Cinema Screen Research Articles

СULTURAL LIFE OF ZAPORIZHZHIA OBLAST SHOWN IN THE LOCAL MEDIA DURING THE LATE STALINISM

Based on the analysis of modern historiography, resources from oblast periodicals and archival documents, the article reveals media methods of influence on the consciousness of Zaporizhzhia people through the prism of the cultural life of the region in the late Stalinism period. Using the approach of generalisation, the author characterises the activity of the most fundamental civil and cultural institutions in the oblast. With the use of the benchmarking method, it was possible to identify similarities and differences of the cultural scene in the regional towns and villages. During the research, the author reveals the direct influence and control of the Soviet authorities on media aimed at undertaking the manipulative actions with the civil consciousness. The article proves that propaganda of government commitments and interests among the population reflected in press, literature, on cinema screens, as well as in the radio programmes. The Soviet power, applying the function of media, facilitated the creation of positive «virtual» reality which was quite different from the every-day life of the post-war period. Furthermore, the author attempts to show that covering the information in media regarding the activity of cultural institutions, organisation and conduction of pertinent events used to oblige population to choose options for rest suggested by the government. Besides, the research results demonstrate distinguished traits of town and village cultural institutions functioning that can be explained by the underdeveloped infrastructure of the village one. The Party Control for the civil recreation used to spread across all age groups and population segments. The propagandist element that undertook influence on public opinion was widely applied to the work activity of cultural and educational institutions. Cultural life in Zaporizhzhia oblast during the 1945-53s was exposed to affection by media, supported by the Soviet authority, that resulted in support of the moral state of regional residents regarding the refurbishment of the economy and industrial sector although without considering personal encouragement.

Customer perspective by integrating Kano model and Quality Function Deployment method into Cinema XXI: A case study from Semarang City Indonesia

This research aims is to identify the needs and desires of Cinema XXI customers in Semarang. As the largest market leader and cinema network in Indonesia, Cinema XXI must have the best quality of service. The population in this study were respondents with criteria that had watched at least at three XXI theaters in the Semarang City. The sample selection uses a purposive sampling method and from questionnaires, 138 respondents met the criteria. By using the Kano Model and integrated into the Quality Function Deployment method, it can be concluded that the highest influence on the increase in satisfaction level is the attribute of the quality of the image display on the cinema screen. Whereas the highest influence on the decline in the level of customer satisfaction is the attribute of the use of polite language and easily understood by officers when explaining / providing information to customers. And attributes that service providers prioritize for improvement are cleanliness and comfort of toilets.

El sujeto bajo la piel:

Partiendo del uso que en ocasiones Slavoj Žižek hace de las Quince tesis sobre el Arte Contemporáneo de Badiou, el presente artículo se plantea la homología existente entre el acto verdaderamente ético y la operación sustractiva del arte moderno, como polos práctico y sensible de un mismo movimiento: el que confluye con la crítica de la ideología allí donde esta se toca con la acción. Tras describir los gestos de Bartleby y Malevich como operaciones (anti) ideológicas capaces de abrir un espacio donde “solo un lugar tendrá lugar”, ubicamos el papel de la pantalla de cine, entre la percepción y la imaginación, como moduladora del deseo y espacio para la interpelación. Tomando la violencia como hilo conductor, mostramos la posibilidad, frente al formalismo que acompaña al lacano-hegelianismo de Žižek, de dar cuenta de diferentes momentos en la historia de ese efecto pantalla. La comparación entre dos obras de Delacroix y Jeff Wall nos permitirá mostrar una mutación que envuelve y reubica a la pantalla explícita del cine.

