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Cinema of Europe

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Entrance to Cinecittà in Rome, Italy, the largest film studio in Europe.[1]

Cinema of Europe refers to the film industries and films produced in the continent of Europe. The history of Italian cinema began a few months after the French Lumière brothers, who made the first public screening of a film on 28 December 1895, an event considered the birth of cinema, began motion picture exhibitions.[2][3] The first Italian director is considered to be Vittorio Calcina, a collaborator of the Lumière Brothers, who filmed Pope Leo XIII in 1896. The Lumière brothers established the Cinematograph; which initiated the silent film era, a period where European cinema was a major commercial success. It remained so until the art-hostile environment of World War II.[4] These notable discoveries provide a glimpse of the power of early European cinema and its long-lasting influence on cinema today.

Notable European early film movements include German expressionism (1920s), Soviet montage (1920s), French impressionist cinema (1920s), and Italian neorealism (1940s); it was a period now seen in retrospect as "The Other Hollywood". War has triggered the birth of Art and in this case, the birth of cinema.

German expressionism evoked people's emotions through strange, nightmare-like visions and settings, heavily stylised and extremely visible to the eye. Soviet montage shared similarities too and created famous film edits known as the Kino-eye effect, Kuleshov effect and intellectual montage.

French impressionist cinema has crafted the essence of cinematography, as France was a film pioneering country that showcased the birth of cinema using the medium invented by the Lumière brothers. Italian neorealism designed the vivid reality through a human lens by creating low budget films outside directly on the streets of Italy. All film movements were heavily influenced by the war but that played as a catalyst to drive the cinema industry to its most potential in Europe.

The notable movements throughout early European cinema featured stylistic conventions, prominent directors and historical films that have influenced modern cinema until today. Below you will find a list of directors, films, film awards, film festivals and actors that were stars born from these film movements.

History

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20th century

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The Babelsberg Studio near Berlin, Germany, was the first large-scale film studio in the world (founded 1912) and still produces international movies every year.

According to one study, "In the 1900s the European film industry was in good shape. European film companies pioneered both technological innovations such as projection, colour processes, and talking pictures, and content innovations such as the weekly newsreel, the cartoon, the serial, and the feature film. They held a large share of the US market, which at times reached 60 percent.

The French film companies were quick in setting up foreign production and distribution subsidiaries in European countries and the US and dominated international film distribution before the mid-1910s. By the early 1920s, all this had changed. The European film industry only held a marginal share of the US market and a small share of its home markets. Most large European companies sold their foreign subsidiaries and exited from film production at home, while the emerging Hollywood studios built their foreign distribution networks."[5]

The European Film Academy was founded in 1988 to celebrate European cinema through the European Film Awards annually.

When Europeans go the cinema, what do they watch? (1996–2016)[6]
  US Films (56%)
  European films (25%)
  US/European co-productions (17%)
  Other films (2%)

Europa Cinemas

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Founded in 1992 with funding from the MEDIA programme Creative Europe and from the CNC, France, Europa Cinemas is the first film theatre network focusing on European films. Its objective is to provide operational and financial support to cinemas that commit themselves to screen a significant number of European non-national films, to offer events and initiatives as well as promotional activities targeted at young audiences.[7] With the support of Eurimages and the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the influence of Europa Cinemas extends to Eastern European countries, to Balkans, Eastern Europe, Russia and Turkey.

As of September 2020, Europa Cinemas had 3,131 screens across 1,216 cinemas, located in 738 cities and 43 countries.[7]

21st century

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On 2 February 2000 Philippe Binant realised the first digital cinema projection in Europe, with the DLP Cinema technology developed by Texas Instruments, in Paris.[8][9][10]

Today US productions dominate the European market. On average European films are distributed in only two or three countries; US productions in nearly ten.[11][12] The top ten most watched films in Europe between 1996 and 2016 were all US productions or co-productions. Excluding US productions, the most watched movie in that period was The Intouchables, a French production, like most of the other movies in the top ten.[6] In 2016–2017 the only (partially) European film in the top ten of the most watched films in Europe was Dunkirk. Excluding it (which was a Netherlands, UK, France and US co-production[13]) the European film with the best results was Paddington 2, which sold 9.1 million tickets.[14]

