Literary Specifics of Biographical Film Story: On the Issue of Genre Heredity

The genre heredity concept is articulated on the analysis example of I. Drach’s screen version of the biographical film story “I’m coming to you” (1970), dedicated to the 100th anniversary of Lesya Ukrainka. The film is marked by innovative approach of I. Drach as a scriptwriter to the image of the poetess. Contrary to the tradition of documentary film to interpret her biography in a certain matrix key (as a fighter and revolutionary), Drach tried to identify Lesya Ukrainka primarily as a private individual, as the woman who knew how to sacrifice herself for the sake of love. Without aiming to show in detail the entire biography of the poetess, the author of the film story chose only a small fragment of her life – four years 1897–1901. In terms of biopic genre heredity, the article observes how this biographical film presents possible ways of processing and contamination of available documentary material (letters, memoirs, reminiscences of contemporaries) and integral creation by Lesya Ukrainka (her poetry, translations, renditions). Hence, the biopic on the basis of multi-genre text material appears as a kind of intertextual plexus. At the same time, the film pays much attention to the feelings, thoughts, creative impulses and state of mind of the heroine. By analogy with the poetics of literary writing, the form of the poetess’ inner monologue was chosen in accordance with the portrait film genre. It is clear that through the prism of Lesya’s life and creative experience the personal attitude of the poet I. Drach emerges towards understanding and reproducing the figure of creative personality in art: the author’ vision logically leads to those biographical episodes that in the existential sense appear the most significant.

The Nationalist Imaginary in the Bollywood Sports Film

Even after the liberalising of the Indian economy, the nationalist narrative, has endured, taking new forms. Some scholars have to argued that the post-national trope has been inaugurated in the Hindi film. By looking at a few popular sports films of the last decade and a half, Nissim Manathukkaren interrogates this contention pointing out that the post-national is not yet realized in the sports film genre. The author argues that the sports film by mirroring the limited notion of nationalism that is in sync with the logic of the market, is as yet a disappointment. It papers over the fissures and the complications within the current hegemonic nationalism, but carrying the potential of reimagining it. The author contends that in its intense desire to portray sporting glory as a triumph for the nation, films have tended to underplay individual struggles.

Does Perceived Stress of University Students Affected by Preferences for Movie Genres? an Exploratory Cross-Sectional Study in China

This study aims to explore whether different preferences for movie genres were related to different perceived stress of college students. An online questionnaire was designed and it was filled out by 1,549 students voluntarily. The 10-item perceived stress scale (PSS-10) and multinomial logistic regression were used to access the perceived stress and the association between the movie preference genres. Over 90% of participants had mild to serious levels of stress. Differences were found between participants with different stress perception states in terms of smoking history, active exercise, and sleep duration (p < 0.05). The participants who showed a preference for suspense movies more probably had lower stress [relative risk ratio (RRR)1 = 0.34, RRR2 = 0.26, p < 0.05], while students who showed preferences for crime film and disaster film more probably had higher stress (RRR = 2.03, p < 0.05, RRR = 3.15, p < 0.05). And the significant gender gap in different film genre preferences was observed in this study (p < 0.05). The males who showed preference for horror movies were more probably to have moderate stress (OR = 3.68, p < 0.05), and females who showed a preference for disaster movies were more probably to have high stress (OR = 3.27, p < 0.05). The perceived stress of Chinese university students is high after 1.5 years of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic. The personal preferences for certain film genres were significantly associated with perceived stress. As different film genre preferences, such as the preference for disaster, crime, and horror, are associated with high perceived stress, it may turn out to be useful to pay more attention to an individual’s film viewing. The teachers need to be concerned with the media usage history and preferences of their students and may advise students with high-level stress to avoid potentially harmful media content.

Lights, camera, action!: Using cinematographic genre in English language classes

This study consists of an academic activity carried out in a master's degree in Professional and Technological Education (PROFEPT) of Instituto Federal do Piauí (IFPI) in progress. The use of the short film genre in English language teaching becomes relevant as it allows the student the opportunity to practice and understand the language orally and critically. In this context, this article sought in the epistemological way to discuss the dyad education and work and their conceptions and interrelationships in professional and technological education, as well as to present a prior state of the art on the use of short films in the English language teaching in technology in contemporary society. From a qualitative perspective, this systematic literature review used as references: journals, dissertations, theses and books, found through the following databases: SciELO, Portal Capes and Google Scholar. Therefore, due to the aspects mentioned in this academic-scientific investigation, it was possible to show that the short film genre is a pedagogical strategy to promote the praxis of conversation in English language classes with students in the High School Technical Professional Education, considering contextualization and interdisciplinarity as guiding principles, thus ensuring the inseparability between theory and social practice. This research seeks to highlight the conceptions, possibilities and challenges in contemporary English language teaching, through the short film genre.

