What is a film

What is cinema, what is a popular cinema, what is art cinema, what is a documentary cinema

1. What Is A Film? JNU ASC 26 th November 2010 1 26th November 2010, JNU ASC

2. Film Studies rests on three basic questions What is a film? What kind of appeal does it have for its viewer? How does it appeal to its viewers? 2 26th November 2010, JNU ASC

3. Today, we shall address only the first question, namely, What Is A Film ? 3 26th November 2010, JNU ASC

4. It is obvious that film is an audio visual moving image that travels in a sequence so as to tell a story with a beginning, middle and end. 4 26th November 2010, JNU ASC

5. In a film we see everything moving Objects, people, time, distance to create events.. 5 26th November 2010, JNU ASC

6. So in many ways we can say that a film is a movement of time to create events Cinema may very well be a theory of events, or a logic of events..also a theory of history, or a philosophy of what happens, a mythology, cosmogony.. 6 26th November 2010, JNU ASC

7. If this is so, then how is a film different from epic, myth, ballad, novel, poetry, painting, music or even theatre 7 26th November 2010, JNU ASC

8. Except history, which is a derived story based upon facts The rest are created out of imagined situations and their logical outcomes. 8 26th November 2010, JNU ASC

9. These stories are therefore Model building exercises to express the logic of interconnectedness of events.. Painting, poetry included… 9 26th November 2010, JNU ASC

10. The purpose of these stories is to find The logic of events… 10 26th November 2010, JNU ASC

11. Then how is the film different? 11 26th November 2010, JNU ASC

12. The uniqueness of film It has movement, which means that it must align its pace with that of its time. Because of its movement, it ,must have a stable or a fixed point of view, which means that it must have a lead protagonist. Since the protagonist must move against the backdrop of the real world in general, there is always a tension between the individual and the world. The cinema becomes a story of the individual and the world. 12 26th November 2010, JNU ASC

13. Even for a documentary film Often the theme, or the subject is the protagonist. 13 26th November 2010, JNU ASC

14. Cinema despite its technology is also an art form with its distinct politics. In countries where a certain kind of politics exist one can make films.. 14 26th November 2010, JNU ASC