Cinephilia (; also cinemaphilia or filmophilia) is the term used to refer to a passionate interest in
films,
film theory, and
film criticism. The term is a
portmanteau
A portmanteau word, or portmanteau (, ) is a blend of words[cinema
Cinema may refer to:
Film
* Cinematography, the art of motion-picture photography
* Film or movie, a series of still images that create the illusion of a moving image
** Film industry, the technological and commercial institutions of filmmaking
...](_blank)
and
philia, one of the four ancient
Greek words for love.
A person with a passionate interest in cinema is called a cinephile (), cinemaphile, filmophile, or, informally, a film buff (also movie buff). To a cinephile, a movie is not just a form of entertainment as they see films from a more
critical point of view.
In English, "cinephile" is sometimes used interchangeably with the word cineaste (), though in the original French the term ''cinéaste'' () refers to a cinephile who is also a
filmmaker
Filmmaking (film production) is the process by which a motion picture is produced. Filmmaking involves a number of complex and discrete stages, starting with an initial story, idea, or commission. It then continues through screenwriting, castin ...
.
Definition
In a review of a book on the history of cinephilia, Mas Generis writes: "Cinephilia, is the condition of a sexual attraction to movies."
Generis also introduces a quote from
film scholar
Film studies is an academic discipline that deals with various theoretical, historical, and critical approaches to cinema as an art form and a medium. It is sometimes subsumed within media studies and is often compared to television studies.
Fi ...
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 Frémaux
Thierry Frémaux (; born 29 May 1960) is the director of the Institut Lumière, of the Lumière Film Festival and of the Cannes Film Festival.
Education and career
Frémaux has a '' diplôme d'études approfondies'' (equivalent to a Master of Ad ...
, "The definitive essence of cinephilia 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."
[Keathley, Christian. Cinephilia and history, or, The wind in the trees. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 2005.]
Film historian Thomas Elsaesser writes that it "reverberates with nostalgia and dedication... more than a passion of going to the movies and only a little less than an entire attitude towards life".
History
Pre-war cinephilia
Since the beginning of the
silent era, there have been
film clubs 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
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 passed befor ...
, there were more and more people interested in seeing older films, which led to the establishment of organizations such as the
Cinémathèque Française
The Cinémathèque Française (), founded in 1936, is a French non-profit film organization that holds one of the largest archives of film documents and film-related objects in the world. Based in Paris's 12th arrondissement, the archive offers ...
, the first major archive devoted to
film preservation
Film preservation, or film restoration, describes a series of ongoing efforts among film historians, archivists, museums, cinematheques, and non-profit organizations to rescue decaying film stock and preserve the images they contain. In the wid ...
.
Post-war French cinephilia
A 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
Occupation commonly refers to:
*Occupation (human activity), or job, one's role in society, often a regular activity performed for payment
*Occupation (protest), political demonstration by holding public or symbolic spaces
*Military occupation, th ...
, as well as the screening programs of local
film clubs and the
Cinémathèque Française
The Cinémathèque Française (), founded in 1936, is a French non-profit film organization that holds one of the largest archives of film documents and film-related objects in the world. Based in Paris's 12th arrondissement, the archive offers ...
, generated interest in
world cinema
World cinema is a term in film theory that refers to films made outside of the American motion picture industry, particularly those in opposition to the aesthetics and values of commercial American cinema.Nagib, Lúcia. "Towards a positive de ...
amongst the city's intellectual
youth culture Youth culture refers to the societal norms of children, adolescents, and young adults. Specifically, it comprises the processes and symbolic systems that are shared by the youth and are distinct from those of adults in the community.
An emphasi ...
. 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.
[Le fantôme d'Henri Langlois. Dir. Jacques Richard. DVD. Kino Video, 2004.]
Influential film clubs of the period included Objectif 49, whose members included
Robert Bresson
Robert Bresson (; 25 September 1901 – 18 December 1999) was a French film director.
Known for his ascetic approach, Bresson contributed notably to the art of cinema; his non-professional actors, ellipses, and sparse use of scoring have l ...
and
Jean Cocteau
Jean Maurice Eugène Clément Cocteau (, , ; 5 July 1889 – 11 October 1963) was a French poet, playwright, novelist, designer, filmmaker, visual artist and critic. He was one of the foremost creatives of the s ...
, 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
André Bazin (; 18 April 1918 – 11 November 1958) was a renowned and influential French film critic and film theorist.
Bazin started to write about film in 1943 and was a co-founder of the renowned film magazine ''Cahiers du cinéma'' in 1951, ...
,
François Truffaut,
Jacques Doniol-Valcroze
Jacques Doniol-Valcroze (; 15 March 1920 – 6 October 1989) was a French actor, critic, screenwriter, and director. In 1951, Doniol-Valcroze was a co-founder of the renowned film magazine ''Cahiers du cinéma'', along with André Bazin and Jo ...