Kahvehanelerin Kent Belleğindeki Yeri: İstanbul’daki Kahvehanelerin ve Belgrad’daki Kafanaların Karşılaştırmalı Analizi

Introduced by the Ottomans to Europe, coffeehouses have been adopted by almost all Balkan countries. Coffeehouses both in Turkey where they are known as kahvehanes and in the Balkans where they are known as kafanas have emerged as an extension of Ottoman culture while still maintaining their existence as part of daily life in today’s modern world. As both simple and complex representations of the realities of daily life, kahvehanes and kafanas had gone far beyond being just a public space to being the places that staged the first theatrical plays and made the first cinema screenings, as well as where marriages and business deals were arranged. Due to these characteristics, they are not just witness to the transformation of the cities where they are located, but have also assumed an active role in this process. The purpose of this study is to analyze the kahvehanes and kafanas as spaces with memories by considering their role in this framework by means of their social, functional, and spatial characteristics. The impact of the subjected collective memory is addressed in view of cities’ dynamic and rapid changes. In order to reveal the similar and distinctive aspects of this impact in different countries and societies, the study compares the kahvehanes in Istanbul and the kafanas in Belgrade as a significant part of the cultural heritage that has passed from one generation to another.

The Influence of Cinema Screen Colors on The Heart Rate and Blood Pressure among Students in the College of Fine Arts

The Influence of Cinema Screen Colors on The Heart Rate and Blood Pressure among Students in the College of Fine Arts

The Press, Society and the Coming of Sound to Birmingham

The arrival of sound on British cinema screens is perhaps more accurately described as the arrival of American sounds. Almost overnight, the sounds of American voices, accents, slang and vernacular became commonplace throughout the country. This article uses linguistic and social economic frameworks to explore the ways in which American sound films challenged the legitimacy and dominance of hegemonic forms of language within Britain. Taking the mainstream provincial press as a primary source, it discusses the ways in which the arrival of sound was seen as a nationalist threat to both industry and culture. The article uses Birmingham as a focal point and uncovers nuanced ways in which language was negotiated and deployed both by mainstream institutions as well as young people and the working classes. It argues that dominant social actors within British society – such as the press, the Church and educationists – saw talkies as almost invariably threatening, while marginalised social actors like children, teenagers and working-class Northern and Midland audiences were able to use the othered displacement of American talkies as a class-neutral space where their own social capital was bolstered.

Screened Live: Technologically Reconfiguring Notions of the Author

The dramatic tradition suggests, for the most part, a progressive relationship between author, performer, producer and audience, in which the author/s originates the playtext, the performers develop a production, and the producer presents the outcome to the public. The arrival of theatrical performance and the fine art exhibition on cinema screens worldwide, the phenomenon of ‘live relay’ or the ‘as live broadcast’ in the arts, challenges this familiar perception of the author/production/audience relationship. The emergence of screening live performances in cinemas has modulated the once-traditional dramaturgical interaction between text, production, and audience. The ‘live relay’ tests the very way we think about theatre and performance. With its destabilization of production and audience spatio-temporal locators, the ‘live relay’ disrupts the vocabulary of theatrical description and it inflects both ontological and epistemological attitudes to the theatre-viewing of the past, the theatre-making of the present, and the interactions thereof. The live relay, moreover, causes disturbances within what can be considered the authorial field. If postdramatic theatre shifts the dramaturgical valency from playwright as creative genius to director as auteur, then the mediaturgy of the ‘live relay’ renders both of these models redundant. This article examines the proposition that the live relay has given rise to new authorial voices and bodies, those of the cinematic director and the institution. These are bodies and voices that need to be accommodated within the mediated and intermedial paradigm of screening live performance in cinema.

