home
| Click link below to enter |
Film genres are various forms or identifiable types, categories, classifications or groups of films that are recurring and have similar, familiar or instantly-recognizable patterns, syntax, filmic techniques or conventions - that include one or more of the following: settings (and props), content and subject matter, themes, period, plot, central narrative events, motifs, styles, structures, situations, recurring icons (e.g., six-guns and ten-gallon hats in Westerns), stock characters (or characterizations), and stars. Many films straddle several film genres. |
| Horror |
Horror Films are unsettling films designed to frighten and panic, cause dread and alarm, and to invoke our hidden worst fears, often in a terrifying, shocking finale, while captivating and entertaining us at the same time in a cathartic experience. Horror films effectively center on the dark side of life, the forbidden, and strange and alarming events. They deal with our most primal nature and its fears: our nightmares, our vulnerability, our alienation, our revulsions, our terror of the unknown, our fear of death and dismemberment, loss of identity, or fear of sexuality. |
| Documentary &
Special Interest |
Documentary Films, strictly speaking, are non-fictional, "slice of life" factual works of art - and sometimes known as cinema verite. For many years, as films became more narrative-based, documentaries branched out and took many forms since their early beginnings - some of which have been termed propagandistic or non-objective. |
Animated Films are ones in which individual drawings, paintings, or illustrations are photographed frame by frame (stop-frame cinematography). Usually, each frame differs slightly from the one preceding it, giving the illusion of movement when frames are projected in rapid succession at 24 frames per second. The earliest cinema animation was composed of frame-by-frame, hand-drawn images. When combined with movement, the illustrator's two-dimensional static art came alive and created pure and imaginative cinematic images - animals and other inanimate objects could become evil villains or heroes.
|
| Musicals focus on stories in which characters communicate their feelings through music and dance. Rather than simply providing a lapse in a movie's action, song and dance fuse to form a whole -- and here lies the main difference between a musical and a movie just containing occasional musical numbers. Because of the difficulty in explaining away as stagey a technique as the song which leaps out of a narrative, as films in general pushed towards realism in the '60s and '70s, the musical fell out of favor. While there have been occasional attempts to recapture the magic -- Pirates of Penzance, Evita -- there have been very few unqualified successes on the level of My Fair Lady, Sound of Music, or West Side Story. The hey-day of the musical began with the very advent of sound film, as the Jazz Singer was one of the first talkies. Stars such as Gene Kelly, Fred Astaire and Bing Crosby had film careers which would have been all but impossible in the latter decades of the 20th century, so tied up in the musical were they. Much of the glamour and magic of the cinema was related to these stars and their songs, and they continue to be well-loved despite the lack of successful contemporary musicals. |
| Erotic
Drama |
A type of drama with an emphasis on eroticism and where a sexual relationship plays an important role in the plot. Often these frank films contain elements of graphic nudity, sexual intercourse, and fetishism, yet these acts rarely are portrayed gratuitously or for simple voyeuristic pleasure. Often, the attention is drawn to issues of pleasure, companionship, and emotional and physical necessity. |
| Sexploitation
& Hardcore Sex Film |
The sexploitation film's thin plots and lurid titles stand in as excuses to get as many women naked as possible in as little time as possible. While the subgenre flourished in Europe, and even achieved a sort of artistic credential in films by directors like Jesus Franco, in puritan America, the erotic thriller and slasher films had to stand in for the audience demand to see naked bodies. There are a few exceptions, and again, there are even those like Russ Meyer, who have ascended to a cult status for their trashy but often pointed films. Faster Pussycat Kill Kill and Lorna are examples of Meyer's obsession with huge breasts, but also of his abiding satirical bent and indebtedness to melodramatic conventions. Meyer's films never take themselves too seriously; they know what they are, and that is part of the fun -- getting to see the naked women but not feeling as guilty because it all could just be a big joke. The films of Franco, on the other hand, delve more into deviant sex (as in Justine), but the same basic principles apply: get enough nudity and sex in, and there is always room for a little playfulness or innovation. |