seventh art

Meanings

1. The art of making motion pictures; filmmaking; cinema.

Etymology

Calque of Italian settima arte, which was coined by the Italian film theoretician Ricciotto Canudo (1877–1923) in 1921, considering filmmaking to be a new art combining the six previous arts of architecture, sculpture, painting, music, dance, and poetry. Canudo had previously used the term sesta arte (literally “sixth art”) to describe filmmaking around 1911 when he did not include dance in the set of preceding arts.