French cinema

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The rise of movement/film era

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Lumiére brothers

Like the other forms of art, film cinema portrays the authenticity that faces several people. France can be considered one of the main pioneers of the entire global film industry. The proof of this claim that between 1895 – 1905 France invented the concept of cinema when the Lumière brothers first film screened on 28 December 1895, called The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat Station, in Paris.[15]

It lasted only 50 seconds but it launched and gave birth to the new medium of expression in the film industry. Lumiére from France has been credited since 1895 and was recognized as the discoverer of the motion camera.[15] However, despite other inventors preceding him, his achievement is often believed to be in the perspective of this creative era.[16]

Lumiere's suitcase-sized cinematography, which was movable served as a film dispensation unit, camera, and projector all in one. During the 1890s, film cinemas became a few minutes long and commenced to consist of various shots too.[17] Other pioneers were also French including Niépce, Daguerre, and Marey, during the 1880s they were able to combine science and art together to launch the film industry.[15]

The pioneers of the French film were influenced by their historical heritage stemming from the need to express the narrative of a nation. The 19th century in France was a period of nationalism launched by the French Revolution (1789–1792).[18] Marey (1830- 1904) invented the photo gun (1882) which was developed to function and be able to have a photographic paper of 150 images in motion.[18] Emile Reynaud 1844-1918 was the founding father of animation.

The short-animated film Pantomimes Lumineuses exhibited during 1892 at the Musee Grevin was developed as a result of his invention, the Praxinoscope projector. This invention brought together colour and hand-drawn drawings.[18] Film Company was established as France's first film studio before Pathe Film Studio and founded by Gaumont (1864-1946).[15] In 1907, Gaumont was the largest movie studio in the world, it also prompted the work of the first female filmmaker Guy-Blachéwho created the film L'enfant de la barricade.[15]

Praxinoscope invented by Reynaud

Pre-and Post-World War I French Cinema

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The pre-World War I period marked the influences of France's historical past with film not only galvanizing a period of advances in science and engineering but a need for a film to become a platform to explore the narrative of their culture and in doing so created a narcissistic platform.[18] Before World War I, French and Italian cinema dominated the European cinema. Zecca, the director general at Pathé Frères perfected the comic version of the chase film which was inspired by Keystone Kops.[19] Besides, Max Linder created a comic persona that profoundly influenced Charlie Chaplin's work.[19]

Other films that began pre-war in France also included The Assassination of the Duke of Guise as well as the film d'art movement in 1908.[20] These films depicted the realities of human life especially within the European society.[20] Moreover, French film produced costume spectacles that raised attention and brought global prominence before the start of World War I.[20]

Approximately 70% of the global films were imported from Paris studios from Éclair, Gaumont, and Pathe before the war.[21] However, as WWI commenced, the French film industry declined during the war because it lost many of its resources which were drained away to support the war. Besides, WWI blocked the exportation of French films forcing it to reduce large productions to pay attention to low finance film-making.[17]

However, in the years that followed the war, American films increasingly entered the French market because the American film industry was not affected by the war as much. This meant that a total of 70% of Hollywood films were screened in France.[17] During this period, the French film industry faced a crisis as the number of its produced features decreased and they were surpassed by their competitors including the United States of America and Germany.[15]

Post World War II French cinema

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After the end of World War II, the French cinema art commenced its formation of the modern image as well as recognizing its after-impacts. Following the establishment and growth of the American and German film industries during the post-WWI era as well as during Great Depression.[17] Many German and American movies had taken the stage of the French and global market.[17] Moreover, during WWII, the French film industry focused mainly on the production of anti-Nazi movies especially during the late 1940s as the war came to an end.[15]

After this era, French film industry directors commenced addressing the issues affecting humanism as well focused on the production of high-eminence entertaining films.[20] In addition, the screening of French literary classics involved La Charterhouse and Rouge et le Noir attained spread great fame across the globe. Besides, Nowell-Smith (2017) asserts that one of the core cinema works that gained popularity during that period was Resnais' directed movie, Mon Amour.[17] This led to Cannes hosting their first international film festival receiving the annual status.

