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110-711: The Independent Film Festival Boston (also known as IFFBoston or IFFB) was created in 2003 by the non-profit organization the Independent Film Society of Boston. The festival takes place each April in the Boston area's finest art-house cinemas. Over 1,200 films are submitted to the festival each year and roughly the best 90-100 of those are shown. Over 120 screenings take place, most with director Q&A sessions following them. There are also nightly parties for guest filmmakers and passholders as well as weekend panel discussions. The Independent Film Festival Boston

220-482: A "loosening of the chain of cause and effect". Mainstream films also deal with moral dilemmas or identity crises, but these issues are usually resolved by the end of the film. In art films, the dilemmas are probed and investigated in a pensive fashion, but usually without a clear resolution at the end of the film. The story in an art film often has a secondary role to character development and exploration of ideas through lengthy sequences of dialogue. If an art film has

330-765: A Time in America . Other directors in the 1980s chose a more intellectual path, exploring philosophical and ethical issues like Andrzej Wajda 's Man of Iron (1981), a critique of the Polish communist government, which won the 1981 Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival . Another Polish director, Krzysztof Kieślowski , made The Decalogue for television in 1988, a film series that explores ethical issues and moral puzzles. Two of these films were released theatrically as A Short Film About Love and A Short Film About Killing . In 1989, Woody Allen made, in

440-456: A complex examination of a failed marriage that dealt with issues such as anomie and sterility; Eclipse (1962), about a young woman who is unable to form a solid relationship with her boyfriend because of his materialistic nature; Red Desert (1964), his first colour film, which deals with the need to adapt to the modern world; and Blowup (1966), his first English-language film, which examines issues of perception and reality as it follows

550-451: A complex relationship of three individuals through innovative screenwriting, editing, and camera techniques. Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni helped revolutionize filmmaking with such films as L'Avventura (1960), influential for its landscape photography and framing techniques, follows the disappearance of a young upper-class woman during a boating trip, and the subsequent search by her lover and her best friend; La Notte (1961),

660-551: A critically acclaimed 1994 art film, "largely a cerebral experience" that one enjoys "because of what you know about film". That said, some art films may widen their appeal by offering certain elements of more familiar genres such as documentary or biography . For promotion, art films rely on the publicity generated from film critics' reviews; discussion of the film by arts columnists, commentators, and bloggers; and word-of-mouth promotion by audience members. Since art films have small initial investment costs, they only need to appeal to

770-420: A cultural elite that can help steer them towards films that are more thoughtful and of a higher quality. To bridge the disconnect between popular taste and high culture, these film critics are expected to explain unfamiliar concepts and make them appealing to cultivate a more discerning movie-going public. For example, a film critic can help the audience—through their reviews—think seriously about films by providing

880-532: A family with a lack of faith, but with a son who believes that he is Jesus Christ and convinced that he is capable of performing miracles; Federico Fellini 's Nights of Cabiria (1957), which deals with a prostitute's failed attempts to find love, her suffering and rejection; Wild Strawberries (1957), by Ingmar Bergman, whose narrative concerns an elderly medical doctor, who is also a professor, whose nightmares lead him to re-evaluate his life; and The 400 Blows (1959) by François Truffaut, whose main character

990-463: A film is considered to be an art film based on artistic status in the same way film genres can be based on aspects of films such as their budgets ( blockbuster films or B-movies ) or their star performers ( Adam Sandler films). There are scholars who point out that mass market films such as those produced in Hollywood appeal to a less discerning audience. This group then turns to film critics as

1100-487: A flexible montage of time and space. The cinema pur movement was influenced by German "absolute" filmmakers such as Hans Richter , Walter Ruttmann and Viking Eggeling . Richter falsely claimed that his 1921 film Rhythmus 21 was the first abstract film ever created. In fact, he was preceded by the Italian Futurists Bruno Corra and Arnaldo Ginna between 1911 and 1912 (as reported in

1210-589: A leading figure of the French New Wave, would continue to make innovative films throughout the decade, proposing a whole new style of film-making. Following the success of Breathless , Godard made two more very influential films, Contempt in 1963, which it shown his view on studio filmmaking system, beautiful long take, and film within film, and Pierrot le fou in 1965, which it is a mash of mash of crime and romance films with and his anti Hollywood style. Jules et Jim , by François Truffaut, deconstructed

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1320-464: A leisurely pace, and long periods of silence. The film is also notable for its use of long shots and overhead shots to create a sense of distance between the audience and the characters. Zhang Yimou 's early 1990s works such as Ju Dou (1990), Raise the Red Lantern (1991), The Story of Qiu Ju (1992) and To Live (1994) explore human emotions through poignant narratives. To Live won

1430-464: A main protagonist murders a girl in the end. In 1992, Rebels of the Neon God , first feature film of Tsai Ming-liang , second generation of Taiwanese New Wave, it has his unique style of filmmaking like alienation, slow movement of actor (his recurring cast, Lee Kang-sheng ), slow-paced, and a few dialogues. Daryush Shokof's film Seven Servants (1996) is an original high art cinema piece about

1540-539: A man who strives to "unite" the world's races until his last breath. One year after Seven Servants , Abbas Kiarostami 's film Taste of Cherry (1997), which won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival, tells a similar tale with a different twist; both films are about a man trying to hire a person to bury him after he commits suicide. Seven Servants was shot in a minimalist style, with long takes,

