Main Area and Open Discussion > Living Room

Film vs. Movie?

(1/5) > >>

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.

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page