Documentary filmmaker Chuck Workman is best known for his clip reels and lovely montage sequences featured at the Academy Awards broadcasts. His feature documentary What Is Cinema?, which takes its name from a seminal work of film theory written by Andre Bazin, is as much essay as film history. Not surprisingly, there is no one answer to the question in this exploration of the many forms that cinema can take and the different approaches adopted by filmmakers. Workman interviews directors such as David Lynch, Mike Leigh, Costa-Gavras, Kelly Reichardt, and Jonas Mekas, and features clips from over 100 works by auteurs ranging from Alfred Hitchcock and Akira Kurosawa to Chantal Akerman and Bill Viola, putting documentary, avant-garde, and experimental filmmaking on an equal footing with Hollywood classics, independent film, and foreign cinema. The film's strength is Workman's talent for bringing in a great breadth of clips across genres, countries, and styles to illustrate ideas and examples offered by his commentators. This idiosyncratic production is too short to be comprehensive, serving as an introduction rather than a film primer or a history lesson, but it's ultimately a loving celebration of the possibilities of cinema and the creative contributions of directors in all genres. Recommended. (S. Axmaker)
What Is Cinema?
Cohen, 80 min., not rated, DVD: $29.98, Blu-ray: $39.98 Volume 30, Issue 1
What Is Cinema?
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As of March 2022, Video Librarian has changed from a four-star rating system to a five-star one. This change allows our reviewers to have a wider range of critical viewpoints, as well as to synchronize with Google’s rating structure. This change affects all reviews from March 2022 onwards. All reviews from before this period will still retain their original rating. Future film submissions will be considered our new 1-5 star criteria.
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