Fall 2013 Lecture Outlines
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Cutting Patterns in DW Griffith's Biographs
Cutting patterns in D.W. Griffith’s Biographs: An experimental statistical study Mike Baxter, 16 Lady Bay Road, West Bridgford, Nottingham, NG2 5BJ, U.K. (e-mail: [email protected]) 1 Introduction A number of recent studies have examined statistical methods for investigating cutting patterns within films, for the purposes of comparing patterns across films and/or for summarising ‘average’ patterns in a body of films. The present paper investigates how different ideas that have been proposed might be combined to identify subsets of similarly constructed films (i.e. exhibiting comparable cutting structures) within a larger body. The ideas explored are illustrated using a sample of 62 D.W Griffith Biograph one-reelers from the years 1909–1913. Yuri Tsivian has suggested that ‘all films are different as far as their SL struc- tures; yet some are less different than others’. Barry Salt, with specific reference to the question of whether or not Griffith’s Biographs ‘have the same large scale variations in their shot lengths along the length of the film’ says the ‘answer to this is quite clearly, no’. This judgment is based on smooths of the data using seventh degree trendlines and the observation that these ‘are nearly all quite different one from another, and too varied to allow any grouping that could be matched against, say, genre’1. While the basis for Salt’s view is clear Tsivian’s apparently oppos- ing position that some films are ‘less different than others’ seems to me to be a reasonably incontestable sentiment. It depends on how much you are prepared to simplify structure by smoothing in order to effect comparisons. -
The Altering Eye Contemporary International Cinema to Access Digital Resources Including: Blog Posts Videos Online Appendices
Robert Phillip Kolker The Altering Eye Contemporary International Cinema To access digital resources including: blog posts videos online appendices and to purchase copies of this book in: hardback paperback ebook editions Go to: https://www.openbookpublishers.com/product/8 Open Book Publishers is a non-profit independent initiative. We rely on sales and donations to continue publishing high-quality academic works. Robert Kolker is Emeritus Professor of English at the University of Maryland and Lecturer in Media Studies at the University of Virginia. His works include A Cinema of Loneliness: Penn, Stone, Kubrick, Scorsese, Spielberg Altman; Bernardo Bertolucci; Wim Wenders (with Peter Beicken); Film, Form and Culture; Media Studies: An Introduction; editor of Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho: A Casebook; Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey: New Essays and The Oxford Handbook of Film and Media Studies. http://www.virginia.edu/mediastudies/people/adjunct.html Robert Phillip Kolker THE ALTERING EYE Contemporary International Cinema Revised edition with a new preface and an updated bibliography Cambridge 2009 Published by 40 Devonshire Road, Cambridge, CB1 2BL, United Kingdom http://www.openbookpublishers.com First edition published in 1983 by Oxford University Press. © 2009 Robert Phillip Kolker Some rights are reserved. This book is made available under the Cre- ative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial 2.0 UK: England & Wales Licence. This licence allows for copying any part of the work for personal and non-commercial use, providing author -
UWM Digital Commons Orphans
University of Wisconsin Milwaukee UWM Digital Commons Theses and Dissertations April 2021 Orphans Ryan Burden University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Follow this and additional works at: https://dc.uwm.edu/etd Part of the Fiction Commons Recommended Citation Burden, Ryan, "Orphans" (2021). Theses and Dissertations. 2649. https://dc.uwm.edu/etd/2649 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by UWM Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of UWM Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. ORPHANS A NOVEL by Ryan Burden A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English at The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee May 2021 ABSTRACT ORPHANS by Ryan Burden The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 2021 Under the Supervision of Professor Liam Callanan This novel explores the ways in which our concepts of children and family shape our larger perceptions of reality, and vice-versa. It tells the story of a family in rural, upstate New York, using three different perspectives: Grace (the head of household), Eve (her foster child), and Bo, a recent addition to the family. Eve has lived with Grace since childhood, while Bo was taken in after attempting to escape from a rehabilitation camp for boys. Over the course of two days, the children try to manage their own internal conflicts, while Grace does her best to help them. The entire plot is covered in the first of three sections: “Grace.” The following sections: “Eve” and “Bo,” repeat this plotline from their own perspectives. -
Film Essay for "Broken Blossoms"
