How does contemporary cinema help us

Save Cite Email this content Share link with colleague or librarian You can email a link to this page to a colleague or librarian:. Your current browser may not support copying via this button. Product Details Get Series Alerts. Publisher: Brill. Art History. Literature and Cultural Studies.

Literary Relations. Cultural History. Theatre Studies. Media Studies. Sign in to annotate. Delete Cancel Save. Cancel Save. View Expanded. View Table. View Full Size. Corporate Social Responsibility. Mission Statement. Corporate Governance.

Stay Updated. Rights and Permissions. Jacques Derrida. Deleuze and Guattari Studies. Philosophy Dictionaries and Encyclopaedias. Philosophy of Mind. Philosophy of Religion. Philosophy Student Guides. Political Philosophy. Popular Philosophy. Scottish Philosophy Thomas Reid. Thomas Reid. Politics American Politics. Environmental Politics. European Politics. International Politics.

Irish Politics. Islamic Politics. Political History. Politics Student Guides. Religious Studies Christianity. Scottish Studies Scottish Archeology. Scottish Book History. Scottish Education. Scottish History Post Scottish History Pre Scottish Law. Scottish Literature. Scottish Philosophy.

Scottish Politics. Scottish Archeology. Publishing with Edinburgh University Press 10 reasons you'll love publishing with us. What our authors say. Meet the editorial team. Preparing your proposal Book proposal guidelines. Series proposal guidelines. Book proposal guidelines. The review process. Writing your book Publication Ethics. Style Sheets. Clearing copyright. Online resources. Publication Ethics. Your cover image. Submitting your manuscript Illustration submission guidelines.

Illustration submission guidelines. From manuscript to finished book Copy-editing. They tell us things we might not know, and they give us a way to explore the past, the present and the future. I could stare at a Van-Gogh for hours, but I sit in a theatre and the images move. As the frames move and tell a story, it is that movement which emotionally connects you.

To me, this is fundamental about why movies have become global. Every country has stories to tell, about their past, their culture now, and views of what the future will look like through their eyes. Firstly, movie theatres began to be built all over the world- not just here in the USA. In many parts of the world, the phenomenon of movie theatres is only ten or fifteen years old.

These theatres give people a place to go, to escape, to learn. All of a sudden, the business part of film allowed people to invest and make movies- and also have somewhere to make their money back, in theatres! Then the internet came along…. The world is changing now faster than you and I change our socks!

If you go on YouTube, you can see the most talented young people all over the world who take a camera and start to film ideas they have and put them online. Movies have become a world-wide feature- and as it relates to what movies tell us? We the Academy sent an outreach program to Cuba, and believe me- we learnt SO much about society from their movies.

The arts are not just one, they are all connected- and movies have become a huge part of the arts. Q: What are the impacts of current-affairs, politics, social issues and corporate interests on film? Some movies take sides- you can agree or disagree with the content. Some movies take sides and create a conversation, and that conversation can be in any area; be it political, social, or even within specific disciplines such as fashion.

Movies can create controversy, and tell difficult stories. Movies have always either taken a side, remained central, or projected something forward. During the Second World War movies in the USA created a feeling of valour and heroism in what we were doing and you saw this in films that came out at the time such as the Purple Heart.

It was during this time also that John Wayne became a huge star, having progressed to this style from the westerns.

We needed to lift our spirits basically…. There is an old movie-saying, which the distribution and marketing people love… During a recession, business gets better!

If you look at the numbers of the movie business you will wonder why that happens. It was the story of a horrible divorce between the Roses. Michael and Kathleen, of course, speak for themselves.

That movie was previewed ten times before it opened. You can sit down on a plane with anybody and want to start a conversation. You start by saying hello, and asking what they do- but then, if you really want to continue the conversation? Can you give me something else which the world has in common?

Movies also create debate, they create conversation, they create an atmosphere. One of the governors of the Academy is a gentleman by the name of Michael Moore who is to the left of the left!

What makes a great film is that it stands the test of time… That you can look at it years later, and still enjoy it. When you sat in the theatre it delivered adventure, suspense, fun- true escapism. Thirty years later, we are still enjoying that movie.

To me, the ultimate prize for a great movie is whether it can stand the test of time, across generations. If we look at what goes into that.. It always starts with a good story, a writer who puts that story down on paper, and then a collaboration between every other guild that goes into making a movie… The Director, actors, cinematographer, make-up artists, visual effects specialists, and more.

Movies are collaborative, and to make a great movie you have to begin with the story and writing, but then when the Director takes over and brings his mindset- casting the actors, and building that team?

Some movies are just not that good… that happens right? Nobody goes out to make a bad movie, nobody starts that way! Failing is not as horrible as you think, as long as you learn something from the failure- so that you can take things to the next step. Talent will always come to the top, and failure will always go to the bottom. Q: How does film sit alongside other arts such as music, theatre and the visual arts? All elements of art are interconnected, they are very similar. It used to be that you go to a museum and you see an art exhibit and it was someone who was well known- you had lines to see the exhibit.

Movies are like that- but the difference is that movies can both take the lead in creating other arts, and following arts by which I mean they are able to take a piece of art, and tell the story behind it. When you paint a picture, you just paint that picture! A movie can take that picture to a whole other place… with a story. Flitcraft was an ordinary family man who, on narrowly missing being crushed to death by a falling beam, understood that life was chaos and left his family and company, only to be found years later in a different town with a new name, job, and family.

Then, at various times at various places around the world but by the early s pretty definitely everywhere, it got used to not being in a crisis state.

Contemporary mainstream Hollywood cinema merely confirms this proposition with its endless remakes, sequels, sequels to remakes, and remakes of sequels, its grand-scale repetition-compulsion machine that has everyone wrapped up, from the crassest ex-TV-commercial director to the most revered auteurs, Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino among them. This cinephilic narrative has undergone refinement in response to two recent developments.

First, digital technology has wrought changes that have been seen variously as augmenting the old powers of cinema, freeing film from the constraints and responsibilities of photographic realism, or spelling the artistic doom of mainstream cinema by condemning it to the pursuit of ever-more stimulating special effects.

Those may be extreme cases, but something like this process virtually defines the terrain of contemporary art cinema, at least the best-known part of it, from Hou Hsiao-hsien, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, and Jia Zhangke to Gus Van Sant Gerry , Elephant , Last Days. The possibility that chance should define culture being unacceptable, we tend to appeal to some kind of authority in these matters, and the film journalist, our expropriated friend, is, almost by job definition, the person whom we grant the right to define what the contemporary cinema is.

Journalists define contemporary cinema at either of two levels: by the films that are shown at Cannes, Venice, Berlin, Toronto, and Rotterdam and maybe a few other festivals or by the films that get some kind of regular commercial release.

The really significant, moment-defining films emerge from the festival circuit, whether they get a wide release or not and they almost never do. In On Film Festivals , a recent anthology edited by critic Richard Porton, several contributors advance the idea that each year, a certain number of important films are made. During the one-to-two-year window of their festival existence, they will never all be in the same place at the same time.

A few will open in regular theaters a few days after their festival premieres; some will eventually go around to museums. After a year or two most of them will be available on DVD for anyone who wants them. If the outstanding films are never all visible at the same time until the window of their contemporaneity has closed, it means they are truly contemporary only for a small group of people—critics, programmers, and distributors.