Search

Copyright of Ñawi: Arte, Diseño y Comunicación is the property of Escuela Superior Politecnica del Litoral and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Italian translation of Film i slikarstvo by Vladimir Petrić.

While experiencing natural beauty is a key appeal of the cinema and other moving-image media, academic film scholarship has rarely paid attention to it. In this article I will use the widespread motif of the gently rustling wind as a pars pro toto to make some general remarks about the experience of natural beauty in film. I will first note the firm place of the motif of the rustling wind in film theoretical debates from the late 19th century until today. Then, I will propose three modes of how viewers can experience this beautiful motif in film. In the following section I will discuss how film's mediation modifies the experience of natural beauty. And in a final step I will explore the reciprocal relation between nature and film, and how one can enhance the appreciation of the other. Ultimately, I follow two – mutually imbricated – goals. On the one hand, I aim to (re)connect the film theoretical discourse about the wind in the trees to natural beauty. On the other hand, I use the motif of the gently rustling wind to say something more general about the aesthetic experience of natural beauty in film.

This article explores the kinetic and aesthetic pleasures of girlhood in Barbie. Through technologies of glamour and consumerism, Barbie invites spectators to window shop in a dazzlingly spectacular pink, shimmering and youthful landscape. Gerwig’s transportive camerawork, flowing choreography and glossy special effects allow spectators to visually and kinetically immerse themselves in a girly world of shimmering fashion, fun automated toys and candy coloured plastic architecture. This spectacular experience of window-shopping orients spectators to feel kinetic empathy with the delights and difficulties of consumer girlhood. I argue that the film both upholds and gently questions these pleasures as Barbie recognises the limits of her consumer power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While experiencing natural beauty is a key appeal of the cinema and other movingimage media, academic film scholarship has rarely paid attention to it. In this article I will use the widespread motif of the gently rustling wind as a pars pro toto to make some general remarks about the experience of natural beauty in film. I will first note the firm place of the motif of the rustling wind in film theoretical debates from the late 19th century until today. Then, I will propose three modes of how viewers can experience this beautiful motif in film. In the following section I will discuss how film’s mediation modifies the experience of natural beauty. And in a final step I will explore the reciprocal relation between nature and film, and how one can enhance the appreciation of the other. Ultimately, I follow two – mutually imbricated – goals. On the one hand, I aim to (re)connect the film theoretical discourse about the wind in the trees to natural beauty. On the other hand, I use the motif of the gently rustling wind to say something more general about the aesthetic experience of natural beauty in film. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through its mixture of similarities to and differences from typical slow cinema practices, Roy Andersson's Songs from the Second Floor (2000) offers a unique perspective on what slow cinema can be. This is apparent in the film's mise en scène and cinematography. While the use of long takes, minimalist performances and deep focus fit comfortably within slow cinema tradition, Songs from the Second Floor differentiates itself with its expansive mise en scène, vast set designs and stationary camera. The film further expands on slow cinema with its inclusion of tragicomic humour, which complements slow cinema's modernist re-appropriation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The question of aesthetics in film-theoretical discourse today is split between, on the one hand, a film-phenomenological or "filmosophical" approach that values the putatively immanent relation between film and the mind and, on the other, the naturalizing epistemology of post-theory, which reduces the question of film aesthetics to one of poetics. What unites these otherwise disparate projects is the consideration of aesthetics divorced from the question of politics; in both cases, the social or political significance of the film–spectator relationship has been summarily purged. In this article, I will offer an alternative account of film aesthetics that draws on Jacques Rancière's theory concerning the mutually determining relationship between aesthetics and politics. In particular, I will consider the relevance of Rancière's thesis concerning what he calls the distribution of sensible to current accounts, as well as taking up his novel consideration of aesthetic distance and the "emancipated" spectator. With respect to film phenomenology, I will examine how its film-theoretical program rests on the flawed concept of a de-politicized spectator enchained by the film image. With respect to post-theory, I will examine how its appropriation from cognitive science of the rational agent model of meaning making inappropriately limits the political potential of film aesthetics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines cinematic anti-heroines' dislocation and dislocated journeys within areas that are displaced within the context of the power relations of the urban-normative discourse in recent Chinese cinema. It refines the concept of dislocation to the specifics of rural displacement and contributes to conversations about the imagination of remote areas as inhabiting "primitive," left-behind spaces. Then, through examining Chinese suburban developments, this article stresses how a grey area between the urban and the rural has come to evoke a space where both desperation and hope can co-exist. Female protagonists in Chinese cinema who are set in displaced environments easily seem vulnerable and marginalised. In recent films, however, these women appear to be anti-heroines who lack the conventional heroic qualities and attributes that we find in previous virtuous, self-less female models. Ironically, their extreme dislocation and vulnerability can also serve to empower because it provides them with some freedom from the social constraints of normative behaviour. In that liminal space their freedom endows them with the ability to devise unusual solutions to problems and to set up a defensive zone with a sense of independence and autonomy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While blindness has been a recurring motif in melodramatic fiction films, this article argues that some contemporary East Asian films about blindness provide a template for challenging ableism and melodramatic conventions via textual analysis. Based on the work of Peter Brooks, Linda Williams, and other significant studies on melodrama and blindness, I first introduce three main characteristics of and gaps in melodrama (virtue, dichotomy, and the moral occult) while examining the connections between blindness and melodrama in East Asian film history. Then I explore how filmic representation in East Asian can question melodramatic conventions and disrupt the dichotomy between disability and non-disability by using the Japanese film Your Eyes Tell (2020) and the Chinese film Blind Massage (2014) as case studies. Your Eyes Tell begins to problematize the melodramatic dichotomy and ableism by attaching great importance to multiple senses, whereas Blind Massage emphasizes the diversity of blindness and challenges melodramatic patterns by representing the body, emotions, affect and sound in very specific ways.

