Transatlantic spaces: production, location and style in 1960s-1970s action-adventure TV series

This paper argues that transatlantic hybridity connects space, visual style and ideological point of view in British television action-adventure fiction of the 1960s–1970s. It analyses the relationship between the physical location of TV series production at Elstree Studios, UK, the representation of place in programmes, and the international trade in television fiction between the UK and USA. The TV series made at Elstree by the ITC and ABC companies and their affiliates linked Britishness with an international modernity associated with the USA, while also promoting national specificity. To do this, they drew on film production techniques that were already common for TV series production in Hollywood. The British series made at Elstree adapted versions of US industrial organization and television formats, and made programmes expected to be saleable to US networks, on the basis of British experiences in TV co-production with US companies and of the international cinema and TV market.

Preminger and Peckinpah: seeing and shaping widescreen worlds

This chapter develops a comparative analysis of sequences from the films of two directors who made eloquent use of widescreen formats but who seem to be in all other respects wholly contrasting figures. The article includes a historiographical element in grounding the argument in the critical history of widescreen aesthetics and the directors’ work. It moves from a close analysis of three sequences, and an exploration of strategies in the use of the widescreen frame, to broader questions of style and its interpretation, narration, point of view and epistemology. The article connects with other work on Preminger, and on the critical history of mise-en-scène, while extending this through the comparative analysis of two figures from different Hollywood contexts and characterised by very different approaches.

Spectacle/gender/history: the case of Gone with the Wind

The essay asserts that, since pioneering work in the 1970s and 80s (in Screen in particular), the study of classical Hollywood cinema has failed adequately to acknowledge and understand the role of spectacle therein. This essay outlines theoretical but, even more, practical understandings of particular kinds of spectacle; they are susceptible to the practice of close analysis. Seeking to discuss spectacle in precise terms and in particular contexts, I define two kinds of spectacle associated with the historical film: ‘the decor of history’ and ‘the spectacular vista’. The example of Gone with the Wind illustrates the interrelationship between these two kinds of spectacle and their associations with particular ideas of femininity and masculinity. This gendering of spectacle is related to ‘the historical gaze’, a performative gesture that exemplifies the wider rhetoric of historical films, in their seeking to address the historical knowledge of the film spectator and to uphold a vision of history as being driven by powerful men, aware of their own destiny. Over the course of the three famous hilltop scenes in Gone with the Wind, one can plot Scarlett O'Hara's increased access to this kind of foresight and fortitude coded as ‘masculine’. This character arc can also be traced through Scarlett's shifting place within the film's use of spectacle: she begins the film wholly preoccupied with the domestic world of lavish parties and beautiful gowns; however, after her encounter with cataclysmic history visualized as a vast, terrible spectacle (the fall of Atlanta), Scarlett assumes the role occupied by her broken and emasculated father.

The Matrix

Review and critical reflection on 'The Matrix', in relation to questions of genre, aesthetics, representation, and cultural and industrial contexts.

Transformers

Review and critical reflection on 'Transformers' as an example of the contemporary blockbuster, exploring questions of genre, aesthetics, representation, and cultural and industrial contexts.

Rumo a uma definição positiva de world cinema

However common it has become, the term World Cinema still lacks a proper, positive definition. Despite its all-encompassing, democratic vocation, it is not usually employed to mean cinema worldwide. On the contrary, the usual way of defining it is restrictive and negative, as ‘the non-Hollywood cinema’. Needless to say, negation here translates a positive intention to turn difference from the dominant model into a virtue to be rescued from an unequal competition. However, it unwittingly sanctions the American way of looking at the world, according to which Hollywood is the centre and all other cinemas are the periphery. As an alternative to this model, this chapter proposes: • World Cinema is simply the cinema of the world. It has no centre. It is not the other, but it is us. It has no beginning and no end, but is a global process. World Cinema, as the world itself, is circulation. • World Cinema is not a discipline, but a method, a way of cutting across film history according to waves of relevant films and movements, thus creating flexible geographies. • As a positive, inclusive, democratic concept, World Cinema allows all sorts of theoretical approaches, provided they are not based on the binary perspective.

Regurgitated bodies: presenting and representing trauma in 'The Act of Killing'

Focusing on The Act of Killing, this chapter examines how an “ethics of realism” operates on three key cinematic arenas: genre, authorship and spectatorship. As far as genre is concerned, the film’s realist commitment emerges from where it is least expected, namely from Hollywood genres, such as the musical, the film noir and the western, which are used as documentary, that is to say, as a fantasy realm where perpetrators can confess to their crimes without restraints or fear of punishment, but which nonetheless retains the evidentiary weight of the audiovisual medium. Authorship, in turn, translates as Oppenheimer’s unmistakable auteur signature through his role of self-confessed “infiltrator” who disguises as a sympathiser of the criminals in order to gain first-hand access to the full picture of their acts. One of them, the protagonist Anwar Congo, is clearly affected by post-traumatic stress disorder, and his repetitive reliving of his killings is made to flare up in front of the camera so as to bring back the dead to the present time in their material reality, through his own body, including a harrowing scene of the actor’s unpredictable and uncontrollable retching as he re-enacts the killing of his victims through strangulation. Finally, in the realm of spectatorship, the usual process of illusionistic identification on the part of the spectator is turned onto its head by means of disguising these criminals as amateur filmmakers, led to shoot, act within, and then watch their own film within the film so as to force them to experience beyond any illusion the suffering they had caused.

