VR technologies in docudrama

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-80
Author(s):  
Natalia G. Stezhko

The essay explores the implementation of VR technologies in film production, a development due to which audio-visual content, which is in high demand both in television and on the Internet, has taken a new direction, and which is a topical issue in contemporary film studies. VR technologies allow the viewer who sits on a swivel chair and wears a VR-helmet incorporating 360-degree rotating LCD monitors to watch different areas of action. A characteristic feature of VR content is a multi-sensory experience including sight, hearing, smell and touch. VR creates a digital reality with maximum sensory immersion. VR is different from cinema, theatre and 3D technologies: here the deception takes place not only at eye level but also at cerebral level. The essay argues that the use of VR technology is particularly successful in the genre of docudrama. A vivid confirmation of this argument is The Hermitage VR. An Immersion Into History (Russia,18 minutes). In this film, the dual nature of docudrama, which combines various elements of documentary and fiction cinema, allows to recreate historical eras, with the viewer becoming a witness to unique historic events. The films director Mikhail Antykov tells the history of the Hermitage Museum in a spectacular form, making the viewer empathize with the events they see through their VR glasses. The powerful artistic image is enhanced by the excellent acting of Konstantin Khabensky in the role of a mystical museum guide. Via facial expressions, gestures and gait, the actor conveys the emotions of a person walking through museum halls. Thoughtful re-enactment scenes representing various historical epochs, augmented by unusual camera angles, inventive lighting and music score, create a metaphor for time and give the viewer an illusion of participation in the unfolding events. Identifying the latest trends in film production, the essay demonstrates that VR technologies continue the evolution of screen arts which possess the potential to transform into an independent and profitable industry similar to traditional cinema. The author concludes that an increased interest in a national culture, little-known facts of history and the general historical heritage of a nation is a fertile source of content for the producers of VR-docudramas.

Author(s):  
Natalya Gavrilova ◽  
Irina Dameshek ◽  
Sofia Kuras

The article provides the analysis of the main stages in the research career of the famous historian, urbanist and expert in the history of Siberian entrepreneurship, Doctor of Historical Sciences, Professor V. Shakherov. The evolution of the scholar’s scientific interests is highlighted in the text. The author outlines the main areas of the scientist’s research: studying the role of the city in building economic and socio-cultural environment of Siberia in the period from the 18th to the early 20th century, history of merchant class and entrepreneurship in pre-revolutionary Siberia, history of banking and credit system of the region, historic and cultural monuments of Siberia. The article presents the analysis of Shakherov’s major works, which reflect his contribution to the development of Siberian studies. Special attention is paid to his scientific, pedagogical and social activity aimed at preserving historical heritage of Irkutsk. The author of the article emphasizes that the research career of V. Shakherov and History Faculty of Irkutsk State University are tightly connected.


2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 189-208
Author(s):  
Oleg A. Donskikh

The article examines the history of the formation of several languages of science – Ancient Greek, Sanskrit, Arabic and Latin - relating to the material of four languages and corresponding cultures. Several considerations are given in favor of the need to preserve the national languages of science. The stages of formation of languages of science in the system of culture are traced. There are two types of languages that are used by scientific communities: 1) languages that are rooted in the national culture and remain firmly linked with the natural language community; 2) languages that are reserved for performing a certain function, while in parallel, national languages are fully functioning in society. The first type includes the Greek and Arabic, the scientific languages of the second type are Sanskrit and Latin. The key role of the humanitarian, in particular poetic, philological and philosophical culture for the formation of the language of science is shown. Based on the material of the Ancient Greek language, the stages of its development over several centuries are traced, which resulted in such linguistic tools that allowed not only to use abstract conceptual concepts, but also to organize the vocabulary hierarchically, and this as a result allowed to form any needed generic chains. The importance of the appearance of impersonal texts that comes with collections of written documents alienated from a particular teacher is emphasized.


2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 265-287
Author(s):  
Feras Krimsti ◽  
John-Paul Ghobrial

Abstract This introduction to the special issue “The Past and its Possibilities in Nahḍa Scholarship” reflects on the role of the past in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century nahḍa discourse. It argues that historical reflection played a pivotal role in a number of scholarly disciplines besides the discipline of history, notably philosophy and logic, grammar and lexicography, linguistics, philology, and adab. Nahḍawīs reflected on continuities with the past, the genealogies of their present, and the role of history in determining their future. The introduction of print gave new impulses to the engagement with the historical heritage. We argue for a history of the nahḍa as a de-centred history of possibilities that recovers a wider circle of scholars and intellectuals and their multiple and overlapping local and global audiences. Such a history can also shed light on the many ways in which historical reflection, record-keeping practices, and confessional, sectarian, or communalist agendas are entwined.