Broken Blossoms By Ed Gonzalez No dialectic approach to film form would be complete without discussing the innovations cultivated by D.W. Griffith and Sergei Eisenstein in the early 1900s. Just as Eisenstein’s radi- cal principles of montage would forev- er inform the way films were cut and consumed, Griffith’s equally essential narrative and aesthetic innovations were becoming overshadowed by the controversy surrounding his epic Civil War reconstruction epic “The Birth of a Nation.” Coincidentally, “Intolerance” would irrevocably inspire budding Soviet filmmakers like Eisenstein, Pudovkin, and Kuleshov when the film was shown in the USSR in 1919, and if Griffith’s legacy remains tarnished to this day, it’s impossible to fathom the state of modern cinema without the influence of his artistic advances, such as his refinement of such techniques as the iris shot, the mask, or the sim- ple flashback. Between 1908 and 1913, Griffith made over 450 films for the New York- Richard Barthelmess watches a sleeping Lillian Gish with adoration. based Biograph Company, perhaps none Courtesy Media History Digital Library . more memorable than the 17-minute one -reel “The Lonedale Operator,” about a substitute telegraph operator (played by Blanch love with a Chinese man, is often regarded and dis- Sweet) who must fend off a group of bandits. The missed as Griffith’s apology for his celebration of the film’s technical innovations were then unheard of, Klu Klux Klan in “The Birth of a Nation.” Because and upon its release the film was considered by “Broken Blossoms” is so earnest a portraiture of an some to be the most thrilling picture ever produced. -
Lecture Outlines
21L011 The Film Experience Professor David Thorburn Lecture 1 - Introduction I. What is Film? Chemistry Novelty Manufactured object Social formation II. Think Away iPods The novelty of movement Early films and early audiences III. The Fred Ott Principle IV. Three Phases of Media Evolution Imitation Technical Advance Maturity V. "And there was Charlie" - Film as a cultural form Reference: James Agee, A Death in the Family (1957) Lecture 2 - Keaton I. The Fred Ott Principle, continued The myth of technological determinism A paradox: capitalism and the movies II. The Great Train Robbery (1903) III. The Lonedale Operator (1911) Reference: Tom Gunning, "Systematizing the Electronic Message: Narrative Form, Gender and Modernity in 'The Lonedale Operator'." In American Cinema's Transitional Era, ed. Charlie Keil and Shelley Stamp. Univ. of California Press, 1994, pp. 15-50. IV. Buster Keaton Acrobat / actor Technician / director Metaphysician / artist V. The multiplicity principle: entertainment vs. art VI. The General (1927) "A culminating text" Structure The Keaton hero: steadfast, muddling The Keaton universe: contingency Lecture 3 - Chaplin 1 I. Movies before Chaplin II. Enter Chaplin III. Chaplin's career The multiplicity principle, continued IV. The Tramp as myth V. Chaplin's world - elemental themes Lecture 4 - Chaplin 2 I. Keaton vs. Chaplin II. Three passages Cops (1922) The Gold Rush (1925) City Lights (1931) III. Modern Times (1936) Context A culminating film The gamin Sound Structure Chaplin's complexity Lecture 5 - Film as a global and cultural form I. Film as a cultural form Global vs. national cinema American vs. European cinema High culture vs. Hollywood II. -
The Wild Child: Children Are Freaks in Antebellum Novels
City University of New York (CUNY) CUNY Academic Works All Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects 2013 The Wild Child: Children are Freaks in Antebellum Novels Heathe Bernadette Heim Graduate Center, City University of New York How does access to this work benefit ou?y Let us know! More information about this work at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/1711 Discover additional works at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu This work is made publicly available by the City University of New York (CUNY). Contact: [email protected] The Wild Child: Children are Freaks in Antebellum Novels by Heather Bernadette Heim A dissertation submitted to the Graduate Faculty in English in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, The City University of New York 2013 Heim ii Heim © 2013 HEATHER BERNADETTE HEIM All Rights Reserved iii Heim This manuscript has been read and accepted for the Graduate Faculty in English in satisfaction of the Dissertation requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Hildegard Hoeller_______________________ __________ ______________________________________ Date Chair of Examining Committee Mario DiGangi__________________________ ___________ ______________________________________ Date Executive Officer Hildegard Hoeller______________________________ William P. Kelly_______________________________ Marc Dolan___________________________________ Supervisory Committee THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK iv Heim Abstract The Wild Child: Children are Freaks in Antebellum Novels by Heather Bernadette Heim Advisor: Professor Hildegard Hoeller This dissertation investigates the spectacle of antebellum freak shows and focuses on how Phineas Taylor Barnum’s influence permeates five antebellum novels. The study concerns itself with wild children staged as freaks in Margaret by Sylvester Judd, City Crimes by George Thompson, The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe and Our Nig by Harriet Wilson. -
The Chromatic Hybridism in Cinema: the Conjugation of Color and Black and White to Delimitate Spaces and Idealize New Worlds
