Friday, April 26, 2013

Neorealism

In cinema and in literature, neorealism is a cultural movement that brings elements of true life in the stories it describes, rather than a world mainly existing in imagination only.

The movement was developed in Europe, primarily after the end of WWII, with Italian neorealist cinema a notable example. The movement is characterized by stories set amongst the poor and working class, filmed in long takes on location, frequently using non-professional actors for secondary and sometimes primary roles.

Italian neorealist films mostly contend with the difficult economical and moral conditions of postwar Italy, reflecting the changes in the Italian psyche and the conditions of everyday life: defeat, poverty, and desperation. Because Cinecittà (a complex of studios in Rome--the center of commercial filmmaking in Italy since 1936) was occupied by refugees, films were shot outdoors, amidst devastation.

Among the most well-known neorealism films are "The Bicycle Thief" and "Umberto D".

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adoor gopalakrishnan

Satyajith Ray's role in revolutionising Indian cinema during 1950s with his first film Pather Panchali was taken-up by Adoor Gopalakrishnan in Kerala to create a drastic change in Malayalam cinema. Adoor's first film Swayamvaram (1972) pioneered the new wave cinema movement in Kerala.

While making films I am not concerned about strictly contemporary, day-to-day issues. Any good film has to survive the period of its making. It has to go beyond today to be relevant tomorrow. I am very particular about that. As a result these films also don't age, I hope. They remain contemporary.

It was his interest in drama, which lead Adoor to take up the direction course in 1962 at the FTII at Pune, thinking that it would help him to enhance his skills in stage productions. But there he found that stage plays and cinema are entirely different mediums.

Notable 'literary' films like Neelakuyil, Chemeen and Oolavum Theeravum produced before Adoor's first film, but all had the regular ingredients of popular cinema, highly dramatic plot and song-dance sequences. Swayamvaram was a rejection of all these populist formulas. This radically different film was reluctantly taken by the mass. Only a minority eagerly waiting for a change in this powerful medium welcomed the film.

Apart from his films, Adoor's major contribution towards introducing a new cinema culture in Kerala was the constitution of the first Film Society in Kerala, 'Chitralekha'. He also took active part in the constitution of 'Chitralekha', Kerala's first Film Co-operative Society for film production. These movements triggered a fresh wave of good films, often termed 'art films' by directors like Aravindan, P A Becker, K G George, Pavithran, Raveendran etc.

Before Swayamvaram Adoor had made his first short film The Myth of 50 Sec duration for a festival in Montreal. His second short film And Man Created was ‘Chitralekha’s’ first production. He also directed numerous documentaries for different government organisations before he started his first feature Swayamvaram.

All the ten films he directed, from Swayamvaram to Oru Pennum Randaanum, were screened at several International film festivals and won him several National and International awards. He won the British Film Institute award forElepathayam. He also won National Film Awards four times and several State Film Awards. Adoor received the Padma Shree in 1984 and the Padma Vibhushan in 2006.

The Nation honoured Adoor for his valuable contributions to Indian cinema by awarding him the highest cinema award of India, the Dabasaheb Phalke Award for the year 2004.

Filmography:

Swayamvaram
Kodiyettam
Elippathayam
Mukhamukham
Anantaram
Mathilukal
Vidheyan
Kathapurushan
Nizhalkkuthu
Naalu Pennungal
Oru Pennum Randaanum

Also read :
Of Life...On Films...:Interview with Adoor
Good Cinema, Bad Cinema: Adoor Gopalakrishnan ['The Hindu' Article]
Chaosmag Interview with Adoor Gopalakrishnan

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Soviet Montage

The Soviet Montage movement began in 1924/25 and ended at 1930. During the Montage movement's existence, perhaps fewer than thirty films were made in the style. But the films were very influential. In the following text I want to explain the history of Russia at this time and the main concepts of Soviet Montage. To explain the key concepts of the avantgarde film movement I will examine Eisenstein's Strike (1925), the first and very successful feature film of Sergei Eisenstein.

Soviet History & Film Production

In 1917 there have been two revolutions in Russia. The February Revolution eliminated the Tsar's government. The second revolution took place in October. Vladimir Lenin was the leader of the revolution and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was created. Narkompros, founded in 1918, controlled the film industry.

Narkompros established the State Film School in 1919. A year later Lev Kuleshov joined the State Film School and formed workshops. Kuleshov's experiments were showing how important editing is and he developed the central idea to the Montage theory and style. A central aspect of his experiments was that the viewer's response in cinema was less dependent on the individual shot than on the editing or montage. Lenin saw cinema as the most important art, most probably because it is an effective medium for propaganda and education.

