Brian R. Jacobson
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780231172813
- eISBN:
- 9780231539661
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231172813.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
By 1915, Hollywood had become the epicenter of American filmmaking, with studio “dream factories” structuring its vast production. Filmmakers designed Hollywood studios with a distinct artistic and ...
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By 1915, Hollywood had become the epicenter of American filmmaking, with studio “dream factories” structuring its vast production. Filmmakers designed Hollywood studios with a distinct artistic and industrial mission in mind, which in turn influenced the form, content, and business of the films that were made and the impressions of the people who viewed them. The first book to retell the history of film studio architecture, Studios Before the System expands the social and cultural footprint of cinema’s virtual worlds and their contribution to wider developments in global technology and urban modernism. Focusing on six significant early film corporations in the United States and France—the Edison Manufacturing Company, American Mutoscope and Biograph, American Vitagraph, Georges Méliès’s Star Films, Gaumont, and Pathé Frères—as well as smaller producers and film companies, Studios Before the System describes how filmmakers first envisioned the space they needed and then sourced modern materials to create novel film worlds. Artificially reproducing the natural environment, film studios helped usher in the world’s Second Industrial Revolution and what Lewis Mumford would later call the “specific art of the machine.” From housing workshops for set, prop, and costume design to dressing rooms and writing departments, studio architecture was always present though rarely visible to the average spectator in the twentieth century, providing the scaffolding under which culture, film aesthetics, and our relation to lived space took shape.Less
By 1915, Hollywood had become the epicenter of American filmmaking, with studio “dream factories” structuring its vast production. Filmmakers designed Hollywood studios with a distinct artistic and industrial mission in mind, which in turn influenced the form, content, and business of the films that were made and the impressions of the people who viewed them. The first book to retell the history of film studio architecture, Studios Before the System expands the social and cultural footprint of cinema’s virtual worlds and their contribution to wider developments in global technology and urban modernism. Focusing on six significant early film corporations in the United States and France—the Edison Manufacturing Company, American Mutoscope and Biograph, American Vitagraph, Georges Méliès’s Star Films, Gaumont, and Pathé Frères—as well as smaller producers and film companies, Studios Before the System describes how filmmakers first envisioned the space they needed and then sourced modern materials to create novel film worlds. Artificially reproducing the natural environment, film studios helped usher in the world’s Second Industrial Revolution and what Lewis Mumford would later call the “specific art of the machine.” From housing workshops for set, prop, and costume design to dressing rooms and writing departments, studio architecture was always present though rarely visible to the average spectator in the twentieth century, providing the scaffolding under which culture, film aesthetics, and our relation to lived space took shape.
Torben Grodal
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- May 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780195371314
- eISBN:
- 9780199870585
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195371314.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies
The introduction to Part II discusses how knowledge of the brain’s processing of information provides crucial insight into central phenomena in visual aesthetics, especially in film aesthetics, and ...
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The introduction to Part II discusses how knowledge of the brain’s processing of information provides crucial insight into central phenomena in visual aesthetics, especially in film aesthetics, and provides a general theory of film aesthetics. Central is the description of what the author calls the PECMA flow, an abbreviation for perception, emotion, cognition, and motor action, which describes the normal flow of information in real life and when watching film. The chapter analyzes how different types of film input may focus the film experience on different steps/brain regions: abstract film is focused on visual cortex processes, lyrical films on processes in the temporal and parietal cortices, and narrative films on frontal parts of the brain. The chapter analyses how and why these different foci provide different aesthetic experiences. The chapter also discusses how cultural and individual factors may influence and modify the innate biological factors.Less
The introduction to Part II discusses how knowledge of the brain’s processing of information provides crucial insight into central phenomena in visual aesthetics, especially in film aesthetics, and provides a general theory of film aesthetics. Central is the description of what the author calls the PECMA flow, an abbreviation for perception, emotion, cognition, and motor action, which describes the normal flow of information in real life and when watching film. The chapter analyzes how different types of film input may focus the film experience on different steps/brain regions: abstract film is focused on visual cortex processes, lyrical films on processes in the temporal and parietal cortices, and narrative films on frontal parts of the brain. The chapter analyses how and why these different foci provide different aesthetic experiences. The chapter also discusses how cultural and individual factors may influence and modify the innate biological factors.
