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The Film Portal

Man working with a movie projector in a movie theater, 1958

A film (British English)—also called a movie (American English), motion picture, moving picture, picture, photoplay, or flick—is a work of visual art that simulates experiences and otherwise communicates ideas, stories, perceptions, emotions, or atmosphere through the use of moving images that are generally accompanied by sound and (less commonly) other sensory stimulations. The word "cinema" is a shortening of the word "cinematography" and is used to refer to either filmmaking, the film industry, the overall art form, or a movie theater. (Full article...)

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Saturday Night Fever is a 1977 American dance drama film directed by John Badham and produced by Robert Stigwood. It stars John Travolta as Tony Manero, a young Italian-American man who spends his weekends dancing and drinking at a local discothèque while dealing with social tensions and disillusionment in his working class ethnic neighborhood in Brooklyn. The story is based on "Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night", a mostly fictional 1976 article by music writer Nik Cohn.

A major critical and commercial success, Saturday Night Fever had a tremendous impact on the popular culture of the late 1970s. It helped popularize disco around the world and initiated a series of collaborations between film studios and record labels. It made Travolta, already well known from his role in the popular TV sitcom Welcome Back, Kotter, a household name. He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance, at the time becoming the fourth-youngest nominee in the category. The film showcases aspects of the music, dancing, and subculture surrounding the disco era, including symphony-orchestrated melodies, haute couture styles of clothing, pre-AIDS sexual promiscuity, and graceful choreography. The Saturday Night Fever soundtrack, featuring songs by the Bee Gees, is one of the best-selling soundtrack albums worldwide. Travolta reprised his role of Tony Manero in Staying Alive in 1983, which was panned by critics despite being successful at the box office. (Portal:Film/Featured content)

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The following are images from various film-related articles on Wikipedia.

Image 1Frame from a c.1912 Chronochrome film (from History of film technology)
Image 2A frame from the Lumière brothers staged comedy film, L'Arroseur Arrosé (1895) (from History of film)
Image 3Maria Germanova in Anna Karenina (1914) (from Film industry)
Image 4Cinema admissions in 1995 (from History of film)
Image 5Don Juan is the first feature-length film to use the Vitaphone sound-on-disc sound system with a synchronized musical score and sound effects, though it has no spoken dialogue. (from History of film)
Image 6Animated GIF of Prof. Stampfer's Stroboscopische Scheibe No. X (Trentsensky & Vieweg 1833) (from History of film technology)
Image 7William Friese-Greene (from Film industry)
Image 8Nestor studio, 1911 (from Film industry)
Image 9Publicity still for the Egyptian film My Wife, the Director General (1966) (from Film industry)
Image 10Complex vignette shot in die Austernprinzessin (The Oyster Princess) (from History of film)
Image 11Louis Poyet [fr]'s engraving of the mechanism of the "fusil photographique" as published in La Nature (april 1882) (from History of film technology)
Image 12Salah Zulfikar and Nadia Lutfi in Saladin the Victorious (1963) (from History of film)
Image 13Insert shot in Old Wives for New (Cecil B. DeMille, 1918) (from History of film)
Image 14Off Plus Camera Film Festival in Kraków, 2012, with Andrzej Seweryn, Daniel Olbrychski, and Wojciech Pszoniak on stage. (from Film industry)
Image 15Charlie Chaplin (from History of film)
Image 16The Hollywood Sign (from Film industry)
Image 17The Jazz Singer (1927), was the first full-length film with synchronized sound. (from History of film technology)
Image 18The Babelsberg Studio near Berlin was the first large-scale film studio in the world (founded 1912) and the forerunner to Hollywood. It still produces global blockbusters every year. (from Film industry)
Image 19
The Pathé Brothers, by Adrien Barrère.
(from Film industry)
Image 20The Babelsberg Studio near Berlin, the earliest large-scale film studio complex (founded 1912) Today its one of the major film studios worldwide. (from History of film)
Image 21London IMAX has the largest cinema screen in Britain with a total screen size of 520 m². (from Film industry)
Image 22Old Chinese Cinema in Qufu, Shandong (from Film industry)
Image 23A surviving two-color-component image from the first Technicolor feature film, The Gulf Between (1917) (from History of film technology)
Image 24A still from The Story of the Kelly Gang (Australia, 1906; 80 min.) (from Film industry)
Image 25Original script from the 1989 film Batman (from History of film)
Image 26Flying pelican captured by Marey around 1882. He created a method of recording several phases of movement superimposed into one photograph (from History of film technology)
Image 27A shot from Raja Harishchandra (1913), the first film of Bollywood. (from Film industry)
Image 28Edward Raymond Turner's three-color projector, 1902 (from History of film technology)
Image 29Max Skladanowsky (right) in 1934 with his brother Eugen and the Bioscop (from History of film technology)
Image 30The Cinématographe Lumière in projection mode (from History of film technology)
Image 31Publicity still for the Egyptian film Yahya el hub (1938) (from Film industry)
Image 32Georges Méliès (left) painting a backdrop in his studio (from History of film)
Image 33Film still from Dickson Greeting (from History of film technology)
Image 34
An electrotachyscope
American Scientific, 16/11/1889, p. 303
(from History of film technology)
Image 35Czermak's 1855 Stereophoroskop (from History of film technology)
Image 36Italian neorealist movie Bicycle Thieves (1948) by Vittorio De Sica, considered part of the canon of classic cinema (from History of film)
Image 37Discounted DVD home video film releases sold in the Netherlands (from Film industry)
Image 38Cinématographe Lumière at the Institut Lumière, France (from History of film technology)
Image 39Poster for a Biograph Studios release from 1913 (from Film industry)
Image 40GIF animation from retouched pictures of The Horse in Motion by Eadweard Muybridge (1879). (from History of film technology)
Image 41A.E. Smith filming The Bargain Fiend in the Vitagraph Studios in 1907. Arc floodlights hang overhead. (from History of film)
Image 42A scene from Raja Harishchandra (1913) – credited as the first full-length Indian motion picture. (from Film industry)
Image 43A production scene from the 1950 Hollywood film Julius Caesar starring Charlton Heston (from History of film)
Image 44Oskar Messter (from History of film)
Image 45The Wizard of Oz (from History of film)
Image 46Poster for the 1956 Egyptian film Wakeful Eyes starring Salah Zulfikar and Shadia (from History of film)
Image 47Akira Kurosawa, Japanese film director (from History of film)
Image 48The first two shots of As Seen Through a Telescope (1900), with the telescope POV simulated by the circular mask (from History of film)

