Cinephilia and the Aestheticization of Film. Cultural Legitimacy Before and After

Abstract

The history of cinema is characterized by the fight for cultural legitimacy. Specifically, in the 20th century, cinema played a key role for the expansion of the aesthetic field in debates on contemporary times and even influenced the philosophy of art. Aesthetic categories are taken from other and more traditional artistic forms (such as representative arts, literature and theatre). The purpose is to expand the field of cultural legitimacy of cinema also to those fields which were considered too involved in the industrial needs. This is the reason why contemporary cinephilia have sometimes extended the broad definition of “beautiful” also to more marginal areas as well as to the most unpredictable places (from pornography to horror), thus identifying forms of art everywhere. So, what is cinephilia and how did it revolutionize the aesthetic criteria of cinema?