bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Aleksander Ford and Film Censorship in Poland
Authors: Misiak Anna
Published: August 2019

POLITICALLY INVOLVED FILMMAKER: ALEKSANDER FORD AND FILM CENSORSHIP IN POLAND AFTER 1945 AFTER World War II civil rights were restricted in Poland as in most of the countries that fell into the zone of Soviet influence. Polish citizens experienced censorship in almost every field of their daily existence. Within the film industry censorship did not function solely as a means of checking final products from the standpoint of ideology. The controlling machine was not only the domain of the Party itself, even though its officials held decisive voice in restricting the autonomy of artists. The highly elaborate system also involved many moviemakers, who often proved to be very efficient in establishing methods of censorship and propaganda within Polish cinema. There was no clear-cut division between the Party and the filmmakers. Both groups became mixed, and the latter often willingly cooperated with the first. Just after the war there was...
Hong Kong 2002
Authors: Toh Hai Leong
Published: August 2019

THE 26th HONG KONG INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL (27 March - 7 April 2002) marked the first time the event was solely organized by the Hong Kong Arts Development Council, a statutory body beyond the direct bureaucratic control of the HK government. After absence caused by the recent administrative turmoil, many of the festival's former programmers have returned to their posts, with the aim of giving the festival a new look and direction. The festival also managed to bring off a coup with the help of the Hong Kong Film Archives which organized a nostalgic retrospective of Mandarin film classics made by Cathay in the 1960s titled "Back to Dreamland: Cathay Showcase". The screenings were extended past the closing of the festival. With budget constraints, however, the usual 16-day event was trimmed to 12 days with over 200 films, instead of more than 300. Happily, the quality of films, particularly...
Truffaut's Antoine Doinel films DVD collection
Authors: Uhde Jan
Published: August 2019

The impact of the DVD revolution goes far beyond the indisputable and conspicuous improvement of the image quality available on the new carrier. The implications - a kind of ripple effect - are profound. Access to a great variety of films, formerly restricted to inhabitants of large metropolises, has been significantly improved. Good movies neglected by the existing distribution and exhibition structures are now coming within reach of practically anyone who desires them. One can even enjoy films which would otherwise be accessible only to a handful of researchers in film archives and research institutes. Restorations of old films offer a new perspective on the history of cinema: through these, viewers discover damaged, lost or censored image material; enjoy improved subtitles, upgraded musical scores. The DVD publishers are learning to observe aesthetic rules such as proper screen ratio which is often neglected by both the television broadcasters and videocassette producers....
Urban Alienation in Wong Kar Wai's Films
Authors: Chong Ethel
Published: August 2019

IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE: URBAN ALIENATION IN WONG KAR WAI'S FILMS They say that love can change a man. I start to find myself looking better and more charming, and suddenly I discover that I'm turning blonde. (Qiwu in Fallen Angels) The four films which I am going to discuss are Days of Being Wild (1991), Chungking Express (1994), Fallen Angels (1995), and Happy Together (1997). These four films were directed by Hong Kong director, Wong Kar Wai, who wowed the critics at Cannes 2000 with In the Mood for Love (2000). Wong has been hailed as the definitive Hong Kong arthouse director. His postmodern themes and filming techniques focus mainly on the anxiety within modern urban living. His films do not provide an answer to the anxiety, nor tell the audience how to deal with the anxiety. In a nutshell, Wong's films are about our postmodern human...
Bangkok 2003
Authors: Toh Hai Leong
Published: August 2019

BANGKOK INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2003 Last October, festival founder Brian Bennett attempted to mount what should have been the festival's 5th edition but this was not to be due to lack of funds. This year's edition has been taken over by main sponsor and organiser, the Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT), and was simply called the 2003 Bangkok International Film Festival (10-21 January 2003). Interestingly, the presidency of the BKKIFF went to the governor of the cash-rich TAT, Juthamas Siriwan. Patrick de Bokay served as the festival's executive director and Kriengsak "Vic" Silakong, the festival's programme director. The country's number one English daily, The Nation, handled the festival operations. The declared aim of the organisers was to establish their first BKKIFF as a regional and international hub for film buffs as well as for potential film investors and those in the film trade. Its other equally important objective was...
Leipzig 2003
Authors: Holloway Ron
Published: August 2019

INTERNATIONALES LEIPZIGER FESTIVAL FUER DOKUMENTAR- UND ANIMATIONSFILM 2003 The timing could not have been better. Shortly after the 45th Leipzig International Festival for Documentary and Animation Films (15-20 October 2002) opened with the hit documentary of the year, Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine (USA), the German edition of Moore's bestselling "Stupid White Men" hit the book stands. The biting, acerbic, stinging Bowling for Columbine had been invited to compete at Cannes and was awarded there an especially created "Unique Prize of the 55th Anniversary Festival." And "Stupid White Men," a riotous political satire penned in the journalistic vein of H.L. Mencken and Mike Royko, rode the best-seller list in the New York Times for nearly a year. How did this hard-nose statement on gun-related deaths in the United States and the ongoing battle with the gun lobby in Congress get made in the first place? Armed with a disarming...
Polish Cinematic Dystopias
Authors: Mazierska Ewa
Published: August 2019

