‘Film’ can refer simply to the latest blockbuster, or to what might be called ‘art film’. Martin Scorsese recently created controversy when he said Marvel comic films were not ‘real cinema.’ Does a film need to be seen in the cinema or is it still a film when we stream it onto our laptop or mobile device? Does a film need to tell a story? Is film an art form? And if so how do we define what is “artistic”? And then there are the synonyms for film: ‘cinema’ (in French) has a different set of meanings; ‘movies’, means something different again. Some countries have tried ‘moving image’ as a neutral term. And these are only English terms!

Over the last hundred years the idea of what a film is, what it might become and how it appears on a screen, have changed dramatically, sometimes due to technological advances, sometimes by accident. 3D film has struggled to take off over the last 70 years, but on the other hand, filming on mobile phones has led accidentally to ‘portrait format’ filming (which many cinephiles hate!) So not only the way that we view film but also the ways in which films are created and circulated have changed.

Film therefore is not a fixed term but rather a whole set of possibilities, types and places of consumption.