Selected Film Criticism, 1923–1931

2020 ◽  
Vol 47 (3) ◽  
pp. 73-91
Author(s):  
Johannes von Moltke
Keyword(s):  
Silent Period ◽  
Film Criticism ◽  
Siegfried Kracauer ◽  
World Cinema ◽  
Film Reviews ◽  
First Time ◽  
Movie Camera

Abstract Ten film reviews by Siegfried Kracauer from the 1920s and early 1930s are translated here for the first time, with a brief introduction by the translator. Leaving aside reviews that have already been translated elsewhere, and focusing almost exclusively on the silent period, the present selection was guided by two considerations. First, it includes reviews of several films that have entered the canon of world cinema (The Last Laugh, The Blue Angel, The Man with the Movie Camera, Girls in Uniform). Second, it reflects Kracauer’s attraction, particularly during the early 1920s, to American slapstick.

scholarly journals Karlovy Vary 2004

2004 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ron Holloway
Keyword(s):  
Outstanding Contribution ◽  
Film Festival ◽  
Vaclav Havel ◽  
Roman Polanski ◽  
World Cinema ◽  
Official Opening ◽  
Artistic Director ◽  
First Time ◽  
To Receive ◽  
Political Figure

KARLOVY VARY INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2004 For the Czech media the 39th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (2-10 July 2004) was something of a sensation. Václav Havel, the country's ex-president and most popular political figure, was on hand for the official opening to receive a moving standing ovation. Later, Václav Klaus, the current Czech president, also showed for the closing ceremonies. To add to the festivities, Miroslav Ondříček, Miloš Forman's ace cameraman (Oscar Nominations for Amadeus and Ragtime) was honoured with an Award for Outstanding Artistic Contribution to World Cinema (together with Harvey Keitel and Roman Polański). The Prize of the Karlovy Vary Region was given for the first time to Jiří Bartoška, the festival codirector. And the Ecumenical Jury honoured Eva Zaoralová, the festival's artistic director, an Award for Outstanding Contribution to the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival. For the second time in a row, the Crystal Globe,...

On the Wannseeheim Youth Center

2020 ◽  
Vol 47 (3) ◽  
pp. 93-98
Author(s):  
Barton Byg
Keyword(s):  
Alternative Education ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
English Translation ◽  
Visual Images ◽  
Film Criticism ◽  
Ordinary People ◽  
German Cinema ◽  
Productive Thinking ◽  
First Time ◽  
New German Cinema

Abstract Presented here for the first time in English translation is one of Harun Farocki’s earliest publications in the journal Filmkritik, of which he later became editor. Composed largely of quotations, Farocki’s text reports on film courses at the Wannseeheim Youth Center, a form of adult and alternative education in Berlin West. The introduction to Farocki’s text connects with the New German Cinema and themes that remained central throughout his own work: collaboration and quotation, Bertolt Brecht’s concept of “learning plays,” using nonfiction to explore both social relations and the cinematic apparatus, and seeing film as a form of “productive thinking.” It represents a kernel of Farocki’s wish to put the tools of filmmaking into the hands of ordinary people, thus revealing both theoretical aspects of the cinematic apparatus itself and the interweaving of visual images with social relations. With a deadpan, whimsical tone, Farocki argues that all this is, or should be, film criticism—in German, Filmkritik.

scholarly journals The New Realistic Trend in Contemporary World Cinema: Ramin Bahrani’s Chop Shop as a Case Study

2013 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 153-167
Author(s):  
Fernando Canet
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Independent Cinema ◽  
Contemporary World ◽  
Siegfried Kracauer ◽  
World Cinema ◽  
History Of ◽  
Open Window ◽  
Andre Bazin ◽  
The One

Abstract In the last two decades there has been an international resurgence of realistic films, i.e., films directed by filmmakers who believe in the ontological power of reality and, at the same time, in the capacity of the medium’s expressive scope for building a story without undermining the viewer’s impression of reality. On the one hand, this new movement is a rehabilitation of the cinematic Realism that throughout the history of film has touted cinema as an open window to the real world, a view particularly exemplified by Italian Neo-Realism. On the other hand, this new trend has given new life to the Realist film theories championed mainly by André Bazin and Siegfried Kracauer. Bazin defines the Realist style as “all narratives means tending to bring an added measure of reality to the screen” (1971, 27). In the article titled Neo-Neo Realism (2009), A. O. Scott discusses a number of filmmakers whom he categorizes within the new Realist trend in contemporary American independent cinema. Among these is Ramin Bahrani, director of the film Chop Shop (2007). Bahrani is a USborn filmmaker of Iranian origin, based in New York. Abbas Kiarostami is one of his main points of reference. Kiarostami, as Scott notes, “refined the old Neorealist spirit through the 1990s and into the next decade.” Bahrani himself acknowledges this influence with his desire to make “an Iranianstyle movie here in New York.”

