Stolen glances: heist cinema and the visual production of deception

The capacity to deceive figures into cinema's history in a number of interesting ways. For Melies, motion pictures allowed the technical production of deception and illusion for his "trick" films, and in popular mythology, frightened spectators fled an exhibition of Auguste and Louis Lumiere's L'Arrivee d'un train en gare de la Ciotat (1895) fearing the imminent arrival of the train at the theatre itself. While this latter story has been roundly discredited, it holds an important place in cinematic lore. In the various efforts of documentary filmmakers to negate the idea of objective truth, whether through direct cinema/cinema verite, the use of reflexive gestures, or subjective positioning, there is a sense of an imminent threat of deception in film's mediation of truth. As Tom Gunning (2004) and Rachel O. Moore (2000) have recently argued, even critical explorations of cinema, quite as much as filmmaking practices themselves, have held the medium in deep suspicion. In the screen theories derived from Lacan and Althusser that dominated 1970s film studies we see film scholars move towards a conception of film that sees deception and trickery - otherwise called "ideological mystification" - as an innate feature of the cinematic apparatus. Despite, or perhaps because of, these ongoing concerns, there seems to be a civic-mindedness among critics, theoreticians, filmmakers, and film-watchers alike which holds that film should be able to present at least some verifiable truths and that filmmaking should still be able to provide a reliable document. However, since film is always a mediation of something else, the direct path to these truths - as the debates about documentary filmmaking and realism have shown - will always be complex, and, indeed, contingent upon the culture in which they find purchase. What is at stake then, is not so much what is real and what is not, but the conditions under which verisimilitude - the experience of reality - can be taken to occur and be produced. This paper is about some of the pleasures to be found in watching a cinematic depiction of theft. Theft is something we do not ordinarily see. In cinematic depictions of theft we are shown something that occurs underneath the surface of our everyday reality. Just as much as cinema is deceptive, therefore, so too can it penetrate and explore deceptive phenomena.

Stolen glances: heist cinema and the visual production of deception

The capacity to deceive figures into cinema's history in a number of interesting ways. For Melies, motion pictures allowed the technical production of deception and illusion for his "trick" films, and in popular mythology, frightened spectators fled an exhibition of Auguste and Louis Lumiere's L'Arrivee d'un train en gare de la Ciotat (1895) fearing the imminent arrival of the train at the theatre itself. While this latter story has been roundly discredited, it holds an important place in cinematic lore. In the various efforts of documentary filmmakers to negate the idea of objective truth, whether through direct cinema/cinema verite, the use of reflexive gestures, or subjective positioning, there is a sense of an imminent threat of deception in film's mediation of truth. As Tom Gunning (2004) and Rachel O. Moore (2000) have recently argued, even critical explorations of cinema, quite as much as filmmaking practices themselves, have held the medium in deep suspicion. In the screen theories derived from Lacan and Althusser that dominated 1970s film studies we see film scholars move towards a conception of film that sees deception and trickery - otherwise called "ideological mystification" - as an innate feature of the cinematic apparatus. Despite, or perhaps because of, these ongoing concerns, there seems to be a civic-mindedness among critics, theoreticians, filmmakers, and film-watchers alike which holds that film should be able to present at least some verifiable truths and that filmmaking should still be able to provide a reliable document. However, since film is always a mediation of something else, the direct path to these truths - as the debates about documentary filmmaking and realism have shown - will always be complex, and, indeed, contingent upon the culture in which they find purchase. What is at stake then, is not so much what is real and what is not, but the conditions under which verisimilitude - the experience of reality - can be taken to occur and be produced. This paper is about some of the pleasures to be found in watching a cinematic depiction of theft. Theft is something we do not ordinarily see. In cinematic depictions of theft we are shown something that occurs underneath the surface of our everyday reality. Just as much as cinema is deceptive, therefore, so too can it penetrate and explore deceptive phenomena.