Tom Ryall
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- July 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780719064524
- eISBN:
- 9781781703007
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719064524.003.0011
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter charts the topography of the British film industry in the 1920s, when Anthony Asquith began his film career. Asquith entered the film industry in the mid-1920s, towards the end of the ...
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This chapter charts the topography of the British film industry in the 1920s, when Anthony Asquith began his film career. Asquith entered the film industry in the mid-1920s, towards the end of the troubled silent period when the production industry in Britain was in decline in the face of competition from the American film. The industry struggled to find a position in the market and seemed to many on the brink of extinction. The 1928 Cinematograph Films Act effectively laid the foundations for a British production industry by, among other provisions, requiring exhibitors to screen a number of British films as part of their annual schedules. It was also a period marked by ‘a lively engagement with issues of film criticism and aesthetics’, which was stimulated in part by the new adventurous films from Germany, France, the Scandinavian countries, and the Soviet Union. Tell England (1931), the much-delayed project about the Gallipoli campaign during the First World War, was to be Asquith's first sound film proper, though, as with Shooting Stars, he was to work in collaboration with another experienced figure. British Instructional had proved to be a congenial context for the start of a career in film making; the next phase of Asquith's career was to prove somewhat more problematic.Less
This chapter charts the topography of the British film industry in the 1920s, when Anthony Asquith began his film career. Asquith entered the film industry in the mid-1920s, towards the end of the troubled silent period when the production industry in Britain was in decline in the face of competition from the American film. The industry struggled to find a position in the market and seemed to many on the brink of extinction. The 1928 Cinematograph Films Act effectively laid the foundations for a British production industry by, among other provisions, requiring exhibitors to screen a number of British films as part of their annual schedules. It was also a period marked by ‘a lively engagement with issues of film criticism and aesthetics’, which was stimulated in part by the new adventurous films from Germany, France, the Scandinavian countries, and the Soviet Union. Tell England (1931), the much-delayed project about the Gallipoli campaign during the First World War, was to be Asquith's first sound film proper, though, as with Shooting Stars, he was to work in collaboration with another experienced figure. British Instructional had proved to be a congenial context for the start of a career in film making; the next phase of Asquith's career was to prove somewhat more problematic.
Hermann Kappelhoff
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780231170727
- eISBN:
- 9780231539319
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231170727.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies
Taking up the discussion of current aesthetic theories and political philosophy, the chapter proposes an approach in which film as a poetic practice can be related to the question of (re)configuring ...
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Taking up the discussion of current aesthetic theories and political philosophy, the chapter proposes an approach in which film as a poetic practice can be related to the question of (re)configuring political communities, whereby reality is tested by the poetic and political medium of audiovisual images. The chapter draws on Rorty's pragmatism and Rancière's poetics to extend their terms into a more Deleuzean schema that stresses the audiovisual modalities of cinematic experience. The relationship between cinema and politics is hereby explored as a respective historical figuration connected to and/or diverging from the utopia of art. Whether the poetological formations mentioned emphasize the mobilization of a new, collective subjectivity, or the crisis of a sense of commonality, they have a common denominator in the idea of aesthetics, articulating the possibility of politics as an insistent problem.Less
Taking up the discussion of current aesthetic theories and political philosophy, the chapter proposes an approach in which film as a poetic practice can be related to the question of (re)configuring political communities, whereby reality is tested by the poetic and political medium of audiovisual images. The chapter draws on Rorty's pragmatism and Rancière's poetics to extend their terms into a more Deleuzean schema that stresses the audiovisual modalities of cinematic experience. The relationship between cinema and politics is hereby explored as a respective historical figuration connected to and/or diverging from the utopia of art. Whether the poetological formations mentioned emphasize the mobilization of a new, collective subjectivity, or the crisis of a sense of commonality, they have a common denominator in the idea of aesthetics, articulating the possibility of politics as an insistent problem.
Kevin B. Johnson
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252037689
- eISBN:
- 9780252094941
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252037689.003.0006
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter examines the delayed but still strong and lasting impression that Pearl White left on Czechoslovakia's critics, viewers, and avant-garde movement. Drawing on a series of articles in ...
