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[French cinéma, short for cinématographe. See cinematograph.]
cinematic cin'e·mat'ic (sĭn'ə-măt'ĭk) adj.A movie; a movie theater; the movie industry. The term refers to movies shot for theater audiences in contrast to videos shot with camcorders, still cameras or camera phones. See cinema format.
Cinema should make you forget you are sitting in a theater.
— Roman Polanski.
Quotes:
"Curiosity doesn't matter any more. These days people don't want to be transported to emotional territories where they don't know how to react."
- Hector Babenko
"What is saved in the cinema when it achieves art is a spontaneous continuity with all mankind. It is not an art of the princes or the bourgeoisie. It is popular and vagrant. In the sky of the cinema people learn what they might have been and discover what belongs to them apart from their single lives."
- John Berger
"Film as dream, film as music. No art passes our conscience in the way film does, and goes directly to our feelings, deep down into the dark rooms of our souls."
- Ingmar Bergman
"My movie is born first in my head, dies on paper; is resuscitated by the living persons and real objects I use, which are killed on film but, placed in a certain order and projected on to a screen, come to life again like flowers in water."
- Robert Bresson
"Films can only be made by by-passing the will of those who appear in them, using not what they do, but what they are."
- Robert Bresson
"The making of a picture ought surely to be a rather fascinating adventure. It is not; it is an endless contention of tawdry egos, some of them powerful, almost all of them vociferous, and almost none of them capable of anything much more creative than credit-stealing and self-promotion."
- Raymond Chandler
See more famous quotes about Cinema
A movie theater (North America), also known as a cinema (Australia, United Kingdom and Ireland, as well as North America), a movie house, or the pictures, is a venue, usually a building, for viewing motion pictures ("movies" or "films"). Most theatres are commercial operations catering to the general public, who attend by purchasing a ticket. The film is projected with a movie projector onto a large projection screen at the front of the auditorium. Some movie theaters are now equipped for digital cinema projection, removing the need to create and transport a physical film print.
Outside of North America most English speaking countries use the term cinema, while "theatre" usually refers to live-performance venues. In the United States, the customary spelling is "theater", but the National Association of Theatre Owners uses the spelling "theatre" to refer to cinema.
Colloquial expressions, mostly used for cinemas collectively, include the silver screen, the big screen (contrasted with the "small screen" of television) and (in England) the pics, the flicks, and the flea pit, which derives from the long standing belief that the seats were infested with fleas as they were so uncomfortable to sit on, resulting in frequent fidgeting.
A "screening room" usually refers to a small facility for viewing movies, often for the use of those involved in the production of motion pictures, or in large private residences.
Noting that the first public exhibition of projected motion pictures in the United States was at Koster & Bials Music Hall on 34th Street in New York City on April 23, 1896, the first "theater" in the US dedicated exclusively to showing motion pictures was Vitascope Hall, established on Canal Street, New Orleans, Louisiana June 26, 1896: it was converted from a vacant store. In the basement of the new Ellicott Square Building, Main Street, Buffalo, New York, Mitchell Mark and his brother Moe Mark added what they called Edison’s Vitascope Theater, which they opened to the general public on Monday, 19 October 1896, in collaboration with Rudolph Wagner, who had moved to Buffalo after spending several years working at the Edison laboratories: this 72 seat, plush theater was designed from scratch solely to show motion pictures. Terry Jamiw Ramsaye, in his book, A Million and One Nights [p. 276], notes that this “was one of the earliest permanently located and exclusively motion-picture exhibitions.” According to the Buffalo News (Wednesday, 2 November 1932), “There were seats for about 90 persons and the admission was three cents. Feeble, flickering films of travel scenes were the usual fare." (The true number of seats was 72.)
