DOCSLIB.ORG

The Digital Audiovisual Essay

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
The Digital Audiovisual Essay ORBIT-OnlineRepository ofBirkbeckInstitutionalTheses Enabling Open Access to Birkbeck’s Research Degree output Lessons in looking : the digital audiovisual essay https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/40215/ Version: Full Version Citation: Baptista, Tiago (2016) Lessons in looking : the digital audio- visual essay. [Thesis] (Unpublished) c 2020 The Author(s) All material available through ORBIT is protected by intellectual property law, including copy- right law. Any use made of the contents should comply with the relevant law. Deposit Guide Contact: email LESSONS IN LOOKING: THE DIGITAL AUDIOVISUAL ESSAY Tiago Baptista Thesis submitted for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Film and Screen Media) Birkbeck, University of London 2016 1 Abstract This thesis examines the contemporary practice of the digital audiovisual essay, which is defined as a material form of thinking at the crossroads of academic textual analysis, personal cinephilia, and popular online fandom practices, to suggest that it allows rich epistemological discoveries not only about individual films and viewing experiences, but also about how cinema is perceived in the context of digitally mediated audiovisual culture. Chapter one advances five key defining tensions of the digital audiovisual essay: its object is the investigation of specific films and cinephiliac experiences; it uses a performative research methodology based on the affordances of digital viewing and editing technologies; it exists primarily in Web 2.0 and takes advantage of its collaborative and dialogical modes of production; it is a “rich text object” that continuously tests the different contributions of both verbal and audiovisual forms of communication to the production of knowledge about the cinema; and finally, the digital audiovisual essay has an important pedagogical potential, not only for those who watch it, but especially for those who practice it. Chapter two presents the theoretical framework of the dissertation, challenges the ‘newness’ of the digital audiovisual essay, and suggests that any investigation of this cultural practice must address its ideological implications and its role in the context of contemporary audiovisual culture. Accordingly, it relates the editing and compositional techniques of the digital audiovisual essay with modernist montage and suggests that the audiovisual essay has not only inherited, but has also updated and enhanced the dialectical interdependency between critical and consumerism drives that shaped modernism’s ambiguous relation to mass culture. The final chapter examines four case studies (David Bordwell, Catherine Grant, ::kogonada, and Kevin B. Lee) that showcase the contradictory tensions of this cultural practice and broad our understanding of the politics of the digital audiovisual essay. 3 Acknowledgments I am thankful to Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia whose financial support made this research possible, and to the directors of Cinemateca, Maria João Seixas and José Manuel Costa, who kindly allowed me to carry on this work in successive leaves of absence between 2011 and 2014. I am also thankful to Professor Laura Mulvey. Her work was directly responsible for my decision to undertake this project and her dedicated guidance throughout this research contributed in many ways to see it through. The comments of Dr. Joel McKim, Dr. Scott Rogers, and Dr. Michael Temple also helped shape the structure of this dissertation. Parts of this research were presented at post-graduate seminars organized at Birkbeck College by Professor Laura Mulvey and Dr. Dorota Ostrowska. I am especially thankful to Dr. Anahid Kassabian for inviting me to present my work in a research seminar at the University of Liverpool. I am indebted to all the organizers and the participants that engaged with my work on those occasions. Throughout this research, I benefitted from the friendly support of many colleagues and friends that helped me juggle this research with my professional obligations. I am extremely grateful to my colleagues at Cinemateca’s film conservation centre (ANIM), as well as to the current and past members of the direction board of AIM (Association of Moving Image Researchers). The collaborative work at the cinema website À Pala de Walsh got me out of writing isolation and introduced me to a wonderful group of new friends (Luís Mendonça, Carlos Natálio, Ricardo Vieira Lisboa, and many others) with whom the discussion, the teaching, and the making of digital audiovisual essays became a pleasurable reality. I am also thankful for the friendly support of Margarida Sousa, José Filipe Costa, Ana Catarina Pinto, Nuno Dias, Nuno Senos, Martim Martins, Luis Trindade, and Joana Estorninho de Almeida, and the daily encouragement and advices of Paulo Cunha and Daniel Ribas. I am especially grateful to Sérgio Dias Branco and Miguel Cardoso for their comments on an advanced draft of this text. I dedicate this thesis to my parents, who nurtured me in so much more ways than they realize, and to Alice and Leonor, my beloved fellow survivors of this dissertation. 4 Table of Contents Introduction: lessons in looking ................................................................................... 8 1. THe exemplary text of contemporary audiovisual culture ................................... 13 2. Terminologies, corpus and periodization .................................................................. 15 3. Dissertation structure ....................................................................................................... 18 1. The digital audiovisual essay ................................................................................. 