Mysteries of Cinema

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adrian Martin
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Politics ◽  
Film Studies ◽  
Film Criticism ◽  
Personal Essays ◽  
Film Genre ◽  
Genre Criticism ◽  
History Of ◽  
Broad Understanding ◽  
Film Critic

The major essays of the distinguished and prolific Australian-born film critic Adrian Martin have long been difficult to access, so this anthology, which collects highlights of his work in one volume, will be welcomed throughout film studies. Martin offers indepth analysis of many genres of films while providing a broad understanding of the history of cinema and the history of film criticism and culture. These vibrant, highly personal essays, written between 1982 and 2016, balance breadth across cinema theory with almost encyclopedic detail, ranging between aesthetics, cinephilia, film genre, criticism, philosophy, and cultural politics. Mysteries of Cinema circumscribes a special cultural period that began with the dream of critique as a form of poetic writing, and today arrives at collaborative experiments in audiovisual essays. Throughout these essays, Martin pursues a particular vision of what cinema has been, what it is, and what it still could be.

Introduction

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Jordan Schonig
Keyword(s):  
Film Studies ◽  
Formal Analysis ◽  
Film Theory ◽  
Gestalt Psychology ◽  
Film Criticism ◽  
Philosophical Intuition ◽  
History Of ◽  
Generic Structures ◽  
Temporal Flow ◽  
Film Form

The Introduction examines why “movement” is often invoked as a term in film criticism and film theory but is rarely analyzed as an aspect of film form. The reason for this is twofold. First, because film theory has largely examined movement only as a defining property of the cinematic medium, movement is rarely singled out in film criticism. Second, because film theory has inherited the philosophical intuition that form is primarily spatial rather than temporal, formal analysis in film studies tends to break up the temporal flow of film into static units, such as in shot breakdowns and frame analyses. In film studies, then, “form” and “movement” are conceptually incompatible. As a means of thinking motion and form together, the Introduction proposes the concept of “motion forms,” generic structures, patterns, or shapes of motion. The Introduction then explores the philosophical roots of the motion form in phenomenology and Gestalt psychology, and explains how such a way of thinking about cinematic motion differs from other phenomenological approaches in film studies. Finally, the introduction outlines the six chapters of the book, each of which investigates a particular motion form that emerges throughout the history of cinema.

scholarly journals Post-Communist Romanian cinema: context and the turn to realism

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dana Iliescu
Keyword(s):  
Film Studies ◽  
Close Association ◽  
Academic Discipline ◽  
Communist Regime ◽  
National Cinema ◽  
History Of ◽  
Romanian Cinema ◽  
Everyday Reality ◽  
History Of Analysis ◽  
Film Critic

"Romanian cinema needs to start again from scratch. It has to regain a sense of everyday reality and it has to render truthfully an important slice of recent history which has been horribly falsified. A blast of Neorealism is practically a moral obligation for our cinema at this time in its history." - Eugenia Voda, film critic, 1995. Romanian film critic Eugenia Voda has made this nearly prophetic statement only five years after the end of Romania's communist regime. Yet more than prophetic, her remark was an appeal to filmmakers, and their conscious as well as conscientious sense of truth. Although more than ten years have passed since, her words often resonate in close association with recent Romanian films and their honest representation of social reality, unique in the history of Romanian cinema. But to what extent is recent Romanian cinema a national cinema? Given the Western history of analysis of foreign cinematic productions, any current examination of non-Western films within a Western theoretical context must be carried out in relation to the prior theoretical developments, debates, and conclusions within the national cinema framework. Benedict Anderson's concept of the "imagined community' resides as foundation in the process of defining what is national (Anderson, 1983). When speaking of nationalist media, Anderson claims that while a nation is portrayed as a community, it is only an imagined one. Members of a nation do not all know each other, "yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion" (Anderson, 1983, p.6). From this perspective, cinema's popularity and ease of distribution has led to films becoming part of mass communications, and thus it can easily play a role in disseminating both national and nationalist ideals. persisted as a theoretical framework during the development and establishment of film studies as a Western academic discipline.

scholarly journals Post-Communist Romanian cinema: context and the turn to realism

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dana Iliescu
Keyword(s):  
Film Studies ◽  
Close Association ◽  
Academic Discipline ◽  
Communist Regime ◽  
National Cinema ◽  
History Of ◽  
Romanian Cinema ◽  
Everyday Reality ◽  
History Of Analysis ◽  
Film Critic

