Art Cinema Research Articles

Contemporary Nordic art film comedy

Critics tend to consider art cinema a serious and challenging form of cinema. Contemporary Nordic art cinema nevertheless includes many films by internationally recognized art film directors that use (dark) comedy as an expressive mode. The article examines the diverse ways that art cinema can merge with comedy. After outlining the concept of art cinema, emphasizing the films’ challenging style, ambiguity and gravity, I present approaches to humour, demonstrating how art film comedy challenges several premises of comedy. Analyses of three films, Lars von Trier’s The Boss of It All (2006), Ruben Östlund’s Force Majeure (2014) and Grímur Hákonarson’s Rams (2015), highlight their comic aspects, but illustrate that they are comic in varying, ambiguous and challenging ways that violate genre expectations.

Special Issue: ‘Contemporary Scandinavian Art Cinema and Screen Cultures in Transition’

The editorial outlines our main reasons for bringing scholarly attention to the theme of Scandinavian art cinema and screen cultures in transition at this moment. It provides brief summaries of the issue’s five feature articles and presents some suggestions for further research on the topic. We stress the importance of taking gender into account in future studies and call for a closer dialogue and more mutual engagement between scholars of art cinema and scholars of digital media.

Art cinema, film policy and the slaughterhouse of Swedish cinema

Focusing on the introduction of a new government film policy in 2017, this article explores how the audience for Swedish cinema – little-watched art films in particular – is conceptualized in the context of film policy and as a topic of debate within the Swedish film industry. The analysis shows that the new film policy contributes – against its own explicit aims – to reproducing a deep-seated distinction between ‘wide’ and ‘narrow’ films. In addition, Swedish film policy has yet to adapt to the conditions of today’s digital screen culture. As a result, ‘narrow films’ are subject to low audience expectations and a de facto lack of performance accountability. This, the article argues, could be more a blessing than a curse, suggesting a need to rethink the notion of ‘failure’ and to further explore the prospects of ‘failure studies’ in the context of Swedish cinema.

Symbolic purposes of style: Ruben Östlund’s The Square

Symbolic criticism is easily reduced to an act of translating meaning, remote from the style of rich narratives. Drawing on David Bordwell’s distinction between broad, overlapping functions of style, I argue that we can examine symbolic purposes as secondary to decorative and expressive purposes. I show how a theory on conceptual cognition proposed by psychologist Lawrence Barsalou can let the critic transcend firm distinctions between abstract and concrete features of a narrative. This proves especially helpful when narrative purposes are downplayed, for example in the resonant elements of art cinema, affecting how we construct and experience the storylines. I posit a framework for the analysis of symbolic purposes based on general mechanisms of memory and attentional guidance, letting us see continuity with critics such as Bordwell and Victor F. Perkins. This approach enables the critic to distinguish between degrees of symbolic power in Ruben Östlund’s The Square.

Editorial

The editorial discusses the importance of Special Issues devoted to a particular topic or theme and welcomes readers to this Special Issue, ‘Contemporary Scandinavian Art Cinema and Screen Cultures in Transition’, curated by Joel Frykholm and Anna Estera Mrozewicz.

Sexuality, Identity and (Be)longing: The Realistic Representation of Gay Identity in KA Bodyscapes

Film is an influential medium to catalyze the social change. Like other fine arts film is both a piece of social reality and a vehicle of depicting the True-reality rather than idealizing and stereotyping it. Films have unpretentious effect on society’s perspective. Film has without a doubt contributed a great deal to the strange development in India. Sexual minority comprises of that multitude of individuals who fall under the classifications of Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals and Transsexuals. Projection of orientation generalizations in films shapes society’s view of orientation jobs. The over-immersion of the sexual orientation generalizations in the movie, KA Bodyscapes directed by Jayan K.Cherian, brings about the deception of orientation which gets implanted in the human psyche and is given from one age to another as an adequate view.

