had a profound effect on…
La Règle du jeu [The Rules of the Game]
La Règle du jeu [The Rules of the Game] is a 1939 humanist film by Jean Renoir satirizing the French aristocracy. Premiered at the brink…
Masumura, Yasuzō (1924–1986)
Masumura Yasuzō was a Japanese film director, scriptwriter, and critic. He started his career at the Daiei Studio, as an assistant, most notably to the…
Kuleshov, Lev Vladimirovich (1899–1970)
Lev Kuleshov was a Soviet director and theorist who initiated the montage movement of the 1920s. He proclaimed editing to be the primary authorial act…
Deren, Maya (1917–1961)
Maya Deren (born Eleanora Derenkowskaia in Kiev, Ukraine) was a Russian American experimental filmmaker whose work in the 1940s and 1950s had a profound impact…
Daney, Serge (1944–1992)
Serge Daney was regarded as one of the greatest film critics in French intellectual culture. For Jean-Luc Godard, his untimely demise signalled the end of…
Pasolini, Pier Paolo (1922–1975)
Known in North America mainly as a provocative filmmaker, Pier Paolo Pasolini (March 6, 1922–November 2, 1975) is also celebrated in his native Italy as…
Man with a Movie Camera (1929)
Together with Berlin: Die Sinfonie der Großstadt (Berlin: Symphony of a City, Ruttmann, 1927), Chelovek s kinoapparatom (Man with a Movie Camera) is one of…
Jordan, Lawrence (1934--)
Lawrence (Larry) Jordan has worked as an experimental filmmaker for the last six decades. Raised in Denver, Colorado, he attended high school with filmmaker Stan…
Italian Neorealism
Italian Neorealism is a filmmaking movement associated with a select group of Italian filmmakers in the latter years of, and the years immediately following, World…
Sanjinés, Jorge (1936--)
Jorge Sanjinés is a Bolivian director, screenwriter, and author. A committed political filmmaker, Sanjinés’s films and essays attempt to integrate Marxist revolutionary theory and indigenous…
Münsterberg, Hugo (1863–1916)
Hugo Münsterberg was a German American psychologist whose pioneering work in applied psychology led him to investigate such topics as forensic psychology, industrial efficiency, and…
The Birth of a Nation
One of the most watched and debated American films in history, The Birth of a Nation is a 1915 silent film by D. W. Griffith…
Hubley, John (1914–1977) and Elliott, Faith (1924–2001)
Animator John Hubley, born in Marinette, Wisconsin, served as creative head of UPA (United Productions of America) in its early years and originated its most…
Solanas, Fernando (1936--)
Fernando “Pino” Solanas is an Argentinian director, screenwriter, author, politician, and public intellectual. Alongside Octavio Getino, Solanas is a founder of the Third Cinema political…
Melodrama
With its origins in the novel and the theater, melodrama appeared in late 18th-century Europe and reached maturity at the turn of the 20th century.…
Shōchiku Company Limited [松竹株式会社]
Shōchiku Company Limited [松竹株式会社] is a Japanese entertainment gaint that owns theaters, film studios, production companies for motion pictures and theater, real estate, and other…
Paik, Nam June (1932–2006)
Nam June Paik was a Korean-born American artist who achieved international notoriety for his destructive, neo-dada activities and visionary, esthetic experiments with electronic media. Born…
Bazin, André (1918–1958)
André Bazin (born April 18, 1918, Angers, France–died November 11, 1958, Nogent-sur-Marne, France) was an influential French film critic who was active during the development…
Dovzhenko, Alexander [ДОВЖЕНКО, Олександер Петрович] (1894–1956)
The Ukrainian film director, artist, and writer Alexander Dovzhenko was born in Sosnytsia (Chernihiv region) and graduated from the Hlukhiv teachers’ college in 1914. He…
Dadaism in Film
Members of the Dada cultural and artistic movement began to experiment with film as a means to disseminate their stylistic partialities and cultural values through…
Serra, Richard (1939--)
The American artist Richard Serra emerged in the 1960s in association with the Minimalism art movement. Known primarily for his work as a sculptor, he…
Menken, Marie (1910–1970)
Marie Menken was a New York-based experimental filmmaker who produced her main work during the 1950s and 1960s. Born in Brooklyn to an immigrant Lithuanian…
Kieślowski, Krzysztof (1941–1996)
Krzysztof Kieślowski was a highly influential Polish filmmaker in the tradition of auteur cinema. Kieślowski tackled the tension between the political, spiritual, and ethical, and…