Styles and conventions in French cinema

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The French New Wave which was accompanied by its cinematic forms led to a fresh look to the French cinema. The cinema had improvised dialogue, swift scene changes and shots that went past the standard 180 degrees axis. Besides, the camera was not utilized to captivate the audience with a detailed narrative and extreme visuals but instead was used to play with the anticipations of the cinema.[19] Classically, conventions highlighted tense control over the film making procedure. Besides, the New Wave intentionally shunned this. Movies were usually shot in public locations with invented dialogue and plots built on the fly.[20]

In several means, it appeared sloppy, but it also captured an enthusiasm and impulsiveness that no famous film could expect to equate.[20] Moreover, the filmmakers of the French New Wave usually abandoned the utilization of remixing their sound.[16] Instead, they utilized a naturalist soundtrack recorded during the capture and illustrated unaltered even though it included intrusions and mistakes. Besides, it lent the film a sense of freshness and energy like their other skills that were not in past films.[16] They used hand-held cameras which could shoot well in tight quarters generating a familiarity that more costly and more burdensome cameras could not rival.[16] A majority of the New Wave films used long, extended shots which were facilitated by these kinds of cameras.[17] Lastly, French films used jump cuts which threw the viewers out of the onscreen drama, unlike the traditional film making.

Avant-garde

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This was the French impressionist cinema which denotes to a cluster of French movies and filmmakers of the 1920s. These filmmakers, however, are believed to be responsible for producing cinemas that defined cinema.[22] The movement happened between 1918 and 1930 a period that saw rapid growth and change of the French and global cinema. One of the main stimulations behind the French impressionist avant-garde was to discover the impression of "pure cinema" and to style film into an art form, and as an approach of symbolism and demonstration rather than merely telling a story.[23]

This avant-garde highlighted the association amongst realism and the camera. This was a result of "photogenie", Epstien's conception on discovering the impression of reality specifically through the camera, emphasizing the fact that it portrays personality in film.[23] The obvious film techniques utilized by the French impressionist avant-garde are slow-motion, soft-focus, dissolves, and image alteration to develop the creative expression.[23]

Prominent French impressionist film directors

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Famous French impressionist films

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Italian cinema

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Marcello Mastroianni in (1963) by Federico Fellini, considered to be one of the greatest films of all time[24]

Italy is the most awarded country at the Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film, with 14 wins, 3 Special Awards and 31 nominations.[25] As of 2016, Italian films have won 12 Palmes d'Or,[26] 11 Golden Lions,[27] and 7 Golden Bears.[28] The country is also famed for its prestigious Venice Film Festival, the oldest film festival in the world, held annually since 1932 and awarding the Golden Lion;[29] In 2008 the Venice Days ("Giornate degli Autori"), a section held in parallel to the Venice Film Festival, has produced in collaboration with Cinecittà studios and the Ministry of Cultural Heritage a list of a 100 films that have changed the collective memory of the country between 1942 and 1978: the "100 Italian films to be saved".

Futurist cinema

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Thaïs by Anton Giulio Bragaglia (1917)

Italian futurist cinema was the oldest movement of European avant-garde cinema.[30] Italian futurism, an artistic and social movement, impacted the Italian film industry from 1916 to 1919.[31] It influenced Russian Futurist cinema[32] and German Expressionist cinema.[33] Its cultural importance was considerable and influenced all subsequent avant-gardes, as well as some authors of narrative cinema; its echo expands to the dreamlike visions of some films by Alfred Hitchcock.[34]

Futurism emphasized dynamism, speed, technology, youth, violence, and objects such as the car, the airplane, and the industrial city. Its key figures were the Italians Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Umberto Boccioni, Carlo Carrà, Fortunato Depero, Gino Severini, Giacomo Balla, and Luigi Russolo. It glorified modernity and aimed to liberate Italy from the weight of its past.[35]

The 1916 Manifesto of Futuristic Cinematography was signed by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Armando Ginna, Bruno Corra, Giacomo Balla and others. To the Futurists, cinema was an ideal art form, being a fresh medium, and able to be manipulated by speed, special effects and editing. Most of the futuristic-themed films of this period have been lost, but critics cite Thaïs (1917) by Anton Giulio Bragaglia as one of the most influential, serving as the main inspiration for German Expressionist cinema in the following decade.

