The Place of the Film

2011 ◽  
pp. 13-22
Author(s):  
Ian Cooper
Keyword(s):  
Horror Film ◽  
New Wave ◽  
Art Cinema ◽  
French New Wave ◽  
Genre Films

This chapter presents a background of Michael Reeves, the director of Witchfinder General (1968). Perhaps the best way to understand Reeves is to regard him as a home-grown ‘Movie Brat’. This was the name given to the geeky American cinephiles who were inspired by the critics-turned-directors of the French New Wave. These film-school-educated ‘Brats’ would make a number of innovative genre films which were to revolutionise Hollywood in the 1970s and beyond. Witchfinder General is not notable solely due to its strange status as ‘a disreputable classic’. It also draws on a number of British and American popular forms (such as the costume melodrama, the horror film and the Western). Moreover, it is a striking example of an auteur sensibility in what Robin Wood calls ‘that most discouraging of areas — the British commercial cinema’. Reeves' love of mainstream, Anglophone cinema went hand-in-hand with a rejection of the then-voguish European art cinema.

Coming-of-Age Cinema in New Zealand

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alistair Fox
Keyword(s):  
Coming Of Age ◽  
Belief Systems ◽  
Time Frame ◽  
New Wave ◽  
Art Cinema ◽  
Literary Sources ◽  
French New Wave ◽  
Significant Phenomenon ◽  
The Impact ◽  
New Zealanders

This book investigates the coming-of-age genre as a significant phenomenon in New Zealand’s national cinema, tracing its development from the 1970s to the present day. A preliminary chapter identifies the characteristics of the coming-of-age film as a genre, tracing its evolution and the influence of the French New Wave and European Art Cinema, and speculating on the role of the genre in the output of national cinemas. Through case studies of fifteen significant films, including The God Boy, Sleeping Dogs, The Scarecrow, Vigil, Mauri, An Angel at My Table, Heavenly Creatures, Once Were Warriors, Rain, Whale Rider, In My Father’s Den, 50 Ways of Saying Fabulous, Boy, Mahana, and Hunt for the Wilderpeople, subsequent chapters examine thematic preoccupations of filmmakers such as the impact of repressive belief systems and social codes, the experience of cultural dislocation, the expression of a Māori perspective through an indigenous “Fourth Cinema,” bicultural relationships, and issues of sexual identity, arguing that these films provide a unique insight into the cultural formation of New Zealanders. Given that the majority of films are adaptations of literary sources, the book also explores the dialogue each film conducts with the nation’s literature, showing how the time frame of each film is updated in a way that allows these films to be considered as a register of important cultural shifts that have occurred as New Zealanders have sought to discover their emerging national identity.

Christian Petzold

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jaimey Fisher
Keyword(s):  
Film Noir ◽  
Horror Film ◽  
Art Cinema ◽  
Pedro Almodovar ◽  
German Film ◽  
Global Cinema ◽  
Feature Films ◽  
German Cinema ◽  
Genre Films ◽  
New German Cinema

In eleven feature films across two decades, Christian Petzold has established himself as the most critically celebrated director in contemporary Germany. The best-known and most influential member of the Berlin School, Petzold's career reflects the trajectory of German film from 1970s New German Cinema to more popular fare in the 1990s and back again to critically engaged and politically committed filmmaking. His combination of critical celebration and popular success underscores Petzold's singular cinematic achievement: the deliberate and shrewd negotiation of art cinema and popular Hollywood genre. This book frames Petzold's cinema at the intersection of international art cinema and sophisticated genre cinema. This approach places his work in the context of global cinema and invites comparisons to the work of directors like Pedro Almodovar and Rainer Werner Fassbinder, who repeatedly deploy and reconfigure genre cinema to their own ends. These generic aspects constitute a cosmopolitan gesture in Petzold's work as he interprets and elaborates on cult genre films and popular genres, including horror, film noir, and melodrama. The book explores these popular genres while injecting them with themes like terrorism, globalization, and immigration, central issues for European art cinema. The volume also includes an extended original interview with the director about his work.

Reading the French New Wave: Critics, Writers and Art Cinema in France

2009 ◽  
Vol 63 (1) ◽  
pp. 115-116
Author(s):  
J. S. Williams
Keyword(s):  
New Wave ◽  
Art Cinema ◽  
French New Wave

The Coming-of-age Film as a Genre: Attributes, Evolution, and Functions

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alistair Fox
Keyword(s):  
Collective Memory ◽  
Cultural Values ◽  
Coming Of Age ◽  
New Wave ◽  
Prominent Feature ◽  
Art Cinema ◽  
French New Wave

This chapter outlines the generic characteristics, categories, and dominant tropes of the coming-of-age film, relating it to the Bildungsroman in literature, and showing the influence on its evolution of the French New Wave and European art cinema. The chapter concludes by speculating on why coming-of-age films are such a prominent feature in national cinemas, arguing that they play an important role in the development of collective memory and the transmission and reshaping of cultural values.

Narrative

Blade Runner ◽  
2016 ◽  
pp. 27-38
Author(s):  
Sean Redmond
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Reference Point ◽  
New Wave ◽  
Art Cinema ◽  
German Expressionism ◽  
Blade Runner ◽  
Contemporary Science ◽  
French New Wave ◽  
Narrative Film ◽  
The Way

This chapter discusses the narrative of Ridley Scott's Blade Runner in terms of the way it functions, like the anti-narrative film found in a great deal of European art cinema. It discusses German Expressionism as the reference point for Blade Runner. It also analyses the dislocated and open-ended nature of Blade Runner's narrative that suggests a challenging art aesthetic that was borrowed from film movements, such as the French New Wave. The chapter explores Blade Runner's narrative, which is marked by gaps and enigmas that are never fully cohered or resolved. It addresses arguments made about contemporary science fiction that is predominately driven by a desire to be always visually spectacular.

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