 This November 7, 1897 ad shows the actual programming of Vitascope Theater one of the first motion picture theaters specially built for that purpose. In its first year, 200,000 people attended. It was in Buffalo, New York. |
The first permanent structure designed for screening of movies in the state of California was Tally's Electric Theater, completed in 1902 in Los Angeles, California. In 1912, the Picture House, in Clevedon, England opened with a charity film performance to raise funds for the victims of the Titanic disaster, and remains (as the Curzon Community Cinema) in business as of August, 2007 as the oldest continually-operating movie theater in the world. The 1913 opening of the Regent Theater in New York City signaled a new respectability for the medium, and the start of the two-decade heyday of American cinema design. The million dollar Mark Strand Theater at 47th Street and Broadway in New York City opened in 1914 by Mitchell Mark was the archetypical movie palace. The ornate Al Ringling Theater was the very first "Movie Palace" it was built in Baraboo, WI by Al Ringling, one of the founders of the Ringling Bros. Circus for the then incredible sum of $100,000.00. Later, Los Angeles promoter Sid Grauman continued the trend of theatre-as-destination with his ornate "Million Dollar Theatre", using the same design firm as Ringling (the MDT was the first to signify its primary use for motion pictures with the "theatre" spelling), and opened on Broadway in downtown Los Angeles in 1918.
In the next ten years, as movie revenues exploded, independent promoters and movie studios (who owned their own proprietary chains until an antitrust ruling in 1948) raced to build the most lavish, elaborate, attractive theatres. These forms morphed into a unique architectural genre—the movie palace—a unique and extreme architectural genre which came to an end with the deepening of the Great Depression. The movie chains were also among the first industries to install air conditioning systems which gave the theatres an additional lure of comfort in the summer period.
Several movie studios achieved vertical integration by acquiring and constructing theatre chains. The so-called "Big Five" theatre chains of the 1920s and 1930s were all owned by studios: Paramount, Warner, Loews (owned by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer), Fox, and RKO. All were broken up as a result of the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in the 1948 United States v. Paramount Pictures, Inc. anti-trust case.
In the 1970s, porn theatres started to have rampant ubiquity in some areas. However, the introduction of the low-cost VHS video system for home televisions has decommissioned many porno cinemas as well as many 'second-run' theatres.
People can pay to watch movies at home, through cable television or
Sometimes a 3-D film is shown. Visitors borrow or keep special glasses to watch it. Depending on the system used, these are e.g. polarized glasses.
Traditionally a movie theater, like a stage theater, consists of a single auditorium with rows of comfortable seats, as well as a lobby area containing a box office for buying tickets, a counter and/or self-service facilities for buying snacks and drinks, and washrooms. Stage theaters are sometimes converted into movie theatres by placing a screen in front of the stage and adding a projector; this conversion may be permanent, or temporary for purposes such as showing arthouse fare to an audience accustomed to plays. The familiar characteristics of relatively low admission and open seating can be traced to Samuel Roxy Rothafel, an early movie theater impresario. Many of these early theatres contain a balcony, an elevated platform above the theater's rearmost seats. The rearward main floor "loge" seats were sometimes larger, softer, and more widely spaced and sold for a higher price.
In conventional low pitch viewing floors the preferred seating arrangement is to use staggered rows. While a less efficient use of floor space this allows a somewhat improved sight line between the patrons seated in the next row toward the screen, provided they do not lean toward one another.
"Stadium seating" is employed in many modern theaters, giving patrons a clear sight line over the heads of those seated in front of them. Originally employed for flat-screen IMAX viewing (which has a very tall screen) this feature has proven popular with theatre patrons. The first stadium-style movie theater in the United States was the AMC Grand in Dallas, Texas, which opened in 1995.
Rows of seats are divided by one or more aisles so that there are seldom more than 20 seats in a row. This allows easier access to seating, as the space between rows is very narrow. Depending on the angle of rake of the seats, the aisles have steps. In older theaters, aisle lights were often built into the end seats of each row to help patrons find their way in the dark. Since the advent of stadium theaters with stepped aisles, each step in the aisles may be outlined with small lights to prevent patrons from tripping in the darkened theater.
North America's first two-screen theatre, The Elgin Theatre was created in 1957 by Nat Taylor in Ottawa, Ontario, when he expanded the 20 year old facility. Taylor is credited as inventor of the multiplex or cineplex, and later founded the Cineplex Odeon Corporation, opening the 18-screen Toronto Eaton Centre Cineplex, the world's largest at the time.[1]
Stanley Durwood of American Multi-Cinema (now AMC Theatres) pioneered what would become the multiplex in 1963 after realizing that he could operate several attached auditoriums with the same staff needed for one through careful management of the start times for each movie.
