scholarly journals Mueda, Memória e Massacre by Ruy Guerra and the cultural forms of the Makonde Plateau

2016 ◽  
Vol 29 ◽  
pp. 53-77
Author(s):  
Raquel Schefer
Keyword(s):  
Film Festival ◽  
Film Culture ◽  
Direct Supervision ◽  
Feature Film ◽  
Cultural Project ◽  
Cultural Forms ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Narrative Forms

Considered to be Mozambique’s first fiction feature film, Ruy Guerra’s Mueda, Memória e Massacre (1979-1980) (Mueda, Memory and Massacre) is an extemporaneous work, which belatedly formalises the assumptions that underpinned FRELIMO’s revolutionary project. A film of transition, it marks the passage from the period of the institution (1975/1976-1979) to the period of destitution of the Aesthetics of Liberation (1975/1976-1984) of the National Film Institute (INC). Mueda, Memória e Massacre was censored, partially re-shot and reedited, without Guerra’s direct supervision. These operations announced a normative deviation from FRELIMO’s political-cultural project and the aesthetic canonization of the 1980s. The mutilated version, that won the awards “Peoples’ Friendship Union” and “Film Culture” at the Tashkent Film Festival in 1980, responds to the “Liberation Script,” an epistemological and historiographical apparatus that aims to organize and codify the country’s history.This article assesses the presence of elements of the cinema collectivisation programme in Mueda, Memória e Massacre. In parallel, it considers the influence of Makonde culture — in particular, of the Mapiko masquerade — on the film’s aesthetic and narrative forms.

scholarly journals Duma i uprzedzenie jak historia romantyczna. O adaptacji powieści Jane Austen w reżyserii Joe Wrighta

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roksana Pilawska
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
Jane Austen ◽  
Film Adaptation ◽  
Pride And Prejudice ◽  
Feature Film ◽  
Research Material ◽  
New Form ◽  
Similarities And Differences ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Audiovisual Presentation

Pilawska Roksana, Duma i uprzedzenie jak historia romantyczna. O adaptacji powieści Jane Austen w reżyserii Joe Wrighta [Dirty (un)Romantic story. An Analysis of Aesthetic Aspects in the Film Adaptation of Pride and Prejudice Directed by Joe Wright]. „Przestrzenie Teorii” 32. Poznań 2019, Adam Mickiewicz University Press, pp. 417–431. ISSN 1644-6763. DOI 10.14746/pt.2019.32.23. The aim of my study is to attempt a comparative analysis of the two most famous film adaptations of the bestselling novel by Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice. As research material, I chose the mini-series produced by the BBC in 1995, which was part of the then popular trend of heritage films (heritage cinema) and the feature film from 2005, directed by Joe Wright, which, in the opinion of film experts, was a completely new form of audiovisual presentation of Austen’s work. In the article, I focus only on interpreting the aesthetic aspects of both productions, which would indicate similarities and differences, thus showing numerous shifts of emphasis in the aesthetic layer of the newer version.

"TOUS LES MATINS DU MONDE": POETRY OF FADING SOUND

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (4) ◽  
pp. 100-107
Author(s):  
Yu. A. Finkelshtein ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Mass Culture ◽  
Film Industry ◽  
Historical Background ◽  
Present Moment ◽  
Feature Film ◽  
Viola Da Gamba ◽  
Emotional Perception ◽  
Baroque Music ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
True Values

The object of the article is Alain Corneau's feature film "All the Mornings of the World" ("Tous les matins du monde", 1991). The movie is considered as a work of art with strong postmodern tendencies. The director uses music written in the XVIIth century to create an image of the era. The image of the gambist de Sainte-Colombe is formed on the basis of the aesthetic and emotional perception of his works by the creators of the movie. The timbre of viola da gamba, one of the key features of which is rapid fading, defines the main philosophical idea of the film. The "disadvantage" of the instrument, which contributed to its short life in art, is perceived by the filmmakers as its original value. The rapidly fading sound becomes a metaphorical symbol of dying and rebirth, death and immortality being one. In addition, Baroque music performs the function of temporary "immersion". Using the music of ancient styles, the film industry gains a foothold in true values and an element of authenticity. In turn, by participating in cinema, it appropriates the features of mass culture: lightness, illusiveness, and easy accessibility. Such ambivalence is also characteristic of the plot, in which events that evoke completely modern feelings take place against a historical background far removed from the present moment.