1650-416: A middle-class woman amidst the social and economic issues that Britain faced at the time. In the 1950s, some of the well-known films with artistic sensibilities include La Strada (1954), a film about a young woman who is forced to go to work for a cruel and inhumane circus performer to support her family, and eventually comes to terms with her situation; Carl Theodor Dreyer's Ordet (1955), centering on

1760-547: A more historically accurate theme and color scheme while upgrades to the stage like new curtains, rigging, and movie screen were also completed. In 2008, the second gallery of the Museum of Bad Art opened in the basement of the theater. The gallery was placed near both the women's and men's restrooms, similar to the museum's first gallery location in the Dedham Community Theater. Although the original gallery

1870-630: A music venue, the theater has played host to many historic concerts, including the first of the two Last Dispatch concerts, two shows by Bruce Springsteen in 2003, and a performance by U2 in 2009. Recent live performances have included Ryan Adams & the Cardinals , Cursive , Norah Jones , The Jonas Brothers , Joan Baez , and the John Butler Trio . The building also hosts the Crystal Ballroom. The Somerville Theater

1980-400: A place where these critics can experience culture and an artistic atmosphere where they can draw insights and material. The following list is a small, partial sample of films with "art film" qualities, compiled to give a general sense of what directors and films are considered to have "art film" characteristics. The films in this list demonstrate one or more of the characteristics of art films:

2090-419: A rape and murder. In 1952, Kurosawa directed Ikiru , a film about a Tokyo bureaucrat struggling to find a meaning for his life. Tokyo Story (1953), by Yasujirō Ozu , explores social changes of the era by telling the story of an aging couple who travel to Tokyo to visit their grown children, but find the children are too self-absorbed to spend much time with them. Seven Samurai (1954), by Kurosawa, tells

2200-445: A sense of social realism ; an emphasis on the authorial expressiveness of the director; and a focus on the thoughts, dreams, or motivations of characters, as opposed to the unfolding of a clear, goal-driven story. Film scholars David Bordwell and Barry Keith Grant describe art cinema as "a film genre , with its own distinct conventions". Art film producers usually present their films at special theaters ( repertory cinemas or, in

2310-456: A serial killer. Lost Highway (1997), from the same director as Blue Velvet , is a psychological thriller that explores fantasy worlds, bizarre time-space transformations, and mental breakdowns using surreal imagery. Other directors in the 1990s explored philosophical issues and themes such as identity, chance, death, and existentialism. Gus Van Sant 's My Own Private Idaho (1991) and Wong Kar-wai 's Chungking Express (1994) explored

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2420-474: A series of vignettes that range from idyllic pastoral country landscapes to horrific visions of tormented demons and a blighted post-nuclear war landscape. The Coen Brothers ' Barton Fink (1991), which won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival , features various literary allusions in an enigmatic story about a writer who encounters a range of bizarre characters, including an alcoholic, abusive novelist and

2530-658: A serious, non-commercial, or independently made film that is not aimed at a mass audience. Some of the films on this list are also considered to be "auteur" films, independent films, or experimental films . In some cases, critics disagree over whether a film is mainstream or not. For example, while some critics called Gus Van Sant 's My Own Private Idaho (1991) an "exercise in film experimentation" of "high artistic quality", The Washington Post called it an ambitious mainstream film. Some films on this list have most of these characteristics; other films are commercially made films, produced by mainstream studios, that nevertheless bear

2640-471: A small portion of mainstream audiences to become financially viable. The forerunners of art films include Italian silent film L'Inferno (1911), D. W. Griffith 's Intolerance (1916) and the works of Russian filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein , who influenced the development of European cinema movements for decades. Eisenstein's film Battleship Potemkin (1925) was a revolutionary propaganda film he used to test his theories of using film editing to produce

2750-411: A story, it is usually a drifting sequence of vaguely defined or ambiguous episodes. There may be unexplained gaps in the film, deliberately unclear sequences, or extraneous sequences that are not related to previous scenes, which force the viewer to subjectively make their own interpretation of the film's message. Art films often "bear the marks of a distinctive visual style" and the authorial approach of

2860-625: A yearly "The 70mm and Widescreen Film Festival" in September. It is also the main host theatre for the Independent Film Festival of Boston and The Slutcracker . The Somerville Theatre is in the minority in the movie theater industry for being locally owned and independent but also operating as a for profit company. The theater's balcony and lobby are featured in Alexander Payne's 2023 film The Holdovers . In

2970-420: A young photographer's attempt to discover whether he had photographed a murder. Swedish director Ingmar Bergman began the 1960s with chamber pieces such as Winter Light (1963) and The Silence (1963), which deal with such themes as emotional isolation and a lack of communication. His films from the second half of the decade, such as Persona (1966), Shame (1968), and A Passion (1969), deal with

3080-655: Is a bridge between his previous Italian neorealist style and his later surrealist style. In 1963, Fellini made 8½ , an exploration of creative, marital and spiritual difficulties, filmed in black-and-white by cinematographer Gianni di Venanzo . The 1961 film Last Year at Marienbad by director Alain Resnais examines perception and reality, using grand tracking shots that became widely influential. Robert Bresson 's Au hasard Balthazar (1966) and Mouchette (1967) are notable for their naturalistic, elliptical style. Spanish director Luis Buñuel also contributed heavily to

3190-618: Is a young man trying to come of age despite abuse from his parents, schoolteachers, and society, this film is the first big step in the French New Wave and for cinema, it showed that films can be made with little money, amateur actors, and a small crew. In Poland, the Khrushchev Thaw permitted some relaxation of the regime's cultural policies, and productions such as A Generation , Kanal , Ashes and Diamonds , Lotna (1954–1959), all directed by Andrzej Wajda , showed