POLISH CINEMATIC DYSTOPIAS: METAPHORS OF LIFE UNDER COMMUNISM – AND BEYOND In this essay I intend to identify and discuss the main features of dystopias, as represented in Polish cinema during the communist period. I will limit my analysis to the five most distinguished Polish science fiction films, produced in the relatively short time span between the late 1970s and mid-1980s: four by Piotr Szulkin: Golem (1979), Wojna światów - następne stulecie (War of the Worlds - Next Century, 1981), O-bi, o-ba. Koniec cywilizacji (O-bi, O-ba. The End of Civilization, 1985) Ga, ga, chwała bohaterom (Ga, Ga. Glory of the Heroes, 1986) and one by Juliusz Machulski: Seksmisja (Sex Mission, 1983). It is widely accepted that these films criticised communist rule; the image of life in a distant future or on a far off planet served as a useful metaphor of life in communist Poland (Jankun 1984; Zarębski 1984;...
From Moscow to Madrid: Postmodern Cities, European Cinema
Authors: Ostrowska Dorota
Published: August 2019

Mazierska's and Rascaroli's From Moscow to Madrid is a fascinating experiment in imaginary cartography, which explores the representation of cities in contemporary European cinema while drawing freely on film history, sociology, politics and cultural studies. The authors choose the postmodern discourse as a theoretical framework to analyze the complex psyche of modern European cities as it is filtered through the cinematic medium. Their cities are postmodern spectacles testifying to the death of God, to the collapse of any overarching and unifying myths and ideologies and to the ensuing fragmentation and diversification. Although the authors are fascinated by the scale of social, economic and political changes which orchestrated the shift from modern to postmodern city, they do not celebrate it but rather count the losses in sensibilities and examine the cracks in ideologies. What strikes in their account is sadness and nostalgia for some lost city which no longer has place...
Found Footage Filmmaking and Popular Memory
Authors: Bell Desmond
Published: August 2019

SHOOTING THE PAST? FOUND FOOTAGE FILMMAKING AND POPULAR MEMORY IntroductionHow should we as documentary filmmakers picture the past? How should we conduct the struggle for memory? Clearly a major resource for the representation of history and the celebration of popular memory is the treasure trove of archival images, both still and moving, that are now available to us in the photographic and film archives. But how should we deal with this stockpile of images - as primary evidence and mute testimony to a unattainable past or as narrative resource capable of releasing the submerged voices of history and of attending to their story? Over the last number of years in collaboration with my editor Roger Buck at Napier University, I have developed an archivally based, creative film practice which explores aspects of Ireland's post- Famine past and the Irish diaspora in America. The Hard Road To Klondike (Bell: 1999)...
Fate and Choice in Kieślowski's Blind Chance
Authors: Ng Yvonne
Published: August 2019

FATE AND CHOICE IN KIEŚLOWSKI'S BLIND CHANCE FILM lovers who appreciate the cinema of the late Polish director Krzysztof Kieślowski (1941-1996) are likely to be familiar with his widely acclaimed works such as the Decalogue (1988), the series of mini-features made for Polish Television based on the Ten Commandments; the metaphysical beauty of The Double Life of Veronique (1991); and the Three Colours trilogy: Blue (1993), White (1993) and Red (1994), through which the director explores the concepts of liberty, equality and fraternity. Much less is known, however, of Kieślowski's numerous documentaries which started his career and of his early feature films which have yet to find commercial release in North America. Kieślowski was a filmmaker who came to be regarded as a philosopher, poet and humanist. His work is deeply concerned with questions of an existential nature and with moral dilemmas faced by ordinary people. His view of...
Lifetime Achievement Awards: Miloš Forman and Saul Zaentz
Authors: Holloway Ron
Published: August 2019

THE FOLLOWING portraits of Miloš Forman and Saul Zaentz celebrate from a personal perspective the extraordinary film accomplishments by this masterful director-producer team on the occasion of Lifetime Achievement Awards given by Film By the Sea Festival in the Dutch seaside resort cities of Vlissingen and Scheveningen. Miloš Forman and Saul Zaentz, invited by festival director Leo Hannewijk and international co-director Steve Klain, were honoured as well by leading personalities of the Netherlands and the European Union. Indeed, this single event scored as one of the festival highlights of the year. Miloš Forman - Auditions and Adaptations My first meeting with Miloš Forman took place in April 1968 - a couple hours after I had been thrown out of the Variety office on 43rd Street for daring to "sign myself on" as a future correspondent. To get rid of me, Bob Landry, the benevolent desk editor, sent me over...
Mary Pickford and Questions of National Identity During WWI
Authors: Zdriluk Beth
Published: August 2019

"WHEN A CANADIAN GIRL BECAME AMERICA'S SWEETHEART:" MARY PICKFORD AND QUESTIONS OF NATIONAL IDENTITY DURING THE WWI It is a little known fact that several of the key figures of early American cinema were, in fact, of Canadian extraction. Pioneering writer-director-producer-actor Mack Sennett, for instance, hailed from Richmond, Québec, while May Irwin, famous for providing American cinema with one half of its first onscreen kiss, was originally from Whitby, Ontario. Similarly, each of the first three Academy Award winners for Best Actress also happened to be Canadian-born. (Mary Pickford, born in Toronto, was awarded the first Best Actress Oscar for her performance in Coquette in 1929, to be followed by Montréal native Norma Shearer in 1930 and Cobourg, Ontario's Marie Dressler in 1931). Unlike more obviously foreign, "Other" stars such as Pola Negri and Greta Garbo, these Canadians were, for the most part, physically and linguistically indistinguishable from their...
Leipzig 2004
Authors: Moritz Dorothea
Published: August 2019

