Usually, when It comes to postcolonial studies, it is the literature of writers from the South Asian Diaspora such as Jhumpa Lahiri, Salman Rushdie, Bharati Mukherjee and Michael Ondaatje, to name a few, that gains academic and popular attention. However, it is cinema with its reach of tens, possibly hundreds, of millions viewers that can be said to have a greater potential in drawing upon experiences of the South Asian Diaspora. A feature role is played by Film in constructions of South Asian diasporic cultures, partly due to its importance in South Asia itself. Indian cinema or to say Bollywood, the Hindi language cinema based in Bombay, also has global presence and popularity in the South Asian region itself and also in the Middle East,
The term ‘Anti-heritage cinema’ came about as this criticism reached height, directed towards movies such as Sense and Sensibility (Ang Lee, 1996) and Elizabeth (Shepak Kapur, 1998) by scholars like Higson (2000) and Pamela Church-Gibson (2000), to name a few, to explain departures in narrative, political and editing styles seen in new British cinema’s rendition of British costume dramas. The ‘anti-heritage cinema’ thus went ahead rejecting the narrative constituents of nationhood in the traditional costume drama, replacing it with a hybrid which resonated more to the Twentieth-century melodramas and Gainsborough’s of the 1940’s than the epic landscape movies and biographies made from the start of 1970 to the 1992 Howard’s End. The hybrid constituents were contemporary politics and editing, non-British directors, a focus on individual characters and a pastiche of past. However, this pastiche of past was not about nostalgia but rather a symbolic, postmodernist, imitation of ‘heritage’ making it more active and ironic in these films. The post-national, as part of the anti-heritage cinematic dialectic, consequently aims to make sure of the pastiche of past to raise questions about the present, placing it directly in centre of debates around identity and
Thompson, Kristin , and David Bordwell. Film History : An Introduction. 3 ed. New York:
These British 'new wave' films began to include youthful protagonists, absorbed in the period's thriving society, which seemed to portray the relevant themes and the social issues at this time. Although, it is suggested that “New Wave” films were mostly about interpersonal relationships in Working class and industrial settings, and that although it is believe that many of these inspirational movement pieces were to portray forms of social injustice, it may not have been their intention to explore and portray through film the economic system and question its ethics. It may well have been, as John Hill suggested that the many social problem films that can be found throughout this movement, could have obscured as much as they enlightened the potential for social change and reconstruction. It is known that many of the great Directors of the time will have grown up in Working class positions and have personal experiences that they’d have wished to portray through the use of film. We can see that a characteristic of many New Wave films are poetic shots and montages of the northern industrial landscape as it was the Working class in the North of England that suffered greatly post-war.
The postmodern cinema emerged in the 80s and 90s as a powerfully creative force in Hollywood film-making, helping to form the historic convergence of technology, media culture and consumerism. Departing from the modernist cultural tradition grounded in the faith in historical progress, the norms of industrial society and the Enlightenment, the postmodern film is defined by its disjointed narratives, images of chaos, random violence, a dark view of the human state, death of the hero and the emphasis on technique over content. The postmodernist film accomplishes that by acquiring forms and styles from the traditional methods and mixing them together or decorating them. Thus, the postmodern film challenges the “modern” and the modernist cinema along with its inclinations. It also attempts to transform the mainstream conventions of characterization, narrative and suppresses the audience suspension of disbelief. The postmodern cinema often rejects modernist conventions by manipulating and maneuvering with conventions such as space, time and story-telling. Furthermore, it rejects the traditional “grand-narratives” and totalizing forms such as war, history, love and utopian visions of reality. Instead, it is heavily aimed to create constructed fictions and subjective idealisms.
The controversies surrounding British crime film releases between 1947 and 1949 are not due to the films themselves, but rather the ways in which the filmmakers were imitating Hollywood cinema’. Making reference to one British crime film in this period alongside primary and secondary source materials, explain to what extent this statement is true?
During the course of this essay it is my intention to discuss the differences between Classical Hollywood and post-Classical Hollywood. Although these terms refer to theoretical movements of which they are not definitive it is my goal to show that they are applicable in a broad way to a cinema tradition that dominated Hollywood production between 1916 and 1960 and which also pervaded Western Mainstream Cinema (Classical Hollywood or Classic Narrative Cinema) and to the movement and changes that came about following this time period (Post-Classical or New Hollywood). I intend to do this by first analysing and defining aspects of Classical Hollywood and having done that, examining post classical at which time the relationship between them will become evident. It is my intention to reference films from both movements and also published texts relative to the subject matter. In order to illustrate the structures involved I will be writing about the subjects of genre and genre transformation, the representation of gender, postmodernism and the relationship between style, form and content.
