Product Code Database
Film studies is an academic discipline that deals with various film theory, historical, and film criticism approaches to film as an art form and a medium. It is sometimes subsumed within media studies and is often compared to television studies.
Film studies is less concerned with advancing proficiency in Filmmaking than it is with exploring the Narrative film, artistic, cultural, economic, and political implications of the cinema. In searching for these social-ideological values, film studies takes a series of critical approaches for the analysis of production, theoretical framework, context, and creation.Sikov, Ed. 2010. "Introduction." Pp. 1–4 in Film Studies: An Introduction. New York: Columbia UP. Print. Google Books Also, in studying film, possible careers include critic or production. Overall the study of film continues to grow, as does the Film industry on which it focuses.
Academic journals publishing film studies work include Sight & Sound, Film Comment, Film International, CineAction, Screen, Journal of Cinema and Media Studies, Film Quarterly, and Journal of Film and Video.
Early focused on the production and subjective critique of film rather than on the critical approaches, history and theory used to study academically. The concept of film studies arose as a means of analyzing the formal aspects of film as the films were created. Established in 1919, the Moscow Film School was the first school in the world to focus on film. In the United States, the USC School of Cinematic Arts, established in 1929, was the first cinematic-based school, which was created in agreement with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. It was also the first to offer an academic major in film in 1932, but the program lacked many of the distinctions associated with contemporary film study. Universities began to implement cinema-related curricula without separation of the abstract and practical approaches.
The German Deutsche Filmakademie Babelsberg was founded during the era of the Nazi Germany in 1938. Its lecturers included Willi Forst and Heinrich George. Students were required to create films in order to complete their studies at the academy.
A movement away from Hollywood productions in the 1950s turned cinema into a more artistic independent endeavor. It was the creation of the auteur theory, which examines film as the director's vision and art, that broadened the scope of academic film studies to a worldwide presence in the 1960s. In 1965, film critic Robin Wood, in his writings on Alfred Hitchcock, declared that Hitchcock's films contained the same complexities of Shakespeare's plays.Grant, Barry Keith. Film Study in the Undergraduate Curriculum. New York: Modern Language Association of America, 1983.15. Print. Similarly, French director Jean Luc Godard, a contributor to the influential magazine Cahiers du Cinéma, wrote: "Jerry Lewis ... is the only one in Hollywood doing something different, the only one who isn't falling in with the established categories, the norms, the principles. ... Lewis is the only one today who's making courageous films." (1987). 9780674090651, Harvard University Press. ISBN 9780674090651
A catalyst in the success and stature of academic film studies has been large donations to universities by successful commercial filmmakers. For example, director George Lucas donated $175 million to the USC School of Cinematic Arts in 2006.
The success of the American film industry has contributed to the popularity of academic film studies in the U.S., and film-related degrees often enable graduates to pursue careers in the production of film, especially Film director and Film producer films.Polan, Dana, and Haidee Wasson. "Young Art, Old Colleges." Inventing Film Studies. Durham: Duke UP, 2008. Print. Courses often combine alternate media, such as television or new media, in combination with film studies."History of Film Studies in the United States and at Berkeley." Film Studies. Web. 11 Nov. 2010. <>.
play an important role in the study of film and may include discourses on topics such as film style, aesthetics, representation, production, distribution, social impact, history, archival and curation. Major festivals such as the Cannes Film Festival offer extensive programs with talks and panel discussions. They also inform film historiography, most actively through retrospectives and historical sections such as Cannes Classics.
Film festival FESPACO serves as a major hub for discourse on cinema on the African continent.
|
|
