International Cinema Festival of India

Film Studies is an academic discipline focused on the critical appreciation of cinema as an art form as well as its role in, and impact on, culture and society. Some cinema theorists argue that its primary purpose is to understand how best to look at films and understand their meaning. The discipline forms part of the larger subject areas of media studies and cultural studies. The discipline is relatively new, its origins as a systematic body of thought dating back to the latter half of the twentieth century.

The field of study is comparatively new one dating back only a handful of decades to the latter part of last century. The explosive growth of movies and their powerful influence on pop culture has been a major factor driving interest in the subject. That interest has given birth to a large range of peer-reviewed, academic journals such as Cinema Journal, Journal of Film and Video plus the British journal Screen.

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.

Perhaps the most controversial of all of the views of Bazin on cinema was his support for appreciative criticism alone. He believed that only critics that liked a movie had a legitimate basis to review and assess it. Clearly this is a restrictive stance. It is also an extreme view all the more so since Bazin was himself a prominent critic.

These two volumes became key texts for many film courses in the English-speaking world, but were never updated or revised. In 2009, a specialist Canadian publisher of film texts, Caboose, spotted an opportunity to take advantage of the relatively favorable copyright laws prevailing in Canada. Caboose compiled fresh translations of many of the most important essays and published them as a new single-volume with annotations by translator Timothy Barnard. That text became the only corrected and annotated edition of the original Bazin writings.

One of the most controversial of Bazin views was perhaps his strong advocacy of appreciative or constructive criticism. He argued that only critics who liked a movie could legitimately review it, clearly a contentious and restrictive position. Interestingly, Bazin himself was a movie critic. Not all Bazin views are supported by contemporary film studies scholars.

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.