CINEJ Cinema Journal
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The American Dark Ages and the Terrorist Witch in Season of the Witch
Get PDFIn this article we argue that Season of the Witch (Sena, 2011) is not to be analyzed according to its faithfulness to the known historical sources, but only by understanding medievalist codes, traditions and (filmic) intertextuality. When read from this perspective, Season of the Witch tried to create new meaning by combining a dominant interpretation of Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal, European traditions on representing medieval witchcraft, contemporary perspectives on the crusades and Susan Aronstein’s concept of “Hollywood Arthuriana”. However, as this demands a lot of medievalist capital to fully understand, Season of the Witch in the end may have lost its coherence for the audience
Defining Italian Neorealism: A Compulsory Movement
Get PDFBeing one of the most influential cinematic movements in film history, Italian neorealism has not been very easy to define. Although one can easily recognize a neorealist film, not all neorealist films share the exact same characteristics. In this paper, four films that have often been labeled as neorealist will be discussed in light of their makers’ views on neorealism and the general characteristics of neorealism as a movement. These films are Roberto Rossellini’s Germania anno zero (1948), Vittorio De Sica’s Ladri di biciclette (1948) and Umberto D. (1952), and lastly Federico Fellini’s La strada (1954)
Liu Na’ou And The 1930s Soft Film Movement: A New Approach In Revisionist Chinese Film Historiography
Get PDFThis essay analyzes how the 1930s Chinese “Soft Film” movement emerged and developed in film historiography, and finds it is a discursive formation by the Leftists to create an ideological enemy that serves to define its own group’s identity through a struggle against an “other”. It challenges the naming of “Soft Film” through examining documents beyond the official archive. Unearthing the film writings of Liu Na’ou as the movement’s leading figure is a good entry point into excavating the history of the people and films associated with the label “Soft Film”. Reconstructing this “reactionary cinema” will reveal previously unknown cultural connections with classical and avant-garde Western film theories, and more importantly renovate the established Chinese film canon of the 1930s
Same Story But Different Cover: The Substitution Principle in Religion and Understanding It Through Watching Films
Get PDFReligion occuppies an important part in our lives. We typically learn about it from our families and later we may accept it or refuse what we learnt. However, we tend to substitute one for another. This essay is conducted to enlight that idea formulating it as The Substitution Principle in Religion. In order to prove the premise, respectively, etymological meanings of religion, Religion as a concept are mentioned in the first and second section and after explaining The Substitution Principle in Religion and giving related examples von Trier’s Breaking The Waves is analyzed. The film’s protagonist, Christ-like figure Bess played by Emily Watson, changes the object of her devotion, but the term of devotion does not change at all and that finding corresponds to the prmise asserted in the essay
Wenders in Motion: A Study On The Way Of Characterization In Wim Wenders’ Road Movies
Get PDFFamous for his road movies, WimWenders, has a deeper understanding of the word; motion. More than often,Wenders tells the story of wanderers by putting them in a constant state oftravel. These travels alter thewanderers’ characters and play a key role in Wenders’ storytelling. This paperstudies Wim Wenders’ way of characterization in three parts. The first partstates out keywords to define Wim Wenders’ wanderers: movement/motion, thejourney, homesickness, spatial levels, the Ozu connection. And it mainlyfocuses on his road trilogy: Im Lauf der Zeit (1976), FalscheBewegung (1975), and Alice in den Städten (1974), whileexplaining the stated keywords. The second part only focuses on Paris, Texas(1984) and its main character Travis, who might be seen as the ultimatewanderer whom all other Wenders’ characters blend in to. Thethird and the final part takes Der Himmel Über Berlin (1987) as ‘avertical road movie’ hoping for finding a cure for the worldwide homesicknessthat all the Wenders’ wanderers suffer. Also there are a handful of musicreferences hidden through the paper in homage to director’s love for rock ‘n’roll music
Nostalgia for the Light: A ‘Documemory’ and The Conflict between History and Memory
