Cinemaphile
Encyclopedia
Cinephilia is the term used to refer to a passionate interest in cinema, film theory
and film criticism
. The term is a portmanteau of the words cinema
and philia
, one of the four ancient Greek
words for love. A person with a passionate interest in cinema is called a cinephile.
In English, it is sometimes used interchangeably with the word cinéaste
, though in the original French the term refers to a cinephile who is also a filmmaker.
and publications in which people who felt passionately about cinema could discuss their interests and see rare and older works. At the beginning of the sound era
, there were more and more people interested in seeing older films, which lead to the establishment of organizations such as the Cinémathèque Française
, the first major archive devoted to film preservation.
and the Cinémathèque Française
, generated interest in world cinema
amongst the city's intellectual
youth culture. In general, the cinephiles of the period set a template for future like-minded groups by having keen enthusiasm for both older and contemporary films.
Influential film clubs of the period included Objectif 49, whose members included Robert Bresson
and Jean Cocteau
, and the Ciné-Club du Quartier Latin (Cinema Club of the Latin Quarter). Revue du Cinéma, a magazine published by members of the two clubs, later evolved into the influential film magazine Cahiers du Cinéma
.
Many of the people who attended the screenings became film critics and later filmmakers, founding the film movement known as the French New Wave
. André Bazin
, François Truffaut
, Jacques Doniol-Valcroze
, Claude Chabrol
, Jean-Luc Godard
, Alexandre Astruc
, Jacques Rivette
, Luc Moullet
and others were regulars, and several, most notably Truffaut, maintained their ties to the community after they had achieved fame.
The community fostered an interest in directors
and films that had been neglected, forgotten or simply unknown in the West, and lead to the development of the auteur theory
. The directors the French cinephiles of the period had strong interests in included F.W. Murnau, Robert Flaherty, Sergei Eisenstein
, Jean Renoir
, Jean Vigo
, Orson Welles
, Anthony Mann
, Louis Feuillade
, D.W. Griffith, the Lumiere Brothers, Alfred Hitchcock
and Georges Melies
, whose films would be screened from nitrate prints on special occasions.
With the popular success of the French New Wave
, film-going became fashionable in Europe and America. Revival screenings
and independently-run cinemas specializing in foreign films became increasingly common. In the United States, New York City was often seen as the center of cinephile culture, due to the wide variety of films available to see at any given time. This culture was also helped by the popularity in America of figures such like Pauline Kael
, Andrew Sarris
and Susan Sontag
. Certain writers and critics, including Sontag, would later come to view this as the "golden age
" of film-going in the US. Directors such as Ingmar Bergman
, Akira Kurosawa
, Michelangelo Antonioni
and Federico Fellini
enjoyed a great deal of popularity in the US and influenced the young generation of film enthusiasts who would become the New Hollywood
, including Martin Scorsese
, Peter Bogdanovich
, Francis Ford Coppola
and Woody Allen
. Due to growing public interest in films from other countries, specialty distributors
such as Janus Films
and New Yorker Films
began importing and subtitling
foreign movies.
The era also saw the growth of college film societies in the US. Though some, like Doc Films
at the University of Chicago
, had existed since the 1930s, the 1960s saw directors of all generations regularly make appearances at college campuses, whether to revisit their old films or to discuss new ones.
At the same time, the Parisian cinephilic culture became increasingly politicized. Critics, and by extension the cinephiles who followed their work, began to emphasize political aspects of films and directors. Though many of the major figures of the post-war community has been originally aligned with the political right -- including most of the Cahiers du Cinéma
group—by the late 1960s Cahiers and the young cinephile public in general had aligned with various forms of the Left, with some figures, such as Jean-Luc Godard
, aligning with Maoism
. In this very politicized climate, cinema was seen often seen as directly connected to Marxism
. Many members of this new generation of cinephiles would become critics and directors
, including Serge Daney
, Philippe Garrel
, and Andre Techine
.
Though most of the world's major film festivals had existed for decades by this point—including the Berlin International Film Festival
, the Cannes Film Festival
and the Venice Film Festival
-- the period saw the establishment of festivals in nearly every major city. The New York Film Festival
, the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival
and the Chicago International Film Festival
were all started during this time. The Toronto International Film Festival
, often seen as second only to the Cannes Film Festival
in terms of importance, was founded towards the end of this period, in 1976.
tapes and later DVD
s became more common, cinephilia became less associated with filmgoing.
While Japanese
films have enjoyed worldwide distribution in the mid 20th century, the late 20th century saw an increase in interest amongst cinephiles in cinema from other Asian countries, especially China, Hong Kong
, Taiwan
and, later, Thailand
.
, established critics and theorists like Dave Kehr
, David Bordwell
, Jonathan Rosenbaum
, Glenn Kenny
and Adrian Martin
, as well as non-professional cinephiles like Girish Shambu
and Acquarello, play key roles in building interest in films or theories amongst cinephiles by writing and communicating through blogs. Forums and podcast
s have become popular ways to stir discussion, allowing cinephiles from different countries and cultures to discuss ideas about film. The social networking and video streaming service The Auteurs caters specifically to cinephiles, allowing its members access to films that sometimes haven't been distributed theatrically or on video in their home countries. DVD labels such as the Criterion Collection and Masters of Cinema
cater to cinephiles, often including large amounts of supplemental and critical
material with their releases.
