Biographical Films Research Articles

Learning Politics through Entertainment: Exploring the Effects of Biographical Films on Political Learning and Attitude Toward Female Politicians

ABSTRACT This study examined the effects of semi-fictional biographical political films on political learning and attitude change in audiences of fictionalized accounts of female politicians. Data from 310 participants indicated that content-related political learning significantly increased and attitude toward female politicians positively changed after exposure. A conceptual model of the political entertainment effects indicated that initial political learning transported the audience into the biographical narrative, which led to greater enjoyment, as well as learning gain and a positive attitude toward female politicians. Our findings provide important clarification to existing research and offer both theoretical, methodological, and practical implications.

The Representations of Stephen Hawking in the Biographical Movies

This article aims to analyze two biographical films of Stephen Hawking in order to identify the representations of the scientist present in cinematographic works. For this, the investigation was based on film analysis and categorization following the main representations identified in the literature. The analysis identified the most common representations present in the scenes and sequences in which the protagonist acted, taking into account the context for certain actions of the scientist. The results indicated that the analyzed works, which belong to a biographical genre, are also bound to permeate stereotypes that contribute to a distorted view of the scientist and scientific work, just as it happens in other cinematic genres.

La pintura bajo el signo del Biopic

When Ricciotto Canudo asserted: “We need Cinema in order to create the total art towards which all the others, since the beginning, have tended. The Seventh Art reconciles all others in this way”, everyone did not know to what extent these words would transcend. Thereby, cinema is always interested in a lot of themes, and one of them is art and artists, for this reason, it is not surprising then that a large number of painters have had a biopic, and all this had a great acceptance by the general public, because what until that moment was in the history books, could now be visualized through the big screen.However, artworks are not, in principle, too attractive material to elaborate a narrative so, it is common that biographical films about these great creators to pay attention to their mood swings, their often difficult character and the historical context in which they moved. So that, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, El Greco, Caravaggio, Vermeer, Rembrandt, Goya, Turner, Renoir, Van Gogh, Rodin, Modigliani, Dalí, Picasso, Frida Kalho or Pollock and their respective films will be studied and analyzed in this investigation. Thus, we are able to recognize and bring the talent of each of them, and the circumstances in which some of his most famous works were developed.

БИНАРНАЯ ОППОЗИЦИЯ «ВЛАСТЬ/НАРОД» В ИСТОРИКО-БИОГРАФИЧЕСКОМ КИНЕМАТОГРАФЕ С. ЭЙЗЕНШТЕЙНА

This article is devoted to the study of the binary opposition «power/people» in Soviet historical and biographical films. The research material is S. Eisenstein’s iconic films Alexander Nevsky (1938) and Ivan the Terrible (1944). Having analyzed the development and transformation of the binary opposition «power/people» in Eisenstein's historical and biographical films in terms of plot, character system and composition, the author came to the following conclusions: characters of formal authority are often negatively marked. The image of the people is represented by an indivisible monolith. The binary opposition «power/people» is removed by the introduction of a mediator, the character which becomes a key one in films. In the film Alexander Nevsky, the image of the cultural hero, the title character, removes the conflict between the opposing sides: the image of the prince is opposed to the image of the official power and absorbs the features of the people's ruler. The image of the people, when interacting with the image of a cultural hero, becomes an ambivalent carrier of both power and heroic traits. In the film Ivan the Terrible, the development of the medial image of the tsar leads to the fact that he himself becomes the embodiment of absolute power, occupying the «powerful» side of the opposition. Thus, the binary opposition is replaced by the ambivalence of the ruler. The author concludes that the development of the opposition «power/people» in the historical and biographical cinema of the Stalinist time is representative of its period and demonstrates strengthening of the imperial discourse of Soviet ideology and the role of the ruler's personality.