3300-508: Is every filmmaker's dream." - Joe Swanberg , director of Hannah Takes the Stairs "[T]he annual Independent Film Festival Boston (IFFB) has accomplished more in its five-year history, than some festivals do with twice as much time and resources. - Matt Dentler, Indiewire "Definitely one of the best-run film festivals I have been to." - Bob Odenkirk, director of Melvin Goes to Dinner "Though

3410-405: Is free and open to the public, the gallery here is only free with admission to the theater. The gallery closed in 2019. In 2009, renovations included new balcony seating, replacing the original seats from 1914; the installation of Dolby Digital Sound and 24 surround speakers throughout the original auditorium; and a revamped projection booth, containing two Norelco DP-70 projectors. The Somerville

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3520-413: Is not]... a single film produced over the past 35 years that is arguably of equal philosophical weight or virtuosity of execution to Bergman 's The Seventh Seal or Persona ". Paglia states that young people from the 2000s do not "have patience for the long, slow take that deep-think European directors once specialized in", an approach which gave "luxurious scrutiny of the tiniest facial expressions or

3630-749: Is now one of the few theaters in New England, and one of only two in Metro Boston (the other being the Coolidge Corner Theatre ), that can run 70mm film. The Theatre currently operates as a three-screen cinema. During the closure of the theater due to the COVID-19 Pandemic, screens 4 and 5 were restored into the Crystal Ballroom, a live-music venue and function hall. The Fraiman family, (then operating as Fraiman Enterprises Inc. - now Frame One Theatres ), took ownership of

3740-475: Is part of the Hobbs Building which was built in 1914 by Joseph Hobbs and designed by the firm of Funk & Wilcox of Boston . Designed for stage shows, vaudeville , opera , and motion pictures, the theater was only one of the highlights of the Hobbs Building, which also contained a basement café, basement bowling alley and billiards hall, the theater lobbies and ten storefronts on the ground floor, and

3850-412: Is then tied together with fast pacing, a musical soundtrack to cue the appropriate audience emotions, and tight, seamless editing. In contrast, Bordwell states that "the art cinema motivates its narrative by two principles: realism and authorial expressiveness". Art films deviate from the mainstream "classical" norms of film making in that they typically deal with more episodic narrative structures with

3960-707: Is told in a poetic narrative style, full of symbolic scenes with philosophical meanings. In Iran, Dariush Mehrjui 's The Cow (1969), about a man who becomes insane after the death of his beloved cow, sparked the new wave of Iranian cinema . Puppeteer Jim Henson had an arthouse success with his 1965 Oscar-nominated non- Muppet short Time Piece . In the early 1970s, directors shocked audiences with violent films such as A Clockwork Orange (1971), Stanley Kubrick's brutal exploration of futuristic youth gangs, and Last Tango in Paris (1972), Bernardo Bertolucci 's taboo-breaking, sexually-explicit and controversial film. At

4070-555: Is typically an independent film , aimed at a niche market rather than a mass market audience . It is "intended to be a serious, artistic work, often experimental and not designed for mass appeal", "made primarily for aesthetic reasons rather than commercial profit", and containing "unconventional or highly symbolic content". Film critics and film studies scholars typically define an art film as possessing "formal qualities that mark them as different from mainstream Hollywood films". These qualities can include (among other elements)

4180-415: The 1982 Cannes Film Festival , can be considered the beginning of contemporary animation. The characters' masks erase all human personality and give the impression of total control over the "matter" of the image and its optical composition, using distorted areas, obscure visions, metamorphoses, and synthetic objects. In 1989, Hou Hsiao-hsien 's A City of Sadness became the first Taiwanese film awarded

4290-440: The Cannes Film Festival . In 1982, experimental director Godfrey Reggio released the surprise arthouse hit Koyaanisqatsi ; a film without dialogue, which emphasizes cinematography (consisting primarily of slow motion and time-lapse cinematography of cities and natural landscapes, which results in a visual tone poem ) and philosophical ideology about technology and the environment. Another approach used by directors in

4400-771: The Futurist Manifesto of Cinema ), as well as by fellow German artist Walter Ruttmann, who produced Lichtspiel Opus 1 in 1920. Nevertheless, Richter's film Rhythmus 21 is considered an important early abstract film. The first British "art cinema" was temporarily opened at the Palais de Luxe in London in 1929 by Elsie Cohen . She went on to establish a permanent location at the Academy Cinema in Oxford Street in 1931. Arthouse cinemas that specialized in

4510-841: The Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival . The film shows the history of Taiwan through one family, and marks another step of the Taiwanese New Wave, which tends to depict realistic, down-to-earth life in both urban and rural Taiwan. In the 1990s, directors took inspiration from the success of David Lynch 's Blue Velvet (1986) and Peter Greenaway 's The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover (1989) and created films with bizarre alternative worlds and elements of surrealism. Japanese director Akira Kurosawa's Dreams (1990) depicted his imaginative reveries in

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4620-533: The Polish Film School style. In India , there was an art-film movement in Bengali cinema known as " Parallel Cinema " or "Indian New Wave". This was an alternative to the mainstream commercial cinema. It was known for its serious content, realism and naturalism, with a keen eye on the social-political climate of the times. This movement is distinct from mainstream commercial cinema and began around