23 1.1. Five key defining tensions ............................................................................................ 28 1.1.1. Between academia and cinephilia: a new type and a different object of knowledge about cinema ............................................................................................................................................................ 30 1.1.2. Between theory and practice: a material thinking process ..................................................... 33 1.1.3. Between private and public: a collaborative and dialogical cultural practice ................ 37 1.1.4. Between verbal and audiovisual communication: a self-reflexive “rich text object” ... 41 1.1.5. Between watching and making: the pedagogical potential of the digital audiovisual essay ............................................................................................................................................................................ 48 Concluding remarks ............................................................................................................... 54 2. The double logic of the digital audiovisual essay ............................................ 57 2.1. Contemporary audiovisual culture and modernism ........................................... 62 2.1.1 Contemporary audiovisual culture ..................................................................................................... 63 2.1.2. Back to modernism ................................................................................................................................... 71 2.1.3. Beyond modernism? The ideological functions of remediation ............................................ 84 2.2. THe formal operations of tHe digital audiovisual essay ..................................... 91 2.2.1. Soviet Montage ............................................................................................................................................ 93 2.2.2. Critical montage? The compilation film ......................................................................................... 100 2.2.3. Vernacular montage: the Remix ........................................................................................................ 110 2.2.4. Negating montage: Détournement ................................................................................................... 119 Concluding remarks ............................................................................................................. 122 3. Four examples ........................................................................................................... 125 3.1. David Bordwell: tHe absent lecturer ....................................................................... 130 Video lectures ........................................................................................................................................................ 130 Video examples ..................................................................................................................................................... 137 3.2. CatHerine Grant: continuous experimentation ................................................... 142 A performative method ..................................................................................................................................... 143 Sequential editing ................................................................................................................................................ 148 Multiple-screen comparisons ......................................................................................................................... 155 Superimpositions ................................................................................................................................................
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Aural Expressionism and Montage in Hitchcock's Blackmail
    Southern Illinois University Carbondale OpenSIUC Research Papers Graduate School Summer 6-25-2012 There’s Something British about That: Aural Expressionism and Montage in Hitchcock’s Blackmail, Psycho, and The irB ds Laura D. Borger [email protected], [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://opensiuc.lib.siu.edu/gs_rp Recommended Citation Borger, Laura D., "There’s Something British about That: Aural Expressionism and Montage in Hitchcock’s Blackmail, Psycho, and The Birds" (2012). Research Papers. Paper 260. http://opensiuc.lib.siu.edu/gs_rp/260 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at OpenSIUC. It has been accepted for inclusion in Research Papers by an authorized administrator of OpenSIUC. For more information, please contact [email protected]. THERE’S SOMETHING BRITISH ABOUT THAT: AURAL EXPRESSIONISM AND MONTAGE IN HITCHCOCK’S BLACKMAIL, PSYCHO, AND THE BIRDS by Laura Borger B.A., Southern Illinois University, 1998 B.S., Southern Illinois University, 1998 M.S., Southern Illinois University, 2003 A Research Report Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Master of Arts Department of English in the Graduate School Southern Illinois University Carbondale August 2012 Copyright by Laura Borger, 2012 All Rights Reserved RESEARCH REPORT APPROVAL THERE’S SOMETHING BRITISH ABOUT THAT: AURAL EXPRESSIONISM AND MONTAGE IN HITCHCOCK’S BLACKMAIL, PSYCHO, AND THE BIRDS By Laura Borger A Research Report Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in the field of English Approved by: Scott McEathron, PhD, Chair Graduate School Southern Illinois University Carbondale June 25, 2012 AN ABSTRACT OF THE RESEARCH REPORT OF LAURA BORGER, for the MASTER OF ARTS degree in ENGLISH, presented on June 25, 2012, at Southern Illinois University Carbondale.
