FILM THEORY
I’d like to begin with film theory which develops concise, systematic concepts that apply to the study of cinema as art.
Classical film theory provides a structural framework to address classical issues of techniques, cinematic codes, genre, “the image”, authorship, and subjectivity.
If to speak about modern analysis, I’d like to mention the following theories:
- structuralist film theory,
- psychoanalytical film theory,
- feminist film theory,
- theories of documentary,
- third cinema,
- new media,
- new queer cinema.
I don’t want to plague you with a lot of boring scientific knowledge, that is why I’ll just mention some interesting facts from the history of film theory.
So, the Italian futurist Ricciotto Canudo (1879-1923) was the first theoretician of cinema. In 1911he published his manifesto The Birth of the Seventh Art.
Also the psychologist Hugo Münsterberg was trying to theorize knowledge about cinema in his work The Photoplay (1916).
Classical film theory was created during the era of silent film. It arose from the works of directors like Germaine Dulac, Paul Rotha, Louis Delluc, Lev Kuleshov, Sergei Eisenstein, Dziga Vertov, Jean Epstein and film critics like Béla Balázs, Rudolf Arnheim and Siegfried Kracauer. It was not an academic discipline.
In the early 1950s Westerns and gangster films gave birth to genre theory.
In the 1960s film theory took up residence in academe, importing concepts from established disciplines like literary theory, linguistics and psychoanalysis.
In the seventies the British journal «Screen» became very influential.
During the 1990s with the digital revolution in image technologies a new era began in film theory.
Later I will tell you about such styles and theories of film as…
- apparatus Theory
- art film
- auteur theory
- feminist film theory
- formalist film theory
- cyberpunk
- film noir
- German Expressionism
- horror film
- Italian neorealism
- Marxist film theory
- new Wave
- no Wave Cinema
- psychoanalytical film theory
- remodernist Film
- romanticism
- socialist realism
- structuralist film theory and many-many others.
Also there are some books that you can read about film theory
(list from Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Film_theory):
1. Dudley Andrew, Concepts in Film Theory, Oxford, New York: oxford University Press, 1984
2. Andre Bazin, What is Cinema? essays selected and translated by Hugh Gray, Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1971
3. Francesco Casetti, Theories of Cinema, 1945-1990, Paperback Edition, University of Texas Press 1999
4. Bill Nichols, Representing Reality. Issues and Concepts in Documentary, Bloomington : Indiana University Press, 1991
5. The Oxford Guide to Film Studies, Oxford University Press 1998
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Yours sincerely,
AlexSandra