Zoom Interview with Sungji Oh, October 24, 2020

Zoom Interview with Sungji Oh, October 24, 2020 Victoria Duckett (bio) and Sungji Oh victoria duckett (vd): Thank you, Sungji, for agreeing to this Zoom interview. I wanted to begin by asking what your role is at the Korean Film Archive.1 sungji oh (so): I've been working for the Korean Film Archive for a long time—for eighteen years. I began in 2002. I am currently head of the archive's cinematheque team. So my team works with cinema screenings and projects such as our Cinema on Wheels project. My team, the cinematheque team, is in charge of our two movie theaters. These screen two to three films every day, except Monday. My team consists of four curators for the theater programs (I am also one of these), three projectionists working in the projection booth, one theater manager, three people working in the ticket booth, as well as six people in the Cinema on Wheels project. Altogether, there are seventeen employees on my team. Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. The Korean Film Archive in Seoul, South Korea. vd: That is quite a lot, isn't it? so: Yes. We work across three theaters. The largest theater seats 326 people, but right now, due to COVID-19, we have only opened 100 seats for the public. The second largest theater has 156 seats, and the third theater has around 46 seats. We don't usually use this theater for screenings. It's for seminars and lectures—for small-sized events. vd: Am I correct in understanding that there's only one theater that is now open? The largest one? Did this open recently? so: Yes. The largest theater opened two weeks ago. It has been largely shut since the last week of February. It was opened briefly for one week in May. When we reopened on August 15, we had to close down again just a week or two later. This was due to government policy. The government set up the three-tier social distancing scheme in Korea, but we never had total lockdown. From time to time, we had to work from home every other day. This occurred when social distancing level reached tier 2. In these phases, we could access our computer from home, so I didn't have any difficulties when I worked from home. However, some of my colleagues working in the projection booth, ticket booth, museum information desk, and in the library had to be transferred temporarily [End Page 248] to other teams, such as the preservation and acquisition teams. Also, some people in charge of inspecting materials couldn't undertake some work when they couldn't come into the office. vd: When you opened the theater during these short periods, how did you respond to coronavirus? What did you do? so: We are a public institution, supervised by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism (we are not a national institution, but our budget comes from the Korean government), and so we follow the government's rules. As I just mentioned, we reduced seating in our theater from 326 seats to just 100. So there were two seats between viewers. Also, everybody here is wearing masks. When you enter the building, there is also a body temperature check. vd: Does one of your staff members have to check people's temperatures? so: Yes, but we use a body scanner, a mobile scanner, that tests whether you have a normal temperature or a fever. vd: Did you have many people come in May or June who had a high fever? so: No. But we didn't have a large audience. vd: Were people a little fearful of coming to the theater? so: Yes. vd: If I understand correctly, this means that you had to shift some of your programs online. so: Yes. My team had to shift to online programs. Even now, in these changed circumstances, we managed two programs. One program shows independent short films, and the other is focused on American presidential election programs. Currently the short films feature work by the Safdie brothers.2 vd: That's interesting. so: Yes, you can watch these eight wonderful documentaries online...

Радянський кінодетектив: історія створення та особливості жанру

The article is devoted to the issue of formation and development of the detective genre on the Soviet cinema screen. Detective is one of the favorite genres of the mass audience. It came from literature in the intriguing story of the American writer Edgar Allan Poe — “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” (1841). It is there that the author formulates the main features of the detective genre. The detective shows a person “strained to the limit” of his mental and physical capabilities. Another peculiarity of the detective is an appeal to the logical capabilities of the recipient. Cinema has turned its attention to the detective since its early years. The founder of this genre was the French director V. Jasset, who directed a series about detective Nick Carter in 1908-1909. “The Rumyantsev Case” (1955) is considered to be the first Soviet detective movie. Probably, this film laid the foundation of the Soviet detective film: psychologically in-depth image of the protagonist, that often weakened the plot, dramaturgical content of other characters, including negative, understanding and desire to support a missteped person, emphasized the moral aspect. The times of the “Khrushchev Thaw” especially accentuated the problem of choosing between the official law of society and the human individual conscience. In 1966, the film “Beware of the Car” was released. It was probably one of the latest outbreaks of the “thaw” era in a desperate desire to defend one’s dreams and ideals, to adjust the system by conscience. The end of the 1960s was marked by the coming of the so-called “Stagnation”. Cinematographers, like tightrope walkers, balance on a thin and sometimes dangerous line between the laws of the genre and the efforts of editors (they were also ideological censorship), because the Soviet detective had to not only entertain but also educate both aesthetically and morally, because no one is allowed to break the law, the thief will always be found and punished. Cinema, as it could, delighted its viewers with not frequent, but such desired detectives. In the late 1960s, purely Soviet detectives appeared: “The Master of the Taiga”, “Village Detective”, and their sequels. In the 1970s, everyone’s favorite series, “Investigations Held by ZnaToKi”; a trilogy about our Commissioner Maigret – Colonel Zorin (“The Return of Saint Luke”, “The Black Prince”, “The Colonel Zorin’s Hypothesis”), appeared on television. Ukrainian film studios also did its part in the development of the detective genre: “Born to a Revolution”, “The Meeting Place Cannot Be Changed”, “The Man in the Courtyard”, “Criminal Inspector”, “Inspector Losev”, “Criminal Investigation Weekdays”, “Vertical Race” and others. The Soviet film detective had its disadvantages, but it also had its advantages. There was not much blood, brutal killings, loud shootings, and breathtaking persecution. However, there were psychologically filled, interesting images with their history, life experience, faith in man, though a kind of naive, but sincere attempts to correct it, to help in difficulties.