Montage

One main characteristic of Soviet Montage films is the downplaying of individual characters in the center of attention. Single characters are shown as members of different social classes and are representing a general type or class. In Eisenstein's Strike there is only one character named individually in the entire film. Another characteristic is that Soviet Montage filmmakers often chose strikes and other clashes in the history of revolutions e.g. Eisenstein's Potemkin, October and Strike.

The central aspect of Soviet Montage style was the area of editing. Cuts should stimulate the spectator. In opposition to continuity editing Montage cutting often created either overlapping or elliptical temporal relations. Overlapping editing means, that the second shot repeats part or all of the action from the previous shot. Through repetitions of this method the time an action takes on the screen expands. Elliptical cutting creates the opposite effect. A part of an action is left out, so the event takes less time than it would in reality. Elliptical editing was often used in the form of the jump cut. In Strike, Eisenstein cuts from a police officer to a butcher who kills an animal in the form of a jump cut.

The butcher is not part of the story but should make the viewer think about the connection and come to a conclusion such as: the workers were slaughtered like animals. The butcher is here a nondiegetic element. Anything that is part of the film story world is diegetic. A nondiegetic element exists outside the story world. There is no connection between the slaughter of the animal. The use of such nondiegetic shots was central to Eisenstein's theory on "intellectual montage". Intellectual montage creates its effects through conflict such as the juxtaposing of shots that have no direct connection. Soviet Montage filmmakers often shot on location. Strike, in fact, was shot in a real factory. The machine and the factory became symbols of the new society in this time.

Sergei Eisenstein

Sergei Eisenstein was 26 when he made his first feature film Strike, the first major film of the Montage movement. It was released in 1925. Potemkin, October, Old and New are three more important works from Eisenstein in that style. At the center of Sergei Eisenstein's concept of Montage was the collision of elements: shots should not be seen as linked, but rather as conflicting with one another. The spectator can create a new concept in her or his mind realising the conflict between elements.

Even today, the Soviet Montage style is very interesting to watch and very inspiring but the political aspects are much harder to follow today. The lack of individual protagonists is a factor that reduces the joy of viewing and makes it hard to follow the whole film. But one can get an idea how exciting it was to be part of the emergence of a new form of society.

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FTII
The Film and Television Institute of India is designed for a new generation of storytellers: visual and performing artists who share a passion for motion pictures and want to learn by making their own projects in a hands-on, intensive program. FTII students are not lost in large classes. As an explicit policy, we limit class size, to make individual attention and interaction among students and instructors possible. All students are encouraged to meet faculty one-on-one for consultation throughout their course creating an environment that promotes personal development and learning.
In keeping with this philosophy, the FTII takes pride in its open door policy of admission. Students from diverse backgrounds and from all walks of life are welcome. This nurtures a supportive, positive atmosphere conducive to the level of collaboration required to do great work. Celebrated guest speakers from the film, television, and media industries frequently visit FTII to share their knowledge and experience with our students.
Learning to be a Director, Cinematographer, Editor, Sound Designer, Art Director, Actor, Screen Play Writer or Animator is not done “by mere numbers.” It is done by hands-on experience, trial and error, feedback and correction, and questions and answers. Filmmaking demands the integration of many kinds of knowledge. It is the integration of knowledge that distinguishes the FTII from many other film schools.

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Indian New Wave Cinema Revisited

By Vikrant Kelkar

Parallel cinema is often misconstrued by people as art cinema or non-commercial. This is utterly absurd because the cinema that we speak of had no intentions of being labeled as arcane and non-profitable. In fact, it was an intellectual movement based on the innovations happening in European cinema. It depicted realism rather than lofty pretentions of being artful. Though it drifted away from the accepted story-telling practices widely-accepted in Bollywood, it had ushered a new direction for Indian Cinema. Hence, the term “Indian New Wave” is more apt than parallel cinema. This change in the direction is mainly due to the efforts of its pioneers like Satyajit Ray, Ritwik Ghatak, Mrinal Sen, Shyam Benegal, M. Jabbar Patel, Adoor Gopalakrishnan and Girish Kasaravalli because they transcended all boundaries and found a unique expression to articulate inner-most turmoil of a man.