Get PDFThe aim of this paper is to analyze the diverse abstract and cinematic approaches that Guzmán uses to build an image of the issues in contemporary Chile. I argue that Guzmán’s documentary investigates the consequences of the dictatorship and the obscurity of constructing a collective memory of the events that happened during and after the coup. In this study, I elaborate on the elements of the film such as sound, evidence, narration, etc. I explore the form and the style as well as the text and the content related choices of filmmaker. Whenever possible the analysis here is supported by a shot by shot or sequential analysis
Editorial
Get PDFThis issue of CINEJ deals with approaches to films from different parts of the world ranging from India and China to Italy and Canada. Detailed analyses on films about Ghandi, docufictions on New York City, reflections of contemporary terror in historical cinema, Chinese Soft Film Movement, road movies, religious identification in films, documemory, Italian neorealism and female performance in Canadian cinema are presented in this issue
Nation, Genre and Female Performance in Canadian Cinema
Get PDFThis paper outlines a theory of sytle and performance in Canadian film based on geography, gender and genre. It is possible to form a theory of Canadian cinema based on theme-genre (strong women, nature as oppressor in dysfunctional family melodramas) in which female characters, as well as their personas, interact with both a physical geography and a social space to define a Canadian identity
The Tale Of Gandhi Through The Lens: An Inter-Textual Analytical Study Of Three Major Films- Gandhi, The Making Of The Mahatma, And Gandhi, My Father
Get PDFFor over half a century Gandhi has been one of the favored characters of a number of films – Nine hours to Rama (1963) to Gandhi, My Father (2007). Gandhian ethos, life and teachings are frequently represented in varied ways in different films. The portrayal of Gandhi in different films can be grouped into two broad categories: i. revolving around his life, percept and practice as one category and ii. involving his ideas, ideals and views either explicitly or implicitly. The first category of the films include three broad films—Gandhi (1982), The Making of the Mahatma (1996) and Gandhi My Father (2007) and the other category of the films include Nine Hours to Rama (1963- English), Jinnah (1998- English), Sardar (1993), Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar (2000), Hey Ram (2000), Lage Raho Munnabhai, (2006) etc. Grounded in the theory of inter-textuality through moving image method, the present study is a comparative analysis of examining the portrayal of Gandhi among the first category of three films ---Gandhi (1982- English) by Richard Attenborough, The Making of the Mahatma (1996) by Shyam Benegal and Gandhi, My Father (2007) by Feroz Abbas Khan with crisscross critiquing of the portrayal of Gandhi in the second category of films. Using Bingham’s (2010) discursive analysis on biopic films, the study seeks to show how Gandhi is perceived and depicted through the lenses of these three eminent directors vis-à-vis others from the point of intertextuality both ideologically and politically. Further the study would elaborate how different personal and social events in Gandhi’s life are weaved together by these directors to bring out the character of Bapu or Mahatma from Gandhi. For all the above critique, Gandhi’s autobiography-The Story of My Experiments with Truth-has been taken as a base referen
Chop Shop and Foreign Parts settle on the fuzzy boundary between fiction and documentary: new representations of New York City in Contemporary Cinema.
Get PDFCapturing reality has been a constant aim of different movements throughout the history of the cinema. Historically, this challenge has been taken up by makers of both documentaries and fiction, through hybrid proposals that blended strategies from both fields. Even though these proposals have been ignored by traditional film historians, they constitute a persistent tendency from the cinema’s earliest times, as Rhodes and Springer pointed out in their book Docufictions: Essay on the intersection of documentary and fictional filmmaking (2006). There are good examples of these proposals in contemporary cinema that have even won awards at leading international film festivals, including the two movies referred to in this paper: the fictional Chop Shop made by Ramin Bahrani in 2007 and the documentary Foreign Parts by Verena Paravel and J.P. Sniadecki in 2010. Both movies try to portray the same reality in the form of the little known Willets Point (Queens, New York City). Both films aim to show the truth behind the reality portrayed by its inhabitants in real life situations. The main goal of this paper is to reveal their manner of doing this and to show how both movies, even though belonging to different genres, share the same strategies to such an extent that their images could be interchangeable