bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Seeing Beyond: Movies, Visions, and Values
Authors: Pratley Gerald
Published: August 2019

THIS remarkable compilation is filled from cover to cover with 26 thoughtful and enlightening essays on a wide range of genres and master-directors, by 15 different authors, after which 14 more authors, mostly film professors, weigh in with their writings on theory, criticism and just about every other aspect of what the movies mean, joining the other writers in rethinking how we see movies, audiences, other critics, and ourselves in this fascinating world of art, morality and humanistic values. Most of the writers are Mr. Robinson's friends. He himself is much admired as a pioneer in film studies, and was a great influence on Richard Sugg who edited this tremendous out-pouring of exactly what do movies teach us exploring a very large number and range of classic and modern films, with a generous number of directors from Ford to Fellini....
Cannes 2003 Report
Authors: Holloway Ron
Published: August 2019

INTRODUCTIONCannes, like Paris for Hemingway, is a moveable feast. So if the Competition appears somewhat lacking, as it did this year, you spend more time viewing entries in Un Certain Regard. Or you pay a couple more visits to the Quinzaine des Réalisateurs. Or you check out entries at the Semaine Internationale de la Critique. Or you cue up at the Federico Fellini Retrospective to see Claudia Cardinale introduce 8 ½ (Italy, 1963). Or you marvel at Oliver Stone's adroit command of French at his Le Leçon de cinéma, the festival's annual "film master class." Or you relive a moment of Cannes history at a Soirée in memory of the late French producer Daniel Toscan du Plantier in the Salle Debussy, where a large French film delegation turned up for a special screening of Maurice Pialat's Sous le Soleil de Satan, the 1987 Palme d'Or winner produced by...
Cinefan 2003
Authors: Holloway Ron
Published: August 2019

CINEMAYA FESTIVAL OF ASIAN CINEMA – CINEFAN 2003 Fifteen years ago, back in the autumn of 1988, a very informative and highly readable film magazine called Cinemaya hit the stands at a few key international film festivals. Published in New Delhi by Aruna Vasudev, an Indian critic and film historian who had been educated in Paris, it beat the drum for Asian cinema and filmmakers so loudly and effectively that soon all the major film festivals took notice. And when she engaged a cohort of able international writers to submit articles, interviews, and festival reports to Cinemaya, the next step was a logical one: the founding in 1990 of the Network for the Promotion of Asian Cinema (NETPAC) at a UNESCO conference held in New Delhi. With a membership that includes 16 Asian countries, plus 8 associate members, the Network was strong enough to assemble its own NETPAC juries...
Istanbul 2003
Authors: Dönmez-Colin Gönül
Published: August 2019

ISTANBUL INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2003 (April 12-27, 2003) celebrated its 22nd birthday this spring with almost 200 films from around the world. What began as Cinema Days in the eighties in this cosmopolitan city of film-lovers has now become a prestigious event that connects different cultures just as the city of over fifteen million inhabitants itself, which unites the continents of Europe and Asia with its spectacular Bosporus. The festival venue in the Beyoglu district, the ancient Pera, which has become the Soho of Istanbul, adds to this atmosphere with its numerous book and CD/DVD shops and bohemian cafes that stay open past midnight. Since the closure of the cinematheque in the eighties by the military regime of the period, the festival has shouldered the dual role of preserving the film culture while presenting the best crop of the year, which means that the main programs, the National and...
Singapore 2003
Authors: Toh Hai Leong
Published: August 2019

SINGAPORE INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL (SIFF) 2003 Last year, the 15th SIFF received a quarter million Singapore dollars from the Singapore Film Commission (SFC). This year, no money was forthcoming - yet the quality and quantity of the programming was not compromised. In fact, critics from Malaysia, the Philippines, Hong Kong, Britain and even those from Singapore, praised the impressive programme - in particular the Asian film selection for which the SIFF is known and which has made it № 3 in Asia, after Pusan and Hong Kong. Noted British film critic Derek Malcolm wrote in The Guardian that the 16th SIFF (17 April-3 May 2003) was "one of the strongest for some time", while Wong T. C., chairman of the Malaysian Art Film Club tagged it "one of the best in years". But then the unforeseen happened. The 2003 SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) outbreak in early March looked set...
Film Classics Series Vol. 1 & 2
Authors: Uhde Jan
Published: August 2019

This remarkable two-volume collection contains in-depth essays on fifty of the most important films made between 1920-1977. Organized chronologically, it stretches from The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (Robert Wiene, 1920) to Woody Allen's Annie Hall (1977). The contributors include well-known critics and scholars such as Peter Cowie, Jill Forbes, Penelope Houston, Camille Paglia, David Robinson, Richard Schickel, Ginette Vincendeau and Peter Wollen....
Racial Issues and Star Trek's Deep Space Nine
Authors: Winn J. Emmett
Published: August 2019

HIGHLY OFFENSIVE FERENGI: RACIAL ISSUES AND STAR TREK'S MULTICULTURAL DEEP SPACE NINE STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE is the third official Star Trek series based on the ideas of the late Gene Roddenberry. The popularity of the Star Trek series has earned them an honoured place in America's popular culture.(1) Likewise, scholarly attention to Star Trek points to its importance to the study of media culture.(2) Star Trek, even before its broadcast of television's first interracial kiss, has always had two missions. The first, its entertainment mission as part of the television industry, is the well known: "Its five year mission is to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man [sic] has gone before."(3) Deep Space Nine's creators, Berman and Pillar, state the second is the less publicly articulated mission of addressing matters of socio-cultural...
Emil Radok and The Taming of Demons
Authors: Voráč Jiří
Published: August 2019