,
Claude Chabrol,
Jean-Luc Godard,
Alexandre Astruc
Alexandre Astruc (; 13 July 1923 – 19 May 2016) was a French film critic and film director.
Biography
Before becoming a film director he was a journalist, novelist and film critic. His contribution to the auteur theory centers on his notion ...
,
Jacques Rivette
Jacques Rivette (; 1 March 1928 – 29 January 2016) was a French film director and film critic most commonly associated with the French New Wave and the film magazine '' Cahiers du Cinéma''. He made twenty-nine films, including '' L'amour f ...
,
Luc Moullet
Luc Moullet (; born 14 October 1937 in Paris) 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, ...
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
Director may refer to:
Literature
* ''Director'' (magazine), a British magazine
* ''The Director'' (novel), a 1971 novel by Henry Denker
* ''The Director'' (play), a 2000 play by Nancy Hasty
Music
* Director (band), an Irish rock band
* ''D ...
and films that had been neglected, forgotten or simply unknown in the West, and led to the development of the
auteur theory
An auteur (; , 'author') is an artist with a distinctive approach, usually a film director whose filmmaking control is so unbounded but personal that the director is likened to the "author" of the film, which thus manifests the director's unique ...
. The directors the French cinephiles of the period had strong interests in included
F. W. Murnau
Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau (born Friedrich Wilhelm Plumpe; December 28, 1888March 11, 1931) was a German film director, producer and screenwriter.
He was greatly influenced by Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Shakespeare and Ibsen plays he had seen at th ...
,
Robert Flaherty,
Sergei Eisenstein
Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein (russian: Сергей Михайлович Эйзенштейн, p=sʲɪrˈɡʲej mʲɪˈxajləvʲɪtɕ ɪjzʲɪnˈʂtʲejn, 2=Sergey Mikhaylovich Eyzenshteyn; 11 February 1948) was a Soviet film director, scree ...
,
Jean Renoir,
Jean Vigo
Jean Vigo (; 26 April 1905 – 5 October 1934) was a French film director who helped establish poetic realism in film in the 1930s. His work influenced French New Wave cinema of the late 1950s and early 1960s.
Biography
Vigo was born to ...
,
Orson Welles
George Orson Welles (May 6, 1915 – October 10, 1985) was an American actor, director, producer, and screenwriter, known for his innovative work in film, radio and theatre. He is considered to be among the greatest and most influential f ...
,
Anthony Mann,
Louis Feuillade
Louis Feuillade (; 19 February 1873 – 25 February 1925) was a French filmmaker of the silent era. Between 1906 and 1924, he directed over 630 films. He is primarily known for the crime serials '' Fantômas'', '' Les Vampires'' and '' Judex ...
,
D. W. Griffith, the
Lumière brothers
Lumière is French for 'light'.
Lumiere, Lumière or Lumieres may refer to:
* Lumières, the philosophical movement in the Age of Enlightenment People
*Auguste and Louis Lumière, French pioneers in film-making Film and TV
* Institut Lumière, ...
,
Alfred Hitchcock and
Georges Méliès, whose films would be screened from
nitrate prints on special occasions.
Filmgoing in the 1960s and 1970s
![Federico Fellini](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9e/Federico_Fellini.jpg)
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
Pauline Kael (; June 19, 1919 – September 3, 2001) was an American film critic who wrote for ''The New Yorker'' magazine from 1968 to 1991. Known for her "witty, biting, highly opinionated and sharply focused" reviews, Kael's opinions oft ...
,
Andrew Sarris
Andrew Sarris (October 31, 1928 – June 20, 2012) was an American film critic. He was a leading proponent of the auteur theory of film criticism.
Early life
Sarris was born in Brooklyn, New York, to Greek immigrant parents, Themis (née Katav ...
and
Susan Sontag.
Certain writers and critics, including Sontag, would later come to view this as the "
Golden Age
The term Golden Age comes from Greek mythology, particularly the '' Works and Days'' of Hesiod, and is part of the description of temporal decline of the state of peoples through five Ages, Gold being the first and the one during which the G ...
" of film-going in the US.
Directors such as
Ingmar Bergman,
Akira Kurosawa
was a Japanese filmmaker and painter who directed thirty films in a career spanning over five decades. He is widely regarded as one of the most important and influential filmmakers in the history of cinema. Kurosawa displayed a bold, dyna ...
,
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
The New Hollywood, also known as American New Wave or Hollywood Renaissance, was a movement in American film history from the mid-1960s to the early 1980s, when a new generation of young filmmakers came to prominence.
They influenced the types o ...
, including
Martin Scorsese
Martin Charles Scorsese ( , ; born November 17, 1942) is an American film director, producer, screenwriter and actor. Scorsese emerged as one of the major figures of the New Hollywood era. He is the recipient of many major accolades, inclu ...
,
Peter Bogdanovich
Peter Bogdanovich (July 30, 1939 – January 6, 2022) was an American director, writer, actor, producer, critic, and film historian.
One of the " New Hollywood" directors, Bogdanovich started as a film journalist until he was hired to work on ...
