Anne Herschberg Pierrot
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780197266670
- eISBN:
- 9780191905391
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- British Academy
- DOI:
- 10.5871/bacad/9780197266670.003.0017
- Subject:
- Literature, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies
This chapter explores the connections between Le Lexique de l’auteur (the seminar of 1973–4 in which Barthes reflects on the genesis of the text that will become Roland Barthes par Roland Barthes), ...
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This chapter explores the connections between Le Lexique de l’auteur (the seminar of 1973–4 in which Barthes reflects on the genesis of the text that will become Roland Barthes par Roland Barthes), La Préparation du roman (his last Collège de France lecture course of 1978–80), and critical essays he wrote in the mid- and late 1970s on scription, the ductus, and writing as gesture (from an anthropological point of view, as in the posthumously published Variations sur l’écriture, and within the paintings of Bernard Réquichot and Cy Twombly). The main focus will be on Barthes’s reflection, across the two seminars, on the idea of the virtual work: his exploration of the modalities of literary genesis in the grammatical mood of the ‘as if’, and his development of ways of modelling literary genesis through the concept of the œuvre-maquette. This bringing together of modelling, genesis, and writing as process, placed in relation to the desire to write as a significant dimension of actual writing, is one of the strikingly original aspects of Barthes’s 1970s thought. It is one that the posthumous publication of the seminars and lectures allows us to understand.Less
This chapter explores the connections between Le Lexique de l’auteur (the seminar of 1973–4 in which Barthes reflects on the genesis of the text that will become Roland Barthes par Roland Barthes), La Préparation du roman (his last Collège de France lecture course of 1978–80), and critical essays he wrote in the mid- and late 1970s on scription, the ductus, and writing as gesture (from an anthropological point of view, as in the posthumously published Variations sur l’écriture, and within the paintings of Bernard Réquichot and Cy Twombly). The main focus will be on Barthes’s reflection, across the two seminars, on the idea of the virtual work: his exploration of the modalities of literary genesis in the grammatical mood of the ‘as if’, and his development of ways of modelling literary genesis through the concept of the œuvre-maquette. This bringing together of modelling, genesis, and writing as process, placed in relation to the desire to write as a significant dimension of actual writing, is one of the strikingly original aspects of Barthes’s 1970s thought. It is one that the posthumous publication of the seminars and lectures allows us to understand.
Gregory J. Watkins
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- January 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780195335989
- eISBN:
- 9780199868940
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195335989.003.0018
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
This chapter reports on a course that successfully uses film to introduce students to the basic theoretical approaches to the study of religion. In conjunction with primary text selections from some ...
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This chapter reports on a course that successfully uses film to introduce students to the basic theoretical approaches to the study of religion. In conjunction with primary text selections from some of the great theorists of religion, students use the films they see to deepen their appreciation and consideration of the various theoretical orientations while asking about the nature of film itself. The course is guided by an overarching consideration of the proposition that film makes possible a unique articulation of religious thought and experience. The chapter also discusses some of the practical challenges of making film viewing a central part of the work in the course, from the logistics of screenings to the use of film clips on exams.Less
This chapter reports on a course that successfully uses film to introduce students to the basic theoretical approaches to the study of religion. In conjunction with primary text selections from some of the great theorists of religion, students use the films they see to deepen their appreciation and consideration of the various theoretical orientations while asking about the nature of film itself. The course is guided by an overarching consideration of the proposition that film makes possible a unique articulation of religious thought and experience. The chapter also discusses some of the practical challenges of making film viewing a central part of the work in the course, from the logistics of screenings to the use of film clips on exams.
Viola Shafik
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9789774160653
- eISBN:
- 9781936190096
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- American University in Cairo Press
- DOI:
- 10.5743/cairo/9789774160653.003.0005
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Middle Eastern Studies
Arab film making was only partly able to compete with “First World” cinema. It has remained greatly dependent on Western imports, technical know-how, evaluation, and partly even on Western financial ...
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Arab film making was only partly able to compete with “First World” cinema. It has remained greatly dependent on Western imports, technical know-how, evaluation, and partly even on Western financial support. The so-called Third-Worldist anti-colonial cinema did not succeed in resolving the contradiction between cultural promotion, political commitment, and rentability, and was soon eclipsed either by entirely mainstream-oriented cinema or by the rather anti-authoritarian, deconstructive, and stylistically innovative, yet regionally marginalized, cinéma d'auteur. Nonetheless, mainstream as well as individualist cinema was able to convey elements of native art and culture, and became actively involved in the creation of specific national or cultural identities. Although the medium became part of a mass-mediated culture and functioned as a means of mass entertainment, commercialism, the obligation to rentability, and competition with Western products did not result in a complete imitation of Western cinema, but initiated the reformation of the imported film language according to the needs of local audiences.Less
Arab film making was only partly able to compete with “First World” cinema. It has remained greatly dependent on Western imports, technical know-how, evaluation, and partly even on Western financial support. The so-called Third-Worldist anti-colonial cinema did not succeed in resolving the contradiction between cultural promotion, political commitment, and rentability, and was soon eclipsed either by entirely mainstream-oriented cinema or by the rather anti-authoritarian, deconstructive, and stylistically innovative, yet regionally marginalized, cinéma d'auteur. Nonetheless, mainstream as well as individualist cinema was able to convey elements of native art and culture, and became actively involved in the creation of specific national or cultural identities. Although the medium became part of a mass-mediated culture and functioned as a means of mass entertainment, commercialism, the obligation to rentability, and competition with Western products did not result in a complete imitation of Western cinema, but initiated the reformation of the imported film language according to the needs of local audiences.
