Digital Art🎄Christmas Tree

Christmas 🎄Tree 🎄 History

🎄 History of  Christmas Trees 🎄

 

The history of Christmas trees goes back to the symbolic use of evergreens in ancient Egypt and Rome and continues with the German tradition of candlelit Christmas trees first brought to America in the 1800s. Discover the history of the Christmas tree, from the earliest winter solstice celebrations to Queen Victoria’s decorating habits and the annual lighting of the Rockefeller Center tree in New York City.

How Did Christmas Trees Start?

Long before the advent of Christianity, plants and trees that remained green all year had a special meaning for people in the winter. Just as people today decorate their homes during the festive season with pine, spruce, and fir trees, ancient peoples hung evergreen boughs over their doors and windows. In many countries it was believed that evergreens would keep away witches, ghosts, evil spirits, and illness.

Did you know? Christmas trees are grown in all 50 states including Hawaii and Alaska.

In the Northern hemisphere, the shortest day and longest night of the year falls on December 21 or December 22 and is called the winter solstice. Many ancient people believed that the sun was a god and that winter came every year because the sun god had become sick and weak. They celebrated the solstice because it meant that at last the sun god would begin to get well. Evergreen boughs reminded them of all the green plants that would grow again when the sun god was strong and summer would return.

 

The ancient Egyptians worshipped a god called Ra, who had the head of a hawk and wore the sun as a blazing disk in his crown. At the solstice, when Ra began to recover from his illness, the Egyptians filled their homes with green palm rushes, which symbolized for them the triumph of life over death.

Early Romans marked the solstice with a feast called Saturnalia in honor of Saturn, the god of agriculture. The Romans knew that the solstice meant that soon, farms and orchards would be green and fruitful. To mark the occasion, they decorated their homes and temples with evergreen boughs.

In Northern Europe the mysterious Druids, the priests of the ancient Celts, also decorated their temples with evergreen boughs as a symbol of everlasting life. The fierce Vikings in Scandinavia thought that evergreens were the special plant of the sun god, Balder.

Christmas Trees From Germany

Germany is credited with starting the Christmas tree tradition as we now know it in the 16th century when devout Christians brought decorated trees into their homes. Some built Christmas pyramids of wood and decorated them with evergreens and candles if wood was scarce. It is a widely held belief that Martin Luther, the 16th-century Protestant reformer, first added lighted candles to a tree. Walking toward his home one winter evening, composing a sermon, he was awed by the brilliance of stars twinkling amidst evergreens. To recapture the scene for his family, he erected a tree in the main room and wired its branches with lighted candles.

Who Brought Christmas Trees to America?

Most 19th-century Americans found Christmas trees an oddity. The first record of one being on display was in the 1830s by the German settlers of Pennsylvania, although trees had been a tradition in many German homes much earlier. The Pennsylvania German settlements had community trees as early as 1747. But, as late as the 1840s Christmas trees were seen as pagan symbols and not accepted by most Americans.

It is not surprising that, like many other festive Christmas customs, the tree was adopted so late in America. To the New England Puritans, Christmas was sacred. The pilgrims’s second governor, William Bradford, wrote that he tried hard to stamp out “pagan mockery” of the observance, penalizing any frivolity. The influential Oliver Cromwell preached against “the heathen traditions” of Christmas carols, decorated trees, and any joyful expression that desecrated “that sacred event.” In 1659, the General Court of Massachusetts enacted a law making any observance of December 25 (other than a church service) a penal offense; people were fined for hanging decorations. That stern solemnity continued until the 19th century, when the influx of German and Irish immigrants undermined the Puritan legacy.

In 1846, the popular royals, Queen Victoria and her German Prince, Albert, were sketched in the Illustrated London News standing with their children around a Christmas tree. Unlike the previous royal family, Victoria was very popular with her subjects, and what was done at court immediately became fashionable—not only in Britain, but with fashion-conscious East Coast American Society. The Christmas tree had arrived.

By the 1890s Christmas ornaments were arriving from Germany and Christmas tree popularity was on the rise around the U.S. It was noted that Europeans used small trees about four feet in height, while Americans liked their Christmas trees to reach from floor to ceiling.

The early 20th century saw Americans decorating their trees mainly with homemade ornaments, while the German-American sect continued to use apples, nuts, and marzipan cookies. Popcorn joined in after being dyed bright colors and interlaced with berries and nuts. Electricity brought about Christmas lights, making it possible for Christmas trees to glow for days on end. With this, Christmas trees began to appear in town squares across the country and having a Christmas tree in the home became an American tradition.

 

Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree

The Rockefeller Center tree is located at Rockefeller Center, west of Fifth Avenue from 47th through 51st Streets in New York City.

The Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree dates back to the Depression era. The tallest tree displayed at Rockefeller Center arrived in 1948. It was a Norway Spruce that measured 100 feet tall and hailed from Killingworth, Connecticut.

 The first tree at Rockefeller Center was placed in 1931. It was a small unadorned tree placed by construction workers at the center of the construction site. Two years later, another tree was placed there, this time with lights. These days, the giant Rockefeller Center tree is laden with over 25,000 Christmas lights.

Christmas Trees Around the World

 

Christmas Trees in Canada

German settlers migrated to Canada from the United States in the 1700s. They brought with them many of the things associated with Christmas we cherish today—Advent calendars, gingerbread houses, cookies—and Christmas trees. When Queen Victoria’s German husband, Prince Albert, put up a Christmas tree at Windsor Castle in 1848, the Christmas tree became a tradition throughout England, the United States, and Canada.