ReFocus: The Films of Paul Schrader

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Film Criticism ◽  
Taxi Driver ◽  
Publication Date ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
First Time ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
Unique Relationship ◽  
Analytical Writing

Paul Schrader’s unique relationship to the role of the author (as screenwriter, director and critic) has long informed his cinema, and raises complicated questions about the definition of the auteur. This volume of essays – the first collection to assess Schrader’s contributions to directing, screenwriting and criticism – includes the first original appraisals of his much-lauded masterpiece First Reformed (2017), as well as a chapter-length interview with Schrader himself, conducted by the editors, in which Schrader examines the arc of his career for the first time and revises previous statements about filmmaking and film criticism. Providing a comprehensive exploration of his groundbreaking achievements in cinema, the book considers Schrader’s more overlooked films and provides new insights to their connection with his celebrated work in direction and screenwriting such as Taxi Driver (1976), Cat People (1982) and The Comfort of Strangers (1990). In doing so, it provides a valuable update to previous texts on Schrader and contains chapters on Schrader’s work since 2008, the publication date of the last book on his filmmaking. Where this study distinguishes itself fully is in its inclusion of a serious treatment of Schrader’s own film criticism and analytical writing. This collected writing provides unique access into how Schrader approaches the analysis of films and provides insight into his own work and others as “transcendental” filmmakers.

Brother and Brother

Ridley Scott ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 14-18
Author(s):  
Vincent LoBrutto
Keyword(s):  
Royal College ◽  
Stream Of Consciousness ◽  
Ridley Scott ◽  
Movie Theaters ◽  
Black And White ◽  
World Cinema ◽  
White Film ◽  
Hollywood Movies ◽  
Ingmar Bergman ◽  
Movie Camera

This chapter examines Scott’s continued study at the Royal College of Art. Scott visits specialized movie theaters and is exposed to world cinema, including the films of Ingmar Bergman, and Japanese, French, Indian, and Hollywood movies. There was no formal film department at the college but one day Scott found an old movie camera and set out to make his first movie, Boy and Bicycle. The script, inspired by James Joyce’s novel Ulysses, was a stream-of-consciousness narrative. It starred Scott’s younger brother Tony, who would also become a noted film director. The short black-and-white film traced the boy on an odyssey he takes on his bike, learning about himself and his environment. Ridley Scott did everything on the project except the music, which he persuaded noted composer John Barry to provide. The significance of Boy and Bicycle is the launching of Ridley Scott as a film director.

Proposal: Mass and Propaganda. An Inquiry Into Fascist Propaganda (Siegfried Kracauer, 1936)

Film Studies ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 6-15
Author(s):  
Nicholas Baer
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Mass Culture ◽  
Social Research ◽  
The United States ◽  
Full Understanding ◽  
Jewish Intellectual ◽  
Siegfried Kracauer ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
German Jewish ◽  
First Time

Written in French exile, the following text by Siegfried Kracauer from December 1936 outlines a research project that the German-Jewish intellectual undertook with funding from the Institute for Social Research. The work outlined here would be a study of totalitarian propaganda in Germany and Italy through sustained comparison with communist and democratic countries, especially the Soviet Union and the United States. Appearing in English translation for the first time, this document from Kracauer‘s estate is crucial for a full understanding of his career as a sociologist, cultural critic, film theorist and philosopher, demonstrating the global scope of his engagement with cinema, mass culture and modernity.

Nordic Film Cultures and Cinemas of Elsewhere

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
21St Century ◽  
Film Studies ◽  
Silent Period ◽  
New Paradigm ◽  
New Model ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
World Cinema ◽  
Resistance Loss ◽  
Post Industrial

