Nikos Kazantzakis’ Unshot Adaptations of Don Quixote and Decameron

This article examines two of Nikos Kazantzakis’ unshot screenplays of the early 1930s: his adaptations of Cervantes’ Don Quixote and Boccaccio’s Decameron, kept in typed manuscripts at the Nikos Kazantzakis Museum Foundation in Iraklion, Crete. The article analyses Kazantzakis’ Don Quixote and Decameron in the contexts of early talking cinema and his ideas of the image-language relationship. Written at a time when the artistic value of talking cinema was still debated, Kazantzakis’ adaptations demonstrate that he sought to express ideas with images rather than dialogue (Don Quixote) and use sound as a creative element (Decameron) in ways alluding to Eisenstein’s 1928-1929 writings, with which, as evidence suggests, the Greek author was familiar. Thus, Kazantzakis’ Don Quixote and Decameron show how a technological development in film history – the coming of sound – and the Soviet film theory influenced this author’s adaptation techniques, while also enhancing our understanding of his creative career as well as the worldwide resonance of Cervantes’ and Boccaccio’s literary milestones.

Reframing culture: Stuart Cunningham's legacies

This essay offers an appreciation of Stuart Cunningham's substantial and diverse contributions to ‘reframing culture’ in Australian research, policy and industry practice, from his early reformulations of Australian film history to his recent work on digital media disruption. The essay discusses the range of Cunningham's institutional and intellectual legacies, suggesting that his advocacy for cultural policy and the creative industries together with his leadership of major collaborative research initiatives in the humanities and social sciences have been especially important for media and cultural studies in Australia. Further, his approach to the project of ‘reframing culture’ is likely to remain a critical task.

La construcción del arquetipo norteamericano. La imagen cinematográfica y televisiva de Abraham Lincoln en los Estados Unidos

El legado histórico de Abraham Lincoln lo ha convertido probablemente en el presidente más importante de los Estados Unidos. Su defensa de la Unión, la abolición de la esclavitud y la Guerra Civil, lo han transformado en el líder esencial para comprender la América contemporánea. Por ello, Lincoln ha sido un referente en la historia del cine norteamericano. Desde las filmaciones tempranas hasta la actualidad, el decimosexto presidente ha constituido un arquetipo representacional asociado a los periodos históricos en los que su figura ha sido reconstruida, vinculada mayoritariamente a tiempos de crisis en los que se refrendaba su carácter mediador y su inteligencia política como modelos de afirmación norteamericana. Lincoln, que había sido capaz de unir y reconciliar a la nación en el periodo más crítico de su joven cronología, se convirtió en el modelo de construcción del mito norteamericano, cuya mención iluminó los periodos oscuros de la Depresión y la Segunda Guerra Mundial. Cuando el país se convirtió en la potencia hegemónica, su figura evolucionó como memoria visual y referente ante los abusos de poder y a las políticas manipuladoras. The historical legacy of Abraham Lincoln has made him probably the most important U.S. president. His support of the Union, the abolition of slavery and the Civil War have made him the central figure of contemporary American understanding. That is why Lincoln has been a landmark in American film history. From early filming to the present day, the 16th President has been a representational archetype of the historical periods in which his figure has been reconstructed. A figure mainly linked to periods of crisis in which his mediating character and political intelligence were endorsed as models of American affirmation. Lincoln, who had been able to unite and reconcile the nation in the most critical period of its young chronology, became the model for the construction of the American myth. His mention shed light on the dark periods of depression and the Second World War. When his country became the world’s hegemonic power, his figure was transmuted into visual memory as a reference in the face of abuses of power and manipulative policies.