LEIPZIG INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL FOR DOCUMENTARY AND ANIMATION FILMS 2004 At the closing of the awards ceremony for the 47th Internationales Leipziger Festival Für Dokumentar- und Animationfilm (19-24 October 2004), Boris Baberkoff sat on stage and played on his cello Bach's "Fifth Suite in C-Minor." Boris, incapacitated in 1998 by a severe stroke in New York, had "beaten the odds" and was back in form. His wife, Katarina Peters, had the strength to remain at his side. Her survival strategy was to make use of a video DV camera as a diary. Thus Am seidenen Faden (Stroke, Germany) is a film that radiates courage. Katarina also confides her worries on video: Will her beloved husband remain a invalid? Will they have enough money to pay the bills? But the pair are indeed fortunate. Boris is endowed with an admirable will to live. A neatly structured and edited documentary, Katarina Peters's Stroke...
Vesoul 2005
Authors: Holloway Ron
Published: August 2019

VESOUL INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL OF ASIAN CINEMAS 2005 Cineastes with an incurable ache for Asian cinema are well advised to seek a cure at Vesoul. Indeed, Asian film festivals in western countries don't get much better than this annual event in an ancient town in the Haute-Saône province in eastern France. Now in its 11th year, the Vesoul International Festival of Asian Cinemas (22 February to 1 March 2005) was founded by Martine and Jean-Marc Théouanne, a teaching couple whose love for Asian cinema stems from back-packing days in the Far East. Enthusiastically supported by the home audience, Vesoul was breaking new ground back when Asian cinema was still an exotic sidebar attraction at major international film festivals. Over the years, as the festival extended its influence all the way to Paris, committed Asian cineastes climbed on board to lend a hand with programming and scouting reports - particularly Martine...
Jour de fête DVD
Authors: Uhde Jan
Published: August 2019

Jacques Tati, the French director, writer and comedian of Russian background is justly known as the heir of the best slapstick of Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton. His gentle, subtle humour reminds the contemporary viewer of the forgotten visual pleasures of the film medium's earlier days. Jour de fête, Tati's first feature, is dominated by the blundering postman François (Tati) who, inspired by a cinema newsreel, tries to introduce to a sleepy rural French town the "cutting edge" of the 1940s American postal technology, albeit with little success. Many François' characteristics foreshadow Monsieur Hulot, the famous character Tati introduced in his next film and which became his trademark. More than in the protagonist's own actions, Tati's slapstick is anchored in the hilarious reactions of those bewildered by the hero's slow-burn antics....
Soft and Hard: Intimations Insinuations Implications
Authors: Stoneman Rod
Published: August 2019

SOFT AND HARD: INTIMATIONS INSINUATIONS IMPLICATIONS At a time when television was extending its bravery and its boundaries, when it offered creative space for the world's film-makers, when a cinema of ideas was still possible... In 1985, working as Deputy Commissioning Editor in the Independent Film and Video department of Channel 4, I took on both the programming of a Godard season and the production of a new piece of specially commissioned work from Jean-Luc Godard and Anne-Marie Miéville originally entitled A Gentle Conversation on Rough Subjects, which became A Soft Conversation between Two Friends on a Hard Subject (1985) or Soft and Hard for short. Channel 4 was an extraordinary and exciting laboratory at this time, "rebuilding the ship at sea" as a new and radical version of public service television; a publisher broadcaster with a remit to "innovate and experiment in the form and content...
Cinefan 2006
Authors: Holloway Ron
Published: August 2019

CINEFAN NEW DELHI FESTIVAL 2006 When I asked an informed critic for an opinion as to which was the most important film festival in India today, he named Osian's Cinefan in a close tie with the Trivandrum International Film Festival - with the caveat, of course, that Cinefan in New Delhi primarily presents Asian cinema, while Trivandrum (aka Triruvananthapuram, to use the official name) in Kerala opens its doors wide to international film fare. As for the long-running International Film Festival in India (IFFI), a government-sponsored affair based in Goa for the past couple of years, I was told that it ranked third at best, although a larger attendance was recorded last year. In other words, Goa, a resort city populated mostly by tourists from home and abroad, has had to work hard to attract a movie-mad Indian public from across the country. Two other festivals were also thrown into...
Istanbul 2006
Authors: Dönmez-Colin Gönül
Published: August 2019

ISTANBUL INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2006 A quarter of a century old, Istanbul International Film Festival (April 1-16, 2006) has come a long way. The galas, the distinguished guests - no less than Catherine Deneuve and Gérard Depardieu - special screenings, celebrations, homages, tributes, documentaries, films from the world film festivals, Turkish cinema, human rights and freedom to women sections, and last but not the least, the competition. In Istanbul, you can find more sections than the total number of films shown in some festivals. Then again, this is a festival that wears several hats: a film festival that tries to bring the best of the latest to its discerning audience; a showcase that aims at displaying the most recent crop of Turkish cinema to the foreign guests; and a two-week long cinematheque for the film lovers, trying to fill the gap left when the city's cinematheque was closed many years...
Women in Polish Cinema
Authors: Owen Jonathan
Published: August 2019