Selected image

Credit: Stephanie Kemna

The Shrine Auditorium, site of the 60th Annual Academy Awards. The Academy Awards, popularly known as the Oscars, are presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) to recognize excellence of professionals in the film industry, including directors, actors, and writers.

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Did you know...

... that in 2001, around 64 percent of all films produced in Malayalam were of the soft-porn variety?
... that an unfinished cut of Revolution+1, a film about the life of the suspected assassin of former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe, was released in theaters the day before Abe's state funeral?
... that Hong Kong actress and beauty pageant winner Louisa Mak is a Cambridge law graduate?
... that film critics accused the MPAA ratings board of having yielded to studio pressure to rate The Exorcist R rather than X?
... that Jack Champion had to film all his scenes in Avatar: The Way of Water twice?

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Leigh in Gone with the Wind (1939)

Vivien Leigh (/liː/ LEE; born Vivian Mary Hartley; 5 November 1913 – 8 July 1967), styled as Lady Olivier after 1947, was a British actress. She won the Academy Award for Best Actress twice, for her performances as Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind (1939) and Blanche DuBois in the film version of A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), a role she had also played on stage in London's West End in 1949. She also won a Tony Award for her work in the Broadway musical version of Tovarich (1963). Although her career had periods of inactivity, in 1999 the American Film Institute ranked Leigh as the 16th-greatest female movie star of classic Hollywood cinema.

After completing her drama school education, Leigh appeared in small roles in four films in 1935 and progressed to the role of heroine in Fire Over England (1937). Lauded for her beauty, Leigh felt that her physical attributes sometimes prevented her from being taken seriously as an actress. Despite her fame as a screen actress, Leigh was primarily a stage performer. During her 30-year career, she played roles ranging from the heroines of Noël Coward and George Bernard Shaw comedies to classic Shakespearean characters such as Ophelia, Cleopatra, Juliet and Lady Macbeth. Later in life, she performed as a character actress in a few films. (Full article...)

