Looking at Movies: Chapter 3
gangster movies
deeply rooted in the concept of the American dream
experimental movies
avant-garde movies that seek to defy categorization and convention not commercial films personal films do not conform to conventional expectations of story and narrative cause and effect exploit the possibilities of cinema and revel in instead all the tactile and mechanical qualities of motion pictures that conventional movies seek to obscure experimental movies remind you that you are watching movie, not immerse like narrative films critique culture and media invite individual interpretation
direct cinema
eschewing intereviewers and even limiting the use of narrators nonfiction fimmaking often filming events taking place
generic transformation
is the process by which a particular genre is adapted to meet the expectations of a changing society
genre
refers to the categorization of narrative films by the stories they tell and the ways they tell them
instructional films
seek to educate viewers about common interests, rather than persuading them to accept particular ideas
hybrid movies
the flexibility of film form has made cross-pollination among experimental, documentary, and narrative approaches as inevitable and desirable aspect of cinematic evolution
stream of consciousness
used by Maya Deren-one of the first major American experimental filmmakers a literary style that gained prominence in the 1920s in the hands of such writers as Marcel Proust, Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, and Dorothy Richardson that attempted to capture the unedited flow of experience through the mind
factual films
usually present people, places, or processes in straightforward ways meant to entertain and instruct without unduly influencing audiences
persuasive films
were originally called documentary films until the term evolved to refer to all nonfiction films
propaganda films
when persuasive documentaries are produced by governments and carry governments' messages which systematically disseminate deceptive or distorted information