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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 (slang) flick – is a work of visual art that simulates experiences and otherwise communicates ideas, stories, perceptions, feelings, beauty, or atmosphere through the use of moving images. These images are generally accompanied by sound and, more rarely, other sensory stimulations. The word "cinema", short for cinematography, is often used to refer to filmmaking and the film industry, and the art form that is the result of it. (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 1Insert shot in Old Wives for New (Cecil B. DeMille, 1918) (from History of film)
Image 2Complex vignette shot in die Austernprinzessin (The Oyster Princess) (from History of film)
Image 3Poster for a Biograph Studios release from 1913 (from Film industry)
Image 4Nestor studio, 1911 (from Film industry)
Image 5Old Chinese Cinema in Qufu, Shandong (from Film industry)
Image 6A surviving two-color-component image from the first Technicolor feature film, The Gulf Between (1917) (from History of film technology)
Image 7A frame from the Lumière brothers staged comedy film, L'Arroseur Arrosé (1895) (from History of film)
Image 8A.E. Smith filming The Bargain Fiend in the Vitagraph Studios in 1907. Arc floodlights hang overhead. (from History of film)
Image 9The first two shots of As Seen Through a Telescope (1900), with the telescope POV simulated by the circular mask (from History of film)
Image 10
An electrotachyscope
American Scientific, 16/11/1889, p. 303
(from History of film technology)
Image 11Salah Zulfikar and Nadia Lutfi in Saladin the Victorious (1963) (from History of film)
Image 12Max Skladanowsky (right) in 1934 with his brother Eugen and the Bioscop (from History of film technology)
Image 13Film still from Dickson Greeting (from History of film technology)
Image 14A still from The Story of the Kelly Gang (Australia, 1906; 80 min.) (from Film industry)
Image 15Animated GIF of Prof. Stampfer's Stroboscopische Scheibe No. X (Trentsensky & Vieweg 1833) (from History of film technology)
Image 16Akira Kurosawa, Japanese film director (from History of film)
Image 17Czermak's 1855 Stereophoroskop (from History of film technology)
Image 18William Friese-Greene (from Film industry)
Image 19Discounted DVD home video film releases sold in the Netherlands (from Film industry)
Image 20A scene from Raja Harishchandra (1913) – credited as the first full-length Indian motion picture. (from Film industry)
Image 21
The Pathé Brothers, by Adrien Barrère.
(from Film industry)
Image 22Eadweard Muybridge's The Horse in Motion cabinet cards utilized the technique of chronophotography to study motion. (from History of film)
Image 23Georges Méliès (left) painting a backdrop in his studio (from History of film)
Image 24Publicity still for the Egyptian film My Wife, the Director General (1966) (from Film industry)
Image 25Flying 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 26The Cinématographe Lumière in projection mode (from History of film technology)
Image 27Cinema admissions in 1995 (from History of film)
Image 28Frame from a c.1912 Chronochrome film (from History of film technology)
Image 29Mona Zaki, Egyptian film star (from Film industry)
Image 30Cinématographe Lumière at the Institut Lumière, France (from History of film technology)
Image 31The Wizard of Oz (from History of film)
Image 32The 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 33Off Plus Camera Film Festival in Kraków, 2012, with Andrzej Seweryn, Daniel Olbrychski, and Wojciech Pszoniak on stage. (from Film industry)
Image 34The 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 History of film)
Image 35GIF animation from retouched pictures of The Horse in Motion by Eadweard Muybridge (1879). (from History of film technology)
Image 36Publicity still for the Egyptian film Yahya el hub (1938) (from Film industry)
Image 37A production scene from the 1950 Hollywood film Julius Caesar starring Charlton Heston (from History of film)
Image 38The Hollywood Sign (from Film industry)
Image 39A shot from Raja Harishchandra (1913), the first film of Bollywood. (from Film industry)
Image 40Bahiga Hafez (1901–1983) Egyptian filmmaker and actress in 1920s and 1930s (from Film industry)
Image 41Charlie Chaplin (from History of film)
Image 42Edward Raymond Turner's three-color projector, 1902 (from History of film technology)
Image 43London IMAX has the largest cinema screen in Britain with a total screen size of 520 m². (from Film industry)
Image 44The Jazz Singer (1927), was the first full-length film with synchronized sound. (from History of film technology)
Image 45Italian neorealist movie Bicycle Thieves (1948) by Vittorio De Sica, considered part of the canon of classic cinema (from History of film)
Image 46Poster for the 1956 Egyptian film Wakeful Eyes starring Salah Zulfikar and Shadia (from History of film)
Image 47Don 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 48Louis Poyet [fr]'s engraving of the mechanism of the "fusil photographique" as published in La Nature (april 1882) (from History of film technology)