"Romanian cinema needs to start again from scratch. It has to regain a sense of everyday reality and it has to render truthfully an important slice of recent history which has been horribly falsified. A blast of Neorealism is practically a moral obligation for our cinema at this time in its history." - Eugenia Voda, film critic, 1995. Romanian film critic Eugenia Voda has made this nearly prophetic statement only five years after the end of Romania's communist regime. Yet more than prophetic, her remark was an appeal to filmmakers, and their conscious as well as conscientious sense of truth. Although more than ten years have passed since, her words often resonate in close association with recent Romanian films and their honest representation of social reality, unique in the history of Romanian cinema. But to what extent is recent Romanian cinema a national cinema? Given the Western history of analysis of foreign cinematic productions, any current examination of non-Western films within a Western theoretical context must be carried out in relation to the prior theoretical developments, debates, and conclusions within the national cinema framework. Benedict Anderson's concept of the "imagined community' resides as foundation in the process of defining what is national (Anderson, 1983). When speaking of nationalist media, Anderson claims that while a nation is portrayed as a community, it is only an imagined one. Members of a nation do not all know each other, "yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion" (Anderson, 1983, p.6). From this perspective, cinema's popularity and ease of distribution has led to films becoming part of mass communications, and thus it can easily play a role in disseminating both national and nationalist ideals. persisted as a theoretical framework during the development and establishment of film studies as a Western academic discipline.

Book Review: The Shaping of American Higher Education

NASPA Journal ◽  
2000 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Gary H. Knock
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Early History ◽  
Quarter Century ◽  
American Higher Education ◽  
History Of ◽  
Broad Understanding

In the introduction of this book, Arthur Cohen states that The Shaping of American Higher Education is less a history than a synthesis. While accurate, this depiction in no way detracts from the value of the book. This work synthesizes the first three centuries of development of high-er education in the United States. A number of books detail the early history of the American collegiate system; however, this book also pro-vides an up-to-date account of developments and context for under-standing the transformation of American higher education in the last quarter century. A broad understanding of the book’s subtitle, Emergence and Growth of the Contemporary System, is truly realized by the reader.

Zemlinsky's “Expressionist” Moment: Critical Reception of the Second String Quartet, 1918–1924

2018 ◽  
Vol 71 (2) ◽  
pp. 371-438
Author(s):  
Clare Carrasco
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Politics ◽  
String Quartet ◽  
Public Life ◽  
Critical Reception ◽  
Early History ◽  
German Culture ◽  
Concert Hall ◽  
Political Debates ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Great War

In the years after 1918, discourse about musical expressionism was controlled by critics rather than composers. Understanding expressionism to be as much a public matter emanating from the concert hall as a private one rooted in the composer's workshop, critics at that time often identified as “expressionist” works that fall outside the conventional notion of an expressionist repertory. In a particularly striking case, those who reviewed the 1918 premiere of Zemlinsky's Second String Quartet, op. 15, described it as experimental, revolutionary, indeed expressionist music. Today, scholars consistently count opus 15 among Zemlinsky's most compelling works, but they do not usually frame it in such charged terms. This article uses reviews of the earliest public performances of the quartet to elucidate the diverse and changing ways in which critics positioned it, as an instrumental chamber work, relative to expressionism between 1918 and 1924. In addition to discussing its music-stylistic features, critics involved the quartet in the heated musical-political debates surrounding expressionism in Austro-German culture at the end of and just after the Great War. These debates concerned everything from the threat of “musical bolshevism” to the (re)interpretation of Bach's and Beethoven's legacies in a postwar age. Zemlinsky's short-lived “expressionist” moment was thus very much a public moment. Reconstructing it opens a window onto the vicissitudes of the early history of musical expressionism, revealing ways in which expressionism was originally meaningful not in relation to composers’ inner lives, but in relation to the turbulent musical and cultural politics that shaped public life.

scholarly journals Samson’s “Thorn Bush” Tagging of Delilah Within Cecil B. DeMille’s Samson and Delilah (1949): Pricking One’s Scriptural Conscience?

