Portal:Film

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Film is a term that encompasses individual motion pictures, the field of film as an art form, and the motion picture industry. Films are produced by recording images from the world with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or special effects.

Film is 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. Films are also artifacts created by specific cultures, which reflect those cultures, and in turn, affect them.

Traditional films are made up of a series of individual images called frames. When these images are shown rapidly in succession, a viewer has the illusion that motion is occurring. The viewer cannot see the flickering between frames due to a combination of physiological and psychological effects. One is known as persistence of vision — whereby the eye retains a visual image for a fraction of a second after the source has been removed. Viewers also perceive motion due to psychological effects called beta movement and the phi phenomenon.

The origin of the name "film" comes from the fact that photographic film (also called film stock) has historically been the primary medium for recording and displaying motion pictures. Many other terms exist for an individual motion picture, including picture, picture show, photo-play, flick, and most commonly, movie. Additional terms for the field in general include the big screen, the silver screen, the cinema, and the movies.

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Featured article

Laurence Olivier, photo by Carl Van Vechten

Richard III is a 1955 British film adaptation of William Shakespeare's historical play Richard III. The film also contains elements of Shakespeare's Henry VI, part 3. It was directed by Laurence Olivier, who also played Richard. The cast includes many noted Shakespearean actors of the time, including a quartet of acting knights. The film depicts Richard plotting and conspiring to grasp the throne from his brother, King Edward, played by Cedric Hardwicke. In the process, many are killed and betrayed, with Richard's evil leading to his own downfall. The prologue of the film states that history without its legends would be "a dry matter indeed", thus the film admits that it is not portraying the actual events of the time, but rather the legend. Many critics now consider Olivier's Richard III his best screen version of Shakespeare. As well, the British Film Institute has called Olivier's rendition of the play "definitive" and that it has done more to popularise Shakespeare than any other single piece of work.

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Selected picture

Credit: Cinematographica

Filmstrip of one of the three Monkeyshines films produced by Thomas Edison's laboratory in 1889–90 for the early cylinder version of the Kinetoscope.

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Did you know...

...that the 1935 film Joymati, produced and directed by the noted Assam poet Jyotiprasad Agarwala, was the first-ever Assamese language film?
...that Gustaf Tenggren was a chief illustrator at the Disney Company when Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Bambi and Pinocchio were produced?
...that Mohamed Camara's 1997 film Dakan was the first West African film to explore homosexuality?

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News

Wikinews film portal

October 22: Canadian actress Barbara Kent dies at age 103
October 16: Iran continues to lash out at film industry
May 12: Actress Mia Amber Davis dies aged 36
March 11: Former adult film actress forced to leave teaching job again

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Featured biography

Preity Zinta at the Jaan-E-Mann and UFO tie-up party (2006)

Preity Zinta (Hindi: प्रीति ज़िंटा; born January 31, 1975) is an Indian film actress. She has appeared in Hindi films of Bollywood, as well as Telugu and English-language movies. After graduating with a degree in criminal psychology, Zinta made her acting debut in Dil Se in 1998 followed by a role in Soldier the same year. These performances earned her a Filmfare Best Female Debut Award, and she was later recognised for her role as a teenage single mother in Kya Kehna (2000). She would subsequently take on a variety of character types, and in doing so has been credited with changing the image of a Hindi film heroine. Zinta received her first Filmfare Best Actress Award in 2003 for her performance in the drama Kal Ho Naa Ho. She went on to play the lead female role in two consecutive annual top-grossing films in India: the science fiction film Koi... Mil Gaya, her biggest commercial success, and the star-crossed romance Veer-Zaara, which earned her critical acclaim. She was later noted for her portrayal of independent, modern Indian women in Salaam Namaste and Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna, top-grossing productions in overseas markets. These accomplishments have established her as a leading actress of Hindi cinema.

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Woody Allen is an American film director, writer, actor, jazz musician, comedian and playwright. He has contributed to many projects as either the writer, director, actor, or a combination of the three. Allen has also written four plays for the stage, including writing sketches to the Broadway revue From A to Z, and the Broadway productions Don't Drink the Water (1966) and Play It Again, Sam (1969). His first film was the 1965 comedy What's New Pussycat?, which featured Allen as both writer and performer. His directorial debut was the 1966 film What's Up, Tiger Lily?, in which a dramatic Japanese spy movie was re-dubbed in English with completely new, comic dialog. According to Box Office Mojo, Allen's films have grossed a total of more than $424 million, with an average of $12 million per film. In addition to works of fiction, Allen has appeared as himself in many documentaries and other works of non-fiction, including Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures, Wild Man Blues, and The Concert for New York City. He has also been the subject of and appeared in two documentaries about himself, To Woody Allen, From Europe with Love in 1980, and Woody Allen: A Life in Film in 2001. He also wrote for and contributed to a number of television series early in his career, including the The Tonight Show as guest host. Currently, all of the films he directed for United Artists and Orion Pictures between 1969 and 1992 are owned by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, which acquired both studios in separate transactions.

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Selected quote

Whereas money is a means to an end for a filmmaker, to the corporate mind money is the start. Right now, I think independent film is very confused, because there's excess pressure in the marketplace for entertainment to pay off. Entertainment has pervaded every system of information in our culture, and along with it comes the promise of money. So it's hard for artists not to keep half an eye on what works commercially as they go about realizing their visions. As a young filmmaker, you've got to deliver, and you've got to deliver fast these days; that wasn't the case twenty years ago.

— Robert Redford, 1997

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