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This chapter examines the delayed but still strong and lasting impression that Pearl White left on Czechoslovakia's critics, viewers, and avant-garde movement. Drawing on a series of articles in Czech periodicals from the late 1910s to the 1930s, it considers the issues presented by White and the American serial films regarding the international market, the need to come to terms with Hollywood's global reach, and the impact of glocalized Americana for local production. The chapter first looks at the sudden influx of American films in Czechoslovakia after World War I before discussing how America was perceived as a model of democracy and cultural modernity in the early years of the First Czechoslovak Republic. It then explores how White fueled the fantasies of the Czech populace as well as the ways that she was appropriated and re-imagined in the service of various discourses that spoke for the mental and physical well-being of the nation. It also analyzes White's Czech career within the context of larger issues related to spectatorship, film aesthetics, and the creation of star mythology.Less
This chapter examines the delayed but still strong and lasting impression that Pearl White left on Czechoslovakia's critics, viewers, and avant-garde movement. Drawing on a series of articles in Czech periodicals from the late 1910s to the 1930s, it considers the issues presented by White and the American serial films regarding the international market, the need to come to terms with Hollywood's global reach, and the impact of glocalized Americana for local production. The chapter first looks at the sudden influx of American films in Czechoslovakia after World War I before discussing how America was perceived as a model of democracy and cultural modernity in the early years of the First Czechoslovak Republic. It then explores how White fueled the fantasies of the Czech populace as well as the ways that she was appropriated and re-imagined in the service of various discourses that spoke for the mental and physical well-being of the nation. It also analyzes White's Czech career within the context of larger issues related to spectatorship, film aesthetics, and the creation of star mythology.
Kaira M. Cabañas
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- September 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780226174457
- eISBN:
- 9780226174624
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226174624.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies
This chapter considers Guy Debord's Hurlements en faveur de Sade (Howls for Sade, 1952). Hurlements is a sound film without images: when someone speaks, the screen is white and filled with light; ...
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This chapter considers Guy Debord's Hurlements en faveur de Sade (Howls for Sade, 1952). Hurlements is a sound film without images: when someone speaks, the screen is white and filled with light; when no one speaks, the screen remains dark. Of its total running time—seventy-five minutes—only twenty minutes contain light and speech. Hurlements's original script demonstrates its indebtedness to a Lettrist film aesthetic. The mixing of original shots with pre-existing footage, as well as the painted filmstrip and sequences of pure color, explicitly recall the visual aspects of Isou's and Lemaître's films. The film's sound track traces a poetic of refusal from the Dadaists to the Surrealists and was interspersed with Lettrist sounds.Less
This chapter considers Guy Debord's Hurlements en faveur de Sade (Howls for Sade, 1952). Hurlements is a sound film without images: when someone speaks, the screen is white and filled with light; when no one speaks, the screen remains dark. Of its total running time—seventy-five minutes—only twenty minutes contain light and speech. Hurlements's original script demonstrates its indebtedness to a Lettrist film aesthetic. The mixing of original shots with pre-existing footage, as well as the painted filmstrip and sequences of pure color, explicitly recall the visual aspects of Isou's and Lemaître's films. The film's sound track traces a poetic of refusal from the Dadaists to the Surrealists and was interspersed with Lettrist sounds.
David Roche
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781496819161
- eISBN:
- 9781496819208
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781496819161.003.0006
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter seeks to further determine Tarantino’s place in the history of film aesthetics, and his relationship to classical, contemporary and art cinema. It analyzes how the films relate to the ...
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This chapter seeks to further determine Tarantino’s place in the history of film aesthetics, and his relationship to classical, contemporary and art cinema. It analyzes how the films relate to the extrinsic norms of the film genres they rework, how they produce their own intrinsic norms and how they ultimately play with the two. It foregrounds the various functions of these devices, that can be dramatic, narrative and/or metafictional. It progresses from a general overview of the Tarantino style by focusing on the body of his work, before studying a certain number of signature devices, and finally some of the specific color schemes and devices utilized in each film.Less
This chapter seeks to further determine Tarantino’s place in the history of film aesthetics, and his relationship to classical, contemporary and art cinema. It analyzes how the films relate to the extrinsic norms of the film genres they rework, how they produce their own intrinsic norms and how they ultimately play with the two. It foregrounds the various functions of these devices, that can be dramatic, narrative and/or metafictional. It progresses from a general overview of the Tarantino style by focusing on the body of his work, before studying a certain number of signature devices, and finally some of the specific color schemes and devices utilized in each film.