The Italian film industry struggled against rising foreign competition in the years following World War I.[36] Several major studios, among them Cines and Ambrosio, formed the Unione Cinematografica Italiana to coordinate a national strategy for film production. This effort was largely unsuccessful, however, due to a wide disconnect between production and exhibition (some movies weren't released until several years after they were produced).[37]

Neorealism

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Vittorio De Sica, a leading figure in the neorealist movement and one of the world's most acclaimed and influential filmmakers of all time.[38]

By the end of World War II, the Italian "neorealist" movement had begun to take shape. Neorealist films typically dealt with the working class (in contrast to the Telefoni Bianchi), and were shot on location. Many neorealist films, but not all, used non-professional actors. Though the term "neorealism" was used for the first time to describe Luchino Visconti’s 1943 film, Ossessione, there were several important precursors to the movement, most notably Camerini's What Scoundrels Men Are! (1932), which was the first Italian film shot entirely on location, and Blasetti's 1942 film, Four Steps in the Clouds.[39]

Roberto Rossellini and Mario Monicelli winning the Golden Lion for General Della Rovere and The Great War respectively.

Ossessione angered Fascist officials. Upon viewing the film, Vittorio Mussolini is reported to have shouted, "This is not Italy!" before walking out of the theatre.[40] The film was subsequently banned in the Fascist-controlled parts of Italy. While neorealism exploded after the war and was incredibly influential at the international level, neorealist films made up only a small percentage of Italian films produced during this period, as postwar Italian moviegoers preferred escapist comedies starring actors such as Totò and Alberto Sordi.[39]

Neorealist works such as Roberto Rossellini's trilogy Rome, Open City (1945), Paisà (1946), and Germany, Year Zero (1948), with professional actors such as Anna Magnani and a number of non-professional actors, attempted to describe the difficult economic and moral conditions of postwar Italy and the changes in public mentality in everyday life. Visconti's The Earth Trembles (1948) was shot on location in a Sicilian fishing village and used local non-professional actors. Giuseppe De Santis, on other hand, used actors such as Silvana Mangano and Vittorio Gassman in his 1949 film, Bitter Rice, which is set in the Po Valley during rice-harvesting season.

Poetry and cruelty of life were harmonically combined in the works that Vittorio De Sica wrote and directed together with screenwriter Cesare Zavattini: among them, Shoeshine (1946), The Bicycle Thief (1948) and Miracle in Milan (1951). The 1952 film Umberto D. showed a poor old man with his little dog, who must beg for alms against his dignity in the loneliness of the new society. This work is perhaps De Sica's masterpiece and one of the most important works in Italian cinema.[41] It was not a commercial success[41] and since then it has been shown on Italian television only a few times. Yet it is perhaps the most violent attack, in the apparent quietness of the action, against the rules of the new economy, the new mentality, the new values, and it embodies both a conservative and a progressive view.[41]

Although Umberto D. is considered the end of the neorealist period, later films such as Federico Fellini's La Strada (1954) and De Sica's 1960 film Two Women (for which Sophia Loren won the Oscar for Best Actress) are grouped with the genre. Director Pier Paolo Pasolini's first film, Accattone (1961), shows a strong neorealist influence.[39] Italian neorealist cinema influenced filmmakers around the world, and helped inspire other film movements, such as the French New Wave and the Polish Film School. The Neorealist period is often simply referred to as "The Golden Age" of Italian cinema by critics, filmmakers, and scholars.

