Columbia U. Launches a Free Multimedia Glossary for Studying Cinema & Filmmaking

You can find no short­age of clas­sic films to watch on Open Cul­ture. (See our col­lec­tion: 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.) But what we haven’t giv­en you is a toolk­it for engag­ing in a more for­mal study of these films. Enter The Colum­bia Film Lan­guage Glos­sary, devel­oped at the Cen­ter for New Media Teach­ing and Learn­ing at Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty.

The free/open resource uses a com­bi­na­tion of text, film clips, and audio com­men­tary to explain terms essen­tial to the study of film — words like Cin­e­ma Ver­ité, Mon­tage, and Mise-en-Scène. And it also defines a lot of nuts-and-bolts con­cepts like Aspect Ratio, High-Angle Shot and Long Take.

The Colum­bia Film Lan­guage Glos­sary “is avail­able to any stu­dent of film. Def­i­n­i­tions and audio com­men­tary are writ­ten and nar­rat­ed by fac­ul­ty at Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty.” You can dive in right now, right here.

h/t Peter Kauf­man

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Visu­al Intro­duc­tion to Sovi­et Mon­tage The­o­ry: A Rev­o­lu­tion in Film­mak­ing

Hitch­cock on the Filmmaker’s Essen­tial Tool: The Kuleshov Effect

Alfred Hitchcock’s Sev­en-Minute Edit­ing Mas­ter Class