EMIL RADOK AND THE TAMING OF DEMONS: THE CZECH INVENTOR OF THE MULTI-SCREEN SHOW IN CANADIAN EXILE In the Cold War era Canada was one of the main destinations of anti-Communist exile where many Czechs (and Slovaks) from the film domain found asylum. In particular, the strong wave of refugees following the 1968 Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia found a relatively benign milieu here, as the Canadian film industry and education system was developing rapidly at the time. The generous acceptance of Czech film exiles(1) was a reflection of the world-wide response to the Czechoslovak "film miracle" of the 60s and specifically also to that country's successful presentation at EXPO 1967 in Montréal.(2) Probably the most distinct Czech "mark" in the history of Canadian audio-visual culture was made by the experimental work of Emil Radok who had become famous as the founder and representative of the so-called multi-screen show. I.
Homosexuality and South African Cinema
Authors: Botha Martin P.
Published: August 2019

The following is an excerpt from a larger manuscript HOMOSEXUALITY AND AFRICAN CINEMA, a co-operative effort of Dr Botha (CityVarsity, Film & Television and Multimedia School in Cape Town, South Africa) and Professor Dethier and Dr. Willemse at the Free University of Brussels. IN A GLITTERING ceremony at the 49th Berlin International Film Festival a full-length South African film, The Man Who Drove With Mandela won the Documentary Teddy Prize. It was rewarded for its unique contribution to gay and lesbian history and for bringing forward a challenging and politically engaging subject. The Man Who Drove With Mandela was directed by Greta Schiller and researched by the co-writer of the outstanding compilation on South African lesbian and gay lives, Defiant Desire, namely Mark Gevisser. No other film in South African history chronicled the lives of lesbian and gays in the way Gevisser's documentary has done(1). It is a...
Bernardo Bertolucci's The Dreamers
Authors: Izod John
Published: August 2019

BERNARDO BERTOLUCCI'S THE DREAMERS (2003): POLITICS OF YOUTH REMEMBERED Bertolucci's films have always been politically engaged. Undergoing psychoanalysis in the 1960s left him fascinated by dreams and their resemblance to cinematic sequences. However, he declared that he could not bring together his interests in politics and aesthetics. For me it's very difficult to succeed in mixing together the idea of beauty that I have as a moral fact and a reduction of reality in political terms, exactly because I think they are two irreconcilable things. (Cited by Purdon, 1971: 7) The Dreamers finally realised his long-standing ambition to make a film dealing with the events of Paris in 1968. Much more than a mere reconstruction of those events, this was to become the Bertolucci film that wove together sex, psychoanalysis, memory, dreaming, revolution and filmic style in a rich tapestry. Bertolucci always wanted to make cinema new and strange...
Boundary Crossing and the Construction of Cinematic Genre
Authors: Hantke Steffen
Published: August 2019

BOUNDARY CROSSING AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF CINEMATIC GENRE: FILM NOIR AS "DEFERRED ACTION" The Frame-Up: Theoretical ConsiderationsIn recent years, critical consensus in cinema studies has begun to coalesce around the idea that, in a sense, there never was such a thing as film noir. Thomas Elsaesser, for example, comes to this conclusion after examining what might be called one of the foundational myths of film noir, the "connection between German Expressionist cinema and American film noir" (Elsaesser: 420). (1) Ever since this story about noir's origins has solidified into one of the "commonplaces of film history," Elsaesser argues, it has become difficult to see film noir for what it really is, "an imaginary entity whose meaning resides in a set of shifting signifiers" (Elsaesser: 420). Following a critical rather than a cinematic tradition, he traces the consolidation of the genre's identity back to the intervention of German exiles like...
Cottbus 2004
Authors: Holloway Ron
Published: August 2019

COTTBUS FESTIVAL OF EAST EUROPEAN FILMS 2004 No other European festival is better positioned than Cottbus to measure the depth and range of the current film revival in Central and Eastern Europe. Abetted by the smart programming skill of festival director Roland Rust, the 14th Filmfestival Cottbus (2-6 November 2004) - aka the 14th Festival of East European Cinema - was again a must-visit event for critics, cineastes, and directors interested in keeping apace with the hundred or more important productions released annually in filmlands stretching from the former German Democratic Republic to Kazakhstan in Central Asia. This year, with its generous budget of circa 500,000 Euros from Land Brandenburg and the City of Cottbus, the festival staff made absolutely sure that its double competition for features and shorts under separate juries had selected the best entries from a bumper crop of quality productions in a dozen rejuvenated filmlands....
Karlovy Vary 2004
Authors: Holloway Ron
Published: August 2019

KARLOVY VARY INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2004 For the Czech media the 39th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (2-10 July 2004) was something of a sensation. Václav Havel, the country's ex-president and most popular political figure, was on hand for the official opening to receive a moving standing ovation. Later, Václav Klaus, the current Czech president, also showed for the closing ceremonies. To add to the festivities, Miroslav Ondříček, Miloš Forman's ace cameraman (Oscar Nominations for Amadeus and Ragtime) was honoured with an Award for Outstanding Artistic Contribution to World Cinema (together with Harvey Keitel and Roman Polański). The Prize of the Karlovy Vary Region was given for the first time to Jiří Bartoška, the festival codirector. And the Ecumenical Jury honoured Eva Zaoralová, the festival's artistic director, an Award for Outstanding Contribution to the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival. For the second time in a row, the Crystal Globe,...
Singapore 2004
Authors: Holloway Ron
Published: August 2019

