scholarly journals From Box Office to Memory: Telling Stories is not an Innocent Act

2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 72-90
Author(s):  
Ayla Kanbur

Throughout human history narratives have had crucial function to construct a society with meanings culturally binding its members and to sustain them for generations in society. Epic stories, proverbs, historical tales are such narratives which, in particular, form patterns for the “shared conceptual framework” of members of a culture. Thus narratives, in a broadest sense, circulate within a society through individual memories of its members and serve to communicate and create meanings by operating like language.Films Bread and Roses by Ken Loach (2000) and Maid in Manhattan (2002) by Wayne Wange intersect with their narrative tools indicating how individual and cultural memory overlap and contested globally within international film industry.

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ayla Kanbur

Throughout human history to narrate have had crucial function to construct a society with meanings culturally binding its members and to sustain them for generations in society. Epic stories, proverbs, historical tales are such narratives which, in particular, form patterns for the “shared conceptual framework” of members of a culture. Thus, narratives, in a broadest sense circulate within a society through individual memories of its members and serve to communicate and create meanings by operating like language.Films Bread and Roses by Ken Loach (2000) and Maid in Manhattan (2002) by Wayne Wange intersect with their narrative tools indicating how individual and cultural memory overlap globally within international film industry.   


2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 225-243 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alfio Leotta

The release of Conan the Barbarian (1982) played a crucial role in the emergence of the sword and sorcery film, a subgenre of fantasy cinema featuring muscular heroes in violent conflict with wizards and other supernatural creatures. Italian genre filmmakers attempted to capitalize on the international popularity of sword and sorcery by quickly producing a number of low-budget films, which emulated the stylistic and narrative features of Conan. Over a period of six years, between 1982 and 1987, the Italian film industry produced almost two dozen sword and sorcery films, which achieved mixed results at the box office. Although recently an increasing number of international film scholars have focused on the critical examination of Italian genre cinema, to date, little attention has been devoted to the study of Italian sword and sorcery. By examining the aesthetic features of four Italian sword and sorcery films (Gunan il guerriero [1982], Ator l’invincibile [1982], Hercules [1983] and The Barbarians [1987]), as well as their modes of production and distribution, this article proposes the first comprehensive critical examination of this filone.


2018 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-95
Author(s):  
Maria Pia Pagani

From a historiographical point of view, the Italian diva Eleonora Duse (1858–1924) as an actress-manager offers an original case study in relation to her only film performance in Cenere ( Ashes, 1916). This is a film adapted from the eponymous novel by Grazia Deledda (Nobel Prize for Literature in 1926). In the 1910s, when Duse decided to work in the Italian film industry, she was a celebrity and her name was a guarantee of success for the Ambrosio Company in Turin. The film producers wanted to use her celebrity in order to ensure success at the box office. As an actress-manager with a long and acclaimed international career in the theatre, Duse knew this mechanism very well, but her position was contrary to their expectations. In fact, she aimed to present herself as an anti-diva, with her wrinkle-furrowed face and white hair, proposing a fascinating artistic creation based on the ‘mother roles’ that she had created for the theatre. This paper explores new elements concerning the position of Duse as an actress-manager for the Italian film industry in the 1910s. It is focused on her strategy of reiterating her stage success in playing a mother. On film, she did not want to be an instrument used for commercial purposes, and she did not want to create a common popular diva film. With Cenere, Duse's capability as an actress-manager can be seen in her creation of this non-conventional, poetic role for the silent film industry in wartime Italy.


2010 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 293-296 ◽  
Author(s):  
Larry Diamond

Violence and Social Orders: A Conceptual Framework for Interpreting Recorded Human History (Cambridge 2009) offers a theory of the evolution of the modern state and an even more ambitious framework “for interpreting recorded human history.” The book raises fundamental questions about the political structuring of violence, the functions of the rule of law, and the establishment and maintenance of political order. In doing so, it speaks to a range of political scientists from a variety of methodological and subfield perspectives. We have thus invited four prominent political science scholars of violence and politics to comment on the book: Jack Snyder, Caroline Hartzell, Jean Bethke Elshtain, and Larry Diamond.