Dobrenko , Evgeny Late Stalinism: The Aesthetics of Politics by Jesse M. Savage (review)

REVIEWS 165 but essential for understanding the choices faced by translators into Russian and the novel solutions developed by Ivanov. An overview of the lyric poets of Lesbos sets Alcaeus and Sappho in their literary, historical and linguistic context. Finally, drawing on his earlier article of 2009, Zav´ialov notes that later translators tended to balance Ivanov’s free approach with Veresaev’s more literal method. Zav´ialov’s detailed commentaries to Ivanov’s introduction and translations (pp. 256–378) are full of interesting information and perceptive insights. As well as noting bibliographic details of the translations and Greek originals, the metre of the originals and the textological sources of reconstructed versions (Hunt, Wilamowitz), he offers historical and literary information on the texts and previous translations, notes significant divergences from the originals (such as Ivanov’s introduction of Christian motifs) and cites contemporary reviewers’ comments and current academic opinions. In cases where fuller versions of the Greek text have subsequently come to light, he provides his own prose translations. Insum,thismilestoneeditionisatremendousachievement.Aswellascasting new light on Ivanov’s poetics and the development of Russian versification, it makes an important contribution to two important fields of growing interest: translation studies and the reception of classical antiquity. UCL SSEES Pamela Davidson Dobrenko, Evgeny. Late Stalinism: The Aesthetics of Politics. Translated by Jesse M. Savage. Yale University Press, New Haven, CT and London, 2020. ix + 574 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $65.00: £45.00. Soviet cultural history is a steadily evolving field, its main challenge to understand the role of culture in the Stalinist regime’s social, political and ideological endeavours. As Evgeny Dobrenko asserts in his monumental Late Stalinism: The Aesthetics of Politics, culture is the most important subject for the era’s critical biographers because it is ‘essentially the only means of constructing reality, of the regime’s production and the masses’ consumption of its own image and legitimacy’ (p. 18). The goal of his book is thus to replace conventional historical analysis of post-war Stalinism with an analysis of cultural production that helped the party and its leaders to ingrain political ideas into the consciousness of the masses through textualization and narrativization. Following Frank Ankersmit’s theory of the aesthetic perspective in the political sphere and Boris Groys’s concept of the Gesamtkunstwerk of Stalinism, Dobrenko suggests that before the SEER, 99, 1, JANUARY 2021 166 regime’s most urgent ideas of the 1940–50s, such as nation-building and the Soviet state’s global leadership in the ‘struggle for peace’, were interiorized by the terrorized, impoverished and exhausted population, they could become neither a part, nor a motive of political action by the Soviet government. This is why his comprehensive and nuanced interpretation of political speeches and Pravda editorials, post-war historical and biographical films, plays produced to Stalin’s direct orders, operas and propagandistic verses, focuses on totalitarian ideologemes and how they pass from the newspaper page into a work of fiction, drama, poetry or cinema, and ultimately to the hearts and minds of the people. The most alluring feature of Late Stalinism is its ability to demonstrate how the mechanism of ‘the aestheticization of politics’ functions on the level of text —the‘variousmodiandtropesthatareoftenignored’butthatare,nevertheless, the key factors of the regime’s political representation (p. 23). Dobrenko’s convincing assessment of the shift in Stalin’s self-perception after World War Two (from Lenin’s heir to the dictator who no longer needs to affirm his legitimacy, and from a popular leader to a god-like head of state with a habit of addressing himself in the third person) leads to his discovery of the key figures inthepost-war‘politicaltropology’:synecdoche,whichsupersedesallegory,and metonymy, which replaces historical metaphor (pp. 23, 26). Dobrenko relies on these tropes when conducting his shrewd narratological analysis of literature about the Siege of Leningrad, the second part of Sergei Eizenshtein’s Ivan the Terrible, Mikhail Chiaureli’s The Vow, the party leadership’s response to Vano Muradeli’s opera, The Great Friendship, Ivan Pyr´ev’s film, Tale of the Siberian Land and Osip Chernii’s novel, Snegin’s Opera. His conclusions are edifying: not only was Stalinist reliance on synecdoche and...