The earliest example of Indian New Wave could be traced to Chetan Anand’s “Neecha Nagar” (1946), which portrayed the depravity of the upper class and the fragility of the lower class. It led to a serious contemplation among the intelligentsia of India and what followed was an earnest frustration with the popular cinema. Satyajit Ray was the first one to express the major elements of this movement. His Apu Trilogy is consisted of three Bengvali films directed by Satyajit Ray: Pather Panchali (Song of the Little Road), Aparajito (The Unvanquished) and Apur Sansar (The World of Apu). The films completed 1955-1959 — were based on two Bengali novels written by Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay: Pather Panchali (1929) and Aparajito (1932). It is simple yet complex coming-of-age story of a young boy, Apu. Though shot on a meager budget of Rs. 1, 50,000, but it accomplished more than any other Indian feature film. The three films went on to win many national and international awards, including three National Film Awards and seven awards at the Cannes, Berlin and Venice Film Festivals. This series of films put Indian Cinema on the global map. Even other Bengali filmmakers, Mrinal Sen and Ritwik Ghatak, found international success with their blend of socio-political films.

Following Ray’s footsteps, other filmmakers used the techniques adopted by Ray while constructing his film so much so that these techniques became a dictum of the New Wave Cinema. These films are characterized by their rejection of popular forms, especially the song and fight sequences, their realistic portrayal of rural settings or working class, use of method actors, a fondness for close-ups and long shots, a sparse use of musical score and sometimes even inventive editing patterns. But each filmmaker had their own distinct style that would set them apart. For instance, Ritwik Ghatak, Mrinal Sen and Satyajit Ray depicted reality as they interpreted it. They were similar only in terms of defying the existing norms.

The new wave wasn’t concentrated movement. It took its roots slowly over a period of time in different parts of India. Like Adoor Gopalkrishanan, Girish Kasaravalli and Jabbar revolutionized Malayam, Kannada and Marathi Cinema respectively. They incorporated the elements of this movement in their films and their mother tongues. While Shyam Benegal illustrated a new kind of contemplative Hindi cinema, which was backed by prominent Bollywood faces, it is often considered as an influence of New Wave on popular cinema. Adoor’s “Swayamvaram”, Kasaravalli’s “Ghatashraddha”, Patel’s “Jait Re Jait” and Benegal’s “Bhumika” are often considered as masterpieces of the second wave of Indian Cinema.

But nowadays, the line between socially-conscious cinema and mainstream cinema has become increasingly hazy with mainstream filmmakers accepting the notion of this cinema. Filmmakers like Mira Nair, Aparna Sen, Sudhir Mishra and Anurag Kashyap are not only commercially successful but also the toast of global cinema. As films like Dev D, Gulaal, Mr. and Mrs. Iyer, and Monsoon Wedding are being considered as contemporary classics. But still these filmmakers can be considered as outsiders of Bollywood. And Bollywood is also making significant film lately. Madhur Bhandarkar, a mainstream Bollywood filmmaker, has been making socially relevant cinema since his debut film.

His film “Chameli” portrays the harsh reality of a prostitute even his recent venture “Heroine” describes the vanity and abject situation of a Bollywood starlet. Even Imtiaz Ali’s “Rockstar” starring Ranbir Kapoor manages to capture the angst of the youth, which is not common for mainstream cinema. All these efforts are a salute to painstaking nature of Indian Cinema and its values inculcated in the past.

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Examples of Genre

A genre is a category of art, music, or literature. Following are some popular examples of genres, along with some related sub-genres.

Action and Adventure

Action and adventure are sometimes considered two distinct genres, however, the two go hand-in-hand: they involve stories with exciting sequences and obstacles that must be overcome before reaching a goal.

There are many different categories of action-adventure stories.

Epics. An epic is a tale, often told in verse, of a heroic figure on a quest.
Military stories. Military fiction usually involves stories of battle and espionage from the warfront.
Spy fiction. These stories, in the James Bond vein, recount the pulse-pounding expeditions of spies in various agencies throughout the world.
Westerns. Stories that take place in the Wild West, typically including gun duels, train robberies, heists, and showdowns, are known collectively as Westerns.

Comedy

Comedies are humorous, funny stories intended to make the reader or viewer laugh.

Black comedy. Although these stories are intended to be funny, they also touch darker areas of storytelling, such as death and fear.
Parodies. A parody intends to mimic another genre to humorous effect. Parodies can be intended to mock and criticize as well as to pay homage.
Rom-com. Romantic comedies, or rom-coms, mix love stories together with comedic events.
Slapstick comedy. This type of comedy features physical humor such as pratfalls, silly and exaggerated body language, and unlikely scenarios.

Fantasy

Stories about magic spells, mythical creatures, and fabled kingdoms are known as fantasies. These stories sometimes include witchcraft and wizardry, dragons and unicorns, and an emphasis on legend.

