scholarly journals Features and specificity of creating a script for a television documentary drama

2020 ◽  
Vol 65 (3) ◽  
pp. 328-335
Author(s):  
N. G. Stezhko
Keyword(s):  
Best Practices ◽  
Historical Documents ◽  
Documentary Films ◽  
Historical Sources ◽  
Feature Film ◽  
Feature Films ◽  
Life Challenges ◽  
Television Documentary ◽  
Documentary Drama ◽  
Additional Figure

The author analyses the specifics of writing a script for a television documentary drama (hereinafter referred to as docudrama), which combines the characteristics of the feature and documentary films. The article points out that many books have been written about the rules of scriptwriting for a feature film. However, there is no literature on the art of scriptwriting for a docudrama despite the fact that there are numerous docudramas being created worldwide. The opinion is given that the mastery of the docudrama scriptwriting is in choosing the most interesting and paradoxical moments in a hero’s life and showing his or her character through the resistance to life challenges: how the hero overcomes them, the motivation behind their actions and why a particular choice is being made. While in feature films the narrative is presented through action and actors’ performances, the article emphasises that docudramas explain the hero’s motivations through an additional figure such as an expert or co­participant in the events. While the difficult moments in the hero’s life and their overcoming are usually depicted through the staged episodes, an exploration into the hero’s character is supported by historical documents, a chronicle or other genuine historical sources. Docudrama is inherently narrative and the author investigates how the best practices of television journalism are used in scriptwriting, in addition to the cinema laws that are used in creating an image. The author explores the methodology of the docudrama scriptwriting in the project “Countdown” (“Vladimir Bokun’s Workshop”,Belarus) as an example.

scholarly journals The history of television documentary drama genesis, its ontological characteristics

2018 ◽  
Vol 63 (4) ◽  
pp. 482-489
Author(s):  
N. G. Stezhko
Keyword(s):  
Stable Form ◽  
Documentary Films ◽  
Dual Nature ◽  
Documentary Theatre ◽  
Feature Films ◽  
Independent Form ◽  
Television Documentary ◽  
History Of ◽  
Documentary Drama ◽  
Historical Issues

The article analyses the genesis of television documentary drama and its dual nature that causes much controversy among film theorists. The ontological characteristics of docudrama are considered, in particular its intrinsic connection with documentary theatre. Docudrama originated at the junction of feature films and documentary films at the time when directors raised important social and historical issues that occurred in the state. The docudrama prototype emerged long before the invention of television and is associated with the first newsreels and films of E. Curtis and R. Flaherty. This experiment had developed greatly with the advent of television, which is characterized by a combination of intimacy, focus on close-ups and the ability to tell stories based on real events. The article highlights the formation of documentary drama on BBC that explored all spheres of life with great interest - from British culture and history to social and political topics. The article traces the popularity and relevance of docudrama at the present stage and its settlement into a stable form. This allows to establish docudrama as an independent form of screen arts. The article studies also the formation and development of docudrama in Belarus that is first of all connected with the director Vladimir Bokun.

scholarly journals The Image of the Holocaust in the Television Documentary Drama Trilogy “The Chronicle of the Minsk Ghetto”

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 56-98
Author(s):  
Nataliia G. Stsiazhko ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Documentary Film ◽  
Film Studies ◽  
Documentary Films ◽  
Film Genre ◽  
Feature Films ◽  
Key Characteristics ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Television Documentary ◽  
Text Information ◽  
Documentary Drama

The prevailing view in modern film studies is that television documentary drama (docudrama) is either a hybrid, a synthesis, or a documentary film genre. The author of the article hypothesizes that docudrama has long exceeded the boundaries of documentary films and asserted its own place in the system of screen arts on par with feature films, documentaries and animated films. The author claims that docudrama is a unique phenomenon generated by television and it combines all the modern innovations in cinema. Docudrama allows for the text information to be reformatted into an audio-visual experience in an emotional, spectacular and accurate way, therefore possessing the inherent features of other screen arts. Like other forms of screen arts, it forms an image capable of evoking certain emotions and makes the viewer think and draw their own conclusions. The combination of artefacts and quotes adds volume and artistic value to the image. The article explores the genesis and development of television docudrama and gives it a definition based on key characteristics. It shows how films of various genres can be created within docudrama, proving that docudrama is not a subgenre within the genre of documentary film but a new independent branch of screen arts. The author highlights that the reason for the popularity of docudrama lies in the fact that the historical and informative material, which can be interesting and useful to the viewer, is presented in a spectacular and lightweight form. This idea is supported through the analysis of the documentary drama trilogy The Chronicle of the Minsk Ghetto, in which an image of the Holocaust, the unspeakable tragedy of the Jews during the Second World War, is shown.