The title of Ewa Mazierska and Elżbieta Ostrowska's Women in Polish Cinema designates an area of film studies doubly neglected. In the field of Polish cinema studies, itself marginal territory, there has been scant attention paid to gender issues. The authors lay much of the blame for this at the feet of Polish film scholars themselves, resistant to gender studies out of an all too symptomatic hostility towards feminism as an alien, "corrupting Western influence". Attempting significantly to redress this situation, the authors establish a twofold purpose: to assess the representations of women onscreen and to reassess the place within Polish cinema of women behind the camera. Their analysis mediated by a strong sense of national specificity, Mazierska and Ostrowska reveal the range of historical, political and religious factors that have determined (indeed sometimes over-determined) constructions of femininity in Polish culture and film....
Andrzej Wajda's A Generartion and Man of Marble
Authors: Schuppert Fabian
Published: August 2019

ANDRZEJ WAJDA'S A GENERATION AND MAN OF MARBLE FROM A POLITICAL PERSPECTIVE 'The cinema does not exist in a sublime state of innocence, untouched by the world; it also has a political content, whether conscious or unconscious, hidden or overt.'(1) Andrew Sarris A PIECE of art is always produced in concrete socio-political circumstances; it is a social product. Undoubtedly art does not come into being or exists in an absolute, free state of self-sufficiency. But to postulate that art is at the same time always political, is quite a different affair. What exactly does it imply to say that art, or as in the case of Andrew Sarris and this article, that film is political? This paper is going to inquire into the political role, function and use of film. The aim of this paper is to give a short...
The Cinematic "Arab"
Authors: Anthony David H.
Published: August 2019

THE CINEMATIC "ARAB": FROM THE LONG SHIPS TO HIDALGO IMAGES of "Arabs" have been perennial staples of both Hollywood feature films and US television. The degree to which these are stereotypical has been examined in studies by several critics. In spite of their admonitions, however, they remain fixtures of America's dream factory. The recent film Hidalgo reveals the reproduction of these tried and not so true representations, but also seeks to address some of the criticisms and to make redress for transgressions visited upon the two principal groups depicted within it, "Arabs" and Native American Indians. In the course of doing so, it takes on North American "racial" formation, historical relations between the New and Old Worlds and British imperialism. Finally, Hidalgo is a curiously complex tricolour tapestry of racial binaries, the antinomies of "White" vs "Red," "Black" vs "White," "White" vs "Arab" and "Red" vs "Arab." If it...
Tirana 2005
Authors: Holloway Ron
Published: August 2019

TIRANA INTERNATIONAL SHORT FILM FESTIVAL 2005 After two strong outings, abetted by the breaking news that Tirana was chosen "World City 2005," it was a sure bet that the Third Tirana International Short Film Festival (5-11 December 2005) would go big time on the world festival stage too. With more than 20,000 Euros in purse prizes as bait, this year's TIFF received over 700 applications from 65 countries for entry in its five sections: 370 in the fiction category, 185 in animation, 85 in documentary, 60 in experimental, and 30 more in the cross-country Albanian-language shorts section. In addition, festival director Ilir Butka and programmer Genc Permeti programmed 27 feature films in free-fall evening programs that ran deep into the night. Most important of all for a festival's continued existence, TIFF 2005 could count on the support of 35 sponsors, plus the city's foreign ambassadors and cultural centres, for...
La bête humaine DVD
Authors: Uhde Jan
Published: August 2019

The phenomenal growth of the DVD medium is seen by many as an excellent opportunity to bring important films of the present and past to audiences worldwide. Among the anxiously awaited issues, long overdue, has been Jean Renoir's 1938 masterpiece La bête humaine, adopted from the eponymous novel by Emile Zola. Set in the closely-knit community of Le Havre's cheminots, or railwaymen, this major work of the French pre-war poetic realism focuses on the gentle engineer Lantier (Jean Gabin) and his tragic struggle with hereditary insanity. The past haunts other characters of the story as well, especially the abused Sévérine (Simone Simon) who, like Thomas Hardy's Tess, is unable to escape her socially pre-determined fateful trajectory....
Film and the "Other" Singaporean
Authors: Lim Edna
Published: August 2019

COMING UP FOR AIR: FILM AND THE "OTHER" SINGAPOREAN The history of Singapore's film industry is marked by two distinct periods. The first period, which lasted from the 1950s to the 1960s, is considered the golden age of Singapore films due to the prolific outpouring of primarily Malay films produced by the local Cathay and Shaw studios. The second period, which began in the 1990s, constitutes a revival of sorts for Singapore film, and is marked by the recent spate of local productions that began with Medium Rare in 1991 and continues to the present. What is interesting about this current "resurgence" of local films is that while these films have resuscitated the previously dormant film industry in Singapore, and can, therefore, be considered a "revival," they are in fact very different kinds of films from the ones that were made during the golden age, just as the current...
Anthology of Polish Animated Film DVD
Authors: Uhde Jan
Published: August 2019

THE PUBLICATION of the Anthology of Polish animation set was without doubt one of the DVD events of 2007. Covering the production of the last fifty years, it offers a collection of the crème de la crème of Polish animation, with twenty-eight shorts by twenty filmmakers, from Jan Lenica and Walerian Borowczyk (The House), Piotr Dumala (Gentle Spirit) to Zbigniew Rybczynski (Tango)....
Bekim Fehmiu and (Yugoslav) Albanian Identity
Authors: Williams Bruce
Published: August 2019

