Film is the art of moving images, recorded and arranged in sequence to tell a story or convey an experience, combining elements of photography, writing, performance, music, and editing into a single medium. It emerged as a technology in the final years of the nineteenth century and matured rapidly into a narrative art over the following decades, developing techniques of editing, camera movement, and sound that had no precedent in the older performing arts. National film industries developed distinct styles, and Japanese cinema in particular, through directors such as Akira Kurosawa, brought a rigorous visual and narrative discipline to international attention in the decades after the Second World War, influencing filmmakers worldwide. Film is often described as a collaborative and industrial art, typically produced by large creative and technical teams and dependent on the equipment and, later, the digital tools of its era, in contrast to the more solitary practice associated with painting or sculpture. Its combination of moving image and recorded sound allows a single work to reach audiences across the world in a way earlier performing arts, tied to a single live performance, could not.
Facts
MediumRecorded moving images arranged in sequence, combined with sound, on photographic or digital media 1 Signature TechniqueMontage: separate pieces of film selected, edited and assembled together to build a new sequence or meaning within a film. 2 Place of OriginThe idea of film as a fine art in its own right, rather than merely a recording technology, is dated to 1911 and Ricciotto Canudo's manifesto The Birth of the Sixth Art. 2 Notable ExampleRicciotto Canudo's 1911 manifesto The Birth of the Sixth Art, the founding argument for treating film as a fine art alongside painting, sculpture, architecture, music and poetry. 2 Connections
Associated With
chroma key compositing is a technique of the film art form.
Claymation is produced and released as film.
found footage is a technique of the film art form.
long take is a technique of the film art form.
Rotoscoping originated as, and remains, a live-action film technique in addition to animation.
Stop-motion animation is produced and released as film.
time lapse photography is a technique of the film art form.
Video Art, Art Forms Video art grew directly out of the moving-image tradition of film, adapting its techniques to gallery and installation contexts using video technology instead of celluloid.
Movements
Source Encyclopaedia BritannicaEncyclopaedia Britannica editors
Practitioners
Source The Films of Akira KurosawaDonald Richie
Source Encyclopaedia BritannicaEncyclopaedia Britannica editors
Works In This Form
Landmark Italian Neorealist film.
Silent film by F.W. Murnau.
Founding film of Italian Neorealism.
Source The Films of Akira KurosawaDonald Richie
Silent film by F.W. Murnau.
Source Sunset Boulevard (Wikipedia)
Silent film by Carl Theodor Dreyer.
Sources
1. Encyclopaedia Britannica
Encyclopaedia Britannica editors, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.- entry: history of film
- Movements: Modernism, entry: Modernism
- Practitioners: Orson Welles, entry: Orson Welles
View the Source 2. Wikipedia
Wikimedia FoundationFilm, Film Theory section
The concept of film as an art-form began in 1911 with Ricciotto Canudo's manifest The Birth of the Sixth Art.
Associated With: Animation, Animation, lead section
Animation is a filmmaking technique whereby pictures are created or manipulated and then played in sequence to create the illusion of moving images.
- Works In This Form: Battleship Potemkin
- Works In This Form: Metropolis
- Works In This Form: Vertigo
- Works In This Form: Tokyo Story
- Works In This Form: Rashomon
- Works In This Form: Casablanca
- Works In This Form: The Godfather
- Works In This Form: 8½
View the Source The Films of Akira Kurosawa
Donald Richie, University of California Press- Practitioners: Akira Kurosawa, introductory chapters on Kurosawa's life and career
- Works In This Form: Seven Samurai, chapter on Seven Samurai
Sunset Boulevard (Wikipedia)
WikipediaWorks In This Form: Sunset Boulevard, Lead section, paragraph 1Quote, Works In This Form: Sunset Boulevard, Lead section, paragraph 1
Sunset Boulevard is a 1950 American black comedy film noir directed by Billy Wilder and co-written by Wilder, Charles Brackett, and D. M. Marshman Jr.
View the Source Frequently Asked Questions
What is considered the birth of cinema?
The Lumiere brothers' first public film screening in Paris in December 1895 is conventionally cited as the birth of cinema.
The Lumiere brothers' first public film screening in Paris in December 1895 is conventionally cited as the birth of cinema, since it was the first paying public exhibition of projected moving pictures. Earlier experiments, including Eadweard Muybridge's motion studies and Thomas Edison's Kinetoscope, had already demonstrated moving images, but to individual viewers rather than a projected public audience.
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