4730-628: The Sony Pictures Classics division of Sony Pictures Entertainment , and the Paramount Vantage division of Paramount . Film critics have debated whether films from these divisions can be considered "independent films", given they have financial backing from major studios. In 2007, Professor Camille Paglia argued in her article "Art movies: R.I.P." that "[a]side from Francis Ford Coppola 's Godfather series, with its deft flashbacks and gritty social realism, ...[there

4840-468: The "metaphoric concrete jungle" of modern Hong Kong. Todd Haynes explored the life of a suburban housewife and her eventual death from toxic materials in the 1995 critical success, Safe . In 1991, another important film of Edward Yang , a Taiwanese New Wave director, A Brighter Summer Day is portrayal of one normal teenager life that evacuated from China to Taiwan which affacted by political situation, school situation, and family situation that make

4950-413: The 1920s, film societies began advocating the notion that films could be divided into "entertainment cinema directed towards a mass audience and a serious art cinema aimed at an intellectual audience". In England, Alfred Hitchcock and Ivor Montagu formed a film society and imported films they thought were "artistic achievements", such as "Soviet films of dialectical montage, and the expressionist films of

5060-853: The 1930s) directed many shows at the Somerville Theatre in the mid-1920s. In 1926, the Hobbs family leased and subsequently sold the theater to Arthur F. Viano, whose family built and owned other area theaters such as the Teele Square Theater, the Broadway Theater in East Somerville, and the Regent Theater in Arlington. The Vianos continued with the stock theater company until the harsh economics of

5170-493: The 1960s, "art film" became a euphemism in the U.S. for racy Italian and French B-movies . By the 1970s, the term was used to describe sexually explicit European films with artistic structure such as the Swedish film I Am Curious (Yellow) . In the U.S., the term "art film" may refer to films by modern American artists, including Andy Warhol with his 1969 film Blue Movie , but is sometimes used very loosely to refer to

5280-491: The 1980s was to create bizarre, surreal alternative worlds. Martin Scorsese 's After Hours (1985) is a comedy-thriller that depicts a man's baffling adventures in a surreal nighttime world of chance encounters with mysterious characters. David Lynch 's Blue Velvet (1986), a film noir -style thriller-mystery filled with symbolism and metaphors about polarized worlds and inhabited by distorted characters who are hidden in

5390-645: The Bailiff (1954), which tells the story of two aristocratic children sold into slavery; in addition to dealing with serious themes such as the loss of freedom, the film features beautiful images and long, complicated shots. The 1960s was an important period in art film, with the release of a number of groundbreaking films giving rise to the European art cinema. Jean-Luc Godard's À bout de souffle ( Breathless ) (1960) used innovative visual and editing techniques such as jump cuts and hand-held camera work. Godard,

5500-551: The Cambridge-Somerville-Arlington neighborhood theaters to become strictly second-run venues. The Viano family leased the Somerville to Garen Daly in 1982, and he turned the theater into a repertory house, running double features and daily changes, offering independent and offbeat fare in the days before video and DVD made it easy to track down such titles. Daly also brought back live performances to

5610-589: The Daily Show 's Rob Corddry and Michael Cera . Films shown at the festival in the first six years included Half Nelson , Murderball , The Corporation , The Proposition , The Saddest Music in the World , Ivans XTC , Lonesome Jim , The Puffy Chair , Fay Grim , Hannah Takes the Stairs , Mutual Appreciation , Me and You and Everyone We Know , Transsiberian , My Winnipeg , Medicine for Melancholy , Ballast , Encounters at

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5720-849: The Depression forced them into a 'movies only' policy in 1932. Throughout the 30s, 40s, 50s and 60s, the Somerville remained a prime neighborhood movie house. In those days, new films would open at the downtown theaters like the RKO Keiths (now the Boston Opera House ), the Paramount, the Metropolitan (now the Citi Performing Arts Center ) and the Loew's Orpheum (now a concert hall). After playing downtown,

5830-678: The End of the World , The Story of the Weeping Camel and Metallica: Some Kind of Monster as well as the U.S. premier of Azumi . The festival shows narrative features, documentary features, short films, animation, and experimental works. The Independent Film Festival Boston awards Grand Jury, Special Jury prizes, and Audience Awards in the categories of narrative feature, documentary feature and short film. The juries are composed of top film industry professionals. The Independent Film Festival Boston also holds monthly screenings throughout

5940-536: The Game (1939) is a comedy of manners that transcends the conventions of its genre by creating a biting and tragic satire of French upper-class society in the years before WWII; a poll of critics from Sight & Sound ranked it as the fourth greatest film ever, placing it behind Vertigo , Citizen Kane and Tokyo Story . Some of these early, artistically oriented films were financed by wealthy individuals rather than film companies, particularly in cases where

6050-548: The Grand Jury Prize. Somerville Theatre The Somerville Theatre is an independent movie theater and concert venue in the Davis Square neighborhood of Somerville, Massachusetts , United States. Over one hundred years old, the Somerville Theatre started off as a vaudeville house and movie theater. The theater has since transitioned and now operates as a live music venue and first-run movie theater. As

6160-401: The Hobbs Building, with the exception of a few storefronts and the theater, had been abandoned since the early 80s, and this space proved to be the answer. In 1996, extensive renovations began. The bowling alleys in the basement and a portion of the first floor retail space were gutted to create modern bathrooms and two new film rooms. Two more screens were built in the former ballroom space on

