Robert Koehler wrote:
> <snip> I would add ``cinema'' as another alternating terms with
> ``movie'' and ``film,'' and, I think, the best of the bunch. And as a term
> to act as a headline banner over the art form as a whole, ``cinema'' for me
> remains the best of all, from cultural, aesthetic and historical
> perspectives. (It is much more frequently used in the UK and France--and in
> its linguistic equivalents in many other countries--than in the US, where
> the term ``cinema'' has a certain snootiness attached to it...
Maybe we need to start using a more neutral term. 'Kino' has
always appealed to me. I like the 'K' and I like the connection to
Russian and European filmmaking.
Why has 'screen' fallen into disuse? Doesn't 'Silver Screen' hold
some residual glamour?
>
> Another interesting way of measuring usage is in the major film
> journals. The cleverest and most satisfying usage is at the best North
> American journal, which uses it in its own title--CinemaScope. Yet, down at
> Lincoln Center (or is it up?), it is Film Comment. Here on the West Coast,
> there is Film Quarterly. (Also, long ago in L.A., there used to be Cinema
> Magazine, edited by Paul Schrader.) My favorite LA video store is cleverly
> titled Cinefile. You have to travel across The Pond to the UK to find a
> journal with ``movie'' in the title--namely, the newly revived Movie.
Well, U.S. newstands have 'Movieline', but I've never understood
the logic of that title (or the attractions of that magazine).
>
> Cahiers du Cinema, of course, still embraces the cinema definition. Others
> bypass the issue altogether--sometimes classically (Sight & Sound,
> Chaplin)--sometimes with marvellous poetics (Trafic, Bianco e Nero ).
> Sometimes, they combine the term with poetics (El Amante/Cine).
Technical terms are popular too, as in Close-Up (Italy) and Positif
(France). Online we also have 24framespersecond and MacGuffin.
It's probably only a matter of time before we see 'Klieg' and 'Avid'
and 'Eyemo' on the newstands.
There's also the graceful 'Griffithiana', but that's not a model that
will work for, say, Hou Hsiao-Hsien. At any rate, we've overcome
the pedestrian titles like 'Monthly Film Bulletin' and 'Film Fan'.
>
> <snip>
> So it goes....
Indeed.
--Robert Keser
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