Kenneth E. Hall
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9789622099562
- eISBN:
- 9789882207097
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Hong Kong University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5790/hongkong/9789622099562.003.0004
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
The Killer is a salient example of cross-cultural influence in Hong Kong filmmaking. This is true in generic, thematic, and stylistic or structural terms. The film provides clear glimpses of the join ...
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The Killer is a salient example of cross-cultural influence in Hong Kong filmmaking. This is true in generic, thematic, and stylistic or structural terms. The film provides clear glimpses of the join between Western and Asian cultures in its marriage of the hitman/wuxia form; of the Western and Asian chivalric traditions; of Western cinematic technique and Chinese art and film aesthetics; and of specific influence from Western and Asian models. Because the film is self-consciously “artistic”, it is an enlightening exhibit in the study of the fusion of Western and Asian film cultures. One of the most important points of contact to be found in the film is the widely known stylistic feature of film noir. Woo's techniques like the jump cutting and the “edited zoom”are integrated into the theme and context of the narrative and serves as strong punctuation.Less
The Killer is a salient example of cross-cultural influence in Hong Kong filmmaking. This is true in generic, thematic, and stylistic or structural terms. The film provides clear glimpses of the join between Western and Asian cultures in its marriage of the hitman/wuxia form; of the Western and Asian chivalric traditions; of Western cinematic technique and Chinese art and film aesthetics; and of specific influence from Western and Asian models. Because the film is self-consciously “artistic”, it is an enlightening exhibit in the study of the fusion of Western and Asian film cultures. One of the most important points of contact to be found in the film is the widely known stylistic feature of film noir. Woo's techniques like the jump cutting and the “edited zoom”are integrated into the theme and context of the narrative and serves as strong punctuation.
Lutz Koepnick
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780816695843
- eISBN:
- 9781452958859
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816695843.003.0002
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
Chapter 1: traces the history and theory of the long take in twentieth-century art cinema to make a case who and why twenty-first century moving image practice differs from the past and its concepts; ...
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Chapter 1: traces the history and theory of the long take in twentieth-century art cinema to make a case who and why twenty-first century moving image practice differs from the past and its concepts; shows how contemporary long take practice absorbs the recalibrates the dual legacies of expanded cinema and art cinema of the 1960s, and how it asks to rethink our concept of art cinema today, and why its study neither belongs to film scholars nor art critics alone todayLess
Chapter 1: traces the history and theory of the long take in twentieth-century art cinema to make a case who and why twenty-first century moving image practice differs from the past and its concepts; shows how contemporary long take practice absorbs the recalibrates the dual legacies of expanded cinema and art cinema of the 1960s, and how it asks to rethink our concept of art cinema today, and why its study neither belongs to film scholars nor art critics alone today
Jonathan Haynes
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780226387819
- eISBN:
- 9780226388007
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226388007.003.0010
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, African Studies
A genre of films about Nigerians living overseas has been produced through collaborations between the Nollywood industry and African immigrant communities in Europe, North America, Brazil, China, and ...
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A genre of films about Nigerians living overseas has been produced through collaborations between the Nollywood industry and African immigrant communities in Europe, North America, Brazil, China, and elsewhere. The point of view ranges from that of settled expatriates to one grounded at home in Nigeria. An extension of Nollywood film culture, the genre has a typical setting, story arc, moral and psychological themes, and formal features. Under the harsh conditions of undocumented immigration, the protagonists must make contact with an African expatriate community, which normally becomes their principle horizon. Often they are forced into drug dealing or prostitution. Betrayal and the question of what one is willing to do for money are common themes. The genre explores opposing sides of the national character as Nigerians conceive of it, in both harrowing and comic versions.Less
A genre of films about Nigerians living overseas has been produced through collaborations between the Nollywood industry and African immigrant communities in Europe, North America, Brazil, China, and elsewhere. The point of view ranges from that of settled expatriates to one grounded at home in Nigeria. An extension of Nollywood film culture, the genre has a typical setting, story arc, moral and psychological themes, and formal features. Under the harsh conditions of undocumented immigration, the protagonists must make contact with an African expatriate community, which normally becomes their principle horizon. Often they are forced into drug dealing or prostitution. Betrayal and the question of what one is willing to do for money are common themes. The genre explores opposing sides of the national character as Nigerians conceive of it, in both harrowing and comic versions.