 

Christmas Trees in Mexico

In most Mexican homes the principal holiday adornment is el Nacimiento (Nativity scene). However, a decorated Christmas tree may be incorporated in the Nacimiento or set up elsewhere in the home. As purchase of a natural pine represents a luxury commodity to most Mexican families, the typical arbolito (little tree) is often an artificial one, a bare branch cut from a copal tree (Bursera microphylla) or some type of shrub collected from the countryside.

 

Christmas Trees in Great Britain

The Norway spruce is the traditional species used to decorate homes in Britain. The Norway spruce was a native species in the British Isles before the last Ice Age, and was reintroduced here before the 1500s.

 

Christmas Trees in Greenland

Christmas trees are imported, as no trees live this far north. They are decorated with candles and bright ornaments.

 

Christmas Trees in Guatemala

The Christmas tree has joined the “Nacimiento” (Nativity scene) as a popular ornament because of the large German population in Guatemala. Gifts are left under the tree on Christmas morning for the children. Parents and adults do not exchange gifts until New Year’s Day.

 

Christmas Trees in Brazil

Although Christmas falls during the summer in Brazil, sometimes pine trees are decorated with little pieces of cotton that represent falling snow.

 

Christmas Trees in Ireland

Christmas trees are bought anytime in December and decorated with colored lights, tinsel, and baubles. Some people favor the angel on top of the tree, others the star. The house is decorated with garlands, candles, holly, and ivy. Wreaths and mistletoe are hung on the door.

 

Christmas Trees in Sweden

Most people buy Christmas trees well before Christmas Eve, but it’s not common to take the tree inside and decorate it until just a few days before. Evergreen trees are decorated with stars, sunbursts, and snowflakes made from straw. Other decorations include colorful wooden animals and straw centerpieces.

Christmas Trees in Norway

Nowadays Norwegians often take a trip to the woods to select a Christmas tree, a trip that their grandfathers probably did not make. The Christmas tree was not introduced into Norway from Germany until the latter half of the 19th century; to the country districts it came even later. When Christmas Eve arrives, there is the decorating of the tree, usually done by the parents behind the closed doors of the living room, while the children wait with excitement outside. A Norwegian ritual known as “circling the Christmas tree” follows, where everyone joins hands to form a ring around the tree and then walk around it singing carols. Afterwards, gifts are distributed.

Christmas Trees in Ukraine
Celebrated on December 25th by Catholics and on January 7th by Orthodox Christians, Christmas is the most popular holiday in the Ukraine. During the Christmas season, which also includes New Year’s Day, people decorate fir trees and have parties.

Christmas Trees in Spain

A popular Christmas custom is Catalonia, a lucky strike game. A tree trunk is filled with goodies and children hit at the trunk trying to knock out the hazel nuts, almonds, toffee, and other treats.

Christmas Trees in Italy

In Italy, the presepio (manger or crib) represents in miniature the Holy Family in the stable and is the center of Christmas for families. Guests kneel before it and musicians sing before it. The presepio figures are usually hand-carved and very detailed in features and dress. The scene is often set out in the shape of a triangle. It provides the base of a pyramid-like structure called the ceppo. This is a wooden frame arranged to make a pyramid several feet high. Several tiers of thin shelves are supported by this frame. It is entirely decorated with colored paper, gilt pine cones, and miniature colored pennants. Small candles are fastened to the tapering sides. A star or small doll is hung at the apex of the triangular sides. The shelves above the manger scene have small gifts of fruit, candy, and presents. The ceppo is in the old Tree of Light tradition which became the Christmas tree in other countries. Some houses even have a ceppo for each child in the family.

 

Christmas Trees in Germany

Many Christmas traditions practiced around the world today started in Germany.

It has long been thought that Martin Luther began the tradition of bringing a fir tree into the home. According to one legend, late one evening, Martin Luther was walking home through the woods and noticed how beautifully the stars shone through the trees. He wanted to share the beauty with his wife, so he cut down a fir tree and took it home. Once inside, he placed small, lighted candles on the branches and said that it would be a symbol of the beautiful Christmas sky. The Christmas tree was born.

Another legend says that in the early 16th century, people in Germany combined two customs that had been practiced in different countries around the globe. The Paradise tree (a fir tree decorated with apples) represented the Tree of Knowledge in the Garden of Eden. The Christmas Light, a small, pyramid-like frame, usually decorated with glass balls, tinsel and a candle on top, was a symbol of the birth of Christ as the Light of the World. Changing the tree’s apples to tinsel balls and cookies and combining this new tree with the light placed on top, the Germans created the tree that many of us know today.

Modern Tannenbaum (Christmas trees) are traditionally decorated in secret with lights, tinsel and ornaments by parents and then lit and revealed on Christmas Eve with cookies, nuts and gifts under its branches.

Christmas Trees in South Africa
Christmas is a summer holiday in South Africa. Although Christmas trees are not common, windows are often draped with sparkling cotton wool and tinsel.

Christmas Trees in Saudi Arabia 
Christian Americans, Europeans, Indians, Filipinos, and others living here have to celebrate Christmas privately in their homes. Christmas lights are generally not tolerated. Most families place their Christmas trees somewhere inconspicuous.

Christmas Trees in Philippines
Fresh pine trees are too expensive for many Filipinos, so handmade trees in an array of colors and sizes are often used. Star lanterns, or parol, appear everywhere in December. They are made from bamboo sticks, covered with brightly colored rice paper or cellophane, and usually feature a tassel on each point. There is usually one in every window, each representing the Star of Bethlehem.

Christmas Trees in China
Of the small percentage of Chinese who do celebrate Christmas, most erect artificial trees decorated with spangles and paper chains, flowers, and lanterns. Christmas trees are called “trees of light.”

