George M. Wilson
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199594894
- eISBN:
- 9780191731440
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199594894.003.0007
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Aesthetics
In earlier chapters, it was argued that a movie fictionally “recounts” its story in audio-visual terms. On face of it, this implies that fictionally there is someone or something in the work that ...
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In earlier chapters, it was argued that a movie fictionally “recounts” its story in audio-visual terms. On face of it, this implies that fictionally there is someone or something in the work that does the recounting. This conclusion is compatible with the viewer’s knowing nothing about the personality or character of the minimal recounting agency. If we ask whether movies have “narrators,” we could be asking whether such a minimal recounting agency is fictionally active in the film. Or we could be asking if the movie depicts a relatively robust character who fictionally carries out the work-internal narration. The answer to the first question is usually, “Yes,” and the answer to the second is almost always “No.” Most people have strong convictions that movies don’t have narrators, but it is explained why those intuitions are conflicted and unreliable.Less
In earlier chapters, it was argued that a movie fictionally “recounts” its story in audio-visual terms. On face of it, this implies that fictionally there is someone or something in the work that does the recounting. This conclusion is compatible with the viewer’s knowing nothing about the personality or character of the minimal recounting agency. If we ask whether movies have “narrators,” we could be asking whether such a minimal recounting agency is fictionally active in the film. Or we could be asking if the movie depicts a relatively robust character who fictionally carries out the work-internal narration. The answer to the first question is usually, “Yes,” and the answer to the second is almost always “No.” Most people have strong convictions that movies don’t have narrators, but it is explained why those intuitions are conflicted and unreliable.
Mark Bernard
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- September 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780748685493
- eISBN:
- 9781474406444
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748685493.003.0002
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter introduces the reader to the Splat Pack, a group of contemporary horror film-makers such as Eli Roth, Rob Zombie, Neil Marshall, and Alexandre Aja. It examines how mainstream media hyped ...
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This chapter introduces the reader to the Splat Pack, a group of contemporary horror film-makers such as Eli Roth, Rob Zombie, Neil Marshall, and Alexandre Aja. It examines how mainstream media hyped the Splat Packers, citing articles — including the one written by Alan Jones for the April 2006 issue of the British film magazine Total Film — that portrayed them as independent, subversive film-makers who operate outside the Hollywood mainstream. One of the ways in which journalists — and the Splat Packers themselves — construct the group's image of oppositional outsiderdom is by likening them to past horror directors like George Romero and Wes Craven from the 1960s and 1970s, the so-called ‘Golden Age’ of subversive American horror films. This chapter suggests that the media hype heralding the Splat Pack's arrival offers an intriguing glimpse into how notions of independence, outsider status, and claims of subversion are used to sell films and the personalities of their directors.Less
This chapter introduces the reader to the Splat Pack, a group of contemporary horror film-makers such as Eli Roth, Rob Zombie, Neil Marshall, and Alexandre Aja. It examines how mainstream media hyped the Splat Packers, citing articles — including the one written by Alan Jones for the April 2006 issue of the British film magazine Total Film — that portrayed them as independent, subversive film-makers who operate outside the Hollywood mainstream. One of the ways in which journalists — and the Splat Packers themselves — construct the group's image of oppositional outsiderdom is by likening them to past horror directors like George Romero and Wes Craven from the 1960s and 1970s, the so-called ‘Golden Age’ of subversive American horror films. This chapter suggests that the media hype heralding the Splat Pack's arrival offers an intriguing glimpse into how notions of independence, outsider status, and claims of subversion are used to sell films and the personalities of their directors.
Susan Tiefenbrun
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- May 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780195385779
- eISBN:
- 9780199776061
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195385779.001.0001
- Subject:
- Law, Public International Law
Violations of international law and human rights laws are the plague of the 20th and 21st centuries. People's inhumanity to people escalates as wars proliferate and respect for human rights and the ...
