There are a lot of ways to present the story which the author wants to share with the audience. It can be a book, a poem, a song, a music item, a film, a play, a dance, anything that the author may imagine. But each form is unique and one and the same story told using different forms will look different. Sometimes a bad story in verses may look perfect in a dance and vice versa. The form in which a story told is important, because it can highlight those important features, which another form may avoid.
Speaking about the film by Baz Luhrmann “Australia”, I cannot but mention the importance of the film-form of it. This epic historical film "Autralia" combines the genres of drama, war, westerns and adventure. The film has such a beautiful attraction, thanks to the magnificent landscapes of Australia, against which events unfold, as well as by the desire to win the director's success with the audience.
The film raises important and difficult questions of brutal racial policies of Australian governments. Baz Luhrmann has found a great way to develop this topic, assigning the role of the narrator, a boy named Metis Nullah (Brandon Walters). The boy begins his narrative with the arrival of the English aristocracy prim (Nicole Kidman) on a ranch Faraway Downs in the north of Australia. According to him, an Englishwoman is a strange woman of all those who have seen him. The heroine of Sarah Nicole Ashley is coming to Australia in September 1939. She inherited a ranch the size of an average U.S. state. Neighbors-landowners immediately laid eyes on her land and livestock. In order to save their property, Sara decides to overtake the 2000 head of cattle in Darwin. She is forced to ask for help Australian farmer (Hugh Jackman) who is an ou...
... middle of paper ...
...ing. Everything is aimed at meeting the "average desires" to society at large.
With the advent of television, films start progressing "by leaps and bounds." One kind of cinema is a documentary film. Thanks to the documentary film, which is simple, concise and understandable form, tell us about nature, culture, history and science, and replenished our "body of knowledge." This is the positive role of cinema in which the means of the common man gets a huge amount of information without losing its finding and processing of your precious time. It increases the overall level of culture. The story of “Australia” makes us closer to the problems of Australian native people, and still, it tells us a beautiful story of Australian people which would be erased if it had any other form except film.
Works Cited
Luhrmann, B. (2008). Australia. [DVD]. Australia: 20th Century Fox
The movie depicts what it was like to be Australian in the decades of the 50’s and 60’s and the decisions of the Australian government over this period, through the journey of four Aboriginal women and one Irish man. The movie explores the treatment of indigenous people living in this era in comparison to white Australians. The unique ways in which the characters made their living provided for scrutiny, judgement and vulnerability. In the movie you see just how differently the Aboriginal community was treated compared to the white Australians during these era’s.
Crocodile Dundee (1986) directed by Peter Faiman and The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994) directed by Stephan Elliott are two Australian films that have unique plots. The expositions of both films have various similarities and differences in the context of quirky ‘Aussie’ characters, stereotypical Australian language, themes and the vast outback setting. The exposition of each film reaffirms typical Australian stereotypes.
In Australia the Aboriginals face discrimination daily. The film opened with four young Aboriginal girls singing on a makeshift stage facing their community. When the camera panned to show the smiling faces in the crowd it gave a feel of unity and love. Later it showed two sisters who were trying to hitch a ride into the city from the main road. Yet every vehicle passed them by; once they saw who they were, frustrated the older sister. Gale stated it was because they ‘were black’. When in the town playing their song on the stage in a bar, the youngest sister turned up and took
One of the first representations encountered in the film Jedda is the portrayal of Australia as a tourist destination in the exposition of the film. This glorified view of the landscape is conveyed to the audience through the use of bold visual images and birds eye camera angels. The visual images, as well as portraying Australia as a tourist destination, also adopt the romanticised Hollywood view of the landscape that many American westerns use to emphasise their appeal to an audience of European background. An example of this romanticised view can be seen in the incorporation of camera shots of landscapes such as rolling planes of dry grassy land, and areas of steep rocky hillsides. This style of filming has been incorporated into the exposition to highlight the drama, beauty and primeval nature of the landscape, and to entice the audience into continuing to watch the film. The films documentary-like voice-over also contribute...
This type of "narrative" writing gives believability to the people, and a sense of realism to the story.
