Film theory

The film theory is the theoretical understanding of the film. It is related to the discipline of film studies.

Approaches

Since film can be seen as an art, as a medium or as a commodity, there is accordingly aesthetic, communication theory and economic theories of film. Can also be distinguished theories, which emphasize more on the film production, reception of theories that deal with the effect of the film on the audience.

Well-known film- theoretical approaches are:

  • Genre theory, which tries to bring out similarities between these films and to genres, the film genres, grouped.
  • The auteur theory, which seeks to recognize the hand of the artist / author / director in films.
  • Psychoanalytic film theory
  • Feminist film theory (see Visual pleasure and narrative cinema)
  • The Filmsemiologie that sees the film as a system of signs (see semiotics )
  • The Neoformalistische film theory
  • The Apparatus Theory

An important role in the theory of the film also plays the so-called media effects research.

History

For the first time in film theory and film language they sat down after the film crisis 1907-1908 apart. At that time the admissions went back for the first time in many countries, as the audience, the short films mostly simple and unimaginative produced not as interesting and attractive as found in the first few years.

Film theory sat down soon also deals with the importance of film for the culture of a country. In Austria, where the film is not long been recognized as art and was dismissed by the upper layers, at least until the 1920s as entertainment for the common people, who was then living in Vienna, Hungarian film theorist Béla Balázs caused first a rethink.

Major film theorist

  • Rudolf Arnheim
  • Béla Balázs
  • André Bazin
  • Walter Benjamin
  • David Bordwell
  • Riciotto Canudo
  • Seymour Chatman
  • Gilles Deleuze
  • Louis Delluc
  • Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein
  • Lorenz Engell
  • L' Estrange Fawcett
  • Tom Gunning
  • Hermann Häfker
  • Alexander Kluge
  • Gertrud Koch
  • Siegfried Kracauer
  • Teresa de Lauretis
  • Georg Lukács
  • Christian Metz
  • Laura Mulvey
  • Hugo Münsterberg
  • Vsevolod Pudovkin Illarionovich
  • Vivian Sobchack
  • Kristin Thompson
  • Slavoj Žižek
Publication Psychoanalytical film theory Thomas Elsaesser Integrated Authority File
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