As was the case with the French cinephilia of the post-war era, the international cinephilic community that has developed on the Internet often emphasizes films and figures that do not have strong critical or popular recognition, including many directors who work within genre film. These include Abel Ferrara
, Bela Tarr
, Michael Mann, Apichatpong Weerasethakul
, Park Chan-wook
, Kiyoshi Kurosawa
, Philippe Garrel
, Pedro Costa
, Lucrecia Martel
and Jose Luis Guerin
.
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Throughout the history of cinema, there have been numerous directors who developed their understanding of cinema through filmgoing and participation in cinephile communities and organizations instead of within the formal settings of either a film school
or a film studio. Directors who began as cinephiles include Jean-Luc Godard
, Claude Chabrol
, François Truffaut
, Quentin Tarantino
, Jacques Rivette
, Andre Techine
, Pedro Costa
, Jim Jarmusch
, Paul Thomas Anderson
, Wim Wenders
, Éric Rohmer
, Hal Hartley
and Aki Kaurismäki
.
The directors of the French New Wave
, who learned about filmmaking by attending screenings at film clubs
and discussing movies amongst themselves, are often seen as models for cinephiles. Their intellectual omnivorousness, which equated an interest in cinema with strong understandings of literature
, art
and sometimes philosophy
, has continued to have influence on cinephiles.
On the other hand, many directors emphasize their lack of cinephilia or interest in movies. Abbas Kiarostami
, Bruno Dumont
, Michael Haneke
and Bela Tarr
, all popular with cinephiles, often emphasize their disinterest in cinema when interviewed. Robert Bresson
, though once a member of the Objectif 49 cine-club, took a harshly critical stance on most films. When asked to name the ten greatest films of all time for the British film magazine Sight & Sound
, Bresson only listed two films, putting Charlie Chaplin
's City Lights
in the top two slots, followed by The Gold Rush (also directed by Chaplin) at number 3 (at a similar film referendum in Brussels
in 1952, Bresson listed a total of 7 films, including the same Chaplins and two by Robert Flaherty).
, actor Johnny Depp
portrays Sam, a cinemaphile man who falls in love with a mentally ill woman named Joon (Mary Stuart Masterson
).
• In the music video for the song "Jack Sparrow
" by comedy rap group The Lonely Island
featuring Michael Bolton
, Bolton is referred to as a 'major cinephile' at the end by Andy Samberg
due to Bolton's consistent references to Pirates of the Caribbean
s Jack Sparrow, Forrest Gump
, Erin Brockovich
, and Scarface
.
Film theory
Film theory is an academic discipline that aims to explore the essence of the cinema and provides conceptual frameworks for understanding film's relationship to reality, the other arts, individual viewers, and society at large...
and film criticism
Film criticism
Film criticism is the analysis and evaluation of films, individually and collectively. In general, this can be divided into journalistic criticism that appears regularly in newspapers, and other popular, mass-media outlets and academic criticism by film scholars that is informed by film theory and...
. The term is a portmanteau of the words cinema
Film
A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...
and philia
Philia
Philia is one of the four ancient Greek words for love.Philia in Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics is usually translated as 'friendship', though in fact his use of the term is much broader.- Aristotle's view :...
, one of the four ancient Greek
Ancient Greek
Ancient Greek is the stage of the Greek language in the periods spanning the times c. 9th–6th centuries BC, , c. 5th–4th centuries BC , and the c. 3rd century BC – 6th century AD of ancient Greece and the ancient world; being predated in the 2nd millennium BC by Mycenaean Greek...
words for love. A person with a passionate interest in cinema is called a cinephile.
In English, it is sometimes used interchangeably with the word cinéaste
Cineaste
Cineaste is a film magazine published quarterly. It has been publishing reviews, in-depth analyses and interviews since 1967. The magazine independently operates out of New York City with no financial ties to any film studios or academic institutions...
, though in the original French the term refers to a cinephile who is also a filmmaker.
Definition
In a review of a book on the history of cinephilia, Mas Generis writes: "Cinephilia, despite its transparent etymological meaning - love of cinema - is a term that resists ready and shared understanding." Generis also introduces a quote from film scholar Annette Michelson that states that there is "no one such thing as cinephilia, but rather forms and periods of cinephilia." As described by Antoine de Baecque and Thierry Fremaux, the "definitive essence of cinephila" is a "culture of the discarded" that prefers "to find intellectual coherence where none is evident" and to "eulogize the non-standard and the minor."History
Since the beginning of the silent era, there have been film clubsFilm society
A film society is a membership club where people can watch screenings of films which would otherwise not be shown in mainstream cinemas. In Spain they are known as "Cineclubs," and in Germany they are known as "Filmclubs"....
and publications in which people who felt passionately about cinema could discuss their interests and see rare and older works. At the beginning of the sound era
Sound film
A sound film is a motion picture with synchronized sound, or sound technologically coupled to image, as opposed to a silent film. The first known public exhibition of projected sound films took place in Paris in 1900, but decades would pass before sound motion pictures were made commercially...
, there were more and more people interested in seeing older films, which lead to the establishment of organizations such as the Cinémathèque Française
Cinémathèque Française
The Cinémathèque Française holds one of the largest archives of films, movie documents and film-related objects in the world. Located in Paris, the Cinémathèque holds daily screenings of films from around the world.-History:...
, the first major archive devoted to film preservation.
Post-War French Cinephilia
Perhaps the most notable cinephilic community of the 20th century was the one that developed in Paris in the decades following World War II. An influx of foreign films that had been withheld during the Occupation, as well as the screening programs of local film clubsFilm society
A film society is a membership club where people can watch screenings of films which would otherwise not be shown in mainstream cinemas. In Spain they are known as "Cineclubs," and in Germany they are known as "Filmclubs"....
and the Cinémathèque Française
Cinémathèque Française
The Cinémathèque Française holds one of the largest archives of films, movie documents and film-related objects in the world. Located in Paris, the Cinémathèque holds daily screenings of films from around the world.-History:...