Guido Models (Julieta Sans, 2015)

Reviewed by: Guido Models by Julieta Sans Alan Smyth (bio) Guido Models. Julieta Sans, 2015. Instituto Nacional de Cine y Artes Audiovisuales (INCAA) and Stigliani Mouriño. 68 mins. Since Argentina's informal sett lements known as villas miseria first appeared on cinema screens in the 1930s, filmmakers have primarily defined them by their relationship to violence, drugs, and criminal gangs. Guido Models, the award-winning debut film by Julieta Sans, sets about reimagining narratives of villas and broadening understandings of these complex spaces. The documentary follows Guido Fuentes, a Bolivian immigrant living in Villa 31, Argentina's largest unofficial neighborhood. A passionate and self-taught designer, Guido trains economically marginalized teens as catwalk models. The fashion shows he organizes despite a lack of state support celebrate and make visible in the most explicit of manners those who are otherwise shunned by mainstream society. Whereas contemporary documentaries generally portray fashion as a divisive force by critiquing the labor exploitation and dangerous beauty ideals driven by transnational clothing companies and Western consumerism, Sans explores its potential to build bridges between disparate socioeconomic, regional, and ethnic communities. The director ventures into the road-movie genre as she follows the titular mentor and his two most promising students, Delia Cáceres and Sonia León, across international borders to the city of Cochabamba, where they host a public show celebrating the work of Latin American immigrants. This positively unsensational portrayal of Guido and the young women he manages challenges stereotypes about the villa dweller. They are resourceful, resilient, and unrelenting in their quest to succeed against the odds. They are not helpless victims, nor are they used to serve the interests of any political movement, as has historically been the case when screening villas. Shots of elegant models posing in front of dilapidated shacks and recurring close-ups of their stilett o heels gracefully negotiating the muddy terrain of the villa convey dignity in the face of destitution. Such moments mark the emergence of Sans as a compelling voice in Argentine film, which is renowned for its strong social conscience. Sans observes, rather than speaks for, Delia and Sonia as they pursue social mobility amid a culture of machismo. Her fitt ing employment of music, [End Page 195] demonstrated by Alicia Villareal's rousing live performance of "Te quedó grande la yegua" [The mare was too big for you], touches on prevalent local and global debates about gender rights and violence toward women. References to the Bolivian and Paraguayan origins of villa residents reinforce major themes of international solidarity and social inclusion. Guido's creations, which include a beautiful gown based on the Bolivian flag, speak to the significant contribution of Latin American immigrants in a deeply fragmented Argentine society and reflect the protagonist's mantra "todo por la integración, 'no' a la discriminación, 'sí' a la inclusión" [all for integration, "no" to discrimination, "yes" to inclusion]. The Plaza de las Banderas, where the flags of the Americas are permanently at mast, becomes a symbolic setting for a final show that reinforces a sense of Latin American kinship and rejects the postcolonial hierarchies that villas have come to represent in Argentina, a country that has seen its Indigenous influence whitewashed by its European image. Despite Guido's positive message, however, the documentary's downbeat pace and somber tone circumvent the naïve implication that art is a sure-fire antidote to privation and social invisibility. Sans's use of direct cinema allows the disheartening realities of poverty to reveal themselves organically. Images of hardship never feel imposed, yet the overwhelming enormity of the concrete labyrinth often seems unsurmountable. A poignant final sequence filmed from the window of a train carriage underscores the uncertainty faced by villa communities, as a pensive-looking Guido gazes silently toward the sprawling shantytown to which he returns after his cross-border trip. Thereafter, Sans counterbalances this disillusionment with hopeful glimpses of the dressmaker in his home studio, an intimate world of colorful materials and sparkling sequins where an unwavering work ethic inevitably resurfaces despite the lack of opportunity he endures. Guido Models is a welcome and original film that diverges from standard discourses surrounding both...

