Abstract: Film semiotics, which deals with the experience and semiotic reality constructed by films, requires a departure from established research paradigms. Rather than focussing on the application of semiotic models in the field of film studies or on professionalised film theories, film semiotics should focus on films’ semiotic practices and meaning mechanisms, and discuss how films as a form of art achieve aestheticisation via their medium. This paper investigates the dynamic correlation between art and media, analysing how the images in films help to cross borders of semiotic practices, and how the observations on semiosis can provide insights into the meaning-generation mechanisms of signs and the essence of art. These perspectives are then taken to be the starting points of a new research paradigm in film studies.
Key words: Film semiotics, media, art, image