DOUBLE EAGLE, DOUBLE INDEMNITY: BEKIM FEHMIU AND (YUGOSLAV) ALBANIAN IDENTITY "ONCE upon a time there was a country, and its capital was Belgrade." These opening words of Kusturica's Underground (1995) allow us to reflect on the apparent unity forged by Tito in Yugoslavia and the notion, however fleeting, of Yugoslav cinema. As Dina Iordanova asserts, this statement at once foregrounds Kusturica's claim that Yugoslav union had been "an artificial political construction built on lies and mutual betrayal" (Iordanova 2002, 83), and evokes an undeniable nostalgia for the defunct state. In wake of the bombardment of Dubrovnik, the wars in Bosnia and Kosovo, and unrest in Macedonia, we recall with certain fondness an era in which Yugoslavia provided a peaceful and accessible portal between East and West. The ambivalence of Kusturica's stance recalls Edward Said's reconsideration of the relationship of divergent communities to the ever-fluctuating nation-state, an argument which has...
Hell as the Here-and-Now
Authors: Short Daniel F.
Published: August 2019

HELL AS THE HERE-AND-NOW: IMAGES OF HUMAN TRAVAIL IN TWELFTH-CENTURY EMAKI AND KUROSAWA'S RANAKIRA KUROSAWA'S last major epic film, Ran (translatable as "chaos"), begins in media res with the moment of precipitous decline of the seventy-year-old Hidetora, a medieval-period daimyo. Hidetora gathers together his three sons and two lesser daimyo, lords Fujimaki and Ayabe, for first a hunt, then to issue an edict: Though he will retain his banner and ceremonial title of Great Lord, his oldest son, Taro, will henceforth act as the clan's leader. Hidetora hopes to spend his remaining years as a doting and beloved father. But, as Hidetora's son Saburo warns, such familial peace and bliss is hardly achievable within a world of warriors and their competing ambitions, a world that Hidetora himself helped to create through his many ruthless acts. This meeting of hunter-warriors is both sequel to the violent episodes in...
Colorization - The Saga of Legend Films
Authors: Holloway Ron
Published: August 2019

COLORIZATION - WHY NOT? THE SAGA OF LEGEND FILMS Colorization is as old as the movies. In fact, it's even older. Although some historians are want to trace the theory of colour photography as far back as 1785, the first patent for colour film was registered sometime in the late 1800s. This was during the era of Georges Méliès, whose famed hand-tinted trick films delighted audiences as early as 1894. Edwin S. Porter borrowed the tinted technique to enhance the gunshot blast at the end of The Great Train Robbery (1904). Later, D. W. Griffith had gun explosions tinted in battle scenes of The Birth of a Nation (1915). And Sergei Eisenstein made sure that in the first prints of Battleship Potemkin (1925) a tinted red flag was raised to glorify the revolution. The first commercially successful colour system to hit the market was Kinemacolor, patented in 1906 by...
Festival de Cannes 2008
Authors: Holloway Ron
Published: August 2019

ANY WAY YOU LOOK AT IT, 2008 was a watershed year at the Cannes film festival. Looking ahead, this was Thierry Frémaux’s first year as délégué général, the first time he was listed in the catalogue as the man who put his own signature on the selection. Last year, he was down simply as director artistique, to wit: the festival’s artistic director under the friendly aegis of président Gilles Jacob. Looking back, Gilles Jacob is currently penning his collection of memories as the festival icon over the past 30 years. Knowing Jacob’s unrestrained love for the Festival de Cannes, a spring event he has personally molded into an institution that stands head and shoulders over all other A-category festivals, his memoirs will surely offer insights into how he was able to balance the ideals of auteur cinema with the public’s demand for starlets on the grand staircase and box-office...
A Presence in Time and Space
Authors: Bagley George
Published: August 2019

A PRESENCE IN TIME AND SPACE: AUTHORITY AND MEANING IN THE RECEPTION COMPLEX Consider Freud's dilemma while sleeping on a train. Upon waking, he mistakes the image reflected in his train compartment window as an elderly gentleman, only to realize in time that "the intruder was nothing more than [his] own reflection."(1) This brief, mistaken visualization presages the intricate relation between representation and understanding, and thus jump-starts a workable metaphor for the reception complex proposed here. Before him in the train's window Freud mistakenly regards an image and takes it at face value, the verifiable picture of a moment in time and space, yet in truth this is simply a manifestation, not the literal picture of that very moment, but a reproduction housing within itself a potential for eventual understanding. It's only after negotiating the field of this mirrored view, the reflection of the bench upon which he...
Interview with Elem Klimov
Authors: Holloway Ron
Published: August 2019

Interview with Elem Klimov at the Denver International Film Festival 1986 Ron Holloway: Elem, how many films have you made up to now?Elem Klimov: Over the past 20 years, I have made six feature-length films and one short film lasting only 18 minutes, a film called Larisa (1980). It's a biography of my wife, Larisa Shepitko (1938-1979). It was made as a tribute to the filmmaker Larisa Shepitko. A small film - but one of the most difficult films of my life. Which is your favourite among the feature films?None. Which then was the easiest film to make? Or the most difficult?None of them were very easy to make. Maybe Sport, Sport, Sport (1970) was the easiest, but that was because I didn't take it very seriously. And the most difficult one among the serious films was definitely Idi I smotri (Come and See, 1985)....
Times BFI Film Festival 2007
Authors: Gorlitz Lana
Published: August 2019