Lisa Nanney
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- January 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781942954873
- eISBN:
- 9781789629781
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3828/liverpool/9781942954873.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 20th Century Literature
John Dos Passos & Cinema, the first study to use the novelist’s little-known writing for the screen to assess the trajectory of his prolific career, explores both how film aesthetics shaped his ...
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John Dos Passos & Cinema, the first study to use the novelist’s little-known writing for the screen to assess the trajectory of his prolific career, explores both how film aesthetics shaped his revolutionary modernist narratives and how he later reshaped them directly into film form. The book features previously unpublished manuscripts and correspondence illustrating case studies of his screen writing during the 1930s for Hollywood feature films and in an innovative independent treatment; it examines the complexities of his role in the 1937 political documentary The Spanish Earth; and it explores the unproduced screen treatment of his attempts from the 1940s on to adapt his epic trilogy U.S.A. directly for the screen and to realign its leftist politics toward the anti-Communist conservatism reflected in his work and activism of that period. John Dos Passos & Cinema thus provides a new context for and reading of his modernist literary innovations and his conservative political reorientation in the 1930s that redefined his literary career.Less
John Dos Passos & Cinema, the first study to use the novelist’s little-known writing for the screen to assess the trajectory of his prolific career, explores both how film aesthetics shaped his revolutionary modernist narratives and how he later reshaped them directly into film form. The book features previously unpublished manuscripts and correspondence illustrating case studies of his screen writing during the 1930s for Hollywood feature films and in an innovative independent treatment; it examines the complexities of his role in the 1937 political documentary The Spanish Earth; and it explores the unproduced screen treatment of his attempts from the 1940s on to adapt his epic trilogy U.S.A. directly for the screen and to realign its leftist politics toward the anti-Communist conservatism reflected in his work and activism of that period. John Dos Passos & Cinema thus provides a new context for and reading of his modernist literary innovations and his conservative political reorientation in the 1930s that redefined his literary career.
Gary D. Rhodes and Robert Singer
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781474460682
- eISBN:
- 9781474481083
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474460682.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
The American television commercial exhibits an aesthetic and historical dynamic linking it directly to cinematic and media cultures. Consuming Images: Film Art and the American TelevisionCommercial ...
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The American television commercial exhibits an aesthetic and historical dynamic linking it directly to cinematic and media cultures. Consuming Images: Film Art and the American TelevisionCommercial establishes the complex vitality of the television commercial both as a short film and as an art form. Through close and comparative readings, the book examines the influence of Hollywood film styles on the television commercial, and the resulting influence of the television commercial on Hollywood, exploring an intertwined aesthetic and technical relationship.
Analysing key commercials over the decades that feature new technologies and film aesthetics that were subsequently adopted by feature filmmakers, the book establishes the television commercial as film art.Less
The American television commercial exhibits an aesthetic and historical dynamic linking it directly to cinematic and media cultures. Consuming Images: Film Art and the American TelevisionCommercial establishes the complex vitality of the television commercial both as a short film and as an art form. Through close and comparative readings, the book examines the influence of Hollywood film styles on the television commercial, and the resulting influence of the television commercial on Hollywood, exploring an intertwined aesthetic and technical relationship.
Analysing key commercials over the decades that feature new technologies and film aesthetics that were subsequently adopted by feature filmmakers, the book establishes the television commercial as film art.
Nico Baumbach
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- May 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780748676118
- eISBN:
- 9780748695096
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748676118.003.0007
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter, written by Nico Baumbach, focuses on the Lumières’ film Le Repas de Bébé (Baby’s Meal); taking as its starting point Georges Méliès’s observation that it was through this film that he ...
