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…
Jancsó, Miklós (1921–2014)
Hungarian director Miklós Jancsó (September 27, 1921–January 31, 2014) emerged in the 1960s with a series of films professing both an unapologetic Marxist perspective and…
Rossellini, Roberto (1906–1977)
Roberto Rossellini (Roberto Gastone Zeffiro Rossellini, Rome, May 8, 1906—June 3, 1977) was an Italian film director, screenwriter, and producer. His early work appeared at…
Modotti, Tina (1895–1942)
Tina Modotti, an Italian-born photographer who lived much of her life in the United States, was an actress in silent movies in Hollywood, and in…
Tokyo Monogatari; 東京物語 [Tokyo Story] (1953)
Tokyo Monogatari [Tokyo Story] (1953) is a Japanese family drama co-written and directed by Ozu Yasujiro at Shochiku Studios. Renowned as one of the greatest…
Ivens, Joris (1898–1989)
Joris Ivens (Georg Henri Anton Ivens), nicknamed “The Flying Dutchman” for his globe-trotting career, was a Dutch documentary maker. His political commitment and deft use…
Méliès, Georges (1861–1938)
Georges Méliès (born Marie-Georges-Jean Méliès) was a French showman, illusionist, and filmmaker best known for his early silent fantasy and science fiction films, such as…
Clair, René (1898–1981)
Filmmaker, novelist, and critic René Clair (original name René-Lucien Chomette) was one of the foremost French film directors of the 1920s and 1930s. His first…
Video Art
The term “video art” is used to describe art made using video technology. Not to be confused with experimental cinema or art film, video art…
CoBrA (1948–1951)
CoBrA was a European avant-garde movement active from 1948 to 1951, primarily known for a painterly style of coloristic disfiguration. The name is an acronym…
Huston, John (1906–1987)
John Huston was an American actor, director, and screenwriter, who became one of the world’s most influential filmmakers. Born in Missouri to Rhea Huston, a…
Kluge, Alexander (1932--)
Alexander Kluge is a German author, film director, and television producer who has also worked as a lawyer, teacher, and political lobbyist. A founding figure of…
Im, Kwon-taek (1936--)
Im Kwon-taek, one of the most prominent South Korean filmmakers, helped to pave the way for the international success of the New Korean Cinema of…
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…