Film studies
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.[1]
Not to be confused with cinematography or film criticism.
Film studies is less concerned with advancing proficiency in film production than it is with exploring the narrative, artistic, cultural, economic, and political implications of the cinema.[1] In searching for these social-ideological values, film studies takes a series of critical approaches for the analysis of production, theoretical framework, context, and creation.[2] Also, in studying film, possible careers include critic or production. Overall the study of film continues to grow, as does the industry on which it focuses.
Academic journals publishing film studies work include Sight & Sound, Film Comment, Film International, CineAction, Screen, Journal of Cinema and Media Studies, Film Quarterly, Projections: The Journal for Movies and Mind, and Journal of Film and Video.
History[edit]
Film studies as an academic discipline emerged in the twentieth century, decades after the invention of motion pictures. Not to be confused with the technical aspects of film production, film studies exists only with the creation of film theory—which approaches film critically as an art—and the writing of film historiography. Because the modern film became an invention and industry only in the late nineteenth century, a generation of film producers and directors existed significantly before the academic analysis that followed in later generations.
Early film schools focused on the production and subjective critique of film rather than on the critical approaches, history and theory used to study academically. Since the time film was created, the concept of film studies as a whole grew to analyze the formal aspects of film as they were created. Established in 1919 the Moscow Film School was the first school in the world to focus on film. In the United States the USC School of Cinematic Arts, established in 1929, was the first cinematic based school, which was created in agreement with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. They were also the first to offer a major in film in 1932 but without the distinctions that are assumed in film studies. Universities began to implement different forms of cinema related curriculum without, however, the division between the abstract and practical approaches.
The Deutsche Filmakademie Babelsberg (i.e. German Film Academy Babelsberg) was founded in the Third Reich in 1938. Among the lecturers were e.g. Willi Forst and Heinrich George. To complete the studies at the Academy a student was expected to create his own film.
A movement away from Hollywood productions in the 1950s turned cinema into a more artistic independent endeavor. It was the creation of the auteur theory, which asserted film as the director's vision and art, that prompted film studies to become truly considered academically worldwide in the 1960s. In 1965, film critic Robin Wood, in his writings on Alfred Hitchcock, declared that Hitchcock's films contained the same complexities of Shakespeare's plays.[3] Similarly, French director Jean Luc Godard, a contributor to the influential magazine Cahiers du Cinéma, wrote: "Jerry Lewis [...] is the only one in Hollywood doing something different, the only one who isn't falling in with the established categories, the norms, the principles. [...] Lewis is the only one today who's making courageous films".[4]
With stable enrollment, proper budgets and interest in all humanities numerous universities contained the ability to offer distinct film studies programs.
As the global community of filmmakers and scholars grew, the analysis of film developed into an academic discipline. This was helped in part by large donations from successful commercial filmmakers, who helped fund film studies departments in universities. An example is George Lucas' US$175 million donation to the USC School of Cinematic Arts in 2006.[5]