Film Genres and Movements

Anime: Anime is a form of animation which became popular in Japan during the 1940s, although the earliest film dates from around 1917. It borrows its characteristics heavily from Japanese comic books and graphic novels known as manga. Notable film techniques include characters drawn with large eyes and exaggerated facial features; anime are often highly coloured, and include heavy use of chiaroscuro and other lighting techniques. Anime narratives are varied; martial arts, cyberpunk, fantasy, and science fiction are common, as are surreal depictions of dystopic or utopian societies. Many films are embedded with philosophical ideas, both Japanese and Western. Often, Anime is serialised in TV-length episodes. Notable auteurs include Kenzo Masaoka from the Shochiku production house (1930s-1940s), Osamu Tezuka and his production house Mushi Productions (creator of Astro Boy, 1960s), and the contemporary films of Hayao Miyazaki and his production house Studio Ghibli. Notable films include Akira (1988), Ghost in the Shell (1995), Princess Mononoke (1997), Cowboy Bebop (2001), Spirited Away (2001), Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence (2004), and Fullmetal Alchemist the Movie (2005). Cinema Novo: otherwise known as New Cinema, Cinema Novo is a film movement which began in Brazil in the 1960s. Anti-imperialism and anti-colonialism are the central ideas which constitute its social and political core. The filmmakers wanted to portray the realism of everyday Brazilian life, from the poverty in rural areas, to the slum-dwelling urban poor. They combined disparate techniques from Italian Neo-realism (utilising handheld cameras and non-professional actors to portray the aforementioned realism) and French Nouvelle Vague (employing an abrupt, discontinuous editing, jump cuts, muffled dialogue and symbolism to alienate the viewer) in order to encourage social and political awareness, whilst maintaining a strong avant-garde aesthetic for a unique national cinema in opposition to mainstream Western cinematic traditions. Notable auteurs include Carlos Diegues, Glauber Rocha, Ruy Guerra and Nelson Pereira dos Santos. Notable films include Rio Zona Norte (Rio Northern District, 1957), Deus e o Diabo na Terra do Sol (Black God, White Devil, 1964), Terra em Transe (Entranced Earth, 1967) and Joanna Francesca (1973). Dogme 95: Dogme 95 (Dogma 95) is a film movement that was initiated in 1995 by the Danish directors Lars Von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg. It involved both directors signing a Vow Of Chastity which set out a manifesto relating to filmmaking techniques and production. These guidelines include: using only a handheld camera; using only natural lighting and colour; music should only be included if its diegetic; there must be no special effects, either in terms of camera lens tricks or animation or in terms of exaggerated actions such as car crashes or shootings; no props are allowed unless they are natural to the location of the film; the director must not be credited; and the temporal and spatial world of the film must only be filmable, i.e. the here and now, not the past, the future, outer space, etc. This highly naturalised way of creating films (whilst never followed exactly to the letter) was created primarily to enable an antidote to the high-budget, high-action productions which were more common fare. It aimed for a re-engagement with how people viewed film art, and desired to focus more on the performance and the story rather than the camera tricks and the special effects; simplifying the form, and

improving the content. Notable directors include Lars Von Trier, Thomas Vinterberg, Jean-Marc Barr, Kristian Levring and Soren Kragh-Jacobsen. Notable films include Festen (The Celebration, 1998, Dogme #1), Idioterne (The Idiots, 1998, Dogme #2), Julien Donkey-Boy (1999, Dogme #6) and Elsker Dig For Evigt (Open Hearts, 2002, Dogme #28). European Avant-garde: Avant-garde film began across the continent of Europe in the 1920s. Cinema in this period began to be seen as a potential location for art, whereas before it was merely considered to be popular entertainment. Artists who were involved particularly in the Dadaist and Surrealist movements in the visual arts, were attracted to cinema and its potentials for exploring art through moving images. Avant-garde, a French term meaning the advance guard relates to a small group of artists who move away from traditional conventions in favour of exploring new avenues, or subverting the old ones. Symbolism and montage are key, as is an embracement of the absurd. Very little consideration is given to chronological flow. Lighting and mise-en-scene are essential, and the use of superimposition, rhythmic editing, close ups and narrative experimentation are all part of the Avant-garde and surrealist films. Notable figures include Jean Epstein, Jean Cocteau, Marcel Duchamp, Luis Buuel, Salvador Dali and Abel Gance. Notable films include La Roue (The Wheel, 1923), Coeur Fidle (Faithful Heart, 1923), Un Chien Andalou (An Andalusian Dog, 1929), and Le Sang Dun Poet (The Blood of a Poet, 1930). Film Noir: Noir films became popular in America in the 1940s and 1950s. A lot of the material for the films came from Pulp Fiction novels, cheap crime thrillers with ambiguous morality, cynical but ultimately good-hearted detectives and femme fatales, women who were beautiful, sexual, cold-blooded and dangerous. Film Noir (or black films) as the name suggest, are centred around sharp lighting and shadow, chiaroscuro being the most used technique. Sets and location are important, and usually consist of urban locations, from the sinister suburbia which hides seedy gambling dens and pornography rings, to the coldness of the crime-ridden city. Symbolism also plays a significant role, perhaps more because of the film censorship prevalent at the time. Narratives often lack closure, which reflect the disillusionment and decaying morals of a society coming out of the Depression and into World War 2. Film Noir were also notorious for being star vehicles. Notable directors include John Huston, Otto Preminger, Howard Hawks, Billy Wilder and early Orson Welles. Notable films include The Maltese Falcon (1941), Fallen Angel (1945), The Big Sleep (1946), Key Largo (1948), and Touch of Evil (1958). French Nouvelle Vague/New Wave: In France during the 1950s, a cinema magazine was produced entitled Cahiers du cinema, in which new theories of film art and production were explored. Central to the ideas of film propounded by this magazine was auteur theory, or the theory of the author. It was argued that each director was in fact an artist of the film-text, and as such could produce a distinct personal style beyond the conventional plot-driven, stalely edited films that were otherwise popular. The Nouvelle Vague directors sought to make intelligent cinema that, through the use of specific techniques, would alienate the audience from the film world and thus enable them to look at the mise-en-scene and the film techniques critically. This was achieved by voice-overs which would explain what would happen at the end of the film, undermining the narrative and thus limiting its importance. Also, sometimes the characters of the film would address the audience directly to explain their motives for the same reason of limiting

