Thinking About Cinema : First Waves

The article explores the work of the "First Wave" of avantgard filmmakers in France throughout the 1920s, highlighting the contributions of some key figures like Louis Delluc, Jean Epstein, Germaine Dulac, Antonin Artaud and the Surrealists. A series of significant concepts fro, the period are discussed and analyzed: the notion, introduced by the Italian Ricciotto Canudo, of cinema as the "Seventh Art", the much debated theories of photogénie and "pure" or "abstract" cinema, and a range of different interpretations of Surrealism in film