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 166
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…
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…
Porter, Edwin S. (1870–1941)
Edwin Stanton Porter was an American film exhibitor, producer, and director. He started his career in cinema in 1896 as a traveling exhibitor and moved…
Griffith, David Wark (1875–1948)
American film director D.W. Griffith was a pivotal figure in cinema’s ascendance as a mass medium and modern art form. He is best known for…
Slapstick Comedy
The term “slapstick comedy” refers to film comedies in which the humor relies upon physical gags and stunts. The slapstick—a wooden paddle to which a…
Zheng Zhengqiu (郑正秋) (1889–1935)
Zheng Zhengqiu (Chinese: 郑正秋, born as Zheng Fangze, 郑芳泽) (December 4, 1889 to July 16, 1935) was a Chinese filmmaker and screenwriter, and one of…
Meshes of the Afternoon (1943)
Meshes of the Afternoon (1943), an experimental film by Maya Deren and Alexander Hammid, is considered an American avant-garde watershed. The husband–wife team played the…
The Bicycle Thief (1948)
Ladri di biciclette (The Bicycle Thief, 1948) is a neorealist film by Vittorio De Sica, considered modern and revolutionary because it radically broke with pre-World…
Ménilmontant (1925)
Ménilmontant is a 38-minute black and white avant-garde French film directed by Dimitri Kirsanoff. Its narrative develops solely through images and montage, without the support…
Zigomar
Zigomar was the criminal mastermind of French writer Léon Sazie’s eponymous serial novel, or feuilleton, which appeared in the newspaper Le Matin between 1909 and…