the importance of the plot. The disunity, lack of strict editing, almost home-made feel of these films were all designed to show to the audience the art and artifice of film. These directors were influenced significantly by Italian Neo-realism and the avant-garde movement in Europe. Similarly, they praised many Film Noir directors for their distinctively styled films. Techniques favoured by the Nouvelle Vague directors include long tracking shots, jump cuts, improvised acting and rapid change of shots. Handheld cameras were used frequently as budgets were usually low, and sets, props and locations were anything that happened to be around at the time. Notable directors include Francois Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard and Claude Chabrol. Notable films include Le Beau Serge (Beautiful Serge, 1958), Les Quatre Cents Coups (The 400 Blows, 1959), Bout de Souffle (Breathless, 1960) and Vivre Sa Vie (My Life To Live, 1962). Associated with the Nouvelle Vague movement were a group of directors known as the Rive Gauche (the Left Bank). While the Nouvelle Vague directors had strong backgrounds in film and film theory, the Left Bank directors were often visual artists or came from art history or literature backgrounds. As such, their films experimented more with narrative rather than rejected it outright, furthermore they did not have the same reverence for American auteurs as the Nouvelle Vague did, and they adhered much less to the auteur theory; Left Bank directors often collaborated for films. Notable figures of the Left Bank include Alain Resnais, Agnes Varda and Chris Marker. Notable films include Hiroshima, Mon Amour (Hiroshima, My Love, 1959), Lanne Dernire Marienbad (Last Year at Marienbad, 1960) and La Jete (The Pier, 1962). German Expressionism: Similar to the European avant-garde and the Soviet Montage movements, German Expressionism in film was related strongly to modernist movements in art. It also began in the 1920s, and was often filmed with low budgets because of the depressed economy. Films of this era often dealt with dark themes such as madness, and were precursors of the horror genre. Architecture was also a common focus at this time, and techniques include theatrical lighting, dramatic shadowing, heavy symbolism, and distorted sets and surrealist acting. Notable directors include Fritz Lang, Paul Wegener, F.W. Murnau and Arthur Robison. Notable films include Das Kabinett des Doctkor Caligari (The Cabinet of Dr Caligari, 1920) Nosferatu (1922), Schatten (Shadows, 1923), Metropolis (1927) and M (1931). Indian Parallel cinema: This movement is so-called because it was created as an alternative to Bollywood cinema; Parallel cinema deals with issues and contains techniques starkly distinct from popular cinema. It began in the 1940s, but reached its peak in the 1960s when a number of directors became frustrated with the whimsical music and fairytale plots of Bollywood and its lack of basis in reality. As such, Parallel cinema became known for strong realism, stark depictions of everyday life, a lack of music and a corresponding naturalness to the mise-enscene. The directors became more like auteurs, and as such, began to experiment with camera angles, lighting and so on. The movement continued through the 1970s and 80s where it became more popular and was, by the 1990s, subsumed into mainstream cinema. Notable directors include Satyajit Ray, Ritwik Ghatak, Mrinal Sen, Bimal Roy, Shyam Benegal, Adoor Gopalakrishnan and Govind Nihalani. Notable films include Nagarik (1952), Devi (1960), Swayamvaram (1972), Aakrosh (1980), Elippathayam (1981) and Ardh Satya (1983).

