hyperlink

Film Whilst I'm here, the most surprising of the three films was Thirteen Conversations About One Thing. It's an example of a genre I've loved for years which Roger Ebert apparently recently, finally, given a name to. The 'hyperlinked movie' or cinema. This is an ensemble film in which the motives or the appearance of a plotline is changed when a character interacts with another or we see the action from a different angle. He later explained that he saw the description in a Film Comment article by Alissa Quart, and also points out that this kind of film has been knocking around for years perhaps with Robert Altman. To suggest some similar films which Ebert neglects, I'd drop in Kasden's Grand Canyon, many of John Sayles' films, particularly North Star and Sunshine State, Linklater's Dazed and Confused and good grief Miranda July's You and Me and Everyone We Know. [via]

This naming of genres after the fact has its anticedents. The filmmakers behind the film noirs of the 1940s and 1950s weren't aware that this was the genre they were working within -- they just churned out gangster pictures which were finding an audience. It took critics and fans to put a label on them. Later, when the Coen Brothers and their follows began to create the neo-noir films they were aware of the genre -- they were using the influence of the earlier films and setting them within a contemporary setting.

What is interesting is whether, now that this 'hyperlink' label has been coined filmmakers will actively decide that they're making their films within this genre and say as much and how quickly it will enter the general vocabulary. Someone should write a dissertation about this. Hmmm...