Christmas Trees in Japan
For most of the Japanese who celebrate Christmas, it’s purely a secular holiday devoted to the love of their children. Christmas trees are decorated with small toys, dolls, paper ornaments, gold paper fans and lanterns, and wind chimes. Miniature candles are also put among the tree branches. One of the most popular ornaments is the origami swan. Japanese children have exchanged thousands of folded paper “birds of peace” with young people all over the world as a pledge that war must not happen again.

Christmas Tree Trivia

1.  Christmas trees have been sold commercially in the United States since about 1850.
2. In 1979, the National Christmas Tree was not lighted except for the top ornament. This was done in honor of the American hostages in Iran.
3. Between 1887-1933 a fishing schooner called the Christmas Ship would tie up at the Clark Street bridge and sell spruce trees from Michigan to Chicagoans.
4. The tallest living Christmas tree is believed to be the 122-foot, 91-year-old Douglas fir in the town of Woodinville, Washington.
5. The Rockefeller Center Christmas tree tradition began in 1933. Franklin Pierce, the 14th president, brought the Christmas tree tradition to the White House.
6. In 1923, President Calvin Coolidge started the National Christmas Tree Lighting Ceremony now held every year on the White House lawn.
7. Since 1966, the National Christmas Tree Association has given a Christmas tree to the President and first family.
8. Most Christmas trees are cut weeks before they get to a retail outlet.
9. In 1912, the first community Christmas tree in the United States was erected in New York City.
10. Christmas trees generally take six to eight years to mature.
11. Christmas trees are grown in all 50 states including Hawaii and Alaska.
12.  98 percent of all Christmas trees are grown on farms.
13. More than 1,000,000 acres of land have been planted with Christmas trees.
14. On average, over 2,000 Christmas trees are planted per acre.
15. You should never burn your Christmas tree in the fireplace. It can contribute to creosote buildup.
16. Other types of trees such as cherry and hawthorns were used as Christmas trees in the past.
17. Thomas Edison’s assistants came up with the idea of electric lights for Christmas trees.
18. In 1963, the National Christmas Tree was not lit until December 22nd because of a national 30-day period of mourning following the assassination of President Kennedy.
19. Teddy Roosevelt banned the Christmas tree from the White House for environmental reasons.
20. In the first week, a tree in your home will consume as much as a quart of water per day.
21. Tinsel was once banned by the government. Tinsel contained lead at one time. Now it’s made of plastic.
22. The best-selling trees are Scotch Pine, Douglas Fir, Fraser Fir, Balsam Fir and White Pine.

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Citation Information

Article Title  History of Christmas Trees

Author   History.com Editors

Website Name  HISTORY

URL   https://www.history.com/topics/christmas/history-of-christmas-trees

Access Date   December 21, 2020

Publisher   A&E Television Networks

Last Updated  December 2, 2020

Original Published Date   October 27, 2009

Tags    Christmas

By  History.com Editors

READ MORE: History of Christmas 

READ MORE: 25 Christmas Traditions and Their Origins

 

https://www.history.com/topics/christmas/history-of-christmas-trees

Contents

1. How Did Christmas Trees Start?
2. Christmas Trees From Germany
3. Who Brought Christmas Trees to America?
4. Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree
5. Christmas Trees Around the World
6. Christmas Tree Trivia

Dance Act 🕺💃Greatest Audition on AGT

Greatest Dance Act

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America's Got Talent (often abbreviated as AGT) is a televised American talent show competition, and is part of the global Got Talent franchise created by Simon Cowell.

Dance Act

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The program is produced by Fremantle USA and Syco Entertainment, distributed by the former, and broadcast on the NBC television network, premiering on June 21, 2006, after plans for a British edition in 2005 were suspended following a dispute within the British broadcaster ITV; production would later resume in 2007, following the success of the first season.

Each season is mainly run during the network's summer schedule, and has featured various hosts over the course of the program's history; the current host is Terry Crews. The program attracts a variety of participants, from across the United States and abroad, to take part and who possess some form of talents, with acts ranging from singing, dancing, comedy, magic, stunts, variety, and other genres.

Each participant who auditions attempts to secure a place in the live episodes of a season by impressing a panel of judges - the current line-up consists of Cowell, Howie Mandel, Heidi Klum and Sofia Vergara.

Those that make it into the live episodes compete against each other for both the judges' and public's vote in order to reach the live final, where the winner receives a large cash prize, primarily paid over a period of time, and, since the third season, a chance to headline a show on the Las Vegas Strip.

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Global🌍Religious 🙏Diversity🌏

🌍 Global 🌎Religious 🙏 Diversity 🌏

Half of the Most Religiously Diverse Countries

are in Asia-Pacific Region

April 4, 2014

Several years ago, the Pew Research Center produced estimates of the religious makeup of more than 200 countries and territories, which it published in the 2012 report “The Global Religious Landscape.” The effort was part of the Pew-Templeton Global Religious Futures project, which analyzes religious change and its impact on societies around the world. As part of the next phase of this project, Pew Research has produced an index that ranks each country by its level of religious diversity.

 

Comparing religious diversity across countries presents many challenges, starting with the definition of diversity. Social scientists have conceived of diversity in a variety of ways, including the degree to which a society is split into distinct groups; minority group size (in share and/or absolute number); minority group influence (the degree to which multiple groups are visible and influential in civil society); and group dominance (the degree to which one or more groups dominate society). Each of these approaches can be applied to the study of religious diversity.