Economies of Inattention

This chapter considers such conventional documentaries as Primary, Crisis, The War Room, and Feed, films that take viewers behind the scenes of presidencies and presidential political campaigns. The filmmakers’ absent editorial voice leaves room for viewers to decide for themselves how they will interpret the recorded images. Thus, at first glance, direct cinema seems to share little in common with the unhinged, racist, conspiracy theories found throughout the cycle of anti-Obama documentaries central to the chapter. However, as I argue, both cycles of films—direct cinema and the hysterical anti-Obama documentaries—rely on related economies of attention, both of which invite viewers to heed the bare distinctions between privacy and publicity. The conservative films construct irresolvable problems; by leaving any solutions in doubt, and projecting this undecidability onto Obama’s very body and being, the documentaries combine hysteria with racist discourse.

Cine directo, aproximaciones pedagógicas de lo cotidiano

Resumen: Este artículo establece relaciones entre el cine y la educación, pensando la dimensión del primero como un aporte valioso para las pedagogías actuales. Desde las múltiples ramas de las artes, el campo del cine y su diversidad de género, ofrece elementos enriquecedores para alimentar las prácticas pedagógicas y de investigación. Es el caso del cinema directo, que desde su planteamiento documental y social, contribuye a una reflexión artística y pedagógica, tanto desde los temas que trata como de los modos técnicos que presentan estos contenidos. En efecto, el cine directo emerge en el corazón de las transformaciones sociales de los años 60-70 y converge con los diferentes cambios de la misma época: giro narrativo en la investigación y giro de la educación tradicional hacia pedagogías alternativas. Veremos en este escrito, a través del género del cine directo, los aportes del cine en el campo de la educación, la investigación, y en lo social. Para ello, a partir del análisis de extractos de la película National Gallery de Frederick Wiseman, estableceremos interconexiones con la educación artística y la formación docente, tomando en cuenta los contenidos y maneras de filmar. En este sentido, el cine nos aporta un modo particular de mirar y analizar las transformaciones pedagógicas y el conocimiento emergente en nuestra época. Palabras clave: formación docente, investigación-creación, interacciones interdisciplinares. Abstract: This article establishes relations between cinema and education, considering the dimension of the first as a valuable contribution to current pedagogies. From the multiple branches of the arts, the field of cinema and its diversity of genre, offers enriching elements to feed pedagogical and research practices. This is the case of direct cinema, which from its documentary and social approach, contributes to an artistic and pedagogical reflection, both from the topics it deals with and from the technical modes that present these contents. Indeed, direct cinema emerges at the heart of the social transformations of the 60s and 70s and converges with the different changes of the same era: narrative turn in research and the shift of traditional education towards alternative pedagogies. We will see in this writing, through the genre of direct cinema, the contributions of cinema in the field of education, research and socially. For this, from the analysis of extracts from the film National Gallery by Frederick Wiseman, we will establish interconnections with artistic education and teacher training, taking into account the contents and ways of filming to present them. In this sense, cinema gives us a particular way of looking at and analyzing pedagogical transformations and emerging knowledge in our time. Keywords: teacher training, research-creation, interdisciplinary interactions

The Nyama (kinship) Documentary as an Intolerant Comparative Discourse in Pegayaman Village, Buleleng, Bali

The Nyama documentary is as a counter-discourse on intolerant attitudes in Indonesia. Nyama film was the result of research and creation of written and audio-visual data documentation of the acculturation of art and culture in the Muslim village of Pegayaman Buleleng, Bali. It was an observational/direct cinema-style documentary film acculturation of Hindu and Islamic arts and culture in Pegayaman Village, Buleleng, Bali. The Nyama film identified the perceptions and acculturation of art and culture in Pegayaman Village, Buleleng, Bali. It was a qualitative descriptive research method. Sources of data obtained through a purposive sampling method were done by accidental sampling technique. The location of the sampling was carried out in Pegayaman Village, Buleleng, Bali. The method used in achieving these goals was Representing reality. The documentary tells an event or reality (facts and data). Principally, documentary films are based on facts and are demanded to be loyal to those facts. Discussion of research and creation of this movie is the observational/direct cinema documentaries. This film tells the story of several people in Pegayaman Village. The subjects in this film are not in the same condition but are equally struggling to preserve the acculturation of Hindu and Islamic arts and culture in the Bali region. The information building in this film was a combination of interviews with selected subjects. The results of the research and creation were in the form of Nyama documentary films. The Nyama documentary is an acculturation campaign for arts and culture and a counter-discourse on the intolerant attitude of Indonesian society that is multicultural and has the character of Indonesian nationality.

