Introduction: Special Effects and the Techno-Romantic Paradigm

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katharina Loew
Keyword(s):  
Crucial Role ◽  
Film History ◽  
Physical Reality ◽  
Silent Film ◽  
Technological Innovations ◽  
Film Culture ◽  
Silent Cinema ◽  
Special Effects ◽  
Material Reality ◽  
Industrial Modernity

German silent cinema is famous for its unconventional aesthetics and film-technological innovations. These characteristics were the result of efforts to reconcile the new medium’s automatic reproductions of physical reality with idealist conceptions of art. Special effects played a crucial role in this endeavour. They afforded creative experiments with the cinematic apparatus and inspired filmmakers to convey ideas and emotions. Special effects embodied the “techno-romantic” project of construing technology as a means for transcending material reality. This common response to industrial modernity profoundly shaped German silent film culture. The techno-romantic paradigm formed the basis of one of the most creative periods in film history and proved instrumental in the evolution of cinematic expressivity and film art.

Women and the Shift from Theatre to Cinema in Spain: The Case of Helena Cortesina (1903–84)

2018 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 96-120
Author(s):  
Elena Cordero-Hoyo ◽  
Begoña Soto-Vázquez
Keyword(s):  
Film History ◽  
Silent Film ◽  
The Other ◽  
Silent Cinema ◽  
Spanish Film ◽  
Professional Career ◽  
Production Of Knowledge ◽  
Feminist Film ◽  
Marginal Status ◽  
The One

The purpose of this article is to identify the main causes behind women achieving, on the one hand, important positions as theatre managers in Spain but, on the other, being relegated a marginal status in the shift to cinema. We use the career of the artist Helena Cortesina to illustrate the only known example of a woman becoming a silent cinema entrepreneur in Spain. An actress, producer, and director of Flor de España o la leyenda de un torero ( Spanish flower or the bullfighter's story, 1921) Cortesina transitioned from the variety dances stage to silent film and became a theatrical manager. Her professional career exemplifies the inter-artistic relations between cinema and the scenic arts at the beginning of the twentieth century and the professional bridge between them. This article contributes to feminist film historiography. Following Monica Dall’Asta, it presents a ‘history that invites us to work using creative hypotheses and even imagination’. The article revisits Spanish Film History, reinterpreting the hegemonic production of knowledge that has been historically told from a (supposedly) un-gendered perspective. Our article seeks to disrupt this patriarchal narrative of firsts (including geniuses, technical discoveries, and masterpieces) that relegate women's experiences to the margins of History.

The Technological Sublime: Metropolis (1927)

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katharina Loew
Keyword(s):  
Special Effects ◽  
Spiritual Dimension ◽  
The Sublime ◽  
Material Reality ◽  
Industrial Modernity ◽  
Technological Sublime ◽  
Technological Means ◽  
Mechanical Objects

Metropolis displays a deeply conflicting attitude toward industrial modernity. Conceived and marketed as a marvel of film technology, the film pursued the techno-romantic project of transcending material reality through technological means. What is more, the goal was to capture the unfathomability of technology itself. Metropolis simultaneously portrays technology as an agent of tyranny and dehumanization and flaunts it as spectacle. Special effects facilitate encounters with overpowering technological environments and omnipotent machines, which give rise to sentiments that are best described in terms of a “technological sublime.” The sublime characterizes experiences that go beyond the earthly and finite, to attain a spiritual dimension. In attributing transcendent qualities to mechanical objects, the technological sublime embodies the technoromantic paradigm.

The origins of screenwriting practice and discourse in Portugal

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-44 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rita Benis
Keyword(s):  
Historical Development ◽  
Early Stage ◽  
Silent Film ◽  
Film Culture ◽  
Silent Cinema ◽  
American Cinema ◽  
Oriented Film ◽  
Film Directors ◽  
Historical Culture ◽  
The Many

Following previous works by Patrick C. Loughney, Isabelle Raynauld, Steven Maras, Ian Macdonald, Alain Carou and Steven Price on screenwriting’s historical development in national frameworks, this article proposes to examine Portuguese screenwriting historical culture in relation to its major external influences: French, Italian and American cinema. If it is true that American mainstream cinema and its screenwriting models are now hegemonic and increasingly present in Portuguese film culture, it is also true that Portugal had (and continues to have) a strong ‘author-oriented’ film tradition, focused on artistic processes, clearly present in its screenwriting culture. Such characteristics developed first under the influence of French and Italian silent cinema, through the contribution of foreign film directors who worked in Portugal and established schools there. Also important were the cinematographic experiences (film and writing) made by modernist poets during the silent film period. Finally, the powerful influence of the French Politique des Auteurs (1950s) also helped to configure Portuguese screenwriting culture. To contextualize the Portuguese experience specifically, I explore the origins of screenwriting practice and discourse in Portugal, addressing the many political, historical and financial aspects that impacted the Portuguese perception of screenwriting craft from an early stage.