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Per a review process, Featured lists are considered to be the best list articles on English Wikipedia.

Image 1
Nesbitt in 2008

James Nesbitt is an actor from Northern Ireland whose filmography encompasses both television and film roles over a 30-year period. Nesbitt's screen career began in the early 1980s with uncredited roles in episodes of the BBC Play For Today strand, which he had while attached to the Riverside Theatre's youth group. His first credited role came in 1989, as a bit player in the John Ogdon biopic Virtuoso, which was followed by his first feature film role in 1991 in Hear My Song.

As a casual actor in the early 1990s, Nesbitt mixed television and film roles; he appeared in episodes of Boon, The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, Covington Cross, Lovejoy, and Between the Lines. He also played roles in several Michael Winterbottom films, beginning with Loves Lies Bleeding in 1993 and continuing with Go Now in 1995, Jude in 1996 and Welcome to Sarajevo in 1997. (Full article...)
Image 2

Mohabbatein (transl. Love Stories) is a 2000 Indian Hindi-language musical romantic drama film written and directed by Aditya Chopra. It stars an ensemble cast of Amitabh Bachchan, Shah Rukh Khan, Aishwarya Rai, and the newcomers Uday Chopra, Shamita Shetty, Jugal Hansraj, Kim Sharma, Jimmy Sheirgill, and Preeti Jhangiani. It tells the story of a fictional all-boys college Gurukul's principal Narayan Shankar (Bachchan) who prohibits his students from falling in love and will unhesitantly expel those who do not obey the rule. The rest of the film focuses on how the arrival of the violin teacher Raj Aryan Malhotra (Khan) changes his views. Mohabbatein's soundtrack was composed by Jatin–Lalit, and the lyrics were written by Anand Bakshi. The film was shot by Manmohan Singh on sets designed by Sharmishta Roy, while the editor was V. Karnik.

The film opened at theatres on 27 October 2000 and was met with widespread acclaim from critics, who praised the performances of Bachchan and Khan. Made on a production budget of ₹130 million (US$1.6 million), the film had a total gross of ₹900.1 million (US$11 million) becoming the year's highest-grossing Indian film. (Full article...)
Image 3
Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World is a 2003 adventure film directed by Peter Weir. He and screenwriter John Collee based the film on several novels in the Aubrey–Maturin series written by Patrick O'Brian. Russell Crowe and Paul Bettany starred in the film, alongside a large ensemble cast. A Samuel Goldwyn Films production, Master and Commander had three American distributors, 20th Century Fox, Miramax Films, and Universal Studios. Fox released the adaptation in North America, while Miramax and Universal served as its distributors overseas. It was released in US theaters on 14 November 2003, where it earned $25.7 million on its opening weekend, debuting in second place behind Elf. Since then, Master and Commander reached a US box office total of more than $93.9 million and after its release in foreign countries over the following few months, its worldwide gross ended at around $212 million. The movie was well received by film critics, with an approval rating of 85 percent on review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes.

Master and Commander garnered various awards and nominations following its release, ranging from recognition of the film itself to its direction, screenwriting, cinematography, and other technical categories. Performances by the cast were also honored, mainly Crowe for Best Actor, Bettany for Best Supporting Actor, and Max Pirkis for Best Young Actor. The adaptation received ten Academy Award nominations but only won in two categories for Best Cinematography and Best Sound Editing; in a ceremony otherwise dominated by The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (which won every award it received a nomination for), these were the only two of the ten Master and Commander categories where Return of the King failed to earn a nomination. At the 57th British Academy Film Awards, Master and Commander received eight nominations, ultimately winning in four of them, including the David Lean Award for Achievement in Directing. Weir's direction received a total of eleven nominations, while he and Collee's screenwriting earned four. The overall film received twelve nominations, coming away with accolades at the American Film Institute Awards, London Film Critics Circle Awards, and National Board of Review Awards. The Golden Globes Awards and Broadcast Film Critics Association Awards each saw the movie earn three nominations but leave empty-handed. (Full article...)
Image 4

Pete Docter received several awards and nominations for his direction.

Soul is a 2020 American animated film written and directed by Pete Docter. It features the voice of Jamie Foxx as Joe Gardner, a middle school music teacher who seeks to reunite his soul and his body after he unexpectedly dies before his big break as a jazz musician. Tina Fey also stars as the voice of 22, a soul with a pessimistic view of life that Gardner tries to inspire to go to Earth.

