User:Jhulty/Film criticism

Article Draft

Academic film criticism

More often known as film theory or film studies, academic critique explores cinema beyond journalistic film reviews. These film critics try to examine why film works, how it works aesthetically or politically, what it means, and what effects it has on people. Rather than write for mass-market publications their articles are usually published in scholarly journals and texts which tend to be affiliated with university presses; or sometimes in up-market magazines. Academic film criticism, or film studies can also be taught in academia, and is featured in many California colleges in the United States due to its established home of film: Hollywood. Some of these colleges include University of California, Davis, University of California, Berkeley, University of California, Los Angeles, Stanford University, as well as many other colleges across the world.

Academic criticism is typically divided and taught in the form of many different disciplines that tackle critique in different manors. These can include:

• Formalism, that analyzes the way that things are done and the appearance of their form or shape.
• Structuralism, that examines the way that movies are sequenced, have a dedicated style, and the way that language and art itself can create meaning.
• Historical, a form of criticism that doesn't look at the direct things being said, but the culture and surrounding environments of a given film. The historical critic will create meaning from something that is not explicitly stated or shown in the film.
• Psychoanalysis, that breaks down the unconscious that one can experience while observing a given film.
• Political and economic, which not only looks into how economics and politics are depicted directly inside the film, but also how it effects the films creation, marketing, screening, and sale.

Academic film criticism tackles many aspect of film making and production as well as distribution. These disciplines include camera work, digitalization, lighting, and sound. Narratives, dialogues, themes, and genres are among maty other things that academic film critics take into consideration and evaluate when engaging in critique.

Some notable academic film critics include André Bazin, Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut (all writers for Cahiers du Cinéma); Kristin Thompson, David Bordwell, and Sergei Eisenstein. Godard, Truffaut and Eisenstein were also film directors.