Early Cinema
Once cinema got its metaphoric foot in the door, it soon became arguably the preeminent visual medium of the early twentieth century. Shortly after the Lumi res sent their cameras out on the road, British films were being shot and shown both at home and abroad. One instance is the newsreel-style Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee aka Diamond Anniversary Celebrations of Queen Victoria shot in 1897, possibly by Richard John Appledon. The film had been screened in many of the British colonies by the...
Case Study indonesia FilmGovernment Ties
While some Southeast Asian governments chose not to overtly employ the cinema as a propaganda tool see, for instance, Grenfell 1979 , successive Indonesian governments were intensely implicated in various aspects of the Indonesian film industry.2 This involvement took different forms at different points in history, but the upshot of most of them was that Indonesian films in the 1950s through to the 1970s were much more than just entertainment. Shortly after the end of the Second World War,...
Auteurs Independents And Global Blockbusters
A film about a shark, no matter how good, is not going to change the history of cinema by itself, but Jaws did come at a very particular juncture, establishing along with Lucas's 1977 Star Wars a new agenda for Hollywood Gomery 1996 47982 Cousins 2004 381-5 . As noted above, the collapse of the studio system was at least partially attributable to a new alignment of stars, directors, and studios. Blockbusters like Jaws and Star Wars also created a new alignment of finances. Major corporations,...
neorealism and the french new wave
While neo-realism was arguably more of a moment in Italian film, rather than a school of cinema, its impact has been enormous on movies throughout the world as we saw with the case study on Satyajit Ray in the previous chapter . With its beginnings in the latter years of the Second World War, but predominately taking place in immediate postwar Italy, neo-realism was characterized by stories set among the poor or working class, filmed in long takes, usually shot outdoors on location, and...
case Study Satyajit Ray and Akira Kurosawa
Akira Kurosawa and Satyajit Ray are two very different filmmakers who also share some surprising similarities. Kurosawa had seen over 100 foreign films by the time he was nineteen, in 1929 Richie 2005 28 . Ray was born into a politically active family and initially worked as an advertising illustrator Rajadhyaksha 1996 682 . As filmmakers, however, they both had to negotiate combining a Western developed media with their own cultural traditions and expectations. They also had to negotiate...
Case Study Hitchcock Auteur and Psychoanalysis
Alfred Hitchcock 1899-1980 is one of cinema's most famous directors O'Neill 1996 310 . Hitchcock worked in Britain, Germany where he was able to observe first hand Murnau's filmmaking, and his early films were clearly influenced by expressionism , and America. With his career lasting over fifty years, his work spans the transition from silent to sound films, from the height of the studio system to the beginning of the blockbuster era - his final film Family Plot 1976 was released one year after...
Case Study Globalized Cinemas Bollywood Anime and Nigerian Video Films
As an illustration of the kinds of dialogism and context that Bakhtin proposes, the global nature of film acts as an intriguing example. When discussing globalization, the perception tends to be that the flow is one way, i.e. from the West to the Rest. As the case study of Kurosawa in particular illustrates, that perception is not accurate. In this case study, three globalized cinemas of very different scale and impact demonstrate in more detail the interconnection of both the world in general...
Third Cinema
Taking the ideas of the context of production and national cinema much further than anything before it was third cinema. The term third cinema comes from the manifesto Towards a Third Cinema, by Argentine filmmakers Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino, published in 1969 Solanas and Getino 1976 . Third cinema was a film movement a set of ideals, films, and filmmakers of the 1960s and 1970s. Briefly, what third cinema proponents argued was that the state of play for cinema, throughout the world,...
Case Study The Secret of My Succes
As has been mentioned elsewhere in the text, Hollywood is often treated as if it exists outside of any cultural context whatsoever - a version of the I don't have an accent -only other people do idea. This is both disingenuous and also dangerous. Hollywood filmmakers exist in a social and cultural context, one that is partially of their own creation as the filmmakers are cultural producers on a massive scale and also in a constant dialogue with a wider American context. Hollywood, as was...
iNTRODUCTiON 1
Given the antipathy that frequently exists between theory and practice in the study of film, it is ironic that the development of fiction film and the development of film theory are inextricably intertwined. From the Kino-eye of Vertov to the Dogmes of the 1990s, theory and practice have influenced one other a great deal. This reason alone makes understanding that latter development an important goal, but there are several other reasons why film theory is important for non-film students. At a...
case Study Watching People Watch TV
This case study will focus on one of the first approaches to audience studies that adopted a qualitative methodology, namely television audience studies. Scholars from a range of disciplines, including cultural studies, communications, and anthropology, conducted these studies. Besides the content of Louise Spence's analysis of viewership and pleasure in watching daytime soap operas 1995 , in this case study the general approach and methodology will be highlighted. While not without critics,...
iNTRODUCTiON
The question of when cinema began has both a simple and a complex answer. The simple answer often given is that cinema began in 1895, with the demonstration of an invention by two French brothers, the Lumi res, of a machine that could both capture and project moving pictures. The complex answer to the question is a lot more interesting. Parkinson describes cinema as the most modern, technologically dependent, and Western of all the arts 1995 7 , and if we agree with the simple explanation of...
montage and editing
Roughly concurrent with the shift of expressionists to Hollywood and the demise of Cin -Art, a new locus of film theory practice arose - Moscow. Sergei Eisenstein and Dziga Vertov are probably the best known of the Soviet filmmakers of this period, but there were others who created an influential set of ideas around techniques and theories of editing. After the 1917 Revolution, many Russian filmmakers saw film as more than just entertainment. Dziga Vertov, for instance, shot and exhibited...
communication studies
Communication studies media or media and communication studies in the UK is another of the approaches influenced by the ideas of the Frankfurt School. While film is a medium of communication, generally film studies is regarded as separate from communication studies. Although there are certainly overlaps between the two disciplines, communication studies have typically been more closely linked with fields such as journalism. Communication studies was one of the first academic disciplines that...
THE HISTORY of CINEMA
Figure 1.1 Toshiro Mifune and Machiko Kyo in a scene from Rashomon. A. Kurosawa 1951 Credit Daiei The Kobal Collection Figure 1.1 Toshiro Mifune and Machiko Kyo in a scene from Rashomon. A. Kurosawa 1951 Credit Daiei The Kobal Collection We had gathered to watch Fatal Attraction on laser disc because Radhika, who was an actress, and her friends a director, a cinematographer, a screenwriter, an assistant director, and a few actors were thinking of remaking it into a Hindi film. Although most of...
expressionism
In Germany, the expressionist movement had no spokesperson like Delluc, but the filmmakers themselves may have been the most eloquent theorists anyway. Though never a distinctive movement in itself, expressionism is an art form where the artist forgoes objective portrayals of reality for a subjective depiction of a state of mind or emotional effect - usually angst.2 Arguably, the only true expressionist film was The Cabinet of Dr Caligari Weine 1920 . However, the works of Murnau, Lang, and...