Italian Neo-realism: Italian Neo-realism was a movement which lasted around a decade, from the early 1940s to the early 1950s. However, its directors, techniques and ideas have influenced many filmmakers right up until the present day. The neo-realists, as the name suggests, were interested in capturing the grim reality of everyday life in wartime Italy. The poverty and decaying morals of Italian society was widespread, and yet there were no portrayals of it in the cultural media of the time. It was this disdain of the lack of realism in popular cinema that the Neo-realists began making their films. While at the time, these films were not popular or successful, the directors were later acclaimed for their rawness and purity of technique, the influence of which can be seen in movements as diverse as Nouvelle Vague, Cinema Novo, Indian Parallel Cinema and Dogme 95. These techniques include handheld camerawork, nonprofessional actors and non-literary dialogue, realistic settings, natural lighting and minimal props and frequently children as central characters. The actions portrayed were usually realistic and mundane, highlighting the hard labour of the people, the squalid conditions in which they worked and lived, and the associated disintegration of morals and thus of society. Notable auteurs in this period include Luchino Visconti, Roberto Rossellini and Vittorio De Sica. Notable films include Ossessione (Obsession, 1943), Roma, citt aperta (Rome, Open City, 1945), Ladri di Biciclette (The Bicycle Thieves, 1948) and Umberto D. (1952). New German cinema: This movement in cinema stretched until the 1980s, and began in 1962 when a group of young directors signed a pact named the Oberhausen Manifesto which stated simply that The old cinema is dead. We believe in the new. These young filmmakers rejected the cinema of the time which was mainly concerned with popular light entertainment, and demanded a cinematic culture based in intellectualism and artistic innovation rather than commercial factors. Furthermore, this movement was one of the first to actively encourage the participation of female filmmakers, and advocate for the independence of women in society. These films were also usually quite critical of the social and political environment of Germany post-war. Many films dealt with the issues of public amnesia and the restriction of civil rights in Germany during the 1970s. Early New German films were often made with small budgets. While there were not necessarily any uniting techniques which were specifically New German, they borrowed significantly from the Nouvelle Vague movement. New German cinema was born perhaps more out of a sense of common ideals rather than commonality in filmmaking techniques. Notable directors include Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Wim Wenders, Werner Herzog, Alexander Kluge, Jean-Marie Straub and Margarethe von Trotta. Notable films include Abschied von gestern (Yesterday Girl, 1966), Summer In The City (1970), The Great Ecstasy of Woodcarver Steiner (1974), Angst essen Seele auf (Fear Eats The Soul, 1974), and Die verlorene Ehre der Katharina Blum (The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum, 1975). New Iranian cinema: Beginning in the late 1960s, and continuing in different forms until the present day, films of the New Iranian cinema movement are embedded with political, intellectual and social ideas. After the Iranian Revolution and the subsequent crackdown on cultural forms through tough censorship laws, film directors in Iran who wanted their work shown locally have had to negotiate this terrain carefully. As such, a major technique of these auteurs is the use of symbolism. In particular, censorship relating to the presentation of female figures is very strict, so these directors often use children as central characters and embed in their actions several layers of meaning. Mise-en-scene and the framing of scenes are often of central concern to New

Iranian cinema; the heavy influence of poetry and art is evident in many directors works. Life and landscape are imbued with a fragile beauty that pervades even the most mundane moments in time and place, and narratives are kept simple in order to portray this beauty in the smallest details. With the increase in popularity of New Iranian cinema overseas, more and more directors appear to flout the rules of Iranian censorship completely, and thus rarely, if ever, have their films shown in Iran itself. Notable directors include Abbas Kiarostami, Jafar Panahi, Majid Madiji, Bahman Ghobadi and Mohsen Makhmalbaf. Notable films include The White Balloon (1995), Gabbeh (Persian Rug, 1996), Children of Heaven (1997), The Wind Will Carry Us (1999), and Kandahar (2001). Soviet Montage: Soviet Montage was arguably the first movement in cinema history. It occurred around the 1920s, when film was beginning to be thought of in artistic terms. There was much debate over the elements of film, and which of these elements would deem it unique over other visual art forms. Inevitably, the editing of a film was considered the directors key tool of manipulation. As such, Soviet Montage argued against the continuity editing used by the makers of popular films, and instead (as the name suggests) created films heavy with montage. These montages were generally made up of a series of independent shots, sometimes with a direct relation, but often with symbolic meanings. These shots were used to create a tone or a mood in the film beyond the temporally and spatially bound fare of the normal narrative structure. A key director of this movement, Sergei Eisenstein, listed five different methods of montage. These were; metric montage (cutting between cuts based on a set time cycle); rhythmic montage (cutting betweens shots based on the timing and pace of the actions on screen); tonal montage (cuttings between shots based on the tone, or emotional meanings the director wishes to elicit from the audience; associational montage (cutting betweens shots based on an amalgamation of the above three montages in order to gain maximum reaction from the audience and also maximum abstractness); and finally intellectual montage (cutting between shots wherein one shot contains the action involved with the plotline, and the second shot contains an action which adds symbolism to the first shot). Notable directors include Sergei Eisenstein, Lev Kuleshov, Vsevolod Pudovkin and Dziga Vertov. Notable films include Battleship Potemkin (1925), Oktyabr (October, 1927), The End of St Petersburg (1927) and Man With A Movie Camera (1929). 1