„Gender transition“ has become a highly controversial topic in gender policy debates. On the one hand, this is because the central terms themselves are controversial: „gender“, „identity“, „diversity“ are controversially discussed both between and within disciplines – medicine, psychology, psychoanalysis, cultural studies, gender studies, sexology. In addition, debates that deal with ‚sex‘ in the broadest sense – as a category and as a practice – are ‚charged‘ in a variety of ways. The article deals with this constellation in a productive way insofar as it proposes a parallel to the aesthetic form of film. For in both fields, according to the thesis, an oscillation between movement and standstill is central due to cultural upheavals, among other things. In the debate about trans*, for example, the binary gender dispositive has been set in motion, while in film the individual image is technically set in motion. On the other hand, in films dedicated to the topic of trans* in the broadest sense, the main characters are suddenly „immobilized“ in situations in front of mirrors. The article examines this film-aesthetic decision on the basis of selected productions. It also looks at aspects and consequences for educational and socio-political debates, moving beyond a positioning in one of the current „camps“ and instead focusing on more far-reaching aspects. Because in the context of the trans* debate, there are shifts in social power relations that must not be lost sight of. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay revisits a period (from the early 1980s to early 2000s) in the history of Hong Kong film through the perspective of 'film bleu' and traces a brief and roughly chronological history of Hong Kong film bleu. In the early stages of the development of the film bleu aesthetic in local cinema, red was nearly as prominent as blue, whereas the blue–red scheme has largely been replaced by a monochromatic blue tone in more recent 'bluish' films. This essay reveals how a blue–red color and lighting scheme gradually gave way to a blue-dominated one and how blue was developed as a generic and cinematic convention in Hong Kong crime films. It propounds that, in addition to efforts to develop idiosyncratic generic conventions, the film bleu aesthetic in post-Handover Hong Kong cinema reflects a detached attitude toward and even a disavowal of both contemporary and traditional Chinese cultures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since its introduction into China, the film Dune has sparked heated discussions among Chinese moviegoers. This paper explores the sense of cosmic community embedded in Dune, and its cinematic aesthetics conveyed to audiences through the information dissemination path. This paper identifies the hierarchical analysis method as the main research method, first identifies the definition of cosmic community in terms of content, and then conducts an appreciation of the sense of cosmic community in the contextual beauty of “Dune”. The algorithmic framework is established by building a model of the hierarchical analysis method, while the priority weight allocation coefficient is calculated afterward to determine the priority weight of the program, and the results are evaluated using the fuzzy preference evaluation method. The data showed that the highest ratio of movie viewers who liked science and technology very much or more was 36.09% and 35.49%, respectively, while the ratio of movie viewers who were interested in the topics of universe and space exploration was 48.8%. The rating screen effects and movie music scored out of 10, and the average audience rating was above 8.2. And Dune belongs to the topic of cosmic exploration, indicating that at least in terms of the movie audience, Dune already has a large audience base in the early stage, which is one of the sources of the movie’s enthusiasm. This paper is feasible and meaningful to explore the research direction of Dune’s cosmic community of contextual beauty from the contextual level.