, generated interest in world cinema
World cinema
World cinema is a term used primarily in English language speaking countries to refer to the films and film industries of non-English speaking countries. It is therefore often used interchangeably with the term foreign film...
amongst the city's intellectual
Intellectual
An intellectual is a person who uses intelligence and critical or analytical reasoning in either a professional or a personal capacity.- Terminology and endeavours :"Intellectual" can denote four types of persons:...
youth culture. In general, the cinephiles of the period set a template for future like-minded groups by having keen enthusiasm for both older and contemporary films.
Influential film clubs of the period included Objectif 49, whose members included Robert Bresson
Robert Bresson
-Life and career:Bresson was born at Bromont-Lamothe, Puy-de-Dôme, the son of Marie-Élisabeth and Léon Bresson. Little is known of his early life and the year of his birth, 1901 or 1907, varies depending on the source. He was educated at Lycée Lakanal in Sceaux, Hauts-de-Seine, close to Paris, and...
and Jean Cocteau
Jean Cocteau
Jean Maurice Eugène Clément Cocteau was a French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, playwright, artist and filmmaker. His circle of associates, friends and lovers included Kenneth Anger, Pablo Picasso, Jean Hugo, Jean Marais, Henri Bernstein, Marlene Dietrich, Coco Chanel, Erik Satie, María...
, and the Ciné-Club du Quartier Latin (Cinema Club of the Latin Quarter). Revue du Cinéma, a magazine published by members of the two clubs, later evolved into the influential film magazine Cahiers du Cinéma
Cahiers du cinéma
Cahiers du Cinéma is an influential French film magazine founded in 1951 by André Bazin, Jacques Doniol-Valcroze and Joseph-Marie Lo Duca. It developed from the earlier magazine Revue du Cinéma involving members of two Paris film clubs — Objectif 49 and...
.
Many of the people who attended the screenings became film critics and later filmmakers, founding the film movement known as the French New Wave
French New Wave
The New Wave was a blanket term coined by critics for a group of French filmmakers of the late 1950s and 1960s, influenced by Italian Neorealism and classical Hollywood cinema. Although never a formally organized movement, the New Wave filmmakers were linked by their self-conscious rejection of...
. André Bazin
André Bazin
André Bazin was a renowned and influential French film critic and film theorist.-Life:Bazin was born in Angers, France, in 1918...
, François Truffaut
François Truffaut
François Roland Truffaut was an influential film critic and filmmaker and one of the founders of the French New Wave. In a film career lasting over a quarter of a century, he remains an icon of the French film industry. He was also a screenwriter, producer, and actor working on over twenty-five...
, Jacques Doniol-Valcroze
Jacques Doniol-Valcroze
Jacques Doniol-Valcroze was a French actor, critic, screenwriter, and director...
, Claude Chabrol
Claude Chabrol
Claude Chabrol was a French film director, a member of the French New Wave group of filmmakers who first came to prominence at the end of the 1950s...
, Jean-Luc Godard
Jean-Luc Godard
Jean-Luc Godard is a French-Swiss film director, screenwriter and film critic. He is often identified with the 1960s French film movement, French Nouvelle Vague, or "New Wave"....
, Alexandre Astruc
Alexandre Astruc
Alexandre Astruc is a French film critic and film director born 13 July 1923, in Paris .Before becoming a film director he was a journalist, novelist and film critic...
, Jacques Rivette
Jacques Rivette
Jacques Rivette is a French film director. His most well known films include Celine and Julie Go Boating, La Belle Noiseuse and the cult film Out 1....
, Luc Moullet
Luc Moullet
Luc Moullet is a French film critic and filmmaker, and a member of the Nouvelle Vague or French New Wave. Moullet's films are known for their humor, anti-authoritarian leanings and rigorously primitive aesthetic, which is heavily influenced by his love of American B-movies.Though such influential...
and others were regulars, and several, most notably Truffaut, maintained their ties to the community after they had achieved fame.
The community fostered an interest in directors
Film director
A film director is a person who directs the actors and film crew in filmmaking. They control a film's artistic and dramatic nathan roach, while guiding the technical crew and actors.-Responsibilities:...
and films that had been neglected, forgotten or simply unknown in the West, and lead to the development of the auteur theory
Auteur theory
In film criticism, auteur theory holds that a director's film reflects the director's personal creative vision, as if they were the primary "auteur"...
. The directors the French cinephiles of the period had strong interests in included F.W. Murnau, Robert Flaherty, Sergei Eisenstein
Sergei Eisenstein
Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein , né Eizenshtein, was a pioneering Soviet Russian film director and film theorist, often considered to be the "Father of Montage"...
, Jean Renoir
Jean Renoir
Jean Renoir was a French film director, screenwriter, actor, producer and author. As a film director and actor, he made more than forty films from the silent era to the end of the 1960s...
, Jean Vigo
Jean Vigo
Jean Vigo was a French film director, who helped establish poetic realism in film in the 1930s and was a posthumous influence on the French New Wave of the late 1950s and early 1960s.-Biography:...
, Orson Welles
Orson Welles
George Orson Welles , best known as Orson Welles, was an American film director, actor, theatre director, screenwriter, and producer, who worked extensively in film, theatre, television and radio...
