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To say that film is a difficult art form can be both dissimulation as well as a half-truth. But yet it is without a doubt that there are films there are pure art in motion. When we watch the films of John Cassevettes, Tarkovsky, Wim Wenders and Fassbinder, there is without a doubt that we are witnessing art. commercial films sometimes fall into this category as well, including the films of Scorcese, Kubrick. be that as it may, film straddles the difficult area of industry and art. and often times they are unique creations of a certain societal and industrial context without which it would be impossible to exist. the films of New Hollywood for example like Five Easy Pieces or Apocalypse Now would not have been possible without the revolution in acting that went hand in hand with it. this revolution in acting was the result of theatre pioneers like Piscator, the Actor's Studio and Stella Adler who were the true inheritors of Stanislavsky rather than the Moscow Art Theatre. at the same time, the entire infrastructure that could support such innovations were created in the Hollywood film industry through years of filmmaking. hence to say that one can make a film like one can sit down and write a novel or write and perform a play is totally untrue. Case in point, Kubrick would not have been able to make Barry Lyndon without set designer Ken Adam, or Once Upon a Time in the West would be very different without the music of Ennio Morricone. the fact that a Ken Adam or  Morricone can exist is testament to the existence of a huge industry that supports their talent. Yet at the same time film can also be an extremely individualistic art as evidenced by filmmakers like Cassevettes, Brakage, Pasolini, Fassbinder. 

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In a sense one could say that there is a tension between the artistic individualistic elements of what makes a great film as well as the industrial elements. In some filmmakers these two yin and yang resulted in a happy synergy like for example Scorcese's Raging Bull.

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One man's meat is another's poison though, and that is more true for film than practically any other art form, and the reason is that so many elements of art go into a film and what someone may admire about a good film may be something that is entirely missing in a classic. For example the familar adage that the visual is paramount in a film is something that is totally untrue in a Woody Allen film. Kubrick hated Cassevettes' approach to acting and Cassevettes would never have lablled Kubrick an artist. Tarkovsky thought Brakage was a joke and an amateur

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The advent of digital filmmaking in the late nineties changed things quite a bit. And it also didn't as well. Digital cinema had really different impacts geographically. The digital revolution in a sense freed up filmmaking and there were short-lived movements like Dogme 95 and a whole crop of digital filmmakers who came on the scene with cheap cameras. The old days of saving up to shoot on precious 16mm or Super 8 were over. In Malaysia a whole crop of digital filmmakers emerged. Not so in Singapore. Over time however it seems that the cost savings of the digital film revolution which morphed into HD and later 4k film, became less and less. Nowadays digital film making is probably almost as expensive as the old days of shooting on 16mm, or perhaps even more. For some filmmakers like Jon Jost, it changed their approach entirely, as they felt that shooting on film was too expensive, primitive and took too much time. For most people it didn't make a difference. If you ask any film student today they'll probably tell you that making a feature film took at least a hundred thousand dollars, if not more. The idea that one could shoot unencumbered by cost is a dream that died many years ago.

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One can however still dream.