Film Studies: Women in Contemporary Cinema (review)

2004 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 178-180
Author(s):  
Anne Morey
Keyword(s):  
Film Studies ◽  
Contemporary Cinema

Vertigo

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adriano D’Aloia
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Neuroscience ◽  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Mirror Neurons ◽  
Film Studies ◽  
Emotional Experience ◽  
Film Theory ◽  
Embodied Simulation ◽  
Contemporary Cinema ◽  
Contemporary Film

The chapter ‘Vertigo. Towards a Neurofilmology’ offers an introduction to the book’s contents and methods. The implementation of psychology of perception, philosophy of mind, and suggestions from cognitive neuroscience (in particular the role of ‘mirror neurons’ and the hypothesis of ‘embodied simulation’) has the capability to renew contemporary film theory and to reduce the distance between competing approaches (i.e. cognitivist and phenomenological film studies). ‘Neurofilmology’ adopts an enactive and embodied approach to cognition and provides interpretative tools for the exploration of contemporary cinema. Through a series of recurrent ‘aerial motifs’ in which the film character loses his/her equilibrium—acrobatics, fall, impact, overturning, and drift—the cinema offers an intense motor and emotional experience that puts the spectator’s somatosensory perception in tension. At the same time, it provides compensation by adopting embodied forms of regulation of stimuli and a dynamic restoration of gravity and orientation (the so called ‘disembodying-reembodying’ dynamic).

Acrobatics

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adriano D’Aloia
Keyword(s):  
Film Studies ◽  
Original Proposal ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Contemporary Cinema

The chapter ‘Acrobatics. On the wires of empathy’ takes as a starting point Edith Stein’s critique of psychologist Theodor Lipps’ notion of empathy (Einfühlung) and her original proposal for a phenomenology of intersubjectivity. Since this debate revolves around the example of an observer watching an acrobat walking on a wire in mid air, the chapter offers an analysis of acrobatic actions in contemporary cinema (such as in Zemeckis’ The Walk) and reflects on both disembodied and embodied accounts of empathy in film studies. Recovering the filmological meaning of this term (introduced into film studies by psychologist Albert Michotte) and developing a model of cinematic empathy along the lines of Stein’s theory, the chapter illuminates the importance of the unbalancing/rebalancing dynamic in creating the spectator’s proprioceptive experience of disequilibrium.

Impossible Puzzle Films

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miklós Kiss ◽  
Steven Willemsen
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Dissonance ◽  
Mental State ◽  
Narrative Theory ◽  
Film Studies ◽  
Cognitive Sciences ◽  
Specific Category ◽  
Contemporary Cinema ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Mulholland Drive ◽  
Blind Spots

Narrative complexity is a trend in contemporary cinema. Since the late 1990s there has been a palpable increase in complex storytelling in movies. But how and why do complex movies create perplexity and confusion? How do we engage with these challenges? And what makes complex stories so attractive? By blending film studies, narrative theory and cognitive sciences, Kiss and Willemsen look into the relation between complex storytelling and the mind. Analysing the effects that different complex narratives have on viewers, the book addresses how films like Donnie Darko, Mulholland Drive or Primer strategically create complexity and confusion, and, by using the specific category of the ‘impossible puzzle film’, it examines movies that use baffling paradoxes, impossible loops, and unresolved ambiguities in their stories and storytelling. By looking at how these films play on our mind’s blind spots, this innovative book explains their viewing effects in terms of the mental state of cognitive dissonance that they evoke.

scholarly journals Europa bije się w piersi. Recenzja książki „Postkolonialna Europa. Etnoobrazy współczesnego kina” Krzysztofa Loski

2017 ◽  
Vol 38 ◽  
pp. 185-191
Author(s):  
Piotr Czerkawski
Keyword(s):  
Film Studies ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Valuable Contribution ◽  
French Cinema ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Contemporary Cinema ◽  
Very High

EUROPE REPENTANT. REVIEW OF POSTCOLONIAL EUROPE: ETHNO-REPRESENTATIONS IN CONTEMPORARY CINEMA BY KRZYSZTOF LOSKAThe subject of the present paper is a book „Postkolonialna Europa. Etnoobrazy współczesnego kina”  by professor Krzysztof Loska from the Jagiellonian University, focused on an attempt to analyse the cinema of the Old Continent from post-colonial point of view. The review underlines a valuable contribution to Polish film studies that the book makes and emphasizes the scale of research underta­ken, as well as the manner accuracy and the ability to perform a witty interpretation of each and every movie. In accordance to the reasoning included in the review, all these features can be noticed in parti­cular in the chapters dedicated to the French cinema. In the present paper the author also pays attention, though, to omission of few movies that are strongly tied to the subject of Loska’s considerations and some irrelevance of the chapter named „Hybrydowość...” in relation to the rest of the book. However, those little concerns do not affect a very high rating of the quality of the reviewed book.                                                                                   Translated by Kordian Bobowski