Since that time multiple-screen theatres have become the norm, and many existing venues have been retrofitted so that they have multiple auditoriums. A single lobby is shared among them. In most markets, nearly all single-screen theatres have gone out of business. Because of the late development of multiplexes, the term "cinema" or "theater" may refer either the whole complex or a single auditorium, and sometimes "screen" is used to refer to an auditorium.
A popular movie may be shown on multiple screens at the same multiplex, which reduces the choice of movies but offers more choice of viewing times or a greater number of seats to accommodate patrons. Two or three screens may be created by dividing up an existing cinema (as Durwood did with his Roxy in 1964), but newly built multiplexes usually have at least six to eight screens, and often as many as twelve, fourteen or even sixteen. In these large modern theaters, an electronic display in the ticket hall often shows a list of movies with starting time, auditorium number, admission rating, and whether it is sold out. Sometimes the number of remaining available seats is shown as well. At the entrance of each auditorium there may be a one-line electronic display with the title of the movie. After the movie has started, it can display the title and time of the next scheduled showing.
Although definitions vary, a large multiplex with 20 or more screens is usually called a
IMAX is a system using film with more than 10 times the frame size of a 35mm film to produce image quality far superior to conventional film. IMAX theaters use an oversized screen as well as special projectors. The first permanent IMAX theater was at Ontario Place in Toronto, Ontario.
A drive-in movie theatre is basically an outdoor parking area with a screen at one end and a projection booth at the other. Moviegoers drive into the parking spaces which are sometimes sloped upwards at the front to give a more direct view of the movie screen. Movies are usually viewed through the car windscreen (windshield) although some people prefer to sit on the hood of the car. Sound is either provided through portable loudspeakers located by each parking space, or is broadcast on an FM radio frequency, to be played through the car's stereo system. Because of their outdoor nature, drive-ins usually only operate seasonally, and after sunset. Drive-in movie theatres are mainly found in the United States, where they were especially popular in the 1950s and 1960s. Once numbering in the thousands, about 400 remain in the U.S. today. In some cases, multiplex or megaplex theatres were built on the sites of former drive-in theatres.
Some outdoor movie theatres are just cleared areas where the audience sits upon chairs or blankets and watch the movie on a temporary screen, or even the wall of a convenient building. There is a nice outdoor cinema along the seafront in Monte Carlo, Monaco.
In the late 1990s, student organizations in universities and schools started to show movies in auditoriums equipped with multimedia projectors. Before the ubiquity of classic and modern films in DVD and VHS formats, student groups at large universities often sponsored screenings of films on 16 mm projectors in lecture halls as a way to raise money. Many small colleges also had student-run film groups that projected 16 mm films on a regular basis to students.
Some alternative methods of showing movies have been popular in the past. In the 1980s the introduction of VHS cassettes made possible video-salons, small rooms where visitors viewed the film on a large TV. These establishments were especially popular in the Soviet Union, where official distribution companies were slow to adapt to changing demand, and so movie theatres could not show popular Hollywood and Asian films.
Movies are also commonly shown on airliners in flight, using large screens in each cabin or smaller screens for each group of rows or each individual seat; the airline company sometimes charges a fee for the headphones needed to hear the movie's sound. Movies can also be shown on trains.
The smallest purpose-built cinema in operation is the Cinema dei Piccoli in Villa Borghese, Rome, Italy. The Cinema dei Piccoli was built by Alfredo Annibali in 1934 in the park of Villa Borghese, and today covers an area of 71.52 sq. m (769.83 sq. ft). Originally called the Topolino Cinema (after Mickey Mouse), the movie theatre used a Path-Baby 9.5 mm movie projector, bed sheets for the screen and played 78's for background music. Restored in 1991, the cinema now has 63 seats, a 5 x 2.5 m (16.4 x 8,2 ft) screen, stereo sound and air conditioning. It is mentioned in the Guinness Book of Records.