This study, however, takes a relatively straightforward approach to religious diversity. It looks at the percentage of each country’s population that belongs to eight major religious groups, as of 2010. The closer a country comes to having equal shares of the eight groups, the higher its score on a 10-point Religious Diversity Index.

 

The choice of which religious groups to include in this study stems from the original research that was done for “The Global Religious Landscape” report. That study was based on a country-by-country analysis of data from more than 2,500 national censuses, large-scale surveys and official population registers that were collected, evaluated and standardized by Pew Research staff and, in the case of European countries, by researchers at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in Laxenburg, Austria.

In order to have data that were comparable across many countries, the study focused on five widely recognized world religions – Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam and Judaism – that collectively account for roughly three-quarters of the world’s population. The remainder of the global population was consolidated into three additional groups: the religiously unaffiliated (those who say they are atheists, agnostics or nothing in particular); adherents of folk or traditional religions (including members of African traditional religions, Chinese folk religions, Native American religions and Australian aboriginal religions); and adherents of other religions (such as the Baha’i faith, Jainism, Shintoism, Sikhism, Taoism, Tenrikyo, Wicca and Zoroastrianism).

Some efforts to measure religious diversity have attempted to take into account subgroups of the major religious traditions.³ The main challenge in looking at religious diversity in this way is the serious data limitations for subgroups within religions other than Christianity. For most countries, Pew Research was able to generate estimates for four main types of Christians – Catholics, 

Protestants, Orthodox and the remainder as an “other” category. For some countries with large Muslim populations, Pew Research has estimated the size of two main subgroups – Sunnis and Shias – but these are only approximations, expressed in ranges. Beyond Christians and Muslims, cross-national demographic data on religious subgroups are generally not available. For this reason, the study is limited to the eight major categories described above.

As noted in previous Pew Research reports, some of the faiths that have been consolidated into the “folk religion” and “other religion” categories have millions of adherents around the world. However, in the overwhelming majority of countries, these religions are not specifically measured in censuses, large-scale surveys or population registers.

Religious Diversity Index

The Religious Diversity Index is a version of the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index, which is commonly used in environmental and business studies to measure the degree of ecological diversity or market concentration. The main difference is that Religious Diversity Index scores are inverted so that higher scores indicate higher diversity. (For more details on the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index and the methods used to calculate the Religious Diversity Index scores, see the Methodology.)

The 10-point Religious Diversity Index is divided into four ranges: Countries with scores of 7.0 and higher (the top 5%) are categorized as having a “very high” degree of religious diversity. Countries with scores from 5.3 to 6.9 (the next highest 15% of scores) are categorized as having a “high” level of diversity. Countries with scores from 3.1 to 5.2 (the following 20% of scores) are categorized as having “moderate” diversity, while the rest are categorized as having “low” diversity.

 

How Countries Ranked

Looking at the percentage of each country’s population that belongs to the eight major religious categories included in the study, 12 countries have a very high degree of religious diversity. Six of the 12 are in the Asia-Pacific region (Singapore, Taiwan, Vietnam, South Korea, China and Hong Kong); five are in sub-Saharan Africa (Guinea-Bissau, Togo, Ivory Coast, Benin and Mozambique); and one is in Latin America and the Caribbean (Suriname). No countries in Europe, North America or the Middle East-North Africa region have a very high degree of religious diversity as measured in this study.
Of the 232 countries in the study, Singapore – an island nation of more than 5 million people situated at the southern tip of Malaysia – has the highest score on the Religious Diversity Index. About a third of Singapore’s population is Buddhist (34%), while 18% are Christian, 16% are religiously unaffiliated, 14% are Muslim, 5% are Hindu and <1% are Jewish. The remainder of the population belongs to folk or traditional religions (2%) or to other religions considered as a group (10%).

According to the new index, the United States has a moderate level of religious diversity, ranking 68th among the 232 countries and territories included in the study. Counting both adults and children, Christians constitute a sizable majority of the 2010 U.S. population (78%). Of the seven other major religious groups, only the religiously unaffiliated claim a substantial share of the U.S. population (16%). All other religious groups combined account for about 5% of Americans. (The U.S. would register as considerably more diverse if subgroups within Christianity were counted.)
By contrast, France has a high degree of religious diversity, ranking 25th among the 232 countries. Christians make up 63% of France’s 2010 population, and two other groups account for sizable shares: the religiously unaffiliated (28%) and Muslims (8%). Iran, whose population is almost entirely Muslim, falls into the low diversity category.

To see how all 232 countries scored on the Religious Diversity Index, see Appendix 1 (PDF).

Religious Diversity by Region

Religious diversity differs substantially by geographic region. Among the six regions analyzed in this study, the Asia-Pacific region has the highest level of religious diversity, followed by sub-Saharan Africa. Europe and North America have a moderate level of religious diversity, while the Latin America-Caribbean and Middle East-North Africa regions have a low degree of religious diversity.

To see Religious Diversity Index scores for countries and regions, see Appendix 2 (PDF) and Religious Diversity Index Scores by Country table. That appendix also includes the percentage of each country’s population that belongs to each of the eight major religious groups in the study. For more information on the size, share and geographic distribution of each of the major religious groups, see Pew Research’s 2012 report “The Global Religious Landscape.”

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https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2014/04/04/global-religious-diversity/

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Religions by country
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religions_by_country

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https://www.pewresearch.org/topic/religion/religions

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http://www.pewforum.org/2014/04/04/methodology-2

How to Find 🎬 Great Films to Watch 👀

🎬 How to Find Great Films to Watch 👀

Bored with Hollywood and Netflix? 

