Module 1 Surrealism Term ‘surrealisme’ coined by French poet Guillaume Apollinaire in 1917. It literally means ‘beyond realism’. The surrealist movement founded in Paris by writer Andre Breton. Published the First Manifesto of Surrealism in 1924. He led the French surrealists until his death. Surrealism concerned with the real functioning of thought, exploring the unconscious thoughts and desires and speaks the language of dreams. Surrealism was influenced by Breton’s reading of Sigmund Freud and his psychoanalytic theories. Affinities between surrealism and film have been noted since the beginning of the surrealist movement in the 1920s. The original surrealists recognized films as having surreal and dream like qualities. Like dreams, they have the appearance of reality but lack three dimensionality and distort the laws of time and space. The objective and technical processes of filmmaking shared affinities with the surrealist project of disassembling reality into a multiplicity of images, and then reassembling those images to achieve a marvelous and uncanny “dream world” that redoubled reality and captured the consciousness of mass audiences. Yet, unlike poetry, fiction, painting, photography, and collage, film never became a dominant medium of surrealist art. The movement used shocking, irrational, or absurd imagery and Freudian dream symbolism to challenge the traditional function of art to represent reality. Surrealist cinema is characterized by juxtapositions, the rejection of dramatic psychology, and a frequent use of shocking imagery. Un Chien Andalou: a 21-minute, silent French film, written by Salvador Dalí and Luis Buñuel, and directed by Buñuel, released in 1929. Surrealism draws upon irrational imagery and the subconscious mind. Surrealists should not, however, be mistaken as whimsical or incapable of logical thought;[8] rather, most Surrealists promote themselves as revolutionaries. Surrealism was influenced by Dadaism. Dada was an informal international movement, with participants in Europe and North America. The beginnings of Dada correspond to the outbreak of World War I. For many participants, the movement was a protest against the bourgeois nationalist and colonialist interests, which many Dadaists believed were the root cause of the war, and against the cultural and intellectual conformity—in art and more broadly in society—that corresponded to the war. Dada movement consisted of artists who rejected the logic, reason, and aestheticism of modern capitalist society, instead expressing nonsense, irrationality, and anti-bourgeois protest in their works. No narrative logic, no spacio-temporal coherence.
Expressionism German Expressionism, one of the earliest artistic genres to influence filmmaking, and one that arguably paved the way for many other avant-garde styles and techniques. German Expressionism is an artistic genre that originated in Europe in the 1920s, and is broadly defined as the rejection of Western conventions, and the depiction of reality that is widely distorted for emotional effect. Expressionists were less concerned with producing aesthetically pleasing compositions as they were with creating powerful reactions to their work through the use of bright, clashing colors, flat shapes, and jagged brushstrokes. Focused on subjective reality instead of objective. In its nature, the movement was interested in the relationship between art and society, and encompassed a broad range of fields, including architecture, painting, and film. The German Expressionist movement was initially confined to Germany due to the isolation the country experienced during World War I. The government had banned foreign films. The films’ appeal soon spread to an international audience, and by the early 1920s, many European filmmakers had begun experimenting with the absurd and wild aesthetics of German cinema. Similar to Expressionist paintings, Expressionist films sought to convey the inner, subjective experience of its subjects. Two of the most influential films of the era were The Last Laugh (1924) and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920). Expressionist film in the 1920s was based on the premise that film becomes art only to the extent that the film image differs from reality. The films of this era are, in their own way, a revealing look at a society at a particular moment in history, expressing the disillusionment, distrust, and isolation experienced by many people living in Germany at the time. Themes of madness, loss of hope, meaninglessness of life, and betrayal.
NeoRealism Italian neorealism (Italian: Neorealismo), also known as the Golden Age, is a national film movement characterized by stories set amongst the poor and the working class, filmed on location, frequently using non- professional actors. Italian neorealism films mostly contend with the difficult economic and moral conditions of post-World War II Italy, representing changes in the Italian psyche and conditions of everyday life, including poverty, oppression, injustice, and desperation. Italian neorealism came about as World War II ended and Benito Mussolini's government fell, causing the Italian film industry to lose its centre. Neorealism was a sign of cultural change and social progress in Italy. Characteristics of the Neo-Realsim
Noticeable long take style
Poor neighborhood and readymade location
The film that showed the situation of the common in the refugee camps to the fascist governance and the disaster brought in by the war
The realism was blend with the Marxist humanism that brought forward those raw emotions of both the artists and its audience
Films avoided editing and lighting of the location
The dialogue of the film focused on conversational script and not the scripted dialogue