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Film vs. Movie?
rsatrioadi:
So the New York International Latino Film Festival posters (nylatinofilm.com) apparently encourage us to watch films, not movies. English is not my primary language, so I don't know the difference between films and movies. In my language, what I thought they define as "movies" and "films" have the same translation: "film". I duckduckgo-ed for the difference but have not found anything useful to separate what I know as "film" into the two categories "movies" and "films". Would some native English speaker (or perhaps movie/film enthusiasts) here clear things out for me? I'm confused as hell. :-\
Edit: Here's a blog post showing all of the posters.
joiwind:
I think "movies" is an American term, whereas "films" is more UK English - may be wrong though.
mouser:
No difference between a film and a movie in american english.
worstje:
There is no difference, if you ask me.
If one insists on definitely defining a difference, I'd say film is used for more culturally or psychologically entertaining works, whereas movie may refer more to the sort of one-shot-horribly-expensive-dare-i-say-overpriced-video-impression that is geared towards more casual entertainment that takes less thinking or consideration to enjoy.
But that is just how I feel about those two words. Seeing how English is my second language, I'd say you ought to take it with a grain of salt - no matter how awesome my english may appear to native speakers at times.
steeladept:
I agree with worstje (except for the grain of salt thing :P).
If I were to differentiate, however, I would say "film" is technically the media upon which a movie is made. Therefore, anything put on film, be it pictures, documentaries, movies, even data, would be technically watching a "film". Movies are a specific type of data that provides entertainment through a single episode of a story retained on film. This would be different from, say a documentary, a television series, or even a slideshow of generally unrelated pictures. But differentiating between all that is a very technical description of the language, and in general usage they are interchangable words.
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