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Violations of international law and human rights laws are the plague of the 20th and 21st centuries. People's inhumanity to people escalates as wars proliferate and respect for human rights and the laws of war diminish. Decoding International Law: Semiotics and the Humanities analyzes international law as represented artfully in the humanities. Mass violence and flagrant violations of human rights have a dramatic effect that naturally appeals to writers, film makers, artists, philosophers, historians, and legal scholars who represent these horrors indirectly through various media and in coded language. This reader-friendly book enables us to comprehend and decode international law and human rights laws by interpreting meanings concealed in great works of art, literature, film and the humanities. Here, the author adopts an interdisciplinary method of interpretation based on the science of signs, linguistics, stylistics, and an in-depth analysis of the work's cultural context. This book unravels the complexities of such controversial issues as terrorism, civil disobedience, women's and children's human rights, and the piracy of intellectual property. It provides in-depth analyses of diverse literary works: Joseph Conrad's The Secret Agent and the movie Hotel Rwanda (both representing terrorism); Martin Luther King's Letter from Birmingham Jail; two documentary films about women and family law in Iran, Divorce Iranian Style and Two Women; Lisa See's Snow Flower and the Secret Fan (women's human rights and human trafficking in China); Uzodinma Iweala's Beasts of No Nation (shedding light on child soldiering and trafficking in Africa), and much more.Less
Violations of international law and human rights laws are the plague of the 20th and 21st centuries. People's inhumanity to people escalates as wars proliferate and respect for human rights and the laws of war diminish. Decoding International Law: Semiotics and the Humanities analyzes international law as represented artfully in the humanities. Mass violence and flagrant violations of human rights have a dramatic effect that naturally appeals to writers, film makers, artists, philosophers, historians, and legal scholars who represent these horrors indirectly through various media and in coded language. This reader-friendly book enables us to comprehend and decode international law and human rights laws by interpreting meanings concealed in great works of art, literature, film and the humanities. Here, the author adopts an interdisciplinary method of interpretation based on the science of signs, linguistics, stylistics, and an in-depth analysis of the work's cultural context. This book unravels the complexities of such controversial issues as terrorism, civil disobedience, women's and children's human rights, and the piracy of intellectual property. It provides in-depth analyses of diverse literary works: Joseph Conrad's The Secret Agent and the movie Hotel Rwanda (both representing terrorism); Martin Luther King's Letter from Birmingham Jail; two documentary films about women and family law in Iran, Divorce Iranian Style and Two Women; Lisa See's Snow Flower and the Secret Fan (women's human rights and human trafficking in China); Uzodinma Iweala's Beasts of No Nation (shedding light on child soldiering and trafficking in Africa), and much more.
Tom Ryall
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- July 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780719064524
- eISBN:
- 9781781703007
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719064524.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This is a comprehensive critical study of Anthony Asquith. The author sets the director's work in the context of British cinema from the silent period to the 1960s, and examines the artistic and ...
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This is a comprehensive critical study of Anthony Asquith. The author sets the director's work in the context of British cinema from the silent period to the 1960s, and examines the artistic and cultural influences within which his films can be understood. Asquith's silent films were compared favourably to those of his eminent contemporary Alfred Hitchcock, but his career faltered during the 1930s. However, the success of Pygmalion (1938) and French Without Tears (1939), based on plays by George Bernard Shaw and Terence Rattigan respectively, together with his significant contributions to wartime British cinema, re-established him as one of Britain's leading film makers. Asquith's post-war career includes several pictures in collaboration with Rattigan, and the definitive adaptation of Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest (1951), but his versatility is demonstrated effectively in a number of modest genre films including The Woman in Question (1950), The Young Lovers (1954) and Orders to Kill (1958).Less
This is a comprehensive critical study of Anthony Asquith. The author sets the director's work in the context of British cinema from the silent period to the 1960s, and examines the artistic and cultural influences within which his films can be understood. Asquith's silent films were compared favourably to those of his eminent contemporary Alfred Hitchcock, but his career faltered during the 1930s. However, the success of Pygmalion (1938) and French Without Tears (1939), based on plays by George Bernard Shaw and Terence Rattigan respectively, together with his significant contributions to wartime British cinema, re-established him as one of Britain's leading film makers. Asquith's post-war career includes several pictures in collaboration with Rattigan, and the definitive adaptation of Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest (1951), but his versatility is demonstrated effectively in a number of modest genre films including The Woman in Question (1950), The Young Lovers (1954) and Orders to Kill (1958).
