Is animation cinema? Reflections on motion pictures

By Dr. Yukie Hori

Still from animated adventure film “Flow” (2024), directed by Gints Zilbalodis

The recent acclaim of Flow, a sublime and emotionally resonant independent animated film that won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, the Golden Globe for Best Animated Film, and numerous other accolades, brings to mind a powerful statement by director Guillermo del Toro at the 2022 Golden Globes:

“Animation is cinema. Animation is not a genre for kids. It’s a medium.”

But is animation truly cinema? For fans of Walt Disney, Studio Ghibli, and other animation giants, the answer is a resounding yes. Animation is now firmly recognised in major film awards. Yet, the question – Is animation cinema? – is more complex than it first appears. This article explores the ontological nature of motion pictures to better understand where animation fits within the cinematic landscape.

Is animation a genre for kids?

The impulse to answer “yes” to the question stems partly from the ongoing effort to legitimise animation, which has often been dismissed as a genre intended solely for children. While much of mainstream animation targets younger audiences, the medium encompasses works made for adults, despite their cartoonish aesthetic – examples include The Simpsons, South Park, Akira, and even Shrek.

A related misconception is that animation itself is a genre. In reality, it spans a wide range of styles and themes, from slapstick comedy to psychological thrillers. As del Toro rightly emphasised, animation is not confined to any one genre, let alone one tailored exclusively for family entertainment.

Similarly, defining cinema as the ultimate benchmark of artistic worth can be misleading. Animation can possess exceptional aesthetic, technical, and narrative sophistication without needing to be classified as ‘cinema’ in the traditional sense. It is an art form in its own right.

Is animation a medium?

According to animation scholar Raz Greenberg, animation is not a medium per se. It manifests across a variety of media and formats – film, video, digital storage – and even beyond the screen, in forms such as flipbooks, zoetropes (spinning cylinders with painted images), and shadow puppetry.

Defining animation strictly as ‘frame-by-frame’ movement is also limiting. Many contemporary animations, especially those created through coding and computer graphics, do not follow this traditional model. As Greenberg notes, “Animation is not a medium, nor is it medium-dependent.” This perspective begins to diverge from del Toro’s.

Paleolithic painting “Lion Panel_ With Mammoth” (n.d.), Chauvet Cave, France

Is animation cinema?

If defining animation is already challenging, defining cinema is even more so. Since the popularisation of cinema with the Lumière brothers’ cinematograph in 1895, scholars have debated its essence.

André Bazin, an influential mid-20th century film theorist, argued that cinema, like photography, begins with the mechanical capture of something that already exists. The key innovation of cinema, according to Bazin, was the ability of the camera to record both objects and their movement – ushering in a new art form. For Bazin, without the camera, there is no cinema.

In this framework, the role of the photographer or filmmaker is primarily to select and frame the subject, while the audience interprets the captured images as reflections of reality. This is distinct from painting or drawing, where the artist exercises full control over creation.

This distinction maps onto the difference between live-action and animation. Cinema, tied to photography and theatre, involves mise-en-scène – organising what exists before the lens. Animation, on the other hand, creates an entire world from scratch, stroke by stroke or through three-dimensional modeling. If cinema is anchored in recorded reality and animation in constructed images, they could be seen as two distinct art forms.

But what about modern technologies like green screens and motion capture? These techniques still record the movements of real actors or animals, yet the final visuals are computer-generated, as seen in James Cameron’s Avatar. In this sense, the green screen acts more like a painter’s blank canvas than a traditional camera lens, merging photography with graphic composition.

So, what is cinema today?

To reflect more deeply, let us revisit Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, where prisoners, chained in darkness, perceive shadows cast on a wall and mistake them for reality. Similarly, recent studies of prehistoric cave art suggest that torchlight may have been used to animate images of animals scratched or painted onto stone walls. The desire to replicate nature, to create and experience alternative realities, seems deeply rooted in human history.

This same impulse drives both cinema and animation. If both forms aim to simulate movement, convey stories, and evoke emotions, is the distinction between them as rigid as it once seemed? Perhaps not. From this vantage point, I find myself agreeing with del Toro: Animation is cinema.

Dr. Yukie Hori is a lecturer in the Department of Media and Communications, Faculty of Humanities and Health Sciences at Curtin Malaysia, where she teaches Screen Studies. She can be contacted at yukihori@curtin.edu.my.