Commedia all'Italiana

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Divorce Italian Style by Pietro Germi (1961)

Commedia all'italiana ("Comedy in the Italian way") is an Italian film genre born in Italy in the 1950s and developed in the following 1960s and 1970s. It is widely considered to have started with Mario Monicelli's Big Deal on Madonna Street in 1958[44] and derives its name from the title of Pietro Germi's Divorce Italian Style, 1961.[45] According to most of the critics, La Terrazza by Ettore Scola (1980) is the last work considered part of the Commedia all'italiana.[46][47][48]

Rather than a specific genre, the term indicates a period (approximately from the late 1950s to the early 1970s) in which the Italian film industry was producing many successful comedies, with some common traits like satire of manners, farcical and grotesque overtones, a strong focus on "spicy" social issues of the period (like sexual matters, divorce, contraception, marriage of the clergy, the economic rise of the country and its various consequences, the traditional religious influence of the Catholic Church) and a prevailing middle-class setting, often characterized by a substantial background of sadness and social criticism that diluted the comic contents.[49]

Be Sick... It's Free by Luigi Zampa (1968)

The genre of Commedia all'italiana differs markedly from the light and disengaged comedy from the so-called "pink neorealism" trend, in vogue until all of the 1950s, since, starting from the lesson of neorealism, is based on a more frank adherence in writing to reality; therefore, alongside the comic situations and plots typical of traditional comedy, always combines, with irony, a biting and sometimes bitter satire of manners, which reflects the evolution of Italian society in those years.[49]

My Friends by Mario Monicelli (1975)

The success of films belonging to the "Commedia all'italiana" genre is due both to the presence of an entire generation of great actors, who knew how to masterfully embody the vices and virtues, and the attempts at emancipation but also the vulgarities of the Italians of the time, both to the careful work of directors, storytellers and screenwriters, who invented a real genre, with essentially new connotations, managing to find precious material for their cinematographic creations in the folds of a rapid evolution with many contradictions.[49]

Among the actors the main representatives are Alberto Sordi, Ugo Tognazzi, Vittorio Gassman, Marcello Mastroianni and Nino Manfredi,[50] while among the actresses is Monica Vitti.[51] Among directors and films, in 1961 Dino Risi directed Una vita difficile (A Difficult Life), then Il Sorpasso (The Easy Life), now a cult-movie, followed by: I Mostri (The Monsters, also known as 15 From Rome), In nome del popolo italiano (In the Name of the Italian People) and Profumo di donna (Scent of a Woman). Monicelli's works include La grande guerra (The Great War), I compagni (The Organizer), L'armata Brancaleone, Vogliamo i colonnelli (We Want the Colonels), Romanzo popolare (Come Home and Meet My Wife) and the Amici miei (My Friends) series.

For the majority of critics the true and proper "Commedia all'italiana" is to be considered definitively waned since the beginning of the 1980s, giving way, at most, to an "Commedia italiana" ("Italian comedy").[52]

Spaghetti Western

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Sergio Leone, widely regarded as one of the most influential directors in the history of cinema.[53][54]

On the heels of the sword-and-sandal craze, a related genre, the Spaghetti Western arose and was popular both in Italy and elsewhere. These films differed from traditional westerns by being filmed in Europe on limited budgets, but featured vivid cinematography. The term was used by foreign critics because most of these westerns were produced and directed by Italians.[55]

The most popular Spaghetti Westerns were those of Sergio Leone, credited as the inventor of the genre,[56][57] whose Dollars Trilogy (1964's A Fistful of Dollars, an unauthorized remake of the Japanese film Yojimbo by Akira Kurosawa; 1965's For a Few Dollars More, an original sequel; and 1966's The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, a World-famous prequel), featuring Clint Eastwood as a character marketed as "the Man with No Name" and notorious scores by Ennio Morricone, came to define the genre along with Once Upon a Time in the West (1968).

Another popular Spaghetti Western film is Sergio Corbucci Django (1966), starring Franco Nero as the titular character, another Yojimbo plagiarism, produced to capitalize on the success of A Fistful of Dollars. The original Django was followed by both an authorized sequel (1987's Django Strikes Again) and an overwhelming number of unauthorized uses of the same character in other films.