Filmowe portrety Stanisława Siedleckiego (1912–2002) na tle Svalbardu. Fragmenty wizualnej historii nauki

Stanisław Siedlecki’s (1912–2002) Film Portraits against the Backdrop of Svalbard. Vignettes from the Visual History of Science The article offers a new perspective on Stanisław Siedlecki’s biography through visual history, with a particular emphasis on film history. The connections between Siedlecki’s life and the cinema can be grouped in three sections: 1. films starring Siedlecki, 2. films by Siedlecki and 3. films about Siedlecki. The film Do Ziemi Torella (To Torell Land) represents the pre-war period; the post-war period is marked by Siedlecki’s collaboration with Jarosław Brzozowcki on the making of Skroplone Powietrze (Liquefied Air) and Wieliczka – both from 1946. In the International Geophysical Year 1957/1958, Siedlecki led the Polish polar expedition, during which the visual material was created. He appeared in all three ‘roles’ (as a co-writer, protagonist, and consultant) in Jarosław Brzozowski’s film W Zatoce Białych Niedźwiedzi (In the Polar Bear Bay). He consulted polar films until the early 1990s. There are also two film biographies (portraits) of Siedlecki by Wanda Rollna and Iwona Bartólewska. The analysis of this material has also shed new light on the visual narration of the Polish polar expeditions in the 20th century.

“Theatricals of Day”: Emily Dickinson and Nineteenth-Century American Popular Culture by Sandra Runzo

Reviewed by: “Theatricals of Day”: Emily Dickinson and Nineteenth-Century American Popular Culture by Sandra Runzo Elizabeth Hewitt “Theatricals of Day”: Emily Dickinson and Nineteenth-Century American Popular Culture. By Sandra Runzo. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2019. viii + 255 pp. $27.95. With the possible exception of Edgar Allan Poe, Emily Dickinson is the American artist most beloved and fetishized by contemporary popular culture. Her image and poetry are emblazoned on countless T-shirts, tote bags, and necklaces. Her life has been reimagined in novels, plays, movies, and recently in the Apple TV+ television series Dickinson. That show, and other recent biographical films about Dickinson, have set out to transform the old stereotype of the poet as a frigid hermit into a passionate and vibrant member of her community. This rewriting has also been the central project of Dickinson scholarship over the last three decades, and Sandra Runzo’s work is a crucial part of this endeavor. “Theatricals of Day” constitutes a major project to document Dickinson’s consumption of “popular entertainments of her time” and to calibrate how this popular media manifested itself in her poetry (1). Runzo begins with P. T. Barnum’s American Museum, focusing particularly on the exhibits Barnum marketed as “What Is It?” She calls particular attention to Joice Heth, the supposedly 161-year-old enslaved woman and nursemaid to George Washington, and to William Henry Johnson, the man Barnum marketed [End Page 172] as a cross between human and orangutan. Runzo does not claim that we find allusions to either Heth or Johnson specifically but suggests instead that Dickinson’s poetry resembles the circus by exhibiting a range of personae and experiences that challenge easy classification. Her verse presents “spectacle and conundrum” (26). But unlike Barnum, Dickinson does not exploit these ambiguous identities through her poetry—she identifies with them and “explore[s] her affiliation with the alien and fantastical” (44). Runzo follows a similar kind of analogic analysis in the next three chapters. She argues that we can see evidence of Dickinson’s appreciation for the Hutchinson Family Singers, an extremely popular antebellum singing group, not only because she owned sheet music of their songs but also because of other kinds of thematic affinities: “prominent references to graves, liberty, captivity, diminutiveness, desolation, yearning, and betrayal” (55). Similarly, the influence of minstrel songs on Dickinson is indicated by the elements of minstrelsy—song, dance, masquerade, riddles, satire—found in abundance in her poetry. And we can see the importance of Harriet Prescott Spofford’s short story “Circumstance” by observing the frequency with which Dickinson’s poetry narrates stories of crisis similar to that in Spofford’s tale: “a speaker encounters a demon, a monster, a goblin, a ghost . . . [and] the ghastly and the familiar live side-by-side” (127–28). Runzo meticulously works through Dickinson’s corpus to identify what is indisputably true: Dickinson’s poetry is laced with allusions to popular entertainments. But I did find myself less persuaded by some of the more sweeping claims made by the book, which threaten an overdetermined reading of the very influences Runzo skillfully uncovers. She certainly proves that the Hutchinson Family Singers influenced Dickinson’s work, but I am less persuaded that what Dickinson appreciated about their music was the “rebellious energy” and “threat of tumult” (63). While I appreciate Runzo’s desire to push back against scholarship that reads Dickinson’s poetry as racist or apolitical, the fact that Dickinson owned sheet music by the Hutchinsons does not, for me, “evince [Dickinson’s] interest in the musical voices of the abolitionist movement” (68). They were extremely popular musicians, so it is not surprising that an avid sheet music collector like Dickinson would own their music. And, as Runzo says, her collection did not include the Hutchinson’s most celebrated abolitionist song, “Get Off the Track.” Runzo argues on behalf of Dickinson’s anti-racism because she owns sheet music for “Old Dan Tucker” and several other antebellum minstrelsy songs. I am unsure why, however, Runzo reads Dickinson’s ownership of the Hutchinson sheet music as approbation of their reformist politics but offers a very different account of Dickinson’s ownership of minstrel music...

