Pre-war cinephilia Since the beginning of the
silent era, there have been
film clubs and publications in which people who felt passionately about cinema could discuss their interests and see rare and older works. At the beginning of the
sound era, there were more and more people interested in seeing older films, which led to the establishment of organizations such as the
Cinémathèque Française, the first major archive devoted to
film preservation.
Post-war French cinephilia A notable cinephilic community of the 20th century was the one that developed in Paris in the decades following World War II. An influx of foreign films that had been withheld during the
Occupation, as well as the screening programs of local
film clubs and the
Cinémathèque Française, generated interest in
world cinema amongst the city's intellectual
youth culture. In general, the cinephiles of the period set a template for future like-minded groups by having keen enthusiasm for both older and contemporary films. Influential film clubs of the period included Objectif 49, whose members included
Robert Bresson and
Jean Cocteau, and the Ciné-Club du Quartier Latin (Cinema Club of the Latin Quarter).
Revue du Cinéma, a magazine published by members of the two clubs, later evolved into the influential film magazine
Cahiers du cinéma. Many of the people who attended the screenings became film critics and later filmmakers, founding the film movement known as the
French New Wave.
André Bazin,
François Truffaut,
Jacques Doniol-Valcroze,
Claude Chabrol,
Jean-Luc Godard,
Alexandre Astruc,
Jacques Rivette,
Agnes Varda,
Luc Moullet and others were regulars, and several, most notably Truffaut, maintained their ties to the community after they had achieved fame. The community fostered an interest in
directors and films that had been neglected, forgotten or simply unknown in the West, and led to the development of the
auteur theory. The directors the French cinephiles of the period had strong interests in included
F. W. Murnau,
Robert Flaherty,
Sergei Eisenstein,
Jean Renoir,
Jean Vigo,
Orson Welles,
Anthony Mann,
Louis Feuillade,
D. W. Griffith, the
Lumière brothers,
Alfred Hitchcock and
Georges Méliès, whose films would be screened from
nitrate prints on special occasions. At the same time, the Parisian cinephilic culture became increasingly politicized. Critics, and by extension the cinephiles who followed their work, began to emphasize political aspects of films and directors. Though many of the major figures of the post-war community has been originally aligned with the
political right—including most of the
Cahiers du cinéma group—by the late 1960s
Cahiers and the young cinephile public in general had aligned with various forms of the
Left, with some figures, such as
Jean-Luc Godard, aligning with
Maoism. In this very politicized climate, cinema was often seen as directly connected to
Marxism. Many members of this new generation of cinephiles would become critics and
directors, including
Serge Daney,
Philippe Garrel, and
André Téchiné. Though most of the world's major film festivals had existed for decades by this point—including the
Berlin International Film Festival, the
Cannes Film Festival and the
Venice Film Festival—the period saw the establishment of festivals in nearly every major city. The
New York Film Festival, the
Karlovy Vary International Film Festival and the
Chicago International Film Festival were all started during this time. The
Toronto International Film Festival, often seen as second only to the
Cannes Film Festival in terms of importance, was founded towards the end of this period, in 1976. Films championed by cinephiles and Western intellectuals as "cutting-edge" and "revolutionary" from the 1960s-1970s included
Lindsay Anderson's Cannes-winning epic
If....,
Humberto Solás's
Lucía and
Glauber Rocha's
Antonio das Mortes alongside multiple works by Godard and the
agitprop documentaries of
The Newsreel.
Home video and the late 20th century (
pictured) is a renowned
arthouse film director from Hong Kong known for works such as
Chungking Express (1994) and
In the Mood for Love (2000). As television,
VHS tapes (as well as video stores like
Kim's Video,
Video Archives and
Blockbuster),
DVDs and later streaming digital access became more common, cinephilia became less associated with filmgoing in theatres (much to the dismay of filmgoers like Kael and Sontag). While Japanese films have enjoyed worldwide distribution in the mid 20th century, the late 20th century saw an increase in interest amongst cinephiles in cinema from other Asian countries, especially China,
Hong Kong,
Taiwan and, later,
Thailand.
Contemporary cinephilia (pictured above at
Cinémathèque Française in 2009) is often considered to be a major figure of
vulgar auteurism by contemporary cinephiles. Since the beginning of the 21st century,
blogging has become a large part of cinephile culture. In the
English-speaking world, established critics and theorists like
Dave Kehr,
David Bordwell,
Jonathan Rosenbaum,
Glenn Kenny,
Wheeler Winston Dixon and
Adrian Martin, as well as non-professional cinephiles like
Girish Shambu played key roles in building interest in films or theories amongst cinephiles by writing and communicating through blogs.
Forums and
podcasts have become popular ways to stir discussion, allowing cinephiles from different countries and cultures to discuss ideas about film. The
social networking and
video streaming service
MUBI caters specifically to cinephiles, allowing its members access to films that sometimes haven't been distributed theatrically or on video in their home countries. Home video distribution labels and distributors such as
The Criterion Collection (and later, in partnership with
Turner Classic Movies,
FilmStruck),
Masters of Cinema,
Facets,
Vinegar Syndrome and
Kino cater to cinephiles, often including large amounts of supplemental and critical material with their releases. Another major development in contemporary cinephilia came in the form of the
social cataloging application formed in 2011 known as
Letterboxd. Hosting approximately 10 million users, Letterboxd is the largest community of online cinephiles to date, allowing users to share their taste in films using a
five-star system. Taiwanese cinephilia had thrived thanks to screenings of various films at
cafes like Halfway Cafe and Insomnia Cafe. As was the case with the French cinephilia of the post-war era, the international cinephilic community that has developed on the Internet often emphasizes films and figures that do not have strong critical or popular recognition, including many directors who work within
genre film, in what is sometimes dubbed
vulgar auteurism. These include
Justin Lin,
Abel Ferrara,
The Farrelly Brothers,
Michael Bay,
John Carpenter,
David Fincher,
Brian De Palma Filmmaker
James N. Kienitz Wilkins's 2023
still image film Still Film argues about the nightmarish effects of cinephilia using
35mm presskit photos for
blockbusters from the 1980s-90s. A notable series of
video essays by Canadian filmmaker
Stephen Broomer entitled
Art & Trash focuses on
underground,
avant-garde and
cult cinema (particularly outsider and
psychotronic movies).
In popular culture Adnan Virk was the host of the podcast
Cinephile that used to broadcast on
ESPN until his leave in 2019. In 2004, film critic
Chris Gore hosted the game show
Ultimate Film Fanatic. The book series
Lil Cinephile is a spin-off of the successful
Cinephile: A Card Game created by author Cory Everett (who was once a contestant on the aforementioned
Ultimate Film Fanatic).
Films about cinephilia •
The Projectionist (1970) •
Fade to Black (1980) •
The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985) •
Cinema Paradiso (1989) •
Close-Up (1990) •
American Movie (1999) •
Cinemania (2002) •
The Dreamers (2003) •
Film Geek (2005) •
Hugo (2011) •
Me and Earl and the Dying Girl (2015) •
The Wolfpack (2015) •
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019) •
I Like Movies (2022) •
Film Geek (2023) •
Still Film (2023) • ''
Kim's Video'' (2023) •
Nouvelle Vague (2025) •
Videoheaven (2025) ==Cinephilia and filmmaking==