2014 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 74-106
Author(s):  
Anton Karl Kozlovic
Keyword(s):  
Film Criticism ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Film Genre ◽  
Selective Review ◽  
Biblical Epics ◽  
The Many

Legendary producer-director Cecil B. DeMille was a seminal cofounder of Hollywood, a progenitor of Paramount Pictures, and an unsung auteur who was not only an early pioneer of the religion-and-film genre but became the undisputed master of the American biblical epic. However, the many deftly engineered sacred subtexts, thematic preoccupations, and aesthetic skills of this movie trailblazer were frequently denied, derided or dismissed during his lifetime and decades thereafter. This situation is in need of re-examination, rectification and renewal. Consequently, following a close reading of Samson and Delilah (1949) and a selective review of the critical DeMille, film and religion literature, this article uses Delilah’s (Hedy Lamarr) “thorn bush” tag, given to her during the wedding feast confrontation scene with Samson (Victor Mature), to explicate ten thorn bush themes that reveal some of the hidden depths of C.B.’s biblical artistry. Utilising textually-based humanist film criticism as the guiding analytical lens, this article concludes that DeMille was a far defter biblical filmmaker than has hitherto been appreciated. Further research into DeMille studies, biblical epics, and the religion-and-film field is warranted, recommended and already long overdue.

scholarly journals Sexuality, Feminism and Polish Cinema in Maria Kornatowska’s "Eros i film"

Panoptikum ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 117-130
Author(s):  
Małgorzata Radkiewicz
Keyword(s):  
Gender Identity ◽  
Critical Analysis ◽  
Film Studies ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
The Body ◽  
Creative Potential ◽  
Feminist Theories ◽  
Feminist Film ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Film Critic

The text addresses the issue of feminist film criticism in Poland in the 1980s, represented by the book by Maria Kornatowska Eros i  film [Eros and Film, 1986]. In her analysis Kornatowska focused mostly on Polish cinema, examined through a feminist and psychoanalytic lens. As a film critic, she followed international cinematic offerings and the latest trends in film studies, which is why she decided to fill the gap in Polish writings on gender and sexuality in cinema, and share her knowledge and ideas on the relationship between Eros and Film. The purpose of the text on Kornatowska’s book was to present her individual interpretations of the approach of Polish and foreign filmmakers to the body, sexuality, gender identity, eroticism, the question of violence and death. Secondly, it was important to emphasize her skills and creative potential as a film critic who was able to use many diverse repositories of thought (including feminist theories, philosophy and anthropology) to create a multi-faceted lens, which she then uses to perform a subjective, critical analysis of selected films.

scholarly journals Gender and Crime Representations and Constructions of Deviant Femininity in Arab Cinema

1970 ◽  
pp. 55-58
Author(s):  
Nada Addoum
Keyword(s):  
Arab World ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
Film Criticism ◽  
Cultural Groups ◽  
Comprehensive View ◽  
Female Criminality ◽  
Femininity And Masculinity ◽  
Gender And Crime ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Relationship

Within the practice of film criticism in the Arab world, the task of providing a comprehensive view of the industrial, socio-cultural, and aesthetic factors which contribute to particular cinematographic representations of class, gender, and sexuality has never been adequately tackled. This article, however, cannot and does not pretend to fill this gap. Instead, it seeks to benefit from the opportunity present in the topic of “female criminality in the Arab world” to start examining the forces and institutions of bias, the cinematic history of various cultural groups and the relationship between film and Arab1 culture's definitions of femininity and masculinity. 

scholarly journals Priority values of the French axiological paradigm on the material of the most used French idioms

2021 ◽  
pp. 68-77
Author(s):  
L. V. Shapovalova ◽  
Keyword(s):  
National Character ◽  
French Language ◽  
A Value ◽  
National Values ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Value Hierarchy ◽  
Broad Understanding

The article examines and analyzes 10 of the 1,500 most commonly used French idioms from the site "Les expressions françaises décortiquées". Phraseological picture of the world plays an important role in cognition of the world around us, because it not only captures its phenomena in the language, but also adds to them connotations, which are manifested in the choice of words of a particular language register. The study of hierarchies of values, recorded in idioms, and ways of their representation allow us to build a value hierarchy in the French mentality and understand the main features of the French national character. We have a broad understanding of phraseology and consider idioms not only idioms, but also phraseological units, proverbs, sayings, winged expressions, speech stamps, because they all name a concept, are reproduced unchanged, and are stable phrases. The phraseological units, taken into the analysis, are allocated on frequency of addresses that allows to define a hierarchy of values in the French phraseological picture of the world. Each of the permanent statements, taken into the analysis, nominates one concept, and the frequency of appeals to them allows not only to understand their priority in the French mentality, but also to outline the features of the French national character. French national values are fixed in the selected phraseological units, and the relation to them is distinguished on the basis of connotations, the register of speech, the present euphemism, and metaphorization. It is interesting to trace the history of the considered phraseological units and lexical units in their structure, ways of entering the French language, numerous hypotheses that explain their meaning. These areas of research and identification of social strata, in which the idioms arose, show where the phenomena denominated by them were the most common, and the hierarchy of values recorded in them, in the French mentality.

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