Alexander Kluge
Richard Langston (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781501739200
- eISBN:
- 9781501739224
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9781501739200.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Media Studies
This book's author is one of contemporary Germany's leading intellectuals and artists. A key architect of the New German Cinema and a pioneer of auteur television programming, who has also written ...
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This book's author is one of contemporary Germany's leading intellectuals and artists. A key architect of the New German Cinema and a pioneer of auteur television programming, who has also written books and articles, and continues to make films. However, his reputation outside of the German-speaking world still largely rests on his films of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. This book assembles thirty of the author's essays, speeches, glossaries, and interviews, revolving around the capacity for differentiation and the need for orientation toward ways out of catastrophic modernity. The volume brings together some of the author's most fundamental statements on literature, film, pre- and post-cinematic media, and social theory, nearly all for the first time in English translation. Together, these works highlight a career-spanning commitment to unorthodox, essayistic thinking.Less
This book's author is one of contemporary Germany's leading intellectuals and artists. A key architect of the New German Cinema and a pioneer of auteur television programming, who has also written books and articles, and continues to make films. However, his reputation outside of the German-speaking world still largely rests on his films of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. This book assembles thirty of the author's essays, speeches, glossaries, and interviews, revolving around the capacity for differentiation and the need for orientation toward ways out of catastrophic modernity. The volume brings together some of the author's most fundamental statements on literature, film, pre- and post-cinematic media, and social theory, nearly all for the first time in English translation. Together, these works highlight a career-spanning commitment to unorthodox, essayistic thinking.
Jonathan Kirshner and Jon Lewis (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- January 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781501736094
- eISBN:
- 9781501736117
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9781501736094.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
The “New Hollywood” that emerged in the late sixties is now widely recognized as an era of remarkable filmmaking, when directors enjoyed a unique autonomy to craft ambitious, introspective movies ...
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The “New Hollywood” that emerged in the late sixties is now widely recognized as an era of remarkable filmmaking, when directors enjoyed a unique autonomy to craft ambitious, introspective movies that evinced a cinematic world of hard choices, complex interpersonal relationships, compromised heroes, and uncertain outcomes. The New Hollywood Revisited brings together a remarkable collection of authors (some of whom wrote about the New Hollywood as it unfolded), to revisit this unique era in American cinema (circa 1967-1976). It was a decade in which a number of extraordinary factors – including the end of a half-century-old censorship regime and economic and demographic changes to the American film audience – converged and created a new type of commercial film, imprinted with the social and political context of the times: the civil rights movement, the Vietnam War, the sexual revolution, women’s liberation, economic distress, urban decay, and, looming, the Shakespearean saga of the Nixon presidency. This volume offers the opportunity to look back, with nearly fifty years hindsight, at a golden age in American filmmaking.Less
The “New Hollywood” that emerged in the late sixties is now widely recognized as an era of remarkable filmmaking, when directors enjoyed a unique autonomy to craft ambitious, introspective movies that evinced a cinematic world of hard choices, complex interpersonal relationships, compromised heroes, and uncertain outcomes. The New Hollywood Revisited brings together a remarkable collection of authors (some of whom wrote about the New Hollywood as it unfolded), to revisit this unique era in American cinema (circa 1967-1976). It was a decade in which a number of extraordinary factors – including the end of a half-century-old censorship regime and economic and demographic changes to the American film audience – converged and created a new type of commercial film, imprinted with the social and political context of the times: the civil rights movement, the Vietnam War, the sexual revolution, women’s liberation, economic distress, urban decay, and, looming, the Shakespearean saga of the Nixon presidency. This volume offers the opportunity to look back, with nearly fifty years hindsight, at a golden age in American filmmaking.
Annette Insdorf
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252036859
- eISBN:
- 9780252093975
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252036859.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
American director Philip Kaufman is hard to pin down: a visual stylist who is truly literate, a San Franciscan who often makes European films, he is an accessible storyteller with a sophisticated ...
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American director Philip Kaufman is hard to pin down: a visual stylist who is truly literate, a San Franciscan who often makes European films, he is an accessible storyteller with a sophisticated touch. Celebrated for his vigorous, sexy, and reflective cinema, Kaufman is best known for his masterpiece The Unbearable Lightness of Being and the astronaut saga The Right Stuff. His latest film, Hemingway & Gellhorn, stars Nicole Kidman and Clive Owen. This book argues that the stylistic and philosophical richness of Kaufman's cinema makes him a versatile auteur. It demonstrates Kaufman's skill at adaptation, how he finds the precise cinematic device for a story drawn from seemingly unadaptable sources, and how his eye translates the authorial voice from books that serve as inspiration for his films. Closely analyzing his movies to date (including Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Wanderers, and Quills) the book links them by exploring the recurring and resonant themes of sensuality, artistic creation, codes of honor, and freedom from manipulation. While there is no overarching label or bold signature that can be applied to his oeuvre, the book illustrates the consistency of themes, techniques, images, and concerns that permeates all of Kaufman's works.Less
American director Philip Kaufman is hard to pin down: a visual stylist who is truly literate, a San Franciscan who often makes European films, he is an accessible storyteller with a sophisticated touch. Celebrated for his vigorous, sexy, and reflective cinema, Kaufman is best known for his masterpiece The Unbearable Lightness of Being and the astronaut saga The Right Stuff. His latest film, Hemingway & Gellhorn, stars Nicole Kidman and Clive Owen. This book argues that the stylistic and philosophical richness of Kaufman's cinema makes him a versatile auteur. It demonstrates Kaufman's skill at adaptation, how he finds the precise cinematic device for a story drawn from seemingly unadaptable sources, and how his eye translates the authorial voice from books that serve as inspiration for his films. Closely analyzing his movies to date (including Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Wanderers, and Quills) the book links them by exploring the recurring and resonant themes of sensuality, artistic creation, codes of honor, and freedom from manipulation. While there is no overarching label or bold signature that can be applied to his oeuvre, the book illustrates the consistency of themes, techniques, images, and concerns that permeates all of Kaufman's works.
