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…
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Politics and Cinema
The relationship between politics and the cinema is probably one of the most vexatious questions to have occupied the academic discipline of film studies, and…
Cinema Nôvo
This entry describes the history and aesthetic concerns of the Brazilian cinema nôvo movement, active from the 1950s to the 1970s. It discusses some of…
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;…
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…
Underground Cinema
‘Underground’ is a label applied to the outer fringes of the radical film spectrum: films whose form, subject matter, or both, challenge conventional cinematic habits.…
Czechoslovak New Wave Cinema
The Czechoslovak New Wave was a 1960s film movement which flourished in the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic during a period of general liberalisation in the country’s…
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…
Modernist Shakespearean Cinema
From the moment of its birth cinema generated its own forms of Shakespeare. About 400 Shakespearean films were produced during the silent era, even though…
Montage
As an aesthetic principle, montage, defined as the assemblage of disparate elements into a composite whole often by way of juxtaposition, is most often associated…
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.…
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…
Surrealism Overview
Soupault’s publication of Manifeste du Surréalism in 1924. Rising in the wake of the First World War, Surrealism revolted against a world that had become…
Modernism in East Asia
The term ‘modernism’ is commonly used to describe some of the literary and cultural production of the early twentieth century in China, Japan, and Korea,…
Modernism in South Asia
In South Asia, a certain haziness regarding modernism and modernity derives not only from the manner in which they can be elided with each other,…
Constructivism
Prior to World War II, Constructivism attracted little interest from British artists apart from the few involved with Circle in 1937. Circle consisted of a…
Modernism in Europe
We are living in a very singular moment of history. It is a moment of crisis, in the literal sense of that word. In every…
Futurism
Futurism emerged at the beginning of the twentieth century as a movement that explicitly conceptualized the process of literary and artistic experimentation as part of…
Cubism
Cubism is an influential modernist art movement that emerged in Paris during the first decade of the twentieth century. The term was established by Parisian…
Photography
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…
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,…
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…
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,…
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…