DARJEELING LIMITED at the TIMES BFI FILM FESTIVAL The Times BFI London Film Festival (17 October-1 November 2007) celebrated its 51st anniversary last year, hosting 185 feature films and 133 short films from 43 countries. The LFF thrives as a "festival of festivals," choosing the best films available on the circuit. This creates an atmosphere which focuses primarily on audience participation and enjoyment rather than the typical emphasis on the industry and the acquisition of distribution rights. The principal concern for Sandra Hebron, Artistic Director of the LFF, was "to select films which showed another way of looking at the world." By all accounts, that was a mission accomplished. From the pursuit of a spiritual self in The Darjeeling Limited, and a lonely voyage to Alaska in Into The Wild, to a glimpse into the world of Bob Dylan in I'm Not There, and a young girl's experience of...
Berlinale 2009
Authors: Holloway Ron
Published: August 2019

BERLINALE (2009) Festival PoliticsAsked whether the Berlinale has fostered an image as a "political" film festival, Christoph Schlingensief, the German jury member at the 59th Berlin International Film Festival (5-15 February 2009), blurted out: "A competition entry here scarcely stands a chance otherwise." Schlingensief, a highly motivated political filmmaker in his own right, hit the nail right on the head. You only have to look back at the past Golden Bear winners. In 2007, the Grand Prix went to Wang Quan'an's fiction-documentary Tu ya de hun shi (Tuya's Marriage, China). Set in rural Mongolia, Tuya's Marriage mirrored the plight of nomadic shepherds whose way of life is threatened by the government's misguided plans to move them to urban shelters. In 2008, it was awarded to José Padilha's Tropa de elite (The Elite Squad, Brazil). Set in 1997, when the Pope announced his visit to Brazil, that news triggered...
Touch, Transcendence and Immanence in Film
Authors: Murphie Andrew
Published: August 2019

TAKING OFF THE GLOVES: TOUCH, TRANSCENDENCE AND IMMANENCE IN FILM Beginning with excessive acts of both violence and compassion, as depicted in Martin Scorsese's Bring out the Dead (1999, USA), I attempt to sketch the play between transcendence and immanence in film. In particular, I am interested in Paul Schrader's philosophical discussion of "transcendental style", as well as his film work, and in the work of Scorsese, Yasujiro Ozu, and Gilles Deleuze concerning the film relations between transcendence and immanence. In the process I hope to foreground the role of touch in film and begin to question an aesthetic syntax in film and in philosophy. In a way the moment of bashing and compassion in Bringing Out the Dead that I shall begin with crystallises a history of ambiguity and anxiety surrounding issues of touch, immanence and transcendence. I shall try and tease out only a few moments in...
Interview with Gary Tooze
Authors: Uhde Jan
Published: August 2019

INTERVIEW WITH GARY TOOZE OF DVDbeaver.com Few people today would fail to see the momentous impact of the DVD medium on the motion pictures – the DVD has changed the way movies are marketed, viewed and above all, revolutionised access to films, both mainstream and art cinema, contemporary and historical, wide-release and niche genres. Still, most reviews and observations on DVD films focus on the disc’s actual content – very few of them examine the content’s material integrity and technical quality of the transfer, even though the differences, quality and price among individual DVD issues of the same movie can be astounding. Fortunately, there are people who understand the importance of a professional analysis of the material aspects of films on DVD. One is Gary Tooze of Mississauga, Ontario, Canada, who provides exactly such a service on his well-known and widely-appreciated website DVDbeaver.com. Here, Tooze shares his...
Ekofilm 97
Authors: Uhde Jan
Published: August 2019

IT WAS NO COINCIDENCE that the fairy-tale Southern Bohemian town of Český Krumlov became the site of the 23rd Festival of Film and Video programmes on Environment (EKOFILM 97). Cesky Krumlov, which is on the UNESCO's world cultural and natural heritage list, taking over the EKOFILM from the North Moravian Ostrava which hosted the festival since its inception during the communist rule in the mid-1970s. In those difficult days this festival was, as its present director Dr. Bedřich Moldán says, one of the "rare islands of renewed and fresh normality within an abnormal world." Some people see a deeper symbolism behind EKOFILM's new home: the steel-city Ostrava (a kind of Czech Detroit), was an example of environmental devastation while Český Krumlov, a few years ago still a neglected, dilapidating town, has been undergoing a careful restoration, revealing the Sleeping-Beauty charms of its medieval architecture....
A Dream Betrayed
Authors: Pratley Gerald
Published: August 2019

Tony Manera: A Dream Betrayed: The Battle for the CBC. Toronto: Stoddart, 1996, 224pp. CAD 27.95. 8 pp. b&w photo insert. ISBN: 0-7737-2980-1. THE trials and tribulations of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation -- mostly self-inflicted over the years -- drag tiresomely on. Two books, The Dream Betrayed by Tony Manera, and Cue the Elephant! by Knowlton Nash, paint opposite sides of the dream. Manera's book is depressing in the extreme while Nash's book is light-hearted to the point of becoming light-headed. Tony Manera, formerly with the CBC for ten years mainly on the engineering and technical side, became President of the Corporation in February 1994 and resigned a year later when the government reduced the CBC's parliamentary appropriations after having assured him, when he accepted the position, of its "undying political and financial support". Having given his word to the staff of the CBC that there would be no more...
Films Can Change Your Life (Interview)
Authors: Karmitz Marin
Published: August 2019

