The second part of the volume consists of a collection of essays that focus on filmmaking. The opening chapter takes us for a life-journey to the holy city of Benares, the city of death, through the eyes of the maverick filmmaker Robert Gardner. Schmitz follows Gardner’s esoteric steps from the Ghats to the holy river of Ganges, in a transcendental journey from life to death and back to life as documented in Gardner’s Forest of Bliss (1986). Schmitz highlights the authoritative and idiosyncratic character of Gardner’s filmmaking in terms of his manipulation of time and space and unique visual language, which aesthetically renegotiate the firm categorizations of ethnographic and avant-garde cinema. By focusing on the uniqueness of “Gardner’s …show more content…
By re-reading the narrative of The Last Supper within the historical context of the time it was produced, Sahasrabudhe argues that Alea’s authoritative and subversive film-style critically reflects upon the Cuban failure to meet the ambitious target of La Gran Granja, the harvest of ten million tons of sugar production in the 1970s, which was meant to pay for resources acquired from the Soviet Bloc. Sahasrabudhe argues that Alea reverses the religious narrative of Christ’s Last Supper, visually imagined in Leonardo da Vinci’s famous revisionist painting, through a serious of poetic, and at times, ironic visual and narrative metaphors, which enable the auteur director to evoke the exploitative duality of sugar plantations at the time of colonial slavery (the complementary ideological and exploitative system of the combination of free labour and Christian religion). In a subversive, but equally, subtle way, Alea offers a critique of Fidel Casto’s failed government policies following the success of the Cuban Revolution. This collective disillusion is reconstructed within the grey areas of metaphor and representation, in which the personal politics of the auteur meet the collective disillusion of the audience. Sahasrabudhe and Tiwary approach Alea and Jia Zhang-ke …show more content…
The auteurs discussed in this volume write from the inside of the society they address, however, they may see themselves as outsiders. Their liminal position, in-between opposite worlds elevates them to a kind of Weberian “charismatic” auteurs or readers, beyond the analytical framework of prophecy and religion. Through writing and filmmaking, the auteur’s intention opens up to the aesthetical world of the audience’s cosmos. The auteur accepts the role of the charismatic prophet, whose poetic metaphors open to the potentiality of transforming the reader or viewer from within, by critically reflecting upon the collective consciousness of a particular historical and political framework through which the text or film was produced. This paradoxical and amateurish condition, being outsiders and insiders at the same time, empowers them to accurately offer semi-fictional or fictional accounts of their own experiences in the world, emancipated from the burden of professional anthropology. Furthermore, it enables them to historically contextualize and politicize the material they have gathered from their lived experiences, represented through fictional or semi-fictional chunks of everyday life. It is this emancipating freedom that fiction gives to ethnographic writing, which radically reverses the politics of representation in ethnography, moving away
The Cuban historical film, La Última Cena, or The Last Supper, takes place at a plantation in Havana at the end of the 18th century. In an effort to respect the holy week and to teach his slaves about Christianity, a sanctimonious plantation owner invites twelve of his slaves to dinner with him to reenact the last supper. During the dinner, the Count tries to influence his slaves towards Christianity and feeds them religious rhetoric. As the night goes on, the Count gets drunk and begins to make promises to his slaves in an attempt to seem more Christ-like. The next day, Good Friday, his promises are not kept and the slaves revolt. Because of the rebellion, the twelve slaves that ate dinner with the Count are all hunted down and killed except for one. This film can be further explained through the concepts of three theorists, Aimé Césaire, Homi K. Bhabha, and W.E.B. DuBois.
