Schirmer Encyclopedia of Film
In terms of the extended definition of art cinema—a
cinema of formal innovation, a cinema aligned with the
latest trends in literature and the fine arts, a cinema that
targets an audience outside of the typical young adult
demographic—the notion of art cinema nearly retains a
degree of currency.
Many recent filmmakers from most of the filmmaking countries of the world have made films that explore
the potential of cinema to do more than tell simple
stories and offer the experience of spectacle; films that
do the kinds of things traditionally associated with the
world of art; films that premiere at the world’s leading
film festivals; films that circulate internationally. Pedro
Almodo´var (b. 1949), Krzysztof Kies ´lowski (1941–
1996), Ken Loach (b. 1936), Mike Leigh (b. 1942),
Michael Haneke (b. 1942), Robert Altman (b. 1925),
Wong Kar Wai (b. 1958), Jane Campion (b. 1954), Be´la
Tarr (b. 1955), and Theo Angelopoulos (b. 1935) have
made films that in various different ways carry on the
traditions of complexity and formal innovation associated
with art cinema. In America, the work of independent
filmmakers such as David Lynch (b. 1946) and Jim
Jarmusch (b. 1953) achieves a similar complexity while
the films of experimental British directors such as Peter
Greenaway (b. 1942) and Derek Jarman (1942–1994)
have blurred the distinction between the avant garde
cinema and the art film.
The pessimistic view of contemporary cinema is that
the polarized battle for cinematic hegemony in the early
twentieth century was won by entertainment and commerce interests at the expense of art interests. However, a
more optimistic view is that artistic influences have infiltrated commercial filmmaking to the extent that the
traditional oppositions of ‘‘art and commerce’’ and ‘‘culture and entertainment’’ have less force than previously.
Moreover, despite the high profile of spectacular blockbusters, contemporary cinema offers a wide spectrum of
experiences. The multiplex cinema is the potential home
to films at all ranges of this spectrum because it has the
screen capacity to host the latest Hollywood blockbuster
as well as the new Almodo´var, in the process making the
notion of a separate art cinema venue redundant. If the
reality of multiplex programming does not always confirm this possibility, then art cinema in the future may
well depend upon television—a major source of art film
financing in Europe dating from the 1970s—and on the
development of the less expensive methods of digital
production and exhibition.