SINGAPORE INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2004 For nearly two decades, the Singapore International Film Festival (SIFF), the showcase of Southeast Asian cinema, has also served as a timely beacon for other key Asian film festivals. Pusan in Korea, Filmex in Tokyo, and Cinefan in New Delhi have benefited from Singapore, simply because SIFF was on the scene first and did all the spadework. Link all four festivals together, and the committed cineaste can easily anticipate Asian entries selected later for Cannes, Venice, Berlin, Montreal, and elsewhere. Its secret? The SIFF is independently operated under a quartet of film professionals (Geoffrey Malone, Philip Cheah, Lesley Ho, and Teo Swee Leng), who concentrate on quality Asian cinema. The Silver Screen Awards, inaugurated in 1991, are judged by a professional jury of peers. The Asian Films section a focuses on current trends, styles, and themes in the respective national cinemas. And Singapore happens...
Singapore Sidebar: Erotic Cinema
Authors: Toh Hai Leong
Published: August 2019

SIFF SIDEBAR: EROTIC CINEMA OF LI HAN HSIANG AND CHU YUAN The legendary directors, Li Han Hsiang and Chu Yuan, made chamber period films in the 1970s for the Shaw Studios in Hong Kong, helmed by the famous Shanghainese brothers Run Run and Runme. Those of us who lived through this period would remember it as prolific time of Hong Kong-made erotica. Films such as the 1973 Illicit Desire (Li Han Hsiang), which featured nudity, were routinely advertised in cinema trailers but were never shown intact. Singapore International Film Festival assembled several landmark erotic works from this period and showed them in the city for the first time on film, and uncut. The Chinese Courtesan films, a gentler but more fatalistic vision of producer Runme Shaw, began with Chu Yuan's first pugilistic - erotic masterpiece, Intimate Confessions Of A Chinese Courtesan (1972). It is the story of an older...
The Leopard DVD
Authors: Uhde Jan
Published: August 2019

In 1963, Luchino Visconti completed his Italian Risorgimento epic The Leopard (Il gattopardo, 1963) - one of the best Italian films ever made and a classic of world cinema. In it, the director conjures an era of aristocratic elegance and charm, his own world in fact, being swept away by the energetic and unscrupulous upstarts of the rising bourgeoisie - "the jackals and the sheep" - opportunistically surfing the waves of Garibaldi's popular uprising. This successful transformation into film of the spirit of Giuseppe Tomasi Di Lampedusa's outstanding novel was made possible by the participation of several exceptional artists: the scriptwriter Suso Cecchi D'Amico, without whose genius neither The Leopard nor much of the best post-war Italian cinema would exist; the cinematographer Giuseppe Rotunno; the composer Nino Rota; the costume designer Piero Tosi; the resplendent Claudia Cardinale, and, last but not least, the experienced Hollywood star Burt Lancaster whose magnificent...
Berlinale 2004 Report
Authors: Holloway Ron
Published: August 2019

BERLINALE 2004 "IF I had a choice, the Retrospective would be the Competition!" - quipped Dieter Kosslick at the opening of the 54th Berlinale (5-15 February 2004), his third as festival director. Titled "New Hollywood 1967-1976," and inspired by film historian Peter Biskind's bestseller "Easy Riders, Raging Bulls," the retro embraced the favourite films of veteran critics and film professionals attending the Berlinale. Indeed, the run on tickets for legendary films by cult directors - Roger Corman's Wild Angels (1966), Arthur Penn's Bonnie and Clyde (1967), John Cassavetes's Faces (1968), Dennis Hopper's Easy Rider (1969), Sam Peckingpah's Wild Bunch (1969), Bob Rafelson's Five Easy Pieces (1969), Peter Bogdanovich's Last Picture Show (1971), William Friedkin's French Connection (1971), Jack Nicholson's Drive, He Said (1971), Francis Ford Coppola's Godfather (1972), Brian De Palma's Sisters (1972), Terrence Malick's Badlands (1973), George Lucas's American Graffiti (1973), Hal Ashby's Last Detail (1973), Steven Spielberg's...
Bresson and Mimesis
Authors: Tam Thomas
Published: August 2019

BRESSON AND THE PROBLEM OF MIMESIS Is there a problem of mimesis in Bresson's conception of cinematography? How does Bresson situate his art in relation to this concept? Is the Bressonian system of cinematography not mimetic in nature after all? Everything in Notes on Cinematography seems to suggest the opposite. As we know, Bresson contrasts his art of cinematography to the art of the theatre. To him, the theatre is a conventionalized practice whose essence consists in the simulation of reality, whereas cinematography presents us with persons and objects such as they are in the real world. The theatre uses actors who act in an expressive way, whereas cinematography uses models who are expressionless. One is imitative, while the other should not be - ‘being' as against ‘seeming'. Bresson sums up the difference: ‘Cinematography films: emotional, not representational.' (NC, p. 90)(1) Yet this cryptic remark needs all its interpretations....
Simulation in Cinema
Authors: Trifonova Temenuga
Published: August 2019

SPECIAL EFFECTS: SIMULATION IN CINEMA There are perhaps two main reasons for the resentment many film critics feel for special effects: first, special effects distract the viewer from the supposedly most substantial aspect of the film, narrative; second, special effects present a danger to what is assumed to be the essential realism of film. New digital technologies, so the argument goes, corrupt the purity of the filmic image: Image manipulation through external montage is one matter, in which shots are intercut for emotional or associative impact. But Digital Domain, ILM, and their brethren are creating a new sort of montage - montage within the frame, without the familiar warning, or ‘limit' signals we have been trained to look for (wipes, matte lines, differences in film stock grain, inaccurate image-sizing and other flaws). These visual clues alerted us to the artificiality and the constructed-ness of the manufactured image we see...
The Social Value of Filmed Arts Lives
Authors: Murphy A. Mary
Published: August 2019