    [Show full text]
  • Japanese Modernism and “Cine-Text”: Fragments and Flows at Empire’S Edge in Kitagawa Fuyuhiko and Yokomitsu Riichi
    CHAPTER 24 JAPANESE MODERNISM AND “CINE-TEXT”: FRAGMENTS AND FLOWS AT EMPIRE’S EDGE IN KITAGAWA FUYUHIKO AND YOKOMITSU RIICHI WILLIAM O. GARDNER In November 1930, literary critic Inoue Yoshio wrote that the “belief in the eye” evident in Kitagawa Fuyuhiko’s recent poetry had progressed from a faith in the human eye to a belief in “that which is all the more precise, all the more objective: to the machine eye—to the lens” (17).' This critical comment, strongly evocative of Soviet filmmaker and theorist Dziga Vertov’s conception of the “cine-eye” {kinoglaz), builds upon Kitagawas own statement that “the poetry of tomorrow is advancing toward the ‘victory of the eye’” (Usawa 30). As Inoue suggests, Kitaga­ wa’s poetry circa 1930 displays a tendency to emulate the film camera, rather than the human eye, in presenting objects that are disassociated from the viewpoint of any single subjective viewing position. This aspiration to the free-ranging and “objective” viewpoint of the “machine eye” is part of a broad confluence between the literary and the cinematic in Kitagawa’s work, which we can also identify in his exploration of the poetic genre of the “cinepoeme,” as well as his coinage of the term “prose film” in his later critical and theoretical writings on cinema. As I will 572 TRANSLATION ZONES explore in this essay, Kitagawa’s writings from the 1920s and 1930s, together with the contemporaneous works of prose author Yokomitsu Riichi, are strongly marked by this confluence of the literary and the cinematic—so much so that we might term Kitagawa and Yokomitsu’s writing from this period “cine-text”: literary and critical texts permeated with cinematic qualities and concerns.
    [Show full text]
  • COM 320, History of the Moving Image–The Origins of Editing Styles And
    COM 320, History of Film–The Origins of Editing Styles and Techniques I. The Beginnings of Classical/Hollywood Editing (“Invisible Editing”) 1. The invisible cut…Action is continuous and fluid across cuts 2. Intercutting (between 2+ different spaces; also called parallel editing or crosscutting) -e.g., lack of intercutting?: The Life of An American Fireman (1903) -e.g., D. W. Griffith’s Broken Blossoms (1919) (boxing match vs. girl/Chinese man encounter) 3. Analytical editing -Breaks a single space into separate framings, after establishing shot 4. Continguity editing…Movement from space to space -e.g., Rescued by Rover (1905) 5. Specific techniques 1. Cut on action 2, Match cut (vs. orientation cut?) 3. 180-degree system (violated in Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920)) 4. Point of view (POV) 5. Eyeline match (depending on Kuleshov Effect, actually) 6. Shot/reverse shot II. Soviet Montage Editing (“In-Your-Face Editing”) 1. Many shots 2. Rapid cutting—like Abel Gance 3. Thematic montage 4. Creative geography -Later example—Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds 5. Kuleshov Effect -Established (??) by Lev Kuleshov in a series of experiments (poorly documented, however) -Nature of the “Kuleshov Effect”—Even without establishing shot, the viewer may infer spatial or temporal continuity from shots of separate elements; his supposed early “test” used essentially an eyeline match: -e.g., man + bowl of soup = hunger man + woman in coffin = sorrow man + little girl with teddy bear = love 6. Intercutting—expanded use from Griffith 7. Contradictory space -Shots of same event contradict one another (e.g., plate smashing in Potemkin) 8. Graphic contrasts -Distinct change in composition or action (e.g., Odessa step sequence in Potemkin) 9.