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Credit: Cinematographica

Filmstrip of one of the three Monkeyshines films produced by Thomas Edison's laboratory in 1889–90 for the early cylinder version of the Kinetoscope.

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Did you know...

... that Hearst Castle inspired Xanadu, the lavish mansion in the 1941 film Citizen Kane?
... that "Gegrüßet seist du, Königin", a German version of the Latin hymn "Salve Regina", was taken to the U.S. by emigrants and became popular in the U.S. in the film Sister Act?
... that film critics accused the MPAA ratings board of having yielded to studio pressure to rate The Exorcist R rather than X?
... that the documentary Railway with a Heart of Gold has actual footage of a derailment captured whilst the filmmaker was attached to the side of the train?
... that a Taiwanese film about parental favoritism was titled A Sun in English to create a pun with "a son"?

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Hall at GalaxyCon Richmond in 2024

Anthony Michael Hall (born Michael Anthony Thomas Charles Hall; April 14, 1968) is an American actor. He is best known for starring in films with John Hughes, which include the teen films Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, and Weird Science.

Hall diversified his roles to avoid becoming typecast as his geek persona, joining the cast of Saturday Night Live (1985–1986) and starring in films such as Out of Bounds (1986), Johnny Be Good (1988), Edward Scissorhands (1990) and Six Degrees of Separation (1993). After a series of minor roles in the 1990s, he starred as Microsoft's Bill Gates in the 1999 television film Pirates of Silicon Valley. He had the leading role in the USA Network series The Dead Zone from 2002 to 2007. In 2008, he appeared in a minor role in The Dark Knight. Since 2019, Hall has appeared in ABC's The Goldbergs. He starred in the slasher film Halloween Kills (2021). (Full article...)

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Image 1
Velasquez at the Jollibee Family Values Awards in September 2015

Filipino entertainer Regine Velasquez has appeared in motion pictures and television programs. She made her screen debut with a minor role in the 1988 comedy film The Untouchable Family. She went on to appear in supporting roles in the comedies Pik Pak Boom (1988) and Elvis and James 2 (1990). Velasquez made her stage debut in 1992 with the Musical Theatre Philippines production of Romualdo Ramos and Tony Velasquez's Kenkoy Loves Rosing. Her breakthrough came when she played the title role in the film Wanted Perfect Mother (1996). The same year, she starred in the musical comedy Do Re Mi alongside Donna Cruz and Mikee Cojuangco. Among Velasquez's next releases were the fantasy comedy Honey Nasa Langit Na Ba Ako (1998) and Joyce Bernal's romantic comedy Dahil May Isang Ikaw (1999) opposite Aga Muhlach. Her first leading television role was in a 2000 episode of the IBC-13 anthology series Habang May Buhay.