Emanuel Levy
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780231152761
- eISBN:
- 9780231526531
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231152761.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies
Through intimate encounters with the life and work of five contemporary gay male directors, this book develops a framework for interpreting what it means to make a gay film or adopt a gay point of ...
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Through intimate encounters with the life and work of five contemporary gay male directors, this book develops a framework for interpreting what it means to make a gay film or adopt a gay point of view. For most of the twentieth century, gay characters and gay themes were both underrepresented and misrepresented in mainstream cinema. Since the 1970s, however, a new generation of openly gay directors has turned the closet inside out, bringing a poignant immediacy to modern cinema and popular culture. Combining his experienced critique with in-depth interviews, Emanuel Levy draws a clear timeline of gay filmmaking over the past four decades and its particular influences and innovations. While recognizing the “queering” of American culture that resulted from these films, Levy also takes stock of the ensuing conservative backlash and its impact on cinematic art, a trend that continues alongside a growing acceptance of homosexuality. He compares the similarities and differences between the “North American” attitudes of Todd Haynes, Gus Van Sant, and John Waters and the “European” perspectives of Pedro Almodóvar and Terence Davies, developing a truly expansive approach to gay filmmaking and auteur cinema.Less
Through intimate encounters with the life and work of five contemporary gay male directors, this book develops a framework for interpreting what it means to make a gay film or adopt a gay point of view. For most of the twentieth century, gay characters and gay themes were both underrepresented and misrepresented in mainstream cinema. Since the 1970s, however, a new generation of openly gay directors has turned the closet inside out, bringing a poignant immediacy to modern cinema and popular culture. Combining his experienced critique with in-depth interviews, Emanuel Levy draws a clear timeline of gay filmmaking over the past four decades and its particular influences and innovations. While recognizing the “queering” of American culture that resulted from these films, Levy also takes stock of the ensuing conservative backlash and its impact on cinematic art, a trend that continues alongside a growing acceptance of homosexuality. He compares the similarities and differences between the “North American” attitudes of Todd Haynes, Gus Van Sant, and John Waters and the “European” perspectives of Pedro Almodóvar and Terence Davies, developing a truly expansive approach to gay filmmaking and auteur cinema.
Sarah Perks, Isabelle Vanderschelden, and Andy Willis
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- February 2021
- ISBN:
- 9781906733162
- eISBN:
- 9781800342002
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3828/liverpool/9781906733162.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
Taking a text-led approach, with the emphasis on more recent popular films, Studying French Cinema is directed at non-specialists such as students of French, film studies, and the general reader with ...
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Taking a text-led approach, with the emphasis on more recent popular films, Studying French Cinema is directed at non-specialists such as students of French, film studies, and the general reader with an interest in post-war French cinema. Each of the chapters focuses on one or more key films from the ground-breaking films of the nouvelle vague (Les 400 coups, 1959) to contemporary documentary (Etre et avoir, 2002) and puts them into their relevant contexts. Depending on the individual film, these include explorations of childhood, adolescence and coming of age (Les 400 coups, L'Argent de poche); auteur ideology and individual style (the films of Jean-Luc Godard and Agnes Varda); the representation of recent French history (Lacombe Lucien and Au revoir les enfants); transnational production practices (Le Pacte des loups); and popular cinema, comedy and gender issues (e.g. Le Diner de cons). Each film is embedded in its cultural and political context. Together, the historical discussions provide an overview of post-war French history to the present. Useful suggestions are made as to studies of related films, both those discussed within the book and outside.Less
Taking a text-led approach, with the emphasis on more recent popular films, Studying French Cinema is directed at non-specialists such as students of French, film studies, and the general reader with an interest in post-war French cinema. Each of the chapters focuses on one or more key films from the ground-breaking films of the nouvelle vague (Les 400 coups, 1959) to contemporary documentary (Etre et avoir, 2002) and puts them into their relevant contexts. Depending on the individual film, these include explorations of childhood, adolescence and coming of age (Les 400 coups, L'Argent de poche); auteur ideology and individual style (the films of Jean-Luc Godard and Agnes Varda); the representation of recent French history (Lacombe Lucien and Au revoir les enfants); transnational production practices (Le Pacte des loups); and popular cinema, comedy and gender issues (e.g. Le Diner de cons). Each film is embedded in its cultural and political context. Together, the historical discussions provide an overview of post-war French history to the present. Useful suggestions are made as to studies of related films, both those discussed within the book and outside.
