Noun

Singular film

Plural films

film (plural films)

1. A thin layer of some substance.
2. (photography) A medium used to capture images in a camera.
3. A motion picture.

Synonyms

• (motion picture): movie

Derived terms

• filmic
• filmmaker
• filmmaking
• filmography
• filmology
• filmy
• on film

Film 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.

Films are cultural artifacts created by specific cultures, which reflect those cultures, and, in turn, affect them. Film is considered to be an important art form, a source of popular entertainment and a powerful method for educating — or indoctrinating — citizens. The visual elements of cinema gives motion pictures a universal power of communication. Some films have become popular worldwide attractions by using dubbing or subtitles that translate the dialogue.

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 an effect 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 perceive motion due to a psychological effect called beta movement.

The origin of the name "film" comes from the fact that photographic film (also called film stock) had 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. A common name for film in the United States is movie, while the Europeans prefer cinema. Additional terms for the field in general include the big screen, the silver screen, the cinema and the movies.

Quotes regarding Film - Cinema, Movies, Motion pictures - and film makers.

Contents

• 1 Sourced
• 2 Attributed
• 3 See also
• 4 External links

Sourced

• The cinema is not an art which films life: the cinema is something between art and life. Unlike painting and literature, the cinema both gives to life and takes from it, and I try to render this concept in my films. Literature and painting both exist as art from the very start; the cinema doesn’t.
  • Who: Jean-Luc Godard, Quoted in Richard Roud, Godard, introduction (1970)

• Photography is truth. The cinema is truth twenty-four times per second.
  • [variation] Cinema is truth at twenty-four frames a second
  • Who: Jean-Luc Godard, Le Petit Soldat (film) (direction and screenplay, 1960)

• A film is a ribbon of dreams. The camera is much more than a recording apparatus; it is a medium via which messages reach us from another world that is not ours and that brings us to the heart of a great secret. Here magic begins.
  • Who: Orson Welles

• "A film is a petrified fountain of thought." ~ Jean Cocteau
  • Esquire, (Feb. 1961)

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Thu Aug 6 08:45:18 2009