The term "art cinema" is one of the most familiar in film studies, marking out simultaneously specific filmmakers, specific films, specific kinds of cinemas, and, for some writers, specific kinds of audiences.

1. Art Cinema
The term "art cinema" is one of the most familiar in film studies, marking out
simultaneously specific filmmakers, specific films, specific kinds of cinemas, and, for
some writers, specific kinds of audiences. The filmmakers implied by the term are such
European auteurs as Michelangelo Antonioni (b. 1912), Federico Fellini (1920–
1993), Jean-Luc Godard (b. 1930), and Ingmar Bergman (b. 1918); the films
include L'Avventura (1960), 8½ (1963), À bout de souffle (Breathless, 1960) and Det
Sjunde inseglet (The Seventh Seal, 1957). The cinemas are small film theaters, rather
than the picture palaces of old or the multiplexes of the present, screening new films but
having a repertory function as well; the audiences for the art film are drawn from the
highly educated urban intelligentsia. These features, however, are only the predominant
connotations of the term, which has a range of uses and connotations, so it is useful to
distinguish between extended and restricted definitions of art cinema.
The extended definition suggests an "art film" presence in the history of cinema virtually
from the beginning, incorporating historical instances stretching back to the years
before World War I; it retains relevance throughout the history of film and possesses a
certain amount of currency in relation to contemporary cinema. The restricted definition
refers to the emergence in the 1950s of a strand in European cinema with a distinct set
of formal and thematic characteristics, specialized exhibition outlets, specific artistic
status as part of "high culture," constituting in some respects cinema's belated
accession to the traditions of twentieth-century modernism in the arts. The two senses
are interrelated and art cinema in the restricted sense can be regarded as part of the
historical continuum embodied in the extended definition as a key, though bounded,
phase in the history of a particular kind of film.
EXTENDED DEFINITIONS
The extended definition of art cinema marks off films that can be differentiated from
commonplace entertainment cinema in terms of source material and intended audience.
Alongside such popular genres of early cinema as actualities, trick films, chase films,
and comedies were brief films drawn from the traditional elements of "high culture," that
is, adaptations from classic drama and literature and films based on historical events.
This dimension of the art film emerged most forcibly in France during the years
before World War I, with films from the appropriately titled Le Film d'Art company, and
there were equivalent trends in Germany and Italy. At this time, the contours of the art
film begin to form in terms of its relationship to orthodox and established high culture—
literature, history, and the fine arts—together with the aspiration on the part of
producers to attract a more "respectable" and educated audience than the urban
working classes that patronized the nickelodeons. Art cinema's project was the
transformation of a cultural phenomenon with origins in fair-grounds, vaudeville theaters
and music halls, and improvised screening venues, into a cultural activity comparable to
the established art forms.

2. However, the most important phase in the early history of art cinema was the 1920s.
The major European film industries had been severely effected by World War I, and
Hollywood had established itself as the main provider of entertainment cinema in many
parts of the world. In the course of reconstructing their film industries, Germany, France,
and the Soviet Union, in particular, created a diverse range of cinemas, making films
that differed in key respects from the Hollywood films that filled European screens. Such
films reflected an attempt to establish alternatives to the evolving Hollywood cinema of
stars and genres and were recognized by intellectuals and artists in such metropolitan
centers of culture as Berlin, Paris, London, and New
ART CINEMA AND AUDIENCE
In addition to different textual qualities, art films were characteristically screened in
venues other than the commercial cinema circuits. The 1920s saw the development of a
range of different and separate exhibition venues, for example, cinema clubs, film
societies, and dedicated repertory cinemas. France was central to this trend with the
ciné club movement, and although Britain did not contribute much in the way of films to
the new art cinema, it was prominent in the development of alternative exhibition
venues with the establishment of the Film Society in London in 1925. In America, some
art films were imported in the 1920s, and there were attempts to establish art cinemas.
Among the proponents were Symon Gould's International Film Arts Guild, which
organized foreign film screenings in New York and Philadelphia, and the club network of
the Amateur Cinema League. These distribution methods led to what became known as
"the little-cinema movement."
ART CINEMA IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY
In terms of the extended definition of art cinema—a cinema of formal innovation, a
cinema aligned with the latest trends in literature and the fine arts, a cinema that targets
an audience outside of the typical young adult demographic—the notion of art cinema
nearly retains a degree of currency.
Many recent filmmakers from most of the filmmaking countries of the world have made
films that explore the potential of cinema to do more than tell simple stories and offer
the experience of spectacle; films that do the kinds of things traditionally associated with
the world of art; films that premiere at the world's leading film festivals; films that
circulate internationally. Pedro Almodóvar (b. 1949), Krzysztof Kieślowski (1941–1996),
Ken Loach (b. 1936), Mike Leigh (b. 1942), Michael Haneke (b. 1942), Robert
Altman (b. 1925), Wong Kar Wai (b. 1958), Jane Campion (b. 1954), Béla Tarr (b.
1955), and Theo Angelopoulos (b. 1935) have made films that in various different ways
carry on the traditions of complexity and formal innovation associated with art cinema.
In America, the work of independent filmmakers such as David Lynch (b. 1946) and Jim
Jarmusch (b. 1953) achieves a similar complexity while the films of experimental British
directors such as Peter Greenaway (b. 1942) and Derek Jarman (1942–1994) have
blurred the distinction between the avant garde cinema and the art film.

3. The pessimistic view of contemporary cinema is that the polarized battle for cinematic
hegemony in the early twentieth century was won by entertainment and commerce
interests at the expense of art interests. However, a more optimistic view is that artistic
influences have infiltrated commercial filmmaking to the extent that the traditional
oppositions of "art and commerce" and "culture and entertainment" have less force than
previously. Moreover, despite the high profile of spectacular blockbusters, contemporary
cinema offers a wide spectrum of experiences. The multiplex cinema is the potential
home to films at all ranges of this spectrum because it has the screen capacity to host
the latest Hollywood blockbuster as well as the new Almodóvar, in the process making
the notion of a separate art cinema venue redundant. If the reality of multiplex
programming does not always confirm this possibility, then art cinema in the future may
well depend upon television—a major source of art film financing in Europe dating from
the 1970s—and on the development of the less expensive methods of digital production
and exhibition.