Ben McCann
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780719091148
- eISBN:
- 9781526124111
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719091148.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This book is the first ever English-language study of Julien Duvivier (1896-1967), once considered one of the world’s great film filmmakers. It provides new contextual and analytical readings of his ...
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This book is the first ever English-language study of Julien Duvivier (1896-1967), once considered one of the world’s great film filmmakers. It provides new contextual and analytical readings of his films that identify his key themes and techniques, trace patterns of continuity and change, and explore critical assessments of his work over time. Throughout a five-decade career, Duvivier zigzagged between multiple genres – film noir, comedy, literary adaptation – and made over sixty films. His career intersects with important historical moments in French cinema, like the arrival of sound film, the development of the ‘poetic realism’, the exodus to America during the German Occupation, the working within the Hollywood studio system in the 1940s, and the return to France and to a much-changed film landscape in the 1950s.
Often dismissed as a marginal figure in French film history, this groundbreaking book illustrates Duvivier’s eclecticism, technical efficiency and visual fluency in films such as Panique (1946) and Voici le temps des assassins (1956) alongside more familiar works like La Belle Equipe (1936) and Pépé le Moko (1937). It will particularly appeal to scholars and students of French cinema looking for examples of a director who could comfortably straddle the realms of the popular and the auteur.Less
This book is the first ever English-language study of Julien Duvivier (1896-1967), once considered one of the world’s great film filmmakers. It provides new contextual and analytical readings of his films that identify his key themes and techniques, trace patterns of continuity and change, and explore critical assessments of his work over time. Throughout a five-decade career, Duvivier zigzagged between multiple genres – film noir, comedy, literary adaptation – and made over sixty films. His career intersects with important historical moments in French cinema, like the arrival of sound film, the development of the ‘poetic realism’, the exodus to America during the German Occupation, the working within the Hollywood studio system in the 1940s, and the return to France and to a much-changed film landscape in the 1950s.
Often dismissed as a marginal figure in French film history, this groundbreaking book illustrates Duvivier’s eclecticism, technical efficiency and visual fluency in films such as Panique (1946) and Voici le temps des assassins (1956) alongside more familiar works like La Belle Equipe (1936) and Pépé le Moko (1937). It will particularly appeal to scholars and students of French cinema looking for examples of a director who could comfortably straddle the realms of the popular and the auteur.
Joseph Mai
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780719096471
- eISBN:
- 9781526124104
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719096471.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This book provides a comprehensive account of Robert Guédiguian’s numerous films since 1980, combining stylistic analyses with historical, political, and generic context. More importantly, it makes ...
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This book provides a comprehensive account of Robert Guédiguian’s numerous films since 1980, combining stylistic analyses with historical, political, and generic context. More importantly, it makes the case that Guédiguian’s work represents one of the most discretely original but radical projects of contemporary French cinema: to make politically committed films with friends, predominately in a local space, over a long period of time. The book starts with a consideration of the philosophy of friendship and its relation to politics, relation, difference, time, and space. It concentrates on Guédiguian’s early life in the Estaque neighbourhood of Marseilles, where he became politically active and developed the friendships that would continue in his filmmaking, as well as Guédiguian’s disillusionment with the Communist Party. It then examines the political pessimism of the 1980s through Guédiguian’s four early films. The book examines the turn toward local activism and utopianism in the 1990s, and follows Guédiguian’s work as it spreads into diverse experimentation with genres and registers in more recent work. It emphasises Guédiguian’s political assessments and his frequent meditations on history, violence, and utopia. But it returns consistently to the underlying themes of friendship, and thus intervenes at the crossroads of affect, politics, philosophy, and art.Less
This book provides a comprehensive account of Robert Guédiguian’s numerous films since 1980, combining stylistic analyses with historical, political, and generic context. More importantly, it makes the case that Guédiguian’s work represents one of the most discretely original but radical projects of contemporary French cinema: to make politically committed films with friends, predominately in a local space, over a long period of time. The book starts with a consideration of the philosophy of friendship and its relation to politics, relation, difference, time, and space. It concentrates on Guédiguian’s early life in the Estaque neighbourhood of Marseilles, where he became politically active and developed the friendships that would continue in his filmmaking, as well as Guédiguian’s disillusionment with the Communist Party. It then examines the political pessimism of the 1980s through Guédiguian’s four early films. The book examines the turn toward local activism and utopianism in the 1990s, and follows Guédiguian’s work as it spreads into diverse experimentation with genres and registers in more recent work. It emphasises Guédiguian’s political assessments and his frequent meditations on history, violence, and utopia. But it returns consistently to the underlying themes of friendship, and thus intervenes at the crossroads of affect, politics, philosophy, and art.
Condee Nancy
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- May 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780195366761
- eISBN:
- 9780199867394
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195366761.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies
Sokurov’s cinematic “ark,” to cite his best-known work, is hardly an inclusive, biblical congeries of all earthly animals. It is a gathering of elite gentility adrift in a catastrophe largely of its ...