Movie theaters may be classified by the type of movies or when they are shown:
Usually an admission is for one feature film. Sometimes two feature films are sold as one admission (double feature), with a break in between. Separate admission for a short subject is rare, it is either an extra before a feature film or part of a series of short subjects sold as one admission (this mainly occurs at film festivals). See also anthology film.
Historically, many movie theatres presented a number of shorter items in addition to the feature film. This might include a newsreel, live-action comedy short films, documentary short films, musical short films, and/or cartoon shorts (many classic cartoons series such as the Looney Tunes and Mickey Mouse shorts were created for this purpose). Some theatres ran on continuous showings, where the same items would repeat throughout the day, with patrons arriving and departing at any time rather than having distinct entrance and exit cycles. Newsreels gradually became obsolete by the 1960s with the rise of television news, and most material now shown prior to a feature film is of a commercial or promotional nature.
A typical modern theatre presents commercial advertising shorts, then movie trailers, and then the feature film. Advertised start times are usually for the entire program or session, not the feature itself.[1]
Thus people who want to avoid commercials might want to enter later, and those who want to avoid the trailers, again later. This is easiest and causes the least inconvenience when it is not crowded, and/or one is not very choosy about where one wants to sit. If one has a ticket for a specific seat (see below) one is formally assured of that, but it is still inconvenient and disturbing to find and claim it during the commercials and trailers, unless it is near an aisle.
Some movie theaters have some kind of break during the presentation. There may also be a break between the introductory material and the feature. Some countries such as the Netherlands have a tradition of incorporating an intermission in regular feature presentations, though many theaters have now abandoned that tradition [2], while in North America this is very rare, and usually limited to special circumstances involving extremely long movies.
During the closing credits many people leave, some stay till the end. Usually the light is switched on after the credits, sometimes already during them.
Sometimes movie theaters provide digital projection of a live broadcast of a performance or other event. For example, there are regular live broadcasts to movie theaters of Metropolitan Opera performances, with additionally limited repeat showings.
In order to obtain admission to a movie theater, the prospective theater-goer must usually purchase a ticket, which may be for an arbitrary seat ("open" or "free" seating, first-come, first-served) or for a specific one. Movie theaters in North America generally have open seating. Movie theaters in Europe can have free seating or have seating systems where the attendee can pick seats from a screen. Some theatres in Mexico offer numbered seating, in particular, Cinepolis VIP.
The price of a ticket may be discounted during off-peak times e.g. for matinées, and higher at busy times, typically evenings and/or weekends. In Canada, when this practice is used, it is traditional to offer the lower prices for Tuesday for all showings, one of the slowest days of the week in the movie theatre business, which has led to the nickname "cheap Tuesday." Almost all movie theaters employ economic price discrimination: tickets for youth, students, and seniors are typically cheaper. Large theater chains, such as AMC Theaters, also own smaller theaters that show "second runs" of popular films, at reduced ticket prices.
Some movie theaters and chains sell passes for unlimited entrance. Some examples:
Note that in Thailand there is the restriction of one show per movie, while in the Netherlands one can see any movie as many times as one wants.
Admission to a movie may also be restricted by a motion picture rating system. According to such systems, children or teenagers below a certain age may be forbidden access to theaters showing certain movies, or only admitted when accompanied by a parent or other adult. In some jurisdictions a rating may legally impose this on movie theaters. Furthermore, where movie theaters do not have this legal obligation, they may enforce restrictions on their own.
Accordingly, a movie theater may either not be allowed to program an unrated film, or voluntarily refrain from that. In the US many mainstream movie theaters do not even show movies rated NC-17 ("No one 17 and under admitted"). Often, instead, an edited R-rated version ("Restricted. Persons under 17 are not admitted unless accompanied by parent or adult guardian.") is shown. [dubious ]
In some movie theater complexes, the theaters are arranged such that tickets are checked at the entrance into the entire plaza, rather than before each theater. This has led to movie hopping, also called theater hopping and plexing, the practice of buying a ticket for one film and illicitly attending additional showings within the complex without buying the required tickets. Younger patrons may also use this practice to enter auditoriums showing age-restricted movies.