6270-624: The Hobbs Crystal Ballroom, a 700-person dance hall, on the second floor. The second and third floors also contained office space for lease. In 1915, the Somerville Theater Players began their stock company presentation of weekly play performances. Among the notable players who came up at the Somerville were Tallulah Bankhead , Kay Corbett, and Francis X. Bushman . Future film director Busby Berkeley (famous for 42nd Street and other stylized musicals of

6380-414: The Hollywood movies of the seventies... [and so], art film, which was never just a matter of European cinema, increasingly became an actual world cinema—albeit one that struggled to gain wide recognition". Corman notes that, "Hollywood itself has expanded, radically, its aesthetic range... because the range of subjects at hand has expanded to include the very conditions of image-making, of movie production, of

6490-462: The Influence , which features an eccentric housewife slowly descending into madness. Also in the 1970s, Radley Metzger directed several adult art films, such as Barbara Broadcast (1977), which presented a surrealistic "Buñellian" atmosphere, and The Opening of Misty Beethoven (1976), based on the play Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw (and its derivative, My Fair Lady ), which

6600-725: The Second World War, "...a growing segment of the American film going public was wearying of mainstream Hollywood films", and they went to the newly created art-film theaters to see "alternatives to the films playing in main-street movie palaces". Films shown in these art cinemas included "British, foreign-language, and independent American films, as well as documentaries and revivals of Hollywood classics". Films such as Rossellini's Open City and Mackendrick's Tight Little Island ( Whisky Galore! ), Bicycle Thieves and The Red Shoes were shown to substantial U.S. audiences. In

6710-436: The Somerville Theatre in 1990 and has since made multiple changes to keep up with the evolving movie theater industry. Since 1990, 4 screens have been added and digital projectors have been installed, although two screens on the upper level have been restored into a ballroom which formerly occupied the space. The Theatre currently operates as a three-screen cinema. Home to one of the most technically advanced projection booths on

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6820-530: The U.S., art-house cinemas) and at film festivals . The term art film is much more widely used in North America, the United Kingdom, and Australia, compared to mainland Europe , where the terms auteur films and national cinema (e.g. German national cinema) are used instead. Since they are aimed at small, niche-market audiences, art films rarely acquire the financial backing that would permit

6930-566: The U.S., which shares many of the same stylistic traits. Companies such as Miramax Films distributed independent films that were deemed commercially viable. When major motion-picture studios noted the niche appeal of independent films, they created special divisions dedicated to non-mainstream fare, such as the Fox Searchlight Pictures division of Twentieth Century Fox , the Focus Features division of Universal ,

7040-472: The United States. According to Warhol, Blue Movie was a major influence in the making of Last Tango in Paris , an internationally controversial erotic art film, directed by Bernardo Bertolucci and released a few years after Blue Movie was made. In Soviet Armenia , Sergei Parajanov 's The Color of Pomegranates , in which Georgian actress Sofiko Chiaureli plays five different characters,

7150-538: The Universum Film A.G. (UFA) studios in Germany". Cinéma pur , a French avant-garde film movement in the 1920s and 1930s, also influenced the development of the idea of art film. The cinema pur film movement included several notable Dada artists. The Dadaists used film to transcend narrative storytelling conventions, bourgeois traditions, and conventional Aristotelian notions of time and space by creating

7260-415: The art of film with shocking, surrealist satires such as Viridiana (1961) and The Exterminating Angel (1962). Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky 's film Andrei Rublev (1966) is a portrait of the medieval Russian icon painter of the same name. The film is also about artistic freedom and the possibility and necessity of making art for, and in the face of, a repressive authority. A cut version of

7370-449: The broad range of films shown in repertory theaters or "art house cinemas". With this approach, a broad range of films, such as a 1960s Hitchcock film, a 1970s experimental underground film, a European auteur film, a U.S. "independent" film, and even a mainstream foreign-language film (with subtitles) might all fall under the rubric of "art house films". By the 1980s and 1990s, the term "art film" became conflated with "independent film" in

7480-424: The chilly sweep of a sterile room or bleak landscape". According to director, producer, and distributor Roger Corman , the "1950s and 1960s was the time of the art film's greatest influence. After that, the influence waned. Hollywood absorbed the lessons of the European films and incorporated those lessons into their films." Corman states that "viewers could see something of the essence of the European art cinema in

7590-435: The content of the film was controversial or unlikely to attract an audience. In the late 1940s, UK director Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger made The Red Shoes (1948), a film about ballet, which stood out from mainstream-genre films of the era. In 1945, David Lean directed Brief Encounter , an adaptation of Noël Coward 's play Still Life , which observes a passionate love affair between an upper-class man and

7700-503: The director is the "author" of his films, with a personal signature visible from film to film. The French New Wave movement continued into the 1960s. During the 1960s, the term "art film" began to be much more widely used in the United States than in Europe. In the U.S., the term is often defined very broadly to include foreign-language (non-English) "auteur" films, independent films , experimental films , documentaries and short films. In

7810-405: The director. An art cinema film often refuses to provide a "readily answered conclusion", instead putting to the cinema viewer the task of thinking about "how is the story being told? Why tell the story in this way?" Bordwell claims that "art cinema itself is a [film] genre, with its own distinct conventions". Film theorist Robert Stam also argues that "art film" is a film genre. He claims that