Behind the money: Alejandro González Iñárritu as career director

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 9-18 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Julian Smith
Keyword(s):  
Mass Culture ◽  
Television Drama ◽  
Feature Film ◽  
Feature Films ◽  
Primary Materials ◽  
Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

This article is presented in two halves. The first analyses little known interviews with Iñárritu before he made his career in feature films that document his practice in radio, advertising and television drama. These interviews focus on his early conception of the relation between art and commerce and his views on the Mexican media scene in the 1990s. The second half of the article analyses the rare primary materials themselves: radio commercials, television idents and, at much greater length, his first feature-length fiction film, an experimental drama made for Televisa in 1995 called Detrás del dinero/Behind the Money. The conclusion argues that even as Iñárritu has more recently distanced himself from broadcasting, his later career as an artistic and commercially successful feature film director embodies a precarious balance between artistic innovation and mass culture and a focus on the audience which he first learned in his early work in advertising, radio and television.

Rob Roy: Britain’s First Feature Film

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Caroline Merz
Keyword(s):  
Language Production ◽  
English Language ◽  
Film Production ◽  
Feature Film ◽  
Study Approach ◽  
Feature Films ◽  
Production History ◽  
History Of ◽  
Film Making

What was the potential for the development of a Scottish film industry? Current histories largely ignore the contribution of Scotland to British film production, focusing on a few amateur attempts at narrative film-making. In this chapter, Caroline Merz offers a richer and more complex view of Scotland’s incursion into film production,. Using a case-study approach, it details a production history of Rob Roy, produced by a Scottish company, United Films, in 1911, indicating the experience on which it drew, placing it in the context of other successful British feature films such as Beerbohm’s Henry VIII, and noting both its success in Australia and New Zealand and its relative failure on the home market faced with competition from other English-language production companies.

scholarly journals The Evolution of Polish War Feature Films (1940-1980)

2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (4.38) ◽  
pp. 474
Author(s):  
Elena Shatova
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Cultural Development ◽  
World War ◽  
Feature Film ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
Feature Films ◽  
Spiritual Culture ◽  
Verification Methods ◽  
Sociocultural Processes

Introduction. The relevance of this study is explained by the rapid social and political homogenization of Europe; the “disclosure” of many documents indicative of sociocultural changes in Eastern Europe; an increasing chronological gap between the research subject and its researcher that enables to use scientific verification methods instead of ideologically “correct” paradigms.Methods. The methodological basis of this article is the principles of systematicity and objectivity. While conducting this research, the author also used genetic, typological, comparative, hermeneutic and semiotic methods.Results. Throughout the postwar history, Polish filmmakers were bringing stories about World War II to the silver screen. The concept of a war feature film also changed depending on the postwar development of Poland.Discussion. The necessary conditions for studying the evolution of Polish war feature films based on systematicity and objectivity are as follows: the analysis of the Polish sociocultural postwar development (periodization with distinguishing essential characteristics of each period); the determination of main trends in the development of spiritual culture as a part of sociocultural processes; the analysis of the state-party politics in the sphere of culture, art and cinema.Conclusion. Throughout the postwar development, Polish filmmakers were addressing the topic of war. Their attitude to war changed depending on the country’s socio-cultural development and the evolution of its spiritual culture. For instance, war feature films were the most prominent trend in the development of the Polish cinema in the second half of the 1940s and the first half of the 1950s. Between 1956 and 1960, the Polish Film School was established and was characterized by a high interest in war-related films (alongside other topics and problems represented in the cinema of that time). In the 1970s, war feature films were still relevant but gave way to flicks about modern times. In the 1980s, this topic “withdrew into the shadows” not only in cinematography but also in other artistic spheres. It was mostly used in films to better interpret other topics.  

Photography and Cinema in 20th-Century Mexico

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Mraz
Keyword(s):  
Golden Age ◽  
Mexican Revolution ◽  
Great Majority ◽  
Documentary Films ◽  
Feature Films ◽  
Mexican Society ◽  
International Audience ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Revolution

Photography, film, and other forms of technical imagery were incorporated quickly into Mexican society upon their respective arrivals, joining other visual expressions such as murals and folk art, demonstrating the primacy of the ocular in this culture. Photojournalism began around 1900, and has formed a pillar of Mexican photography, appearing in illustrated magazines and the numerous picture histories that have been produced. A central bifurcation in the photography of Mexico (by both Mexicans and foreigners) has been that of the picturesque and the anti-picturesque. Followers of the former tendency, such as Hugo Brehme, depict Mexicans as a product of nature, an expression of the vestiges left by pre-Columbian civilizations, the colony, and underdevelopment; for them, Mexico is an essence that has been made once and for all time. Those that are opposed to such essentialism, such as Manuel Álvarez Bravo, choose instead to posit that Mexicans are a product of historical experiences. The Mexican Revolution has been a central figure in both photography and cinema. The revolution was much photographed and filmed when it occurred, and that material has formed the base of many picture histories, often formed with the archive of Agustín Víctor Casasola, as well as with documentary films. Moreover, the revolution has been the subject of feature films. With the institutionalization of the revolution, governments became increasingly conservative, and the celebrity stars of “Golden Age” cinema provided models for citizenship; these films circulated widely throughout the Spanish speaking world. Although the great majority of photojournalists followed the line of the party dictatorship, there were several critical photographers who questioned the government, among them Nacho López, Héctor García, and the Hermanos Mayo. The Tlaltelolco massacre of 1968 was a watershed, from which was born a different journalism that offered space for the critical imagery of daily life by the New Photojounalists. Moreover, the representation of the massacre in cinema offered sharply contrasting viewpoints. Mexican cineastes have received much recognition in recent years, although they do not appear to be making Mexican films. Television in Mexico is controlled by a duopoly, but some programs have reached an international audience comparable to that of the Golden Age cinema.