영화감독 심훈의 영화예술에 대한 인식 고찰

영화감독 심훈의 영화예술에 대한 인식 고찰

ANIMATION FORMS IN VIDEO GAMES A CLASSIFICATION STUDY BASED ON GAME MECHANICS

The first inventions that aimed to convey the movement had features of animated films rather than filming. However, cinema and animation began to emerge as an art, not only with the transmission of movement. The creation of software-based graphics enabled video games to be created with computer graphics, and digital games using three-dimensional graphics began to appear in other attractive animation applications. So again, game technology animation filmmaking, different forms specific to games began. Since this study accepts it as a form of making cinema, not a genre of cinema, using the ways of using cinema in video games to understand, define and use it with game mechanics. In the study, video games were examined and the animation methods used here were defined, and these methods were classified and analyzed within the teachings. Video games cooperate closely with the art of cinema. Although the digital game shows a software-based structure, its aesthetic components can be included in the animation universe. The research has shown that the playing experience is actually an animation experience and has classified these experience areas with examples in this direction.

Robots over humans? The place of artificial intelligence in the pedagogy of art direction in film education

Discourses on artificial intelligence (AI) in the field of art direction have not gained enough attention, although its use is becoming more predominant in the rapidly evolving technologically driven filmmaking world. Largely, AI has taken over various aspects of the filmmaking process from pre-production, and production to postproduction. Apart from its major influence on the role of an art director, the incorporation of AI in filmmaking enhances the functions of producers, screenwriters, directors, cinematographers, editors, sound designers, and animators. This qualitative paper approach rides on a rapid review design based on the selection of scholarly articles drawn from databases such as Google Scholar, Elsevier, IEEEX Xplore, and ACM Digital Library, using artificial intelligence, art direction, and filmmaking as vocabulary for search. It aims to outline the benefits of integration of AI in art direction pedagogy in film education. Also, it highlights the challenges and potential solutions of the integration of AI in art direction pedagogy in film education. The findings of this review show that AI enhances set design and simulates lighting in the creation of film worlds. Also, AI has the ability to create three-dimensional (3D) and realistic complex props rapidly. In addition, AI has the ability to analyze and generate design renderings in costume design and make-up efficiently. Notwithstanding, it brings to the fore that the integration of AI in teaching art direction poses some challenges such as awareness and understanding of tools, as well as ethical implications to data privacy and algorithmic bias. The paper recommends that educational institutions offering film art direction curricula should embrace this technology and equip teachers with the necessary training and support to teach them effectively. Also, the institutions must take measures to control ethical issues and data-driven policies.

Issues of the Development of Uzbek Cinema Art

This scientific article analyzes the issues of the development of modern Uzbek cinema, studies their achievements and problems, makes the necessary suggestions and comments. In Uzbek art cinema, in the light of the current state of youth creativity, suggestions and comments will be made to eliminate existing problems.

Study on the aesthetic laws of VR digital media art on the reception of film art

Abstract To improve the level of film creation, pull up the technology of VR technology applied in film creation, enhance the aesthetic satisfaction of film viewers to film art, and promote the peaceful development of the film market. In this paper, we study the aesthetics of film art from the viewers’ evaluation of the film after the application of VR digital media art to film and the change of film expression in the film industry to summarize the aesthetic law of audience acceptance of film art. According to the study, 85.90% of the audiences are very fond of VR digital media movie art and are willing to go to the cinema to experience the audio-visual enjoyment of VR movies. 79.65% of the audiences think that VR digital application in movies enhances the impact of movie images and the aesthetic pleasure of watching movies. Among all the survey groups, the college student group has the highest love for the combination of VR technology and movies, at 92.60%. It can be seen that VR digital media art has won unanimous praise in the current movie market, and grasping the aesthetic rules of movie watchers can better create good movies that meet the aesthetic needs of the public, stimulate the vitality of the movie market, and enrich the spiritual and cultural life of the people.

Lucky Numbers and Greedy Ghosts: Lottery as Trope for the Singapore Dream

Abstract This article analyzes Singaporean films on the topic of the state-sponsored lottery as trope for the national dream, focusing on three different categories: popular films that link lottery winnings to the state’s promise of economic prosperity; hor-medy (horror/comedy) films that depict characters who are punished by the ghosts for greed; and art films that depict social inequalities in relation to unsuccessful efforts to attain the national dream. In doing so, it examines what Lee Kah-Wee refers to as the “relationship between morality and economics within the context of nation-building” with respect to Singaporean film. The convergence of cinematic treatment of lottery cultures between otherwise separate popular films, horror films, and arthouse films is a unique commonality in Singapore film. Also, films discussed in this paper from the late 1990s to 2013 reflect the ongoing centrality of lottery films in Singaporean cinema and the national imaginary.

