Media 1, Readings

Non-narrative cinema

Since I’m doing a Cinema Studies contextual stream I’ve previously blogged about non-narrative form and experimental cinema. Doing this week’s reading1 has been handy to consolidate the forms of non-narrative cinema:

  • Categorical form: Enumerates subject matter and organises it into categories and subcategories. Examples: The Fog of War, Tokyo Olympiad, At Berkeley, The Clock.
  • Rhetorical form: An attempt to persuade the audience to adopt a certain position. Examples: The Hunting Ground, The Invisible War, Bowling for Columbine.
  • Abstract form: Manipulates shapes, colours and lines in experimental ways. Examples: Stan Brakhage, Len Lye.
  • Associational form: Poetic juxtaposition of mismatched elements to create associations in the audience’s minds. Examples: Baraka, Samsara, La Jetée.
  1. Bordwell, D. & Thompson, K. (1997), Film art: An introduction, New York: McGraw-Hill. ↩
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