The Cineaste - More Than Just A Film Fan

A cineaste is a person whose love of cinema, film and sometimes television goes far beyond the usual level. True cineastes are not only extremely knowledgeable about the content of film productions and the history of the film industry, but are also able to provide information about the biographies of actors and the technical development of cinema. Until a few years ago, sophisticated filmmakers and knowledgeable, renowned film critics were referred to as cineastes. Today, this is only common in France, where film directors still bear the epithet "cinéaste". However, there are still filmmakers who attach importance to being considered cinéaste filmmakers, i.e. stylistically sophisticated filmmakers with extensive knowledge and deep roots in film and cinema history.

Film & cinema of the 50s: the first cineastes

The history of the term cinéaste began in the 1920s, when the French film critic, director , film theorist and screenwriter Louis Delluc was looking for a word that would clarify the difference between commercially oriented film and cinema with high artistic value. In the 1950s, the French term "cinéaste" finally found its way into German and English usage. The decisive factor in distinguishing between a mere film consumer and a cineaste is the willingness and ability to enter into a discourse about cinema and film culture. The knowledge of a mere film consumer is not sufficient for this, whereas a cineaste can even enrich the discourse with intelligent, knowledgeable contributions.

What does a cineaste do?

Watch films, talk about films, inform themselves about films. In addition to this classic triptych (which also applies to some film consumers without intellectual aspirations), cineastes differ from non-cineastes in that they join film clubs, take part in panel discussions or attend film studies seminars. The subject of film therefore not only touches them now and then, but permanently. Some cineastes spend a large part of their free time interpreting films, reading books about films and writing online articles about cinema. Interesting in this context: In some cases, a passionate preoccupation with film culture was even the starting point of a great career as a film director. For example, the legendary French director Jean-Luc Godard initially worked as a film critic and cineaste before he started making films himself.

An important area of film studies: cineastics

When the discourse on cinema becomes academic, we speak of cineastics. Cineastics includes methods such as semiotic film analysis, in which individual images of a film are viewed and analysed as the basic element of a system of signs.