When film first started gaining popularity, it want’s as obvious that be connecting two different images, we would assume their relation. Film simply document events that occurred, it wasn’t until the enterprising pioneers of early cinema took hold that they began to manipulate their audience into following a story their way and feeling it in those exact steps. Lev Vladimirovich Kuleshov a Soviet filmmaker and film theorist in the 1920s who taught at and helped establish the world’s first film school, the Moscow Film School. He was one of the very first film theorists and one the great pioneers of early editing regarded amongst worldwide filmmaker and he is famous for what became known as Soviet Montage.
From Kuleshov perspective, the essences of the cinema was editing was the act of placing two things near each other that contrasted each other. To show this principle, he created what we have come to know as today as the Kuleshov Experiment. There is a video of the Kuleshov experiment that is still currently functioning on the media-sharing site YouTube: The experimental video shows a shots of an actor Ivan Mozhukhin, intercut with various meaningful things a bowl of soup, a dead child inside a casket, a woman lying down. So it there was three shots was of an expressionless man looking at the camera, and juxtaposed that with three things mentioned (soup, child, and women). The actor doesn’t see them, they are mostly likely not connected, and quite frankly they could have been shot in separate places for all we know. It is the audience that voluntarily makes the connection, they assume they are directly related in some way in their head whilst consciously watching, the audience tries to create meaning by combining the two imag...
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...ry - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. [ONLINE] Available at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_montage_theory. [Accessed 15 February 2014].
EV KULESHOV | Directors. 2014. LEV KULESHOV | Directors. [ONLINE] Available at: http://directors-sovietcinema.tumblr.com/post/13422306315/lev-kuleshov. [Accessed 15 February 2014].
Lev Kuleshov. 2014. Lev Kuleshov. [ONLINE] Available at: https://mubi.com/cast_members/22859. [Accessed 15 February 2014].
Lev Kuleshov and his ‘effect’ « Early & Silent Film. 2014. Lev Kuleshov and his ‘effect’ « Early & Silent Film. [ONLINE] Available at: http://cinetext.wordpress.com/2009/09/10/lev-kuleshov-and-his/. [Accessed 15 February 2014].
Introduction to Film - Soviet Montage - YouTube. 2014. Introduction to Film - Soviet Montage - YouTube. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TsUzglygW_s. [Accessed 15 February 2014].
The decade was largely dominated by silent films, but the creation of movies with sound followed afterwards. These innovations greatly improved the movies and made them more immersive and exciting for the viewer. Soon after the invention of sound in movies, the silent era movies...
In describing the setting, the general locale is the prison in the coldest part of Russia- Siberia, geographically but socially depicting the social circumstances in the prison, but draws analogies to the general social, political and economic circumstances of Russia during the Stalinist era (form 1917 revolution up to 1955). The symbolic significance of the novel and the film (genres) reflects experiences, values and attitudes of the Russian society. The genres reflect the origins of the Russian social disorders and massive counts of political misgivings which watered down real communism in Russia. We are constantly reminded of the social and cultural heritage and originality of Russian ethnic groups through those different levels of meanings
Johnson, Priscilla and Leopold Labdez (eds.). Khrushchev and the Arts: the politics of Soviet Culture, 1962-64. MIT Press, 1965.
The silent era in film occurred between 1895 through 1929. It had a a major impact on film history, cinematically and musically. In silent films, the dialogue was seen through muted gestures, mime, and title cards from the beginning of the film to the end. The pioneers of the silent era were directors such as, D. W. Griffith, Robert Wiene and Edwin S. Porter. These groundbreaking directors brought films like first horror movie and the first action and western movie. Due to lack of color, the silent films were either black and white or dyed by various shades and hues to signal a mood or represent a time of day. Now, we begin to enter towards the sound era and opposed to the silent era, synchronized sounds were introduced to movies. The classic movie, The Jazz Singer, which was directed by Alan Crosland, was the first feature length film to have synchronized dialogue. This was not only another major impact in film history, but it also played a major part in film technology and where film is right now.
The Bolshevik Revolution was a defining turning point in Russian history. This overall revolution consisted of two individual revolutions in 1917 which resulted in the overthrow of the Tsarist government and the formation of a socialist society led by Vladimir Lenin’s radical Bolsheviks. For a moment with such enormous weight like the Bolshevik Revolution, there will be various interpretations on the true results of that moment and the meaning and value of these results. The film Man with a Movie Camera deals with the results of the Bolshevik Revolution and the early Soviet Society it birthed as it utilizes footage of one day in this early Soviet Union, thus making it worthy of examination. In the film Man With a Movie Camera, Vertov impressively
The popularity of the dialectical approach was fostered by the upheaval in Russia during the early 20th Century. As communism rose in popularity, Eisenstein believed a Marxist dialectical approach in regards to montage was the foundation of cinema, stating, “Cinematography is, first, and foremost, montage”. He expressed this idea in his films, such as in Battleship Potemkin. On a larger social scale, Eisenstein wished to use his
...s appeared not so much to matter as the fact that he developed new techniques, devised camera approaches and sought always to bring out the potential of a still developing form. That he forgot--or overlooked--to bring the Marxist message to one of his films two years ago brought him that fatal kiss of all--the accusation from the authoritative Soviet magazine, Culture and Life, that his productions had been short on the prescribed Soviet requirement of art and interpretation of history” ("Sergei Eisenstein is Dead in Moscow”, New York Times, 1948) . In film, Eisenstein was known for his development of the montage sequence, his unusual juxtapositions, and his life-like imagery. In life he was known for his propaganda and belief in the plight of the working class. Eisenstein left an inevitable mark on his community, his time, the shape of a sub-culture, and his art.