Weather as cinema

This article analyzes weather as enabler of, and able to make, cinematic art. I begin by exploring philosophies of weather and air, and then look at early films where meteoro-logical phenomena receive acute attention alongside related media analyses. Afterwards I analyze two artworks, by Madge Evers and Anna Scime. Each was made by mush-rooms sporifying on receptive media, respectively paper and analog film. This article includes original interviews with both artists.I identify fresh ways of understanding cinema but also weatherly and fungal creativity. Analyzing such artworks, I also think about how artists can develop art practices able to galvanize instead of eviscerate futurity. Consequently, I not only investigate more-than-human creativity, but explore how cinema can facilitate instead of block ecological heal-ing.

A Comparative Analysis of “Sense of Music” and “Sense of Guilt” in Chinese and Western Films

The differences between Chinese and Western cultures result in systematic differences in the forms and styles of film art, the deep psychological patterns of a culture are more or less influenced by the society and ideology that gave birth to them. However, due to the natural environment, living conditions, especially the different forms of economic production and activities, people from different religious beliefs, different spiritual cores, different cultural development models. As a form of cultural presentation, Chinese and Western films show different ways of dealing with the same type of events, as well as different narrative philosophies. This paper analyzes the “Music culture” and “Guilt culture” in the image narrative strategy of Chinese and foreign films on this subject, to explain the source of the cultural differences.

Linguistic creativity and multimodal tropes in cinematic discourse

The present article explores the creative potential of language that is realized in cinematic discourse and is based on the case study of eight popular Soviet comedy films of the 1960s with the overall running time of 670 minutes. The choice of this period is determined by the sociohistorical relevance of the sixties in the development of Russian culture and cinematic art. The goals of this paper are to identify and categorize the verbal means that trigger the creation of cinematic tropes, and to define the transformations that these verbal means acquire as a result of their involvement into constructing cinematic figurativeness. To achieve these goals, a complex methodology has been elaborated. It includes three stages of analysis and rests on conceptions that have been recently developed in linguistics, film studies, and research on multimodality. According to research findings, cinematic figurativeness originates in two kinds of verbal means. Non-figurative verbal means (i.e. words used in their literal meanings; free word-combinations, etc.) and figurative verbal means (i.e. literary metaphors; idioms, etc.) are employed for the creation of three kinds of cinematic tropes: cinematic metonymies, cinematic metaphors, and cinematic irony. In the process of the formation of cinematic tropes, verbal units of both categories are transformed in a variety of ways: structurally, grammatically, semantically, and pragmatically. The investigation has revealed a dual or reverse character that linguistic creativity has in cinematic discourse: verbal units provide the creation of cinematic tropes and at the same time they themselves acquire certain innovative properties. The results could contribute to further studies of creativity in cinematic discourse as well as in other types of multimodal texts, including media, advertising, visual poetry, and electronic literature.

The history of the creation, formation and development of the Museum of Theater, Music and Cinema Arts of Ukraine

The authors analyzed the stages of creation, formation, development and modern activity of the Museum of Theater, Music and Cinema Arts of Ukraine, which is the only one in Ukraine in terms of its specialization. This museum has a history famous for its names and events. It is widely known in Ukraine and abroad for its permanent exhibitions and mobile exhibitions, created on unique exhibits from the history of theater, music, and cinema. Collected during its existence – since 1923 – a large and multifaceted collection of monuments from the history of the development of arts, which is constantly replenished with new materials, is the basis for scientific research, scientific advisory, expositional and exhibition work, a rich source for popularizing the achievements of the national theater, music and cinema. The article emphasizes that theater museums, film and music museums are an integral part of the development of world culture. They arose, developed and formed into a separate typological group of art museums. The uniqueness of each theater museum was determined by stationary expositions and temporary exhibitions, which were the main sphere of operation and a form of use and popularization of the processed funds. Reproducing the phenomena and events of the theatrical heritage, expositions and exhibitions visualized the most significant assets of both the past and modern theater and theater science in the language of museum exhibits. Research and analysis of the historical experience of exposition and exhibition activity of theater museums, film and music museums will be important for an objective assessment of the positive and negative consequences of the influence of national and cultural processes on their functioning and development. The challenges faced by theater museums, film museums and music museums in the course of their activities have common features and may vary depending on the specific situation and context. The article analyzes the typical problems and features that theater, film and music museums face in their activities. The article shows that these problems may differ for each specific theater museum depending on its size, financial resources, location and other factors. Their features may vary among theater, music, and film museums, depending on their resources, scale, and specialization. However, solutions to these challenges may include working with conservation professionals, attracting grants and sponsors, developing educational programs, and using new technologies to improve visitor audience engagement.