Giallo

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Mario Bava, referred to as the "Master of Italian Horror"[58] and the "Master of the Macabre".[59]
Dario Argento, referred to as the "Master of the Thrill"[60] and the "Master of Horror".[61]

During the 1960s and 1970s, Italian filmmakers Mario Bava, Riccardo Freda, Antonio Margheriti and Dario Argento developed giallo (plural gialli, from giallo, Italian for "yellow") horror films that become classics and influenced the genre in other countries. Representative films include: The Girl Who Knew Too Much (1963), Castle of Blood (1964), The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1970), Twitch of the Death Nerve (1971), Deep Red (1975) and Suspiria (1977).

Giallo is a genre of mystery fiction and thrillers and often contains slasher, crime fiction, psychological thriller, psychological horror, sexploitation, and, less frequently, supernatural horror elements.[62] Giallo developed in the mid-to-late 1960s, peaked in popularity during the 1970s, and subsequently declined in commercial mainstream filmmaking over the next few decades, though examples continue to be produced. It was a predecessor to, and had significant influence on, the later American slasher film genre.[63]

Giallo usually blends the atmosphere and suspense of thriller fiction with elements of horror fiction (such as slasher violence) and eroticism (similar to the French fantastique genre), and often involves a mysterious killer whose identity is not revealed until the final act of the film. Most critics agree that the giallo represents a distinct category with unique features,[64] but there is some disagreement on what exactly defines a giallo film.[65]

The Girl Who Knew Too Much by Mario Bava (1963), considered by most critics to be the first giallo film.[66]

Giallo films are generally characterized as gruesome murder-mystery thrillers that combine the suspense elements of detective fiction with scenes of shocking horror, featuring excessive bloodletting, stylish camerawork and often jarring musical arrangements. The archetypal giallo plot involves a mysterious, black-gloved psychopathic killer who stalks and butchers a series of beautiful women.[67] While most gialli involve a human killer, some also feature a supernatural element.[68]

The typical giallo protagonist is an outsider of some type, often a traveller, tourist, outcast, or even an alienated or disgraced private investigator, and frequently a young woman, often a young woman who is lonely or alone in a strange or foreign situation or environment (gialli rarely or less frequently feature law enforcement officers as chief protagonists).[68][69]

The protagonists are generally or often unconnected to the murders before they begin and are drawn to help find the killer through their role as witnesses to one of the murders.[68] The mystery is the identity of the killer, who is often revealed in the climax to be another key character, who conceals his or her identity with a disguise (usually some combination of hat, mask, sunglasses, gloves, and trench coat).[70] Thus, the literary whodunit element of the giallo novels is retained, while being filtered through horror genre elements and Italy's long-standing tradition of opera and staged grand guignol drama. The structure of giallo films is also sometimes reminiscent of the so-called "weird menace" pulp magazine horror mystery genre alongside Edgar Allan Poe and Agatha Christie.[71]

German expressionism

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German expressionism surfaced as a German art movement in the early 20th century. The focus of this movement was at the inner ideas and feelings of the artists over the replication of facts. Some of the characteristic features of German expressionism were bright colours and simplified shapes, brushstrokes and gestural marks. The two different inspirations of film style that German expressionism drives from are horror films and film Noir.

Prominent German expressionism directors

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Director Fritz Lang has been cited as one of the most influential filmmakers of all time.[72]
Nosferatu (1922) directed by F.W. Murnau. Critic and historian Kim Newman declared it as a film that set the template for the genre of horror film.[73]
Metropolis (1927), directed by Fritz Lang, first film to be inscribed on UNESCO's Memory of the World Register

Famous German expressionism films:

World War I

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The German film industry was not ready when the First World War started. In the initial days of the war's outbreak, nearly everyone in the industry was unsafe. First few victories achieved in the west changed the mood of the Germans and they became more patriotic.