,
Francis Ford Coppola and
Woody Allen
Heywood "Woody" Allen (born Allan Stewart Konigsberg; November 30, 1935) is an American film director, writer, actor, and comedian whose career spans more than six decades and multiple Academy Award-winning films. He began his career writing ...
. Due to growing public interest in films from other countries, specialty
distributors
A distributor is an enclosed rotating switch used in spark-ignition internal combustion engines that have mechanically timed ignition. The distributor's main function is to route high voltage current from the ignition coil to the spark plugs ...
such as
Janus Films
Janus Films is an American film distribution company. The distributor is credited with introducing numerous films, now considered masterpieces of world cinema, to American audiences, including the films of Michelangelo Antonioni, Sergei Eisenstei ...
and
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, founded 1960, after a film's producer would not allow for a movie's sin ...
began importing and
subtitling foreign movies.
The era also saw the growth of college film societies. Though some, like
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. According to a 2007 ''Chicago Tribune'' article, it is "the longest-running collegiate film society in t ...
at the
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park, Chicago, Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chic ...
, 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. The
Melbourne Cinematheque
The Melbourne Cinémathèque is a non-profit film society screening programmes year-round, dedicated to presenting the history of world cinema on the big screen in carefully curated retrospectives. It started out as Melbourne University Film Socie ...
, founded in 1948 in
Melbourne, Australia, began as the Melbourne University Film Society (MUFS), and was renamed Cinémathèque in 1984.
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
Right-wing politics describes the range of political ideologies that view certain social orders and hierarchies as inevitable, natural, normal, or desirable, typically supporting this position on the basis of natural law, economics, auth ...
—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
Maoism, officially called Mao Zedong Thought by the Chinese Communist Party, is a variety of Marxism–Leninism that Mao Zedong developed to realise a socialist revolution in the agricultural, pre-industrial society of the Republic of Ch ...
. In this very politicized climate, cinema was often seen as directly connected to
Marxism
Marxism is a left-wing to far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand class relations and social conflict and a dialectical ...
. Many members of this new generation of cinephiles would become critics and
directors
Director may refer to:
Literature
* ''Director'' (magazine), a British magazine
* ''The Director'' (novel), a 1971 novel by Henry Denker
* ''The Director'' (play), a 2000 play by Nancy Hasty
Music
* Director (band), an Irish rock band
* ''D ...
, including
Serge Daney Serge Daney (June 4, 1944, Paris – June 12, 1992) was a French movie critic. He was a major figure of ''Cahiers du cinéma'' which he co-edited in the late 1970s. He also wrote extensively about films, television, and society in the newspaper ''Li ...
,
Philippe Garrel
Philippe Garrel (; born 6 April 1948) is a French director, cinematographer, screenwriter, film editor, and producer, associated with the French New Wave movement. His films have won him awards at Cannes Film Festival and Venice Film Festival.
...
, and
André Téchiné.
Though most of the world's major film festivals had existed for decades by this point—including the
Berlin International Film Festival
The Berlin International Film Festival (german: Internationale Filmfestspiele Berlin), usually called the Berlinale (), is a major international film festival held annually in Berlin, Germany. Founded in 1951 and originally run in June, the fest ...
, the
Cannes Film Festival
The Cannes Festival (; french: link=no, Festival de Cannes), until 2003 called the International Film Festival (') and known in English as the Cannes Film Festival, is an annual film festival held in Cannes, France, which previews new films o ...
and the
Venice Film Festival
The Venice Film Festival or Venice International Film Festival ( it, Mostra Internazionale d'Arte Cinematografica della Biennale di Venezia, "International Exhibition of Cinematographic Art of the Venice Biennale") is an annual film festival h ...
—the period saw the establishment of festivals in nearly every major city. The
New York Film Festival
The New York Film Festival (NYFF) is a film festival held every fall in New York City, presented by Film at Lincoln Center (FLC). Founded in 1963 by Richard Roud and Amos Vogel with the support of Lincoln Center president William Schuman, i ...
, the
Karlovy Vary International Film Festival and the
Chicago International Film Festival
The Chicago International Film Festival is an annual film festival held every fall. Founded in 1964 by Michael Kutza, it is the longest-running competitive film festival in North America. Its logo is a stark, black and white close up of the comp ...
were all started during this time. The
Toronto International Film Festival
The Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF, often stylized as tiff) is one of the largest publicly attended film festivals in the world, attracting over 480,000 people annually. Since its founding in 1976, TIFF has grown to become a perman ...
, often seen as second only to the
Cannes Film Festival
The Cannes Festival (; french: link=no, Festival de Cannes), until 2003 called the International Film Festival (') and known in English as the Cannes Film Festival, is an annual film festival held in Cannes, France, which previews new films o ...
in terms of importance, was founded towards the end of this period, in 1976.