Space, authenticity and utopia in the hip-hop teen dance film

The dance film flourished in the 2000s in the form of the hip-hop teen dance film. Such films as Save the Last Dance (Thomas Carter, 2001), Honey (Billy Woodruff, 2002) and Step Up (Anne Fletcher, 2006) drew on hip-hop’s dominance of the mainstream music industry and combined the teen film’s pre-existing social problem and musical narratives. Yet various tension were created by their interweaving of representations of post-industrial city youth with the utopian sensibilities of the classical Hollywood musical. Their narratives celebrated hip-hop performance, and depicted dance’s ability to bridge cultural boundaries and bring together couples and communities. These films used hip-hop to define space and identity yet often constructed divisions within their soundscapes, limiting hip-hop’s expressive potential. This article explores the cycle’s celebration of, yet struggle with, hip-hop through examining select films’ interactions between soundscape, narrative and form. It will engage with these films’ attempts to marry the representational, narrative and aesthetic meanings of hip-hop culture with the form and ideologies of the musical genre, particularly the tensions and continuities that arise from their engagement with the genre’s utopian qualities identified by Richard Dyer (1985). Yet whilst these films illustrate the tensions and challenges of combining hip-hop culture and the musical genre, they also demonstrate an effective integration of hip-hop soundscape and the dancing body in their depiction of dance, highlighting both form’s aesthetics of layering, rupture and flow (Rose, 1994: 22).

Etniska stereotyper på film : med utgångspunkt i amerikansk film med ryska motiv (2008-2011)

Filmmediet idag är den mest populära formen av masskultur. Med sin världstäckande genomslagskraft och sitt stereotypa porträtterande av verklighet, påverkar filmen världsåskådningen för människor runtom i världen. Ett brinnande ämne i amerikansk film har alltid varit Ryssland, på grund av de politiska motsättningarna och den historiska rivaliteten med USA. Studiens syfte är att undersöka hur Ryssland porträtteras i amerikanska filmer från perioden för presidenterna Dmitrij Medvedevs respektive Barack Obamas första mandatperiod. Frågeställningen för uppsatsen är: hur ser stereotypa föreställningar om Ryssland ut i amerikansk film 2008-2011? Trettiotal filmer med ryska motiv valdes ut för undersökningen och analyserades utifrån de visuella och sociala aspekterna. Resultatet visar på att det förekommer tre skikt av stereotyper om Ryssland: de eviga, som har existerat i hundratals år och spridits av resenärer; stereotyper från epoken för det kalla kriget; och stereotyper om det moderna Ryssland inspirerade av medias nyhetsrapporteringar.

Klimatförändringar på vita duken. : Passiviserande underhållning eller mobilisering.

Vid en tillbakablick på de senaste 25 års spelfilmer kan man se hur ett växande klimathot funnits med som en berättelseingrediens i ett antal spelfilmer från Hollywood mainstreamfåra. (Axelson 2008). År 2004 kom katastroffilmen The Day after Tomorrow som gjordes till objekt för en brittisk publikstudie. I denna studie analyserar forskargruppen hur The Day After Tomorrow påverkade publikens tankar kring klimatförändringar (Lowe et al. 2006). Den irländske forskaren Pat Brereton har initierat ett projekt inom HERA (Humanities in the European Research Area) med ett forskningsfokus på hur medier och film bidragit till ett ekologiskt paradigm som enligt Brereton, långsamt växer sig allt starkare hos den europeiska allmänheten (Brereton 2008). I mitt paper vill jag diskutera Breretons hypotes om ett ökande ekologiskt sentiment under framväxt hos en europeisk allmänhet över tid och hur denna hypotes bör underkastas en kritisk diskussion utifrån ett receptionsperspektiv. Vad säger existerande publikorienterad receptionsforskning om på vilket sätt klimatförändringar gestaltade på film kan ha förmågan att beröra processer relaterade till människors teoretiska övertygelser om tillvaron, grundläggande värderingar samt en livsåskådningsmässig grundhållning (Lowe et al. 2006, Axelson 2008)?

Novas mídias e mercado da experiência: um estudo da indústria de videogames

Os videogames estão revolucionando a cultura de entretenimento digital e já movimentam U$27 bilhões anuais, mais do que a indústria de Hollywood foi capaz de arrecadar em 2004 em suas bilheterias de cinema. Encarados por alguns críticos como arte, por outros como escape e ainda como terapia por alguns psicólogos, os videogames apresentam muitos elementos que podem nos ajudar a traçar um panorama de algumas mudanças centrais na cultura do entretenimento no início deste século. Nessa pesquisa, os videogames serão tomados como paradigmáticos da “economia do acesso”. Esta é produto da imbricação entre tecnologia, mercado e cultura, que teria possibilitado a formação da economia de rede, promovendo um outro tipo de espaço para o capitalismo: não mais o mercado de compra e venda - que durante muito tempo significou algo geograficamente delimitado-, mas o ciberespaço, algo virtual, relacionado ao tempo, promotor de trocas de informações e experiências. Como etapa primeira de um projeto de pesquisa mais amplo, este atual projeto se focará em resgatar a história da indústria dos videogames: quando, onde, como e por que surgiu, e quais os seus desdobramentos contemporâneos. Ou seja: trata-se de um levantamento bibliográfico preliminar sobre o surgimento da "indústria dos videogames", tomando-o como modelo de uma nova forma de entretenimento – digital e interativo –, buscando-se compreender a lógica que o sustenta e a subjetividade que lhe corresponde.

La deslocalización de funciones no esenciales en las empresas: oportunidades para exportar servicios. El caso de Chile

Incluye Bibliografía

La industria cinematográfica en México y su participación en la cadena global de valor

Incluye Bibliografía