As a result of this, owners of movie theaters in Germany decided to remove all English and French films from the repertoire of German movies. Around the same time, as borders underwent separation because of war and the international trade was closed, Germans couldn't really connect with the international cinema for almost a decade. Around the time July 1914 ended, there were a lot of movies in the German market.[74]

However, as the First World War started, many enemy states temporarily banned the films, and censorship decrees were introduced. All of these factors collectively caused an acute dearth of feature films. German film producers started supporting war programs of patriotic nature around the end of August 1914.

Movies started to contain scenes illustrating war-related ideas shaped by history, and the scenes were deemed historically true representation of reality. Such a depiction of war addressed all needs of classical communication criteria, so they met with economic success. Producers started making movies on many other subjects around the start of 1915. A common theme of all those movies was a successful journey of the protagonist through the war that comes as a test in the way of final destination.[74]

Censorship

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While there were heavy regulations placed on the press releases, no uniform rules existed for the censorship of picture. During the course of the First World War, censors which were enacted newly also placed a ban on the movies that had been approved for production already as they were deemed unsuitable for the war. Censorship in that time was very decentralized and it deterred the surfacing of a concerted film market in Germany.[75]

The first movie company of Germany to be allowed to shoot the scenes of war officially was EIKO-film. The permission was granted on 2 September 1914.[75] However, first war movies made by EIKO-film were confiscated by the Berlin police on 12 September 1914 because of the doubts of surveillance. Such confiscation had also been observed in certain other areas of the country. It was in October 1914 when the cinemas got their first war newsreel.[75] But the engagement of theater operators in the occupied territories' military service limited film viewing. The collective effect of these limitations and censorship caused a decrease in war cinematography.

Post World War I

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Unlike the war movies made in the war's initial phases, the focus of directors and producers in the war's aftermath increasingly shifted towards feature films. This laid the basis of more professional movie production. Along with that, a national movie culture started to be expressed after the war. With the increased demand for German movies, many new film making companies emerged.[75] It was a time of continuous expansion of the Berlin film industry.

From the mid-1915, German producers started making detective film series but failed to meet the demand even though they were also making serial productions related to other genres. Owing to the censorship laws and legal restrictions, the French and British movies obtained before the First World War continued to be shown in most cinemas of Germany in 1915 till a ban was imposed on them. Therefore, operators of cinemas looked for movies made by producers from neutral countries.[75]

There was a single cause of official propaganda during the initial half of the war as per the German government. The meaning and significance of war had become quite questionable by the year 1916 with the commencement of a re-evaluation of movies. Directors and producers started to consider designs suitable for the period after the end of the war.

Owing to the growing dissatisfaction of people with the military situation and increasing shortage of food, the military, and the state resolved to establish the Universum-Film AG (Ufa) on 18 December 1917.[75] It was a commercially oriented new movie making company that was found with the purpose to make feature films with just concealed propaganda.[75] The purpose to be served by these feature films was to stabilize the wartime morale and boost it.

The founders wanted to feature civilian, non-warlike and inoffensive material in the films to play a part in the victory by drawing people's attention away from the war. the First World War played an important role in the growth as well as technical changes in the laws and operation of cinema in Germany. German producers have made many artistic and technical contributions to early film technology.

Soviet cinema

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Soviet Union cinema consisted of movies created by the constituent republics of the Soviet Union. Predominantly produced in the Russian language, the films reflect pre-Soviet elements including the history, language, and culture of the Union. It is different from the Russian cinema, even though the central government in Moscow regulated the movies.

Among their republican films, Georgia, Armenia, Ukraine, and Azerbaijan were the most productive. Moldavia, Belarus, and Lithuania have also been prominent but to a lesser extent. The film industry was completely nationalized for a major part of the history of the country. It was governed by the laws and philosophies advocated by the Soviet Communist Party that brought a revolutionized perspective of the cinema in the form of "social realism" that contrasted with the view that was in place before the Soviet Union or even after it.[76]

The Russians had an instinct for film-making from the very start. The first film dramatized by the Russians was made in the year 1908, which gives the Russian cinematography the status of one of the oldest industries in the world. There were more than 1300 cinemas in Russia till the year 1913 and the country had produced over 100 movies which had a profound influence on the film making of the American and European origin.[77]

Censorship

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Films in the Soviet Union started to be censored especially ever since November 1917 when the People's Commissariat of Education was created.[78] It was almost a month after the Soviet state was itself established. After the Bolsheviks gained strength in the Soviet Union in the year 1917, they had a major deficit of political legitimacy. Political foundations were uneasy and the cinema played an important role in the protection of the USSR's existence.

