Film Studies is the name given to an academic field of study that analyzes the critical appreciation of cinema as an art together with the role it plays in society and culture. Film theorists argue that the discipline concerns itself with how best to view movies and understand all their meanings. The subject forms part of the larger disciplines of media and culture studies.
The discipline is a relatively new one dating back to the second half of the twentieth century. The growth of cinema studies as a discipline following the end of World War II has spawned a number of academic peer-reviewed journals. Examples include the influential British journal Screen, Cinema Journal and the Journal of Film and Video.
Graduates of cinema studies generally pursue a career in non-technical fields such as film criticism, journalism and media analysis. They also select the subject as a non-major component of programs of study focused on the technical aspects of filmmaking.
Given the dominance of Hollywood movie commercialism in shaping popular culture, the strong influence of European and other countries on movie production and theory may surprise many people. For example, the Moscow Film School established in 1919 was the first school focused on cinema anywhere in the world.
Similarly, the first dedicated cinema theorist and critic was Andre Bazin (1918-1958), a Frenchman born in the provincial town of Angers located south west of Paris. He began writing on cinema during the World War II in 1943, when he was 25 years of age. He subsequently co-founded the influential magazine Cahiers du cinema in 1951 with two other colleagues, Lo Duca and Doniol-Valcroze.
A 4 volume set of Bazin writings was published and released after his death. Those volumes were titled Qu’est-ce que le cinema? (What is Cinema?) and released over the years 1958 to 1962. A selection of those essays was translated into English and published as two volumes, the first in the late 1960s and the other in the early 1970s.
These two volumes quickly became key texts among English-speaking cinema theorist. However, because Bazin was deceased, strict copyright laws inhibited updates and revisions. By the 1980s and 1990s, their their ongoing currency waned. In 2009, a small but specialist Canadian publisher of books on cinema, named Caboose, spotted an opportunity to take advantage of the relatively favorable copyright laws prevailing in Canada. Caboose arranged for new translations and annotations for the most important essays to be prepared by Timothy Barnard.
Not all Bazin views are supported by contemporary film studies scholars. He is nonetheless celebrated as an original thinker of his time. Francois Truffaut dedicated his The 400 Blows to Bazin who, coincidentally, died only one day after shooting for the movie started.
Tarintino had to start somewhere. Film school can open the door to a lucrative and enjoyable career. The industry requires hard work and long hours so get started at a Canadian Art Institute. If film does not interest you then try taking web design courses or photography courses.