MODEL LIVES: THE SOCIAL VALUE OF FILMED ARTS LIVES Film has developed thus far as a medium either for entertainment or education, but seldom for both at once. The problem has been, not that educational entertainment is oxymoronic, but rather the limited vision of filmmakers. Biographical film has the generic potential to be a meeting place for the documentary demands of scholarship and the escapist or cathartic demands of audienceship. There is no reason that factual accuracy and historicity should be dull and dry as dirt; the difference is made in the telling - the Canterbury pilgrims understood that. Their Tales were to be judged on the narrative balance of solace and sentence, their ability simultaneously to delight and instruct. Lewis Lockwood makes two observations on this point, in his discussion of the film Immortal Beloved. He says that a "deep disdain, ill-concealed scorn, for mass audiences, is one...
Ljubljana 2003
Authors: Holloway Ron
Published: August 2019

LJUBLJANA INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2003 It was a festival of superlatives - the 14th Ljubljana International Film Festival, scheduled 7-21 November 2003. Under the aegis of Jelka Stergel, one of the first festival directors to introduce "beam subtitling" to accommodate audiences with computerized Slovenian subtitles, the Ljubljana audience has mushroomed to an attendance of over 40,000 at six venues over the two-week stretch. Over the years, LIFFE (the festival's nickname), together with the Slovenian Film Archive, has played an important role in sparking a national film revival. Indeed, young Sloveni­an directors - Jan Cvitkovic (Bread and Milk), Hana A. W. Slak (Blind Spot), Maya Weiss (Guardian of the Frontier), Janez Burger (Idle Run­ning), Damjan Kozole (Spare Parts), Igor Sterk (Express, Express), Andrej Kosak (The Outsider), Saso Podgorsek (Sweet Dreams), Metod Povec (Carmen), Janez Lapajne (Rustling Landscapes), Vojko Anzeljc (The Last Supper), Martin Srebotnjak (Ode to the Poet), among others...
Nantes 2003
Authors: Dönmez-Colin Gönül
Published: August 2019

THE FESTIVAL DES 3 CONTINENTS celebrated its 25th anniversary from 25 November to 2 December 2003 in the Atlantic city of Nantes in Western France with a wide choice of films from the continents of Asia, Africa and Latin America. From Argentine, Los Guantes Magicos (The Magic Gloves) by Martin Rejtman and Ana y Los Otros by Celina Murga and from Cuba Siete Dias, Siete Noches (Seven Days, Seven Nights) by Joel Cano represented Latin America where film production is not very vibrant for the moment. On the other hand, the Asian continent was in the forefront with a wide selection that included films even from Malaysia, Pakistan or Kazakhstan, countries that are not household names at film festivals.   Kazakh filmmaker Nariman Turabayev's first feature, Malen'kie ljudi (Ordinary People) followed the day to day existence of two young man from Almaty, the Russian Max and the Kazakh Beck, both of...
The Chaplin collection DVDs
Authors: Uhde Jan
Published: August 2019

Not surprisingly, more than two dozen Chaplin titles have already been published on DVD. Their quality is, like the weather, variable. The 2003 publication of the massive two-volume The Chaplin Collection by MK2 (the prodigious French producer Marin Karmitz) and Warner Brothers, is what film lovers have been waiting for: a virtually complete collection of Chaplin's features (only the 1967 A Countess from Hong Kong is not included) on a high-quality digital transfer from the Chaplin family film vault....
Million Dollar Baby
Authors: Izod John
Published: August 2019

MILLION DOLLAR BABY: BOXING GRIEF AS Ed Buscombe remarks in his review of Million Dollar Baby (USA, 2004) it, like most movies that feature boxing, does not make fighting its principal subject, but deploys it as a metaphor for life (2005: 67-8). In this sub-genre, themes such as courage, loyalty, comradeship, endurance, betrayal, blind anger and one form or another of corrupt behaviour (both in and out of the ring) commonly occur. At various times the main protagonists in Million Dollar Baby show most of the virtues and vices just listed. They provide, so to speak, the basic topography against which Million Dollar Baby is plotted. The film is distinctive, however, because while these moral issues are constantly in the background, it foregrounds two less familiar themes - firstly, the strange, counter-instinctive skills that the boxer must learn; and secondly, the repression and displacement of grief together with the necessity...
The Russian Cinema at the Beginning of the New Millennium
Authors: Stojanova Christina
Published: August 2019

THE RUSSIAN CINEMA AT THE BEGINNING OF THE NEW MILLENNIUM IN 1998, this journal published my article "The New Russian Cinema and the New Russian Society" (1) which examined the counter-productive impasse reached during the early post-Communist period by the thriving Russian auteur and the nascent experimental cinema. The mainstream cinema lovers became increasingly insensitive to serious art-house films and sought to satisfy their hunger for entertainment from whatever imported genre films were allowed on the chaotic film scene in the early 1990s. Therefore this essay leaves out such significant, internationally acclaimed works of well established auteurs from the former Soviet Union such as A. Sokurov's Russian Ark (2002) and the third part of his dictators' trilogy about Japan's Emperor Hirohito (Sun, 2005); K. Muratova's Second Class Citizens (2001) and Chekhov's Motifs (2002); A. Rogozhkin's The Cuckoo (2002); V. Abdrashitov and A. Mindadze's Magnetic Storms (2003), as well as...
Delhi 2005
Authors: Holloway Ron
Published: August 2019