scholarly journals Cultivating the Early Canons: The Pordenone Silent Film Festival

2016 ◽  
Vol 69 (3) ◽  
pp. 91-95
Author(s):  
Vito Adriaensens
Keyword(s):  
Film History ◽  
Silent Film ◽  
Small City ◽  
Early Cinema ◽  
Film Festival ◽  
Silent Cinema ◽  
The North ◽  
Special Events ◽  
The World ◽  
Les Miserables

Festival Report: For passionate lovers of silent cinema, the first weekend of October is permanently highlighted in the calendar: it is then that a small city in the north of Italy serves up more than just excellent antipasti and chilled Aperol Spritz. Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, or “the days of silent cinema,” commonly known as the Pordenone Silent Film Festival, has been the mecca for film historians and amateurs of “mute flickers” since its founding in 1982. The festival is the largest silent film festival in the world, offering a nine-day bombardment of rediscoveries, restorations, retrospectives, and special events from dusk until well past dawn, projected at the proper speeds and accompanied by such leading early cinema musicians as Neil Brand, John Sweeney, and Günter Buchwald. Film history comes alive. Films reviewed include: Douro, Faina Fluvial (1931), Chuji tabinikki (A Diary of Chuji's Travels, Daisuke Ito, 1927), and Henri Fescourt's 1925–26 rendition of Les Misérables.

Special Effects and German Silent Film

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katharina Loew
Keyword(s):  
Silent Film ◽  
Pivotal Role ◽  
Film Culture ◽  
Comprehensive Understanding ◽  
Special Effects ◽  
Cinema Studies ◽  
The Look ◽  
The Way

In recent decades, special effects have become a major new area of research in cinema studies. For the most part, they have been examined as spectacles or practical tools. In contrast, Special Effects and German Silent Film, foregrounds their function as an expressive device and their pivotal role in cinema's emergence as a full-fledged art. Special effects not only shaped the look of iconic films like Nosferatu (1922) or Metropolis (1927), but they are central to a comprehensive understanding of German silent film culture writ large. This book examines special effects as the embodiment of a "techno-romantic" paradigm that seeks to harness technology-the epitome of modern materialism-as a means for accessing a spiritual realm. Employed to visualize ideas and emotions in a medium-specific way, special effects thus paved the way for film art.

scholarly journals Early ‘Glocalization’ in Indian Cinema: An Analysis of Films of Dada Saheb Phalke and Himanshu Rai

2020 ◽  
Vol 73 (3) ◽  
pp. 521-544
Author(s):  
M. Sadiqur Rahman
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
Decisive Role ◽  
Film History ◽  
Foreign Technology ◽  
Film Culture ◽  
Integration Process ◽  
Silent Cinema ◽  
Indian Cinema ◽  
World Cinema ◽  
Global Vision

AbstractThat the adaptation of international ideas and foreign technology had an impact on local film culture, is not a new idea in Indian cinema. Nevertheless, more scholarship and greater familiarity with extant literature are needed. This article aims to contribute to the study of the integration process of early Indian films into World cinema. This article considers the early ‘glocalization’ in Indian cinema which traces the process of universalizing particular experiences in silent cinema and transcending from the local to (achieve) global levels. Through the analysis of the films of Dada Saheb Phalke and Himanshu Rai, two film producers who were hugely impacted by the European style of filmmaking, I will discuss how their global vision with local considerations played a decisive role in shaping the early Indian film history. I argue how local and global forces in Phalke and Rai’s cinema boosted cultural open-mindedness and economic growth.

Confessions of a film restorer

2019 ◽  
pp. 101-110
Author(s):  
Thomas C. Christensen
Keyword(s):  
Image Quality ◽  
Film History ◽  
Silent Film ◽  
New Work ◽  
Silent Cinema ◽  
Archival Practice ◽  
Restoration Work ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Object Of Study ◽  
Insight Into

When restoring a film, the aim is naturally always to provide the definitive version. However, many factors make this an impossible mission. This chapter draws on actual film archival practice and theory, exposing a minefield of obstacles facing any academic study trying to examine film history based on restored works. The focus is on silent cinema restoration, intertitles, and translation issues. Using Mark-Paul Meyer and Paul Read’s categories—from a one-to-one duplication to the creation of an altogether new work—the aim is to give an insight into the complexity of silent film restoration and the practical, and sometimes very unacademic, nature of the actual restoration work. The fact that most film restorations typically concentrate on image quality rather than titles, which are often merely supposed to support the visual action, adds to the complexity of transparency about the provenance of the filmic titles as an object of study.

