politique des auteurs, first stated by Francois Truffaut in his article "Une certaine tendance du cinema francais" in Cahiers du cinema in 1954, suggests that one person, usually director, has the artistic responsibility for a film and reveals a personal worldview through the tensions among style, theme, and the conditions of production. It argues that films can be studied like novels and paintings as a product of an individual artist.

an "author" of a film, usually identified as the director, especially a director with a recognisable style and whose personal vision dominates the film or filmmaking process, as opposed to just a "metteur en scene" whose direction is considered more like craftsmanship.

artists who are more intellectually or aesthetically advanced than are their contemporaries (if we assume that art is progressing). Avant garde films are generally non-narrative in structure.

In the continuity editing system, the imaginary line that passes from side to side through a main actors, defining the spatial relations of all the elements of the scene as being to the right or the left. It is also called the 180-degree line. When the camera crosses this axis at a cut, those spatial relations are reversed thereby confusing the audience. It is one of cardinal rules of continuity editing not to cross this axis during a sequence.