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Sokurov’s cinematic “ark,” to cite his best-known work, is hardly an inclusive, biblical congeries of all earthly animals. It is a gathering of elite gentility adrift in a catastrophe largely of its own making, dancing to the exquisite music of its isolated culture, oblivious to the impending historical “accident.” Here, for Sokurov, the imperial imagination is a robust, sense-making instrument. And while Russian Ark is neither typical nor representative, such distant films as Days of the Eclipse or Second Circle nevertheless reveal contrastive features of a shared, imaginative topography. It is not in a literal sense that Turkmenistan (Days of the Eclipse), the frozen north (Second Circle) or the Tajik border (Spiritual Voices) belong to the same cinematic empire. Indeed, the African colonialist footage (Mournful Indifference), the Nazi mountain-retreat (Moloch) and Japanese palace (Sun), or Sokurov’s Anglophile, seafaring preoccupations (Confession) are hardly the historical residue of Russia’s overland imperium, but function as loan-fantasies, something beyond, as Said has suggested, “mere” positive knowledge. Tropes speculatively associated with empire’s legacy, like an elite, insular center and distant periphery and a preference for grand, oracular eschatology, provide productive environments for inquiry.Less
Sokurov’s cinematic “ark,” to cite his best-known work, is hardly an inclusive, biblical congeries of all earthly animals. It is a gathering of elite gentility adrift in a catastrophe largely of its own making, dancing to the exquisite music of its isolated culture, oblivious to the impending historical “accident.” Here, for Sokurov, the imperial imagination is a robust, sense-making instrument. And while Russian Ark is neither typical nor representative, such distant films as Days of the Eclipse or Second Circle nevertheless reveal contrastive features of a shared, imaginative topography. It is not in a literal sense that Turkmenistan (Days of the Eclipse), the frozen north (Second Circle) or the Tajik border (Spiritual Voices) belong to the same cinematic empire. Indeed, the African colonialist footage (Mournful Indifference), the Nazi mountain-retreat (Moloch) and Japanese palace (Sun), or Sokurov’s Anglophile, seafaring preoccupations (Confession) are hardly the historical residue of Russia’s overland imperium, but function as loan-fantasies, something beyond, as Said has suggested, “mere” positive knowledge. Tropes speculatively associated with empire’s legacy, like an elite, insular center and distant periphery and a preference for grand, oracular eschatology, provide productive environments for inquiry.
Condee Nancy
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- May 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780195366761
- eISBN:
- 9780199867394
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195366761.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies
In German’s Lapshin and Khrustalev, the child-protagonist witnesses events the meaning of which becomes evident only over decades. A similar ignorance, the filmmaker has suggested, could be found in ...
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In German’s Lapshin and Khrustalev, the child-protagonist witnesses events the meaning of which becomes evident only over decades. A similar ignorance, the filmmaker has suggested, could be found in his earlier Trial on the Road: “one could say that the protagonist’s ignorance is primary for us.” With his meticulous, even forensic reconstitution of the mid-century’s mise-en-scène, German is concerned with how the historical moment is perpetually in excess of our immediate capacity to grasp its content. German’s own work has undergone an oddly analogous accumulation of meaning. As the screening exodus at Cannes (1998) painfully suggested, his audience saw Khrustalev in a naïve, ignorant manner unavailable to us as we watch the film today. German typically takes stories from the older, metropolitan elite who became the Soviet intelligentsia, and tells them to an art-house audience who, however unintentionally, ceased to be the Soviet intelligentsia. For the educated, metropolitan children of that first Soviet generation, the future as conceived by their fathers gradually became a weakened operative concept. That Soviet future, recaptured by German at the historical moment of most ambitious construction, is screened as an homage to the verdancy, ignorance, and naiveté of the fathers.Less
In German’s Lapshin and Khrustalev, the child-protagonist witnesses events the meaning of which becomes evident only over decades. A similar ignorance, the filmmaker has suggested, could be found in his earlier Trial on the Road: “one could say that the protagonist’s ignorance is primary for us.” With his meticulous, even forensic reconstitution of the mid-century’s mise-en-scène, German is concerned with how the historical moment is perpetually in excess of our immediate capacity to grasp its content. German’s own work has undergone an oddly analogous accumulation of meaning. As the screening exodus at Cannes (1998) painfully suggested, his audience saw Khrustalev in a naïve, ignorant manner unavailable to us as we watch the film today. German typically takes stories from the older, metropolitan elite who became the Soviet intelligentsia, and tells them to an art-house audience who, however unintentionally, ceased to be the Soviet intelligentsia. For the educated, metropolitan children of that first Soviet generation, the future as conceived by their fathers gradually became a weakened operative concept. That Soviet future, recaptured by German at the historical moment of most ambitious construction, is screened as an homage to the verdancy, ignorance, and naiveté of the fathers.
Emily Hughes
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- February 2021
- ISBN:
- 9781906733438
- eISBN:
- 9781800342026
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3828/liverpool/9781906733438.003.0012
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter summarises the study of Pedro Almodóvar's Talk to Her (2002). Talk to Her is a film that reflects the social and historical context of Spain and demonstrates many of Almodóvar's auteur ...
