Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
How to analyze a documentary film
How to analyze a documentary film
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: How to analyze a documentary film
The movie industry has long been accused of harboring recalcitrant hordes of arrogant, narcissistic, and shallow operators whose twin goals have always been glory and gold. Despite fame and fortune, most actors and actresses enjoyed little or no respect at all, for the most part through fault of theirs. Their headline-grabbing antics frequently put them in bad light or hilarious situations which continuously supply fans and watchers with regular doses of cheap fun. It is against this backdrop that it is always a welcome breath of fresh air when one of their kind figures in a meritorious undertaking. One fine example is Doc PenPen, writer and director of “Takipsilim”, an award-winning indie docu-film that tackled the sinister side of human existence and the inescapable eventuality of death.
Due to the success of “Takipsilim”, Doc PenPen is now busy preparing the film’s sequel, aptly titled “Bukang Liwayway”. This time the theme will deal with personal battles against overwhelming odds and triumphs over them. To ensure that the sequel would even be better, Doc PenPen has engaged the assistance of renowned director, Celso Ad. Castillo, and hit maker director, Mauro Gia Samonte.
Simultaneous with his moviemaking preparation, Doc PenPen is officially launching what he calls “Exodus Poetry” as a continuance of his philosophical inquiries. The objective of Exodus Poetry is to emancipate libertarian poets from the bondage of restrictive traditionalists, to set them free from the tyranny of the conservatives. It is a forum where poets of diverse backgrounds, education, beliefs and styles can meet, exchange ideas, and learn. It is a vehicle that will bring enslaved poets to the promise land of writing opportunities where hard-nosed big...
... middle of paper ...
...st Outstanding Public Service Program given by Pope John Paul, and a membership at the Radio Hall Of Fame. Mr. Calpito, an author himself, was challenged by Doc Penpen’s film and poems, finding them mystifying in style but lucid in substance, disorganized in structure but tidy in essence, and seemingly incomprehensible in form but robustly rational in message.
Incidentally, on Aug. 28, 2011, Doc Penpen was awarded “The Father of Philippine Visual Poetry” in a fitting ceremony held at the grand ballroom of Cloud Nine, a classy boutique hotel perched on a hill in Antipolo. The man in the mask has a face at last! The award has further ignited Doc PenPen’s commitment to do “Bukang Liwayway” and to release his book of visual poetry before the year ends. Verily, his rendezvous with destiny and appointment with history can no longer be postponed, much less canceled.
When I read poetry, I often tend to look first at its meaning and second at how it is written, or its form. The mistake I make when I do this is in assuming that the two are separate, when, in fact, often the meaning of poetry is supported or even defined by its form. I will discuss two poems that embody this close connection between meaning and form in their central use of imagery and repetition. One is a tribute to Janis Joplin, written in 1983 by Alice Fulton, entitled “You Can’t Rhumboogie in a Ball and Chain.” The second is a section from Walt Whitman’s 1,336-line masterpiece, “Song of Myself,” first published in 1855. The imagery in each poem differs in purpose and effect, and the rhythms, though created through repetition in both poems, are quite different as well. As I reach the end of each poem, however, I am left with a powerful human presence lingering in the words. In Fulton’s poem, that presence is the live-hard-and-die-young Janis Joplin; in Whitman’s poem, the presence created is an aspect of the poet himself.
This anthology is beautifully diverse and unique. Although the poems are new, they take reader back in time through issues that are relevant to the 21st century life. Most of the poems are experimental form probably because the poets are trying to get their voices heard by doing new things, which I think work well for a majority of these poems and others, not so much. Analicia Sotelo’s “I’m Trying to Write a Poem About A Virgin and It’s Painful” is an experimental prose form, and it’s beautiful. A part of the poem reads, “Some people said I should take her out of the poem. Other people said No, take her out of the lake and put her in the bedroom” (40). The poet making the process of writing a poem the poem itself is something new for me. The contrast in this piece also works well, although I still do not understand the metaphor of the lake. Also, Damian Caudill has a beautiful form in “Tuesday Ordinary.” The form and the style seem experimental but worthwhile. The poem is written from the perspective of Trayvon Martin’s hoodie, which many, especially in the African-American community believed contributed to his murder. The depth of thought that might have gone into the penning of this poem is commendable. However, I did not think this experimental form works well for “It was a miracle route everyone had been searching for and the story caused a sensation” on page 5. The later part of the first section left me with the question, “why is this a poem, or included in a poem? And I find it hard to comprehend why these different sections are fused under one poem. Also in Kara Kai Wang’s “Idiom,” I find the footnote alienating as a reader, because of the language used. I would have preferred if the footnoted words are in another languag...