Everybody’s Gotta Learn Sometime

This video offers up a pedagogical reflection on teaching subjectivity, ambiguity, and textual analysis by illustrating two pieces of scholarship that I assign in my Intro to American Film History course – Greg Smith’s “It’s Just a Movie” and David Bordwell’s “The Art Cinema as Mode of Film Practice” – with Michel Gondry’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

Projecting Creative Processes: Art Films and Art Education in Post-war Britain

The relationship between film and art education has received little scholarly attention. This paper describes and discusses one instance in the long and multifaceted history of this relationship: the educational uses of nonfiction films about art and artists in post-Second World War Britain, known then invariably either as ‘films on art’ or ‘art films.’ As a new international genre (backed by UNESCO’s educational distribution schemes), it gained particular momentum in the UK with the Arts Council of Great Britain, a public body, set up after the war with a mission ‘to increase the accessibility of the fine arts.’ And one of the ways it did was via 16mm projection. Alongside building a substantial film library, in 1950 the Council, in collaboration with the British Film Institute (BFI), started a new mobile cinema scheme, the Art Film Tour, to directly engage with the nontheatrical cinema sector, especially its educational venues. By drawing on my research in the Arts Council Archive, I propose to adopt a ‘historical pragmatics’ perspective and to study the Art Film Tour’s media configuration as a dispositif (Kessler, 2018). In the 1950s, with an increasing number of art films dedicated to artists at work, art students encountered cinematic renderings of the creative process by renowned modern artists, such as Picasso, Henry Moore and Jackson Pollock. And therefore, I make a case for an inductive analysis of ‘showing making’ on screen and its implications within historicised art education contexts.

Color and composition under big data technology: the art of visual communication in film art

Abstract In modern film art design, there are different kinds of art requirements to be involved. These artistic requirements embody our profound national culture in modern film art, making the organic combination of art and culture, which in turn achieves the promotion of art and provides more excellent traits for the development of modern film visual communication. At the same time, modern film design draws on traditional art from five aspects: composition, perspective, image, color and allegory, and applies its advantages and strengths completely to the process of modern film art design. Among them, the most important is the modern color and composition design. To illustrate the art of visual communication in film art cannot be separated from color and composition. In this paper, we analyze the dynamic changes of higher-order aberrations of near-eye and ortho-eye groups over time, find the turning point of the dynamic changes of higher-order aberrations, and compare the differences between the dynamic changes of higher-order aberrations of the two groups by interaction analysis. By analyzing the application of modern color and composition design in film, it is concluded that the art effect of modern film is inseparable from the design elements, and the color and composition influence caused by the product of the combination of design elements for human senses.

Aldo Vergano, Umberto Barbaro and Devil’s Ravine: Italian filmmakers in early People’s Poland: 1948–56

This article traces and analyses the activities of Umberto Barbaro and Aldo Vergano in the People’s Republic of Poland during the late 1940s. It focuses on the production and reception of Czarci żleb (Devil’s Ravine) () in order to examine the extent to which the activities of the Italians were used by the Polish communist authorities for their own political ends. The article draws attention to the opinions formulated by both filmmakers and relevant critics in interviews about the relationship between film art and politics. This part of analysis is of crucial importance, as both Barbaro and Vergano came to Poland bearing the aura of artists who had been deprived of their jobs in Italy for political reasons. The article investigates how far these filmmakers were instrumentalized for political purposes by the Polish communist authorities.