CINEFAN FESTIVAL OF ASIAN CINEMA IN DELHI 2005 Back in 1999, when the First Cinefan Festival of Asian Cinema was launched in New Delhi by publicist Aruna Vasudev, together with UNESCO friends and with the support of Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, the program numbered only 27 Asian films. Seven years later, in partnership with entrepreneur Neville Tuli and his Indian auction house for popular art and Hollywood-Bollywood memorabilia, the re-christened 7th Ocean's Cinefan Festival of Asian Cinema (15-24 July 2005) could offer its public of feast of 121 Asian films from 35 countries. The films were presented on four screens in the Siri Fort Complex, plus an extra venue at the Alliance Française. The evening shows were nearly all sold out. How did Delhi become one of the biggest and most representative festivals of Asian cinema? Only Pusan in Korea and Filmex in Tokyo are comparable oases of...
Karlovy Vary 2005
Authors: Holloway Ron
Published: August 2019

KARLOVY VARY INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2005 "Life Begins at Forty!" ran the trailer for this year's 40th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (1-9 July 2005). But, as some asked, was this really the 40th anniversary? Since the festival was officially founded in the summer of 1946 - thus making it older than Cannes, founded in September of 1946 - then KVIFF should rightly be 59 years old, in contrast to the 58th anniversary celebrated by Cannes last May. There are two bumps in the road, however. First of all, the Czech event was programmed in the neighbouring spa of Marienbad for its first three years, not in Karlovy Vary at all. Secondly, beginning in 1958 and lasting until 1994, Karlovy Vary was forced by a FIAPF (International Federation of Film Producers Associations) recommendation to alternate annually with Moscow. This festival carousel went on until 1994, when both Karlovy Vary...
Czech Film in Exile (Český film v exilu)
Authors: Uhde Jan
Published: August 2019

CZECH FILM IN EXILE (ČESKÝ FILM V EXILU). Jiří Voráč. Brno, Host 2004. 192pp, stills, index, English summary. ISBN: 8072941399.In Czech Film In Exile, Jiří Voráč turns to a topic painfully relevant for the cultural history of his country, yet ignored by his compatriot researchers for years. In the stifling times of the pre-1989 Communist dictatorship, the subject of the exile culture was strictly taboo. More surprising was that it continued to be neglected for almost fifteen years after the "velvet revolution" and subsequent democratization. Among the reasons may have been the geographic fragmentation, linguistic diversity and disorganization of the sources which had to be researched in countries on several continents. Another factor may have been a sort of ideological inertia among some of the Czech academic community, which did not seem to consider its own film exile a worthwhile academic subject.For Voráč, a film historian at Brno's Masaryk University,...
Women, Islam and Cinema
Authors: Padgaonkar Latika
Published: August 2019

Gönül Dönmez-Colin's book, Women, Islam and Cinema, comes not a day too soon. At a time when controversies rage over the wearing of the veil in school, reality seems to be catching up with fiction. Dönmez-Colin speaks of the insidious and conservative ways in which cinema in many Islamic countries has portrayed women. Her sweep is large: she covers India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Indonesia, Iran, Turkey, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan and draws careful analogies and contradictions that exist within and among these countries. Inevitably, cinema's depiction of women as actresses, directors and spectators grows out of the prevailing social and political atmosphere: stifling patriarchy and female subordination....
Jim Jarmusch’s Aesthetics of Sampling
Authors: Gonzales Eric
Published: August 2019

JIM JARMUSCH'S AESTHETICS OF SAMPLING IN GHOST DOG - THE WAY OF THE SAMURAI ICE Cube's "Gangsta's Fairytale" (1990), Tupac Shakur and Snoop Dogg's "2 of Amerikaz Most Wanted" (1996), 50 Cent's "What Up Gangsta" (2003): from the end of the 1980s, in countless raps,(1) the gangster persona has inspired a host of MCs, who since then have adopted - and adapted - an imagery and themes the American film industry started dealing with sixty years earlier.(2) However, this cross-fertilization can work the other way round too. A director like Jim Jarmusch has chosen to invigorate Ghost Dog - The Way of the Samurai not only with the charismatic power of the black gangster, but also with a particularly rich intertextual network and an aesthetics of sampling clearly reminiscent of that taken up by rap artists since the end of the 1970s. Indeed, rap music's dominant feature...
Berlinale 2005: Special Report
Authors: Holloway Ron
Published: August 2019

A FESTIVAL of surprises and discoveries, the fourth under the aegis of Dieter Kosslick, the 55th Berlinale (10-20 February 2005) set a new attendance record - 400,000 visitors, 180,000 sold tickets - and welcomed 17,000 accredited guests from 120 countries, including 1,000 more trade passes for the European Film Market (a 30% increase). One hopes, however, that weather conditions will be better next year than experienced this time around - following a mild winter, snow and rain arrived with a bang just after the festival opened, a misfortune that led to dampened spirits and less merriment on the red carpet before the Berlinale Palast for the gala screenings. But this didn't prevent scores of cineastes parading to the Gropius-Bau for the all-embracing Stanley Kubrick Retrospective and Exhibition Tribute. After all, since the theme of this year's Berlinale Retrospective was titled "Production Design + Film," no great master of modern...
Child Abuse in a Social Drama Film
Authors: Winn J. Emmett
Published: August 2019