Home video and the late 20th century
![Wong Kar-wai at 2008 TIFF](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ac/Wong_Kar-wai_at_2008_TIFF.jpg)
As
VHS tapes,
[Richard Linklater and the VHS Generation, White City Cinema](_blank)
/ref> DVD
The DVD (common abbreviation for Digital Video Disc or Digital Versatile Disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any kind ...
s and later digital access became more common, cinephilia became less associated with filmgoing in theatres (much to the dismay of some cinephiles like Sontag).
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
Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China (abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China on the eastern Pearl River Delta i ...
, Taiwan
Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia, at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the nort ...
and, later, Thailand
Thailand ( ), historically known as Siam () and officially the Kingdom of Thailand, is a country in Southeast Asia, located at the centre of the Indochinese Peninsula, spanning , with a population of almost 70 million. The country is b ...
.
Contemporary cinephilia
Since the beginning of the 21st century, blogging
A blog (a truncation of "weblog") is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in reverse chronological order s ...
has become a large part of cinephile culture. In the English-speaking world
Speakers of English are also known as Anglophones, and the countries where English is natively spoken by the majority of the population are termed the '' Anglosphere''. Over two billion people speak English , making English the largest langua ...
, established critics and theorists like Dave Kehr, David Bordwell, Jonathan Rosenbaum
Jonathan Rosenbaum (born February 27, 1943) is an American film critic and author. Rosenbaum was the head film critic for ''The Chicago Reader'' from 1987 to 2008, when he retired. He has published and edited numerous books about cinema and has ...
, Glenn Kenny
Glenn Kenny (born August 8, 1959) is an American film critic and journalist. He writes for ''The New York Times'' and '' RogerEbert.com''.
Biography
Kenny attended William Paterson University, where he majored in English literature.[Wheeler Winston Dixon
Wheeler Winston Dixon (born March 12, 1950) is an American filmmaker and scholar. He is an expert on film history, theory and criticism.Bill Goodykoontz, December 23, 2012, USA TodayDefining Tarantino Accessed Aug. 25, 2013, Quote = "...long, invo ...]
and Adrian Martin
Adrian Martin (born 1959) is an Australian film and arts critic. He now lives in Malgrat de Mar in Spain. He is Adjunct Associate Professor in Film Culture and Theory at Monash University. His work has appeared in many magazines, journals and n ...
, as well as non-professional cinephiles like 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 Cin ...
played key roles in building interest in films or theories amongst cinephiles by writing and communicating through blogs. Forums and podcast
A podcast is a program made available in digital format for download over the Internet. For example, an episodic series of digital audio or video files that a user can download to a personal device to listen to at a time of their choosin ...
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
Video on demand (VOD) is a media distribution system that allows users to access videos without a traditional video playback device and the constraints of a typical static broadcasting schedule. In the 20th century, broadcasting in the form of o ...
service MUBI
Mubi (; stylized as MUBI; The Auteurs before 2010) is a global curated film streaming platform, production company and film distributor. Mubi produces and theatrically distributes films by emerging and established filmmakers, which are exclusivel ...
caters specifically to cinephiles, allowing its members access to films that sometimes haven't been distributed theatrically or on video in their home countries. Home video distribution labels and distributors such as The Criterion Collection
The Criterion Collection, Inc. (or simply Criterion) is an American home video, home-video distribution company that focuses on licensing, restoring and distributing "important classic and contemporary films." Criterion serves film and media scho ...
, Masters of Cinema
Masters of Cinema is a line of DVD and Blu-ray releases published through Eureka Entertainment. Because of the uniformly branded and spine-numbered packaging and the standard inclusion of booklets and analysis by recurring film historians, the ...
, Facets
A facet is a flat surface of a geometric shape, e.g., of a cut gemstone.
Facet may also refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media
* ''Facets'' (album), an album by Jim Croce
* ''Facets'', a 1980 album by jazz pianist Monty Alexander and his tri ...
, Vinegar Syndrome
Cellulose acetate film, or safety film, is used in photography as a base material for photographic emulsions. It was introduced in the early 20th century by film manufacturers and intended as a safe film base replacement for unstable and highly ...
and Kino
Kino may refer to:
Arts, entertainment and media Broadcasters
* KINO, a radio station in Arizona, U.S.
* Kino FM (98.0 FM – Moscow), a Russian music radio station
* KinoTV, now Ruutu+ Leffat ja Sarjat, a Finnish TV channel
Fictional entiti ...
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 Genre film may refer to:
* A film conforming to a well-defined film genre
* Genre Films, aka Kinberg Genre, a television and film production company
* ''Genre'' (1996 film), a live-action/animated short by Don Hertzfeldt
See also
* Genre, the ge ...
, in what is sometimes dubbed vulgar auteurism
Vulgar auteurism is a movement that emerged in early 2010s cinephilia and film criticism associated with championing or reappraising filmmakers, mostly those working in the horror and action genres and whose work has otherwise received little atte ...
. These include Justin Lin
Justin Lin (, born October 11, 1971) is a Taiwanese-American film director. His films have grossed US$2.3 billion worldwide as of March 2017. He is best known for his directorial work on '' Better Luck Tomorrow'' (2002), the ''Fast & Furious'' f ...
