Baraka is a montage film about nature, wildlife, religion, technology, culture and the cruelty of human beings. Baraka has no dialogue, and has music that matches the scenes. Temples, volcanoes, pyramids, and the ocean are seen in the film. Wildlife includes: monkeys, iguanas, flamingoes, and antelopes. People of different religions are seen carrying out their ceremonies. Baraka shows life in the city, the life of different tribes, and people living in poverty. Concentration camps and the destruction of nature are also be seen. Daughter of Keltoum is a film about a daughter’s quest to find her mother. She arrives at her grandfather’s home, and meets him and her crazy aunt. She is told her mother will arrive on a Friday, but her mother never shows. She decides to go search for her, and is almost forced to ask her aunt to join her. They encounter many troubles along the way, and the daughter gets to see how women are treated. She experiences a culture she has never seen, and begins to despise her aunt for reminding her of it. Somehow they manage bond and make it the luxury hotel, after her aunt saves her from getting raped. They finally meet Keltoum and the daughter finds out the truth. She finds out that all along she was at her mother side, her aunt. She also finds out the reason that …show more content…
Different religious ceremonies, art, and clothing are seen. Different social classes can be seen, from people in a city to people digging through garbage. There is also a scene where only woman are working, no men are seen. Baraka allows viewers to experience the life of different people and their culture. McDougall (1978:405) asserts that, “Since all films are cultural artifacts, many can tell us as much about the societies that produced them as about those they purport to describe Films can thus serve as a source of data for social science in the manner of myths, rock paintings, and government
Lemelson starts off this film by explaining why he is there and the local religion and things such as karma. The subject, Kerata, explains that he has visions of what according to him is Rangda. According to Balinese mythology, Rangda is a child-eating demon queen. Another explanation for this is just as his brother had stated, that these visions had started after having had consumed contaminated (with pesticides) eels from the rice fields. According to local doctors, the fact that Kerata ate contaminated eels may have affected his wife’s pregnancy. His wife had a miscarriage. Kerata goes to visit a traditional healer. Kerata and his wife state that they don’t believe in this form of medicine and that western medicine is more effective. What’s odd about this is that despite not believing, the husband states that he felt a bit of burning sensation, to which his wife replies “well he was worse that I thought.” Later on in the film a third reason as to how this mental illness was caused is presented years later. Kerata feels attached to a military uniform. He states that he feels comfortable and safe but then talks about some war that had occurred and how he believes he may have been there because he is so interested in that
How Cinematic Identification is Used to Position the Spectator in Relation to Race, Gender, and Sexuality in Far From Heaven
Hello my name is Daniel Quinn and today I will be talking to you about the parallels between the film Baraka and my novel Ishmael. To give you all some context before I start, I will explain the premises of both pieces of work. Baraka is a non-narrative documentary film that was released in 1992. Throughout the film there is no narration or dialogue, it is just a compilation of multiple events. Some of what is shown includes natural events, life, human activities and technological phenomenon. The film was shot in multiple locations that includes the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, the Ryoan temple in Kyoto, Lake Natron in Tanzania, burning oil fields in Kuwait, the smoldering precipice of an active volcano, a busy subway terminal, tribal celebrations, of the Masai in Kenya, and chanting monks in the Dip Tse Chok Ling monastery.
Gender and culture are two concepts that were principally shown throughout the film. The film revolves around Toula’s traditional Greek family and how they exemplify gender roles, gender stereotyping as well as gender stratification. The film also epitomized on subcultures, countercultures, ethnocentrism, cultural relativism and lastly, cultural
One could easily dismiss movies as superficial, unnecessarily violent spectacles, although such a viewpoint is distressingly pessimistic and myopic. In a given year, several films are released which have long-lasting effects on large numbers of individuals. These pictures speak
Kumar, Nita N. "The Logic of Retribution: Amiri Baraka's 'Dutchman.'" African American Review 37.2/3 (2003): 271-279. JSTOR. Web. 2 May 2012. .
An ethnographic study aims to explore and analyze a particular group of people’s social practices, and establishes a detailed description of how that particular social group operates, based on the observation of, and usually the participation in, that certain group. The study is usually helped by the interviews and data collecting through the use of camera recordings. The ethnographic film is a method or a way of documenting and gathering the ethnographic data in the field work. It is also a medium, adopted by the ethnographer, to broadcast or convey the ethnographic findings or knowledge with the aim to present an interpretation of a certain social phenomenon or cultural understandings. (Yoshimizu, 2014).