Narrative

2020 ◽  
pp. 36-61
Author(s):  
Gary D. Rhodes ◽  
Robert Singer
Keyword(s):  
Life Story ◽  
Full Length ◽  
Television Commercials ◽  
Television Commercial ◽  
Feature Film ◽  
Narrative Forms ◽  
Tv Commercial ◽  
Narrative Framework

To explore these issues in-depth, Chapter 2 covers narrative, specifically examining how television commercials operate in terms of Scene, Genre, Cross-Genre, and the Remake. This chapter contends that the narrative framework for producing the television commercial is arguably, shot by shot, second to second, as frequently creative as a full-length feature film. Some commercials utilize cinematic narrative forms of Hollywood; others diverge from the same. The product and its “message” might be realistic or wholly fantastic; nevertheless, the TV commercial is indeed a narrative, a critically substantial formation, whether it unfolds in the form of a slice-of-life story or a presentational style pitch.

The Hundred-Year-Old Question: Can American Cinema Be Saved?

2018 ◽  
Vol 71 (3) ◽  
pp. 37-47
Author(s):  
James Schamus
Keyword(s):  
American Film ◽  
Film Festival ◽  
American Cinema ◽  
Feature Films ◽  
Theatrical Film ◽  
Streaming Services ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Ticket Prices ◽  
Film Experience ◽  
Viewing Experience

The Art House Convergence conference annually brings together hundreds of independent theater owners and supporters of arthouse cinema during the days preceding the Sundance Film Festival. When the organizers invited James Schamus to deliver the keynote address at their 2016 gathering, it was a commission he did not relish. The expected argument of such speeches is pretty much set in stone these days: cinema, understood primarily as feature films meant initially for theatrical exhibition, is under attack, and the keynote speaker's task is to rally the troops in its defense, soliciting applause for recent victories on the battlefield, and railing against the encroachments of the enemies of film, in particular the digital streaming services whose assaults on the sanctity of the theatrical viewing experience, and thus on the aesthetic object known as the theatrical film, grow ever more ferocious with each passing year. Schamus took on the task of delivering that speech, and then transforming it into this article for FQ. He concludes with a rousing plea to all regarding what he terms, “This vicious spiral of longer movies, higher costs and higher ticket prices,” that can only spell disaster for the supporter of truly independent American cinema. Schamus urges readers to stand with him (and all who love the genuine American film experience), to advocate for vibrant, varied, open-ended, hybrid, serial and ongoing open storytelling and entertainment.

Dazzled by the Sun: Corporatising Queensland Film Culture

1998 ◽  
Vol 89 (1) ◽  
pp. 109-123 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Dawson
Keyword(s):  
Assessment Process ◽  
Film Festival ◽  
Film Culture ◽  
Arts Funding ◽  
Film And Television ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
Power Base ◽  
Last Stage ◽  
Craft Skills ◽  
Professional Systems

In the wake of economic rationalism and the failed cyber-fantasies of Creative Nation, there has been an increasing tendency towards the corporatisation of film funding bodies at a time when a loosening of self-defensive bureaucratic systems might have been expected. For example, the Film Finance Corporation has created increasingly complex ‘professional’ systems of management and has foreshadowed a ‘last stage’ script assessment process that has created dismay in industry guilds. After exhaustive prior script development (and many funding and script editing stops), a project will face yet another barrier immediately prior to shooting. In addition, the increasing invocation of ‘craft skills' themselves as somehow learnable and precisely quantifiable processes, has dug an even deeper moat around funding bodies. The winding down of Film Queensland and the enhanced corporatisation of the Pacific Film and Television Commission (even to office dress codes!) and incorporation of events such as the Brisbane International Film Festival into an Events Corporation are signs that many largely discredited constructs of The Market are still being applied — to strengthen the power base of the apparatchicks at the expense of their local clients. The events sketched in this paper are paradigmatic of over-regulated and inner-focused arts funding systems that have lost sight of who their real clients should be.