, Abel Ferrara
Abel Ferrara (born July 19, 1951) is an American filmmaker, known for the provocative and often controversial content in his movies and his use of neo-noir imagery and gritty urban settings. A long-time independent filmmaker, some of his best kn ...
, Michael Mann
Michael Kenneth Mann (born February 5, 1943) is an American director, screenwriter, and producer of film and television who is best known for his distinctive style of crime drama. His most acclaimed works include the films ''Thief'' (1981), ...
, Roland Emmerich
Roland Emmerich (; born 10 November 1955) is a German film director, screenwriter, and producer. He is widely known for his science fiction and disaster films and has been called a "master of disaster" within the industry. His films, most of wh ...
, The Farrelly Brothers, Michael Bay, John Carpenter
John Howard Carpenter (born January 16, 1948) is an American filmmaker, actor, and composer. Although he worked in various film genres, he is most commonly associated with horror, action, and science fiction films of the 1970s and 1980s. He ...
, Kathryn Bigelow
Kathryn Ann Bigelow (; born November 27, 1951) is an American filmmaker. Covering a wide range of genres, her films include '' Near Dark'' (1987), '' Point Break'' (1991), '' Strange Days'' (1995), '' K-19: The Widowmaker'' (2002), ''The Hurt Loc ...
,[Vulgar Auteurism-Film Theory](_blank)
/ref> James Gray
James, Jim, or Jimmy Gray may refer to:
Politicians
* James Gray (Australian politician) (1820–1889), member of the Tasmanian House of Assembly
* James Gray (British politician) (born 1954), British politician
* James Gray (mayor) (1862–1916 ...
, David Fincher, M. Night Shyamalan,[Vulgar Auteurism: A Guide Or: The "Mann-Scott-Baysians"-MUBI](_blank)
/ref> Brian De Palma
Brian Russell De Palma (born September 11, 1940) is an American film director and screenwriter. With a career spanning over 50 years, he is best known for his work in the suspense, crime and psychological thriller genres. De Palma was a leading ...
and Tony Scott
Anthony David Leighton Scott (21 June 1944 – 19 August 2012) was an English film director and producer. He was known for directing highly successful action and thriller films such as '' Top Gun'' (1986), '' Beverly Hills Cop II'' (1987), ''D ...
.
In popular culture
Adnan Virk
Adnan Virk ( ur, ) (born July 29, 1978) is a Canadian sportscaster for MLB Network and DAZN who previously worked for ESPN, TSN, and WWE. He also produces and hosts the weekly podcast ''Cinephile with Adnan Virk'' show covering cinema news and ...
was the host of the podcast ''Cinephile'' that used to broadcast on ESPN
ESPN (originally an initialism for Entertainment and Sports Programming Network) is an American international basic cable sports channel owned by ESPN Inc., owned jointly by The Walt Disney Company (80%) and Hearst Communications (20%). Th ...
until his leave in 2019.
Films about cinephilia
*'' Fade to Black'' (1980)
*''The Purple Rose of Cairo
''The Purple Rose of Cairo'' is a 1985 American fantasy romantic comedy film written and directed by Woody Allen, and starring Mia Farrow, Jeff Daniels, and Danny Aiello. Inspired by the films '' Sherlock Jr.'' (1924) and '' Hellzapoppin ( ...
'' (1985)
*'' Cinema Paradiso'' (1989)
*'' Close-Up'' (1990)
*''American Movie
''American Movie'' is a 1999 American documentary film directed by Chris Smith, produced by Smith and Sarah Price, and edited by Jun Diaz and Barry Poltermann. The film chronicles the making of '' Coven'', an independent short horror film dir ...
'' (1999)
*'' Cinemania'' (2002)
*'' The Dreamers'' (2003)
*''Hugo
Hugo or HUGO may refer to:
Arts and entertainment
* ''Hugo'' (film), a 2011 film directed by Martin Scorsese
* Hugo Award, a science fiction and fantasy award named after Hugo Gernsback
* Hugo (franchise), a children's media franchise based on ...
'' (2011)
*''Me and Earl and the Dying Girl
''Me and Earl and the Dying Girl'' is a 2012 debut novel written by Jesse Andrews. The novel was released in hardcover by Amulet Books on March 1, 2012, and in paperback on May 7, 2013.
Plot
Greg Gaines is a senior at Benson High School i ...
'' (2015)
*'' Once Upon a Time in Hollywood'' (2019)
Cinephilia and filmmaking
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
A film school is an 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 ar ...
or a film studio.
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
An omnivore () is an animal that has the ability to eat and survive on both plant and animal matter. Obtaining energy and nutrients from plant and animal matter, omnivores digest carbohydrates, protein, fat, and fiber, and metabolize the nut ...
, which equated an interest in cinema with strong understandings of literature
Literature is any collection of written work, but it is also used more narrowly for writings specifically considered to be an art form, especially prose fiction, drama, and poetry. In recent centuries, the definition has expanded to include ...