Fables. This type of fantasy story demonstrates a general truth or a parable.
Fairy tales. Often age-old stories that include magic and folklore in addition to traditional fantasy characters like elves and goblins.
Legends. While legends may include bits of historical fact, they are usually made to seem larger than life, as in the Legend of King Arthur.
Scientific fantasy. A fantasy story that may include elements of scientific fact is known as science-fantasy.

Horror

Horror stories are intended, as the name suggests, to horrify and scare an audience. The genre of horror has been shocking audiences for many centuries and includes many sub-genres.

Ghost stories. These are stories where the dead return to life and haunt the living, such as Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. Sometimes the ghosts are trying to teach the living a lesson.
Monster stories. Monster stories use creatures that frighten or threaten human beings as the antagonists.
Slasher fiction. Popular in cinema, slasher stories tell of deranged killers who are out to punish regular people.
Survival stories. These stories paint a future where humankind is up against a threat like zombies or vampires and must survive against the odds.

Any story that uses scientific concepts to explain the world or the universe is known as science fiction, sci-fi, or syfy. This genre is very similar in construction to fantasy, except that science is a central theme.

Science Fiction

Apocalyptic sci-fi. Any science fiction that has to do with the end of the world or the destruction of mankind is known as "apocalyptic" sci-fi.
Hard sci-fi. When the science of a particular story is well-researched and stands up to scrutiny, it is considered "hard" sci-fi.
Soft sci-fi. Soft sci-fi typically deals less with the complications of applied science and more with the effects of science.
Space opera. This type of science fiction deals with the long-term effects of a life lived in space, such as Star Trek or Star Wars.

There are many examples of genres and sub-genres. The movies, books, literature and entertainment you enjoy fall into one of these genres.

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ONEIRIC FILM THEORY

By: Ben.

From Wikipedia:

In a film theory context, the term oneiric (/oʊˈnaɪrɪk/; “pertaining to dream”) refers to the depiction of dream-like states in films, or to the use of the metaphor of a dream or the dream-state to analyze a film. The connection between dreams and films has been long established; “The dream factory” “…has become a household expression for the film industry”. The dream metaphor for film viewing is “one of the most persistent metaphors in both classical and modern film theory”, and it is used by film theorists using Freudian, non-Freudian, and semiotic analytical frameworks.

I would classify this as the film theory I most Identify with and support.

FILM LANGUAGE

Here is a glossary of film terms :

Animation

A form of filmmaking characterised by photographing inanimate objects or individual drawings frame by frame, with each frame differeing minutely from the previous frame. When these images are projected at the standard speed of twenty-four frames per second, the images appear to move.

Here is a nice example of a short animation film.

Auteur

French for “author”. Used by critics writing for Cahiers du cinema and other journals to indicate the figure, usually the director, who stamped a film with his/her own “personality”. The concept allowed critics to evaluate highly works of American genre cinema that were otherwise dismissed in favor of the developing European art cinema. Auteur theory emphasises the director as the major creator of film art.

Here is part of a documentary on auteur theory.

Costume

The clothes that characters wear. Costume in narrative cinema is used to signify character, or advertise particular fashions, or to make clear distinctions between characters.

Here is short video clip which examines the work of a costume designer.

Biopic

A biographical film normally about the life of a famous person.

Here is the trailer to Ray about the life of the singer ray Charles.

Captions/ titles

Written labels on the screen. A title designer is responsible for the captions. One of the most famous title designers was Saul Bass who worked on many of Hitchcock’s films. Here are the titles for Vertigo.

Here is a short film which celebrates Saul Bass’ title design.

The Title Design of Saul Bass from Ian Albinson on Vimeo.

This short film gives a brief history of title design.

A Brief History of Title Design from Ian Albinson on Vimeo.

Cinematographer, director of photography

The artist responsible for the lighting of a shot and the quality of the photography in a film.

Here is a master class in cinematography by Christopher Doyle, the renowned cinematographer of film such as In The Mood for Love and The Quiet American.

Diegesis

The narrative elements that are shown or inferred from the content of a film. The diegesis includes objects, events, spaces and the characters that inhabit them, including things, actions, and attitudes not explicitly presented in the film but inferred by the audience. The audience constructs a diegetic world from the material presented in a narrative film.

Dolly shot, tracking shot, trucking shot

A shot taken from a moving vehicle. In the past tracks were laid on the set to permit a smoother movement of the camera.

In Hitchcock’s North by Northwest we can see this example of a dolly shot.

In the opening scene of Trainspotting there are several dollying shots to follow the characters as they run.