Summarising F. Testu’s research on the issue of school rhythms, R. Sue and M.-F. Caccia explain that we are “confronted with two rhythms: one ‘environmental’, imposed by the adult; the other ‘endogenous’, specific to the pupils”. The first difficulty for schools is to impose the same timetable on all children and adolescents in order to accommodate and allow for the development of each individual. In addition, the school day is divided into learning periods and breaks, where pupils strike a delicate balance between constraints (teaching) and moments of fulfilment (those of “youthful life, the loves and friendships that unfold”). According to a number of education researchers, this fragmentation of the day does not meet the imperatives of “global, interrelated, not fragmented or compartmentalized” educational time.It seems to us that this tension between a fragmented school rhythm and the individual, non-compartmentalised construction of adolescence motivates the subject matter of several films. In Entre les murs (L. Cantet, 2008), for example, the camera takes the time to linger on each body in a collective learning situation, while at the same time blurring the boundaries between the classroom and the outside world. In addition, Elephant (G. Van Sant, 2003) offers each teenager filmed the opportunity to escape both the rhythm of school (endless wandering through the corridors of a high school) and the stereotypes of the teen-movie with which each is a priori associated (the jock, the artist, the outcast, etc.). We propose to understand precisely how these two films, principally, construct an individualised representation of teenage bodies, at a time when they are subjected to an 'environmental' rhythm that does not precisely, a priori, respond to educational issues.

This paper presents a dataset of fine-grained film analytical annotations (Melgar and Estrada and Koolen 2018) for a corpus study of feature films, documentaries, and television news on the Global Financial Crisis (2007-), generated by the research group Affektrhetoriken des Audiovisuellen (Freie Universität Berlin and Hasso-Plattner-Institute Potsdam, 2016-2021, see Bakels et. al. 2020a). The semantic video annotations are based on the AdA Filmontology (v1.8), which consists of eight annotation levels, 78 annotation types, and 501 annotation values (Bakels et. al. 2020b). Each level, type, and value has a unique resource identifier (URI) as well as an English and German name and description. In our paper, we reflect on the specific challenges of capturing film-analytical claims of embodied viewing experiences in an ontology-based taxonomy. We further critically discuss aspects such as intercoder-reliability, consistency, as well as the requirements of training and synchronising expert annotators. The dataset contains more than 92,000 manual and semi-automatic annotations authored in the open-source-software Advene (Aubert/Prié 2005) by expert annotators, as well as more than 400,000 automatically-generated annotations for wider corpus exploration. The annotations are published as Linked Open Data under the CC BY-SA 3.0 licence and available as rdf triples in ttl files and in Advene’s non-proprietary azp-file format, which allows instant access through the graphical interface of the software. Via a web application all annotations can be downloaded, queried, and visualised in conjunction with password-protected access to the source video files (Agt-Rickauer 2022). This dataset is of interest for research on the financial crisis discourse or the specific films and broadcasts; also, the dataset serves as a proof of concept for ontology-based video annotation and as a provider of training data on film analytical concepts such as shot length, camera movements, or affective tonalities.

