Kino

Confirmed 298,580

Part of a series on /tv/. [View Related Entries]

About

Kino is short for the word "kinography," which is often ironically used on 4chan's /tv/ (television and film) board and Reddit's /r/moviescirclejerk when referring to the highest caliber of film.

Origin

At the beginning of the 1929 film Man with a Movie Camera directed by Sovet filmmaker Dziga Vertov, a statement is displayed referring to "absolute kinography" as an "absolute language of cinema":

"This new experimental work by Kino-Eye is directed towards the creation of an authentically international absolute language of cinema – ABSOLUTE KINOGRAPHY – on the basis of its complete separation from the language of theatre and literature."

On 4chan, kino is often used as shorthand for kinography as a joke classification for the highest tier of film, followed by "cinema," "film," "movie," "flick" and "joint." As early as September 2014, a copypasta containing a "superior patrician ranking" of films began circulating on /tv/, featuring "Absolute Kinography" at the top (shown below).^[6]

ABSOLUTE KINOGRAPHY
1. Человек с киноаппаратом (1929, Dziga Vertov)
2. Суд народов or Sud narodov (1947, Yelizaveta Svilova)
3. Новости дня (1954, Dziga Vertov)

CINEMA
1. L'année dernière à Marienbad (1961, Resnais)
2. Voskhozhdenie (1977, Larisa Shepitko)
3. The Birth of a Nation (1915, D. W. Griffith)

FILM
1. 黒い河 (1957, Masaki Kobayashi)
2. Höstsonaten (1978, Ingmar Bergman)
3. Dog Star Man: Part I (1962, Stan Brakhage)

MOVIES
1. Le voyage dans la lune (1902, Georges Méliès)
2. Le Dernier Samaritain (1991, Scott)
3. Offret (1986, Andrei Tarkovsky)

FLICKS
1. Een hagedis teveel (1960, Verhoeven)
2. 七人の侍 (1954, Akira Kurosawa)
3. Mauvais Garçons (1995, Bay)

JOINTS
1. Mo' Better Blues (1990, Lee)
2. Joe's Bed-Stuy Barbershop: We Cut Heads (1983, Lee)
3. Do The Right Thing (1989, Lee)

Spread

On September 19th, 2015, an anoymous 4chan user started a thread with a green text story about going to see "kino" and later realizing it was actually "cinema" (shown below).^[7]

On April 12th, 2016, Redditor khazixtoostronk submitted a post asking what users on 4chan's /tv/ board "mean with the word 'kino'?" to /r/OutOfTheLoop,^[1] to which Redditor Ammaeli cited its ironic association with patricians on 4chan and linked to multi-pane image comparing examples of "Cinema," "Film," "Movie" and "Flick" (shown below).

On April 15th, a similar thread was submitted to the /tv/ board on 4chan, to which an anonymous user responded with a photoshopped chart attributed to the USCSchool of Cinematic arts, placing Kinography as the highest tier in a slide titled "Motion Picture Classifications" (shown below).^[3]

On June 10th, Urban Dictionary^[2] user PatricianMaster submitted an entry for "kino," referring to it as "the highest tier of artistry in film" that "can only be enjoyed by patricians" (shown below).

On June 30th, an anonymous 4chan user submitted a post titled "Ideology in film," along with an image featuring the posters for several films with the heading "Essential Epiphenomenal Performances in Kino" to the /lit/ board (shown below, left).^[5] On May 7th, 2017, actor William Shatner replied to a tweet about his favorite boards on 4chan, asking "Is it kino?" (shown below, right).^[8]