PEMAKNAAN RASISME DALAM FILM (ANALISIS RESEPSI FILM GREEN BOOK)

As a mass communication media, film can make an impact to the audience such as psychological and social impacts. Green Book is a biographical film with the genre of comedy-drama, and directed by Peter Farrelly. This film tells the relationship of mutualism between talented black pianist Dr.Donald Shirley with his driver as well as bodyguard named Tony Vallelonga. This study uses a descriptive qualitative research method with the Stuart Hall reception analysis approach. Reception analysis considers the audience can be a culture agent that means capable of producing meaning from the various discourses offered by a media. The purpose of this study is to determine the position of the audience according to Stuart Hall's three reading positions in interpreting racism in the green book film. The three positions are dominant hegemony position, negotiation position, and opposition position. This research shows that the reading of the audience towards racism in the Green Book film is interpreted differently. Of the eight scenes selected, the informant's reading position is dominated by the opposition's position. But in some scenes, there are also informants who are in a negotiating position and few who are in a dominant hegemony position.

In the Shoes of Dave Blase: Cycling, Cinema, and Social Class in Peter Yates’ Breaking Away

Peter Yates’ Breaking Away (1979) is a riveting example of sport biopic. Indeed, Yates’ film focuses on the story of Dave Blase, a Hoosier who competed in the Little 500 cycling race during his time at Indiana University. By completing 139 of the 200 laps by himself, the student brought the victory to his fraternity, the Phi Kappa Psi. Of course, if the film respects the location – the shooting was entirely conducted in Bloomington – it changes the time period by fifteen years, switching from 1962 to 1978. More central to our study, this biopic immerses the spectator back in the rural universe of 1970s’ America, with a particular emphasis on the pervasive violence, real and symbolic, between classes – especially those between the towners or ‘cutters’ and the elite studying at Indiana University. By replacing this biographical film in its political context, by underscoring its cultural universe and the social values on its era, this article strives to decipher – beyond the simple aesthetic considerations – the socio-historical significance of cycling.

A Hero for All Seasons: Pride of the Yankees, Brian’s Song, and the Athlete as Christ-Figure

This study examines Pride of the Yankees and Brian’s Song, two biographical sports films tracing the stories of baseball legend Lou Gehrig and 1960s back up NFL running back Brian Piccolo. The paper argues that the two films are fundamentally the same narrative, a Christ-figure story in which the too young death of the sports hero rhetorically resolves a social tension of the time. As portrayed in the films, Gehrig’s death offers a vision of American soldiers as transcendent heroes created on baseball diamonds while Piccolo’s story presents a vision of America as transcending the pollution of racism that has perpetually clouded its social order. Each film creates a rhetoric of transcendence from a dramatistic reconstruction of the basic data of the athlete’s life.