, Anthony Mann
Anthony Mann
Anthony Mann was an American actor and film director, most notably of film noirs and Westerns. As a director, he often collaborated with the cinematographer John Alton and with James Stewart in his Westerns.-Biography:...
, Louis Feuillade
Louis Feuillade
Louis Feuillade was a prolific and prominent French film director from the silent era. Between 1906 and 1924 he directed over 630 films...
, D.W. Griffith, the Lumiere Brothers, Alfred Hitchcock
Alfred Hitchcock
Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock, KBE was a British film director and producer. He pioneered many techniques in the suspense and psychological thriller genres. After a successful career in British cinema in both silent films and early talkies, Hitchcock moved to Hollywood...
and Georges Melies
Georges Méliès
Georges Méliès , full name Marie-Georges-Jean Méliès, was a French filmmaker famous for leading many technical and narrative developments in the earliest cinema. He was very innovative in the use of special effects...
, whose films would be screened from nitrate prints on special occasions.
Filmgoing in the 1960s and 1970s
French New Wave
The New Wave was a blanket term coined by critics for a group of French filmmakers of the late 1950s and 1960s, influenced by Italian Neorealism and classical Hollywood cinema. Although never a formally organized movement, the New Wave filmmakers were linked by their self-conscious rejection of...
, film-going became fashionable in Europe and America. Revival screenings
Revival house
A revival house or repertory cinema is a term for a cinema that specializes in showing classic or notable older films . Such venues may include standard repertory cinemas, multi-function theatres that alternate between old movies and live events, and some first-run theatres that show past...
and independently-run cinemas specializing in foreign films became increasingly common. In the United States, New York City was often seen as the center of cinephile culture, due to the wide variety of films available to see at any given time. This culture was also helped by the popularity in America of figures such like Pauline Kael
Pauline Kael
Pauline Kael was an American film critic who wrote for The New Yorker magazine from 1968 to 1991. Earlier in her career, her work appeared in City Lights, McCall's and The New Republic....
, Andrew Sarris
Andrew Sarris
Andrew Sarris is an American film critic and a leading proponent of the auteur theory of criticism.-Career:Sarris is generally credited with popularizing the auteur theory in the U.S...
and Susan Sontag
Susan Sontag
Susan Sontag was an American author, literary theorist, feminist and political activist whose works include On Photography and Against Interpretation.-Life:...
. Certain writers and critics, including Sontag, would later come to view this as the "golden age
Golden Age
The term Golden Age comes from Greek mythology and legend and refers to the first in a sequence of four or five Ages of Man, in which the Golden Age is first, followed in sequence, by the Silver, Bronze, and Iron Ages, and then the present, a period of decline...
" of film-going in the US. Directors such as Ingmar Bergman
Ingmar Bergman
Ernst Ingmar Bergman was a Swedish director, writer and producer for film, stage and television. Described by Woody Allen as "probably the greatest film artist, all things considered, since the invention of the motion picture camera", he is recognized as one of the most accomplished and...
, Akira Kurosawa
Akira Kurosawa
was a Japanese film director, producer, screenwriter and editor. Regarded as one of the most important and influential filmmakers in the history of cinema, Kurosawa directed 30 filmsIn 1946, Kurosawa co-directed, with Hideo Sekigawa and Kajiro Yamamoto, the feature Those Who Make Tomorrow ;...
, Michelangelo Antonioni
Michelangelo Antonioni
Michelangelo Antonioni, Cavaliere di Gran Croce OMRI was an Italian modernist film director, screenwriter, editor and short story writer.- Personal life :...
and Federico Fellini
Federico Fellini
Federico Fellini, Cavaliere di Gran Croce OMRI , was an Italian film director and scriptwriter. Known for a distinct style that blends fantasy and baroque images, he is considered one of the most influential and widely revered filmmakers of the 20th century...
enjoyed a great deal of popularity in the US and influenced the young generation of film enthusiasts who would become the New Hollywood
New Hollywood
New Hollywood or post-classical Hollywood, sometimes referred to as the "American New Wave", refers to the time from roughly the late-1960s to the early 1980s when a new generation of young filmmakers came to prominence in America, influencing the types of films produced, their production and...
, including Martin Scorsese
Martin Scorsese
Martin Charles Scorsese is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, actor, and film historian. In 1990 he founded The Film Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to film preservation, and in 2007 he founded the World Cinema Foundation...
, Peter Bogdanovich
Peter Bogdanovich
Peter Bogdanovich is an American film historian, director, writer, actor, producer, and critic. He was part of the wave of "New Hollywood" directors, which included William Friedkin, Brian De Palma, George Lucas, Martin Scorsese, Michael Cimino, and Francis Ford Coppola...
, Francis Ford Coppola
Francis Ford Coppola
Francis Ford Coppola is an American film director, producer and screenwriter. He is widely acclaimed as one of Hollywood's most innovative and influential film directors...
and Woody Allen
Woody Allen
Woody Allen is an American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, jazz musician, author, and playwright. Allen's films draw heavily on literature, sexuality, philosophy, psychology, Jewish identity, and the history of cinema...
. Due to growing public interest in films from other countries, specialty distributors
Film distributor
A film distributor is a company or individual responsible for releasing films to the public either theatrically or for home viewing...
such as Janus Films
Janus Films
Janus Films is a film distribution company. It was one of the first distributors to bring what are now regarded as masterpieces of world cinema to the United States...
and New Yorker Films
New Yorker Films
New Yorker Films is an independent film distribution company founded by Daniel Talbot in 1965. It started as an extension of his Manhattan movie house, the New Yorker Theater, after he discovered he was unable to obtain certain foreign titles for exhibition....
began importing and subtitling
Subtitle (captioning)
Subtitles are textual versions of the dialog in films and television programs, usually displayed at the bottom of the screen. They can either be a form of written translation of a dialog in a foreign language, or a written rendering of the dialog in the same language, with or without added...
foreign movies.