Rising Sulphur and Raising Sheep: Landscape, Identity and Amateur Film in New Zealand c.1923-1939

<p>Looking at early examples of amateur filmmaking from the period 1923-1939, which have been deposited in New Zealand's national film archive, Ngā Taonga Sound and Vision, this thesis considers how amateur practice both relates to and deviates from other contemporary forms of visual culture such as professional cinema. Internationally, scholars and archivists have recently begun to examine ways that amateur films or home movies, which document personal, local and everyday experience, supplement other sources of visual history. There have, however, been few studies to date of this aspect of New Zealand's film history. While the idiosyncratic language of films intended for private use complicates their interpretation in an archive, it is argued that home movies display a 'referential coherence' in relation to other media, which offers a way of understanding amateur films as historical documents in the public domain. This relationship is explored looking at holiday films recorded at a popular sightseeing destination and films depicting working life on sheep farms. Portrayed as an exotic wonderland with spectacular geothermal activity and authentic Māori culture on display, Rotorua, as seen in promotional media, exemplified the widespread representation of New Zealand as a scenic playground. Amateur films offer a more ambivalent view of the tourist locality's geography and inhabitants. Made by outsiders familiar with popular representations, amateur tourist films resemble the imagery of professional media in many respects, however, they do so largely without articulating the simplistic narratives of publicity material. Picturesque images depicting rural New Zealand as an idyllic pastoral paradise have a long history across a wide range of media. While idealised scenic views of the countryside, which consistently ignored the social realities of rural existence, appear to presuppose the unfamiliar gaze of an (urban) outsider, rural residents recorded their own impressions of their surroundings on film. Less concerned with scenery than with the scene of daily life, amateur farming films document specific concrete experiences in a particular time and place, yet simultaneously appear to share, if not so much the iconography or aesthetics of professional media, at least some of the wider aspirations of cultural discourses in circulation. It may be concluded therefore that the study of amateur media production contributes to an understanding of how individuals and groups internalise and reproduce, or alternatively disregard, prevailing social ideologies.</p>

Rising Sulphur and Raising Sheep: Landscape, Identity and Amateur Film in New Zealand c.1923-1939

<p>Looking at early examples of amateur filmmaking from the period 1923-1939, which have been deposited in New Zealand's national film archive, Ngā Taonga Sound and Vision, this thesis considers how amateur practice both relates to and deviates from other contemporary forms of visual culture such as professional cinema. Internationally, scholars and archivists have recently begun to examine ways that amateur films or home movies, which document personal, local and everyday experience, supplement other sources of visual history. There have, however, been few studies to date of this aspect of New Zealand's film history. While the idiosyncratic language of films intended for private use complicates their interpretation in an archive, it is argued that home movies display a 'referential coherence' in relation to other media, which offers a way of understanding amateur films as historical documents in the public domain. This relationship is explored looking at holiday films recorded at a popular sightseeing destination and films depicting working life on sheep farms. Portrayed as an exotic wonderland with spectacular geothermal activity and authentic Māori culture on display, Rotorua, as seen in promotional media, exemplified the widespread representation of New Zealand as a scenic playground. Amateur films offer a more ambivalent view of the tourist locality's geography and inhabitants. Made by outsiders familiar with popular representations, amateur tourist films resemble the imagery of professional media in many respects, however, they do so largely without articulating the simplistic narratives of publicity material. Picturesque images depicting rural New Zealand as an idyllic pastoral paradise have a long history across a wide range of media. While idealised scenic views of the countryside, which consistently ignored the social realities of rural existence, appear to presuppose the unfamiliar gaze of an (urban) outsider, rural residents recorded their own impressions of their surroundings on film. Less concerned with scenery than with the scene of daily life, amateur farming films document specific concrete experiences in a particular time and place, yet simultaneously appear to share, if not so much the iconography or aesthetics of professional media, at least some of the wider aspirations of cultural discourses in circulation. It may be concluded therefore that the study of amateur media production contributes to an understanding of how individuals and groups internalise and reproduce, or alternatively disregard, prevailing social ideologies.</p>