The Return of Miserabilism: Richard Billingham's Ray & Liz

2019 ◽  
Vol 73 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-41
Author(s):  
J. M. Tyree
Keyword(s):  
Visual Arts ◽  
The Other ◽  
Film Culture ◽  
Feature Film ◽  
Narrative Cinema ◽  
Contemporary Cinema ◽  
Historical Art

This essay discusses Richard Billingham's debut feature film, Ray & Liz (2018), through the lens of miserabilism as both an historical art movement and as an endemic feature of British film culture. The film provides both continuity and innovation in Billingham's work, connecting with his 1990s photographs of his family (originally displayed alongside the work of other Young British Artists [YBAs] at the London Sensation exhibition in 1997), and introducing new formal aspects of narrative cinema into his career in the visual arts. Called a “cine-memoir” by Billingham, Ray & Liz portrays incidents from the artist's family's life and his own upbringing near Birmingham, focusing on his father's alcoholism and his parents' loss of custody of Billingham's brother. The film questions many of the assumptions about how poverty is represented in contemporary cinema and challenges the tendencies of miserabilism towards apolitical nihilism on one hand and simplistic message-making on the other.

Blood, Fire, and Interiority in Horace Ové’s Pressure

2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 (47) ◽  
pp. 44-55
Author(s):  
Yasmine Espert
Keyword(s):  
Black Community ◽  
Black Power ◽  
Coming Of Age ◽  
Feature Film ◽  
The Public ◽  
Black British ◽  
Public Protest ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Black Britain

Pressure, the first feature film by a black British director, was the center of praise and critique at the time of its release. Completed in 1974, it narrates a coming-of-age story about a young man who discovers the complexity of Black Power activism in London. This article investigates how the Trinidad-born director Horace Ové pictures activists and Caribbean migrants of the Windrush generation throughout the film. Close analyses reveal that Ové relied on his training as a documentarian to capture what he perceived to be an authentic, rather than celebratory, version of London’s black community. His deliberate choice to steer from an “uplift” aesthetic ignited a debate that continues to the present day. I argue that Ové’s observational style in the film attempts to picture the public and the inner lives of black Britain. Ultimately, it shows that the call for equity and liberation is more than a matter of public protest dressed in the aesthetic of blaxploitation. My argument draws on scholarship by Kevin Quashie and Elizabeth Alexander to reveal the potential of the interior and the imagination in representations of Black Power.

Vietnamese Cinema: First Views

1991 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-62 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Charlot
Keyword(s):  
Film Industry ◽  
The United States ◽  
Film Festival ◽  
Feature Film ◽  
Staff Members ◽  
Feature Films ◽  
East Bloc ◽  
Department Staff ◽  
History Of ◽  
General Director

Vietnamese cinema has only recently become known outside of the East Bloc countries. The first public showing of a Vietnamese feature film in the United States was that of When the Tenth Month Comes at the 1985 Hawai'i International Film Festival in Honolulu. At the 1987 Festival, a consortium of American film institutions was formed with Nguyen Thu, General Director of the Vietnam Cinema Department, to organize the Vietnam Film Project — the first attempt to introduce an entire new film industry to America. The purpose of this article is to provide a brief description of Vietnamese cinema along with an appreciation of its major characteristics and themes. I base my views on my two visits to the Vietnam Cinema Department in Hanoi — for one week in 1987 and two in 1988 — on behalf of the Hawai'i International Film Festival. During those visits, I was able to view a large number of documentaries and feature films and to discuss Vietnamese cinema with a number of department staff members. I was able to obtain more interviews during the visits of Vietnamese to the Hawai'i International Film Festival in Honolulu. This article cannot claim to be an adequate introduction to the history of Vietnamese cinema, a task I hope will be undertaken with the aid of my informants and the sources I list as completely as possible.

Singapore 2001

2002 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brandon Wee
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
Golden Age ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Film Festival ◽  
Film Culture ◽  
Problematic Use ◽  
The Past ◽  
Island State ◽  
Film Productions

SINGAPORE INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2001: CROUCHING TYRANTS, HIDDEN TALENTS For a young island-state that once saw a "golden age of cinema" in the 50s and 60s, it was bittersweet to witness, after a score of idle years, a rise in the number of local film productions in the 1990s. But where local movies of the past triumphed in forging an indigenous film culture, recent Singaporean films have all but ignored the significance of maintaining such an objective. History, in this instance, has indeed repeated itself. Just as the thriving industry that had once characterised the "golden age" succumbed to the escalating popularity of Hong Kong and Taiwanese films in the 60s and 70s, the haphazard accomplishments of Singaporean films this past decade look set to remain in subordination to a longer-standing nemesis: that of Hollywood's domination. The consequence of this status quo has only served to highlight the problematic use...

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