2018 ◽  
pp. 15-30
Author(s):  
Pascal Lefèvre

This chapter provides a wide-ranging account of animated documentary cinema’s evolution, one which relates that ongoing history to analogous developments in related fields including live-action documentary, painting, photography and New Journalism. By their overt artificial nature animated documentaries seem to challenge the traditional documentary epistemology. Lefèvre considers the extent to which established Film Studies conceptual and analytical paradigms offer pre-existing tools that contemporary scholars can readily transpose to the study of animated documentary. This essay questions if the animated documentaries still fit in the six categories or modes of documentary film production that Bill Nichols defined: the poetic, the expository, the observational, the participatory, the reflexive, and the performative mode. This chapter highlights many of the critical and conceptual questions which that partially obscured history raises, laying out ten distinct sets of logistical, aesthetic and ideological issues that repeatedly manifest themselves across the history of animated documentary filmmaking.


2007 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 113-130 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karen Henson

This article introduces twelve new Verdi letters and other operatic and musical theater sources in the Yale Collection of Historical Sound Recordings. The materials hail from the French baritone Victor Maurel (1848-1923), Verdi's first Iago and first Falstaff, and from his second wife, the musical theater librettist and screenwriter Frederique Rosine de Gresac (1866/7-1943). The letters and other sources constitute an important resource for not only nineteenth-century opera and operatic performance but also the early American musical, film studies, the history of women, even the history of celebrity. The Verdi letters concern Maurel's creation of the role of Falstaff and include a intriguing debate about preparing for the role and singing generally.


Author(s):  
Olena Plyuta

The purpose of the article is to determine the role of modern art tourism, its components, and varieties in the process of the formation of tourist attractiveness of a certain territory. The methodology of the research is based on the use of general scientific methods (systemic, structural and functional, genetic, typologization, etc.) with the involvement of research guidelines of socio-cultural analysis of phenomena and processes. The scientific novelty of the results obtained is to find out the role of art tourism in the process of forming a tourist attractiveness of the territory, which consists in the formation of a positive image of the latter due to the use of new methods and mechanisms for promotion. Conclusions. The article presents an article characteristic of art tourism, which provides intellectual rest, that is, a combination of pleasant with useful, namely purposeful visits to various art measures and events: forums of contemporary art, large artistic and photo exhibitions, theatrical prime minister, film festivals, etc. Art tourism creates positive characteristics of a particular territory, forms a certain image of a consumer about cultural and historical heritage, contemporary art, everyday style of life, etc. The features of modern street art, which is one of the directions attracting tourists from all over the world. Street art is able to tell an entire history of culture and life without a single word. More and more communities include Street Art and Graffiti in the concept of designing modern quarters and areas of their cities. Important attention is paid to this direction of creative tourism activity as an art hotel, which distinguished from the overall mass with its originality, artistic design, and creative approach to service.


2020 ◽  
Vol 74 (4) ◽  
pp. 78-82
Author(s):  
S. Zhirenov ◽  
◽  
А. Smanova ◽  
Zh. Nebesaeva ◽  
◽  
...  

The article considers the coding of the system of national values in Kazakh art and their linguistic expression in the linguocultural aspect. There is a linguistic representation of the place of art in the national culture, the activity of cultural values in the worldview of the ethnos. If the indicator of the culture of an ethnos is cultural values, then the value of cultural values is determined by language. Art is an indicator of cultural and social life, endowed with the ancient cultural and spiritual value of the national existence of the ethnos. Considering that different forms of art and their compositions are marked and distinguished by language, the article analyzes in detail the question of the relationship of art to language, language to art. The existence of such categories as the history of a nation and the ethics of words, culture and art of an ethnos, aesthetic cognition and taste, folk wisdom and spiritual food is considered in the existence of a language. The role of language in expressing the essence of art is described in detail.