LIGHT, rebellion, love, equality, cinema, democracy: the words that adorn the frontispiece of the latest "cinema venue" created by Marin Karmitz, in Paris, more or less sum up the independent producer's ambitious and quasi-militant concept of cinema; indeed, Karmitz is someone who puts his passion at the service of creative film directors the world over. He is a producer, distributor both in France and abroad, and also runs a number of cinemas in Paris; after many years as a marginalised figure, he is now at the very heart of the French film-making industry.This interview, conducted by Anne Rapin, was originally published in Label France No. 31, April 1998.(1) Label France: People send you a thousand scripts a year. What criteria do you use to decide which films to produce in any given year? Marin Karmitz: There are several ways of looking at what a producer does. Personally,...
The Public Broadcaster in Love with Commercials
Authors: Pratley Gerald
Published: August 2019

Seldom does a day pass by without Canadian Broadcasting Corporation TV being mentioned, for one reason or the other, in the media or in political circles, either with unfavourable comments or occasionally, compliments. Great storms of fury arise over its administration, its policies and appointments, its programming and financial distress. It is harangued, it is laughed at, it is loyally defended by Ian Morrison and his Friends of Canadian Broadcasting. The government is blamed for decisions it has taken, and for measures it hasn't carried out, to benefit the CBC. But in these ceaseless debates, nothing is ever said, within the CBC or outside seemingly, among its viewers, about the greatest blight ever to settle over the CBC and this is the curse of commercials. Does this mean that to the CBC's entire staff and to its faithful "the CBC no matter what" supporters, this contentious subject is no longer...
Cannes 1998
Authors: Holloway Ron
Published: August 2019

No film deserved the Golden Palm -- and the Ecumenical Prize -- more than Theo Angelopoulos's Eternity and a Day (Greece-France). Ever since Angelopoulos's Travelling Players was awarded the International Critics Prize in the Directors' Fortnight section at the 1975 Cannes festival (he was to receive the FIPRESCI award a half-dozen times more over the next two decades), the Greek filmmaker has been generally referred to as a "critic's director."The cinema of Theo Angelopoulos is the result of meticulous preparation and teamwork in collaboration with a closely knit production crew. Yorgos Arvanitis, his cameraman from the very beginning, is internationally renown for his long-take sequences, powerful rhythmic movements, and deliberately orchestrated zooms timed with the changing positions of the protagonists. Italian screenwriter Tonino Guerra has been with Angelopoulos for the last six films, ever since Voyage to Cythera (Cannes, 1984). Yannis Tsitsopoulos has edited his last four films, for which...
Singapore 98
Authors: Toh Hai Leong
Published: August 2019

th April-2nd May) started just before the closing of the more established 22nd Hong Kong International Film Festival on18th April. Big is the word for this year's festival and the 300 films shown is nearly twice the size of Hong Kong's output of 160 films. Of course, more does not necessarily mean better. However, the Singapore festival this year did have an overwhelming number of entertaining features, avant garde feminist video works (Women About Women), a flood of South East Asian shorts and experimental films, seminar workshops with the proponents of the emerging Asian-American cinema, led by Chris Chan Lee (Yellow), Renee Tajima-Pena (My America ... Or Honk If You Love Buddha), lara Lee (Modulations), Jon Moritsugu (Fame Whore). There was a tribute to Cannes' 50th Anniversary with a slew of l 5 French Golden Palm winners and a Wim Wenders' retrospective comprising l5 films. Homage was also paid to...
UPDATE 2000: Good News from Paris
Authors: Uhde Jan
Published: August 2019

Reflecting upon the current situation of world cinema, one can hardly get away from the gloomy news and dark predictions hailing from all directions: decline of national productions and cinema culture in general, Hollywood domination, style homogenisation - in other words, the end of cinema, the Millennium... Occasionally, however, good news comes our way, too. This time from France - where the legendary Cinémathèque, founded in 1936 by Henri Langlois and currently housed in the Palais de Chaillot in Paris, will soon be moving to new premises in the 12th arrondissement (the former American Centre near Bercy), together with the Film library (BIFI) situated today near the Bastille. The Cinémathèque's new home, Maison du cinéma, designed in 1994 by the renowned architect Frank Gehry (he has built the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao) is supposed to receive its new tenant in the year 2000.Situated in a popular quarter now in a process...
David Lean: A Biography
Authors: Paquet Ronald
Published: August 2019

DAVID LEAN, unlike other famous film directors, Hitchcock and Wells for example, shunned publicity and the spotlights after the openings of his films leaving as soon as possible for some remote hotel in a far flung land to remain an inaccessible and private person. Long overdue, as a result, is this thorough and insightful biography by renowned film historian, Kevin Brownlow (The Parade's Gone By, Hollywood, the Pioneers) told through the authentic voices of Lean's many wives, his friends and co-workers....
Towards a Psychological Theory of Close-ups
Authors: Persson Per
Published: August 2019