The chromatic hybridism in cinema: the conjugation of color and black and white to delimitate spaces and idealize new worlds Jaime Neves Universidade Católica Portuguesa, CITAR Centro de Investigação em Ciência e Tecnologia das Artes PORTUGAL [email protected] Abstract: -Starting from an analysis of the symbolism attributed to black and white in symbiosis with color, we seek in this task to reflect on the way in which cinema seeks to obtain aesthetic, conceptual and even narrative dividends by combining in the same cinematographic piece the use color and black and white. Chromatic hybridism in cinema, let's call it that, definitively presents itself as an important film resource that enhances signifiers and, in the same way, creates or differentiates environments, time spaces and narratives. Key Words: Black and White Color Cinema Chromatic Hybridism New Worlds 1 Introduction After several years of experience, the brothers Auguste and Louis Lumière presented the cinematograph in 1895 and marked the beginning of a new era in the field of art. Cinema was born. In black and white, the still static images would now gain a new life with the illusion of movement and would exert an attractive force on the spectators watching them. The early years of cinema were years of strong technical limitations despite the creative efforts of many pioneers who aspired a cinema with sound and color. In 1928, Warner Brothers, after the successful sound experience a year earlier with Alan Crosland's Jazz Singer, concluded the sound revolution with the film The Lights of New York - the first film with fully synchronized sound. -
Greatest Year with 476 Films Released, and Many of Them Classics, 1939 Is Often Considered the Pinnacle of Hollywood Filmmaking
The Greatest Year With 476 films released, and many of them classics, 1939 is often considered the pinnacle of Hollywood filmmaking. To celebrate that year’s 75th anniversary, we look back at directors creating some of the high points—from Mounument Valley to Kansas. OVER THE RAINBOW: (opposite) Victor Fleming (holding Toto), Judy Garland and producer Mervyn LeRoy on The Wizard of Oz Munchkinland set on the MGM lot. Fleming was held in high regard by the munchkins because he never raised his voice to them; (above) Annie the elephant shakes a rope bridge as Cary Grant and Sam Jaffe try to cross in George Stevens’ Gunga Din. Filmed in Lone Pine, Calif., the bridge was just eight feet off the ground; a matte painting created the chasm. 54 dga quarterly photos: (Left) AMpAs; (Right) WARneR BRos./eveRett dga quarterly 55 ON THEIR OWN: George Cukor’s reputation as a “woman’s director” was promoted SWEPT AWAY: Victor Fleming (bottom center) directs the scene from Gone s A by MGM after he directed The Women with (left to right) Joan Fontaine, Norma p with the Wind in which Scarlett O’Hara (Vivien Leigh) ascends the staircase at Shearer, Mary Boland and Paulette Goddard. The studio made sure there was not a Twelve Oaks and Rhett Butler (Clark Gable) sees her for the first time. The set single male character in the film, including the extras and the animals. was built on stage 16 at Selznick International Studios in Culver City. ight) AM R M ection; (Botto LL o c ett R ve e eft) L M ection; (Botto LL o c BAL o k M/ g znick/M L e s s A p WAR TIME: William Dieterle (right) directing Juarez, starring Paul Muni (center) CROSS COUNTRY: Cecil B. -
François Truffaut's Jules and Jim and the French New Wave, Re-Viewed
FILMHISTORIA Online Vol. 29, núms. 1-2 (2019) · ISSN: 2014-668X François Truffaut’s Jules and Jim and the French New Wave, Re-viewed ROBERT J. CARDULLO University of Michigan Abstract Truffaut’s early protagonists, like many of those produced by the New Wave, were rebels or misfits who felt stifled by conventional social definitions. His early cinematic style was as anxious to rip chords as his characters were. Unlike Godard, Truffaut went on in his career to commit himself, not to continued experiment in film form or radical critique of visual imagery, but to formal themes like art and life, film and fiction, and art and education. This article reconsiders a film that embodies such themes, in addition to featuring characters who feel stifled by conventional social definitions: Jules and Jim. Keywords: François Truffaut; French film; New Wave; Jules and Jim; Henri- Pierre Roché Resumen Los primeros protagonistas de Truffaut, como muchos de los producidos por la New Wave, eran rebeldes o inadaptados que se sentían agobiados por las convenciones sociales convencionales. Su estilo cinematográfico temprano estaba tan ansioso por romper moldes como sus personajes. A diferencia de Godard, Truffaut continuó en su carrera comprometiéndose, no a seguir experimentando en forma de película o crítica radical de las imágenes visuales, sino a temas formales como el arte y la vida, el cine y la ficción, y el arte y la educación. Este artículo reconsidera una película que encarna dichos temas, además de presentar personajes que se sienten ahogados: Jules y Jim. Palabras clave: François Truffaut, cine francés, New Wave; Jules and Jim, Henri-Pierre Roché. -
Subversion of the Dominant Narrative Structure of Mainstream American Cinema in Aronofsky's Requiem/Or a Dream (2001)
