Maite Conde
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780520290983
- eISBN:
- 9780520964884
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520290983.003.0010
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter undertakes a close reading of the Brazilian experimental silent film Limite, made in 1930 by Mário Peixoto. It pays close attention to the context of the film’s production: Peixoto’s ...
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This chapter undertakes a close reading of the Brazilian experimental silent film Limite, made in 1930 by Mário Peixoto. It pays close attention to the context of the film’s production: Peixoto’s contact with the world of cinephilia in Brazil and his links to the European avant-garde. In doing so, it analyzes the film’s style in the light of Germaine Dulac’s emphasis on cinema’s visual rhythms. Rather than providing us with a story or even presenting us with the psychological state of mind among its characters, it shows how Peixoto’s film “thinks” in pictures, movements, and angles, trying to intertwine diverse visual fields by using certain symbolic themes and variations. The chapter this shows how Limite accomplishes what Dulac had demanded in 1927: the “real” filmmaker should “divest cinema of all elements not particular to it, to seek its true essence in the consciousness of movement and visual rhythms.”Less
This chapter undertakes a close reading of the Brazilian experimental silent film Limite, made in 1930 by Mário Peixoto. It pays close attention to the context of the film’s production: Peixoto’s contact with the world of cinephilia in Brazil and his links to the European avant-garde. In doing so, it analyzes the film’s style in the light of Germaine Dulac’s emphasis on cinema’s visual rhythms. Rather than providing us with a story or even presenting us with the psychological state of mind among its characters, it shows how Peixoto’s film “thinks” in pictures, movements, and angles, trying to intertwine diverse visual fields by using certain symbolic themes and variations. The chapter this shows how Limite accomplishes what Dulac had demanded in 1927: the “real” filmmaker should “divest cinema of all elements not particular to it, to seek its true essence in the consciousness of movement and visual rhythms.”
Neil Blain and David Hutchison
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748627998
- eISBN:
- 9780748671205
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748627998.003.0010
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Media Studies
The chapter starts by countering the view that Scottish cinema is under-developed, noting recent diversity, and films which challenge dominant cinematic forms. The chapter proceeds to discuss a form ...
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The chapter starts by countering the view that Scottish cinema is under-developed, noting recent diversity, and films which challenge dominant cinematic forms. The chapter proceeds to discuss a form of Scottish art cinema, and the avant-garde element represented by film-maker Margaret Tait. Critical approaches to Scottish film are discussed, before an extended examination of the significance of Tait's work. Genre hybrids (‘films which playfully rework a variety of genres’) are noted, as are other Scottish cinematic themes, including heritage, and masculinity. European and American influences are discussed. There follows an extended discussion of personal film making and a Scottish art cinema, referencing Tait, Lynne Ramsay, and others, with emphasis on Ramsay's Morvern Callar and other key films. The chapter concludes with observations on the positive potentials of new technology and low budget film making.Less
The chapter starts by countering the view that Scottish cinema is under-developed, noting recent diversity, and films which challenge dominant cinematic forms. The chapter proceeds to discuss a form of Scottish art cinema, and the avant-garde element represented by film-maker Margaret Tait. Critical approaches to Scottish film are discussed, before an extended examination of the significance of Tait's work. Genre hybrids (‘films which playfully rework a variety of genres’) are noted, as are other Scottish cinematic themes, including heritage, and masculinity. European and American influences are discussed. There follows an extended discussion of personal film making and a Scottish art cinema, referencing Tait, Lynne Ramsay, and others, with emphasis on Ramsay's Morvern Callar and other key films. The chapter concludes with observations on the positive potentials of new technology and low budget film making.
Christa Blümlinger
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781474407120
- eISBN:
- 9781474434874
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474407120.003.0010
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
Avant-gardes have been interested, ever since the 1920s, in the leftovers – that which is usually kept out of representation because it is considered too blurry, lacking in focus, ‘faulty’. Starting ...
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Avant-gardes have been interested, ever since the 1920s, in the leftovers – that which is usually kept out of representation because it is considered too blurry, lacking in focus, ‘faulty’. Starting from an analysis of Peter Tscherkassky’s Coming Attractions (2010), this essay assesses the value of that which is, in the cinema, deemed too blurry, while also pointing to the import that certain aesthetic theories (from Jean-François Lyotard to Tom Gunning) have granted it. How and why does Tscherkassky, in his use of found footage, seek to reveal the formless as well the photographic code (the black and the white)? In doing so, he draws near to what John Cage called ‘silencing’: not silence, but the withdrawal of some of the sounds attributed to the musical eventLess
Avant-gardes have been interested, ever since the 1920s, in the leftovers – that which is usually kept out of representation because it is considered too blurry, lacking in focus, ‘faulty’. Starting from an analysis of Peter Tscherkassky’s Coming Attractions (2010), this essay assesses the value of that which is, in the cinema, deemed too blurry, while also pointing to the import that certain aesthetic theories (from Jean-François Lyotard to Tom Gunning) have granted it. How and why does Tscherkassky, in his use of found footage, seek to reveal the formless as well the photographic code (the black and the white)? In doing so, he draws near to what John Cage called ‘silencing’: not silence, but the withdrawal of some of the sounds attributed to the musical event
Tami Williams
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252038471
- eISBN:
- 9780252096365
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252038471.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
Best known for directing the Impressionist classic The Smiling Madame Beudet and the first Surrealist film The Seashell and the Clergyman, Germaine Dulac—feminist and pioneer of 1920s French ...
