art cinema

art cinema

1. The ideologies and institutions of art have classified art cinema in a specific category to qualify for the status such as auteur, anti-commercial purity, aesthetic disinterest, and authorship. The art cinema was confined to these ideologies and institutions for a long time, thus making art a traditional genre. The ideologies required that a cinema to be considered as art it should not have any commercial elements. This categorization of art cinema has elicited partial views because art is broad, and there should not be a set guideline that should highlight art according to traditional genres such as neorealism or the new wave. Sarri (2007) says that “…The auteur theory, if a director has no technical competence, no elementary flair for the cinema, he is automatically cast out from the pantheon of directors” (562). This shows that defining art cinema was not merely canons or use of auteurism, and more was required for a movie to be considered an art cinema. The classification of art cinema that it should only contain predictable milieus be closed on a historical period, style, and narrative make it only partial in explaining what it means to be an art cinema.
2. David Argues that art cinema should not be confined in a specific category, which has been the case for a very long time where individual evaluators have consistently defined features that make a movie artistic. The partiality in visualizing the art cinema has been restricted to reductive generalities, which makes it undertheorized, thus lacking logical unification in defining what art cinema should contain. Case in point, the movie Eyes Wide Shut shows a rather modern depiction of art cinema with a traditional form of grotesque art (Kubrick, 1999, 1:15:53). The constraints imposed by self-evaluators make it hard to understand art cinema in a coherent and defensible manner. The author suggests that legitimate institutions such as the Cannes Film Festival and overlooks high-art ideology and academic compartmentalization.
3. The author highlights that American softcore cinema correlated with the art cinema and gives examples of Muholland Drive, which depicted features of art cinema through low-budget and use of auteurs. He has also highlighted American indie film and the new Hollywood as some of the many ways that America has chipped in the production of art cinema through the use of low-budget and depiction o0f neorealism as was used in Italy. Andrew argues that even though art cinema does not originate in America, the Marsigila use of softcore auteur shows that art cinema existence in the American cult subculture.
4. The art cinema has always been defined according to the features of art-house where incorporation of social realism style, limitation to a particular niche market use of lesser-known actors, has recently been changing. The categorization has become more robust with the integration of technology where movies such as indie-style films have been documented in blogs, DVD “extras,” which tirelessly anoint auteurs for an age of home consumption” (Andrews 39). This statement shows that although art cinema identification with art house has been declining the central aspect are still depicted in film festivals and other electronic means which offers more robust ideas off exploring artistic experience in cinema. The fact that arthouse film has been commercialized there is still adherence to art cinema features of realism style
5. Andrews argues that the existing inequalities such as classification of art cinema as legitimate, quasi-legitimate and illegitimate based on secondary recognition of different art films by accredited sources and institutions have stacked to the traditional ways of defining art as avant-garde, neo-realism or expressionism as used in German films such as The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari depiction of horrific scenes (Wiene, 1920, 18:25). Andrew argues this limits the definition of culture and subculture through canonization. However, he offers a solution to this contextual definition of art that provides inclusivity, and neutrality is only through a glimpse of the philosophy of art. Andrews (2013) claims that “The value-neutral approaches of the philosophy of art allowed aestheticians to create increasingly catholic theories that could accommodate even the most popular forms of art, like porn” (42). This shows that canons in the definition art cinema can be reconsidered to accommodate more diversity offered in a different culture.