Film Theorists and deconstruction of Film Openings

Here are some Film theorists and their deconstructions

Laura Mulvey

Laura Mulvey (1941 - ) is a British feminist film theorist, working at the University of London in Birbeck as a professor if film and media studies. Her most famous work, Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, introduced the idea of the male gaze to media, which posits that we view media and film through the eyes of a man because the camera has the eyes of a man. She takes on an extremely feminist point of view in all the work that she does, pulling from psychoanalytic practices such as Freud to examine gender in film and the way it is perceived. Some work with queer theory has been grounded in the work of Mulvey, applying her idea of the male gaze to LGBTQ+ spectatorship of film.

Luis Buñuel

Luis Buñuel (1900 - 1983) was a Spanish filmmaker known for his work with making the surrealist genre of film what it is today. His most famous work, Un Chien Andalou, done with Salvador Dali, was written with the idea that nothing was supposed to make clear, rational sense. It would become the foundation for surrealism as a whole, specifically French surrealism. It revolutionized the ideal of avant-garde filmmaking, filmmaking meant to be viewed solely as art and not for consumerism. He was known for being influenced by mise-en-scene, and taking a critical eye to athiesm and religion.

Rudolf Arnheim

Rudolf Arnheim (1904 - 2007) was a German artist, author, perceptual psychologist, and film theorist. Greatly influenced by art history and psychology, he applied Gestalt Theory to film and art, revolutionizing the way filmgoers viewed film. His work with art mainly focused on the perception and sensation of experiencing art, and he began writing about film in the 1920s with Stachelschwein​, and this kicked off a lot of his writings about film and art in general. His argument was generally that art was utilized in a way to change the world around you, and to make that world a better place.