Concept
Film
Overview
A film, movie, or motion picture is a work of visual art that simulates experiences and otherwise communicates ideas, stories, perceptions, emotions, or atmosphere through the use of moving images that are generally, since the 1930s, synchronized with sound and sometimes feature other sensory stimuli.
Films are produced by recording people and objects with cameras or by creating them using animation techniques and special effects. They comprise a series of individual frames, but when these images are shown rapidly in succession, the illusion of motion is seen by the viewer. Flickering between frames is not noticeable due to an effect traditionally known as persistence of vision, and now more specifically known as flicker fusion, whereby the visual system processes a sufficiently fast succession of pictures and interruptions into a steady image of averaged brightness.
Films are widely considered to be an important art form; films entertain, educate, enlighten, and inspire audiences. The visual elements of cinema need no translation, giving the motion picture a universal power of communication. Any film can become a worldwide attraction, especially with the addition of dubbing or subtitles that translate the dialogue. Films are also artifacts created by specific cultures, which reflect those cultures, and, in turn, affect them.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
Found by search and not yet checked by a person; they may only mention the idea in passing.
Among CXP's findings concerning the production of microfilm from digital files, KENNEY reported that the digital files for the same Reed lecture were used to produce sample film using an electron beam recorder. The resulting film was faithful to the image capture of the digital files, and while CXP felt that the text and image pages represented in the Reed lecture were superior to that of the light-lens film, the…
Library of Congress, Workshop on Electronic Texts
Names Film several times; opens on Film.
But when these same particles, refined by putrefaction, enter into the narrow veins, and are duly proportioned to the particles of earth and air which are there, they set them whirling about one another, and while they are in a whirl cause them to dash against and enter into one another, and so form hollows surrounding the particles that enter—which watery vessels of air (for a film of moisture, sometimes earthy…
Plato, Timaeus
States what Film is; names Film.
Further, our eye-balls tend to flee the bright And shun to gaze thereon; the sun even blinds, If thou goest on to strain them unto him, Because his strength is mighty, and the films Heavily downward from on high are borne Through the pure ether and the viewless winds, And strike the eyes, disordering their joints. So piecing lustre often burns the eyes, Because it holdeth many seeds of fire Which, working into eyes…
Titus Lucretius Carus, On the Nature of Things
Names Film several times; opens on Film.
Philosophers who discussed Film
Related ideas
- Film theory
- Ferdinand de Saussure
- Artificial intelligence
- Hindi
- Internet
- Analytic philosophy
- Jacques Lacan
- Dialogue
- Language
- Ludwig Wittgenstein
- Translation
- Literature
- Culture
- Mumbai
- Middle East
- Realism (arts)
- Photography
- Silent film
- Semiotics
- Thomas Edison
- Technology
- Theory
- Berlin
- Visual arts
Opposing perspectives
Place in the tradition
Part of Aesthetics.