Movies played a central role at that time since they served to convince the masses about the legitimacy of the regime and their status as the bearers of historical facts. Some of the prominent movies of the time include The Great Citizen and Circus. A film committee was set up in March 1919 to establish a school view a view to training the technicians and actors so that a modest movie production schedule would be commenced. The committee was headed by a long-term Bolshevik party's member D.I. Leshchenko, In addition to looking after and ensuring the correctness of genres and themes of the film companies, Leshchenko also worked to deter the flaring up of anti-Soviet movie propaganda. It was particularly important because of the war communism in that era.

The documentaries and features of Soviet cinema thrived at their best in the 1920s. Filmmakers enthusiastically engaged themselves in the development of the first socialist state of the world. Rather than having to create money for the Hollywood film industry, the filmmakers saw this as an opportunity to focus on the education of people of the new Soviet. The first leader of the country to become the USSR and founder of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution – Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, visualized the cinema as a technological art that was best suited for a state established on the basis of the conversion of humanity by means of technology and industry.[16] Cinema took the position of the most valuable form means of art production and propagation across masses. The decade is known for experimentation with different styles of movie-making.

The 1920s

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Mary Pickford

During the 1920s, the USSR was getting a New Economic Policy. It was a decade when certain industries had a relaxed state control that provided people with a sense of mini-capitalism inside the Communist economy. That was a time of prosperity of the private movie theaters, and together with it, the whole Soviet movie industry thrived. American movies had a major influence on the Russians, unlike Soviet productions. Many Hollywood stars like Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks were idolized as heroes.

The heroic Fairbanks became a sex symbol and the contemporary star system got popularity with Pickford. The Soviet reaction to the Hollywood influence was a mix of repulsion and admiration. Near the end of 1924, Sovkino and ARK were established which were two organizations that influenced the cinema of the Soviet Union the most in the decade.[76] That was a time when the ambitious, zealous, and young film community members had bright plans for the film industry. Their efforts were directed at making the processes of production and distribution more effective and organized and raising the status of workers in the industry. In other words, they tried to publicize the cinema.

Jolly Fellows (1934) directed by Sergei Eisenstein

Prominent Soviet cinema directors

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Famous Soviet cinema films

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Film festivals

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The Venice Film Festival, Italy, is the oldest film festival in the world.[79]

The "Big Three" film festivals are:[80][81]

In particular, the Venice Film Festival, held annually since 1932 and awarding the Golden Lion, is the oldest film festival in the world.[79]

Others

Film awards

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Directors

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French
Belgian
British
Italian
German
Russian
Danish
Swedish
Polish
Dutch
Turkish
Austrian
Other

Cinematographer

[edit]
French
Belgian
British
Italian
German
Dutch

Actors

[edit]

Films

[edit]

See also

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References

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  80. ^ Bordwell, David (2005). Figures Traced in Light: On Cinematic Staging. University of California Press. p. 144. ISBN 9780520241978. Because reputations were made principally on the festival circuit, the filmmaker had to find international financing and distribution and settle for minor festivals before arriving at one of the Big Three (Berlin, Cannes, Venice).
  81. ^ Wong, Cindy Hing-Yuk (2011). Film Festivals: Culture, People, and Power on the Global Screen. Rutgers University Press. p. 5. ISBN 9780813551104. Whether we talk about the Big Three festivals—Cannes, Venice, Berlin—look at Sundance, Tribeca, and Toronto in North America, or examine other significant world festivals in Hong Kong, Pusan, Locarno, Rotterdam, San Sebastián, and Mar del Plata, the insistent global icons of all festivals are films, discoveries, auteurs, stars, parties, and awards.
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