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This chapter, written by Nico Baumbach, focuses on the Lumières’ film Le Repas de Bébé (Baby’s Meal); taking as its starting point Georges Méliès’s observation that it was through this film that he first registered the potential of cinema. It is not the spectacular that Méliès notices, but the incidental detail of moving leaves in the background of the film. Baumbach homes in on this incidental detail to explore the significance it held for filmmakers, including D. W. Griffith. Baumbach addresses film’s power to construct palpable, seemingly concrete visual phenomena, though here he examines the transitory aesthetics of the ‘wind in the trees’. Baumbach enriches the interest in what Tom Gunning and André Gaudreault called the ‘cinema of attractions’ by suggesting, via detours into Kant, Benjamin, German Romantic poetry, and Impressionist painting, that the inscription of the incidental could often be as powerful as the spectacular.Less
This chapter, written by Nico Baumbach, focuses on the Lumières’ film Le Repas de Bébé (Baby’s Meal); taking as its starting point Georges Méliès’s observation that it was through this film that he first registered the potential of cinema. It is not the spectacular that Méliès notices, but the incidental detail of moving leaves in the background of the film. Baumbach homes in on this incidental detail to explore the significance it held for filmmakers, including D. W. Griffith. Baumbach addresses film’s power to construct palpable, seemingly concrete visual phenomena, though here he examines the transitory aesthetics of the ‘wind in the trees’. Baumbach enriches the interest in what Tom Gunning and André Gaudreault called the ‘cinema of attractions’ by suggesting, via detours into Kant, Benjamin, German Romantic poetry, and Impressionist painting, that the inscription of the incidental could often be as powerful as the spectacular.
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.
Lutz Koepnick
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780816695843
- eISBN:
- 9781452958859
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816695843.003.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
Introduction: makes a case for the importance to study the long take today as something that probes our sense of time across different moving image platforms; develops the category of wonder—first ...
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Introduction: makes a case for the importance to study the long take today as something that probes our sense of time across different moving image platforms; develops the category of wonder—first time seeing that appeals to our curiosity—as a central category of the book; presents the contemporary long take as a medium to challenge the attentional economy of today’s agitated screen cultures; argues against associating the long take with slow cinema or contemporary cinephelia.Less
Introduction: makes a case for the importance to study the long take today as something that probes our sense of time across different moving image platforms; develops the category of wonder—first time seeing that appeals to our curiosity—as a central category of the book; presents the contemporary long take as a medium to challenge the attentional economy of today’s agitated screen cultures; argues against associating the long take with slow cinema or contemporary cinephelia.
Lutz Koepnick
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780816695843
- eISBN:
- 9781452958859
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816695843.003.0004
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
Chapter 3: discussion of the long-take work of Tsai Ming-liang and BelaTarr, the first using relative static, the latter intricately moving camera setups; arguing against schoalrs who see their work ...
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Chapter 3: discussion of the long-take work of Tsai Ming-liang and BelaTarr, the first using relative static, the latter intricately moving camera setups; arguing against schoalrs who see their work as nostalgic, apocalyptic, and deeply cinephilic, the chapter explores the extent to which long takes her function as conduits of sensory self-experimentation and interpretative deferral, at once pulling the viewer into and pushing him out of the image; and how they reckon with viewers deeply accustomed to mutli-screen uses and mobile forms of spectatorship.Less
Chapter 3: discussion of the long-take work of Tsai Ming-liang and BelaTarr, the first using relative static, the latter intricately moving camera setups; arguing against schoalrs who see their work as nostalgic, apocalyptic, and deeply cinephilic, the chapter explores the extent to which long takes her function as conduits of sensory self-experimentation and interpretative deferral, at once pulling the viewer into and pushing him out of the image; and how they reckon with viewers deeply accustomed to mutli-screen uses and mobile forms of spectatorship.
Lutz Koepnick
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780816695843
- eISBN:
- 9781452958859
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816695843.003.0006
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
Chapter 5: reading one of Michael Haneke’s most infamous long takes so as to show that not all long takes square with the aesthetics of the wondrous as discussed in this book; Haneke’s late modernist ...