Provincializing Bollywood

This book situates Bhojpuri cinema within the long history of vernacular media production, which was kick-started by audio cassettes and spurred on further with VCDs and DVDs. The emergence of multiplex-malls and the evacuation of single-screen theatres all over north India, at a time of massive real estate development, particularly in peninsular Indian cities, which required working class migrants’ ‘manual labour’ also prepared the ground for new linguistic consolidations and cultural forms. Investigating the historical, theoretical and empirical bases of Bhojpuri media production, the book tries to make sense of cinema within the ‘comparative media crucible’, in which film history sits alongside floods, droughts, musical traditions, gendered segregation, real estate boom, libidinal youth cultures, urban resettlements and highway modernities. The book grapples with Bhojpuri media from within Hindi film history, from the vantage point of provincial north India, in the light of the socio-technical upheavals of the last three decades. Foregrounding the libidinal energies, language politics and curatorial informalities, the book argues that Bhojpuri cinema could be conceptualized via the logic of overflow. Animated by libidinal affordances which have breached all formal embankments, it thrives on a curious blend of scandalizing and moralizing overtones.

Otherwise

This chapter shows that if seen from the film distribution-exhibition end, film history in India appears remarkably different from the iconic ‘family films’ which played in the premier theatres. It analyses the fringe exhibition sector, in which action, horror, sleaze genres flourished via dubbing, remakes, informal rehashing and insertion of pornographic ‘bits’. Situating the eruption of Bhojpuri cinema vis-a-vis these genres and their working-class patrons, the chapter establishes its continuity with the informal media economy of pirated disks, microSD data transfers and illegal settlements, all of which constitute the suboptimal transactions of Bhojpuri songs, music videos, films but also Hindi/Tamil/Telugu action films. Arguing that these transactions constitute the ‘meanwhile’ temporality of transitory urban settlements perpetually negotiating their legality with urban planners and administrators, the chapter situates a meanwhile subjectivity of the provincial migrants which remains sandwiched between the superhighways of global modernity and the crumbling infrastructures of provincial life.

Jill Craigie, Post-war British Film Culture and the British Film Academy

This article seeks to locate the socialist feminist film-maker Jill Craigie in the British film culture of the post-war period. Long regarded in scholarly accounts as something of an outsider, a woman who was effectively shut out of the industry during the 1950s, this article seeks to position Craigie rather differently. While acknowledging the obstacles she undoubtedly faced, it details aspects of her achievements and her visibility in the British film culture of the immediate post-war period. Craigie's politically driven documentaries and realist film practice accorded with prevailing discourses of ‘quality’ and she acquired the status of what would today be termed a media personality who worked across film, radio, television and print media. Considering Craigie as a figure embedded in the British film establishment, this article gives particular emphasis to her role in the British Film Academy (BFA), arguing that the significance of this practitioner-led organisation has yet to be fully recognised in British film history. The argument draws on archives held at the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) to begin a discussion of how the BFA, and Craigie as the first woman to be elected to its Management Council, played its part in the development of British film culture.

Screening the Police

American police departments have presided over the business of motion pictures since the end of the nineteenth century. Their influence is evident not only on the screen but also in the ways movies are made, promoted, and viewed in the United States. Screening the Police explores the history of film’s entwinement with law enforcement, showing the role that state power has played in the creation and expansion of a popular medium. For the New Jersey State Police in the 1930s, film offered a method of visualizing criminality and of circulating urgent information about escaped convicts. For the New York Police Department, the medium was a means of making the agency world famous as early as 1896. Beat cops became movie stars. Police chiefs made their own documentaries. And from Maine to California, state and local law enforcement agencies regularly fingerprinted filmgoers for decades, amassing enormous records as they infiltrated theaters both big and small. Understanding the scope of police power in the United States requires attention to an aspect of film history that has long been ignored. Screening the Police reveals the extent to which American cinema has overlapped with the politics and practices of law enforcement. Today, commercial filmmaking is heavily reliant on public policing—and vice versa. How such a working relationship was forged and sustained across the long twentieth century is the subject of this book.