Within this existential consideration, Richardson (2000) finds autoethnography as a writing style - combining the readable style of autobiography into the ethnographic approach - which may produce something that will make it off the shelf. If relevant research is what is intended to be produced, then its readability must be a primary
Whether Andrei Rublev (Andrei Tarkovsky 1966/1969) ‘accurately’ or precisely reveals the reality of life in the 15th century has nothing to do with any actual audiences’ reactions to the film as experience. Instead, what we can feel is the becoming of the experienced world into distraction from something else. As a spotlight, for its intensity, might remind us what is outside its beam, the sprawling and unlimited earthly world of the film points to something outside the widescreen frame. The film makes itself a diversion from something that had equally not existed before the image began moving – or had it existed? The movie is enough to send audiences fleeing to god. And is, in this manner, a proof of god much like Pavel Florensky’s by iconography: “There exists the icon of the Holy Trinity by St. Andrei Rublev; therefor...
But do not look down on the people of Cuba with a “developed world” haughtiness, for indeed El Che must’ve done SOMETHING to deserve such decoration, something so pervasive that more than 40 years after his murder, his portrait is still plastered on the walls of many of the world’s student residences, something so powerful it blinded a nation to all his natural human faults. How is it that one man’s actions and contributions to a small island off the American coast could impact on the world in such a way and be recognised as possibly the most famous face in the modern world? This investigation will aim to pull El Che from his charismatic mystique and look behind the idolized revolutionary whose image was demoted to a heaping mound of overcommercialised crap and expose him as a man, a l...
For the purposes of this study, it is helpful to look specifically at the way in which Christ and Christianity are being presented, through the various methods, in contemporary film.
Communion This sacrament is also known as Eucharist, Last supper, and the Lord’s Supper. Again communion is an action consider as sacrament because Jesus taught his disciple to do it, and one read it in the Bible for instances in the Gospel of Matthew 26:26-28, Mark, 14:22-24, Luke 29: 19-20 and the Epistle of 1 Corinthians 11:24-26. Going to the point, “Then he took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me” (Luke 22:19), “…this cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood,” (Luke 22:20). “...He broke [bread] and said, ‘This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.’” (1 Cor. 11:24), “…this
In this essay, I seek to elucidate the importance of the Lord’s Supper as a sacrament for the Christian religion within John Calvin’s Institutes, and then move forward to one of the practical or pastoral concerns that John Calvin brings up in his refutations over the Lord’s Supper. This essay assumes that it cannot deal comprehensively with every argument on account of its limited space. So, the singular concern for this essay will be Calvin 's refutation against consubstantiation. Additionally, the essay presupposes the soundness of Wim Janse thesis that Calvin’s belief on the Lord 's Supper cannot be static but instead is an "underdetermined or [opened]" view developing through his interactions with other reformers and reflecting on the
... movie stars like royalty or mythical gods and goddesses, viewing the drama between great archetypal characters in a personal psychic realm. By considering the statements made and their societal impact from a Marxist perspective, Benjamin’s method is highly effective, as it does not simply consider art in terms of pure aesthetics anymore, but considers art’s place in a society capable of mechanically reproducing and endlessly duplicating film, photography, and digital art. His qualm with losing the aura and mystique of an original work is negated by the cult of movie stars, the adoration of fame, the incorporation of soundtracks which embody a particular time period, cinematographic allusions, and time-capsule-like qualities of a film such as Basquiat, a 90s tribute to the 80s, produced both as a part of and resulting from the art movements and trends it addresses.
In my essay I will discuss the differences between national cinema and Hollywood cinema by using Rio de Janeiro¡¯s famous film City of God. There will be three parts in my following main body, the first part is a simple review of the film City of God, I will try to use the review to show the film structure and some different new points from this, show the how did the ¡®Shocking, frightening, thrilling and funny¡¯ (Nev Pierce) work in the film. The second part is my discussion parts; I will refer some typical Hollywood big name films such as Gangs in New York, Shawshank¡¯s Redemption, and Good Fellas to discuss the main differences between City of God and other national films. The third part is my summary, I will use my knowledge to analyse why there have big different between both kind of films and their advantages.
The film immediately sets the tone from the very beginning by presenting various interdisciplinary ‘experts’ who equally have part in narrating the film throughout. As the argument develops, however, the narrators seem to hav...