Australia has the terrible condition of having an essentially pointless and prefabricated idea of “Aussiness” that really has no relation to our real culture or the way in which we really see ourselves. We, however subscribe to these stereotypes when trying to find some expression of our Australian identity. The feature film, The Castle, deals with issues about Australian identity in the 1990’s. The film uses techniques like camera shots, language and the use of narration to develop conflict between a decent, old fashioned suburban family, the Kerrigans and an unscrupulous corporation called Airlink. Feature films like The Castle are cultural products because they use attitudes, values and stereotypes about what it means to be Australian.
The most confronting aspect of the documentary was the failure of the Australian Government’s to address poverty within the Mt. Druitt community. It was fairly evident that Mt Druitt’s community is “let down”, especially when Billy, a resident, was accused of failing to pay rent. This certainly struck me, as without a house to
According to Ruby’s book, film can be used a research tool. Visually experiencing something gives us a greater understanding of it, rather than just reading or hearing about it. Ruby expresses the idea that film makers looking to make a visual ethnography have a lot of responsibility to the culture they are sharing so as to give them fair and accurate representation, free from artistic molding or outside influences. They should not highlight the differences in culture, but merely document it in true form. We have studied many people that have made contributions to ethnography such as Robert Flaherty, Timothy Asch and Jean Rouch. An anthropologist that is currently still making major a contribution to this field is Robert Lemelson.
The poem America by Claude McKay is on its surface a poem combining what America should be and what this country stands for, with what it actually is, and the attitude it projects amongst the people. Mckay uses the form of poetry to express how he, as a Jamaican immigrant, feels about America. He characterizes the bittersweet relationship between striving for the American dream, and being denied that dream due to racism. While the America we are meant to see is a beautiful land of opportunity, McKay see’s as an ugly, flawed, system that crushes the hopes and dreams of the African-American people.
Australia is considered as a young country when comparing to other countries as it has been founded around 200 years ago. Today, it is still in the trouble of some sort of identity crisis, trying to find its true identity. To try to define what really is considered as Australianness means one will have to take the plunge. For instance, in Australia the movie, director Baz Luhrmann made a great effort in telling an epic story of Australia but it still falls into the category of imprudent cliché of Australianness. Now we will look at the poster of Australia the movie then analyse it to interpret in what ways it represents the Australianness.
Whether it be through times of hardship and need or through a high quality game of soccer such as when the Socceroos beat the strong favourites South Korea in a gruelling match to the death, the Aussie Battler spirit has always been an important aspect of our Australian identity. For a film to be selected to feature in this festival, not only must the movie have to have breathtaking cinematography that fully utilises Australia’s landscape and history, but it must also effectively depict a multitude of ways in which the spirit of the Aussie battler can be displayed. Baz Luhrman’s Australia ticks all of these boxes and thus if you are serious about a Film Festival that presents an apt coverage of Australian identity to the world, you must include
The film prevails as a reflection of the Australian culture of the 90s in all its crass, gaudy and over-the-top suburban ways. Despite this unique and iconic look at urban Australia and Australian characters, the story highlights universal themes with Hogan saying of the film’s international success, “that was a big lesson to me: if you have the right story there is no such thing as 'too parochial’.” (Lowenstein, 2000) Though the popularity of films portraying a new urban “Australian-ness” in this era influenced films like The Castle (Chocolate & Sitch, 1997) for years to come, this new cultural identity was not embraced by all. There has been significant backlash towards Australian film within Australia, with many finding the ideas of Australia portrayed on screen limited and stereotypical, rather than portraying the full breadth and multi-cultured nature of Australia.
Today, John Grierson is widely considered as the father of British and Canadian documentary film, as well as the father of the “documentary” film genre. Grierson first mentioned the term when he reviewed Robert Flaherty’s film Moana (1926). He wrote that it had a “documentary value” and would later argue that basically the “raw” and “original” subjects or scenes were always better than their fictitious counterparts when trying to interpret the world. He would later go on to define documentary as “the creative treatment of actuality”. In order to discuss the implications of Grierson’s definition, we must try to explore the concept of a documentary, and look at some key characteristics of documentary film.
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.
The introduction of films began in the early era of 1920s and since then technology in many forms as such Televisions which featured documentary and made films more popular with in audiences, according to commentators it is said that film has become the most global and popular seen and followed form of culture. (Shiel, 2001; Urry & Larsen, 2011). Furthermore in late 1960s cinemas and theaters were popular among people also due to entertainment and transformation of different cultures, it has since then captured a large number of tourists. Today that trend has changed into television viewing, which is hence said it is the major leisure activity among people. In addition to that seeing films...