7920-758: The east coast, the Somerville can present virtually any film format - from digital releases to archival 35mm and 70mm film prints. The Somerville also counts a rentable 31-seat "microcinema" among its screening rooms. All screens (except the microcinema) are equipped with 35mm projectors and DCP. Only screen 1 is capable of 70mm. The theatre currently operates as a first- and second-run moviehouse, with an emphasis on independent and art house fare. It also regularly hosts live music, dance and comedy performances, with entertainers including U2, Louis CK, Jonathan Richman, Thomas Dolby, and Arlo Guthrie on its stage. The theatre regularly runs vintage 35mm and 70mm films, silent films with live musical accompaniment, and as of 2016, hosts

8030-551: The escapist blockbuster adventures of Steven Spielberg and George Lucas , the gritty, harsh realism of his film Raging Bull . In this film, actor Robert De Niro took method acting to an extreme to portray a boxer's decline from a prizewinning young fighter to an overweight, "has-been" nightclub owner. Ridley Scott 's Blade Runner (1982) could also be seen as a science fiction art film, along with 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). Blade Runner explores themes of existentialism , or what it means to be human. A box-office failure,

8140-645: The film became popular on the arthouse circuit as a cult oddity after the release of a "director's cut" became successful via VHS home video. In the middle of the decade, Japanese director Akira Kurosawa used realism to portray the brutal, bloody violence of Japanese samurai warfare of the 16th century in Ran (1985). Ran followed the plot of King Lear , in which an elderly king is betrayed by his children. Sergio Leone also contrasted brutal violence with emotional substance in his epic tale of mobster life in Once Upon

8250-462: The film was shown at the 1969 Cannes Film Festival , where it won the FIPRESCI prize. At the end of the decade, Stanley Kubrick 's 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) wowed audiences with its scientific realism, pioneering use of special effects, and unusual visual imagery. In 1969, Andy Warhol released Blue Movie , the first adult art film depicting explicit sex to receive wide theatrical release in

8360-483: The greatest emotional response from an audience. The international critical renown that Eisenstein garnered from this film enabled him to direct October as part of a grand 10th anniversary celebration of the October Revolution of 1917. He later directed The General Line in 1929. The film by Alexander Dovzhenko Earth (1930), filmed under the influence of Eisenstein, is defined by some critics as

8470-1105: The hallmarks of a director's "auteur" style, or which have an experimental character. The films on this list are notable either because they won major awards or critical praise from influential film critics, or because they introduced an innovative narrative or film-making technique. In the 1920s and 1930s, filmmakers did not set out to make "art films", and film critics did not use the term "art film". However, there were films that had sophisticated aesthetic objectives, such as Carl Theodor Dreyer 's The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928) and Vampyr (1932), surrealist films such as Luis Buñuel's Un chien andalou (1929) and L'Âge d'Or (1930), or even films dealing with political and current-event relevance such as Sergei Eisenstein 's famed and influential masterpiece Battleship Potemkin . The U.S. film Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927) by German Expressionist director F. W. Murnau uses distorted art design and groundbreaking cinematography to create an exaggerated, fairy-tale-like world rich with symbolism and imagery. Jean Renoir 's film The Rules of

8580-470: The idea of film as an artifice. The intellectual and visually expressive films of Tadeusz Konwicki , such as All Souls' Day ( Zaduszki , 1961) and Salto (1962), inspired discussions about war and raised existential questions on behalf of their everyman protagonists. Federico Fellini's La Dolce Vita (1960) depicts a succession of nights and dawns in Rome as witnessed by a cynical journalist, this film

8690-604: The large production budgets associated with widely released blockbuster films. Art film directors make up for these constraints by creating a different type of film, one that typically uses lesser-known film actors or even amateur actors, and modest sets to make films that focus much more on developing ideas, exploring new narrative techniques, and attempting new film-making conventions. Such films contrast sharply with mainstream blockbuster films, which are usually geared more towards linear storytelling and mainstream entertainment. Film critic Roger Ebert called Chungking Express ,

8800-795: The largest film festival in New England . Special guests of the festival in its first six years included Steve Buscemi , Chris Cooper , Sir Ben Kingsley , John Waters , Will Arnett , Lili Taylor , Illeana Douglas , Melvin Van Peebles , Noam Chomsky , Michael Almereyda , Robert Vaughn , Bill Pullman , Dylan Baker , Famke Janssen , Mary Stuart Masterson , Project Runway ' s Jay McCarroll, Todd Graff , Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney , Ted Hope , Bob Odenkirk , Bernie Worrell , Ryan Fleck , Anna Boden, Alexandre Rockwell , Eliza Dushku , Danny Huston , Jesse Eisenberg , Doug Pray , Albert Maysles , Saturday Night Live 's Fred Armisen ,

8910-468: The late 1950s, French filmmakers began to produce films that were influenced by Italian Neorealism and classical Hollywood cinema , a style that critics called the French New Wave . Although never a formally organized movement, New Wave filmmakers were linked by their self-conscious rejection of classical cinematic form and their spirit of youthful iconoclasm , and their films are an example of European art cinema . Many also engaged in their work with

9020-471: The mainstream films of classical Hollywood cinema. Mainstream Hollywood-style films use a clear narrative form to organize the film into a series of "causally related events taking place in space and time", with every scene driving towards a goal. The plot of mainstream films is driven by a well-defined protagonist, fleshed out with clear characters, and strengthened with "question-and-answer logic, problem-solving routines, [and] deadline plot structures". The film