Gillian Doyle
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780748698233
- eISBN:
- 9781474416122
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748698233.003.0005
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter investigates how well the Council’s evolutionary development served in enabling it to satisfy the differing constituencies of support that form part of the landscape of film provision. ...
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This chapter investigates how well the Council’s evolutionary development served in enabling it to satisfy the differing constituencies of support that form part of the landscape of film provision. Drawing on original interviews with senior figures from the UKFC and with key industry stakeholders, it assesses the challenges the organisation faced in handling a multiplicity of interest groups, concerns and expectations and how effectively the Council addressed competing economic, industrial and cultural objectives. This chapter also considers how the Council negotiated the various tensions between regional, national, European and international interests in an increasingly transnational film industry.Less
This chapter investigates how well the Council’s evolutionary development served in enabling it to satisfy the differing constituencies of support that form part of the landscape of film provision. Drawing on original interviews with senior figures from the UKFC and with key industry stakeholders, it assesses the challenges the organisation faced in handling a multiplicity of interest groups, concerns and expectations and how effectively the Council addressed competing economic, industrial and cultural objectives. This chapter also considers how the Council negotiated the various tensions between regional, national, European and international interests in an increasingly transnational film industry.
Aimee Mollaghan
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- August 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780190469894
- eISBN:
- 9780190469931
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190469894.003.0011
- Subject:
- Music, History, Western
This chapter explores how experimental filmmaker Lis Rhodes subverts the hegemonic relationship between sound and image across her body of moving image work in order to highlight and address ...
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This chapter explores how experimental filmmaker Lis Rhodes subverts the hegemonic relationship between sound and image across her body of moving image work in order to highlight and address inequitable power structures and the absence of the female voice in music and society. This is achieved on a material level by translating the optical soundtrack into visual presentations in her direct animation Dresden Dynamo (1971–72) and within an expanded, performative context in her audiovisual composition Light Music (1975). Further to this, Rhodes’s later films, Light Reading (1978) and A Cold Draft (1988), continue to rebalance the audiovisual relationship by giving countenance to the female voice, acousmatised from the images presented on screen.Less
This chapter explores how experimental filmmaker Lis Rhodes subverts the hegemonic relationship between sound and image across her body of moving image work in order to highlight and address inequitable power structures and the absence of the female voice in music and society. This is achieved on a material level by translating the optical soundtrack into visual presentations in her direct animation Dresden Dynamo (1971–72) and within an expanded, performative context in her audiovisual composition Light Music (1975). Further to this, Rhodes’s later films, Light Reading (1978) and A Cold Draft (1988), continue to rebalance the audiovisual relationship by giving countenance to the female voice, acousmatised from the images presented on screen.
Alan Clarke
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- July 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780719068300
- eISBN:
- 9781781702987
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719068300.003.0014
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Television
This chapter portrays Clarke's ‘voice’ as a filmmaker, and reveals the ‘voices’ that his productions articulated. It discusses Clarke's interrogations relating to the state and media discourses ...
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This chapter portrays Clarke's ‘voice’ as a filmmaker, and reveals the ‘voices’ that his productions articulated. It discusses Clarke's interrogations relating to the state and media discourses within the discursive framework of academic writing, and acknowledges the extent to which these voices have been expressed latently. The way that Clarke articulates the ‘political dilemma’ is also discussed. The Thatcherite discourses, which Clarke documented, ultimately silenced the kind of drama with which he was associated. Eventually, directors gained more influence than writers, as drama shifted to a more visual form of storytelling. Finally, the chapter uses analytical tools to unpick Clarke's contribution to their style and form, and to attempt to understand their effects. Clarke died on 24 July 1990. Many of his collaborators and admirers have argued that his technique of making radical plays died with him.,Less
This chapter portrays Clarke's ‘voice’ as a filmmaker, and reveals the ‘voices’ that his productions articulated. It discusses Clarke's interrogations relating to the state and media discourses within the discursive framework of academic writing, and acknowledges the extent to which these voices have been expressed latently. The way that Clarke articulates the ‘political dilemma’ is also discussed. The Thatcherite discourses, which Clarke documented, ultimately silenced the kind of drama with which he was associated. Eventually, directors gained more influence than writers, as drama shifted to a more visual form of storytelling. Finally, the chapter uses analytical tools to unpick Clarke's contribution to their style and form, and to attempt to understand their effects. Clarke died on 24 July 1990. Many of his collaborators and admirers have argued that his technique of making radical plays died with him.,
Michael Murphy
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9781846310737
- eISBN:
- 9781846314476
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/UPO9781846314476.008
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
This chapter presents an interview with film maker Terence Davies, conducted on 8 May 2006 at Kettners Restaurant, Soho. Davies was born in Liverpool in 1945 and grew up in a working-class Catholic ...