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Chapter 5: reading one of Michael Haneke’s most infamous long takes so as to show that not all long takes square with the aesthetics of the wondrous as discussed in this book; Haneke’s late modernist strategies of shaming spectators is seen as the mere flipside of what the logic of 24-7 screen interactivity demands from us; asking us to be ever alert, Haneke’s project exemplifies what I call anti-wonder.Less
Chapter 5: reading one of Michael Haneke’s most infamous long takes so as to show that not all long takes square with the aesthetics of the wondrous as discussed in this book; Haneke’s late modernist strategies of shaming spectators is seen as the mere flipside of what the logic of 24-7 screen interactivity demands from us; asking us to be ever alert, Haneke’s project exemplifies what I call anti-wonder.
Dona Kercher
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- November 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780231172097
- eISBN:
- 9780231850735
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231172097.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This study explores how five major directors—Pedro Almodóvar, Alejandro Amenábar, Álex de la Iglesia, Guillermo del Toro, and Juan José Campanella—modelled their early careers on Hitchcock and his ...
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This study explores how five major directors—Pedro Almodóvar, Alejandro Amenábar, Álex de la Iglesia, Guillermo del Toro, and Juan José Campanella—modelled their early careers on Hitchcock and his film aesthetics. In shadowing Hitchcock, their works embraced the global aspirations his movies epitomise. Each section of the book begins with an extensive study, based on newspaper accounts, of the original reception of Hitchcock's movies in either Spain or Latin America and how local preferences for genre, glamour, moral issues, and humour affected their success. The text brings a new approach to world film history, showcasing both the commercial and artistic importance of Hitchcock in Spain and Latin America.Less
This study explores how five major directors—Pedro Almodóvar, Alejandro Amenábar, Álex de la Iglesia, Guillermo del Toro, and Juan José Campanella—modelled their early careers on Hitchcock and his film aesthetics. In shadowing Hitchcock, their works embraced the global aspirations his movies epitomise. Each section of the book begins with an extensive study, based on newspaper accounts, of the original reception of Hitchcock's movies in either Spain or Latin America and how local preferences for genre, glamour, moral issues, and humour affected their success. The text brings a new approach to world film history, showcasing both the commercial and artistic importance of Hitchcock in Spain and Latin America.
Christine L. Marran
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781517901585
- eISBN:
- 9781452958781
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9781517901585.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
In Ecology without Culture, Christine L. Marran introduces biotropes—material and semiotic figures that exist for human perception—to navigate how and why the material world has proven to be an ...
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In Ecology without Culture, Christine L. Marran introduces biotropes—material and semiotic figures that exist for human perception—to navigate how and why the material world has proven to be an effective medium for representing culture. A bold and timely reconsideration of ecocriticism, this book insists on decentering questions of culture to highlight the materiality of poetry, film, and prose fiction.Less
In Ecology without Culture, Christine L. Marran introduces biotropes—material and semiotic figures that exist for human perception—to navigate how and why the material world has proven to be an effective medium for representing culture. A bold and timely reconsideration of ecocriticism, this book insists on decentering questions of culture to highlight the materiality of poetry, film, and prose fiction.
Lutz Koepnick
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780816695843
- eISBN:
- 9781452958859
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816695843.003.0005
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
Chapter 4: the focus of this chapter is on the video installtions of artists Tacita Dean, Teressa Hubbard/Alexander Birchler, and IñigoManglano-Ovalle; discusses various concepts of roaming ...
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Chapter 4: the focus of this chapter is on the video installtions of artists Tacita Dean, Teressa Hubbard/Alexander Birchler, and IñigoManglano-Ovalle; discusses various concepts of roaming spectatorship only to show that the work under discussion succeeds quite well to hold the viewer’s attention, redefine the long take as a perceptual rather than representational logic, and in so doing clear perceptual ground for the possibility of wonderLess
Chapter 4: the focus of this chapter is on the video installtions of artists Tacita Dean, Teressa Hubbard/Alexander Birchler, and IñigoManglano-Ovalle; discusses various concepts of roaming spectatorship only to show that the work under discussion succeeds quite well to hold the viewer’s attention, redefine the long take as a perceptual rather than representational logic, and in so doing clear perceptual ground for the possibility of wonder