The era also saw the growth of college film societies in the US. Though some, like Doc Films
Doc Films
The Documentary Film Group, better known as Doc Films, is a student-operated film society at the University of Chicago, Illinois, United States. It is—according to a 2007 Chicago Tribune article—"the longest-running collegiate film society in the country" and may be the oldest film society of any...
at the University of Chicago
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...
, had existed since the 1930s, the 1960s saw directors of all generations regularly make appearances at college campuses, whether to revisit their old films or to discuss new ones.
At the same time, the Parisian cinephilic culture became increasingly politicized. Critics, and by extension the cinephiles who followed their work, began to emphasize political aspects of films and directors. Though many of the major figures of the post-war community has been originally aligned with the political right -- including most of the Cahiers du Cinéma
Cahiers du cinéma
Cahiers du Cinéma is an influential French film magazine founded in 1951 by André Bazin, Jacques Doniol-Valcroze and Joseph-Marie Lo Duca. It developed from the earlier magazine Revue du Cinéma involving members of two Paris film clubs — Objectif 49 and...
group—by the late 1960s Cahiers and the young cinephile public in general had aligned with various forms of the Left, with some figures, such as Jean-Luc Godard
Jean-Luc Godard
Jean-Luc Godard is a French-Swiss film director, screenwriter and film critic. He is often identified with the 1960s French film movement, French Nouvelle Vague, or "New Wave"....
, aligning with Maoism
Maoism
Maoism, also known as the Mao Zedong Thought , is claimed by Maoists as an anti-Revisionist form of Marxist communist theory, derived from the teachings of the Chinese political leader Mao Zedong . Developed during the 1950s and 1960s, it was widely applied as the political and military guiding...
. In this very politicized climate, cinema was seen often seen as directly connected to Marxism
Marxism
Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...
. Many members of this new generation of cinephiles would become critics and directors
Film director
A film director is a person who directs the actors and film crew in filmmaking. They control a film's artistic and dramatic nathan roach, while guiding the technical crew and actors.-Responsibilities:...
, including Serge Daney
Serge Daney
Serge Daney was an influential French movie critic who went on from writing film reviews to developing a “television criticism” and onto building a personal theory of the image...
, Philippe Garrel
Philippe Garrel
Philippe Garrel is a French director, cinematographer, screenwriter, editor and producer. His movies have won him awards at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival and Venice Film Festival...
, and Andre Techine
André Téchiné
André Téchiné , is a French screenwriter and film director. He has had a long and distinguished career that places him among the best post-New Wave French film directors....
.
Though most of the world's major film festivals had existed for decades by this point—including the Berlin International Film Festival
Berlin International Film Festival
The Berlin International Film Festival , also called the Berlinale, is one of the world's leading film festivals and most reputable media events. It is held in Berlin, Germany. Founded in West Berlin in 1951, the festival has been celebrated annually in February since 1978...
, the Cannes Film Festival
Cannes Film Festival
The Cannes International Film Festival , is an annual film festival held in Cannes, France, which previews new films of all genres including documentaries from around the world. Founded in 1946, it is among the world's most prestigious and publicized film festivals...
and the Venice Film Festival
Venice Film Festival
The Venice International Film Festival is the oldest international film festival in the world. Founded by Count Giuseppe Volpi in 1932 as the "Esposizione Internazionale d'Arte Cinematografica", the festival has since taken place every year in late August or early September on the island of the...
-- the period saw the establishment of festivals in nearly every major city. The New York Film Festival
New York Film Festival
The New York Film Festival has been a major film festival since it began in 1963 in New York. The films are selected by the Film Society of Lincoln Center...
, the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival
Karlovy Vary International Film Festival
The Karlovy Vary International Film Festival is a film festival held annually in July in Karlovy Vary , Czech Republic. The Karlovy Vary Festival gained worldwide recognition over the past years and has become one of Europe's major film events....
and the Chicago International Film Festival
Chicago International Film Festival
The Chicago International Film Festival is an annual film festival held every fall. Founded in 1964, it is the longest-running competitive film festival in North America....
were all started during this time. The Toronto International Film Festival
Toronto International Film Festival
The Toronto International Film Festival is a publicly-attended film festival held each September in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. In 2010, 339 films from 59 countries were screened at 32 screens in downtown Toronto venues...
, often seen as second only to the Cannes Film Festival
Cannes Film Festival
The Cannes International Film Festival , is an annual film festival held in Cannes, France, which previews new films of all genres including documentaries from around the world. Founded in 1946, it is among the world's most prestigious and publicized film festivals...
in terms of importance, was founded towards the end of this period, in 1976.
Home video and the late 20th century
As VHSVHS
The Video Home System is a consumer-level analog recording videocassette standard developed by Victor Company of Japan ....
tapes and later DVD
DVD
A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....
s became more common, cinephilia became less associated with filmgoing.
While Japanese
Japanese language
is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...
films have enjoyed worldwide distribution in the mid 20th century, the late 20th century saw an increase in interest amongst cinephiles in cinema from other Asian countries, especially China, Hong Kong
Hong Kong
Hong Kong is one of two Special Administrative Regions of the People's Republic of China , the other being Macau. A city-state situated on China's south coast and enclosed by the Pearl River Delta and South China Sea, it is renowned for its expansive skyline and deep natural harbour...