TOWARDS A PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORY OF CLOSE-UPS: EXPERIENCING INTIMACY AND THREAT This article takes a functionalist perspective to cinema. It is insufficient only to describe textual features without awareness of how these function in co-operation with cultural-psychological-behavioural structures in the spectator. It is the experience of cinema a reception study seeks to elucidate. It is maintained that threat and intimacy are two generally widespread spectatorial effects of close-ups. The reason why these effects emerge might be explainable from a theory of personal space, which in social psychology refers to the intimate sphere surrounded by every individual regulating distance behaviour in interpersonal situations. This behavioural pattern is said to have two functions. In the protective function an intrusion into personal space warns the individual about potential threats and generates protective behaviour (backing off, leaving the situation). In the communicative function manipulating distance during conversation (for example by letting someone into your...
Aspects of Television Temporality
Authors: Gwóźdź Andrzej
Published: August 2019

ON SOME ASPECTS OF TELEVISION TEMPORALITY If there is a film that makes the way of existence of its images the object of its discourse, then Cinema Paradiso (Nuovo Cinema Paradiso, by Giuseppe Tornatore, France/Italy, 1989) undoubtedly is that film. It is just here that in an almost demonstrative way the duality of a film iconosphere is shown: a pictorial passage on a film reel on the one hand, and immateriality of die luminous screen phantom on the other, a "film-reel" and a "film-projection."(1) It is here that the cinema shows its ontology as a mechanism of difference between materiality of a fundamental cinematographic apparatus and immateriality of a cinematic mechanism that actually results in the source of the cinema. If we were to look for a similar justification for the ontology of television, we would surely have to locate it within the "time of expression," that is,...
Mumbai 1998
Authors: Holloway Ron
Published: August 2019

MUMBAI INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL FOR DOCUMENTARY, SHORT AND ANIMATION FILMS 1998 Founded in 1990 as a biannual event, and now only five festivals old, the 5th Mumbai (Bombay) International Film Festival for Documentary, Short and Animation Films (1-7 March 1998) already numbers among the most important of its kind. Indeed, MIFF pulled out all the stops this year to celebrate India's 50 Years of Independence in the country's largest city and undisputed finance-and-film capital, where the Films Division has been chronicling the country's history, culture and heritage with scores of documentaries over the past five decades. Altogether, including retrospectives and the information section, over 300 films and videos were programmed by festival director Bankim. Two juries, for film and video entries, awarded 22 prizes and citations, along with purses amounting altogether to $45,000 (1.8 million rupees). Golden and Silver Conches were awarded in four film categories: Long Documentary (over...
Law and Order and the American Criminal Justice System
Authors: Sutton David L. , Britts Melissa , Landman Margaret
Published: August 2019

TELEVISION PROGRAMMES AS LEGAL TEXTS: WHAT LAW AND ORDER TELLS US ABOUT THE AMERICAN CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM In this work, we take the perspective that although a television program is produced for the brief amusement of a mass audience, it can be viewed as having a part in the scholarly investigation of law and justice in our society. The central question we are focussing on is: What does Law & Order programme tell its audience about the American criminal justice system? According to one of the program's official web sites, Law & Order is a "realistic" television series that examines "law and order from a dual perspective." For roughly the first half-hour, the program focuses on two New York Police Department (NYPD) detectives as they "investigate crimes and apprehend law-breakers." Then the scene switches to the criminal courts, where two assistant district attorneys "work within a complicated justice system...
Innovations at Cannes
Authors: Holloway Ron
Published: August 2019

CANNES: INNOVATIONS IN THE CERTAIN REGARD, DIRECTORS' FORTNIGHT AND CRITICS WEEK For the third year in a row, an entry in Un Certain Regard was awarded the increasingly important prize of the Fondation GAN pour le cinéma (worth FF 200,000 in French distribution aid) by an independent international jury. Consequently this Cannes sidebar is now viewed by many as a "backup festival" to the Competition in the official program. For the second year in a row under the new management of Marie-Pierre Macia, the Quinzaine des Réalisateurs (Directors' Fortnight) continued to distance itself from the prior policies of Pierre-Henri Deleau (three decades on the job) by formulating a programming image that was even more actor-and-personality oriented than last year's event. And for the first time in 16 years, the Semaine de la critique (Critics Week) finds itself under new management: José María Riba was elected by the Paris-based critics...
Karlovy Vary 2000
Authors: Holloway Ron
Published: August 2019

35th KARLOVY VARY INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL The Brazilian film revival received another festival boost when Andrucha Waddington's Eu Tu Eles (Me You Them) scored a hardly unexpected Crystal Globe victory at the 35th Karlovy Vary festival (5-15 July 2000). Since 1995, when the new government (after the impeachment of the president) introduced friendly film laws to encourage investment in productions, a Golden Bear has been awarded at the Berlinale to Walter Salles's Central Station -- followed by an even more important commercial box-office hit: Carlos Diegues's Orfeu, a remake of Vinicius de Morales's play Orfeu de Carnival, the same source used by Marcel Camus for his Orfeu Negro (Black Orpheus), the Golden Palm winner at the 1959 Cannes festival. In June, a month before Karlovy Vary, Orfeu was the key film in the 24-film retrospective programmed at the Troia festival in Portugal to celebrate the discovery of Brazil 500...