The British Documentary Film Movement (1926–1946)
The British Documentary Film Movement refers to the film units pioneered by John Grierson. With the benefit of state sponsorship, Grierson and the filmmakers that…
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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…
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…
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…
Wright, Basil (1907–1987)
Basil Wright was a prominent figure in the British documentary film movement. He attended the first screening of John Grierson’s Drifters (1929), which amplified his…
Breathless (1960)
Jean Luc Godard’s Breathless captures French New Wave’s rejection of traditional cinematic form, and its style has influenced alternative, political, and documentary filmmakers.
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,…
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…
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.…
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…
McLaren, Norman (1914–87)
Born in Scotland, Norman McLaren was a filmmaker and one of the most inventive creators of animation films. His career is closely connected to the…
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…
Ophüls, Max (1902–1957)
Max Ophüls is an important critic and filmmaker of the postwar period, known for his opulent set design, kinetic long-takes, and proto-feminist melodramas, a source…
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…
Dobell, William (1899–1970)
William Dobell was an icon of Australian art during his lifetime, renowned for portraiture but also for the controversy surrounding his being awarded the Archibald…
Mingus, Charles (1922–1979)
Charles Mingus (1922–1979) was an American jazz bassist, composer, and bandleader. He held strong social and political views and composed songs on civil rights, such…
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…
Wu Xiaobang (吴晓邦) (1906–95)
Wu Xiaobang, known in China as “the father of Chinese new dance,” was the most important pioneer of modern dance in twentieth-century China. Exposed to…
Feminist Film
There is no consensus about what “feminist film” is. A simple definition would be films about women made by women that advance the feminist cause.…
Cavalcanti, Alberto de Almeida (1897--1982)
Alberto Cavalcanti was a Brazilian-born film director and producer who made significant contributions to documentary and post-war cinema. In 1926 he made his first film,…
Moholy-Nagy, László (1895–1946)
Born in Bácsborsód, Hungary, László Moholy-Nagy was one of the most influential teachers, designers, and theoreticians of twentieth-century Modernism. As a professor at the Bauhaus…
Modernism and Film Music in Latin America
Modernism in Latin America was, as in Europe, a movement that began as a reaction to late-nineteenth-century artistic currents, primarily in visual and plastic art,…
Vertov, Dziga (b. January 2, 1896, Bialystok, Poland; d. February 12, 1954, Moscow, Russia)
Derived from the sound of a working film-reel and the word “vertet´sia” (to spin), Dziga Vertov is the pseudonym of David (aka Denis) Kaufman, a…
Ivory, James (1928–)
James Frances Ivory is an American film director and co-owner of Merchant Ivory Productions. He and his partner, Ismail Merchant, a film producer, formed Merchant…
Lifar, Serge (1905–1986)
A crucial figure in the rehabilitation of ballet at the Paris Opéra, Serge Lifar had a glamorous career as a dancer, choreographer, and intellectual in…