9130-403: The major game in town: a smartly programmed and risk-taking festival that balances 'big' indie films with the best in local filmmaking." - Ty Burr, Boston Globe "IFFBoston has redefined the term 'filmmaker friendly' for every producer, director, editor, cinematographer, composer and actor that has been lucky enough to experience the festival. The audiences are passionate and intelligent, which

9240-419: The mid-to-late 1940s, such as Open City (1945), Paisa (1946), and Bicycle Thieves (1948) can be deemed as another "conscious art film movement". In the late 1940s, the U.S. public's perception that Italian neorealist films and other serious European fare were different from mainstream Hollywood films was reinforced by the development of "arthouse cinemas" in major U.S. cities and college towns. After

9350-410: The new and prismatic media-mediated experience of modernity. There's a new audience that has learned about art films at the video store." Corman states that "there is currently the possibility of a rebirth" of American art film. Film scholar David Bordwell outlined the academic definition of "art film" in a 1979 article entitled "The Art Cinema as a Mode of Film Practice", which contrasts art films with

9460-399: The occupying Nazi government's deportation of French Jews to concentration camps during World War II. Another critically praised art film from this era, Wim Wenders 's road movie Paris, Texas (1984), also won the Palme d'Or. Kieślowski was not the only director to transcend the distinction between the cinema and television. Ingmar Bergman made Fanny and Alexander (1982), which

9570-428: The pictures made their way, week by week, often two and three per week, to the neighborhood houses like the Somerville Theatre. Like all Viano Theaters, the Somerville was well known for fresh popcorn, and also for gimmicks like prize nights. These gift nights began in the depression and lasted at the Somerville until the 1970s. These were certain nights, usually weekdays, where dishware, appliances, and other merchandise

9680-463: The pinnacle of art cinema. Art films were also influenced by films by Spanish avant-garde creators, such as Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí (who made L'Age d'Or in 1930), and by the French playwright and filmmaker Jean Cocteau , whose 1932 avant-garde film The Blood of a Poet uses oneiric images throughout, including spinning wire models of a human head and rotating double-sided masks. In

9790-555: The presentation of art films emerged on the east coast of the United States towards the end of the 1920s. Such cinemas were widespread in both the USA and Europe. In the 1930s and 1940s, Hollywood films could be divided into the artistic aspirations of literary adaptations like John Ford 's The Informer (1935) and Eugene O'Neill 's The Long Voyage Home (1940), and the money-making "popular-genre films" such as gangster thrillers. William Siska argues that Italian neorealist films from

9900-411: The same time as French and Japanese New Wave . The most influential filmmakers involved in this movement were Satyajit Ray , Mrinal Sen and Ritwik Ghatak . Some of the most internationally acclaimed films made in the period were The Apu Trilogy (1955–1959), a trio of films that tell the story of a poor country boy's growth to adulthood, and Satyajit Ray 's Distant Thunder (1973), which tells

10010-585: The same time, other directors made more introspective films, such as Andrei Tarkovsky 's meditative science fiction film Solaris (1972), supposedly intended as a Soviet riposte to 2001 . In 1975 and 1979 respectively, Tarkovsky directed two other films, which garnered critical acclaim overseas: Mirror and Stalker . Terrence Malick , who directed Badlands (1973) and Days of Heaven (1978), shared many traits with Tarkovsky, such as his long, lingering shots of natural beauty, evocative imagery, and poetic narrative style. Another feature of 1970s art films

10120-571: The seamy underworld of a small town, became surprisingly successful considering its highly disturbing subject matter. Peter Greenaway 's The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover (1989) is a fantasy/ black comedy about cannibalism and extreme violence with an intellectual theme: a critique of "elite culture" in Thatcherian Britain. According to Raphaël Bassan , in his article " The Angel : Un météore dans le ciel de l'animation", Patrick Bokanowski 's The Angel , shown at

10230-416: The second floor. An elevator was installed, new windows and a marquee reminiscent of the original were added, and the third and second floors became new modern office space. The theater lobby was expanded by taking over an adjacent storefront, and new comfortable seats were installed in the orchestra seating of the original auditorium. In 2006, further renovations restored the original auditorium interior to

10340-422: The social and political upheavals of the era, making their radical experiments with editing, visual style and narrative part of a general break with the conservative paradigm. Some of the most prominent pioneers among the group, including François Truffaut , Jean-Luc Godard , Éric Rohmer , Claude Chabrol , and Jacques Rivette , began as critics for the film magazine Cahiers du cinéma . Auteur theory holds that

10450-577: The stage for the first time since the 1930s when he began programming concerts to complement the film programs. During this period, the Hobbs Building was purchased by Chatham Light Realty, whose owners, the Fraiman family, had previously bought and operated the Capitol Theater in Arlington. When Garen Daly's lease ended in 1989, the Fraimans decided to operate the Somerville themselves, closing

10560-507: The story of a farmer during a famine in Bengal . Other acclaimed Bengali filmmakers involved in this movement include Rituparno Ghosh , Aparna Sen and Goutam Ghose . Japanese filmmakers produced a number of films that broke with convention. Akira Kurosawa 's Rashomon (1950), the first Japanese film to be widely screened in the West, depicts four witnesses' contradictory accounts of

10670-633: The story of a farming village that hires seven master-less samurais to combat bandits. Fires on the Plain (1959), by Kon Ichikawa , explores the Japanese experience in World War II by depicting a sick Japanese soldier struggling to stay alive. Ugetsu (1953), by Kenji Mizoguchi , is a ghost story set in the late 16th century, which tells the story of peasants whose village is in the path of an advancing army. A year later, Mizoguchi directed Sansho