Gender and culture are two concepts that were principally shown throughout the film. The film revolved around Toula’s traditional Greek family and how they exemplified gender roles, gender stereotyping as well as gender stratification. The film also epitomized on subcultures, countercultures, ethnocentrism, cultural relativism as well as cultural diffusion. It is forthrightly for a sociologist to relate trends in the film to prevailing trends occurring all around the
In the article “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” Laura Mulvey discusses the relationships amongst psychoanalysis (primarily Freudian theory), cinema (as she observed it in the mid 1970s), and the symbolism of the female body. Taking some of her statements and ideas slightly out of their context, it is interesting to compare her thoughts to the continuum of oral-print-image cultures.
Ashton, starting out with a quote from Jay Ruby and analyzing it is a great way to begin your post. The significance of anthropology and communication is very important, especially when viewing a film of another culture. According to Ruby, “one of the primary goals of an anthropological communication is to make viewers or readers aware of their words, the general purpose of an anthropological communication is to alter the relationship between Westerners and the Other” (Ruby 2000, 186). That is, as a viewer, one has the ability attribute the meaning of the film based on one’s cultural lenses. As a viewer, one’s culture plays a vital role in interpreting visual context. Ruby mentions that the “primacy of culture in the construction of meaning
The “Couple in the Cage” was an exhibition called “ A Savage Performance” curated by Coco Fusco and Guillermo Gomez-Pena. The exhibition was displayed across several European countries and some states in the United States. In the video, we see both Coco and Guillermo in a cage. They carry them around in the cage. The audience feeds them through the cage and takes pictures with them. In the trailer, we also see interviews with the audience. The video also juxtaposes old footages of exhibitions alongside this exhibition. Both characters are dressed in stereotypical attire. There are both characters because they decided to put on a show. The exhibition is not real and the tribe they told the audience they came from is not real. This trailer is part of a longer documentary, which goes into more details about the cities they visited, and commentary from the audience watching. The theories I will be employing in this analysis are ethnography, displaying the other in reference Sara Baartman and the politics of exhibiting.
who wanted to enter her life, she is left alone after her father’s death. Her attitude
The ideation of objectivity remains a highly debatable subject among philosophical elites. Some philosophers may argue that human’s understanding of objectivity is subject to the scope of understanding of the term and exposure (Livingstone & Plantinga 10). When the term objectivity is entwined with realism, it yields a complex ideation that remains highly debatable and less agreeable among erudite authors (Livingstone & Plantinga 23). However, to understand and appreciate the concept of realism and objectivity in film, it becomes critical to adopt a definite definition. First, the term reality in film is used to describe concepts that are visible in nature as experienced on a daily life by one or more individuals (Livingstone & Plantinga 24). The term objectivity in this case is used to define a set of ideations or perspectives that are incorporated in the film (Livingstone & Plantinga 24). Documentaries are used to create a form of reality, an experience or ideation of the person or group of person experiencing an event or phenomenon. The argument in this analysis is that it is impossible for documentary films to objectively capture reality.
Since the creation of films, their main goal was to appeal to mass audiences. However, once, the viewer looks past the appearance of films, the viewer realizes that the all-important purpose of films is to serve as a bridge connecting countries, cultures, and languages. This is because if you compare any two films that are from a foreign country or spoken in another language, there is the possibility of a connection between the two because of the fact that they have a universal understanding or interpretation. This is true for the French New Wave films Contempt and Breathless directed by Jean-Luc Godard, and contemporary Indian films Earth and Water directed by Deepa Mehta. All four films portray an individual’s role in society, using sound and editing.
With one of the most memorable transitions in the film (the Silent Scream performed by a Japanese Butoh dancer), Baraka makes clear the consequences of modern human life. When increasing production and profit takes priority over valuing human life, civilization eventually destroys itself; the film walks us through scenes of systemic poverty, exploitation, war, and genocide to illustrate this point. Paired with stirring, ominous music, this sequence is the most effective sequence of the film and can stand alone as an indictment of modern civilization. Finally, the story of modern civilization ends with images of the ruins of great ancient civilizations. The takeaway message is clear: just as those civilizations rose and fell, so too will the great civilizations of