Movie Blog

And now it’s time to speak about genres. In film theory, genre means method of film categorization. A “genre” refers to films that share similar elements they are consist of.

When we want to define film genres, we use three main categories:
- setting,
- mood,
- format.

The film’s location refers to the SETTING.
The emotional charge in the film is defined as its MOOD.
To make the film we use particular equipment that defines its FORMAT.

And now I will tell you about it in more details…

SETTING

- Crime - you will find the main character in sphere of criminal activity
- Film noir - the main characters will be shown in nihilistic and existentialist sphere or manner
- Historical - the scene of action will take place in the past
- Science fiction - characters will be in an alternative reality (for example, in the future or in space)
- Sports - sport events and locations that refers to a given sport
- War - battlefields and locations that refers to a time of war
- Westerns - colonial period of the western United States. «Perhaps gunplay and fisticuffs are as formal a part of the “western” as blood and bodies are of the detective novel» (from ABBY Lingvo 11)

MOOD

- Action - a moral interplay between “good” and “bad” with the help of violence or physical force
- Adventure - danger, risk, often with a high degree of fantasy.
- Comedy - created to make you laugh
- Drama - the main thing in such a film is character development
- Fantasy - fiction outside reality (for example, myth, legend)
- Horror - created to provoke fear and make you shudder with horror
- Mystery - you will go from the unknown to the known by discovering and solving a series of secrets
- Romance - involves elements of romantic love
- Thrillers - created to provoke excitement and nervous tension into audience

FORMAT
(according to Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Film_theory)

- Animation - illusion of motion by consecutive display of static images which have been created by hand or on a computer
- Biographical - a biopic is a film that dramatizes the life of an actual person, with varying degrees of basis in fact
- Documentary - a factual following of an event or person to gain an understanding of a particular point or issue
- Experimental (avant-garde) - created to test audience reaction or to expand the boundaries of film production/story exposition then generally at play
- Musical - a film interspersed with singing by all or some of the characters
- Short - may strive to contain many of the elements of a “full-length” feature, in a shorter time-frame

So, I will use this classification in my blog, in spite of the fact that there are some other classifications and I will tell you about it later. And at the end of my post I should mention about age…

AGE
(according to Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Film_theory)

- Children’s film - films for young children - as opposed to a family film, no special effort is made to make the film attractive for other audiences
- Family - intended to be attractive for people of all ages and suitable for viewing by a young audience
- Adult film - intended to be viewed only by an adult audience, content may include violence, disturbing themes, obscene language, or explicit sexual behavior. “Adult film” may also be used as a synonym for pornographic film.

<:3 )~~~~~~
Yours sincerely,
AlexSandra

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

<:3 )~~~~~~
Yours sincerely,
AlexSandra