RADIO FLYER: THE THERAPEUTIC RHETORIC OF CHILD ABUSE IN A SOCIAL DRAMA FILM The United States continues to experience many social problems despite its relative wealth and power. The steady rise in child abuse is one of the most frightening. As Marc Miringoff and Marque-Luisa Miringoff point out, "Since 1976, child abuse has worsened by more than 300 percent" (75). The US Department of Health and Human Services reports that from 1986 to 1993 the abuse rates almost doubled. One might hope that much of this increase could be attributed to a rise in public awareness and, hence, an increase in the reporting of child abuse. Regrettably this is not the case. The escalations are "so dramatic the researchers judged them to be a ‘true rise' in the severity of the problem" (Miringoff & Miringoff 75). The problem is fatally severe. The National Committee to Prevent Child Abuse reports...
Goa, India 2004
Authors: Syed Siraj
Published: August 2019

INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL OF INDIA, GOA 2004 Some people have described the International Film Festival of India (IFFI) as a ‘travelling circus'. While it is true that the festival has been travelling all over the country, it would be irresponsible to call it a circus. Sometimes, local authorities do go overboard in adding-on sideshows, perhaps in an attempt to use the occasion a public relations exercise for their government. On other occasions, the local government has had strong film industry connections, so the display of razzle-dazzle and magnanimity was only natural. Nevertheless, there is always a generous serving of cinema from all over the world, including, of course, from the host country, which is the world-leader when it comes to the most number film produced annually. India has been holding international film festivals since 1952, first on an ad hoc basis, and then more regularly. But unlike almost all other...
Mumbai (Bombay) 2005
Authors: Syed Siraj
Published: August 2019

MUMBAI INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2005 MAMI, the acronym for the body that organises the International Film Festival of Mumbai (IFFM), stands for Mumbai Academy of the Moving Image. That's a curiously old-fashioned name for a body that was set up only about eight years ago. Run by film-makers and technicians, as against the central government funded and organised International 7th Film Festival of India (IFFI), IFFM had its seventh staging last January 6-13 in Mumbai. IFFM had some good films, a centrally located venue and the ever-enthusiastic captive film-buff audience of India's film capital. It also had some glitches, little glamour, and very few foreign delegates. Lack of funds is the bane of every festival, and IFFM has always felt the pinch. Money comes from some sponsors, a state (local) government grant, co-organisers in the shape of the central government's National Film Development Corporation (NFDC) and the P. L....
Toronto 2004
Authors: Viccari Ben
Published: August 2019

CANADIAN FEATURES AT THE TORONTO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2004 Again I looked for interesting Canadian productions at Toronto's International Film Festival 2004. This year, sad to relate, I found only few that warranted even faint praise. At the top of my list was the Festival's gala opener, Being Julia, produced by Robert Lantos - his second venture with Hungarian director István Szabó and like the first, Sunshine, Being Julia is set outside Canada. It's an adaptation of an almost forgotten Somerset Maugham novel, the story of Julia Lambert, an ageing but not yet fading diva of the London stage in the 1930s. I found Being Julia absorbing, amusing and with an extraordinary sense of location and period. Clean, directed by France's Olivier Assayas, is a Canadian film in the sense that the character of Albrecht as played by Nick Nolte typifies the kind of Canadian who would support peacekeeping,...
Jan Švankmajer's Adaptations of Edgar Allan Poe
Authors: White Tim , Winn J. Emmett
Published: August 2019

TOMORROW COULD BRING SALVATION: JAN ŠVANKMAJER'S ADAPTATIONS OF EDGAR ALLAN POE Animation, as a branch of cinema, has never been accorded the respect given to other kinds of filmmaking, and as a result has never been as carefully researched as have these other cinematic modes. In an understudied art, Jan Švankmajer, the Czech filmmaker (specializing in stop-motion animation and pixilation), is even less well-known or discussed.(1) The nature of his films, which are always disturbing and frequently downright repulsive, often leads critics to discuss them in terms of only these surface elements, using them as examples of Švankmajer's strangeness. Even more often, however, critics and filmgoers choose not to discuss his films at all, as if the images and the ideas they evoke are too disgusting - or painful - to think about. Švankmajer's animation is unlike most worldwide animation and is particularly dissimilar to mainstream American animation.
Karlovy Vary 2006
Authors: Holloway Ron
Published: August 2019

41st KARLOVY VARY INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL "This year we have reason to celebrate two anniversaries," reflected Eva Zaoralová, artistic director of the 41st Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (20 June-8 July 2006). "It was exactly 110 years ago, on 15 July 1896, that this famous spa town first set eyes on the Lumière brothers' invention and, fifty years later, the first postwar summer of 1946 saw the launch of the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (KVIFF), back then also held in the neighbouring town of Mariánské Lázně (aka Marienbad)." Indeed, had not Karlovy Vary been forced by FIAPF (International Federation of Film Producers Associations) rules to alternate with Moscow for the A-Competition summer festival slot during the socialist era, then Eva Zaoralová and KVIFF president Jiří Bartoška might well be celebrating the spa festival's 60th anniversary. And that would make Karlovy Vary-Mariánské Lázně one year older than Cannes! Karlovy...
Montreal 2006
Authors: Dönmez-Colin Gönül
Published: August 2019