The aim of the article is to study the features of the process of attractive visuality generation within the 360˚-VR video format. Results. A comprehensive consideration of the issue with the use of general scientific and special methods (problem-logical, theoretical-informational, art studies, comparative analysis, the method of analogy, abstraction, induction, and deduction) demonstrates that one of the key trends in modern film production is the creation of a “multinarrative space” (A. G. Iñárritu) VR-immersion of the viewer as a recipient and co-creator of this space, accompanied by the transformation of the film into a visually attractive activity and transformation principles of film aesthetics in the 20th century. Scientific novelty. It is proved that the 360˚-VR video format is a unique audiovisual form that requires a special grammatical, technical and technological base (professional or amateur 360˚ camera, effective tools for creating and editing 360˚video content for the different platforms, Kolor Autopano Video Pro, SIFT algorithm, etc.) thus, brings the use of the immersion principle to a qualitatively new level. Conclusions. Due to this, attractive visuality is becoming possible in the quality of a new aesthetic and perceptual-virtual experience that is being formed under the influence of VR-attractions and modern special effects in the digital cinematograph. It leads to the synthesis between cinematograph and theatre when the transition is occurring from montage sequence to virtual-theatrical play where in consequence of 360˚-VR the action has been developing constantly, and the viewer is in the very centre of the events. Thereby, there are grounds to confirm that, including technological development and measureless creative possibilities in the process of projecting different VR-attractions, it is possible for a viewer’s infinite immersion in the space of a digital film; that, from one side, transforms film language on the modern stage, creating the perspectives of the further branch development, and from another side, it conditions a number of psychological problems and risks connected with the viewers’ reaction on a different level of density of the attractive field of modified film language.

This article presents a conversation with Laura U. Marks, a distinguished scholar of film and new media who launched the Small File Media Festival in 2020. Marks' message is that large-file streaming is harmful to the planet and that we need to act against its growing yet under-the-radar carbon footprint. The festival's goal is to demonstrate that movies can be captivating and immersive even if they are not large in file size, and encourages creators to experiment with low-energy technologies and techniques. Given the high stakes, the festival's organizers hope that small-file media will become increasingly influential as an aesthetic movement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I examine the film style of Yasmin Ahmad's short film Chocolate (2009) by looking specifically at its production design component. Through the application of design intensity theory, the abstract function of film style theory and Viktor Shklovsky's ostranenie (defamiliarization) concept, my examination reveals that production design through the patterning of everyday objects as props (kitchen utensils, a plastic food cover, AA batteries, a baby milk bottle and a chocolate bar) in Chocolate functions more than denoting the setting of the story and enhancing the reality effect. It also works to visualize abstract ideas about the ambivalent possibilities of interracial–interfaith relationships in contemporary Malaysia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article seeks to explore the early stages of American film theory, where cinephilia became a site of aesthetic interest and criticism thanks to the theorization of cinema as a conversational medium. Following Stanley Cavell’s analysis of a distinct form of moviegoing in America, based on the casual conversation about movies, I argue that a reinterpretation of Emerson’s ordinary aesthetics has been at the core of early film theory, especially in Vachel Lindsay’s writings. In order to illustrate the relation between the defence of a new medium and the attempt to define a quintessentially American art form, this article focuses on the concept of “conversation” that Lindsay uses to describe film spectatorship and to provide a new critical apparatus to grasp the specificity of film aesthetics.

In this article I translate and analyze for the first time a text by Orson Welles, originally published in the February 1941 issue of Stage. Its title, 'Orson Welles writes about Orson Welles', is an indication of its ironic tone, since it is devoted almost entirely to criticizing the Hollywood film industry, especially regarding the figure of the producer. The date of its publication, three months before the premiere of Citizen Kane (1941), its humorous look and its undeniable parrhesia, reinforce the importance of this text to know his ideas about film and his connection with Hollywood, but also his conception of the art of directing, the role of production and other filmic aspects such as music and acting. This text contains not only an aesthetic, but also an ethic and even a philosophy of cinema, which is inseparable from a way of life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses the feature films of the Polish Dutch filmmaker Urszula Antoniak through the lens of border and migration studies. I argue that Antoniak's films are characterized by an aesthetic of migration that visualizes the radical identity formation of both her migrant and non-(im)migrant figures. Antoniak's fourth film Pomiędzy słowami/Beyond Words (2017) challenges the presumptions that underlie her own aesthetic of migration by situating her characters explicitly in the geo-political, legal, and social contexts that make radical self-regeneration possible for some and not for others. In the end, the migrants in Beyond Words remain metonyms for the redefinition of the self that is possible due to the experience of migration; however, they also recalibrate that redefinition to include community, the evasion or abdication of hegemonic oversight, as well as a new conception of what it means to be a migrant or 'native'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The history of cinema is characterized by the fight for cultural legitimacy. Specifically, in the 20th century, cinema played a key role for the expansion of the aesthetic field in debates on contemporary times and even influenced the philosophy of art. Aesthetic categories are taken from other and more traditional artistic forms (such as representative arts, literature and theatre). The purpose is to expand the field of cultural legitimacy of cinema also to those fields which were considered too involved in the industrial needs. This is the reason why contemporary cinephilia have sometimes extended the broad definition of “beautiful” also to more marginal areas as well as to the most unpredictable places (from pornography to horror), thus identifying forms of art everywhere. So, what is cinephilia and how did it revolutionize the aesthetic criteria of cinema?