Becoming an adventurous and informed explorer of the cinema world is in everyone’s grasp
by Geoff Andrew

 

Need to Know

Most people like movies. After all, 50 years before television became a dominant fixture in many homes, the cinema had established itself as the great popular medium of the 20th century. Some – myself included – go further, and refer to cinema as the previous century’s greatest and most popular artform. Others, especially if their experience of movies has been limited to what’s available at the local multiplex or what’s on offer from Netflix or Disney, might raise an eyebrow at such a claim. Artform? Aren’t movies just about entertainment, a distraction from the daily grind?

Well, no, not entirely. If your film-watching life has been shaped exclusively by the programming of the major cinema chains and global online platforms, you could be forgiven for thinking that most films are American (or at least in English), that with few exceptions they were made in the past few decades, and that they are the perfect accompaniment to a tub of popcorn. But that’s a huge distortion – in fact, movie-making is an international phenomenon that began long before Marvel kicked off. Long before the original Star Wars, even. Film has been with us for more than 125 years. The contemporary mainstream is just the tip of a massive cinematic iceberg.

There is, and has always been, far more to the movies than action spectaculars, thrillers and feelgood romances. Not that there is necessarily anything wrong with such films – there are excellent, terrible and middling examples of every kind of movie – and we should never underestimate the appeal of escapism. Fantasy has been an important element of the cinematic offer ever since Georges Méliès delighted audiences with his trick films back in the late 1890s and early 1900s – and his influence lives on today. Méliès was referenced in Baz Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge! (2001) and in Martin Scorsese’s Hugo (2011); his best-known film, the delightfully imaginative Le Voyage dans la Lune (1902), can be found on YouTube.

But there’s more to life than escapism, and film has reflected that. There have always been filmmakers concerned with pondering the realities of everyday life; with looking at and portraying the world with curiosity and compassion. (I am not merely alluding to documentaries, but to all kinds of films.) In the right hands, a movie can touch us – emotionally and intellectually, culturally and philosophically – in ways mostly neglected by the mainstream ‘product’ churned out as if on a conveyor belt, its raison d’être not artistic worth but profit.

If you’ve felt that frustrating sense of déjà vu as you work your way through yet another romcom or superhero movie, you may be curious to explore what else is out there. At the same time, perhaps you’re not sure where to start – if so, this Guide is for you.

 

Prepare to Take a Rewarding Dive into the Unknown

I grew up in a small town in the English Midlands and, like many others at that time, my cinema-going progressed from a children’s diet of Disney cartoons and family comedies to what I came to regard as a more adult regime of westerns, thrillers, sci-fi, spy and horror movies. True, this was supplemented by the old American and British black-and-white movies then constantly on television, but the selection was mostly restricted to English-language genre cinema. Then, in my first term at university, a friend persuaded me to accompany him to the local arts cinema to catch ‘the new Ingmar Bergman’. (At that time, I had no idea who Bergman was or what he did.) My experience that evening blew my mind and effectively changed my life.

My friend and I got the last two seats in the centre of the front row, and were soon confronted by the opening scene: a harrowing close-up of a woman in agonising pain. The film, Cries and Whispers (1972), told of two women visiting their sister’s deathbed to pay their last respects. It was about suffering, fear, death, guilt, self-loathing, resentment and recrimination.

 

That’s entertainment? 

Not in the usual understanding of the term. But I was gripped from beginning to end, and sat with my friend for hours afterwards discussing life, death, film and art. It was quite unlike any movie I’d seen before; it stirred me both intellectually and emotionally, and made me want to learn more, not only about this Bergman chap, but to see if there were other movies by other people that might prove similarly affecting. I’d had no idea cinema could be like this, and I wanted more. It was the start of a life-long passion – that eventually turned into a decades-long career.

Not everyone is lucky enough to have a friend knowledgeable about the cinema who invites them to watch a preconceptions-busting movie, let alone to have a cinema screening such fare in their locality. Moreover, I was fortunate in that my particular dive into the unknown involved a film now widely regarded as a masterpiece; I might have gone to see something disappointing or downright awful. So it could take a few dives to get the hang of swimming in film’s hitherto uncharted waters. That’s why a little research before you begin can be useful. There’s so much out there to explore – and in this Guide I’m going to share with you some tips on how to get started.

 

What to do... Start with an open mind

Before you embark on your journey, it’s important to set aside your preconceptions about the kinds of films with which you might be unfamiliar. Here are a few things to consider.

Some folks seem to think that a movie with subtitles must be ‘arty’, pretentious, difficult or boring. But all it really means is that the film was made in a country where the first language is not English. In fact, subtitles can be a good sign, since their presence shows that the film has been deemed interesting enough to be exported to other cultures. Remember that many – perhaps most – of the films widely regarded by movie critics, historians and directors as among the greatest ever made are not in English. Yasujirō Ozu’s Tokyo Story (1953), Jean Renoir’s The Rules of the Game (1939), Federico Fellini’s 8 ¹/₂ (1963) and Bergman’s Wild Strawberries (1957) are regular high-flyers.

Similarly, just because a film is in black and white rather than colour doesn’t mean that it is inferior or impoverished. Many of the most rewarding and entertaining films of all time were shot in black and white, either because that was, for technical reasons, the norm when they were made, or because the filmmakers deliberately chose to shoot in black and white; monochrome can produce a formal beauty different from color. Again, critics, historians and directors number many black-and-white movies in polls and surveys of the greatest films ever made. Alongside the titles I mentioned above, Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane (1941), Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960) and Billy Wilder’s Some Like It Hot (1959) are consistent favorites.