Mathijs, Ernest, and Jamie Sexton. Cult Cinema: An Introduction. Chichester, West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011. Print.
" Cinema and the Nation. Ed. Mette Hjort and Scott Mackenzie. New York City, NY: Routledge, 2000. 260-277.
Movies, as one of the greatest product of the 2nd Industrial Revolution, are a brand new form of media for entertainment. Directors, as the architects of movies, are the ones to blame when movies come out bad and the ones to praise when movies come out good. Not only do they need to design a fascinating story, use devices to push forward the plot, and make characters as vivid as possible to the audience, but they also need to consider the contemporary ideology and political correctness in order to film a movie that’s not too widely divergent to the thinking at the time. History movies are more or less different than the regular ones in that directors sometimes have to choose whether to sacrifice the authenticity of the history to
Globalization is often misrepresented as the growing influence of the western culture in the world and so we tend to state that Hollywood is influencing Bollywood to a great extent. An argument can be made to justify the validity of that statement. However, this paper aims at presenting the influence of Bollywood on Hollywood in terms of music, dance and visual representation. This paper deals with a specific part of globalization, providing evidence that it is not only related to the spreading influence of the western culture but also of eastern culture. Feature film produced in 2009 Courtesy: UNESCO Indian movies began production in the beginning of the 20th century and were, much like American films, in black and white.
African cinema has evolved in multiple facets since postcolonialism milieu. Post-nationalist African cinema has transformed into a more complex network that simultaneously incorporates both global and national issues alike. Modern post-nationalist films aim to aim to repudiate a homogenized notion African Cinema while highlight the diversities in African cinema, unlike antithetical early nationalist variants which portrayed a generalized African identity. These post-nationalist film makers advocate the need for utilizing new film languages and ideals suitable to the contemporary cultural, social, political and economic situations of different African countries. Certain developments have been instrumental to this gradual cinematic evolution
This approach takes into account finer details of the movie like the relationships between some semantic elements of that particular genre or between aspects of the society at large and those elements. It appreciates how isolated elements combine in any given movie to come up with the true meaning of such movie (George, 2009). This approach seeks not only an understanding as to why some aspects of any given film are so, but also examines the effects of such aspects on the audience, the information which seems valuable. This type of film examination brings a deeper look into incidences which might look insignificant in one film but holds a lot of water if compared or connected with similar incidences of other films. Altman goes further to bringing up two more different approaches to genre criticism: ritual and ideological.
The Hollywood adaptation from 2008 offers a more complex view over the life in the political and historical context presented. “ridiculous, but imagined with humour and gusto: a very diverting gallop trough the heritage landscape” (Peter Bradshaw – “The Guardian”)
The release of Gordon Hollingshead and Alan Crosland’s The Jazz Singer in 1927 marked the new age of synchronised sound in cinema. The feature film was a huge success at the box office and it ushered in the era David Bordwell describes as ‘Classical Hollywood Cinema’; Bordwell and two other film theorists (Janet Staiger and Kristin Thompson) conducted a formalist analysis of 100 randomly selected Hollywood films from the years 1917 to 1960 in order to fully define this movement. Their results yielded that most Hollywood made films during that era were centred on, or followed, specific blueprints that formed the finished product. Through this analysis of Hollywood films the theorists were able to establish stylised conventions and modes of production under which a classic Hollywood film was fashioned (Foster, 2008), the film Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001) directed by Peter Jackson will be used as a case study to demonstrate these specific conventions.
Bordwell, D., Thompson, K., Staiger, K., (1988), The Classical Hollywood Cinema: film style and mode of production to 1960, London, Routledge,
Films and videos are rarely a simple record of what the camera sees. The reaction of audiences may vary according to what part of the world they are from, together with their customs and beliefs, when and where the film was made and set, and the ability of the film makers to lead the audience to a “willing suspension of disbelief” (Films in our lives, 1953) so that when the audience watch the film they are to think that what they are watching is actually happening rather than being played out by actors. Films tell stories about people – the way they live, behave, think, feel and interact. They show us in pictures, actions, words and sound what the world is like, was like, or might be like – or what the director’s particular view of the world might be. The film and video cameras provide us with a lens to look more closely at ourselves and our world (Films in our lives, 1953).