, art
Art is a diverse range of human activity, and resulting product, that involves creative or imaginative talent expressive of technical proficiency, beauty, emotional power, or conceptual ideas.
There is no generally agreed definition of wha ...
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 as in the cases of Abbas Kiarostami
Abbas Kiarostami ( fa, عباس کیارستمی ; 22 June 1940 – 4 July 2016) was an Iranian film director, screenwriter, poet, photographer, and film producer. An active filmmaker from 1970, Kiarostami had been involved in the production of ...
and Peter Greenaway
Peter Greenaway, (born 5 April 1942) is a Welsh film director, screenwriter and artist. His films are noted for the distinct influence of Renaissance and Baroque painting, and Flemish painting in particular. Common traits in his films are th ...
, while acclaimed by cinephiles, often emphasized their disinterests in cinema when interviewed.
Cinephobia
There have also been different forms of cinephobia (fear or hatred of cinema) from the fear of "losing" celluloid film in the digital age through anxieties about moral values on the big screen to the point of censorship.
Telephilia
Telephilia is the term used to refer to a passionate interest in television
Television, sometimes shortened to TV, is a telecommunication medium for transmitting moving images and sound. The term can refer to a television set, or the medium of television transmission. Television is a mass medium for advertisin ...
.
Coined by ''The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...
'' critic Frank Rich as a pejorative term, telephilia was defined as "the pathological longing of Americans, no matter how talentless, to be on television". This early definition was reflective of the negative attitude contemporary critics had toward television, which was frowned upon as inferior to film until the advent of quality television Quality television (also quality TV or quality artistic television) is a term used by television scholars, television critics, and broadcasting advocacy groups to describe a genre or style of television programming that they argue is of higher qua ...
in the 1980s and 1990s. With the rise of quality television, anti-heroic series like ''The Sopranos
''The Sopranos'' is an American crime drama television series created by David Chase. The story revolves around Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini), a New Jersey-based Italian-American mobster, portraying his difficulties as he tries to balance ...
'' and ''The Wire
''The Wire'' is an American crime drama television series created and primarily written by author and former police reporter David Simon. The series was broadcast by the cable network HBO in the United States. ''The Wire'' premiered on June 2 ...
'' were cited as improving television content thus earning critical praise.
Telephilia is also said to rival cinephilia for relevance, as production values are higher than ever before on shows such as ''Mad Men
''Mad Men'' is an American period drama television series created by Matthew Weiner and produced by Lionsgate Television. It ran on the cable network AMC from July 19, 2007, to May 17, 2015, lasting for seven seasons and 92 episodes. Its f ...
'', '' Breaking Bad'' and ''Homeland
A homeland is a place where a cultural, national, or racial identity has formed. The definition can also mean simply one's country of birth. When used as a proper noun, the Homeland, as well as its equivalents in other languages, often has ethn ...
''. Despite this development, there are still intellectuals who consider telephilia as inferior to cinephilia, particularly in cases of obsessions for modern television programs belonging to genres such as melodrama and soap opera
A soap opera, or ''soap'' for short, is a typically long-running radio or television serial, frequently characterized by melodrama, ensemble casts, and sentimentality. The term "soap opera" originated from radio dramas originally being sponsored ...
. This is also explained by the view that highlighted the unattainable nature of the cinema, which makes it more desirable and extraordinary since it features a regime of presence-yet-absence filmic image, allowing a form of cinematic stardom capable of triggering a series of psychic mechanisms. This is contrasted with television, which is perceived to be more present and immediate—with its stars "famous only in so far as he or she makes frequent television appearances." Some observers, however, note that there is now a destabilization of traditional notions of what constitutes cinephilic tendency due to the availability of film on home media
Home media refers to media used for recording, copying, delivery, and playback of various types of entertainment and information in the home.
Forms of home media include:
* Home video
* Magnetic tape
* Phonograph record
A phonograph record ( ...
technology.
List of cinephiles
Film directors
*Paul Thomas Anderson
Paul Thomas Anderson (born June 26, 1970), also known by his initials PTA, is an American filmmaker. He made his feature-film debut with '' Hard Eight'' (1996). He found critical and commercial success with ''Boogie Nights'' (1997) and received ...
*Wes Anderson
Wesley Wales Anderson (born May 1, 1969) is an American filmmaker. His films are known for their eccentricity and unique visual and narrative styles. They often contain themes of grief, loss of innocence, and dysfunctional families. Cited by ...
*Ari Aster
Ari Aster (born July 15, 1986) is an American film director, screenwriter, and producer. He is known for writing and directing the horror films ''Hereditary'' (2018) and '' Midsommar'' (2019).
Early life
Aster was born into a Jewish family in Ne ...
* Sean Baker
*Noah Baumbach
Noah Baumbach () (born September 3, 1969) is an American film director and screenwriter. He is known for making witty and intellectual comedies set in New York City and has often been compared to writer-directors such as Woody Allen and Whit St ...