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This chapter summarises the study of Pedro Almodóvar's Talk to Her (2002). Talk to Her is a film that reflects the social and historical context of Spain and demonstrates many of Almodóvar's auteur characteristics. Its award-winning screenplay defies traditional conventions in genre and narrative structure whilst still creating something that is aesthetically pleasing and accessible to view. The interpretations cited in this book are not the only interpretations. This is a film which becomes richer through discussion and analysis and by approaching it from different critical approaches such as: auteur, genre, narrative, gender, and psychoanalytic film theory. Indeed, the film leaves the viewer with many interesting questions to consider. Ultimately, it is important to look at the film within the body of Almodóvar's work, particularly through exploring his depictions of rape.Less
This chapter summarises the study of Pedro Almodóvar's Talk to Her (2002). Talk to Her is a film that reflects the social and historical context of Spain and demonstrates many of Almodóvar's auteur characteristics. Its award-winning screenplay defies traditional conventions in genre and narrative structure whilst still creating something that is aesthetically pleasing and accessible to view. The interpretations cited in this book are not the only interpretations. This is a film which becomes richer through discussion and analysis and by approaching it from different critical approaches such as: auteur, genre, narrative, gender, and psychoanalytic film theory. Indeed, the film leaves the viewer with many interesting questions to consider. Ultimately, it is important to look at the film within the body of Almodóvar's work, particularly through exploring his depictions of rape.
Kerry D. Soper
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781496817280
- eISBN:
- 9781496817327
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781496817280.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Comics Studies
This book explores Gary Larson’s unlikely career as the creator of the groundbreaking, syndicated panel cartoon, The Far Side. To help contemporary readers understand the controversial qualities and ...
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This book explores Gary Larson’s unlikely career as the creator of the groundbreaking, syndicated panel cartoon, The Far Side. To help contemporary readers understand the controversial qualities and cultural significance of Larson’s work, the author recreates the historical context in which The Far Side first emerged: the early 1980s when “family-friendly” mainstream mediums like the newspaper comics page were largely intolerant of alternative worldviews or irreverent brands of comedy. As a self-taught cartooning auteur with a morbid sense of humor and subversively scientific perspective on life, Larson resisted or bypassed most of the established rules about “appropriate” art and comedy on the Funnies Page. That independence allowed him to introduce a set of innovative aesthetic devices, comedic tones, and philosophical frames that challenged and delighted many readers, while upsetting and confusing others. In sum, this book reminds old fans and new readers of the ways that Larson’s iconoclastic work and career effectively broadened the culture’s palate for alternative comedy, profoundly shaping the worldviews and comedic sensibilities of a generation of cartoonists, comedy writers and every day readers.Less
This book explores Gary Larson’s unlikely career as the creator of the groundbreaking, syndicated panel cartoon, The Far Side. To help contemporary readers understand the controversial qualities and cultural significance of Larson’s work, the author recreates the historical context in which The Far Side first emerged: the early 1980s when “family-friendly” mainstream mediums like the newspaper comics page were largely intolerant of alternative worldviews or irreverent brands of comedy. As a self-taught cartooning auteur with a morbid sense of humor and subversively scientific perspective on life, Larson resisted or bypassed most of the established rules about “appropriate” art and comedy on the Funnies Page. That independence allowed him to introduce a set of innovative aesthetic devices, comedic tones, and philosophical frames that challenged and delighted many readers, while upsetting and confusing others. In sum, this book reminds old fans and new readers of the ways that Larson’s iconoclastic work and career effectively broadened the culture’s palate for alternative comedy, profoundly shaping the worldviews and comedic sensibilities of a generation of cartoonists, comedy writers and every day readers.
Julian Murphet
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780252042768
- eISBN:
- 9780252051623
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5622/illinois/9780252042768.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This book is a comprehensive study and appraisal of the career of Todd Solondz, one of the key figures of independent cinema in the 1990s, whose box office fortunes have been in decline ever since ...
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This book is a comprehensive study and appraisal of the career of Todd Solondz, one of the key figures of independent cinema in the 1990s, whose box office fortunes have been in decline ever since that heyday. The book argues that this decline is a fitting analogue for the story of American independent cinema more generally and the declining rate of US corporate profit at large. Tracking the long arc of Solondz's seven major feature-length films, the book isolates certain persistent motifs and themes—the fascination with suburban “junkspace,” the logic of repetition with disappointing variations, the stylistic and formal category of “left classicism,” the indulgence of subjective fantasy counterpointed by an insistence on discomfiting long takes, and the thematic obsession with the “gift of shit”—to account for Solondz's art of diminishing returns under the rubric of satire. The book is more than a simple auteur study in that it establishes a new understanding of the stakes of independent cinema in today's context of economic crisis and decline. It argues that no other contemporary film artist has explored as astutely and perversely the contradictions of aesthetics under the conditions of senile capitalism.Less
This book is a comprehensive study and appraisal of the career of Todd Solondz, one of the key figures of independent cinema in the 1990s, whose box office fortunes have been in decline ever since that heyday. The book argues that this decline is a fitting analogue for the story of American independent cinema more generally and the declining rate of US corporate profit at large. Tracking the long arc of Solondz's seven major feature-length films, the book isolates certain persistent motifs and themes—the fascination with suburban “junkspace,” the logic of repetition with disappointing variations, the stylistic and formal category of “left classicism,” the indulgence of subjective fantasy counterpointed by an insistence on discomfiting long takes, and the thematic obsession with the “gift of shit”—to account for Solondz's art of diminishing returns under the rubric of satire. The book is more than a simple auteur study in that it establishes a new understanding of the stakes of independent cinema in today's context of economic crisis and decline. It argues that no other contemporary film artist has explored as astutely and perversely the contradictions of aesthetics under the conditions of senile capitalism.