Velasquez's profile continued to grow in the 2000s as she took on starring roles in two lucrative romantic comedy films. She featured as a prominent singer desperate for a normal life in Kailangan Ko'y Ikaw (2000), and she re-teamed with Bernal and Muhlach in Pangako Ikaw Lang (2001)—Velasquez's biggest commercial success to date, for which she received the Box Office Entertainment Award for Box Office Queen. In 2002, she appeared in an episode of ABS-CBN's drama series, Maalaala Mo Kaya, playing an intellectually disabled woman who develops a romantic relationship with a younger man—a role that earned her the Star Award for Best Actress. That year, she also portrayed a mundane and undesirable mail sorter in the drama Ikaw Lamang Hanggang Ngayon, which garnered her a Young Critics Circle nomination for Best Actress. In 2003, Velasquez starred with Christopher de Leon in the romantic comedy Pangarap Ko Ang Ibigin Ka and played Darna in the superhero film Captain Barbell. (Full article...)
Image 2
Chaplin in his "Tramp" persona

(Sir) Charlie Chaplin (KBE) (1889–1977) was an English internationally renowned Academy Award-winning actor, comedian, filmmaker and composer who was best known for his career in Hollywood motion pictures from his debut in 1914 until 1952; he however subsequently appeared in two films in his native England. During his early years in the era of silent film, he rose to prominence as a worldwide cinematic idol renowned for his tramp persona. In the 1910s and 1920s, he was considered the most famous person on the planet.

Chaplin was born in London and began acting on stage at the age of nine. In 1913, while on tour in the United States with Fred Karno's comedy group, he accepted a contract to work for Keystone Film Company. During his time at Keystone, he began writing and directing some of the films in which he starred. Chaplin signed with the Essanay Film Manufacturing Company in 1915, and the year after with the Mutual Film Corporation. (Full article...)
Image 3
The 76th Academy Awards ceremony, presented by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), honored the best films of 2003 and took place on February 29, 2004, at the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood, Los Angeles. During the ceremony, AMPAS presented Academy Awards (commonly referred to as Oscars) in 24 categories. The ceremony, televised in the United States by ABC, was produced by Joe Roth and was directed by Louis J. Horvitz. Actor Billy Crystal hosted for the eighth time. He first presided over the 62nd ceremony held in 1990 and had last hosted the 72nd ceremony held in 2000. Two weeks earlier in a ceremony at The Ritz-Carlton Huntington Hotel & Spa in Pasadena, California held on February 14, the Academy Awards for Technical Achievement were presented by host Jennifer Garner.

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King won a record-tying eleven awards including Best Director for Peter Jackson and Best Picture. Other winners included Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World and Mystic River with two awards and The Barbarian Invasions, Chernobyl Heart, Cold Mountain, Finding Nemo, The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara, Harvie Krumpet, Lost in Translation, Monster, and Two Soldiers with one. The telecast garnered nearly 44 million viewers in the United States, making it the most-watched telecast in four years. (Full article...)
Image 4
Locsin at the Los Angeles premiere of Love Me Again in 2008

Filipino actress Angel Locsin has appeared in motion pictures and television programs. She made her screen debut at age 15 as the young Robina Gokongwei in the biopic Ping Lacson: Super Cop (2000). Her first television appearance was in the teen drama series Click (2002), followed by a string of guest roles in the romance series Ang Iibigin ay Ikaw (2002), Twin Hearts (2003), and Love to Love (2003). Locsin had minor appearances in the second and third installments of the Mano Po film franchise, Mano Po 2: My Home (2002) and Mano Po 3: My Love (2003). In 2004, she had her breakthrough role as the avian-human hybrid heroine in the fantasy series Mulawin, a role she reprised in its 2005 film adaptation.