Medialny wizerunek osoby z autyzmem kreowany w filmach

Cel badań. Celem badań było opisanie kreowanego we współczesnych filmach wizerunku osób z zaburzeniami ze spektrum autyzmu, a także określenie obszaru filmowej stygmatyzacji bohaterów z autyzmem oraz ich kulturowej i społecznej dyslokacji.
 Metoda badań. Badaniom poddane zostały cztery dzieła: film dokumentalny pt. Komunia (Zamecka, 2008), dramat obyczajowy pt. Czarny balonik (Down, 2008), film biograficzny pt. Temple Grandin (Jackson, 2010) oraz komedia pt. W kosmosie nie ma uczuć (Öhman, 2010). Przy doborze utworów uwzględniono odmienność gatunkową, zróżnicowanie wiekowe bohaterówz autyzmem i poziom ich psychospołecznego funkcjonowania, a także kraj produkcji filmu.W celu realizacji badań zastosowano metodę jakościowej analizy treści.
 Wyniki badań. Analiza treści filmów dowiodła, że kreują one wizerunek osób z autyzmem uwypuklający ich anormatywność – intensyfikują zarówno brak cech rozwojowo normatywnych, jak również nadzwyczajne zdolności i umiejętności tych osób. W zakresie samorealizacji społeczno-kulturowej bohaterzy podejmują różnorodne aktywności, które w konfrontacjiz neurotypowym otoczeniem eksponują deficyty poznawcze i społeczne, jak również szczególny poziom umiejętności matematycznych i konstrukcyjnych. Ekspozycja niedoborów i nadmiarów behawioralnych i społecznych ukazuje pejoratywny obraz bohaterów z zaburzeniami ze spektrum autyzmu.
 Wnioski. Filmy poddane analizie treści kreują wizerunek osób z autyzmem eksponujący ich atypowość, a tym samym stygmatyzujący, przedstawiając je jako osoby poszkodowane, które wymagają stałej opieki lub osoby genialne bądź dziwaczne. Specyfika funkcjonowania filmowych bohaterów stanowi problem dla społeczności, w której żyją – osoby neurotypowe wykazują dezaprobatę i brak zrozumienia wobec zachowania wynikającego z zaburzeń ze spektrum autyzmu.

Informal Effect of The Biographical Film on The Views of Prospective Science Teachers on Nature of Science

In this study, the effects of a documentary and a biographical film, which was watched in an informal environment, on the prospective science teachers’ nature of science (NOS) views were examined. The study conducted according to the mixed research methodology. The data were obtained through the open-ended questionnaire prepared by considering the consensus aspects of the NOS. The participants were shown a documentary-style biographical film about a cross-section of the life of a famous scientist. The findings show that there are changes in the participants' views on some of the consensus aspects of the nature of science. Some of these were in the desired direction, but the retention was weak. Also, some of the changes are in an undesirable direction such as to create a science myth. According to the results, it can be thought that films adapted from the history of science can be used to teach the nature of science. Since films produced for different purposes such as art and entertainment may cause problems in teaching the nature of science, it can be suggested to use such films in a more structured learning environment.

What Messages a Documentary and Biographical Film Give About the Nature of Science to Prospective Science Teachers?

In this study, the experience of prospective science teachers, who watched a cinema film adapted from the life story of a well-known scientist for the first time in an informal environment, was examined. Answers of two questions were sought in the study; (1) what aspects of the nature of science did the prospective science teachers experience through which scenario elements of the film? (2) how do pre-service teachers interpret these experiences? In this study, being conducted based on hermeneutic phenomenology design; the data were collected through focus group interviews with semi-structured questions prepared by taking into consideration the aspects of the nature of science. Participants were 29 (23 girls, 6 boys) prospective science teachers. The collected data were analyzed by qualitative methods. The findings showed that the participants experience and interpret some aspects of the nature of science through specific scenario elements (representations). It was determined that participants highlighted certain sections (e.g. process of discovery, social reaction) in the story. It was observed that the participants correlated these sections with the nature of science in a positive or negative way and interpret them. The results show that these kinds of films adopted from history of science, which are recommended in the literature, can give positive messages about the nature of science. In addition, it was observed that the film caused misconceptions about the nature of science, especially due to the scenario. Therefore, it can be said that such films produced for different purposes may lead to some problems in the teaching of the nature of science. From this point of view, even if such films are used, it is obvious that rather than an informal environment, it is necessary to integrate these films into a more structured learning environment where inappropriate messages given by the film can be seen critically.