Ella Shohat and Robert Stam in “Stereotype, Realism, and the Struggle over Representation” provide discourses into how not only the marginalized groups have come to their state of powerlessness, but, also, how the institutions perpetuate and audiences receive the information. They state, “That films are only representations does not prevent them from having real effects in the world; racist films can be mobilize the Ku Klux Klan, or prepare the ground for retrograde social policy. Recognizing the inevitability and the inescapability of representation does not mean, as Stuart Hall puts it, that ‘nothing is at stake’”. In essence, a film’s quality of representation can move individuals to ascertain ideas of positive or negative thoughts. In “The Orchestration of Discourse” section, Shohat and Stam find that multivocality plays an integral part in constructing the positive image and “accuracy” for films. This paper will explore how different voices in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre functions as a mirror of the real world and reaches the “mimetic accuracy”.
The Jewish tradition of the Passover has been very important for the welfare and freedom of the Jews since the Old Testament. Each part of the Passover brings forth the knowledge of what God promises to his people. “The name “Passover” is derived from the Hebrew word Pesach which is based on the root “pass over” and refers to the fact that G-d “passed over” the houses of the Jews when he was slaying the firstborn of Egypt during the last of the ten plagues.” The Christian belief is that the Last Supper fulfills the promise made to the Jews through Jesus Christ. The Passover and the Last Supper are important in understanding the relationship between the Jewish belief and Christian belief. They are also important to help grasp what it means to be free with a God.
Art has been always seen as a form to express self emotions and ideas; an artist creates an idea and shapes it by culturally known objects and forms to send encrypted message. Through the times both, ideas and materials used, separates art in to different periods and movements. In late 40’s and late 50’s two art and culture movements emerged, one from another. The first one, Lettrism, was under the aspiration to rewrite all human knowledge. From it another movement, Situationism, appeared. It was an anti-art movement which sought for Cultural Revolution. Both of these movements belong to wide and difficulty defined movement of experiment, a movement whose field is endless. Many different people create experimental films because of the variety of reasons. Some wishes to express their viewpoints which are unconventional. But most of them have an enthusiasm for medium itself. They yearn to explore what prospects the medium has and wishes to open new opportunities to create and to explore, as well as to educate. Experimental filmmaker, differently from mainstream filmmakers, wishes to step out from the orthodox notions. The overall appreciation is not the aim that the experimental filmmakers would seek for. Experimenters usually work on the film alone or with a small group, without the big budget. They intend to challenge the traditional ideas. And with intention to do so Lettrism tries to narrow the distance between the poetry and people’s lives, while Situationism tries to transform world into one that would exist in constant state of newness. Both of these avant-garde movements root from similar sources and have similar foundations. Nonetheless, they have different intentions for the art and culture world and these movements...
The reclusive film director Terrence Malick has to date, only directed a small number of films. His twenty year hiatus between directing Days of Heaven (1978) and The Thin Red Line (1998), may provide the explanation for such a sparse back catalogue. Malick’s refusal to talk with the media, has led to hearsay, as to how he occupied his time during the hiatus. Malick’s directing debut Badlands (1973) is a collection of concepts, all carefully moulded together to create one iconic piece of film. This process draws in and also alienates the audience. Malick’s style is positively noted by critics to be influenced by European philosophy. This is clearly due to Malick’s study of philosophy at Harvard and Magdalen College Oxford. There is no given explanation to the mindless violence featured within the film, mainly due to the films resistance to the straight forward approach. The familiar and the unknown are carefully merged together. The only way of gaining an understanding into the hidden meanings within Badlands is by breaking down the film, by looking at the characters, the use of sound, the visual setting and the films genre. The illusionary effect of Malick’s style means that all is not as it seems.
Livingstone, Paisley & Carl Plantinga. The Routledge Companion to Philosophy and Film. London: Routledge – Taylor & Francis Group. 2009. Print.