Gina Marchetti
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9789888028566
- eISBN:
- 9789882206991
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Hong Kong University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5790/hongkong/9789888028566.003.0013
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
The redefinition of “Hong Kong” occasioned by the Handover coincided with the re-imagination of the city in other ways as well. Produced within this charged political context, Stanley Kwan's Hold You ...
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The redefinition of “Hong Kong” occasioned by the Handover coincided with the re-imagination of the city in other ways as well. Produced within this charged political context, Stanley Kwan's Hold You Tight mediates various local and global currents in queer cinema within Hong Kong screenscapes. Kwan redraws the line, yet again, between popular schlock and New Wave aesthetic experimentation. The film's New Wave auteur credentials are certainly hard to challenge. Hold You Tight won the Alfred Bauer Prize at the Berlin Film Festival as well as the Teddy award for best gay/lesbian film at the festival. Set in Hong Kong and Taipei, Kwan solidifies an important regional link between Taiwan New Cinema and Hong Kong's “Second” Wave. The film offers the distinct vision of a cinematic auteur in addition to the common aesthetic and discursive currency needed to function in the international art film circuit as well as the regional market for Chinese-language cinema.Less
The redefinition of “Hong Kong” occasioned by the Handover coincided with the re-imagination of the city in other ways as well. Produced within this charged political context, Stanley Kwan's Hold You Tight mediates various local and global currents in queer cinema within Hong Kong screenscapes. Kwan redraws the line, yet again, between popular schlock and New Wave aesthetic experimentation. The film's New Wave auteur credentials are certainly hard to challenge. Hold You Tight won the Alfred Bauer Prize at the Berlin Film Festival as well as the Teddy award for best gay/lesbian film at the festival. Set in Hong Kong and Taipei, Kwan solidifies an important regional link between Taiwan New Cinema and Hong Kong's “Second” Wave. The film offers the distinct vision of a cinematic auteur in addition to the common aesthetic and discursive currency needed to function in the international art film circuit as well as the regional market for Chinese-language cinema.
Jennifer O'Meara
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781474420624
- eISBN:
- 9781474449564
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474420624.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This book examines the centrality of dialogue to American independent cinema, arguing that it is impossible to separate small budgets from the old adage that ‘talk is cheap’. Focusing on the 1980s ...
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This book examines the centrality of dialogue to American independent cinema, arguing that it is impossible to separate small budgets from the old adage that ‘talk is cheap’. Focusing on the 1980s until the present, particularly on films by writer-directors like Jim Jarmusch, Noah Baumbach and Richard Linklater, the book demonstrates dialogue’s ability to engage audiences and bind together the narrative, aesthetic and performative elements of selected cinema. When compared to the dialogue norms of more mainstream cinema, the verbal styles of these independent writer-directors are found to be marked by alternations between various extremes, particularly those of naturalism and hyper-stylization, and between the poles of efficiency and excess. More broadly, these writer-directors are used as case studies that allow for an understanding of how dialogue functions in verbally experimental cinema, which, this book contends, is more often found in ‘independent’ or ‘art’ cinema. In questioning the association of dialogue-centred films with the ‘literary’ and the ‘un-cinematic’, the book highlights how speech in independent cinema can instead hinge on what is termed ‘cinematic verbalism’: when dialogue is designed and executed in complex, medium-specific ways. More broadly, the book provides a framework for analysing dialogue design and execution that can be readily applied to other films and filmmakers. It also highlights how speech can be central to cinema without overshadowing its medium-specific components. In so doing, the book develops new connections between film dialogue, reception studies, independent cinema and auteur studies.Less
This book examines the centrality of dialogue to American independent cinema, arguing that it is impossible to separate small budgets from the old adage that ‘talk is cheap’. Focusing on the 1980s until the present, particularly on films by writer-directors like Jim Jarmusch, Noah Baumbach and Richard Linklater, the book demonstrates dialogue’s ability to engage audiences and bind together the narrative, aesthetic and performative elements of selected cinema. When compared to the dialogue norms of more mainstream cinema, the verbal styles of these independent writer-directors are found to be marked by alternations between various extremes, particularly those of naturalism and hyper-stylization, and between the poles of efficiency and excess. More broadly, these writer-directors are used as case studies that allow for an understanding of how dialogue functions in verbally experimental cinema, which, this book contends, is more often found in ‘independent’ or ‘art’ cinema. In questioning the association of dialogue-centred films with the ‘literary’ and the ‘un-cinematic’, the book highlights how speech in independent cinema can instead hinge on what is termed ‘cinematic verbalism’: when dialogue is designed and executed in complex, medium-specific ways. More broadly, the book provides a framework for analysing dialogue design and execution that can be readily applied to other films and filmmakers. It also highlights how speech can be central to cinema without overshadowing its medium-specific components. In so doing, the book develops new connections between film dialogue, reception studies, independent cinema and auteur studies.
Hye Seung Chung
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252036699
- eISBN:
- 9780252093791
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252036699.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This study investigates the controversial motion pictures written and directed by the independent filmmaker Kim Ki-duk, one of the most acclaimed Korean auteurs in the English-speaking world. ...