Research on Pre-Modern Earthquakes Based on Fusion of Humanities and Sciences

2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 76-86 ◽  
Author(s):  
Masaharu Ebara ◽  
Akihito Nishiyama ◽  
Taisuke Murata ◽  
Reiko Sugimori ◽  
◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Information Science ◽  
Historical Documents ◽  
Historical Sources ◽  
Reconstruction Process ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
Historical Material ◽  
Historical Resources ◽  
Relief Efforts ◽  
Post Disaster

The Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami has reawakened people to the reality of large-scale earthquakes that recur in cycles of several hundred to a thousand years. The historical resources and archeology research group, which was established in 2014 within the Coordinating Committee of Earthquake and Volcanic Eruption Prediction Researches, is collaborating with researchers of seismology, history, archeology, and information science to investigate infrequent earthquakes using historical documents that record earthquakes and traces of disasters at archeological sites. To this end, we are creating a database of published historical sources of earthquakes to make the data readily accessible, and reexamining these sources and uncovering new historical material to investigate earthquakes that occurred in pre-modern times. We are also engaged in research on relief efforts for victims of past earthquakes and the post-disaster reconstruction process.

The Importance of Being Honest: Verifying Citations, Rereading Historical Sources, and Establishing Authority in the Great Karamoja Debate

2007 ◽  
Vol 34 ◽  
pp. 383-409
Author(s):  
Mustafa Kemal Mirzeler
Keyword(s):  
Annual Meeting ◽  
Cultural Anthropology ◽  
Historical Documents ◽  
Writing Style ◽  
American Anthropological Association ◽  
Historical Sources ◽  
Rhetorical Devices ◽  
Historical Argument ◽  
Citation Practices ◽  
Scholarly Attention

Anthropologists pay considerable attention to the writing style, the construction of a text, and the question of ethnographic authority, particularly since Derek Freeman's critique of Margaret Mead's Samoa writings. Although the issue of representation of the history and culture of far-flung peoples in the form of the written report is a long and distinguished tradition in the field of cultural anthropology, the Freeman/Mead debates have raised a number of questions ranging from the problem of faulty citation practices to the issue of vulnerable ethnographic authority. The debate over Freeman's critique of Mead has developed into a major controversy and was featured at the 1983 annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association (Marshall 1993:604). Since then, numerous articles and books have been written on the debate, and while many people have become tired of the “whole mess”, the case continues to attract scholarly attention.Critiques of Freeman often revolve around the sources Freeman used to support his historical argument against Mead, illuminating how Freeman used rhetorical devices, selectively omitted vital passages in historical documents that he cited, and “heavily” used partial quotations and (sometimes) ellipses, in order to “…undermine Mead's ethnographic authority and enhance his own” (e.g., Marshall 1993:604).

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.

From Objects to Actors: Knud Rasmussen’s Ethnographic Feature Film The Wedding of Palo

Films on Ice ◽  
2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ebbe Volquardsen
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Cultural Relations ◽  
Historical Document ◽  
Feature Film ◽  
Cultural Traditions ◽  
The North ◽  
Feature Films ◽  
Ethnographic Fiction

This chapter examines one of Denmark’s best-known ethnographic fiction feature films, Knud Rasmussen’s The Wedding of Palo (1934), directed by Friedrich Dalsheim, and shot in Western Greenland. While in many ways a documentary in the salvage ethnography tradition of the first part of the twentieth century, and sharing many similarities with Robert Flaherty’s Nanook of the North (1922), Volquardsen examines the significance of this film for the contested geopolitical status of Greenland in the early 1930s. Foregrounding the venerable status of Knud Rasmussen as an explorer and ethnographer in Danish history, this chapter shows how the film continues to be both cherished and mocked as a thwarted historical document for the Greenlandic population. The legacy of this film, showcasing seal-hunts, kayaking tricks, and domestic and cultural traditions (including drum-dancing), has remained significant and occupies a complex position in Denmark-Greenland cultural relations.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document