Nordic Film Cultures and Cinemas of Elsewhere proposes a new paradigm for Nordic film studies, as well as for other small national, transnational, and world cinema traditions. This book re-imagines Nordic cinemas as international, cosmopolitan, diasporic, and planet-connected from their beginnings in the early silent period on forward to their present 21st-century dynamics more than a century later. By identifying and engaging with a wide range of unknown, repressed, and overlooked stories (e.g., narratives of movement, mobility, interaction, synthesis, resistance, loss, reclamation, humanistic questing, etc.) inside and outside of established Nordic film traditions, this book introduces a new model of inquiry into a specific Scandinavian cultural lineage and into small nation and pan-regional cinemas more generally. In this way, the book also speaks to a range of traditions in world cinema. Its overarching goal is to breach entrenched structures and to invite more exploratory, rigorous, and unexpected readings. The volume advocates the intellectual and cultural ethos of cinemas of elsewhere, expanding on previous progressive, interpretive traditions such as cinemas of diasporic, exilic, postcolonial, accented, post-industrial, and existential identities. It is therefore not a study of Nordic cinemas comfortably situated within national brackets or self-enclosed borders. Drawing on the specificities, dynamics, and ambitious reach and scope of Scandinavian cinema production, circulation, and influence for over a century, Nordic Film Cultures and Cinemas of Elsewhere navigates and narrates a parallel, alternative history.

Vietnamese Cinema on the Move

Transfers ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 152-158
Author(s):  
Stéphanie Ponsavady
Keyword(s):  
Mutual Relationship ◽  
Movie Theaters ◽  
World Cinema ◽  
The World ◽  
First Time

“Where can I see this Vietnamese movie?” Try sitting on board a Vietnamese Airlines jet to Hanoi. In Vietnam, movie theaters have been replaced by multiplexes showing the latest American blockbusters. Foreigners are most likely to encounter Vietnamese cinema for the first time on the move, as they travel to the country, by selecting the World Cinema category of their in-flight entertainment system. Watching a Vietnamese movie will both distract them from the long-haul and give them a taste of their destination culture as they make their way there. Twice the displacement, experiencing Vietnamese cinema has become a vehicle for representations of mobility and an integral part of contemporary travel practices. This review will consider a variety of ways the mutual relationship between cinematic figurations of movement and processes of mobility have shaped Vietnamese cinema.

Annulate lamellae in the Sertoli cells of guinea pig testis after unilateral torsion of the spermatic cord

1984 ◽  
Vol 42 ◽  
pp. 196-197
Author(s):  
J. Chakraborty ◽  
A. P. Sinha Hikim ◽  
J. S. Jhunjhunwala
Keyword(s):  
Sertoli Cells ◽  
Guinea Pigs ◽  
Spermatic Cord ◽  
Present Report ◽  
Cell Types ◽  
Annulate Lamellae ◽  
Spermatogenic Cells ◽  
Electron Microscopic ◽  
Structural Details ◽  
First Time

Although the presence of annulate lamellae was noted in many cell types, including the rat spermatogenic cells, this structure was never reported in the Sertoli cells of any rodent species. The present report is based on a part of our project on the effect of torsion of the spermatic cord to the contralateral testis. This paper describes for the first time, the fine structural details of the annulate lamellae in the Sertoli cells of damaged testis from guinea pigs.One side of the spermatic cord of each of six Hartly strain adult guinea pigs was surgically twisted (540°) under pentobarbital anesthesia (1). Four months after induction of torsion, animals were sacrificed, testes were excised and processed for the light and electron microscopic investigations. In the damaged testis, the majority of seminiferous tubule contained a layer of Sertoli cells with occasional spermatogonia (Fig. 1). Nuclei of these Sertoli cells were highly pleomorphic and contained small chromatinic clumps adjacent to the inner aspect of the nuclear envelope (Fig. 2).

Electron spectroscopic imaging and diffraction

1991 ◽  
Vol 49 ◽  
pp. 706-707
Author(s):  
M. Rühle ◽  
J. Mayer ◽  
J.C.H. Spence ◽  
J. Bihr ◽  
W. Probst ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Materials Science ◽  
Electron Spectroscopic Imaging ◽  
Magnetic Filter ◽  
Magnetic Imaging ◽  
Illumination System ◽  
Probe Size ◽  
Diffraction Patterns ◽  
Fritz Haber ◽  
Koehler Illumination ◽  
First Time

A new Zeiss TEM with an imaging Omega filter is a fully digitized, side-entry, 120 kV TEM/STEM instrument for materials science. The machine possesses an Omega magnetic imaging energy filter (see Fig. 1) placed between the third and fourth projector lens. Lanio designed the filter and a prototype was built at the Fritz-Haber-Institut in Berlin, Germany. The imaging magnetic filter allows energy-filtered images or diffraction patterns to be recorded without scanning using efficient area detection. The energy dispersion at the exit slit (Fig. 1) results in ∼ 1.5 μm/eV which allows imaging with energy windows of ≤ 10 eV. The smallest probe size of the microscope is 1.6 nm and the Koehler illumination system is used for the first time in a TEM. Serial recording of EELS spectra with a resolution < 1 eV is possible. The digital control allows X,Y,Z coordinates and tilt settings to be stored and later recalled.

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