A Cross-Border Life and Legacy: Zheng Lücheng

Zheng Lücheng (1914–1976) is famed in China as the composer of “March of the People’s Liberation Army” (C. Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun jinxingqu). Less well known, but of more interest to readers of this paper, is his “March of the [North Korean] People’s Army” (K. Inmin’gun haengjin kok), the official army march of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea until the late 1950s. Zheng was a transnational musician, crossing the shifting borders of Korea, Manchuria and China during turbulent years of war. Zheng’s is a fascinating story of revolution, migration, music, romance and diplomacy at a crux in East Asian history. In the 1930s, Zheng left southern Korea to join anti-Japanese forces in China; he studied and then worked in the Lu Xun Arts School in Yan’an—the crucible of Maoist cultural policy; he married a Han Chinese cadre; returned to North Korea to compose for the army, establish orchestras and conservatoires; was repatriated to China and almost immediately returned to Pyongyang with the Chinese forces. Finally, he returned for good to China as an army composer. A literate and wellconnected musician, he was adept at negotiating the power of nation states. Since Zheng’s death in 1976, his legacy has continued to cross borders. He is celebrated in a North Korean biographical film, The Musician Zheng Lücheng (K. Ŭmakka Chŏng Ryulsŏng; 1992) and in a Chinese film Going towards the Sun (C. Zouxiang taiyang; 2005). He is commemorated in exhibition halls, memorials and festivals in both China and in his birthplace in Kwangju, South Korea. Zheng’s story and music evoke nationalist sentiment, and at the same time are used in cultural diplomacy between these states. Drawing on interviews, archival documents and more recent materials, this examination of Zheng, who played such a central part in the creation of East Asian musical modernity in the mid-twentieth century, illustrates a fascinating interaction of nationalism, internationalism and, now, soft power.

Cinematic Equivalence in Subtitling: A Case Study of the Biographical Drama Forever Enthralled

We propose in this paper a conceptual model of how equivalence may be achieved in subtitling to allow the target language viewers the opportunity to enjoy a comparable cinematic experience as that enjoyed by the source language viewers. We follow Brock’s (2015) adaptation of Goffman’s (1981) participation framework in communication and take Nida’s (1964) Dynamic Equivalence as the point of departure to propose Cinematic Equivalence as the conceptual model as well as the aim of film subtitling. This model is illustrated by examining the English subtitles of a Chinese biographical film called Forever Enthralled (?????). Based on our conceptual model, we make suggestions for subtitling training and practice.

A Study on the Characteristics of the 1970s in Korean Biographical Film

A Study on the Characteristics of the 1970s in Korean Biographical Film

„Eine Explosion der Sprache.“ Zur Filmbiografie der taubblinden Marie Heurtin (1885–1921)

In 2015, Jean-Pierre Améris brought the life of Marie Heurtin (1885–1921), a deaf-blind French woman, on the big screen. Améris’ biographical film tells the story of a girl who first developed an understanding of linguistic signs and communication at the age of ten. Focusing both on the film’s aesthetic-narrative level and its medical-historical dimension, this article aims to delineate the potential of films as an aesthetic mass medium to convey notions of deafblindness to a general public; beyond that, I will analyze and discuss the views on deafblindness in children that become apparent in the context of Heurtin’s biography.