    [Show full text]
  • The General Idea Behind Editing in Narrative Film Is the Coordination of One Shot with Another in Order to Create a Coherent, Artistically Pleasing, Meaningful Whole
    Chapter 4: Editing Film 125: The Textbook © Lynne Lerych The general idea behind editing in narrative film is the coordination of one shot with another in order to create a coherent, artistically pleasing, meaningful whole. The system of editing employed in narrative film is called continuity editing – its purpose is to create and provide efficient, functional transitions. Sounds simple enough, right?1 Yeah, no. It’s not really that simple. These three desired qualities of narrative film editing – coherence, artistry, and meaning – are not easy to achieve, especially when you consider what the film editor begins with. The typical shooting phase of a typical two-hour narrative feature film lasts about eight weeks. During that time, the cinematography team may record anywhere from 20 or 30 hours of film on the relatively low end – up to the 240 hours of film that James Cameron and his cinematographer, Russell Carpenter, shot for Titanic – which eventually weighed in at 3 hours and 14 minutes by the time it reached theatres. Most filmmakers will shoot somewhere in between these extremes. No matter how you look at it, though, the editor knows from the outset that in all likelihood less than ten percent of the film shot will make its way into the final product. As if the sheer weight of the available footage weren’t enough, there is the reality that most scenes in feature films are shot out of sequence – in other words, they are typically shot in neither the chronological order of the story nor the temporal order of the film.
    [Show full text]
  • Editing and Montage in International Film and Video Theory and Technique 1St Edition Pdf
    FREE EDITING AND MONTAGE IN INTERNATIONAL FILM AND VIDEO THEORY AND TECHNIQUE 1ST EDITION PDF LuГѓВ​s Fernando Morales Morante | 9781138244078 | | | | | Editing and Montage in International Film and Video [Book] Montagein motion pictures, the editing technique of assembling separate pieces of thematically related film and putting them together into a sequence. With montage, portions of motion pictures can be carefully built up piece by piece by the director, film editor, and visual and sound technicians, who cut and fit each part with the others. Visual montage may combine shots to tell a story chronologically or may juxtapose images to produce an impression or to illustrate an association of ideas. An example of the latter occurs in Strikeby the Russian director Sergey Eisensteinwhen the scene of workers being cut down by cavalry is followed by a shot of cattle being slaughtered. Montage may also be applied to the combination of sounds for artistic expression. Montage technique developed early in cinema, primarily through the work of the American directors Edwin S. Porter — and D. Griffith — It is, however, most commonly associated with the Russian editing techniques, particularly as introduced to American audiences through the montage sequences of Slavko Verkapich in films in the s. See also photomontage. Montage Article Additional Info. Print Cite. Facebook Twitter. Give Feedback External Websites. Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article requires login. External Websites. Articles from Britannica Encyclopedias for elementary and high school students. The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working Editing and Montage in International Film and Video Theory and Technique 1st edition that content or via study for an advanced degree Editing and Montage in International Film and Video Theory and Technique 1st edition Article History.
    [Show full text]
  • The Narrative Functions of Television Dreams by Cynthia A. Burkhead A
    Dancing Dwarfs and Talking Fish: The Narrative Functions of Television Dreams By Cynthia A. Burkhead A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Ph.D. Department of English Middle Tennessee State University December, 2010 UMI Number: 3459290 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. UMT Dissertation Publishing UMI 3459290 Copyright 2011 by ProQuest LLC. All rights reserved. This edition of the work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 DANCING DWARFS AND TALKING FISH: THE NARRATIVE FUNCTIONS OF TELEVISION DREAMS CYNTHIA BURKHEAD Approved: jr^QL^^lAo Qjrg/XA ^ Dr. David Lavery, Committee Chair c^&^^Ce~y Dr. Linda Badley, Reader A>& l-Lr 7i Dr./ Jill Hague, Rea J <7VM Dr. Tom Strawman, Chair, English Department Dr. Michael D. Allen, Dean, College of Graduate Studies DEDICATION First and foremost, I dedicate this work to my husband, John Burkhead, who lovingly carved for me the space and time that made this dissertation possible and then protected that space and time as fiercely as if it were his own. I dedicate this project also to my children, Joshua Scanlan, Daniel Scanlan, Stephen Burkhead, and Juliette Van Hoff, my son-in-law and daughter-in-law, and my grandchildren, Johnathan Burkhead and Olivia Van Hoff, who have all been so impressively patient during this process.