Neill, Alex. “Empathy and (Film) Fiction.” Philosophy of film and motion pictures : an anthology. Ed. Noel Carrol and Jinhee Choi. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2006. 247-259. Print.
Michael Gray’s analysis of Dylan’s lyrics being a contrast between hackneyed expressions and “beautifully done” are exemplified in the song “Just Like a Woman.” Dylan’s lyrics “she aches just like a woman but she breaks just like a little girl” is given the harsh description of “maudlin platitude” and deemed to be a “non-statement.” If Dylan’s lyrics cannot uphold against meaningful music of the same category, how can they be expected to stand against literature written for a different field. John Lennon had his own critiques of Dylan’s works, calling out how the abstract nature of his lyrics, having loose definition, never achieved an actual point. Lennon’s definition of “poetry” referred to “stick[ing] a few images together” and “thread[ing] them” in order to create something meaningful. It once again boils down to the fact that Dylan’s music that was written and intended to be received as a live performance. The acknowledgement that “…you have to hear Dylan doing it” is a recognition of his composition’s failure to come across as a normal literary work. It’s all part of a “good game.” This in itself should disqualify Dylan as a possible candidate for the Nobel Prize.
The millions of children throughout the world who learned to love words and reading through his books cherish the memory of the man who had infinite respect for young people and thei...
Monforton, Nicole. “Whitman and Ginsberg”. Weblog entry. Blog. 1 December 2010. 2 May 2012 .
The poetry of Brian Turner, Charlotte Mew, and T. S. Eliot all turned poetry from the status of great to world re-making; they transformed the poetry of their era to poetry that could be read decades later yet still have a profound impact on its audience. I believe that world making lies in a poet’s ability to take any situation, any speaker, and any context that is personally important to them, and create a poem that deeply affects its audience--one with the ability to completely transcribe emotion from a text to the heart.
Welty, Eudora. “Why I Live at the P.O.” Discovering a Voice: A Rhetoric for Writers. The University of West Alabama. Southlake, TX: Fountainhead, 2009. 359-67. Print.
It is a way to crucially engage oneself in setting the stage for new interventions and connections. She also emphasized that she personally viewed poetry as the embodiment of one’s personal experiences, and she challenged what the white, European males have imbued in society, as she declared, “I speak here of poetry as the revelation or distillation of experience, not the sterile word play that, too often, the white fathers distorted the word poetry to mean — in order to cover their desperate wish for imagination without insight.”
In recent times, such stereotyped categorizations of films are becoming inapplicable. ‘Blockbusters’ with celebrity-studded casts may have plots in which characters explore the depths of the human psyche, or avant-garde film techniques. Titles like ‘American Beauty’ (1999), ‘Fight Club’ (1999) and ‘Kill Bill 2’ (2004) come readily into mind. Hollywood perhaps could be gradually losing its stigma as a money-hungry machine churning out predictable, unintelligent flicks for mass consumption. While whether this image of Hollywood is justified remains open to debate, earlier films in the 60’s and 70’s like ‘Bonnie and Clyde’ (1967) and ‘Taxi Driver’ (1976) already revealed signs of depth and avant-garde film techniques. These films were successful as not only did they appeal to the mass audience, but they managed to communicate alternate messages to select groups who understood subtleties within them.
Poetry, Drama, and the Essay. Ed. Joseph Terry. New York: Addison-Wesley Educational Publishers Inc, 2001. 123-154.
According to “The Art of the Actor: The Essential History of Acting, from Classical Times to the Present Day” by Jean Benedetti, “Acting is a way of showing our understanding of the world and passing it on to other people” (1). Such affirmation has proven itself to be true if history is taken into consideration. One of the oldest forms of art and career throughout history, acting has established itself as one of the most prominent and yet unstable careers of all times. Its vast history provides anyone who dares to become an actor with a great understanding of the different societies throughout the years and profound meaning to why, despite all adversities, it is still one of the most wanted careers. More than only a job, and differently from many work fields, acting is about passion and the ability to transmit reality within fantasy. But why acting? Because it is a career related to every other existing one; and being successful in it requires more than what one would think.
Parini, Jay. Editor. The Columbia Anthology of American Poetry. New York: Columba University Press, 1995.
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.
Stleber, Dave. “The power of spoken word poetry. “The Huffington Post. The Huffington Post.come, 12 Feb. 2014. Web.15 May 2014