2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 58-67
Author(s):  
Yu Wang ◽  
◽  
Zhengding Liao ◽  

In the two decades since the establishment of the people’s Republic of China, the challenges facing porcelain production have changed significantly. Porcelain production is one of the most important and oldest traditions in China. In the 1950s, porcelain craftsmen became involved in the creation of new forms of interior plastics. Many of the pieces they created are now part of museum collections and represent the history of the development of Chinese interior porcelain. Using the example of three museums and three reference monuments, the article examines the key trends in the development of porcelain art and stylistic changes that occurred during this period. The following museums have been selected as examples to showcase the specifics of Chinese porcelain art from this period: the China Ceramic and Porcelain Museum located in Jingdezhen City, which is the country’s first major art museum specializing in ceramics; the Chinese Fine Arts Museum in Beijing, which specializes in collecting, researching and displaying works of Chinese artists of modern and contemporary eras; and the Guangdong Folk Art Museum, which specializes in collecting, researching and displaying Chinese folk art. All of these museums are engaged in collecting porcelain, including interior porcelain plastics from the mid-20th century. In the collections of the aforementioned museums, three works were selected for analysis. These are three paired compositions created in the second half of the 1950s: the sculpture “An Old Man and a Child with a Peach” by Zeng Longsheng, “Good Aunt from the Commune” by Zhou Guozhen and “Fifteen coins. The rat case” by Lin Hongxi. These porcelain compositions reveal close relations with Chinese national culture and not only reflect various scenes, but are also aimed at expanding the role of porcelain in decorating residential interiors.


2021 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 296-320
Author(s):  
Juan Velasquez

This article examines the relationship between labour, productivity and film. The purpose of this intervention is to suggest that narrative film can show us the unproductive tendencies that humans carry within them but that cannot always make themselves known. These leisurely desires erupt as musicality, ecstasy, and the undoing of the self when we carry out the repetitive gestures of work. This article compares Camus's freedom and Georges Bataille's sovereignty as they share an interest in anti-futurity and anti-productivity and it uses these concepts to propose worker's ecstatic escapes from labour as Sisyphean unproductivity. Using this theoretical framework, I carry out a comparative and formal analysis of Sisyphus (Marcell Jankovics, 1974), Modern Times (Charles Chaplin, 1936), The Apartment (Billy Wilder,1960) , Saut ma ville (Chantal Akerman, 1971) and Dancer in the Dark (Lars von Trier, 2000). While the field of film studies has highlighted the role of cinema as a tool for propagating ideologies of productivity, the scenes examined suggest that film also has a history of subverting ideologies of productivity through repetitive, Sisyphean unproductivity. By updating the plight of the Greek hero to 20th and 21st century capitalism, these directors uncover a fundamental, yet impossible, human desire for non-productive activities This re-centering of the unproductive could be useful in future academic re-categorizations of the working class through its desires to not work, that is, it provides preliminary materials for understanding class identities through their deformation, and not just their formation.


2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 103-112
Author(s):  
N.V. Kostrykina ◽  

The article describes the work of Irina Borisovna Zaitseva, a world-famous Krasnoyarsk documentary film director, a member of the Board of the Union of Cinematographers and the Association of Documentary Films of the Russian Federation, whose film productions have not yet been the subject of film studies. Her films have won numerous prizes at prestigious All-Russian and international film festivals ("Russia", "Golden Knight", "Living Water", "Flahertiana", "Stalker", "Saratov Suffering", "Mediawave", "Documenta Madrid", "Docupolis", etc.). A number of documentary films reflect the history of not only the Krasnoyarsk Territory, but also Russia. Some films have a parable discourse and carry a moral and philosophical context. The director repeatedly addresses the topic of "fathers and children". I. Zaitseva makes high demands on the profession of a film director, relying in her work on the director's code of honor, so as not to harm the heroes of her documentaries. As a result of the analysis of the film "Martyrs and Confessors" and a brief review of other films directed by I. Zaitseva, a wide range of artistic techniques was identified: subjective video camera, vertical and parallel editing, historical reconstruction, "story within a story", changing focalizations and temporality, allegory, and others. All the author's means of the film language work for a strong drama, which distinguishes the films of the documentarian. In her work, there is a hybrid-a combination of factuality and artistry, which does not mean devaluing the principle of documentality. The Krasnoyarsk documentary filmmaker was one of the first in Russia to make a film about the tragic fate of the clergy who died at the hands of representatives of the Soviet government in the period 1918–1938. I. Zaitseva's filmography is a phenomenon of regional and national culture.


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