    [Show full text]
  • Digital Film & TV
    DiGiTal Film & TV Exam REVIEW GUIDE: Film Technologies & Cinematic Techniques Types of Questions 1. Short Answer-- Qualify your answers with illustrative examples which are drawn directly from the readings, shots, and film clips 2. Shot Composition and SEMIOTICS applied concepts, montage/sequence analysis (visual, audio, dialogue, editing tactics) 3. Application of Reading/Theory Questions Application of ideas from readings and screenings. Reading theory/concept to actual practice and examples 4. Film Development, Scripting, Conceptualization and PlanningKnowledge of the “behind the scenes” development and conceptual structure of filmmaking 5. SCREENINGS: Critical analysis of in and out of class screenings and semiotic moments 6. Strong and detailed working knowlegdge of Canon D70 cameras (the 18-135mm lens and tripod) – menus, options, settings, lens features, audio, etc. 7. Strong and detailed working knowledge of Premiere Pro CC— This includes Editing, Titling, Key Frames, working with hiRes stills, basic effects, Audio, Transitions, Exporting (Premiere—step-by-step sequence/approaches) 8. Working knowledge of Camtasia Studio 9. Working knowledge of Digital Memory Resources: This includes SD Cards, Portable/external hard drives, and Network (TLDAT) resources 10. Black Box ScreeningQuestion You’ll want to review: 1. Readings, terminology, class notes, course links, Premiere operations, screenings! DigiFilm&TV COURSE LINKS Page 2. Be able to CONVINCINGLY "deconstruct" the semiotics of film/TV stills and sequences using variety of terms
    [Show full text]
  • “We'll Embrace One Another and Go On, All Right?” Everyday Life in Ozu
    “We’ll embrace one another and go on, all right?” Everyday life in Ozu Yasujirô’s post-war films 1947-1949. University of Turku Faculty of Humanities Cultural History Master’s thesis Topi E. Timonen 17.5.2019 The originality of this thesis has been checked in accordance with the University of Turku quality assurance system using the Turnitin OriginalityCheck service. UNIVERSITY OF TURKU School of History, Culture and Arts Studies Faculty of Humanities TIMONEN, TOPI E.: “We’ll embrace one another and go on, all right?” Everyday life in Ozu Yasujirô’s post-war films 1947-1949. Master’s thesis, 84 pages. Appendix, 2 pages. Cultural history May 2019 Summary The subject of my master’s thesis is the depiction of everyday life in the post-war films of Japanese filmmaker Ozu Yasujirô (1903-1963). My primary sources are his three first post- war films: Record of a Tenement Gentleman (Nagaya shinshiroku, 1947), A Hen in the Wind (Kaze no naka no mendori, 1948) and Late Spring (Banshun, 1949). Ozu’s aim in his filmmaking was to depict the Japanese people, their society and their lives in a realistic fashion. My thesis offers a close reading of these films that focuses on the themes that are central in their everyday depiction. These themes include gender roles, poverty, children, nostalgia for the pre-war years, marital equality and the concept of arranged marriage, parenthood, and cultural juxtaposition between Japanese and American influences. The films were made under American censorship and I reflect upon this context while examining the presentation of the themes.
    [Show full text]
  • PAJ77/No.03 Chin-C
    AIN’T NO SUNSHINE The Cinema in 2003 Larry Qualls and Daryl Chin s 2003 came to a close, the usual plethora of critics’ awards found themselves usurped by the decision of the Motion Picture Producers Association of A America to disallow the distribution of screeners to its members, and to any organization which adheres to MPAA guidelines (which includes the Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences). This became the rallying cry of the Independent Feature Project, as those producers who had created some of the most notable “independent” films of the year tried to find a way to guarantee visibility during award season. This issue soon swamped all discussions of year-end appraisals, as everyone, from critics to filmmakers to studio executives, seemed to weigh in with an opinion on the matter of screeners. Yet, despite this media tempest, the actual situation of film continues to be precarious. As an example, in the summer of 2003 the distribution of films proved even more restrictive, as theatres throughout the United States were block-booked with the endless cycle of sequels that came from the studios (Legally Blonde 2, Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle, Terminator 3, The Matrix Revolutions, X-2: X-Men United, etc.). A number of smaller films, such as the nature documentary Winged Migration and the New Zealand coming-of-age saga Whale Rider, managed to infiltrate the summer doldrums, but the continued conglomeration of distribution and exhibition has brought the motion picture industry to a stultifying crisis. And the issue of the screeners was the rallying cry for those working on the fringes of the industry, the “independent” producers and directors and small distributors.