More than Ready for Her Close-Up: Harriet Tubman on Screen

More than Ready for Her Close-Up: Harriet Tubman on Screen Catherine Clinton Gregory Allen Howard and Kasi Lemmons, Harriet, directed by Kasi Lemmons. Focus Films, 2019. 125 minutes. The biopic Harriet, directed by Kasi Lemmons with Cynthia Erivo in the title role, was a box office hit in 2019 and earned 35 award nominations, including two in the Oscar categories: best song and best actress. The story of the life of Harriet Tubman, an American hero and legendary conductor on the Underground Railroad, did not become the focus of a feature film well into the twenty-first century. Kellie Carter Jackson, writing in 2014 about the state of black actors and filmmaking, critiqued the film Glory (1989), commenting, “there is hardly a black woman present in the film—an omission that is all the more peculiar when one considers that Harriet Tubman served as a spy during the war and witnessed the assault on Fort Wagner that is portrayed in the film.”1 She goes on to complain: ‘How is it possible to have one of the most famous black women abolitionists in American history operating in the same space as black soldiers with no mention of her, let alone a cameo? Furthermore, how is it possible that there is no biographical film on Harriet Tubman?”2 Five years later, whether scholars and biographers agree with the liberties taken by this film, a virtuoso cinematic performance has appeared to meet this challenge. Film projects as well as reflects transformative values. The visual representations of black women have been shaped by diverse dynamics, with racism and sexism as overpowering influences. Thus, the impact of media, and particularly film, seems a significant opportunity to reconfigure unidimensional perspectives on black womanhood within mainstream U.S. culture. Historical epics with black women as lead actors in commercial features are a relatively recent development. The highest-profile movie with the most potential for meaningful impact continues to be the “biopic,” as screen portraits/biographical films are affectionately called. Many of us have worked long and hard in the archives, and in classrooms, to try to convey a sense of time and place for our readers, for our students—for our own selves. We seek portraits by filmmakers to create compelling visions [End Page 253] of the past for today’s audiences. The concept of “the representation of history and our thought about it in visual images and filmic discourse” was discussed by Hayden White in response to Robert Rosenstone’s notion of “really putting history onto film,” in an American Historical Review forum in 1988.3 As French film scholar Joanny Moulin explains, White coined the concept of “historio-photy,” defined as “‘the representation of history in verbal images and written discourse . . . in contradistinction with ‘historiography’.”4 White went on to ponder whether it was possible to ‘translate’ a given written account of history into a visual-auditory equivalent without [emphasis added] significant loss of content. By the 1980s, scholars heatedly debated the utility of film as “texte.” Rosenstone, among others, bemoaned the failure of the historical profession to engage an audience without visual material. He argued film “could allow narrative history to recapture the power it once had when it was more deeply rooted in the literary imagination.”5 Rosenstone took his own leap of faith when his biography of John Reed (Romantic Revolutionary, 1975) became the basis for the Academy Award winning Reds (1981), a film on which he consulted for years to bring his material to the screen. But still the focus remained on great men, great moments—and above all white, bankable characters. Joshua Clover suggests: “It is a well-known fact among cinephiles and people of taste that the biopic is an abject sort of entertainment, ruled by clichés and following a narrative arc more rigid than Calvinism.”6 Even if the Hollywood establishment seemed indifferent to black women’s potential as protagonists for commercial film, some consideration remained for their suitability for “biopics.”7 Projects would have to focus on exceptional, emblematic African American women. The popularity of black music within 1960s American culture, primed an audience for portraits of African American musical performers. In 1972...

Searching for Woody Guthrie: A Personal Exploration of the Folk Singer, His Music, and His Politics by Ron Briley