At a theater with a sold-out show there is often an additional ticket check, to make sure that everybody with a ticket for that show can find a seat.
The lobby may be before or after the ticket check, see below.
Movie studios/film distributors in the U.S. traditionally drive hard bargains entitling them to as much as 70% of the gross ticket revenue during the first week (and then the balance changes in 10% increments per week from there).[3] See also box office.
Movie theaters are associated with dating, 3D glasses, popcorn and expensive treats. It is rather common to throw and leave your garbage on the floor in a movie theater, than elsewhere, which is defiant to the cultural standard of cleaning up after oneself, much to the chagrin of theater employees.
Sometimes couples go to a movie theater for the additional reason that it provides the possibility of some physical intimacy, where the dark provides some privacy (with additional privacy in the back-row), i.e., the same amount of intimacy is a lesser form of public display of affection. This applies in particular for young people who still live with their parents, and these parents tend to monitor and/or forbid certain activities, and in the case of other social or even legal problems with public displays of affection. Compared with being together in a room without other people, it may also be reassuring for one or both of the couple (and for parents) that the intimacy is necessarily limited.
Arm rests pose a hindrance to intimacy. Some theaters have love seats: seats for two without an armrest in the middle. The most modern theaters have movable armrests throughout the theater that when down can hold a food container as well as act as an armrest or partition between the seats and when up allow closer contact between the couple. More expensive theaters may have large comfortable sofas.
Movie theaters usually sell various snack foods and drinks on concession stands. There may be a counter, self-service where one pays at the counter, and/or coin-operated machines. Sometimes the area of sale is more like a self-service shop than a lobby (it is not suitable for consuming the goods), and one pays at the check-out between the shop and the area with the screens.
The facilities for buying snacks and drinks often represent the theater's primary source of profit since most of the ticket revenue goes to the film distributor (and onward to the movie studio). Some movie theaters forbid eating and drinking inside the viewing room (restricting such activities to the lobby), while others encourage it by such devices as selling large portions of popcorn; in either case, bringing one's own food and drinks may be forbidden. Concessions is currently a huge area of expansion with many companies in the U.S. offering a wider range of snacks, including hot dogs and nachos. The noise of people eating, including the opening of wrappers, is frowned upon by some moviegoers.
Many theaters have embraced the "brew and view" concept, serving alcoholic beverages, in addition to snacks and popcorn. Some movie theaters such as the Alamo Drafthouse offer full restaurant service at one's seat, though this is not as widespread. McMenamins is a chain of restaurant/brewpub establishments in the U.S. states of Oregon and Washington, many of which have full movie theaters.
The lobby may be before or after the ticket check. If it is after, sometimes entrance to the lobby is restricted to a specific time, such as half an hour before the movie starts.
It is quite common for the lobby to include an arcade game area.
Sometimes movie going teenagers throw various foodstuffs — most notably popcorn — at each other, though sometimes at other moviegoers. This is frowned upon by management. In Ireland, mobile phones have also been banned in all cinemas, with some going to the extreme of installing equipment that blocks mobile phone signals.
The collocation of theaters and the rotation of start times results in a great economy of scale for the sale of so-called "junk food" — sugary soda pop, popcorn, and the like. In addition to poor nutritional values, the foodstuffs sold are also characterized by extremely high markup and the profit from their sales can form the bulk of the gross margin of a theater.
This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)
Dansk (Danish)
n. - biograf, filmindustri
Nederlands (Dutch)
bioscoop, film(kunst)
Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - κινηματογράφος, σινεμά
Italiano (Italian)
cinema, sala cinematografica
Português (Portuguese)
n. - cinema (m)
Русский (Russian)
кинотеатр, кинематография
Español (Spanish)
n. - cine, cinematógrafo
Svenska (Swedish)
n. - biograf
中文（简体） (Chinese (Simplified))
电影院, 电影
中文（繁體） (Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 電影院, 電影
العربيه (Arabic)
(الاسم) سينما, دار سينما
עברית (Hebrew)
n. - אמנות הקולנוע, קולנוע, בית-קולנוע, סרט
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