*Brad Bird
Phillip Bradley Bird (born September 24, 1957) is an American film director, animator, screenwriter, producer, and voice actor. He has had a career spanning forty years in both animation and live-action.
Bird was born in Montana and grew up i ...
*Bong Joon Ho
Bong Joon-ho (, ; Hanja: 奉俊昊; born September 14, 1969) is a South Korean film director, producer and screenwriter. The recipient of four Academy Awards, his filmography is characterised by emphasis on social themes, genre-mixing, black ...
* The Coens
*Sofia Coppola
Sofia Carmina Coppola (; born May 14, 1971) is an American filmmaker and actress. The youngest child and only daughter of filmmakers Eleanor Coppola, Eleanor and Francis Ford Coppola, she made her film debut as an infant in her father's acclaimed ...
*Brian De Palma
Brian Russell De Palma (born September 11, 1940) is an American film director and screenwriter. With a career spanning over 50 years, he is best known for his work in the suspense, crime and psychological thriller genres. De Palma was a leading ...
*Greta Gerwig
Greta Celeste Gerwig (; born August 4, 1983) is an American actress, screenwriter, and director. She first garnered attention after working on and appearing in several mumblecore films. Between 2006 and 2009, she appeared in a number of films ...
*James Gray
James, Jim, or Jimmy Gray may refer to:
Politicians
* James Gray (Australian politician) (1820–1889), member of the Tasmanian House of Assembly
* James Gray (British politician) (born 1954), British politician
* James Gray (mayor) (1862–1916 ...
*James Gunn
James Francis Gunn Jr. (born August 5, 1966) is an American filmmaker and executive. He began his career as a screenwriter in the mid-1990s, starting at Troma Entertainment with ''Tromeo and Juliet'' (1997). He then began working as a directo ...
*Todd Haynes
Todd Haynes (; born January 2, 1961) is an American film director, screenwriter, and producer. His films span four decades with themes examining the personalities of well-known musicians, dysfunctional and dystopian societies, and blurred gender ...
* Jim Jarmusch
*Barry Jenkins
Barry Jenkins (born November 19, 1979) is an American filmmaker. After making his filmmaking debut with the short film ''My Josephine'' (2003), he directed his first feature film '' Medicine for Melancholy'' (2008) for which he received an Inde ...
* Stanley Kubrick
*Spike Lee
Shelton Jackson "Spike" Lee (born March 20, 1957) is an American film director, producer, screenwriter, and actor. His production company, 40 Acres and a Mule Filmworks, has produced more than 35 films since 1983. He made his directorial debut ...
* Richard Linklater
* Alexander Payne
* Sam Raimi
* The Safdies
* Paul Schrader
*Martin Scorsese
Martin Charles Scorsese ( , ; born November 17, 1942) is an American film director, producer, screenwriter and actor. Scorsese emerged as one of the major figures of the New Hollywood era. He is the recipient of many major accolades, inclu ...
*Quentin Tarantino
Quentin Jerome Tarantino (; born March 27, 1963) is an American film director, writer, producer, and actor. His films are characterized by stylized violence, extended dialogue, profanity, dark humor, non-linear storylines, cameos, ensembl ...
* Guillermo del Toro
* François Truffaut
*The Wachowskis
Lana Wachowski (born June 21, 1965, formerly known as Larry Wachowski) and Lilly Wachowski (born December 29, 1967, formerly known as Andy Wachowski) are American film and television directors, writers and producers. The sisters are both trans ...
*John Waters
John Samuel Waters Jr. (born April 22, 1946) is an American filmmaker, writer, actor, and artist. He rose to fame in the early 1970s for his transgressive cult films, including '' Multiple Maniacs'' (1970), '' Pink Flamingos'' (1972) and '' Fe ...
* Nicolas Winding Refn
*Ed Wood
Edward Davis Wood Jr. (October 10, 1924 – December 10, 1978) was an American filmmaker,
actor, and pulp novel author.
In the 1950s, Wood directed several low-budget science fiction, crime and horror films that later became cult cla ...
*Edgar Wright
Edgar Howard Wright (born 18 April 1974) is an English filmmaker. He is known for his fast-paced and kinetic, satirical genre films, which feature extensive utilisation of expressive popular music, Steadicam tracking shots, dolly zooms and a ...
Other cinephiles
* James Baldwin
*Lana Del Rey
Elizabeth Woolridge Grant (born June 21, 1985), known professionally as Lana Del Rey, is an American singer-songwriter. Her music is noted for its cinematic quality and exploration of tragic romance, glamour, and melancholia, with frequent r ...
* Roger Ebert
*Tatsuki Fujimoto
is a Japanese manga artist, known for his works '' Fire Punch'' and ''Chainsaw Man''.
Early life
Fujimoto was born on October 10, 1992 or 1993, in Nikaho, Akita Prefecture, Japan. He started drawing at an early age. He had no preparatory school ...