Reviewed by: Searching for Woody Guthrie: A Personal Exploration of the Folk Singer, His Music, and His Politics by Ron Briley Jason Mellard Searching for Woody Guthrie: A Personal Exploration of the Folk Singer, His Music, and His Politics. By Ron Briley. (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2020. Pp. 388. Photographs, notes, bibliography, index.) On the 1997 album Corazón, Steve Earle mourned the state of the world with a song addressed to one of his forebears: "Come Back, Woody Guthrie." Ron Briley's Searching for Woody Guthrie does similar work but goes Earle one further, manifesting the Popular Front songwriter as a continuing presence in our moment, an artist whose life and songs preserve what Briley terms an indigenous American radicalism. Briley does not write a straightforward biography, but instead combines original research in the Woody Guthrie Archives with a personal and impressionistic exploration of the parallels between Guthrie's experiences as an Okie migrant and Briley's own working-class upbringing in the Texas Panhandle town of Childress. This is by no means a solipsistic gesture; it provides context for Guthrie's political and artistic choices, a testament that roots his radicalism, often treated as exceptional, in the experience of working people in the American Southwest. Briley centers the book on the contrast between the anodyne Guthrie of public memory and the radical Guthrie of history. He sets this theme with [End Page 237] an initial chapter on Hal Ashby's 1976 biographical film Bound for Glory, which portrayed Guthrie as an exemplar of populist patriotism rather than as a radical with politics forged in alliance with the Depression-era Communist Party. Briley's narrative then unfolds through thematic sections related to Guthrie's personal biography, journalism and activism, iconic songs, and larger legacy, always interspersed with elements of Briley's own experiences and political education. The portrait of Guthrie that emerges is a rich and textured one. Briley frames well Guthrie's engagement with Christianity, his use of the romantic outlaw figure, his antifascist rhetoric, and the evolution of his ideas on race. Guthrie's deep faith in labor organization threads through all these topics in each chapter of his life. It goes beyond the bread-and-butter issues of wages and working conditions to his envisioning a world built anew through union solidarity. Briley wrestles, too, with those places where Guthrie fell short, especially the reality of his fraught personal relations with women and family despite his abstract politics of equality and solidarity. Post-war retrenchment and McCarthyism, paired with Guthrie's worsening health, resulted in a poignant denouement to Woody's life. Even so, Guthrie lived to see his torch taken up by the young activists of the 1960s, and Briley spends a later chapter fruitfully exploring aspects of Guthrie's legacy represented by his son Arlo Guthrie, Bob Dylan, and Bruce Springsteen. These artists maintained Guthrie's self-declared "commonism" as a living political concern. Briley's foregrounding of the ways that Guthrie's politics echo in his own experience make this book, in its own way, another link in that same chain. The book is a long one, and the author might have neatly folded the chapters devoted to the individual albums Dust Bowl Ballads, Struggle, and the understudied Ballads of Sacco and Vanzetti into the biographical or thematic chapters without losing much analytically. But Woody Guthrie is an inexhaustible subject, and each page here has something not only for Guthrie enthusiasts, but also for scholars of the Great Depression, World War II, labor history, and the relationship between popular music and social movements. Searching for Woody Guthrie explores the man and his art in vivid terms, and the book's personal voice distinguishes it in Guthrie scholarship. In the process, Briley also demonstrates how artists such as Guthrie, who chronicle historic moments, participate in our discipline after a fashion. "As a historian," Briley concludes, "Woody reminds progressive citizens of a radical tradition upon which they might draw in the contemporary fight for social justice. Woody provides us with an example of a usable past" (307). Roll on Woody, roll on. [End Page 238] Jason Mellard Texas State University Copyright © 2020 The Texas...

Cinema e pintura em diálogo

Being the cinema, heir of painting, among other arts, it is natural that these two forms of representation have been theorized either by researchers in the field of film studies (Aumont, 2004), visual arts (Manovich, 2005), by filmmakers (Eisenstein, Godard...). Much of this theorization has had the object of studying biographical films of painters (cf. the work organized by Thivat, 2011). The question of the dialogue between cinema and painting has been posed by Queiroz (2012) ; by Nunes (2014). However, if we consider the example of the film Le Mystère Picasso, although Henri-George Clouzot filmed Picasso in the creative act, as spectators we do not have access to the genesis of the creative process, we only see the gestures and features of Picasso. This is, the cinema has functioned as a technology of recording, memory and digital composition, as a translator of the creative process of a work of art. Hence, as part of the research project “Cinema and painting in dialogue”, we intend to question film writing (cinematographic editing) as “translator” of the genesis of the creative process of a work of art; to establish, through filmic writing, the process of creating a work of art: drawing, painting, sculpture... And bringing cinema and painting closer together in the dialogical process of receiving and appropriating the work by the public.