Distortion in lattice-resolution scanned-probe microscope images

1993 ◽  
Vol 51 ◽  
pp. 522-523
Author(s):  
L. Fei
Keyword(s):  
Film Studies ◽  
Lattice Structure ◽  
Substrate Material ◽  
Repulsive Force ◽  
Instrument Calibration ◽  
Microscope Images ◽  
Probe Microscope ◽  
Electron Microscopes ◽  
Diffraction Patterns ◽  
Lattice Resolution

Scanned probe microscopes (SPM) have been widely used for studying the structure of a variety material surfaces and thin films. Interpretation of SPM images, however, remains a debatable subject at best. Unlike electron microscopes (EMs) where diffraction patterns and images regularly provide data on lattice spacings and angles within 1-2% and ∽1° accuracy, our experience indicates that lattice distances and angles in raw SPM images can be off by as much as 10% and ∽6°, respectively. Because SPM images can be affected by processes like the coupling between fast and slow scan direction, hysteresis of piezoelectric scanner, thermal drift, anisotropic tip and sample interaction, etc., the causes for such a large discrepancy maybe complex even though manufacturers suggest that the correction can be done through only instrument calibration.We show here that scanning repulsive force microscope (SFM or AFM) images of freshly cleaved mica, a substrate material used for thin film studies as well as for SFM instrument calibration, are distorted compared with the lattice structure expected for mica.

Bollywood and Postmodernism

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Neelam Sidhar Wright
Keyword(s):  
Film Studies ◽  
First Century ◽  
Indian Cinema ◽  
Alternative Method ◽  
Twenty First Century

‘New Bollywood’ has arrived, but its postmodern impulse often leaves film scholars reluctant to theorise its aesthetics. How do we define the style of a contemporary Bollywood film? Are Bollywood films just uninspired Hollywood rip-offs, or does their borrowing signal genuine innovation within the industry? Applying postmodern concepts and locating postmodern motifs in key commercial Hindi films, this book reveals how Indian cinema has changed in the twenty-first century. Equipping readers with an alternative method of reading contemporary Indian cinema, the book takes Indian film studies beyond the standard theme of diaspora, and exposes a new decade of aesthetic experimentation and textual appropriation in mainstream Bombay cinema. A bold celebration of contemporary Bollywood texts, this book radically redefines Indian film and persuasively argues for its seriousness as a field of cinematic studies.

Cinéma-monde

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
French Language ◽  
Related Topic ◽  
Diverse Area ◽  
Contemporary Cinema

The first book devoted to a wide-ranging study of developments in global French-language cinema, from Quebec to Mauritania and from Belgium to Cambodia, Cinéma-monde picks up on the lively scholarly debates generated by the related topic of littérature-monde. Extending the scope of this debate to cover the thriving and diverse area of international French-language cinema, this innovative book also considers cinema from France within the context of global production. With contributions from an international range of specialists, and with considerations of works by contemporary directors like Rachid Bouchareb, Abderrahmane Sissako and Rithy Panh, Cinéma-monde explores the porous borders around francophone spaces and the ways in which languages and identities ‘travel’ in contemporary cinema.

‘Good enough for a spot of lippy anyway’: Rape and the Body Politic in My Brother Tom

2013 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 358-373
Author(s):  
Louise Wilks
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Abuse ◽  
Female Body ◽  
Body Politic ◽  
The Body ◽  
Sexual Violation ◽  
Female Protagonist ◽  
British Cinema ◽  
Hollywood Movies ◽  
Contemporary Cinema ◽  
Rape Narratives

The representation of rape continues to be one of the most highly charged issues in contemporary cinema, and whilst many discussions of this topic focus on Hollywood movies, sexual violation is also a pervasive topic in British cinema. This article examines the portrayal of a female's rape in the British feature My Brother Tom (2001), a powerful and often troubling text in which the sexual violation of the teenage female protagonist functions as a catalyst for the events that comprise the plot, as is often the case in rape narratives. The article provides an overview of some of the key feminist academic discussions and debates that cinematic depictions of rape have prompted, before closely analysing My Brother Tom's rape scene in relation to such discourses. The article argues that the rape scene is neither explicit nor sensationalised, and that by having the camera focus on Jessica's bewildered reactions, it positions the audience with her, and powerfully but discreetly portrays the grave nature of sexual abuse. The article then moves on to examine the portrayal of sexual violation in My Brother Tom as a whole, considering the cultural inscriptions etched on the female body within its account of rape, before concluding with a discussion of the film's depiction of Jessica's ensuing methods of bodily self-inscription as she attempts to disassociate her body from its sexual violation.

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