Transcript am studies - UC Berkeley Library

What Is Cinema: or
When is a Movie More
Than Just a Movie
Gary Handman
Director
Media Resources Center
Moffitt Library
What Kinds of Images Move?
•Cinema aka THE MOVIES: 1886-•Nationality
•Genres: Sci Fi, Gangster, Film Noir, Musicals,
Westerns, pornography…etc.
•Eras
•Styles
•Directors
•Actors
•Audiences
What Kinds of Images Move?
• Documentaries
• Slick and produced - rough/cinema verité
• Educational / Instructional films/video
• Promotional films (selling/explaining a program,
product, institution, etc.)
•Newsreels
•Propaganda
•Primary Source Materials: raw footage; reality
footage
•Amateur films (home movies)
What Kinds of Images Move?
• TV: Network, Cable
• Programming (from sitcoms to sports to MTV)
• News
• Commercials/Infomercials
Cinema aka THE MOVIES:
What Is Cinema?
•Entertainment and Big Business
•Art Form
•History
•Movies as History; History & the
Movies
•Movies as snapshot
•Movie as Mirror -- as social &
psychological “text”
Non-theatrical Film and Video
•Documentaries
•Primary Source Materials
•Amateur films
•The Camera is NEVER totally Objective!
•No Matter How Subtle or Artfully
Concealed: There is ALWAYS a Point of
View
Examples: Cinema & TV as Social Text
The Movies and TV as witting or
unwitting mirrors of ideas about
race, gender, ethnicity,class
The Movies and TV as social or
political expression
Non-Theatrical Film & Video:
Documenting the Present and Past
•Film as Weapon: Propaganda
•Film as Chronicle
•Newsreels
•Broadcast News
•Primary Source Footage
•Amateur Film/Video
•TV as Chronicle