, Taiwan
Taiwan
Taiwan , also known, especially in the past, as Formosa , is the largest island of the same-named island group of East Asia in the western Pacific Ocean and located off the southeastern coast of mainland China. The island forms over 99% of the current territory of the Republic of China following...
and, later, Thailand
Thailand
Thailand , officially the Kingdom of Thailand , formerly known as Siam , is a country located at the centre of the Indochina peninsula and Southeast Asia. It is bordered to the north by Burma and Laos, to the east by Laos and Cambodia, to the south by the Gulf of Thailand and Malaysia, and to the...
.
Contemporary cinephilia
Since the beginning of the 21st century, blogging has become a large part of cinephile culture. In the AnglosphereAnglosphere
Anglosphere is a neologism which refers to those nations with English as the most common language. The term can be used more specifically to refer to those nations which share certain characteristics within their cultures based on a linguistic heritage, through being former British colonies...
, established critics and theorists like Dave Kehr
Dave Kehr
Dave Kehr is an American film critic. A critic at the Chicago Reader and the Chicago Tribune for many years, he writes a weekly column for The New York Times on DVD releases, in addition to contributing occasional pieces on individual films or filmmakers.-Early life and education:Dave Kehr did...
, David Bordwell
David Bordwell
David Bordwell is an American film theorist and film historian. Since receiving his PhD from the University of Iowa in 1974, he has written more than fifteen volumes on the subject of cinema including Narration in the Fiction Film , Ozu and the Poetics of Cinema , Making Meaning , and On the...
, Jonathan Rosenbaum
Jonathan Rosenbaum
Jonathan Rosenbaum is an American film critic. Rosenbaum was the head film critic for the Chicago Reader from 1987 until 2008, when he retired at the age of 65...
, Glenn Kenny
Glenn Kenny
Glenn Kenny is an American film critic. Kenny served as a critic and editor at the film magazine Premiere from 1996 until it ceased publication in 2007...
and Adrian Martin
Adrian Martin
Dr. Adrian Martin is an Australian film and arts critic from Melbourne. Dr. Martin is Associate Professor, Co-Director of the Research Unit in Film Culture and Theory and Head of Film and Television Studies at Monash University...
, as well as non-professional cinephiles like Girish Shambu
Girish Shambu
Girish Shambu is an American film blogger, cinephile, film critic and educator.Besides maintaining an eponymous blog, which has become a popular center for the film blogging community, Shambu has contributed writing to including Senses of Cinema, Artforum, Cineaste and The Auteurs'...
and Acquarello, play key roles in building interest in films or theories amongst cinephiles by writing and communicating through blogs. Forums and podcast
Podcast
A podcast is a series of digital media files that are released episodically and often downloaded through web syndication...
s have become popular ways to stir discussion, allowing cinephiles from different countries and cultures to discuss ideas about film. The social networking and video streaming service The Auteurs caters specifically to cinephiles, allowing its members access to films that sometimes haven't been distributed theatrically or on video in their home countries. DVD labels such as the Criterion Collection and Masters of Cinema
Masters of Cinema
The Masters of Cinema organization began as a website dedicated to the most well-regarded film directors in the world. Founded by a diverse international group of like-minded film enthusiasts: Jan Bielawski, a mathematician; Doug Cummings, a graphic artist and freelance critic; Trond Trondsen, a Ph.D...
cater to cinephiles, often including large amounts of supplemental and critical
Film criticism
Film criticism is the analysis and evaluation of films, individually and collectively. In general, this can be divided into journalistic criticism that appears regularly in newspapers, and other popular, mass-media outlets and academic criticism by film scholars that is informed by film theory and...
material with their releases.
As was the case with the French cinephilia of the post-war era, the international cinephilic community that has developed on the Internet often emphasizes films and figures that do not have strong critical or popular recognition, including many directors who work within genre film. These include Abel Ferrara
Abel Ferrara
Abel Ferrara is an American film screenwriter and director. He is best known as an independent filmmaker of such films as The Driller Killer , Ms. 45 , King of New York , Bad Lieutenant and The Funeral .-Early life:Ferrara was born in the Bronx of Italian and Irish descent...
, Bela Tarr
Béla Tarr
-Life:Tarr was born in Pécs, but grew up in Budapest. Both of his parents were close to theatre and film: his father was a scenery designer, while his mother has been working as a prompter at a theater for more than 50 years now...
, Michael Mann, Apichatpong Weerasethakul
Apichatpong Weerasethakul
Apichatpong "Joe" Weerasethakul is a Thai independent film director, screenwriter, and film producer. His feature films include Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, winner of the prestigious 2010 Cannes Film Festival Palme d'Or prize; Tropical Malady, which won a jury prize at the 2004...
, Park Chan-wook
Park Chan-wook
Park Chan-wook is a South Korean film director, screenwriter, producer, and former film critic. One of the most acclaimed and popular filmmakers in his native country, Park is most known for his films Joint Security Area, Thirst and what has become known as The Vengeance Trilogy, consisting of...
, Kiyoshi Kurosawa
Kiyoshi Kurosawa
is a Japanese filmmaker. He is best known for his many contributions to the Japanese horror genre.-Biography:Born in Kobe on July 19, 1955, Kiyoshi Kurosawa is not related to director Akira Kurosawa...