Locsin gained wider recognition and received praise for portraying the title character in the 2005 television series Darna, which is based on Mars Ravelo's comics superheroine of the same name. She starred opposite Richard Gutierrez in the romantic dramas Let the Love Begin (2005) and I Will Always Love You (2006). During this period, Locsin appeared alongside Dennis Trillo in the horror thriller Txt (2006) and the fantasy adventure series Majika (2006). She reunited with Richard Gutierrez in the coming-of-age drama The Promise (2007) and played a collector for a secret society in the action-adventure series Asian Treasures (2007) with Robin Padilla. For her role as a fledgling lycanthrope in the supernatural drama series Lobo (2008), she earned an International Emmy Award nomination for Best Actress. The same year, Locsin appeared in an episode of the anthology series Maalaala Mo Kaya, for which she won a Star Award for Best Actress. She then played an aspiring chef in the comedy series remake Only You (2009), and portrayed the offspring of her lycan character in Lobo's sequel, Imortal (2010). (Full article...)
Image 5
Shetty in 2018

Shilpa Shetty is an Indian actress who is primarily known for her work in Hindi films, in addition to a few Telugu, Kannada and Tamil films. Shetty made her acting debut opposite Shah Rukh Khan in the 1993 thriller Baazigar. Shetty's performance earned her two Filmfare Awards nominations for Lux New Face of the Year and Best Supporting Actress. She subsequently earned recognition with dual roles in the 1994 action-comedy Main Khiladi Tu Anari. After initial success, Shetty's films fared poorly at the box office for the next five years. Films Shetty starred in including action drama Aag, romantic drama Aao Pyaar Karen, comedy Haathkadi and Chhote Sarkar proved to be financially unsuccessful.

The 2000 romantic drama Dhadkan marked a turning point in her career, earning her several nominations in the Best Actress category at various award ceremonies. Shetty played the lead female in films such as family drama Apne, police drama Garv: Pride and Honour and musical drama Life in a... Metro. Her comic performance as an eccentric fisherwoman in 2002 action-drama release Rishtey earned her a nomination for the Filmfare Best Supporting Actress Award. Shetty became a global figure after winning the 2007 British reality television series Celebrity Big Brother, after comments made by other contestants about Shetty fell afoul of Ofcom rules and caused an international controversy over racism. (Full article...)
Image 6

Eastwood publicity photo (1960s)

Clint Eastwood is an American film actor, director, producer, and composer. He has appeared in over 60 films. His career has spanned 65 years and began with small uncredited film roles and television appearances. Eastwood has acted in multiple television series, including the eight-season series Rawhide (1959–1965). Although he appeared in several earlier films, mostly uncredited, his breakout film role was as the Man with No Name in the Sergio Leone–directed Dollars Trilogy: A Fistful of Dollars (1964), For a Few Dollars More (1965), and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966), which weren't released in the United States until 1967/68. In 1971, Eastwood made his directorial debut with Play Misty for Me. Also that year, he starred as San Francisco police inspector Harry Callahan in Dirty Harry. The film received critical acclaim, and spawned four more films: Magnum Force (1973), The Enforcer (1976), Sudden Impact (1983), and The Dead Pool (1988).

In 1973, Eastwood starred in another western, High Plains Drifter. Three years later, he starred as Confederate guerrilla and outlaw Josey Wales in The Outlaw Josey Wales. In 1978, Eastwood starred opposite an orangutan in the action-comedy Every Which Way but Loose. Although it received largely negative reviews, the film was a financial success, his highest-grossing film at that time, and generated a sequel. In 1979, Eastwood portrayed prisoner Frank Morris in the Don Siegel–directed Escape from Alcatraz. (Full article...)
Image 7
Publicity photo for the film Penelope (1966)

Natalie Wood (1938–1981) was an American actress who started her career as a child by appearing in films directed by Irving Pichel. Wood's first credited role was as an Austrian war refugee in the Pichel-directed Tomorrow Is Forever (1946) with Claudette Colbert and Orson Welles. The following year, she played a child who does not believe in Santa Claus in the Christmas comedy-drama Miracle on 34th Street (1947) opposite Maureen O'Hara, John Payne, and Edmund Gwenn.

