approximately 300 residents. Everything there is small—the little grocery store, their post office, their two little schoolhouses. The care and upkeep of boats stored in the boat yards is still important there. The little harbour is full of boats as well. I want to show this in my film, and the natural environment as well. Man-O-War has some of the most beautiful beaches in the world.
CAVE OF FORGOTTEN DREAMS
I chose Werner Herzog’s Academy Award winning Cave of Forgotten Dreams because Herzog is one of the most respected documentary filmmakers today, and I wanted to learn from how he handles topics like history and art. My subjects are not nearly as ancient as the ones in this film, and what I discovered was that with Cave of Forgotten
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He uses colourful, poetic language in his interviews and with his descriptions. His interviews are conversational and in natural settings. Interviewees who don’t speak English are dubbed over instead of subtitled. He talks with scientists who are studying the paintings; we see them cautiously working to study the paintings without disturbing prints and scratches. We get a look at them working in the caves and at computers. Motion graphics and maps are used. Everything in the cave must be carefully preserved. Herzog visits art museums and talks with art historians about the earliest art, those found in the cave and similar pieces found elsewhere. He talks with a perfumer who discusses constructing the past by studying odours. Sweeping panoramics of the surrounding areas outside the caves play under Herzog’s storytelling, as he recounts the discovery of the caves and asks hypothetical questions. A historian speculates about the lifestyle of early humans, demonstrating tools they might have used. Another wears clothes that he believes may have been worn. For the caves, the shots slowly linger on each painting. The lengthy montage with surreal vocals, moments of silence, and soft instrumentals help create a feeling of wonder and serenity. Due to the extreme age of these paintings, Herzog brings this story to a close by asking one of the historians to speak to the beginning of
Bad Dreams in A Raisin in the Sun The issue of racism is one of the most significant themes in Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun. Many black men have to deal with inherent racism. The frustrations that they deal with do not only affect them, but it also affects their families as well. When Walter Lee has a bad day he can't yell at his boss for fear of losing his job.
The award-winning book of poems, Brown Girl Dreaming, by Jacqueline Woodson, is an eye-opening story. Told in first person with memories from the author’s own life, it depicts the differences between South Carolina and New York City in the 1960s as understood by a child. The book begins in Ohio, but soon progresses to South Carolina where the author spends a considerable amount of her childhood. She and her older siblings, Hope and Odella (Dell), spend much of their pupilage with their grandparents and absorb the southern way of life before their mother (and new baby brother) whisk them away to New York, where there were more opportunities for people of color in the ‘60s. The conflict here is really more of an internal one, where Jacqueline struggles with the fact that it’s dangerous to be a part of the change, but she can’t subdue the fact that she wants to. She also wrestles with the issue of where she belongs, “The city is settling around me….(but) my eyes fill up with the missing of everything and everyone I’ve ever known” (Woodson 184). The conflict is never explicitly resolved, but the author makes it clear towards the end
Disney movies may want us to believe that Greek mythology is all about heroes defeating the villains and that the Gods are the good guys. However, minimal research will reveal that this isn’t the case. In Edna St. Vincent Millay’s sonnet “I Dreamed I Moved among the Elysian Fields” she intertwines the allusions to mythological Greek woman with the speaker’s own experience to make a powerful statement on the sexual objectification and victimization of women in the 1930s. The speaker begins the poem with an ethereal tone masking the violent nature of her subject matter. The poem is set in the Elysian Fields, a paradise where the souls of the heroic and virtuous were sent (cite).
For years Western scholars and novelists have been drawn to the story, yet until now there has been no documentary. Ric Burns's film is a first.
“Tunnel” by Sarah Ellis is about a sixteen-year old boy who is looking for a job. He gets a job as a babysitter, and has to look after a girl name Elizabeth, Ib for short. Ib and Ken go for an exploration mission, as he calls it, ending up at a recognizable place from Ken's childhood. Ib enters this place, endangers herself, and requires assistance from Ken. Ken and Ib hear voices that will only disappear upon hearing Ken and Ib’s real name. Ken helps Ib, and they leave, trying to forget about the traumatic experience. This story was able to positively depict the elements of a short story through the point of view, theme, and the mood of the story.
Meshes of the Afternoon by Maya Deren is one of the most intriguing and significant experimental films of the 1940’s. Maya Deren is a surrealist experimental filmmaker who explores themes like yearning, obsession, loss and mortality in her films. In Meshes of the Afternoon, Maya Deren is highly influenced by Sigmund Freud’s theory of expressing the realms of the subconscious mind through a dream. Meshes of the Afternoon, is a narration of her own experience with the subconscious mind that draws the viewers to experience the events being played out rather than just merely showing the film. I chose Maya Deren for my research because her intriguing sense gives viewers an enthralling experience by taking them to a different, semi-real world of the subconscious mind. Meshes of the Afternoon not only reveals Deren’s success in a male dominant arena, but also provides a sensational and escalating experience for the spectators.
