Film genres: features, functions, evolution
This Interactive workshop aims at exploring the origin of genres, their functions in cinema and their evolution, with particular emphasis on the latest developments. We first ask why we need genres at all and examine the variety of classification criteria that can be used. Then we focus on the specific features of genre films, analysing their conventions and their narrative structures. We then explore how different agents (from producers to audiences, from critics to film scholars) have used and still use genres, and highlight their economic, sociocultural and communicative functions. Finally, by taking a historical perspective, we explore how genres have evolved in the course of time and how modern cinema extensively use genre mixing and hybridization, thus pointing to the future of this important but complex category of film analysis. Part of the www.cinemafocus.eu research materials.
This Interactive workshop aims at exploring the origin of genres, their functions in cinema and their evolution, with particular emphasis on the latest developments. We first ask why we need genres at all and examine the variety of classification criteria that can be used. Then we focus on the specific features of genre films, analysing their conventions and their narrative structures. We then explore how different agents (from producers to audiences, from critics to film scholars) have used and still use genres, and highlight their economic, sociocultural and communicative functions. Finally, by taking a historical perspective, we explore how genres have evolved in the course of time and how modern cinema extensively use genre mixing and hybridization, thus pointing to the future of this important but complex category of film analysis. Part of the www.cinemafocus.eu research materials.
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I generi cinematografici: caratteristiche, funzioni, evoluzione
Film genres: features, functions, evolution
Italiano English
La sottile linea rossa/The thin red line (di/by Terrence Malick, USA 1998)
Italiano English
Dunkirk (di/by Christopher Nolan, GB/USA/Francia-France/Olanda-Holland 2017)
Note/Notes
(1) Altman R. 1999. Film/Genre, Palgrave Macmillan, London; Moine R. 2008. Cinema genre,
Blackwell, Oxford.
(2) Moine, op. cit.
(3) McQuail D. 1987. Mass Communication Theory: An Introduction (2nd Edn.), Sage, London.
Citato in/Quoted in Chandler, D. 1997. An Introduction to Genre Theory, p. 6.
(4) Altman, op. cit., p. 38.
(5) Ishaghpour Y. 1982. D’une image à l’autre, Denoël, Paris, pp. 83–103. Citato in/Quoted in
Moine, op. cit., p. 95.
(6) Whright, J. H. 1995. "Genre Films and the Status Quo", in Grant, B. K. (Ed.), Film Genre
Reader II, University of Texas Press, Austin, pp. 41–49. Citato in/Quoted in Moine, op. cit., p.
96.
(7) Altman, op. cit. Citato in/Quoted in Moine, op. cit., p. 105.
(8) 1 - Omicidio a luci rosse/Body double (di/by Brian De Palma, USA 1984); 2 - Frankenstein
Junior/Young Frankenstein (di/by Mel Brooks, USA 1974).
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