Re-centering the Cinema Experience in a Multi-Platform, Digital Age

2015 ◽  
Vol 8 (5) ◽  
Author(s):  
E. W. Nikdel
Keyword(s):  
Physical Environment ◽  
Cultural Memory ◽  
Emotional Response ◽  
Physical Space ◽  
Film History ◽  
Cultural Activity ◽  
Film Culture ◽  
The Past ◽  
Imminent Death ◽  
Multiple Media

With the advent of online distribution and the rise of multiple media devices, claims of the cinema’s imminent death have surfaced with greater intensity than ever before. Of course, with an ever-widening array of platforms these accounts have placed a newfound emphasis on the cinema as a distinctive physical space, one that plays host to a very particular and much cherished cultural activity. This article considers the substance of these claims by tracing a very particular historical route. Firstly, be revisiting Baudry’s notion of the dispositif, this article detects the importance of the physical environment in the process of film consumption. Secondly, I relate this emphasis on the physical to the traditional notion of the cinephile, a practice that ritualises the cinema experience. Many accounts across the spectrum of film history will attest to the profound ways in which the physical experience of the cinema summons a rich emotional response. Lastly, I consider how the cinema and the collective nature of film consumption provides an authentic trace to the past and a very certain time and place in history. In turn, despite competition from cheaper and more convenient platforms, this article will endeavour to show how the cinema retains its place at the centre of contemporary film culture. KEYWORDS Cinema, dispositif, cinephilia, cultural memory.

Cinema Expanded

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Walley
Keyword(s):  
New Media ◽  
Film History ◽  
Video Art ◽  
Experimental Film ◽  
Art World ◽  
Film Culture ◽  
Moving Image ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Expanded Cinema ◽  
History Of

Cinema Expanded: Avant-Garde Film in the Age of Intermedia is a comprehensive historical survey of expanded cinema from the mid-1960s to the present. It offers an historical and theoretical revision of the concept of expanded cinema, placing it in the context of avant-garde/experimental film history rather than the history of new media, intermedia, or multimedia. The book argues that while expanded cinema has taken an incredible variety of forms (including moving image installation, multi-screen films, live cinematic performance, light shows, shadow plays, computer-generated images, video art, sculptural objects, and texts), it is nonetheless best understood as an ongoing meditation by filmmakers on the nature of cinema, specifically, and on its relationship to the other arts. Cinema Expanded also extends its historical and theoretical scope to avant-garde film culture more generally, placing expanded cinema in that context while also considering what it has to tell us about the moving image in the art world and new media environment.

Nicht nur Slapstick: Stummfilme als unterschätzte Zeugen der Medizingeschichte

2020 ◽  
Vol 145 (25) ◽  
pp. 1818-1827
Author(s):  
Dennis Henkel ◽  
Eelco M. Wijdicks ◽  
Axel Karenberg
Keyword(s):  
Medical Profession ◽  
Silent Film ◽  
Turn Of The Century ◽  
Short Film ◽  
X Rays ◽  
Silent Cinema ◽  
Feature Films ◽  
Illegal Abortion ◽  
Art Form ◽  
Short Films

AbstractMedicine in silent film has a long history. Although the silent era in cinema was dominated by burlesques (using escaped “lunatics”) a number of themes emerged after systematic review. The cinematic representation of medicine coincided with the discovery of X-rays. During this “roentgenomania”, short films were produced showing groundbreaking X-ray images, which fitted perfectly into needs of dramatic cinema. But soon the “cinema of narration” evolved: Starting just after the turn of the century, the short film “The Country Doctor” was able to address complex interplay between duties and limitations of the medical profession. This was followed by numerous feature films on infectious diseases, which often used tuberculosis as a centerpiece of its story. Directors often took advantage of the well-known stereotype of the omnipotent physician. But in certain medical fields, such as psychiatry or surgery, a more ambivalent figure of the doctor was portrayed, f. e. in “Hands of Orlac” (1924). Silent cinema also offered interesting ideas on the healing powers of the medium itself: in “The Mystery of the Kador Cliffs” (1912) a film screening could cure the patient of fears after reenactment. Finally, a closer look at the early era of film echoes how social conflicts where dramatized, especially in the case of nationwide birth control. How illegal abortion kept the society on its edge, was most clearly shown in the adaption of the scandalous play “Cyankali” (1930).In addition to discussing various topics in the cinematic representation of medicine, this brief overview shows that silent movies were a new and true art form, representing an exceptional resource for historians of film and medicine.

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