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 165
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…
VanDerBeek, Stan (1927–1984)
Stan VanDerBeek is an American artist (b. New York City, US) who is widely regarded as a pioneer and visionary in the field of experimental…
Starevich, Vladislav (1882–1965)
Pioneering puppet animator Vladislav Starevich was born to Polish parents in political exile in Moscow. He initially filmed ethnographic and entomological subjects for Moscow’s Khanzhonkov…
Godard, Jean-Luc (1930–)
One of the most important filmmakers in the latter half of the 20th century, Jean-Luc Godard’s reputation remains enduringly linked with the French nouvelle vague…
Fireworks (1947)
Fireworks, Kenneth Anger’s breakthrough short film brought him immediate renown, and acclaim from the likes of Jean Cocteau, upon its debut at the 1949 Festival…
Disney, Walter Elias (1901–1966)
Walt Disney, (b. 5 December 1901, d. 15 December 1966) born in Chicago and raised in Kansas City, Missouri, was a film producer and entrepreneur who built…
Lye, Len (1901–1980)
New Zealand native Len Lye was an experimental innovator in painting, sculpture, documentary film, and animation. After studying indigenous art in Samoa, he emigrated to…
Cabinet of Doctor Caligari (1922)
Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari [Cabinet of Doctor Caligari, 1922] is a silent German Expressionist film made by Robert Wiene, and is considered among the…
French Impressionist Cinema
French Impressionist Cinema describes an avant-garde film movement lasting approximately from 1918 to 1929. It was characterised by camera and editing techniques which both augmented…
Makavejev, Dušan (1932–)
Dušan Makavejev is an avant-garde Marxist Serbian filmmaker whose film techniques, exuberant black humour, and sexual and political transgressive themes made him one of the…
Schneemann, Carolee (1939–)
Carolee Schneemann is an American artist (born in Pennsylvania, United States) whose work interrogates vision as embodied experience. She has produced films made to be…
Regen (Rain) (1929)
Regen (Rain) is a black-and-white short film by Joris Ivens and Mannus Franken about a rain shower in Amsterdam. As a masterpiece of Dutch avant-garde…
Black God, White Devil (1964)
Black God, White Devil is a 1964 film directed by Brazilian auteur Glauber Rocha. Shot on location in the Brazilian sertão, it launched the cinema…
Brug, De (The Bridge) (1928)
De Brug (The Bridge) is a black-and-white short silent film by Joris Ivens about the Koningshavenbrug in Rotterdam, a railroad lift bridge built between 1925…
Black Girl (1966)
Black Girl is the first feature-length sub-Saharan African production directed by Ousmane Sembène, also known as the father of African cinema. The film traces the…
Ray, Satyajit (1921–1992)
Satyajit Ray was an Indian filmmaker, writer, music director, and illustrator, considered among the greatest auteur-directors of 20th-century cinema, along with the likes of Akira…
World Film News
World Film News was a publication that advanced the visibility of the documentary film movement and hosted wide-ranging debates over film, politics, and aesthetics. The…
A Movie (1958)
A Movie (1958) is a twelve-minute compilation montage of vintage newsreels, soft-core “girlie movies,” low-budget Westerns, educational and ethnographic films, and other black and white…
Anemic Cinema (1926)
Considered one of the important experimental films of the prewar European avant-garde, Anemic Cinema (1926) is a short experimental film by Marcel Duchamp, who authored…
Art Cinema
Although the term circulates widely in popular and academic discourse, ‘art cinema’ is a notoriously difficult concept to define, conjuring a wide range of associations…
Reiniger, Lotte (1899–1981)
Berlin-born Charlotte ‘Lotte’ Reiniger, the first woman animator, was the foremost practitioner of silhouette animation (paper cut-outs lit from beneath and manipulated one frame at…
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…