The film premiered at the London Film Festival on October 11, 2020, and was scheduled to be theatrically released on November 20. However, the feature was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, with Soul being released direct-to-streaming on Disney+ on December 25, 2020, and in theaters in countries without the streaming service. As of May 2021^[update], Soul has grossed $116.2 million at the worldwide box office. Rotten Tomatoes, a review aggregator, surveyed 360 reviews and judged 95% of them to be positive. (Full article...)
Image 5

The 2023 recipient: Emma Stone

The Academy Award for Best Actress is an award presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS). It has been awarded since the 1st Academy Awards to an actress who has delivered an outstanding performance in a leading role in a film released that year. The award is traditionally presented by the previous year's Best Actor winner.

The Best Actress award has been presented 96 times, to 79 actresses. The first winner was Janet Gaynor for her roles in 7th Heaven, Street Angel, and Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans. The most recent winner is Emma Stone for her role in Poor Things (2023); she had previously won the award for her role in La La Land (2016). The record for most wins is four, held by Katharine Hepburn. Frances McDormand has won three times, and thirteen other actresses have won the award twice. Meryl Streep has received the most nominations in the category—seventeen—and has won twice. With six nominations Deborah Kerr is the most nominated actress without a single win in this category. At the 41st Academy Awards, Barbra Streisand and Katharine Hepburn received the same number of votes and thus tied for Best Actress (the only time this has occurred). (Full article...)
Image 6

Peter Jackson (pictured at the final film's world premiere in Wellington) directed all three films of the trilogy.

The Lord of the Rings is a film series of three epic fantasy adventure films directed by Peter Jackson. The films, subtitled The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and The Return of the King, were released serially worldwide between December 2001 and December 2003. They are based on J. R. R. Tolkien's epic fantasy novel, The Lord of the Rings, adapted for the screen by Jackson, Fran Walsh, and Philippa Boyens. Set in Tolkien's fictional Middle-earth, the plot follows the hobbit Frodo Baggins and his fellow members of the Fellowship of the Ring as they embark on a quest to destroy the One Ring, which will rid Middle-earth of the Dark Lord Sauron. A large ensemble cast was featured in the series, which included Elijah Wood, Ian McKellen, Viggo Mortensen, Sean Astin, Orlando Bloom, Liv Tyler, John Rhys-Davies, Sean Bean, Billy Boyd, Dominic Monaghan, Andy Serkis, Cate Blanchett, Christopher Lee, Hugo Weaving, Ian Holm, John Noble, Bernard Hill, David Wenham, Miranda Otto, Karl Urban, Craig Parker, Marton Csokas, and Brad Dourif.

All three films premiered to widespread critical acclaim. The Toronto Film Critics Association awarded Jackson a "Special Citation" for his work on the series as a whole, while the Austin Film Critics Association selected the entire series as the decade's third best film. The films won seventeen out of thirty Academy Award nominations, and The Return of the King holds the record for most Oscars with eleven alongside Titanic and Ben-Hur. The Return of the King also has the distinction of being the only fantasy film until The Shape of Water (2017) to have won the Academy Award for Best Picture. (Full article...)
Image 7

Nightcrawler is 2014 American thriller film written and directed by Dan Gilroy. The film stars Jake Gyllenhaal as Lou Bloom, a stringer who records violent events late at night in Los Angeles, and sells the footage to a local television news station. Rene Russo, Riz Ahmed, and Bill Paxton feature in supporting roles. The film premiered at the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival on September 5, before receiving a theatrical release on October 31, distributed by Open Road Films. Nightcrawler earned a worldwide total of $50.3 million on a production budget of $8.5 million. Rotten Tomatoes, a review aggregator, surveyed 232 reviews and judged 95 percent to be positive.