Purba film as a prototype of Malay film genre: A preliminary exploration

This article attempts to trace the historical development of the period costume dramas known as purba films, a prototyped genre for Malay cinema produced in Singapore and Kuala Lumpur during the ‘studio era’ from the late 1940s to early 1970s. Either adapted from folk literature/theatre and historical texts or based on original ideas by the screenwriters/directors, purba films are set in the pre-colonial era, invariably in a kampong and glorify the Malay world prior to the arrival of the imperialists. I argue that the genre, which encompasses diverse variants and subdivisions, has undergone several phases of transformation and evolution, in particular, while drawing out the genre’s codes, conventions and ideologies. Additionally, I demonstrate that they are, on the one hand, culturally and cinematically specific, and, on the other, are borrowed from, and shaped by, other cinematic genres, forms and practices. The discussion also provides evidence on how purba films were situated within the cultural and industrial contexts.

“I Saw a Different Life. I Can't Stop Seeing It”: Perfectionist Visions in Revolutionary Road

In this article, I claim that Sam Mendes’ Revolutionary Road (2008) is a recent version of the film genre that Stanley Cavell calls the “melodrama of the unknown woman”. Accordingly, my discussion focuses on two key elements of that identification: the film's overriding dramatic and thematic emphasis on conversation, and the central characters’ relation to the wider social and political concerns of America.

Defa’-e Moghaddas (The Sacred Defense), Hamdeli va Mehrvarzi (Camaraderie and Love from Knowing the Other), and the Making of Social Cinema in Post-Revolutionary Islamic Iran

A publicity tool during the Iran–Iraq war (1980–1988), the cinema of the post-war period in Iran was expected to uphold Islamic, ethical, and symbolic values idealized by the government as defa’-e moghaddas (the sacred defense). The war film genre, which was launched during this period to promote these values, exclusively addressed the presence of men on the front lines. It barely made on-screen references to the role of women. Focusing on the gender dynamics of self-sacrifice and drawing on genres such as drama and melodrama, certain filmmakers used cinemay-e ejtema’i (the social cinema) to translate this ideal to the struggles back home. These films turned the gaze of the camera toward the hidden life of mazlooman (the oppressed). They thus shifted the meaning of defa’-e moghaddas and addressed socio-psychological suffering, oppressive cultural practices (‘ orf), and unjust legal codes of qisas (retaliation) as contradictory to Islam’s teachings on and cultivation of love, justice, and righteousness among ommat (the Islamic community). Focusing on the Iranian poetic vision of hamdeli va mehrvarzi (camaraderie and love from knowing the other), this essay traces affective states including affinity in struggle, rage, anger, and resistance. Linking instances of these states with Western feminist scholarship on the theory of affect, I discuss the cinematic process of claiming “the right to look” (Mirzoeff, Nicholas, The Right to Look: A Counterhistory of Visuality. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011).

Multipli-city, My Winnipeg and a pedagogy of the permanent circuit

The city is a network of boulevards, thoroughfares, highways and subway systems. The city is also a site of learning, or rather the city houses sites of learning: museums, libraries, schools, theatres and cinemas, for instance. Interestingly, these sites of learning need not be physical; indeed, regarding cinema, for example, they can be websites like Amazon, Criterion Channel, Netflix, where cinephiles can stream movies from the comfort of their home, office, car, on a phone, tablet, television. It is at the intersection of these sites – the cinema and the city – that I wish to situate this article. In particular, I explore how the filmmaker Guy Maddin with My Winnipeg (2007) finagles cinema’s essay-film genre to turn a physical space (in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada) from, in Deleuze and Guattari’s terms, striated to smooth, points to pointillism, in which event replaces essence and multipli-city replaces singular(c)ity. The city is a machine and the machine here is D+G’s assemblage. As such, the city and the citizen/creator become one, symbio[(y)tic], and the two cannot be separated without returning the city to a simpli-city and the filmmaker to a documentarian. This film amounts to an encounter that causes thinking (in Deleuzian terms) and thus learning and thus a way forward for thinking through a pedagogy of the permanent circuit.