Editing

The joining together of clips of film into a single filmstrip. The cut is a simple edit but there are many other possible ways to transition from one shot to another.

Here is part of a documentary which explains the work of a film editor.

film/movie buff

A film enthusiast.

Here is a short film which explains how to become a film buff.

Flashback / Flashforward

A jump backwards or forwards in diegetic time. With the use of flashback / flashforward the order of events in the plot no longer matches the order of events in the story. Citizen Kane(Orson Welles, 1941) is a famous film composed almost entirely of flashbacks and flashforwards. The film timeline spans over 60 years, as it traces the life of Charles Foster Kane from his childhood to his deathbed — and on into the repercussions of his actions on the people around him. Some characters appear at several time periods in the film, usually being interviewed in the present and appearing in the past as they tell the reporter of their memories of Kane.

Here is part of documenary discussing the importance of Citizen Kane.

Focus

Focus refers to the degree to which light rays coming from any particular part of an object pass through the lens and reconverge at the same point on a frame of the film negative, creating sharp outlines and distinct textures that match the original object. “Out of focus” means the images are blurred and lack acceptable linear definition.

In Deconstructing Harry by Woody Allen the main character is deliberately shot out of focus.

Freeze frame

A device which allows you to pause the film and freeze the image. One of the most famous uses of freeze frame is the final shot in Truffuat’s 400 Blows.

Genres

Types of film recognized by audiences and/or producers. These types are distinguished by narrative or stylistic conventions.

Here is short clip of the American Film Institute’s Top 10 films by genre.

Mise-en-scene

All the things that are “put in the scene”: the setting, the decor, the lighting, the costumes, the performance etc.

In this short clip there is an explanation and examples of mise-en-scene.

Scene

A scene is a segment of a narrative film that usually takes place in a single time and place, often with the same characters.

Here is one of the most famous scenes from Hitchcock’s Rear Window.

Script, Screenplay, Scenario

A written description of a film’s dialogue and action, sometimes with basic camera directions.

In this film a screenwriter explains how to write a screenplay.

In this short clip a scriptwriter explains how to write a filmscript.

Shot

A single stream of images, uninterrupted by editing; a unit of film in which the camera does not stop filming.

TYPES OF SHOT:

ANGLES

Aerial shot:

A shot taken from a crane, plane, or helicopter, restricted to exterior locations.

The trailer for Psycho starts with an aerial shot of Hitchcock outside The Bates Motel.

Birds’s eye view

A shot in which the camera photographs the scene from directly overhead.

Crane shot

A shot taken from a mechanical device called a crane which can carry the camera in any direction.

High angle shot

A shot taken from above the subject.

Low angle shot

A shot taken from below the subject.

SHOT SIZES

Extreme long shot

A framing in which the scale of the object shown is very small; a building, landscape, or crowd of people will fill the screen.

Establishing shot

Long or full shot

A type of long shot that includes the human body in full, with the head near the top of the frame and the feet near the bottom.It makes for a relatively stable shot that can accomodate movement without reframing .

Medium long shot

Framing such than an object four or five feet high would fill most of the screen vertically. Also called plain américain,given its recurrence in the Western genre, where it was important to keep a cowboy’s weapon in the image.

Medium close-up

A relatively close shot, revealing the human figure from the waist up.

Close-up

A detailed view of a person or object. A framing in which the scale of the object shown is relatively large. In a close-up a person’s head, or some other similarly sized object, would fill the frame.

Extreme close-up

A shot in which the scale of the object shown is very large, a minutely detailed view of an object or person. Faces are the most recurrent images in extreme close-ups. An extreme close-up of an actor usually includes only his or her eyes or mouth.

Point of view shot

A shot taken with the camera placed approximately where the character’s eyes would be, showing what the character would see; usually cut in before or after a shot of the character looking. Horror films and thrillers often use POV shots to suggest a menacing and unseen presence in the scene. In Force of Evil we see Frank-s face in a point of view shot from the killer above: Then we cut to the killer-s face from Frank-s point of view below.

Reaction shot

A shot to show an emotional response to the immediately preceding action or words of another character in the scene, or to an event in the immediately preceding scene which may or may not involve another actor (e.g., an explosion, monster, empty room, etc.)

Two shot

A medium featuring two actors in the same frame.

Three shot

A medium featuring three actors in the same frame.

Dutch Tilt

A shot in which the camera angle is deliberately slanted to one side. This can be used for dramatic effect and helps portray unease, disorientation, frantic or desperate action, intoxication or madness.

Stills