Wood appeared as a regular cast member in the television sitcom The Pride of the Family (1953). Two years later, she starred as a recalcitrant teenager in Rebel Without a Cause with James Dean, for which she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, and received the Golden Globe Award for Most Promising Newcomer – Female.
The following year, Wood appeared as a kidnapped girl in the John Ford-directed western The Searchers (1956) with John Wayne and Jeffrey Hunter. Two years later, she played a Jewish student in Marjorie Morningstar (1958) opposite Gene Kelly, and an American girl living in World War II France who is caught in a love triangle in Kings Go Forth (1958) with Frank Sinatra and Tony Curtis. (Full article...)
Image 8
Fay Bainter, shown here in Jezebel (1938), was the first person to be nominated for two Oscars in the same year. She won Best Supporting Actress for Jezebel, and was nominated for Best Actress for White Banners.

A dozen people have been nominated for two Academy Awards in acting categories in a single year, the first in 1938 and the most recent in 2019.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has two rules about multiple nominations: first, an actor or actress cannot receive multiple nominations for different performances in the same category (one nomination must be for a lead role, in the Best Actor/Best Actress category, and the other must be for a supporting role in the Best Supporting Actor/Best Supporting Actress category; and second, they cannot receive multiple nominations for the same performance. (Full article...)
Image 9

Pharrell Williams garnered several accolades for composing the song "Happy".

Despicable Me 2 is a 2013 American animated comedy film produced by Illumination Entertainment and distributed by Universal Pictures. The sequel to Despicable Me (2010), it was directed by Chris Renaud and Pierre Coffin, and written by Cinco Paul and Ken Daurio. Despicable Me 2 stars the voices of Steve Carell, Kristen Wiig, Benjamin Bratt, Miranda Cosgrove, Russell Brand, and Ken Jeong. The film follows Gru (Carell) as he is recruited by agent Lucy Wilde (Wiig), who is investigating a theft of the mutagen called PX-41, stolen from the Arctic Circle. During their investigations, they extract Eduardo Pérez / El Macho (Bratt), a supervillain with the goal of causing world domination after faking his death.

Despicable Me 2 debuted in Australia on June 5, 2013, and was released in the United States on July 3. Proudced on a budget of $76 million, Despicable Me 2 grossed $970.8 million worldwide, finishing its theatrical run as the third-highest-grossing film of 2013. On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 75% based on 187 reviews. (Full article...)
Image 10
The Act of Killing (Indonesian: Jagal) is a 2012 Danish-British-Norwegian documentary film directed by Joshua Oppenheimer, Christine Cynn, and an anonymous Indonesian co-director. The film explores the social significance of the Indonesian mass killings of 1965–1966 by focusing on the perpetrators and having them produce reenactments of the killings in the style of various Hollywood genres. The film's primary subjects had been petty criminals, but came to lead a powerful death squad during the anti-communist purge which resulted in the death of an estimated 500,000–2,000,000 suspected communists, communist sympathisers, alleged leftists, and ethnic Chinese. As many of the institutions and people responsible remained in power, those who carried out the killings were never held to account and continue to hold positions of power and respect. Oppenheimer was struck by the extent to which people not only rationalised but boasted about their participation in the killings, and used the film to explore the role the events continue to play in people's lives in the present. According to Oppenheimer, it is "about a regime in which genocide has, paradoxically, been effaced and celebrated – in order to keep the survivors terrified, the public brainwashed, and the perpetrators able to live with themselves."

The film first screened in September 2012 at the Telluride Film Festival in Colorado, and had its public premiere on July 19, 2013, in New York City. Its worldwide box office earnings totaled over $0.5 million USD, and it made $1.1 million in video sales. The Act of Killing has received worldwide critical acclaim. Rotten Tomatoes, a review aggregator, surveyed 137 reviews and judged 96% to be positive. Metacritic, another review aggregator, evaluated 30 reviews, finding an average score of 89 out of 100, indicating "universal acclaim". (Full article...)

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20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1916)
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Poster for Quo Vadis (1913 silent film)
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