Nightcrawler received awards and nominations in a variety of categories, with particular praise for Gilroy's screenplay and Gyllenhaal's performance. At the 87th Academy Awards, Gilroy was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. The film received an additional four nominations at the 68th British Academy Film Awards, three nominations at the 20th Critics' Choice Awards, one nomination at the 72nd Golden Globe Awards, and one nomination at 21st Screen Actors Guild Awards, but did not win any of them. Nightcrawler did fare better at award ceremonies held by critics' organizations, particularly the 19th San Diego Film Critics Society Awards, where it won seven out of its nine nominations. These included Best Actor, Best Director, and Best Film. The American Film Institute and the National Board of Review included Nightcrawler in their lists of top ten films of the year. (Full article...)
Image 8
Chopra in 2012

Yash Chopra (1932–2012) was an Indian film director and producer known for his works in Bollywood. Acknowledged as one of the greatest filmmakers from the country, he was credited by the media for "changing the face of romance to become a brand" in the industry. He made his directorial debut with the family drama Dhool Ka Phool, which was produced by his elder brother Baldev Raj. The film, released in 1959, became a commercial success worldwide and gave him critical acclaim. Chopra's next film, Dharmputra (1961), failed to perform well at the box office but won the National Film Award for Best Feature Film in Hindi. In 1965, he directed the drama Waqt about a family who are separated due to a natural disaster. A commercial success, it was one of the earliest Indian films to star an ensemble cast and won a first Best Director trophy for him at the Filmfare Awards.

The 1980s was the most unsuccessful period of his career. Following the failure of his romantic drama Silsila (1981), which he co-wrote, directed and produced, Chopra's popularity began to wane. According to his biographer, the British academic Rachel Dwyer, this was because action and crime films were more popular at the time while most of his films were romances. Chopra experimented with making two action films, Mashaal (1984) and Vijay (1988), which underperformed financially but were well received by critics. Chandni was his only box-office success of the decade. Starring Sridevi in the title role, the film tells the story of a young woman who is accused of being responsible for her lover's accident. Chopra's career began to revive since its premiere in 1989; the film was named the Best Popular Film Providing Wholesome Entertainment at the 37th National Film Awards and considered one of his best films. (Full article...)
Image 9
The 91st Academy Awards ceremony, presented by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), honored the best films of 2018 and took place on February 24, 2019, at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, Los Angeles. During the ceremony, AMPAS presented Academy Awards (commonly referred to as Oscars) in 24 categories. The ceremony was televised in the United States by the American Broadcasting Company (ABC) and was produced by Donna Gigliotti and Glenn Weiss, with Weiss also serving as director. This was the first telecast to have no host since the 61st ceremony held in 1989.

In related events, the Academy held its 10th Annual Governors Awards ceremony at the Grand Ballroom of the Hollywood & Highland Center on November 18, 2018. The Academy Scientific and Technical Awards were presented by host David Oyelowo on February 9, 2019, in a ceremony at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel in Beverly Hills. (Full article...)
Image 10
The Cecil B. DeMille Award is an honorary Golden Globe Award bestowed by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA) for "outstanding contributions to the world of entertainment". The HFPA board of directors selects the honorees from a variety of actors, directors, writers and producers who have made a significant mark in the film industry. It was first presented at the 9th Golden Globe Awards ceremony in February 1952 and is named in honor of its first recipient, director Cecil B. DeMille. The HFPA chose DeMille due to his prestige in the industry and his "internationally recognized and respected name". DeMille received the award the year his penultimate film, The Greatest Show on Earth, premiered. A year later in 1953, the award was presented to producer Walt Disney.

The award has been presented annually since 1952, with exceptions being 1976, 2008, 2022, and 2024. The second incident was due to the 2007–08 Writers Guild of America strike's cancellation of that year's ceremony. The award that year was meant to honor director Steven Spielberg, but due to the cancellation of the ceremony, the award was presented to him the following year. The third occurrence resulted from various media companies, actors, and other creatives boycotting the awards in protest over its lack of action to increase the membership diversity of the HFPA. In 2024, the award was shelved to make way for additional categories at that year's ceremony. (Full article...)

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I think that the tendency for most people is to fall back on a comic interpretation of things -- because things are so sad, so terrible. If you didn't laugh you'd kill yourself. But the truth of the matter is that existence in general is very very tragic, very very sad, very brutal and very unhappy.

— Woody Allen

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Lists - List of basic film topics • List of film topics • List of films • List of film festivals • List of film formats • List of film series • List of film techniques • List of highest-grossing films • List of longest films by running time • List of songs based on a film or book • Lists of film source material • List of open content films

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