The paper concerns a “Note on the Film,” a short appendix to Feeling and Form by Susanne Langer. The interpretation interweaves the Note into a larger context of Langer’s philosophical work – primarily in terms of her understanding of the dream as a lower symbolic form, to which the film is compared – as well as in terms of her account of literary arts among which, she suggests, cinema belongs. Langer’s references to Sergei Eisenstein are discussed and their respective concepts of cinema are compared. An implicit political dimension of Langer’s writing on film is emphasized by relating her critique of modern civilization, as sketched in the last chapter of Philosophy in a New Key, to her film aesthetics. At the end of the paper I compare my interpretation of the Note with the one that was offered by Trisha Curran.

Copyright of Écrans is the property of Classiques Garnier and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Écrans is the property of Classiques Garnier and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Écrans is the property of Classiques Garnier and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Écrans is the property of Classiques Garnier and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Écrans is the property of Classiques Garnier and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The aim of this paper is to analyse the role played by the category of system in the early books of David Bordwell. They have exerted an enormous influence on the understanding of film aesthetics, but little space has been devoted to their methodological background, including the category of system. In Film Art: An Introduction (1979), all elements of film form have a systemic character, which is visible in the chapter titles, such as “Form as System” or “Narration as a Formal System”. In The Classical Hollywood Cinema, the film aesthetics is based on systems of narrative logic, time and space. In Narration in the Fiction Film, the systems of syuzhet and style are foregrounded. Bordwell’s fascination with systems is rooted undoubtedly in their popularity in the 1970s. But do Bordwellian notions really fulfil the criteria of system theory, especially in its newer version, with such notions as chaos, feedback loop, self-regulation and others? Perhaps even Bordwell himself is not certain of that, since the word “system” disappears from recent editions of Film Art: An Introduction.

Copyright of Film Quarterly / Kwartalnik Filmowy is the property of Kwartalnik Filmowy and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper considers what decolonizing film education might mean through a series of research initiatives undertaken across different cultures which explore social media platforms for creating moving image sequences. The paper attends to three factors in the current climate of education: the accessibility of the medium, its immediacy in dissemination, and the democratizing effect that these conditions have had on the medium of film. Working with these three conditions in contemporary film education, the case studies described include workshops that aimed to shift the curriculum from film canons to proposing the introduction of concepts. Furthermore, elided histories are explored through site-specific projects that show how decolonial processes allow these histories to be reclaimed in film practice, and for marginal subjectivities to be made visible. Finally, the proposal of decolonial processes seeks to work with creating opportunities for social and historical visibilities. The proposition is to work with film(ed) evidence as material connected to broader social justice issues that are expressed through aesthetic forms closely associated with decolonial processes and described as decolonial aesthesis.

This article discusses 'the dainty', an aesthetic category that rose to prominence in the trade and fan press during American cinema's transitional era as a means of characterizing female stars like Lillian Gish, Mary Pickford, Marguerite Clarke, Billie Rhodes and Lois Wilson. The readiest reading of the dainty is that, like the stars the term often described, it was a throwback to an older, diminutive ideal of femininity that bore little relation to the 'modern' woman as she was emerging in the early twentieth century at the intersection of aesthetic modernism and industrial modernity. This article, however, contends that the dainty has more in common with paradigmatically modern aesthetics like 'glamour' than one might initially suppose. As I show, the dainty's modernity is twofold. First, it lies in the category's objective register, where its formal qualities, most notably its diminutiveness, afford it an unexpected affinity with modernist mandates of restraint and reduction. Second, it lies in the category's subjective register, where its association with 'fastidiousness' suggests a calculating and discriminating form of aesthetic subjectivity that is peculiarly modern by virtue of its aesthetic reflexivity. In paying close attention to one of the specifically aesthetic categories that define female star images at this period, I join a small coterie of scholars, like Lea Jacobs and Rosalind Galt, who have set out to explore the aesthetic formations through which we evaluate and experience film and film-adjacent phenomena. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]