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Best known for directing the Impressionist classic The Smiling Madame Beudet and the first Surrealist film The Seashell and the Clergyman, Germaine Dulac—feminist and pioneer of 1920s French avant-garde cinema—made close to thirty fiction films as well as numerous documentaries and newsreels. Through her filmmaking, writing, and cine-club activism, Dulac's passionate defense of the cinema as a lyrical art and social practice had a major influence on twentieth-century film history and theory. This book—making unprecedented use of the filmmaker's personal papers, production files, and archival film prints—is the first full-length historical study and critical biography of Dulac. The book's analysis explores the artistic and sociopolitical currents that shaped Dulac's approach to cinema while interrogating the ground-breaking techniques and strategies she used to critique conservative notions of gender and sexuality. Moving beyond the director's work of the 1920s, the book examines Dulac's largely ignored 1930s documentaries and newsreels establishing clear links with the more experimental Impressionist and abstract works of her early period. This vivid portrait will be of interest to general readers, as well as to scholars of cinema and visual culture, performance, French history, women's studies, queer cinema, in addition to studies of narrative avant-garde, experimental, and documentary film history and theory.Less
Best known for directing the Impressionist classic The Smiling Madame Beudet and the first Surrealist film The Seashell and the Clergyman, Germaine Dulac—feminist and pioneer of 1920s French avant-garde cinema—made close to thirty fiction films as well as numerous documentaries and newsreels. Through her filmmaking, writing, and cine-club activism, Dulac's passionate defense of the cinema as a lyrical art and social practice had a major influence on twentieth-century film history and theory. This book—making unprecedented use of the filmmaker's personal papers, production files, and archival film prints—is the first full-length historical study and critical biography of Dulac. The book's analysis explores the artistic and sociopolitical currents that shaped Dulac's approach to cinema while interrogating the ground-breaking techniques and strategies she used to critique conservative notions of gender and sexuality. Moving beyond the director's work of the 1920s, the book examines Dulac's largely ignored 1930s documentaries and newsreels establishing clear links with the more experimental Impressionist and abstract works of her early period. This vivid portrait will be of interest to general readers, as well as to scholars of cinema and visual culture, performance, French history, women's studies, queer cinema, in addition to studies of narrative avant-garde, experimental, and documentary film history and theory.
David Bordwell
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780226352176
- eISBN:
- 9780226352343
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226352343.003.0008
- Subject:
- Literature, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies
This chapter traces the heritage of the four critics across the years up to the 1980s. Ferguson, the earliest of the critics considered, was the last to be rediscovered, after celebrity criticism of ...
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This chapter traces the heritage of the four critics across the years up to the 1980s. Ferguson, the earliest of the critics considered, was the last to be rediscovered, after celebrity criticism of the Kael-Sarris variety took over film reviewing. Agee’s collection, AGEE ON FILM, was the first major collection of a critic’s writing and, because he won the Pulitzer prize posthumously for A DEATH IN THE FAMILY, the anthology garnered enormous praise. It led other critics to collect their reviews as well. Manny Farber created his own collection, strategically selecting items to create a certain persona for himself—one based on his more arcane 1960s writings for film and art journals. Parker Tyler wrote prolifically about non-Hollywood film (chiefly foreign cinema and avant-garde film) and returned only to Hollywood movies to point out that the sexual subtexts he had revealed had come to the surface, rather blatantly. The same period revealed a growing awareness that these critics had been pioneers in arts journalism, and that the new trends owed a great deal to them.Less
This chapter traces the heritage of the four critics across the years up to the 1980s. Ferguson, the earliest of the critics considered, was the last to be rediscovered, after celebrity criticism of the Kael-Sarris variety took over film reviewing. Agee’s collection, AGEE ON FILM, was the first major collection of a critic’s writing and, because he won the Pulitzer prize posthumously for A DEATH IN THE FAMILY, the anthology garnered enormous praise. It led other critics to collect their reviews as well. Manny Farber created his own collection, strategically selecting items to create a certain persona for himself—one based on his more arcane 1960s writings for film and art journals. Parker Tyler wrote prolifically about non-Hollywood film (chiefly foreign cinema and avant-garde film) and returned only to Hollywood movies to point out that the sexual subtexts he had revealed had come to the surface, rather blatantly. The same period revealed a growing awareness that these critics had been pioneers in arts journalism, and that the new trends owed a great deal to them.
E. Dawn Hall
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781474411127
- eISBN:
- 9781474444620
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474411127.003.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
Referencing Laura Mulvey, Andre Bazin and Andrew Sarris, this chapter discusses auteur characteristics and explores how Kelly Reichardt is contributing to a definition of feminist avant-garde cinema ...
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Referencing Laura Mulvey, Andre Bazin and Andrew Sarris, this chapter discusses auteur characteristics and explores how Kelly Reichardt is contributing to a definition of feminist avant-garde cinema through her production methods, content, and form. Reichardt offers a 21st century alternative to traditional mainstream cinematic ideologies and her filming style politicizes her cinematic form. While discussing differences between Hollywood and independent filmmaking practices, this chapter also posits alternatives to mainstream cinematic pleasure.Less
Referencing Laura Mulvey, Andre Bazin and Andrew Sarris, this chapter discusses auteur characteristics and explores how Kelly Reichardt is contributing to a definition of feminist avant-garde cinema through her production methods, content, and form. Reichardt offers a 21st century alternative to traditional mainstream cinematic ideologies and her filming style politicizes her cinematic form. While discussing differences between Hollywood and independent filmmaking practices, this chapter also posits alternatives to mainstream cinematic pleasure.