According to historians like Neil Burch, the primitive period of the film industry, at the turn of the 20th century was making films that appealed to their audiences due to the simple story. A non-fiction narrative, single shots a burgeoning sense
...ican propaganda during the later period of the Cold War and its distortion of what threats lie at the relative east in an effort to raise concern over the intercontinental standoff. Even with the Cold War’s perpetuation since 1945, the tensions between the United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist Russia are interceded only by the all too unfortunately plausible concept of Mutually Assured Destruction. During the height of the burgeoning motion picture industry and the apex of the cold war, the directors of such films intended on producing motion pictures that would depict Soviet Russia and its destructive and innovative potential. Thanks to this industry, the era would be successful in raising the American society’s sense of awareness toward the Soviet’s ingenuity; thus increase the support of the United States populous’ stance in the anti-Soviet movement.
Even though the still picture and the theatrical play also give the spectator either a visual or an aural image, a motion picture is the one that stimulates the spectator’s senses with its story, color, sound, acting, filming, and editing. Based on Munsterberg’s film theory, what makes a motion picture so distinct from other mediums is that it has several characteristic processes of attention, memory, imagination, emotion, and unity. In the book The Major Film Theories, he says that “Munsterburg had a hierarchic notion of the mind; that is, he felt it was comprised of several levels. Each level evolves chaos of undistinguished stimuli by a veritable act, virtually creating the world of objects, events, and emotions that each of us live in” (Andrew 18).... ...
However, in stark contrast to The General, other films were being made around the world that did not follow a simple Hollywood structure, but rather were more experimental with what a movie could be. Man With a Movie Camera (1929), a very ahead of its time, utilized a completely different style of filmmaking that resonated strongly with the ideals of the Soviet Union. Thus, Man With a Movie Camera sought out to make the everyday people of the Soviet Union the stars of the film. This idea was completely revolutionary as well, and almost by necessity, introduced a new style of editing to fit the story—or rather the documentation—that director Dziga Vertov was trying to tell.
In the presented essay I will compare the style of work of selected artists in the montage of the film. I will try to point out some general regularities and features of Soviet cinema. At the same time I will try to capture especially what is common in their systems and similar or conversely what differ. For my analysis, I will draw on the feature films of the Soviet avantgarde, namely these are the movies - The Battleship Potemkin (S. Eisenstein, 1925), Mother (V. Pudovkin, 1926) and The Man with a movie camera (D. Vertov, 1929).
Art has been always seen as a form to express self emotions and ideas; an artist creates an idea and shapes it by culturally known objects and forms to send encrypted message. Through the times both, ideas and materials used, separates art in to different periods and movements. In late 40’s and late 50’s two art and culture movements emerged, one from another. The first one, Lettrism, was under the aspiration to rewrite all human knowledge. From it another movement, Situationism, appeared. It was an anti-art movement which sought for Cultural Revolution. Both of these movements belong to wide and difficulty defined movement of experiment, a movement whose field is endless. Many different people create experimental films because of the variety of reasons. Some wishes to express their viewpoints which are unconventional. But most of them have an enthusiasm for medium itself. They yearn to explore what prospects the medium has and wishes to open new opportunities to create and to explore, as well as to educate. Experimental filmmaker, differently from mainstream filmmakers, wishes to step out from the orthodox notions. The overall appreciation is not the aim that the experimental filmmakers would seek for. Experimenters usually work on the film alone or with a small group, without the big budget. They intend to challenge the traditional ideas. And with intention to do so Lettrism tries to narrow the distance between the poetry and people’s lives, while Situationism tries to transform world into one that would exist in constant state of newness. Both of these avant-garde movements root from similar sources and have similar foundations. Nonetheless, they have different intentions for the art and culture world and these movements...
‘Then came the films’; writes the German cultural theorist Walter Benjamin, evoking the arrival of a powerful new art form at the end of 19th century. By this statement, he tried to explain that films were not just another visual medium, but it has a clear differentiation from all previous mediums of visual culture.
Hegel once described hearing and seeing as two rational senses working together to give us the complex picture. While sight permits to perceive the object only as a surface without depth, hearing allows to overcome distance between the subject and the object. From this point of view one could assume that the use of sound in film will add to its ability of verisimilitude. Nevertheless, the first reaction to the sound cinema was not always welcoming and numerous film theorist, Rudolf Arnheim leading the list, feared that sound would be a relapse to the old perception of cinema as filmed theatre. In 1929, Weimar director Fritz Lang, the author of renowned Metropolis, “scoffed loudly and publicly at the very concept of the sound film”. However,