Not too far away from the town of Montignac, in the western Massif Central and Northern Pyrenees, the cave of Lascaux was discovered. Four teenage boys and their dog discovered it. The four boys, Marcel Ravidat, Jacques Marsal, Georges Agnel and Simon Coenccus, were out on an expedition, but they found more than they bargained for that day. Their dog wandered away and they searched for him. In the process, the four boys discovered a cave that had been right below their feet for the past 17,000 years. They were not able to venture down into the 250-meter deep cave on the first day so they came back the next day prepared to enter the cave. When the boys first wiggled their way down into the cave they did not find anything. It was not until they reached an oval room that they first discovered paintings on the walls. These boys had uncovered paintings dating back to the Aurignacian (30,000-18,000 B.C.E.) (Laming, 34-41) and Magdalenian (15,000-10,000 B.C.E.) periods. It is believed that many of the paintings found in Lascaux were created between 16,000 and 14,000 B.C.E. The boys could no longer keep this cave a secret, so they told one of their teachers, Monsieur Laval. After accompanying the boys down to the cave, M. Laval started alerting historians to this new discovery. Within five days three historians were already on their way to visit the site. On September 17, 1940 three experts on Paleolithic art, Abbé Breuil, Dr. Cheynier and Abbé Bouyssonnie, crawled down into the cave; it was at this point the cave became authenticated.
The Lascaux Cave in Dordogne, France is important to scientists because it explains the civilization’s culture and history in painting and the people’s artistic talents and use of paints. Further, the quality and bright paintings show animals, bison, deer, bears [Fig.1-4] and large mammoth animals. The cave and the paintings are significant because there are generations of paintings amongst one another. For instance [Fig.5] shows a horse that was painted over of the bull and then some smaller horses that were painted over that. Therefore, the paintings were done over a long period of time with many different painters and represents different time periods; archeologists saw that the people lived in a cave beside this one, so this cave could have been more spiritual and if there was many animals painted in the cave the people would believe that there would be enough food for them in the forests (Bolman, n.d.) It also supports animism, which is the belief that natural objects, natural phenomena, and the universe itself possess souls (Animism, 2014). The paintings reflect the development...
The painting was discovered in December 1994, by the exploring team led by Jean-Marie Chauvet, where the name Chauvet came from. Tests by the French scientists conducted using the radiocarbon dating revealed that the murals in the cave date between 30,000 and 28,000 BCE. The painting composed of about twenty animals of which the Paleolithic painters depicted the horns of an auroch, an oxen that is now extinct, and two rhinos at the lower right appearing to fight each other. The painting, however, did raise some eyebrows and became a subject of controversy, since the assumption was that their style of painting was not that evolved to represent a more sophisticated painting. “Some archaeologists have contested the early dating of the Chauvet paintings on the grounds the tested samples were contaminated.” (Gardner, p.22).
I am Legend, directed by Francis Lawrence, is a 2007 American post-apocalyptic dystopian film. Throughout the entire dystopian trailer, the director has used the visual construction of it as the primary device to not only entice the audience, but also deduce the key elements of a dystopia. In doing this, Francis Lawrence has implicated a wide array of visual techniques such as the use camera angles, montages and word inter-titles to aid him in evoking the primary elements of a dystopia.
Documentary films can be presented in many ways, with filmmakers blurring the lines of film styles to create an individual piece. When analyzing documentaries, the truthfulness in which the subject or argument is presented can easily be questioned. The authenticity of an argument can be a difficult aspect to successfully showcase in a film. By repeatedly watching the assigned scenes of Grizzly Man, it is clear that the appearance of truth within the scenes comes into question. The method in which these scenes are directed and shot, is in direct relation to the way Herzog wants the audience to interpret them. Therefore, Herzog has complete
What happens to a dream when it suspends in time? Does it stay suspended within a man through his lifetime, dormant, unreachable, and far away? Does its power grow and ultimately force him to act to make it happen sometime in the future-if not in his lifetime then in the future members of his kin? On the other hand, does it eat away at him, crystallizing and internally segmenting his own derived purpose and meaning of life until it is indiscernible from its original state of grandeur and grace? Those are some of the questions that Lorraine Hansberry poses for consideration in her play, A Raisin in the Sun. It is no accident that she chose Langston Hughes' poem as a gateway into the incredible experience of true life, living, dreaming and working for a better tomorrow as enacted and emoted by her play's characters, the Youngers. More specifically, she uses Mama Younger to echo the poem's style of thought-provocation to at least partially surmise an answer of whether dreams deferred do, in fact, dry up, crust and sugar over like a syrupy sweet, or sag like a heavy load.
With one of the most memorable transitions in the film (the Silent Scream performed by a Japanese Butoh dancer), Baraka makes clear the consequences of modern human life. When increasing production and profit takes priority over valuing human life, civilization eventually destroys itself; the film walks us through scenes of systemic poverty, exploitation, war, and genocide to illustrate this point. Paired with stirring, ominous music, this sequence is the most effective sequence of the film and can stand alone as an indictment of modern civilization. Finally, the story of modern civilization ends with images of the ruins of great ancient civilizations. The takeaway message is clear: just as those civilizations rose and fell, so too will the great civilizations of
“Stone Mattress” is a title story about “how you might murder somebody on a boat in the Arctic and get away with it” as noted by the author, Margaret Atwood, in an interview for the Trillium Book Award of 2015 (“Margaret”). The main character of the short story is a woman named Verna Pritchard, whose life was completely shattered at the age of fourteen when she was raped, impregnated, and slandered by a seventeen year old boy and his best friend (Atwood). Verna went on to marry and kill four men, and she blamed her murderous actions on one of her rapists, Bob Goreham (Atwood 212). After murdering her fourth husband, Verna decided to take a vacation where she
I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud – An Analysis I chose the poem "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" by William Wordsworth because I like the imagery in it of dancing daffodils. Upon closer examination, I realized that most of this imagery is created by the many metaphors and similes Wordsworth uses. In the first line, Wordsworth says "I wandered lonely like a cloud. " This is a simile comparing the wonder of a man to a cloud drifting through the sky. I suppose the wandering cloud is lonely because there is nothing up there that high in the sky besides it.