Author(s):  
Dan Hassler-Forest

Chapter 23 approaches the phenomenon of the comic book movie as a complex and dynamic adaptation process. While superhero movies and other comics-inspired franchises now dominate the global box office, it is rare that they adapt comic books’ formal features in a meaningful way. By foregrounding three comic book movies that have largely been considered failures, the essay discusses innovative ways of adapting comics to film through a media-archaeological approach to the genre. The films Popeye (1980), Dick Tracy (1990), and Hulk (2002) can be read, each in its own way, as provocative “roads not taken” by the Hollywood film industry.


2010 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 287-289 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jack Snyder

Violence and Social Orders: A Conceptual Framework for Interpreting Recorded Human History (Cambridge 2009) offers a theory of the evolution of the modern state and an even more ambitious framework “for interpreting recorded human history.” The book raises fundamental questions about the political structuring of violence, the functions of the rule of law, and the establishment and maintenance of political order. In doing so, it speaks to a range of political scientists from a variety of methodological and subfield perspectives. We have thus invited four prominent political science scholars of violence and politics to comment on the book: Jack Snyder, Caroline Hartzell, Jean Bethke Elshtain, and Larry Diamond.


2016 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 368-389
Author(s):  
Huw David Jones

Ken Loach stands out as one of the few British directors whose films are regularly co-produced with European partners. Of the nineteen films he has directed since 1990, fourteen have been UK/continental European co-productions. This article draws on interviews with Loach's long-term producer Rebecca O'Brien, content analysis of his films and the statistical analysis of box-office data to examine how and why Loach came to work with continental European co-production partners and how these partnerships have affected the cultural identity of his films and their box-office performance. It argues that while some of Loach's co-production partnerships were initiated for creative reasons, most have proceeded on a ‘finance-only’ basis, whereby the partners have had very little creative input into his films. Co-production has therefore allowed Loach to continue making ‘culturally British’ films without the creative interference which often comes with this mode of film-making. This creative freedom has been vital in terms of maintaining Loach's reputation as one of Europe's leading auteurs and attracting the attention of film festivals like Cannes and Berlin, which in turn has played a key role in the marketing of his films and increasing their admissions in key continental European territories. Co-production has also boosted the performance and circulation of Loach's films in mainland Europe by making it easier to access EU MEDIA distribution support. These findings not only offer new insights into Loach's films in terms of their production, content and reception, but also contribute to wider debates surrounding co-production and transnational cinema.


Author(s):  
Klaus Keil ◽  
Tobias Mosig

THE SUCCESS OF MOTION PICTURES – AN ECONOMIC GAMBLE: SELECTED MOVIE EXPLOITATION PHENOMENA More than 5,000 marketable movies are produced worldwide every year - a risky economic gamble running into billions. Despite the potential risk of commercial failure, film producers still try to achieve outstanding box-office results. There are also special movies that are able to preserve or even increase their intrinsic value due to the longevity of their commercial success. This article focuses on distinctive movie exploitation phenomena, which can be observed worldwide. These phenomena show the unpredictability of film success due to the fact that the cycles, the duration, and the progress of film exploitation are unforeseeable. MythSuccess is the big myth of the international film industry: on the one hand enormous profits, glamour, film stars, red carpet shows at Cannes, Berlin, and Venice - the big film festivals. And as climax - the Oscars in...


2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 224-245
Author(s):  
Lee Yoong Hon ◽  
Ruth Lim Sheau Yen

This paper explores the performance of local movies at the Malaysian box-office circuit to ascertain and analyse the extent of the reported improvements of the sector – it is hoped that the findings can provide a more objective assessment of the state of local films and the policies that have been aimed at cultivating improvements in the sector. Overall, the findings indicate that the local movie industry is still a long way from establishing a strong foothold even in its own domestic market.


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