In this essay we will analyse what techniques Agnès Varda used in both Les Glaneurs et la Glaneuse and Les Plages d’Agnès to underline the key theme of public and private spaces. This has been done through four key areas: setting, sound, camera style and the use of interviews to focus on individuals. Furthermore, to fully engage with this question we first must have an understanding of what public and private space is. Public space is a social space that is generally open and accessible to all². Private or personal space is an area surrounding a person that they regard as theirs, and it has a profound impact on their personal experiences and identity². In both of Agnès Varda’s films she uses setting to blur public and private spaces, but especially in les Plages d’Agnès. She uses this technique to challenge the audience’s perceived perception that public and private spaces are distinct from each other. For example, in Les Plages d’Agnès she uses the setting of beaches, which one would normally associate with a public space, and makes it a personal space by using mirrors and talking about her own personal experiences in her life to convince the audience that this beach is a private space for her. For example, in one particular scene in Les Plages d’Agnès, Varda writes out her birth name of Arlette and then explains why she changed her name to Agnès. Whilst she is talking about this the sea washes away her name Arlette just like she did. This gives us the feeling that Varda is manipulating the setting of the beach a public space in order to express her personal experiences and make it a personal space for her. This blurs the audience’s interpretation of what is a public of private space. As Varda says, “If we opened me up we’d find... ... middle of paper ... ...as in public places the music appears to be jollier and brighter, this coincides with the mood of Varda, such as the trapeze scene. Overall in both these documentaries it seems apparent that Varda uses many cinematic techniques, such as the use of setting and camera and sound trickery. This underlines Varda’s point of view that unlike what most people think, public and private spaces are not automatically distinct from each other, but yet sometimes they can become very difficult for people to distinguish them from each other. Works Cited 1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_space (reworded) 13/05/14 13:54 2 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_space (reworded) 13/05/14 14:00 3 http://www.theguardian.com/film/2009/sep/24/agnes-varda-beaches-of-agnes 14/05/14 14:35 4 http://www.cadrage.net/films/glaneursetglaneuse/glaneursetlaglaneuse.html 14/05/14 15:27
Similarly in Iven Sen’s film Beneath Clouds the concept of misleading impressions is explored through distinctive vi...
This report aims to make light of certain elements of documentary making that are perhaps more susceptible to influence on the director’s part, and once again explore the effect of these decisions on the audience’s reaction to the information presented.
Despite the similarities in the two texts presented by the authors and photographers, their work is presented in two various ways. Agee and Evans project was done after living with three tenant families and Evans photographs are completely separate from Agees text. There are not any captions or names and they do not tell us where the photos are taken or who the people in the pictures are. Lange and Taylor’s project on the other hand is written in a way that helps us read the photographs and it is easier to see the connections between the text and pictures. The captions underneath the photos are based on words formulated by the people in the picture. However, the photos that do not have any people in them still have captions, but in this case we can assume that someone has told the photographer or author what to write for each photo. By this method the true meaning of how the turmoil during this period affected the people in question is more precisely illustrated because it includes the words uttered by the people thems...
I realized that sometimes it is fine for things to just be, and I don’t know why. Much of the film has to do with how we think, and what we do in private. Collectively, through these moral and ethical acts (or lack thereof) we can impact the public. Also, by sharing these thoughts and concepts with the public in the documentary, it can affect our thoughts and actions in our private lives; I know it has, at least for myself. One of the earliest topics in the film that I took note of was the ethics of certain matters, in a way that I had never considered before.
Sadar, Ziauddin ed., ‘The Rise Of The Voyeur’ (The New Statesman Essay: 06 Nov 2000).
The values and perceptions of people in a public space and cause an internal struggle and can ultimately lead to long lasting effects. For instance, as previously discussed – Chico felt the need to reassert his masculinity throughout the novel because he felt Blanca wore the pants in their relationship. This immediately became a problem once people on the outside started sharing their opinions of what goes on in their private space. Furthermore, we have Blanca who bases her values and morals on the opinions and beliefs of the church. This is yet another example of how this particular public space alters one’s individuality. In many cases, both private and public spaces intertwine and the reader may conclude that this may cause tension for some characters. For instance, when Blanca urged the cops to come into her home, Chico did not like how she made this decision without asking for his approval. At this particular moment – both private and public space are overlapping and this caused conflict. The public’s perception of what a woman and/or man should be affects one’s identity. Berland and Warner’s concept of intimacy regarding personal and private space plays a huge role throughout Bodega Dreams. The intimacy of couples throughout the novel caused tension and disapproval from the individuals within the public space and might have even changed the reader’s opinion of certain characters. This novel may lead to reader to question – does intimacy truly effect people within both the private and public space? If so, why must the opinion of the public have long lasting, dramatic effects on our personal
Can you imagine walking where the streets are dark and cold with no glimmer of excitement and joy as security cameras watch your every move? Alan Moore certainly could. In fact, he felt he was living in such a place. He saw 1980s England as a fascist society where the lower class were being oppressed. In Moore’s graphic novel, V for Vendetta, he depicts that point in history through the story of future London under the Norsefire Regime. History plays a very important role in Moore’s story and his ideologies about class distinction are very prominent. For these reasons, a cultural poetics and Marxist literary criticism analyzes the story of V for Vendetta in a very interesting and informative way. Using these two literary criticisms I will analyze how the historical time period and economic class Alan Moore was brought up in shapes his view of the class distinctions in his graphic novel and specifically how the Shadow Gallery, Evey, and Rose show how prevalent class distinction is in society and the way it stunts individuals and society as a whole.