Subversion of the dominant narrative structure of mainstream American cinema in Aronofsky's Requiem/or a Dream (2001) Adrian Konik Philosophy, Centre for Advanced Studies, University of Port Elizabeth, South Africa, -mail: [email protected] In Requiem for a Dream (2001), Aronofsky uses certain techniques of critical cinema to make the audience aware of the "constructed-ness" of the represented material. In doing so he goes against the "norms" of mainstream American cinema that aim to "mesmerize" the audience and "draw" them into the narrative. There are distinct parallels between the techniques used by Aronofsky and those employed by Eisenstein in his critical cinema, namely the use of non-stable footage, to make the camera conspicuous, the use of montage of rhythm, to disrupt the continuity of the narrative, the use of "word play" in relation to the captions and the representation of footage in "reverse", which force an audience to engage critically with the material, and the use of "Brechtian" theatre techniques to alienate the audience from the text. However, Aronofsky does not merely mirror Eisenstein's use of these techniques but rather develops them in his own way. Also, Aronofsky does not attack capitalism and bourgeois axiology in the same way as Eisenstein, but rather aims his criticism at the way in which subjectivity is constituted through the hegemony of the postmodem mass media. Through his critical cinema he subverts this constitution at both an overt level, involving the more blatant and jarring techniques of critical cinema discussed above, and at a subtle level, involving the valorization of a different narrative structure to that of mainstream cinema, namely one that does not edge its way towards some amiable form of Apollonian resolution. -
How I Became the Los Angeles Correspondent for Cahiers Du Cinéma
1 How I Became the Los Angeles Correspondent for Cahiers du cinéma grew up in a small town in North Texas on the Oklahoma border. Living in a big house on the edge of town, I had access to the larger I world through radio—still in its “Golden Age”—and television: The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet (1952), which I still enjoy in reruns; I Love Lucy (1951); the many Warner Bros. television series; and countless westerns, a staple in theaters that filled the airwaves as well. Every week on Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1955), which began airing when I was ten, the maestro personally presented concentrated doses of his trademark cinema of suspense and black comedy, while Rod Serling did the same thing on The Twilight Zone (1959), a weekly series that began airing five years later, offering tales of fantasy and science fiction introduced and narrated by Serling. I first encountered Orson Welles inThe Fountain of Youth (1958), an unsold pilot that aired on CBS in 1958 and won a Peabody Award. (I would later introduce it to French audiences via the Cahiers du cinéma when Welles was receiving an honor for his life’s work in France, accompanied by an interview conducted over the telephone between Los Angeles and New York for a special issue of the Cahiers.) The fundamentals of auteurism, a theory promulgated by the Cahiers, were already being communicated to me and future friends in other parts of the country, some of whom grew up to be auteurs of cinema and television: Joe Dante, John Landis, and in a more modest way me, 3 © 2020 State University of New York Press, Albany 4 Letters from Hollywood when editor Ed Marx and I finished a film for Welles in 1994, theFour Men on a Raft section of It’s All True (1943), a three-part film he shot in Latin America in 1942 and was not permitted to finish. -
A GENERAL CONFERENCE Volume 53, Number 1 in This Issue What Is a General Conference? the Expression “General Conference” Is Self-Explanatory
Editorial A GENERAL CONFERENCE Volume 53, Number 1 In this issue What is a General Conference? The expression “General Conference” is self-explanatory. It is not one person, or a small group of people. • Why Does God Call for a General As we will learn in this issue of The Reformation Herald, the words of a Conference? few persons are not to be considered as the voice of God, yet we are told Following God’s plan of organization. 3 that the “decisions of a General Conference composed of an assembly of • Why Are GC Delegation Sessions duly appointed, representative men from all parts of the fi eld, should be Necessary? . respected,”1 and further, that “the representatives of [God’s] church The biblical basis for such gatherings. 5 from all parts of the earth, when assembled in a General Conference, shall have authority.”2 • Introducing the Delegation What happened fi rst? No GC offi cer should be considered as being the “General Conference.” 8 Even a small group of GC offi cers should not be considered as being the • Newly Elected GC Offi cers “General Conference,” but “an assembly of duly appointed, representative These offi cers will bear weighty responsibilities. 10 men” “from al parts of the earth,” when acting in harmony with God’s • The African Region Word, make up the General Conference whose voice must be respected. Light to the “dark” continent. 12 When Moses was visited by Jethro, his father-in-law, an interesting con- versation took place. Jethro realized that Moses—capable as he was—was • The Asian Region undertaking a very heavy burden for one man alone.