Don’t be put off because a film was made before the advent of sound brought us ‘talking pictures’. Of course, sound – which is considerably more than just the spoken dialogue – has been an important part of the film-going experience since the late 1920s. But even before then, films were rarely ‘silent’ because they were usually presented with music – and that is how movies from those years are presented and enjoyed today. Moreover, many films made during the first three decades of cinema history have an extraordinary visual eloquence and elegance, not to mention an exhilarating inventiveness – this, after all, was when filmmakers were establishing, exploring and extending the language of film. That’s why best-ever movie polls often feature classics such as F W Murnau’s Sunrise (1927), Dziga Vertov’s semi-documentary Man with a Movie Camera (1929), Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927) and Buster Keaton’s The General (1926).

Remember that a film’s age has nothing to do with its worth or its capacity to entertain. Like any other medium or artform, film is constantly changing, but not necessarily for the better. People have made good and bad movies throughout cinema’s long and varied history. Finally, try not to be put off by a film’s genre, its running time, its title or the term ‘documentary’. For the sake of simplicity, I’ve mostly mentioned fictional movies in this Guide, but much of what follows can also be applied to nonfiction films. Bear in mind that there are great (and awful, and utterly average) documentaries, animated films, short films, long films, experimental films, etc; and that a film’s title usually tells us very little about the experience of watching the film.

 

Give Movies a Chance

Once you’ve selected a movie to watch, try to view it under the best circumstances possible. A cinema with a decent-sized screen, good sightlines and quality sound is the optimum option for appreciating a film’s visual and aural subtleties; try to find one where the audience tends to be attentive rather than talkative. If such a cinema isn’t accessible, then the best alternative is as large a screen as you manage at home (or at a friend or relative’s home). Laptops are not good for picture quality or sound, let alone any kind of ‘immersive’ experience, and phones won’t do anything for your appreciation of a movie’s finer qualities, so these should be avoided. TV and streaming channels are fine for home viewing, with some (eg, Mubi, BFI Player and the Criterion Channel) specialising in curated, non-mainstream fare. Many Blu-rays (for the best-quality picture and sound) and DVDs have extras (commentaries, introductions, documentaries, essays), which can add to your understanding, appreciation and enjoyment. These extras are best watched after the movie itself, to avoid spoilers.

Be patient. Give the movie time and your undivided attention. Don’t expect to be hooked from the first minute. Even if you feel you’re getting little out of a movie, if you’re watching at home, give it a minimum of, say, 40 minutes before you switch off; you’d be surprised how many filmmakers wait half an hour or so before they drop their first narrative bombshell.

Get some Advice

If you have any friends or acquaintances who fancy themselves as film-buffs, ask them for tips on which movies and filmmakers to check out. You’ll also find that staff working at cinematheques and independent cinemas showing old films or art movies are often more than happy to share their enthusiasms. And remember: people don’t just like movies; they tend to like talking about them, especially their favorites, too. So try to watch movies with friends and share your thoughts; if you notice that the cinema you frequent has regulars, they could be cinephiles who would be happy to discuss movies in the lobby or bar after a screening. Finally, if you’re lucky enough to have a film festival in your locality, that’s a great way to not only see movies but to meet like-minded people too.

 

Play to your Strengths and Interests

If you have a special interest in a particular genre among recent mainstream movies, you could do worse than explore its history: comedies, action adventures, horror films, thrillers, sci-fi, westerns and love stories have all been going strong for well over 100 years, and musicals became popular as soon as sound became predominant at the start of the 1930s. You may find it useful to work your way steadily backwards in time from the present. Or it could be exhilarating to check out early landmark films of the genre in question, such as: Lang’s Metropolis (sci-fi), Murnau’s Nosferatu (1922, horror) and Keaton’s Steamboat Bill, Jr (1928, comedy) – all still impress and amaze more than 90 years after they first appeared.

If you’re especially fond of, or knowledgeable about, a country or part of the world, or want to know more about it in anticipation of a forthcoming visit, why not check out its films and filmmakers? If you’re a news junkie or fascinated by politics and current affairs, you might find yourself drawn to documentaries. If you’re a fan of contemporary art, you could sample avant-garde and experimental films. If you’re a history nut, there are period dramas galore – not to mention ‘contemporary’ movies made over a fast-changing period of more than 120 years. If you’re a bookworm, there are countless literary adaptations. You get the idea – indulge yourself.

 

Follow your Likes

If you find a movie especially interesting or enjoyable, use the Internet Movie Database (IMDb) website to identify another film starring the same actor, scripted by the same writer, shot by the same cinematographer, or, above all, made by the same director. Directors are widely regarded as the most important member of a film’s creative personnel because they – if they’re any good – bring all the other cast and crew members’ contributions together to form a coherent whole, sometimes with a recognizable signature style or thematic concerns. As film follows film, you’ll get a better idea of what and who you like and dislike, and come across new exploratory paths to follow.

At the same time, when you find a film that’s worked well for you, do a little research to find out more about its place in cinema history. Besides being made by a specific group of people, it will also be part of a national cinema, and you might follow that route: in every continent, there are countries renowned for having distinguished and distinctive schools and styles of filmmaking. Moreover, the film in question may also be regarded as having been part of, or influenced by, a historical movement. So if you find that it’s an example of German expressionism, French poetic realism, Italian neorealism, the French New Wave or whatever, it can be rewarding to check out other examples. For instance, let’s say your diet has mainly centred on American crime films; you could do worse than check out the ‘New Hollywood’ films of the late 1960s and ’70s – which gave us classics such as the Godfather movies (1972, 1974, 1990) and many more lesser-known gems – or the extraordinary flowering of Hollywood film noir of the 1940s and ’50s, with dozens of hard-boiled gems, such as The Big Sleep (1946), The Killers (1946) and Touch of Evil (1958).