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This study investigates the controversial motion pictures written and directed by the independent filmmaker Kim Ki-duk, one of the most acclaimed Korean auteurs in the English-speaking world. Propelled by underdog protagonists who can only communicate through shared corporeal pain and extreme violence, Kim's graphic films have been classified by Western audiences as belonging to sensationalist East Asian “extreme” cinema, and Kim has been labeled a “psychopath” and “misogynist” in South Korea. Drawing upon both Korean-language and English-language sources, the book challenges these misunderstandings, recuperating Kim's oeuvre as a therapeutic, yet brutal cinema of Nietzschean ressentiment (political anger and resentment deriving from subordination and oppression). The book argues that the power of Kim's cinema lies precisely in its ability to capture, channel, and convey the raw emotions of protagonists who live on the bottom rungs of Korean society. It provides historical and postcolonial readings of victimization and violence in Kim's cinema, which tackles such socially relevant topics as national division in Wild Animals and The Coast Guard and U.S. military occupation in Address Unknown. The book also explores the religious and spiritual themes in Kim's most recent works, which suggest possibilities of reconciliation and transcendence.Less
This study investigates the controversial motion pictures written and directed by the independent filmmaker Kim Ki-duk, one of the most acclaimed Korean auteurs in the English-speaking world. Propelled by underdog protagonists who can only communicate through shared corporeal pain and extreme violence, Kim's graphic films have been classified by Western audiences as belonging to sensationalist East Asian “extreme” cinema, and Kim has been labeled a “psychopath” and “misogynist” in South Korea. Drawing upon both Korean-language and English-language sources, the book challenges these misunderstandings, recuperating Kim's oeuvre as a therapeutic, yet brutal cinema of Nietzschean ressentiment (political anger and resentment deriving from subordination and oppression). The book argues that the power of Kim's cinema lies precisely in its ability to capture, channel, and convey the raw emotions of protagonists who live on the bottom rungs of Korean society. It provides historical and postcolonial readings of victimization and violence in Kim's cinema, which tackles such socially relevant topics as national division in Wild Animals and The Coast Guard and U.S. military occupation in Address Unknown. The book also explores the religious and spiritual themes in Kim's most recent works, which suggest possibilities of reconciliation and transcendence.
Linda Badley
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252035913
- eISBN:
- 9780252095429
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252035913.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
Scandinavia's foremost living auteur and the catalyst of the Dogme 95 movement, Lars von Trier is arguably world cinema's most confrontational and polarizing figure. Willfully devastating audiences, ...
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Scandinavia's foremost living auteur and the catalyst of the Dogme 95 movement, Lars von Trier is arguably world cinema's most confrontational and polarizing figure. Willfully devastating audiences, he takes risks few filmmakers would conceive, mounting projects that somehow transcend the grand follies they narrowly miss becoming. Challenging conventional limitations and imposing his own rules, he restlessly reinvents the film language. He has cultivated an insistently transnational cinema, taking inspiration from sources that range from the European avant-garde to American genre films. This book provides a stimulating overview of Trier's career while focusing on his more recent work, including the controversial Gold Heart Trilogy (Breaking the Waves, The Idiots, and Dancer in the Dark), the as-yet unfinished USA Trilogy (Dogville and Manderlay), and individual projects such as the comedy The Boss of It All and the incendiary horror psychodrama Antichrist.Closely analyzing the films and their contexts, the book draws on a range of cultural references and critical approaches, including genre, gender, and cultural studies, performance theory, and trauma culture. Two revealing interviews that Trier granted during crucial stages of Antichrist's development are also included.Less
Scandinavia's foremost living auteur and the catalyst of the Dogme 95 movement, Lars von Trier is arguably world cinema's most confrontational and polarizing figure. Willfully devastating audiences, he takes risks few filmmakers would conceive, mounting projects that somehow transcend the grand follies they narrowly miss becoming. Challenging conventional limitations and imposing his own rules, he restlessly reinvents the film language. He has cultivated an insistently transnational cinema, taking inspiration from sources that range from the European avant-garde to American genre films. This book provides a stimulating overview of Trier's career while focusing on his more recent work, including the controversial Gold Heart Trilogy (Breaking the Waves, The Idiots, and Dancer in the Dark), the as-yet unfinished USA Trilogy (Dogville and Manderlay), and individual projects such as the comedy The Boss of It All and the incendiary horror psychodrama Antichrist.Closely analyzing the films and their contexts, the book draws on a range of cultural references and critical approaches, including genre, gender, and cultural studies, performance theory, and trauma culture. Two revealing interviews that Trier granted during crucial stages of Antichrist's development are also included.
Eric Salzman and Thomas Desi
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- January 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780195099362
- eISBN:
- 9780199864737
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195099362.003.0021
- Subject:
- Music, Opera
This chapter discusses certain forms of music theater, particularly in the United States and in France dominated by stage directors or choreographers acting as auteurs (rather than composers). It ...
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This chapter discusses certain forms of music theater, particularly in the United States and in France dominated by stage directors or choreographers acting as auteurs (rather than composers). It considers how much experimental theater has evolved towards the condition of music theater over the years; the term melodrama — originally a spoken or declaimed theater accompanied by continuous music — and many modern examples found in the work of Schoenberg, Cage and others; and other forms of in-between art involving jazz, percussion, and noise.Less
This chapter discusses certain forms of music theater, particularly in the United States and in France dominated by stage directors or choreographers acting as auteurs (rather than composers). It considers how much experimental theater has evolved towards the condition of music theater over the years; the term melodrama — originally a spoken or declaimed theater accompanied by continuous music — and many modern examples found in the work of Schoenberg, Cage and others; and other forms of in-between art involving jazz, percussion, and noise.