Anthology film

An anthology film (also known as an omnibus film, package film, or portmanteau film) is a subgenre of films consisting of several different short films, often tied together by only a single theme, premise, or brief interlocking event (often a turning point). Sometimes each one is directed by a different director. These differ from "revue films" such as Paramount on Parade (1930)—which were common in Hollywood in the early sound film era to show off their stars and related vaudeville-style acts—composite films, and compilation films.

Sometimes there is a theme, such as a place (e.g. New York Stories, Paris, je t'aime), a person (e.g. Four Rooms), or a thing (e.g. Twenty Bucks, Coffee and Cigarettes), that is present in each story and serves to bind them together. Two of the earliest films to use the form were Edmund Goulding's Grand Hotel (1932), released by MGM with an all-star cast; and Paramount's If I Had a Million (also 1932), featuring segments helmed by a number of directors.

Examples

European directors such as Roberto Rossellini directed anthology films such as L'Amore (segments: "Il Miracolo" and "Una voce umana") (1948), Les Sept péchés capitaux (segment: "Envie, L'Envy") (1952), Siamo donne (segment: "Ingrid Bergman") (1953), and Amori di mezzo secolo (segment: "Napoli 1943") (1954). American studios soon followed with films like Quartet (1948) based on stories by W. Somerset Maugham. This led to two sequels, Trio (1950) and Encore (1951), as well as imitators like O. Henry's Full House (1952) and Actor's and Sin (1952).

Sometimes there is one "top-level" story, a framing device, which leads into the various "sub-stories", as in Intolerance (1916), Tales of Manhattan (1942), Flesh and Fantasy (1943), Dead of Night (1945), and The Illustrated Man (1968). Dead of Night helped to popularize the format for horror films—although they had existed as far back as Unheimliche Geschichten (1919)—and British company Amicus made several such films in the 1960s and 1970s.

The 1989 film New York Stories consists of three segments directed by Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola and Woody Allen.

The Red Violin (1998) could also be considered a portmanteau film, since the storylines revolve around the various owners of a precious sixteenth-century violin through the centuries. Similarly, 1964's The Yellow Rolls-Royce follows the owners of the titular vehicle.

Gene Kelly's 1956 all-dance film Invitation to the Dance consisted of three distinct stories, each different in tone and with its own plot line. Kelly appeared in each of the stories as different characters.

Four Rooms is also an anthology film which follows the protagonist and his misadventures in four different rooms of a hotel. The four different segments (or rooms) were all directed by different directors.

Mohsen Abdolvahab's debut Please Do Not Disturb (2010) was a widely acclaimed tri-segmented Iranian anthology film.

Anthology films are often mistaken with hyperlink cinema. Hyperlink cinema shows bits of many stories throughout the movie, whereas anthology films show story segments of one at a time. Some mistaken examples include Pulp Fiction and Amores Perros, distributing their storylines non-chronologically, separated by segments.

V/H/S is a 2012 American anthology horror film created by Brad Miska and Bloody Disgusting. It features a series of five unrelated found-footage horror shorts tied together by a frame narrative. The film spawned two sequels, V/H/S/2 (2013), and V/H/S: Viral (2014), and a spin-off, SiREN (2016).

In India

Sirikkathe, a Tamil film released in 1939, is considered the first anthology film in India.

The 1961 Bengali film Teen Kanya by Satyajit Ray, based on three short stories by Rabindranath Tagore, belongs to this genre.

Chithramela, a Malayalam film directed by T. S. Muthaiah, and Kathasangama, a Kannada film directed by Puttanna Kanagal in 1975, are some of the earliest portmanteau films from India.

Recent Anthology films from Bollywood include Ram Gopal Varma's Darna Mana Hai and its sequel Darna Zaroori Hai. Dus Kahaniyaan is also a noted portmanteau film from Bollywood.

Love Sex aur Dhokha, directed by Dibakar Banerjee also belong to this genre of films. While the characters of the part 'Sex' work in the supermarket, the characters of 'Love' and 'Dhokha' visits the market and acquainted with the protagonists of 'Sex'.

In Kannada Cinema famous director S. R. Puttanna Kanagal's 1976 film Katha Sangama is the first attempt in making anthology films.But the audience did not accepted this movie.However today Katha Sangama counted as one of the cult movie in Kannada Cinema history.It is made by three different stories of different authors.

Recently in 2010, V. K. Prakash's Kannada movie Aidondla Aidu attracted people to theatres.People accepted the movie.He used author Jayaprakash Koloor's five stories in this movie.

An Indian Malayalam movie, Kerala Cafe (2009) includes 10 different stories packed up in a single movie by Ranjith, a well known Malayalam film director. The ten stories are directed by ten directors and more importantly, every film has a different team for its making. Another Malayalam Example is 5 Sundarikal which had 5 Different Short-Movies. It also pays tribute to Indian film industry on its centenary. Yauvanam/Vandikkari (1974) and Adoor Gopalakrishnan's Naalu Pennungal (2007) are two other portmanteau films in Malayalam.

Bombay Talkies is an Indian anthology film consisting of four short films, directed by Anurag Kashyap, Dibakar Banerjee, Zoya Akhtar and Karan Johar. The film was released on May 3, 2013, to mark the centenary year of Indian cinema.

Solo is a 2017 Indian bilingual anthology romantic thriller directed by Bejoy Nambiar, telling the story of four different people all played by Dulquer Salmaan, each story revolving around four different elements: Earth, Fire, Wind and Water, each with the different facets of Lord Shiva

In Assamese Cinema, Samiran Barua Ahi Ase was the first attempt to make a film based on Anthology consisting of four stories revolving around a leader of a terrorist outfit. Based on a story by Journalist Manoj Kumar Goswami and directed by Prodyut Kumar Deka, the film received official entry in the 12th Kolkata International film festival in 2012.

Ji Galpar Ses Nai is a 2018 upcoming Assamese Anthology film by three directors Prodyut Kumar Deka, Prasant Saikia and Utpal Datta. Loneliness links the three different films based on stories by Maupassant, Balzac and Homen Borgohain.

Package film

Package film is a film consisting of several short films, often a feature-length compilation of short subjects in animation.

See also

• Anthology series, in radio and television
• Composite film
• Hyperlink cinema
• Frame tale
• List of animated package films