 

Reflect on How Films are Made

As you explore the world of film, you’ll enrich your experience by dwelling on different aspects of how they’re made. A good place to start is by thinking about a film’s narrative structure. Narrative is not story itself but how a story is related; it is about tone, texture and timing, pace and duration, perspective and point of view, consistency and credibility.

Most stories are told in a fairly straightforward, chronologically linear fashion: Keaton’s The General and Vittorio De Sica’s Bicycle Thieves (1948) are both models of structural clarity.

But in Citizen Kane, Welles deploys a series of flashbacks to investigate a recently deceased tycoon’s life as remembered by those who knew him best. Nicolas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now (1973) repeatedly interrupts a chronologically linear story with shots of uncertain status – might they be memories, anxieties, wishful fantasies or clairvoyance? – to explore a couple’s response to the death of their child. And in Robert Altman’s Nashville (1975), any overarching story is virtually abandoned as the film simply observes, to impressionistic effect, the everyday behaviour of dozens of characters attending or somehow connected to a five-day-long country music festival.

Michael Haneke’s Code Unknown (2000) goes still further, evoking the fabric of modern urban society by interweaving brief fragments from the lives of a number of apparently unrelated individuals who were unwittingly all present at a seemingly unremarkable event in a Parisian street. In other words, narrative can be extremely flexible.

In fact, there is more – far more – to a film than its story. If indeed there is a ‘story’ because, as Code Unknown shows, there doesn’t always have to be! Indeed, it might help to start thinking about films a little differently – approach them as you would, say, a piece of music, a painting, a photo, a sculpture or a poem.

Movies are actually made up of many different elements. Alongside the script and performance, just as important are composition, lighting, colour, camera movement, editing, costume and set design, music, sound design, use of space and architecture. A skilled director will deploy all these elements in such a way as to suggest how characters relate to one another and to the world they live in, and to inflect the viewer’s relationship to everyone and everything seen and heard on screen.

Film is such an immensely rich, complex medium, which at its best works on several levels at once. The more you watch, the more you will come to appreciate the collaborative artistry that goes into it. In the final section of the Guide – Learn More below – I’ve shared some pointers for other aspects of film you might look at more closely as you continue your deep-dive into cinema. I hope that, in time, your own journey into film will give you as much pleasure as it has given me.

 

Key Points🎬 How to find Great Films to Watch

1. Prepare to take a rewarding dive into the unknown. In the right hands, an artistic movie can touch us – emotionally and intellectually, culturally and philosophically.
2. Start with an open mind. Before you embark on your journey beyond the mainstream, it’s important to set aside your preconceptions about any films with which you might not be familiar – such as foreign language, black-and-white, and ‘silent’ films.
3. Give movies a chance. View your chosen film on a big screen if you can, and be patient – don’t expect to be hooked from the first minute.
4. Get some advice. Don’t be afraid to ask for tips from film-buff friends, staff at independent cinemas, or cinephiles at your local theatre.
5. Play to your strengths and interests. If there’s a contemporary genre you like, check out its history; if you have certain hobbies or countries you’re interested in, try exploring related movies.
6. Follow your likes. If you particularly enjoy a movie, look for other films by the same director, featuring the same actor or from the same era or movement.
7. Reflect on how films are made. Film is an immensely rich, complex medium: at its best, it works on several levels at once. The more you watch, the more you will come to appreciate the collaborative artistry involved.
   

Learn More

Cinema can operate on various levels. To deepen your appreciation of film, here are some further aspects that you might look at more closely, along with some viewing suggestions. These categories and the film examples are far from exhaustive, but will help you begin exploring cinema as an art-form.

 

Composition, Lighting and Color

The look of a film is all-important, providing not only essential narrative information but mood, atmosphere, character, subtext and theme. Some films are remarkable for their sheer beauty, such as Bergman’s Persona (1966), Terrence Malick’s Days of Heaven (1978), Claire Denis’s Beau Travail (1999) and Abbas Kiarostami’s The Wind Will Carry Us (1999). Some – Robert Bresson’s Pickpocket (1959) and his other films, for instance – are distinctive for their deliberate, pared-back functionality and focus on essentials, while others – such as John Cassavetes’s Faces (1968) or A Woman Under the Influence (1974) – have a seemingly casual spontaneity in terms of composition so as to suggest reality rather than artifice. The high-contrast shadows and pools of light in film noir – Robert Siodmak’s The Killers is a prime example – or in Charles Laughton’s The Night of the Hunter (1955), speak of isolation, vulnerability, fear and danger. But a film need not be in black and white to have its expressionist moments: the use of colour in Jean Renoir’s The River (1951), Nicholas Ray’s Bigger Than Life (1956) and Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s Three Monkeys (2008) is no less eloquent in dealing with the characters’ emotions.

 

Camera Movement and Editing

Camera movement can be expressive, as well as aesthetically pleasurable. In The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928), Carl Theodor Dreyer uses a wildly swinging camera to evoke psychological turmoil; in the films of Max Ophüls – Madame de… (1953) and Le Plaisir (1952) are arguably the greatest – the camera tracks and circles around characters suggesting they are imprisoned by their desires and social circumstances. The extended travelling crane shot that opens Welles’s Touch of Evil is, like other long shots in the film, crucial to the narrative in respecting temporal and spatial continuity in order to emphasise causality, while the way the camera repeatedly follows the central character in the Dardenne Brothers’ Rosetta (1999) highlights the stressful urgency of her plight.