Onstage/Onscreen

The link between alternative film production and rock culture continued in the subgenre of the music festival documentary, which came into being through the direct cinema documentary movement. The transition from the recording studio to the live stage was a defining one for rock culture at the end of the 1960s, and the aesthetics of presenting dynamic concert performances—communicated widely by audio and moving image representations of concerts—displayed ideals of rock authenticity. Exploring four feature documentary projects organized around the countercultural space of the rock festival, my third chapter demonstrates how emergent means of nonfiction film production shaped the onscreen spectacle of a rock musician performing live onstage. Through concert documentaries, a rock star no longer had to go to the studio lot to appear onscreen; instead, their stage labor could be preserved and extended through new camera and sound recording technologies. However, while the technologies (and filmmakers’ philosophies) that informed direct cinema seemed to offer a uniquely uncompromised means for representing rock culture onscreen, the production histories of concert documentaries also reveal how rock stars’ control over their own representation was not distributed equally, ranging from the option of refusing to be filmed to the power to determine whether a film project even saw the light of day. Produced in the absence of major film studios, arrangements of power between filmmakers, rock stars, and festival organizers existed on a case-by-case basis, and rock stars operated on a spectrum between observed subjects and controlling gatekeepers of moving image depictions of their performances.

Let’s Talk about S… : The Influence of Cinéma Vérité on Sex Education in French National Television around 1968

Studying the French audiovisual mediascape the contribution asks when and how the issue of sexuality and sexual education surfaced on TV. As direct cinema micro-trottoire techniques met sex education they challenged classical talk shows. Thereby they reframed who could be a speaking subject in front of the TV camera. Contrasting official TV shows used in a systematic fashion as principal primary source the contribution moves on to look at school television and amateur videos, used as counterarchives. How did these multiple screens differ in informing or educating about sexuality? Their comparative and integrated analysis emphasizes how intimate, ordinary, and ‘real’ self-exhibition in intimate confessional scenes and unscripted street interviews became key portraits and tropes situated on the fence between exploring and exploiting.

Film Dokumenter Penenun Tapis Lampung Sebagai Media Identitas Kultural

The Lampung Wastra, called the Tapis, is an intangible artifact that has exotic characteristics and uniqueness like fabrics in other parts of Indonesia. All typical fabrics in the archipelago become cultural icons in each region, especially the Tapis discussed in this paper are indeed in the 'critical' space. In fact, the number of Tapis weavers and the process of regeneration of weavers is not going well. In fact, the number of Tapis weavers and the process of regeneration of weavers is not going well. Weavers who understand the history of Tapis, the meaning of motifs, patterns, types as well as their functions remain one person in Lampung, the rest only have an understanding in the aesthetic area and do not understand the deeper layers of the Tapis, both the meaning, historical value, articulation of forms and motifs used in the Tapis . The design of this documentary film will be made by combining direct cinema and social reconstruction documentary, referring to the form of direct cinema which is the disclosure of a fact that occurs about this Tapis fabric. polemic that occurs in the development of Tapis cloth in terms of philosophical, function and economic aspects, which will provide a strong dramatization in this documentary. For this reason, efforts should be made to build the image of Tapis fabric as a distinctive identity of Lampung cloth, build brand personality through weavers who still preserve cultural processes in making Tapis fabrics. Along with that there must be an effort to re-inform the philosophical values contained in the process of making Tapis fabric.