    [Show full text]
  • Documentary: Data: Montage’ Jon Dovey & Mandy Rose
    1 ‘We’re Happy and We Know It : Documentary: Data: Montage’ Jon Dovey & Mandy Rose Abstract This article is concerned with the social praxis of documentary in the sea of ‘ubiquitous data’ that is both consequence and driver of online social mediation. The topic is given importance by the morphing of the character of video in the context of the latest web coding language, HTML5. Until now web video has been impervious to its networked context; reproducing the conditions of the TV screen in a hypermediated space. Now existing databases and live information drawn from social media can be connected to the documentary environment, offering opportunities for the production of new kinds of knowledge and application. The affordances of networked connectivity offer the potential to re-contextualise documentary material through mobilising the enormous co-creative potential of human discourse captured in the web. The challenge in these marriages of mass media form and rhizomatic network is to find new ways of shaping attention into a coherent experience. To do so we have to re-invent the social praxis of documentary, creating new visual and informational grammars. Contributor’s Details Jon Dovey is Professor of Screen Media at the University of the West of England. He is the Director of the Digital Cultures Research Centre (http://www.dcrc.org.uk/). He also heads up REACT, the AHRC Creative Economy Hub for Wales and the West that aims to connect arts research with the Creative Economy. He was a film maker and video artist before becoming an academic. He has been working with Mandy Rose and the iDocs team at DCRC, see more at http://i-docs.org/ .
    [Show full text]
  • In Cinema, Editing Is Also Called “The Invisible Art.”
    In cinema, editing is also called “the invisible art.” For our purposes, think of “the gutter” as “the edit.” The edit is at the very heart of cinema! According to Soviet “Montage is an idea that montage theory, to edit arises from the collision of between two different shots independent thoughts.” creates a collision of ideas. Soviet Montage Theory (1920s) Another Resilient Ancient P.O.V. Montage is French for “assembly.” The montage technique is one that implies no real temporal continuity whatsoever. Montage is achieved with a collection of symbolically related images, cut together in a way that suggests psychological relationships rather a temporal continuum. Methods of montage Methods of montage Metric - where the editing follows a specific number of frames (based purely on the physical nature of time), cutting to the next shot no matter what is happening within the image. This montage is used to elicit the most basal and emotional of reactions in the audience. Metric montage example from Eisenstein's October. Rhythmic - includes cutting based on continuity, creating visual continuity from edit to edit. Rhythmic montage example from Il Buono, il Brutto, il Cattivo where the protagonist and the two antagonists face off in a three-way duel Another rhythmic montage example from The Battleship Potemkin's "Odessa steps" sequence. Tonal - a tonal montage uses the emotional meaning of the shots -- not just manipulating the temporal length of the cuts or its rhythmical characteristics -- to elicit a reaction from the audience even more complex than from the metric or rhythmic montage. For example, a sleeping baby would emote calmness and relaxation.
    [Show full text]
  • Tokyo Story (Tokyo Monogatari, Yasujiro Ozu, 1953) Discussion Points 1
    FAC@JGC John Gray Centre Star Room April 2016 Tokyo Story (Tokyo monogatari, Yasujiro Ozu, 1953) Discussion Points 1. Think about what is at the core (theme) of the story? 2. How does Ozu depict family dynamics in this film – specifically the bond between parents and children? 3. How do you respond to the slow pace of the film? 4. What is your opinion on the portrayal of women in the narrative? 5. What do you think is the effect of presenting: (a) frames in which the camera is right between the two people conversing and films each person directly? (b) so-called tatami shots (the camera is placed as if it were a person kneeling on a tatami mat)? 1 Dr Hanita Ritchie Twitter: @CineFem FAC@JGC John Gray Centre Star Room April 2016 6. How does Ozu present the progression of time in the story? 7. Think about the following translated dialogue between Kyoko, the youngest daughter in the family, and Noriko, the widowed daughter-in-law, after Mrs Hirayama’s death. How would you interpret it in terms of the story as a whole? K: “I think they should have stayed a bit longer.” N: “But they’re busy.” K: “They’re selfish. Demanding things and leaving like this.” N: “They have their own affairs.” K: “You have yours too. They’re selfish. Wanting her clothes right after her death. I felt so sorry for poor mother. Even strangers would have been more considerate.” N: “But look Kyoko. At your age I thought so too. But children do drift away from their parents.
    [Show full text]