“The documentary tradition as a continually developing “record” that is made in so many ways, with different voices and vision, intents and concerns, and with each contributor, finally, needing to meet a personal text” (Coles 218). Coles writes “The Tradition: Fact and Fiction” and describes the process of documenting, and what it is to be a documentarian. He clearly explains through many examples and across disciplines that there is no “fact or fiction” but it is intertwined, all in the eye of the maker. The documentarian shows human actuality; they each design their own work to their own standards based on personal opinion, values, interest and whom they want the art to appeal to. Coles uses famous, well-known photographers such as Dorthea Lange and Walker Evans, who show the political angle in their documentations and the method of cropping in the process of making the photo capture exactly what the photographer wants the audience to view. In this paper I will use outside sources that support and expand on Coles ideas with focus on human actuality, the interiority of a photograph, and the emotional impact of cropping.
“of exhibitionist confrontation rather than absorption,” (Gunning, Tom 2000 p 232) as Gunning suggests the spectator is asking for an escape that is censored and delivered with a controlled element of movement and audiovisual. Gunning believes that the audience had a different relationship with film before 1906. (Gunning, Tom 2000 p 229)
The Interaction Order of Public Bathrooms, written by Spencer E. Cahill, is an article that does a fairly well job at analyzing interpersonal relationships and individual practices in restrooms. Cahill used ideologies of Emile Durkheim, Erving Goffman, Margaret Atwood, Horace Miner, and Lyn Lofland to help construct his perspective on the individual’s expectations of bathroom etiquette through our experiences with others and how we internalize these behaviors.
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...
Oscar Wild once said, “The truth is rarely pure and never simple” and he is right. But no matter what the outcome is, or how complex the truth is, we will always strive for the truth. The concept of truth is no stranger to film documentaries, and one filmmaker that certainty was aware of that was Dziga Vertov. During the 1920’s Vertov created a newsreel series to promote the concept of ‘Kinopravda” which translated to English mean “Film truth.” Unfortunately, Vertov was ahead of his time, and this concept disappeared along the filmmakers’ path. It wasn’t until the 1960’s that other filmmakers around the world once again recognized the importance of the truth. Two movements with the purpose of revealing the truth of life, emerge in different parts of the world, Direct Cinema in North America and Cinema Vérité in France. Although, both had the same purpose, their approaches towards getting the truth make them completely different. Cinema Vérité’s approach gave the filmmakers a chance to manipulate and distort reality by participating and observing at the same time, while Direct Cinemas approach was strictly observational, and there is no better way to find out the truth than observing without interfering.
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.
They try and bring people together within these public spaces through their ridiculous sketches and ‘improvisations’. By filming their endeavors within their public space, they are providing their own surveillance cameras and can choose to film what they want within this already surveyed space. As technology continues to grow and expand, the questions brought up by Krauss and Mann will only continue to fuel debate. The newest public space being investigated through art is the Internet. Privacy comes into question more and more often with the advent of Facebook, Youtube and Chat Roulette.
One of the integral things that must be addressed when making a film is the ethics involved. Ethics are a constant issue that have to be carefully considered when filmmaking. This difficult decision-making is highly prevalent in that of documentaries, because of the difficulties associated in filming ‘real people’ or “social actors, (Nichols, 2001).” More importantly, the issues faced by a filmmaker differ between each of the documentary modes. Each particular documentary mode poses different formal choices that must be made in order to operate in an ethical fashion. Two films that have been made both display examples of how ethics must be considered when embarking on a documentary are Etre at Avoir [To Be and to Have], (2001) and Capturing the Friedmans (2003). These films have been made in different documentary modes, highlighting that there is not one mode which is easier or has fewer ethical issues associated with it. Additionally, what must be considered is how these style choices in these different modes affect the power relationships between the filmmaker, the subject and its audience, (Nichols, 2001).