10780-553: The terms of analysis of these art films. Adopting an artistic framework of film analysis and review, these film critics provide viewers with a different way to appreciate what they are watching. So when controversial themes are explored, the public will not immediately dismiss or attack the movie where they are informed by critics of the film's value such as how it depicts realism. Here, art theaters or art houses that exhibit art films are seen as "sites of cultural enlightenment" that draw critics and intellectual audiences alike. It serves as

10890-426: The theme of identity. The former is an independent road movie/buddy film about two young street hustlers, which explores the theme of the search for home and identity. It was called a "high-water mark in '90s independent film", a "stark, poetic rumination", and an "exercise in film experimentation" of "high artistic quality". Chungking Express explores themes of identity, disconnection, loneliness, and isolation in

11000-425: The themes that A Clockwork Orange explored: an alienated population living in a violent, decaying society. The gritty violence and seething rage of Scorsese's film contrasts other films released in the same period, such as David Lynch 's dreamlike, surreal and industrial black and white classic Eraserhead (1977). In 1974, John Cassavetes offered a sharp commentary on American blue-collar life in A Woman Under

11110-437: The venue for a series of renovations. Some in the community were afraid the original theater would be subdivided into smaller cinemas, and formed an activist group to prevent such an occurrence, but as the owners had never actually made that decision, the theater was preserved, and reopened in 1990. Movie attendance, however, had dropped considerably, and a plan had to be devised to keep the theater competitive. The remainder of

11220-627: The word 'independent' sometimes connotes 'small', it's clear that the Independent Film Festival of Boston is THE premiere film festival in the Boston area. From a distributor's standpoint, it's important that a festival handle a film with a certain degree of professionalism and attention to detail. IFFBoston's focus on presenting dynamic, quality films and treating each screening as an event both meets and exceeds those expectations." - Brad Westcott, Magnolia Pictures Art-house An art film , art cinema , or arthouse film

11330-521: The words of New York Times critic Vincent Canby , his most "securely serious and funny film to date", Crimes and Misdemeanors , which involves multiple stories of people who are trying to find moral and spiritual simplicity while facing dire issues and thoughts surrounding the choices they make. French director Louis Malle chose another moral path to explore with the dramatization of his real-life childhood experiences in Au revoir les enfants , which depicts

11440-747: The year. The main hub of the festival is the Somerville Theatre in Davis Square , Somerville, Massachusetts . Other venues used by the festival in its first seven years include the Coolidge Corner Theatre, the Brattle Theatre , the Museum of Fine Arts , the Institute of Contemporary Art , and the Jimmy Tingle Theatre. "Yet in only its third year, the Independent Film Festival of Boston has become

11550-483: Was banned by Soviet authorities, unavailable in the West for a long period, and praised by critic Mikhail Vartanov as "revolutionary"; and in the early 1980s, Les Cahiers du Cinéma placed the film in its top 10 list. In 1967, in Soviet Georgia , influential Georgian film director Tengiz Abuladze directed Vedreba (Entreaty), which was based on the motifs of Vaja-Pshavela 's literary works, where story

11660-614: Was considered, according to award-winning author Toni Bentley , to be the "crown jewel" of the Golden Age of Porn , an era in modern American culture that was inaugurated by the release of Andy Warhol's Blue Movie (1969) and featured the phenomenon of " porno chic " in which adult erotic films began to obtain wide release, were publicly discussed by celebrities (such as Johnny Carson and Bob Hope ) and taken seriously by film critics (such as Roger Ebert ). In 1980, director Martin Scorsese gave audiences, who had become used to

11770-608: Was given away to entice patrons to attend the show. Gradually the Viano family came to operate the Capitol Theater in Arlington as well, and by the 1970s, the Somerville, Capitol, Regent, and Broadway theaters were mainstays of local movie-going. The opening of the Sacks Assembly Square Cinema (now closed) helped to kill the Broadway Theater, and the Fresh Pond Drive-In became a multiplex, forcing

11880-931: Was named "one of the top five film series in Boston" by the Boston Society of Film Critics in the festival's inaugural year of 2003 and was the only film festival on that list. The book The Ultimate Film Festival Survival Guide named the festival "the premier film festival in Boston" and the festival has since been recognized by the Boston Globe , Boston Herald , Boston Phoenix , Boston Magazine , Indiewire , and countless filmmakers as "the premier film festival in Boston". In 2008, MovieMaker Magazine named IFFBoston among "The Top 25 Film Festivals Worth The Entry Fee". The festival debuted in 2003 with an audience of 10,000 people and has grown in size each year since (2004–15,000 people, 2005–18,000 people, 2006–22,000 people, 2007–23,000 people, 2008–23,400) making it

11990-491: Was shown on television in an extended five-hour version. In the United Kingdom, Channel 4 , a new television channel, financed, in whole or in part, many films released theatrically through its Film 4 subsidiary. Wim Wenders offered another approach to life from a spiritual standpoint in his 1987 film Wings of Desire , a depiction of a "fallen angel" who lives among men, which won the Best Director Award at

12100-549: Was the return to prominence of bizarre characters and imagery; which abound in the tormented, obsessed title character in German New Wave director Werner Herzog 's Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1973), and in cult films such as Alejandro Jodorowsky 's psychedelic The Holy Mountain (1973) about a thief and an alchemist seeking the mythical Lotus Island . The film Taxi Driver (1976), by Martin Scorsese , continues

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