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