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This chapter presents an interview with film maker Terence Davies, conducted on 8 May 2006 at Kettners Restaurant, Soho. Davies was born in Liverpool in 1945 and grew up in a working-class Catholic family. The films With Distant Voices, Still Lives (1988) and The Long Day Closes (1992) marked Davies out as the most important and distinctive British film-maker since Michael Powell. He subsequently adapted and directed two novels by American authors: John Kennedy Toole's The Neon Bible (1995), and Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth (2000).Less
This chapter presents an interview with film maker Terence Davies, conducted on 8 May 2006 at Kettners Restaurant, Soho. Davies was born in Liverpool in 1945 and grew up in a working-class Catholic family. The films With Distant Voices, Still Lives (1988) and The Long Day Closes (1992) marked Davies out as the most important and distinctive British film-maker since Michael Powell. He subsequently adapted and directed two novels by American authors: John Kennedy Toole's The Neon Bible (1995), and Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth (2000).
David Seed
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9781846312120
- eISBN:
- 9781846315190
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/UPO9781846315190
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 20th Century Literature
This book examines American cinematic classics and also looks at some lesser-known figures such as Karl Van Vechten and Tom Kromer. The phrase cinematic fiction has now been generally accepted into ...
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This book examines American cinematic classics and also looks at some lesser-known figures such as Karl Van Vechten and Tom Kromer. The phrase cinematic fiction has now been generally accepted into critical discourse, but is usually applied to post-war novels. The book asks a simple question: given their fascination with the new medium of film, did American novelists attempt to apply cinematic methods in their own writings? From its very beginnings the cinema has played a special role in defining American culture. Covering the period from the 1910s up to the Second World War, the book offers insights into classics such as The Great Gatsby and The Grapes of Wrath, discussing major writers' critical writings on film and active participation in film-making. It is careful not to portray ‘cinema’ as a single or stable entity. Some novelists drew on silent film; others looked to the Russian theorists for inspiration; and yet others turned to continental film-makers rather than to Hollywood. Film itself was constantly evolving during the first decades of the twentieth century and the writers discussed here engaged in a kind of dialogue with the new medium, selectively pursuing strategies of montage, limited point of view, and scenic composition towards their different ends. The book contrasts a diverse range of cinematic and literary movements.Less
This book examines American cinematic classics and also looks at some lesser-known figures such as Karl Van Vechten and Tom Kromer. The phrase cinematic fiction has now been generally accepted into critical discourse, but is usually applied to post-war novels. The book asks a simple question: given their fascination with the new medium of film, did American novelists attempt to apply cinematic methods in their own writings? From its very beginnings the cinema has played a special role in defining American culture. Covering the period from the 1910s up to the Second World War, the book offers insights into classics such as The Great Gatsby and The Grapes of Wrath, discussing major writers' critical writings on film and active participation in film-making. It is careful not to portray ‘cinema’ as a single or stable entity. Some novelists drew on silent film; others looked to the Russian theorists for inspiration; and yet others turned to continental film-makers rather than to Hollywood. Film itself was constantly evolving during the first decades of the twentieth century and the writers discussed here engaged in a kind of dialogue with the new medium, selectively pursuing strategies of montage, limited point of view, and scenic composition towards their different ends. The book contrasts a diverse range of cinematic and literary movements.