30th MONTREAL WORLD FILM FESTIVAL Amidst speculations as to its presence and particularly its future, Montreal World Film Festival (24 Aug-4 Sept, 2006) opened the curtain with optimism and pride to celebrate its 30th anniversary. Gone were the star-studded days, lavish parties and long queues in front of the theatres, but the aficionados were still there, rain or shine, and the program, true to its commitment, was diverse and explorative, with evident partiality to the lesser known cinemas. Over two hundred features from at least 76 countries - from Haiti to Afghanistan with a good dose of French films - stirred up the curiosity of the public habitually fed on Hollywood products. The multi-ethnic and multi-cultural make-up of Montreal was evident in the diversity of the languages spoken in the corridors, especially in the way many people were trying to see a film from their own country that perhaps...
In Front and Behind the Camera
Authors: Uhde Jan
Published: August 2019

KINEMA SPEAKS WITH CHINESE DIRECTOR XU JINGLEI Xu Jinglei (b. 1974) is one of the most versatile young film talents in Mainland China. She first achieved popularity in her home country for her television roles but soon won acclaim for her film appearances, having starred in ten features since 2002. She received the Chinese Film Society Performance Award for her first major film role in Zhang Yang's Spicy Love Soup (1997), the Baihua Best Actress Award in I Love You (Zhang Yuan, 2003) and the Golden Rooster Award for Best Supporting Actress in Far from Home (Yu Zhong, 2002). More recently, the Beijing-born actress and graduate of the Beijing Film Academy has taken on the role of director. Her first feature Wo he ba ba (My Father and I, 2003) was rewarded at home with a Golden Rooster for Best Directing Debut and invited to a number of international...
South African Cinema (1)
Authors: Botha Martin P.
Published: August 2019

110 YEARS OF SOUTH AFRICAN CINEMA (Part 1) The South African film industry is one of the oldest in the world. The Kinetoscope, invented by Thomas Edison, reached Johannesburg by 1895, only six years after its introduction in New York. Between 1895 and 1909 mainly British and American films reached many parts of South Africa by means of mobile bioscopes. The first permanent cinema was built in 1909 by Electric Theatres Limited in Durban. Over the next five years several film distribution companies built cinemas across the country, which led to serious competition....
3 Continents Nantes 2005
Authors: Dönmez-Colin Gönül
Published: August 2019

FESTIVAL DES 3 CONTINENTS NANTES 2005 The 27th Festival of 3 Continents in Nantes (22-29 November 2005), a pioneer in France for exploring unknown film industries around the world has been hard pressed in recent years to find virgin territories as the world has come to resemble a global village. With the success of the Afghan program last year, Libya was on the agenda for 2005 but to negotiate with Colonel Muammar al-Qaddafi did not prove to be such an easy matter. Ivory Coast was the replacement, a tiny film industry that nonetheless gave us perhaps the most erotic film to come out of Africa, Désiré Ecaré's 1985 classic, Visages de femmes (Faces of Women). From Turkey, Melein Düüü (Angel's Fall), perhaps Turkey's first incest story told in a minimalist, reflective mode was part of the competition that included eight films from Asia, two from Latin America (Play by Alicia...
Bitola 2005
Authors: Holloway Ron
Published: August 2019

INTERNATIONAL FILM CAMERA FESTIVAL "MANAKI BROTHERS" IN BITOLA When you see packed houses for all the screenings at a film festival, you know that this will be an event to be remembered. So it was at the 26th International Film Camera Festival "Manaki Brothers" in Bitola (20-25 September 2005) under festival director Tomi Salkovski and selector-programmer Blagoja "Dore" Kunevski. Indeed, this specialized festival honouring the cinematographer had every reason to celebrate. For, as every film historian worth his salt knows, the first film shot in the Balkans was by the Manaki Brothers. Back in 1905, shortly after Yanaki Manaki returned home to Bitola in Macedonia from London with a Film Camera 300 in the Bioscope series bought from the Charles Urban Trading Company, he teamed with his photographer brother Milton Manaki to film in nearby Audela (today Greece) their 114-year-old grandmother at her spinning-wheel. Of course, a Manaki heir was...
Sofia 2005
Authors: Holloway Ron
Published: August 2019

SOFIA INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2005 Film festivals in Central and Eastern Europe - "CentEast" in EU parlance - don't get much better than the 10th Sofia International Film Festival (9-19 March 2006) under its charismatic director Stefan "Kita" Kitanov. One glance at the 160-page SIFF catalogue tells most of the story - prominently displayed are circa 80 sponsors and partners. Moreover, these sponsors are said to contribute the lion's share of this year's 250,000 Euro budget, in contrast to reported city and government funding at a meagre 25,000 Euros. Altogether, 160 films (100 features, 30 documentaries, 30 shorts) from circa 40 countries were booked for viewing by an estimated audience of 70,000, that figure apparently including attendance at follow-up events in Plovdiv and Burgas that stretch the SIFF out for another full week. According to an SIFF bulletin, this year's 250 applications for entry in the competition doubled the...
Eisenstein and the Challenge of Sound
Authors: Burke Marina
Published: August 2019

EISENSTEIN AND THE CHALLENGE OF SOUND Discussion of Eisenstein's theory and practice in the use of sound from his first experiments in the late 1920s to the later refinement of his ideas on audio/visual correspondence in Alexander Nevsky (1938) and Ivan the Terrible (1944-46) have tended to sideline the former, but both are noteworthy in relation to Eisenstein's first experiments in sound and as a link with the elaboration of his later sound theory and practice is evident in Nevsky and Ivan. It is well-known that among the early proponents of sound, the Soviet directors' 'Statement' - a 'wish list freed from practicality'(1) - holds an important place. While opposition to synchronised dialogue was widespread, in the Soviet case there were considerations peculiar to the montage school of filmmakers, as Ian Christie makes clear.(2) By the time of the introduction of synchronised sound, the whole edifice of...
Flemish Cinema and Film Culture through South African Eyes
Authors: Botha Martin P.
Published: August 2019