*Bill Hader
William Thomas Hader Jr.''Finding Your Roots'', January 26, 2016, PBS. (born June 7, 1978) is an American actor, comedian, writer, and producer. He is the creator, producer, writer, director, and star of the HBO dark comedy series ''Barry'' (201 ...
* Kim Jong-il
* Hideo Kojima
*Frank Ocean
Christopher Francis "Frank" Ocean (born Christopher Edwin Breaux; October 28, 1987), is an American singer, songwriter, and rapper. His works are noted by music critics for featuring avant-garde styles and introspective, elliptical lyrics. Ocean ...
*Patton Oswalt
Patton Peter Oswalt (born January 27, 1969) is an American stand-up comedian, actor and writer. He is known as Spence Olchin in the sitcom ''The King of Queens'' (1998–2007) and for narrating the sitcom '' The Goldbergs'' (2013–present) as ...
*J. D. Salinger
Jerome David Salinger (; January 1, 1919 January 27, 2010) was an American author best known for his 1951 novel ''The Catcher in the Rye''. Salinger got his start in 1940, before serving in World War II, by publishing several short stories in '' ...
*David Stratton
David James Stratton (born 10 September 1939) is an English-Australian award-winning film critic, as both a journalist and interviewer, film historian and lecturer and television personality and producer.
Life and career
Born in Trowbridge, ...
*The Weeknd
Abel Makkonen Tesfaye (born February 16, 1990), known professionally as the Weeknd, is a Canadian singer, songwriter, record producer, and actor. Known for his sonic versatility and dark lyricism, his music explores escapism, romance, and ...
* Slavoj Žižek
* Jerry Harvey
*Luka Magnotta
In May 2012, Jun Lin (December 30, 1978 – May 24/25, 2012), a university student, was fatally stabbed and dismembered in Montreal, Canada, by Luka Rocco Magnotta, who then mailed Lin's hands and feet to elementary schools and federal political ...
*Alex Turner
Alexander David Turner (born 6 January 1986) is an English musician, singer, songwriter, and record producer. He is well known as the frontman and principal songwriter of the rock band Arctic Monkeys, with whom he has released seven albums. He ...
See also
* Auteur
An auteur (; , 'author') is an artist with a distinctive approach, usually a film director whose filmmaking control is so unbounded but personal that the director is likened to the "author" of the film, which thus manifests the director's unique ...
– film equivalent of a literary author
* Audiophilia
An audiophile is a person who is enthusiastic about high-fidelity sound reproduction. An audiophile seeks to reproduce the sound of a piece of recorded music or a live musical performance, typically inside closed headphones, In-ear monitors, open ...
– love of high-fidelity sound reproduction
* Vulgar auteurism
Vulgar auteurism is a movement that emerged in early 2010s cinephilia and film criticism associated with championing or reappraising filmmakers, mostly those working in the horror and action genres and whose work has otherwise received little atte ...
– A latter-day resurgent focus on mainstream directors of modern popcorn cinema
* Bibliophilia – love of books
* Comicphilia
Comics studies (also comic art studies, sequential art studies or graphic narrative studies) is an academic field that focuses on comics and sequential art. Although comics and graphic novels have been generally dismissed as less relevant pop cu ...
– love of comic books
* '' The Snob's Dictionary'', a humorous look at snobbery by author Dave Kemp
* Videophilia
A videophile (literally, "one who loves sight") is one who is concerned with achieving high-quality results in the recording and playback of movies, TV programs, etc.
Criteria
Similar to audiophile values, videophile values may be applied at all s ...
– love of high-quality image reproduction
* Postmodernist film
Postmodernism is an intellectual stance or mode of discourseNuyen, A.T., 1992. The Role of Rhetorical Devices in Postmodernist Discourse. Philosophy & Rhetoric, pp.183–194. characterized by skepticism toward the " grand narratives" of moderni ...
and television
Television, sometimes shortened to TV, is a telecommunication medium for transmitting moving images and sound. The term can refer to a television set, or the medium of television transmission. Television is a mass medium for advertisin ...
– similar in content
* '' Mystery Science Theater 3000'' – Cult TV show featuring films considered the worst
* ''The Incredibly Strange Film Show
''The Incredibly Strange Film Show'' was a series of documentaries presented by Jonathan Ross focusing on the world of "psychotronic" or B movies.
Each episode was focused on the lives of filmmakers like Herschell Gordon Lewis, Sam Raimi, D ...
'' – Another cinema-based series featuring notable cult filmmakers
* Z Channel
The Z Channel was one of the first pay television stations in the United States best known for its devotion to the art of cinema due to the eclectic choice of films"Film-News and Notes." ''Daily News of Los Angeles'' October 3, 1986 by the prog ...
– Los Angeles
Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, largest city in the U.S. state, state of California and the List of United States cities by population, sec ...
-based TV channel which featured popular and obscure films that was also the subject of a Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession, 2004 documentary
References
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Film and video terminology
Hobbies
Film preservation
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