, Philippe Garrel
Philippe Garrel
Philippe Garrel is a French director, cinematographer, screenwriter, editor and producer. His movies have won him awards at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival and Venice Film Festival...
, Pedro Costa
Pedro Costa
Pedro Costa is a Portuguese film director.He is acclaimed for using his ascetic style to depict the marginalised people in desperate living situations...
, Lucrecia Martel
Lucrecia Martel
Lucrecia Martel is a film director, screenplay writer, and producer.According to film critic Joel Poblete, who writes for Mabuse, a cinema magazine, Lucrecia Martel is one of the members of the so-called "New Argentina Cinema" which began c...
and Jose Luis Guerin
José Luis Guerín
José Luis Guerín is a Spanish filmmaker and educator, known for his meditative and intellectually curious work in both documentary and narrative filmmaking....
.
Cinephilia and filmmaking
Film school
The term film school is used to describe any educational institution dedicated to teaching aspects of filmmaking, including such subjects as film production, film theory, digital media production, and screenwriting. Film history courses and hands-on technical training are usually incorporated into...
or a film studio. Directors who began as cinephiles include Jean-Luc Godard
Jean-Luc Godard
Jean-Luc Godard is a French-Swiss film director, screenwriter and film critic. He is often identified with the 1960s French film movement, French Nouvelle Vague, or "New Wave"....
, Claude Chabrol
Claude Chabrol
Claude Chabrol was a French film director, a member of the French New Wave group of filmmakers who first came to prominence at the end of the 1950s...
, François Truffaut
François Truffaut
François Roland Truffaut was an influential film critic and filmmaker and one of the founders of the French New Wave. In a film career lasting over a quarter of a century, he remains an icon of the French film industry. He was also a screenwriter, producer, and actor working on over twenty-five...
, Quentin Tarantino
Quentin Tarantino
Quentin Jerome Tarantino is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, cinematographer and actor. In the early 1990s, he began his career as an independent filmmaker with films employing nonlinear storylines and the aestheticization of violence...
, Jacques Rivette
Jacques Rivette
Jacques Rivette is a French film director. His most well known films include Celine and Julie Go Boating, La Belle Noiseuse and the cult film Out 1....
, Andre Techine
André Téchiné
André Téchiné , is a French screenwriter and film director. He has had a long and distinguished career that places him among the best post-New Wave French film directors....
, Pedro Costa
Pedro Costa
Pedro Costa is a Portuguese film director.He is acclaimed for using his ascetic style to depict the marginalised people in desperate living situations...
, Jim Jarmusch
Jim Jarmusch
James R. "Jim" Jarmusch is an American independent film director, screenwriter, actor, producer, editor and composer. Jarmusch has been a major proponent of independent cinema, particularly during the 1980s and 1990s.-Early life:...
, Paul Thomas Anderson
Paul Thomas Anderson
Paul Thomas Anderson is an American film director, screenwriter, and producer. He has written and directed five feature films: Hard Eight , Boogie Nights , Magnolia , Punch-Drunk Love and There Will Be Blood...
, Wim Wenders
Wim Wenders
Ernst Wilhelm "Wim" Wenders is a German film director, playwright, author, photographer and producer.-Early life:Wenders was born in Düsseldorf. He graduated from high school in Oberhausen in the Ruhr area. He then studied medicine and philosophy in Freiburg and Düsseldorf...
, Éric Rohmer
Éric Rohmer
Éric Rohmer was a French film director, film critic, journalist, novelist, screenwriter and teacher. A figure in the post-war New Wave cinema, he was a former editor of Cahiers du cinéma....
, Hal Hartley
Hal Hartley
Hal Hartley is an American film director, screenwriter, producer composer, who became a key figure in the American independent film movement of the 1980s and 1990s...
and Aki Kaurismäki
Aki Kaurismäki
-Career:After studying Media Studies at the University of Tampere, Aki Kaurismäki started his career as a co-director in the films of his elder brother Mika Kaurismäki. His debut as an independent director was Crime and Punishment , Dostoyevsky's famous crime story set in modern-day Helsinki...
.
The directors of the French New Wave
French New Wave
The New Wave was a blanket term coined by critics for a group of French filmmakers of the late 1950s and 1960s, influenced by Italian Neorealism and classical Hollywood cinema. Although never a formally organized movement, the New Wave filmmakers were linked by their self-conscious rejection of...
, who learned about filmmaking by attending screenings at film clubs
Film society
A film society is a membership club where people can watch screenings of films which would otherwise not be shown in mainstream cinemas. In Spain they are known as "Cineclubs," and in Germany they are known as "Filmclubs"....
and discussing movies amongst themselves, are often seen as models for cinephiles. Their intellectual omnivorousness, which equated an interest in cinema with strong understandings of literature
Literature
Literature is the art of written works, and is not bound to published sources...
, art
Art
Art is the product or process of deliberately arranging items in a way that influences and affects one or more of the senses, emotions, and intellect....
and sometimes philosophy
Philosophy
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...
, has continued to have influence on cinephiles.
On the other hand, many directors emphasize their lack of cinephilia or interest in movies. Abbas Kiarostami
Abbas Kiarostami
Abbas Kiarostami is an internationally acclaimed Iranian film director, screenwriter, photographer and film producer. An active filmmaker since 1970, Kiarostami has been involved in over forty films, including shorts and documentaries...
, Bruno Dumont
Bruno Dumont
Bruno Dumont is a French film director. To date, he has directed five feature films, all of which border somewhere between realistic drama and the avant-garde. His films have won several awards at the Cannes Film Festival. Two of Dumont's films have won the Grand Prix award: both L'Humanité and...
