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…
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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.…
Paisà
Paisà (Paisan. Italy 1946, b/w, 124 min. Drama). Directed and produced by Roberto Rossellini. Production: OFI, Foreign Film Production Inc., Capitani Film. Written by Federico…
L’Herbier, Marcel (1888–1979)
Marcel L’Herbier was a French pioneer avant-garde (impressionist) filmmaker and theorist who made more than forty films between the 1920s and the 1950s. During World…
New American Cinema
The New American Cinema was a movement to create independent films that expressed the countercultural moods and sensibilities of the late 1950s and early 1960s;…
Agee, James (1909–1955)
James Agee was an American film critic, journalist, and novelist, who, like his modernist contemporaries, pushed against the constraints of his genres. Born in Knoxville…
Painlevé, Jean (1902–1989)
Jean Painlevé was a French scientist who was particularly well known for his documentary films about science and the natural world. He was the only…
Pudovkin, Vsevolod Illarionovich (1893–1953)
Vsevolod Pudovkin was a Soviet actor, director, and film theorist working during the first half of the 20th century. He studied chemistry at Moscow State…
Auteur Theory, The
The auteur theory is a way of critically analyzing a film or corpus of films through viewing its director as the film’s author and principal…
Iranian New Wave
The Iranian New Wave began when a group of young Iranian directors—following developments in the Iranian cultural arena with origins in the political and social…
Sen, Mrinal (1923--)
Mrinal Sen is an Indian film director closely associated with the Indian New Wave (alternatively known as the Parallel Cinema). Born in Faridpur, now Bangladesh,…
Kinugasa, Teinosuke (1896–1982)
Kinugasa Teinosuke (1 January 1896–26 February 1982) was a Japanese actor and film director, most famous for his experimental films of the 1920s and art-house…
Vulgar Modernism
J. Hoberman (James Lewis Hoberman) first introduced his concept of “vulgar modernism” in 1981 to describe a particular sensibility found on the “looney” fringes of…
Fantômas
The first and most famous of many films based on the eponymous villain created by writers Marcel Allain and Pierre Souvestre, the silent crime serial…
Cocteau, Jean (1889–1963)
Jean Cocteau (Jean Maurice Eugène Clément Cocteau) was an influential, prolific, multi-talented French artist, writer, critic and filmmaker. He wrote poetry, plays, libretti for ballets,…
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…
Alfred Hitchcock (1899–1980)
Anglo-American director Alfred Hitchcock was one of the most influential auteurs in cinema history, making more than fifty feature films between 1925 and 1976. He…
Buñuel, Luis (1900–1983)
Luis Buñuel is the film director most often associated with Surrealism, although his own career spanned many genres, film industries, and nations. Born to a…
Vidas Secas (Barren Lives)
One of the most important films of Brazil’s Cinema Nôvo movement, Vidas Secas was directed by Nelson Pereira dos Santos, and based on the 1938…
Von Sternberg, Josef (1894–1969)
Born in Vienna as Jonas Sternberg to impoverished Orthodox Jewish parents, Josef von Sternberg (1894–1969) migrated to New York in his teens; there he changed…
Maas, Willard (1906–71)
Willard Maas (1906–71) was an American filmmaker and poet. He was known for his experimental style of filmmaking and was considered part of an avant-garde…
Švankmajer, Jan
Jan Švankmajer (1934–) is a Czech surrealist visual artist, primarily known for his film works. He studied puppetry and theatre at university and began his…
Tarkovsky, Andrei (1943–1986)
The cinema of Andrei Tarkovsky stands at the zenith of high-modernist cinema. Amongst the many technical achievements that characterize Tarkovsky’s total art approach to cinema,…
Strike (Sergei Eisenstein, 1925)
The first feature film of legendary Soviet director Sergei Eisenstein, Strike, is an anatomy of the germination of collective action, its surveillance within modern networks…
Penn, Arthur (1922–2010)
Arthur Penn was an American stage director, television producer, and filmmaker. During the 1950s, Penn’s successful run as a director of television dramas led to…