CIN201

Invention (pre-cinema)

Period encompassing the technological developments that led to motion pictures, including optical toys (zoetrope), photography (Muybridge), and early projection devices

Cinema of Attractions

(1895-1906) Early cinema where the primary appeal was the spectacle of the moving image rather than narrative immersion. Coined by Tom Gunning.

Transitional Cinema

(1907-1915) Marked the shift from short, spectacle-based films to longer, narratively complex features. Saw the standardization of film language (editing, camera work) and the rise of the star system.

Silent Feature Era

(1915-1929) Dominated by full-length feature films without synchronized recorded sound. Represents peak of visual storytelling techniques prior to the “Talkies.”

The Serial

A type of film released in chapters or episodes (often weekly) containing a continuous plot that usually ends in a cliffhanger to encourage the audience to return the following week

The Feature

The main film in a screening program, generally defined by a runtime consisting of multiple reels (usually over 60 minutes in the modern era, though shorts in the 1910s).

Slapstick

A style of comedy based on physical action, exaggerated violence, and visual gags rather than dialogue. It was a dominant form in the silent era (Chaplin, Keaton).

Race Films

Films produced between ~1915-1950 specifically for African American audiences, featuring all-Black casts. Often made outside the Hollywood system to counter racist stereotypes and were shown in segregated theaters.

Short Films

Films with short running time (historically one or two reels, 10-20 minutes). In the classic era, these included cartoons, newsreels, and comedies played before the feature.

First-Run Theaters

Premier movie theaters located in major cities that commanded the highest ticket prices and received new films before they moved to smaller, neighborhood theaters.

Block Booking

A distribution practice were studios forced theaters to book a bundle of films rather than allowing them to select individual titles.

A-Movie

High-budget production with top stars intended as the main attraction.

B-Movie

Low-budget film intended to be the bottom half of a double feature.

Picture Palaces

Large, elaborately decorated movie theaters built between 1910s-1940s that offered a luxurious movie-going experience, often featuring orchestras and seating thousands.

Continuity Editing

System of cutting used to maintain continuous and clear narrative action. Relies on matching screen direction, position, and temporal relations from shot to shot so the viewer understands the space.

Continuity Script

A screenplay that breaks down the action into individual shots with specific technical instructions, allowing scenes to be filmed out of order but edited together seamlessly later.

Fast Cutting (Rapid Editing)

An editing technique involving short shots used in rapid succession to create energy, chaos, or rhythmic effects. Popularized by Abel Gance and Soviet Montage theorists. 

Mobile Camera

The use of a moving camera (tracking shots, pans, dollies) to follow action or explore space, breaking away from the static “proscenium” style of early film. Notably advanced by F.W. Murnau.

Superimposition

The exposure of more than one image on the same film strip or digital file, causing the images to appear ghosted over one another.

Soft Style

Cinematography style popular in the 20s and 30s that used gauze or diffusion filters to create a glamorous, hazy, or romanticized look, often focusing on the stars’ face.

Low-Key Lighting

Lighting style that uses a hard light source to enhance shadows and create high contrast (chiaroscuro), often used in German Expressionism and Film Noir to suggest mystery or danger.

Assembly Line Animation

The industrialization of animation productions where labor was divided in specific repetitive tasks (backgrounds, in-betweening, inking) to maximize output. Pioneered by studios like Bray-Hurd and Disney.

Dialectical Montage

Theory Developed by Sergei Eisenstein stating that meaning is created not by the continuity of shots, but by their collision. Shot A + Shot B = New Concept C.

Visual Music

Experimental film movement that treated cinema as an abstract for similar to music, focusing on rhythm, shape, and movement rather than narrative. Viking Eggerling and Hans Richter.

Kuleshov Effect

Cognitive phenomenon demonstrated by Lev Kuleshov where viewers derive more meaning from the interaction of two sequential shots than from a single shot in isolation. For example, a neutral face edited next to soup is perceived as hunger.

Vernacular Modernism

Concept suggesting that classical Hollywood cinema functioned as a global language of modernity, offering a sensory reflex to the modern industrial world that transcended national borders. Associated with scholar Miriam Hansen.

Auteur

Theory originating in France that views the director as the primary creative force or “author” of a film, whose personal style and themes are evident throughout their body of work.

Black Spectatorship

Field of film theory exploring how Black audiences engage with cinema that often excludes or stereotypes them, involving an “oppositional gaze” or resistance to dominant narratives. Scholars include bell hooks and Manthia Diawara.

Photogénie

Term used by French Impressionist critics (Jean Epstein) to describe the unique, almost spiritual quality of a film image-how the camera enhances and reveals the moral character or essence of a subject in a way the human eye cannot.

Medium Specificity

The idea that each art form should utilize the unique properties specific to it. For film, this meant focusing on editing and camera movement rather than simply recording theater.

French Impressionism

1920s avant-garde movement that focused on conveying character subjectivity, emotion, and mental states through camera techniques like superimposition, filters, and rhythmic editing.

German Expressionism

Movement that rejected realism, using distorted sets, high-contrast lighting, and exaggerated acting to express internal psychological turmoil or madness (1920-1927).

Soviet Constructivism

Artistic philosophy in the early Soviet Union that viewed art as a practice for social purposes (“art as a machine”), emphasizing structure, montage, and political utility over personal expression.

Surrealism

Movement influenced by Freudian psychology that sought to represent the unconscious mind, dreams, and the irrational, often using shocking or non-logical imagery (e.g., Un Chien Andalou).

Modern

In art history, this refers to the break from classical traditions, embracing the new industrial world, fragmentation, and speed (late 19th to mid-20th century).

Classical Hollywood Style

Characterized by continuity editing, clear cause-and-effect narrative, and invisible storytelling (1917-1960).

Realism

Artistic attempt to represent subject matter truthfully, without artificiality. In film, this often involved location shooting, natural light, and non-professional actors.

Avant Garde

Experimental or innovative works that push the boundaries of what is accepted as the norm or the status quo in the art world.

Experimental

Cinema that rejects the conventions of mainstream narrative and production, often exploring the material limits of the film medium itself (abstraction, non-narrative structures).

Oligopoly

Market structure in which a small number of firms have the large majority of market share. In film history, this refers to the “Big Five” and “Little Three” studios controlling Hollywood during the Golden Age.

Vertical Integration

Business model where a single company controls all stages of the product lifecycle: Production, distribution, and exhibition.

Protectionism

Government policies (quotas or tariffs) designed to restrict foreign imports to help domestic industries survive. Many European countries used this to fight Hollywood’s dominance in the 1920s.

New Economic Policy (Soviet Union)

Lenin’s economic policy (1921-1928) that reintroduced a limited measure of private capitalism. This allowed the Soviet film industry to recover and import foreign films and equipment, fueling the montage movement.

The Great Migration

Mass movement of African Americans from the rural South to the urban North to escape Jim Crow laws and find industrial work (1916-1970). This created concentrated urban audiences that supported the rise of “Race Films” and Black-owned theaters.

Redlining

Discriminatory practice where services (financial and otherwise) were withheld from customers in neighborhoods classified as “hazardous to investment, largely based on racial demographics. In cinema, this affected where theaters were built and the ability of Black entrepreneurs to secure loans for theater ownership.