THE HERITAGE OF FILM: PERSPECTIVE ON FLEMISH CINEMA AND FILM CULTURE THROUGH SOUTH AFRICAN EYES I assisted the Locarno Film festival in 2005 with a retrospective of short films by young South African directors. There I met a very talented, young Flemish director, whose film was by far the best in the one section.(1) It moved me immensely with its honest portrait of alienation and racial discrimination. We had a long discussion on film history, aesthetics and film cultures. We also talked about the history of film in Belgium and it was noted that while the French speaking side of Belgian cinema had recently received international acclaim (for example, the work by the Dardenne Brothers), Flemish cinema was struggling. In fact, the young filmmaker made the statement that there was little to be excited about in the history of Flemish cinema. He felt especially that the films about...
Werner Herzog and the Aesthetics of the Grotesque
Authors: Sebok B. R.
Published: August 2019

EVEN DWARFS STARTED SMALL: WERNER HERZOG AND THE AESTHETICS OF THE GROTESQUE IntroductionRarely in modern cinema has a film fully engaged with the ribald grotesquery and carnival aesthetics of bygone theatre and literature. Perhaps, as was the case in the grotesque theatre, audiences are reluctant to identify with characters and plots wrought with fundamental contradictions and mythical intellectuality. It seems that to explore the grotesque in the "modern" cinema, the director must stand outside of mainstream national and ideological consciousness. It is fitting then, that Werner Herzog would fully engage with the grotesque aesthetic and the mystical history it entails. Herzog, the "dreamer of new dreams, teller of new truths, and seeker of new images," working both within and outside of the auspices of the New German Cinema movement, visualizes for his audiences a complex amalgam of history, mythology, and ideology.(1) He, in creating what is best...
Almaty 2007
Authors: Holloway Ron
Published: August 2019

4th EURASIA INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL ALMATY The Saga of Chingiz AitmatovWhen Chingiz Aitmatov went onstage in the spacious Palace of the Republic in Almaty (former Alma-Ata) at the closing gala of the Fourth Eurasia International Film Festival (23-29 September 2007) to receive an honorary award from the Kazakh government, he was greeted with a standing ovation. Indeed, the applause was well deserved. For the 78-year-old Kirghiz writer-diplomat is revered throughout Central Asia not only as a gifted storyteller, whose heart-rending novella Jamila (published in 1958) was praised by Louis Aragon as "the world's most beautiful love story," but also as the first Kirghiz Ambassador to Luxembourg and the European Union in Brussels. Moreover, during the high-water mark of the Khrushchev "thaw" (1956-65), when Chingiz Aitmatov was appointed head of the Kirghizfilm Studio in Frunze (today Bishkek), he fostered there a path-breaking "director's cinema" that helped to revolutionize Soviet...
CINEFAN 2007
Authors: Dönmez-Colin Gönül
Published: August 2019

OSIAN'S CINEFAN - FESTIVAL OF ASIAN AND ARAB CINEMA Celebrating its ninth birthday, Osian's Cinefan (New Delhi, 20-29 July 2007) once again confirmed its status as the most important film festival of India with its comprehensive program, select guest list and stimulating conferences and seminars. The festival, which started as a showcase of Asian cinema has already added a section of Arab cinema to its program a few years ago. This year, Arab films that do not come from the Asian countries were also allowed to enter the competition, which brought a more colorful quality to the program. The fact that a Tunisian filmmaker would share the same concerns with his or her Taiwanese counterpart was another confirmation of the fact that the world was becoming smaller each day and the problems of one country would unavoidably have repercussions on another country, even miles away. The opening film of...
Karlovy Vary 2007
Authors: Holloway Ron
Published: August 2019

42nd KARLOVY VARY INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL Records were broken at the 42nd Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (29 June to 7 July 2007). Festival president Jiří Bartoška and artistic director Eva Zaoralová welcomed 12,000 accredited guests, 500 more than in the previous year. Another record was passed when 580 journalists registered for KVIFF, 300 more than in 2006. Another record was passed when 580 journalists registered for KVIFF, 300 more than in 2006. And who really knows how many students and young cineastes flocked to Karlovy Vary from across the Czech and Slovak Republics, many of them sleeping in the park in tents provided by the festival and sometimes under the stairs of the Hotel Thermal when it rained. Even a children's play pen was added in the Thermal Hotel, the festival headquarters. With lines forming before the box offices as early at seven in the morning, the only...
Montreal 2007
Authors: Holloway Ron
Published: August 2019

31st MONTREAL WORLD FILM FESTIVAL Nic Balthazar's Ben X (Belgium-Netherlands) was the clear winner at the 31st Montreal World Film Festival (23 August to 3 September 2007). Besides sharing the Grand Prize of the Americas with Claude Miller's Un secret (France), it received the Ecumenical Prize and was voted the Audience Award. Not bad for a critic-turned-director making his debut feature. The story of a mildly autistic lad who is constantly put upon by a couple bullies at a technical school, the youth retreats into his own world and finds some refuge in video games on his computer. Before writing and directing this screen version of his own bestselling novel, penned to increase literacy among Belgian youths, Nic Balthazar had also developed Ben X into a successful play. Another audience favourite was awarded the runner-up Special Jury Grand Prize. In Ayelet Menahemi's Noodle (Israel) a six-year-old Chinese boy gets...