, Michael Haneke
Michael Haneke
Michael Haneke is a German born Austrian filmmaker and writer best known for his bleak and disturbing style. His films often document problems and failures in modern society. Haneke has worked in television‚ theatre and cinema. He is also known for raising social issues in his work...
and Bela Tarr
Béla Tarr
-Life:Tarr was born in Pécs, but grew up in Budapest. Both of his parents were close to theatre and film: his father was a scenery designer, while his mother has been working as a prompter at a theater for more than 50 years now...
, all popular with cinephiles, often emphasize their disinterest in cinema when interviewed. Robert Bresson
Robert Bresson
-Life and career:Bresson was born at Bromont-Lamothe, Puy-de-Dôme, the son of Marie-Élisabeth and Léon Bresson. Little is known of his early life and the year of his birth, 1901 or 1907, varies depending on the source. He was educated at Lycée Lakanal in Sceaux, Hauts-de-Seine, close to Paris, and...
, though once a member of the Objectif 49 cine-club, took a harshly critical stance on most films. When asked to name the ten greatest films of all time for the British film magazine Sight & Sound
Sight & Sound
Sight & Sound is a British monthly film magazine published by the British Film Institute .Sight & Sound was first published in 1932 and in 1934 management of the magazine was handed to the nascent BFI, which still publishes the magazine today...
, Bresson only listed two films, putting Charlie Chaplin
Charlie Chaplin
Sir Charles Spencer "Charlie" Chaplin, KBE was an English comic actor, film director and composer best known for his work during the silent film era. He became the most famous film star in the world before the end of World War I...
's City Lights
City Lights
City Lights is a 1931 American silent film and romantic comedy-drama written by, directed by, and starring Charlie Chaplin. It also has the leads Virginia Cherrill and Harry Myers. Although "talking" pictures were on the rise since 1928, City Lights was immediately popular. Today, it is thought of...
in the top two slots, followed by The Gold Rush (also directed by Chaplin) at number 3 (at a similar film referendum in Brussels
Brussels
Brussels , officially the Brussels Region or Brussels-Capital Region , is the capital of Belgium and the de facto capital of the European Union...
in 1952, Bresson listed a total of 7 films, including the same Chaplins and two by Robert Flaherty).
In popular culture
• In the 1993 film Benny & JoonBenny & Joon
Benny & Joon is a 1993 romantic comedy film released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer about how two eccentric individuals, Sam and Juniper "Joon" , find each other and fall in love...
, actor Johnny Depp
Johnny Depp
John Christopher "Johnny" Depp II is an American actor, producer and musician. He has won the Golden Globe Award and Screen Actors Guild award for Best Actor. Depp rose to prominence on the 1980s television series 21 Jump Street, becoming a teen idol...
portrays Sam, a cinemaphile man who falls in love with a mentally ill woman named Joon (Mary Stuart Masterson
Mary Stuart Masterson
Mary Stuart Masterson is an American film, stage and television actress and director.-Early life:Masterson was born in New York City to writer/director Peter Masterson and actress Carlin Glynn. She has two siblings: Peter Masterson Jr., and Alexandra Masterson, who are both involved in the...
).
• In the music video for the song "Jack Sparrow
Jack Sparrow (song)
"Jack Sparrow" is a song by American comedy troupe The Lonely Island featuring singer-songwriter Michael Bolton. The song and music video debuted on Saturday Night Live as an SNL Digital Short on May 7, 2011. The plot follows the troupe inviting Bolton to work on a new hip hop track, in which the...
" by comedy rap group The Lonely Island
The Lonely Island
The Lonely Island is an American comedy troupe composed of Akiva "Kiv" Schaffer, Jorma "Jorm" Taccone, and David Andrew "Andy" Samberg, best known for their comedic music. Originally from Berkeley, California, the group is currently based in New York City. The group broke out due to their...
featuring Michael Bolton
Michael Bolton
Michael Bolton is an American singer and songwriter. Bolton originally performed in the hard rock and heavy metal genres from the mid 1970s to the mid 1980s, both on his early solo albums and those recorded as the frontman of the band Blackjack...
, Bolton is referred to as a 'major cinephile' at the end by Andy Samberg
Andy Samberg
David Andrew "Andy" Samberg is an American actor, comedian, rapper and writer best known as a member of the comedy group The Lonely Island and as a cast member on Saturday Night Live...
due to Bolton's consistent references to Pirates of the Caribbean
Pirates of the Caribbean (film series)
Pirates of the Caribbean is a series of fantasy-adventure films directed by Gore Verbinski and Rob Marshall , written by Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio and produced by Jerry Bruckheimer...
s Jack Sparrow, Forrest Gump
Forrest Gump
Forrest Gump is a 1994 American epic comedy-drama romance film based on the 1986 novel of the same name by Winston Groom. The film was directed by Robert Zemeckis, starring Tom Hanks, Robin Wright and Gary Sinise...
, Erin Brockovich
Erin Brockovich (film)
Erin Brockovich is a 2000 biographical film directed by Steven Soderbergh. The film is a dramatization of the story of Erin Brockovich, played by Julia Roberts, who fought against the US West Coast energy corporation Pacific Gas and Electric Company. Roberts won the Academy Award, Golden Globe,...
, and Scarface
Scarface (1983 film)
Scarface is a 1983 American epic crime drama movie directed by Brian De Palma, written by Oliver Stone, produced by Martin Bregman and starring Al Pacino as Tony Montana...
.