Films by pre-talkie filmmakers such as Abel Gance (Napoleon, 1927) and Sergei Eisenstein (Battleship Potemkin, 1925) used rapid editing or ‘montage’ to create excitement, particularly in dealing with conflict. Meanwhile, in movies such as Sabotage (1936), Rear Window (1954) and North by Northwest (1959), Hitchcock perfected a distinctive but highly flexible editing style that, in carefully concealing certain information from the viewer, not only created suspense but manipulated audience sympathies. Agnès Varda’s use of long takes in Cléo from 5 to 7 (1962) deftly tricks the viewer into thinking the naturalistic story is happening in real time, while the use of editing to create a fragmented, repetitive narrative rhythm in John Boorman’s Point Blank (1967) reflects the central character’s obsessive mindset.

Music and Sound

Music can underline a film’s emotional dynamics or create mood. For memorable examples, consider Bernard Herrmann’s many scores for Hitchcock, Ennio Morricone’s for the movies of Sergio Leone – Once Upon a Time in the West (1968) is probably the finest – and Miles Davis’s improvised soundtrack to Louis Malle’s Lift to the Scaffold (1958). But music can also be ironic – Michael Nyman’s scores for Peter Greenaway’s films such as The Draughtsman’s Contract (1982) – or indicative of a character’s state of mind: eg, Nyman’s score for Jane Campion’s The Piano (1993). Of course, following in the footsteps of George Lucas’s American Graffiti (1973), there are also soundtracks compiled from popular songs to evoke the exact era depicted in the film.

Sound can be expressive too. Welles used all he’d learned working in radio when he made Citizen Kane, deploying echoes, volume changes and other effects to suggest the scale of rooms in which scenes take place, whereas Robert Bresson’s A Man Escaped (1956), about a prisoner of war, makes expert use of off-screen sounds to suggest activity in the world outside his cell. Bergman’s Persona deploys sound (and silence) to hint, subtly, that certain scenes may be dreamt or imagined, while David Lynch’s The Elephant Man (1980) and Blue Velvet (1986) are essentially expressionist in distorting and exaggerating sounds to create a sense of unease.

Costume and Set Design

Memorable early examples of expressive set and costume design include the aforementioned Metropolis (renowned for its evocation of monumentality) and the films Josef von Sternberg made with Marlene Dietrich – Morocco (1930) and The Scarlet Empress (1934) are perhaps the most impressive – famous primarily for their ornate elegance and excess. Immediately conspicuous design can still be found in a diverse range of later films, such as Jacques Demy’s The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967), Terry Gilliam’s Brazil (1985), Pedro Almodóvar’s Pain and Glory (2019) and Yorgos Lanthimos’s The Favourite (2018). But costumes and sets are chosen and made for most fiction films, many of them rather more naturalistic in tone. Fine examples would include Robert Hamer’s Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949), Éric Rohmer’s Pauline at the Beach (1983), Wong Kar-Wai’s In the Mood for Love (2000) and Jessica Hausner’s Lourdes (2009).

 

Location and Architecture

Where a film is set and shot has an inevitable influence on its mood and, sometimes, its meaning. Just as the Monument Valley settings of John Ford westerns such as Stagecoach (1939), My Darling Clementine (1946) and The Searchers (1956) reflect their heroic stories and stark moral dilemmas, so Bergman’s decision to make many of his films of the 1960s and ’70s – Through a Glass Darkly (1961) and The Passion of Anna (1969) among them – on the island of Fårö in the Baltic Sea contributed to their examinations of suffering, loneliness and dark despair. Welles, Michelangelo Antonioni and Alan J Pakula made highly expressive use of both architecture and landscape in films such as The Trial (1962), The Eclipse (1962) and The Parallax View (1974), respectively. Again, however, virtually all films feature architecture and landscape, and less conspicuously expressive examples can be likewise effective and impressive: Wim Wenders’s Alice in the Cities (1974), Abderrahmane Sissako’s Waiting for Happiness (2002) and Valeska Grisebach’s Western (2017), to name but three.

 

Links & Books

1. Few serious magazines about the cinema survive in print in English but Sight and Sound, probably the best-known, is now available digitally too.
2. The Australian website Senses of Cinema is an informative repository of director profiles and features.
3. Just as you can find out which films and directors are rated highly by the critics and filmmakers who have voted every 10 years for Sight and Sound’s Greatest Films of All Time polls, it might also be worth checking which films were awarded top prizes by the juries at major film festivals, especially at Cannes and Venice. Many winners of the Palme d’Or and the Golden Lion went on to become major arthouse hits over the years.
4. The history of cinema, if dealt with globally, is so huge and complex as to be beyond the scope of any one book. That said, Geoffrey Nowell-Smith’s The History of Cinema: A Very Short Introduction (2017) provides an outline of what has happened over the years.
5. Another book The Story of Film (2nd ed, 2020) by Mark Cousins offers an alternative, occasionally provocative perspective on developments.
6. Other books, along the lines of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die (updated ed, 2019), edited by Steven Jay Schneider, might prove a helpful starting point.
7. The respected critic David Thomson has also written a number of books useful for further research, including The New Biographical Dictionary of Film (6th ed, 2014) and Have You Seen? (2008).
8. The Aeon Video and Psyche Film channels feature many films that can complement your cinematic explorations, from an explainer about how film cuts work, to movie analysis from The Nerdwriter, and artistic experiments in the medium itself.
9. Geoff Andrewis a critic, lecturer and programmer. He was for many years film editor of Time Out and head programmer at London’s BFI Southbank. He has written, edited and contributed to numerous books on film. He lives in London and writes on the arts at geoffandrew.com

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