Metacinema

Films which consciously reflect on their own role, production, and significance through the use of self-referential scenes. A mode of filmmaking that seeks to explicitly demonstrate its traditional metalinguistic gimmicks, thus revealing a film's intrinsic inner workings and underlying creative processes.

The introduction of the metacinematic element can follow different trajectories and operate on varying depths of analysis. For example, it can be limited to a single character briefly breaking the fourth wall, or go so far as to totally drop all pretense and show the director and crew engaged in the very act of making the movie. In the realm of horror and science fiction, metacinema either tends to examine the rules, stylistic elements, and "stereotypes" inherent in the genre, or else attempts to shed light of the genre's role, particularly regarding the type and nature of its exigencies and the needs which it intends to address.

Further, it's not unusual for works (often characterized by ironic and/or amusing tones) which combine cinephile homages, self-references, and experimental flights of fancy to contribute to a semantic-conceptual reworking of the material under examination (along with methods of addressing it), which constitutes an ideal prerequisite for the development of novel artistic paths. Embracing a broader sense of "Metacinema", this Tag will include any film featuring scenes of a meta-narrative nature, whether the artistic-cultural source of reference lies in cinema or elsewhere (literature, painting, videogames, etc.).