The Eye, the Brain, the Screen – What Neuroscience Can Teach Film Theory

“I don’t believe that linguistics and psychoanalysis offer a great deal to the cinema. On the contrary, the biology of the brain – molecular biology – does.” Gilles DeleuzeModels of the brain are inextricably linked to the surrounding cultural episteme: whether it is viewed as a complex clockwork device, a computer, a self-regulating network or even a cinema screen, our understanding of neurophysiology has always relied on discourses and images taken from other fields. In turn, however, our knowledge of cerebral processes (such as sight for instance) has always, inevitably, affected the way that we approach artworks, literary texts and cultural artefacts.Based on this, this paper looks at how recent neuroscientific research on vision and cognition can help us better understand the processes inherent in film theory. Focussing mainly on the recently discovered concept of the mirror neuron but also citing synaesthesia and limbic perceptual processing, I suggest that neuroscience can provide us with a fertile new ground for thinking about areas such as spectatorship and the facilitation of emotional affect, it can also offer us alternatives to monolithic ideas like the Gaze and the patriarchal nature of visual pleasure.Prompted perhaps by a shift in scopic thinking, some recent neuroscientific research has even mirrored film and cultural theory by foregrounding notions such embodiment, cross-model perception and mimesis, adding to the dialogic relationship that exists between these two disciplines. This paper then is not only concerned with how different fields communicate but with how each can provide models, metaphors and frameworks for the other.

Escaping from the City Means More than a Cheap House and a 10-Minute Commute

Escaping from the City Means More than a Cheap House and a 10-Minute Commute

Fede Álvarez and the impossibility of Uruguayan Cinema

This article argues that the career of film director Fede Álvarez suggests the ‘impossibility’ of Uruguayan cinema: his relative success as a Hollywood film-maker could not be achieved were he to make films in Uruguay. Furthermore, I shall suggest that this ‘impossibility’ was already present in the short film that allowed Álvarez to progress from Montevideo to Los Angeles, namely ¡Ataque de pánico!/Panic Attack! (2009), which sees aliens attack and destroy Uruguay’s capital. I shall subsequently argue that Álvarez emblematizes how Uruguay ‘disappears’ from cinema screens in various ways, including as a result of the shape of the Uruguayan film industry and the size of the nation itself, while also suggesting that in the story of ¡Ataque de pánico!, this disappearance happens quite literally. This disappearance is linked to globalization, technology and the ongoing economic dependency of the global south on the global north, and as is reflected in Álvarez’s transition to Hollywood itself. In other words, Uruguay disappears from cinema screens in the same way that Uruguay disappears historically. This is demonstrated especially by the way in which a very ‘cinematic’ special effects film like ¡Ataque de pánico! circulates primarily not in cinemas but online. Cinema is in this way alien to Uruguay as Uruguay is alien to cinema – with ¡Ataque de pánico! thereby constituting a form of non-cinema.

Silver Screen, Hasidic Jews: The Story of an Image by Shaina Hammerman

Reviewed by: Silver Screen, Hasidic Jews: The Story of an Image by Shaina Hammerman Karen E. H. Skinazi Shaina Hammerman. Silver Screen, Hasidic Jews: The Story of an Image. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2018. Xxix+157 pp, 20 b&w illustrations. Paperback $25. ISBN 978-0-253-03169-3. The cover of the book features one of the greatest moments in film history: the brief and sudden appearance in Annie Hall of Alvy Singer, played by Woody Allen, as a Hasidic Jew. As we immediately intuited watching the film, this is precisely how Alvy feels Grammy Hall sees him—as a “real Jew,” disguised beneath his Americanized, secular exterior. Adding a layer to the story, however, this image of Allen/Alvy’s inner-Hasid materializes on the front cover of Shaina Hammerman’s fascinating new book, Silver Screen, Hasidic Jew, on a poster rather than on a cinema screen. Labeled “der heyliker rebbe,” the poster is plastered on a building on the Lower East Side of New York, selling the clothes of American Apparel. Not only about Jewish self-consciousness, then, Allen’s bearded and sidelocked face in this context connects, over time and professions, two successful secular Jewish men, both of whom apparently had a Hasidic fetish; in fact, both men went on to use Hasidic imagery in different ways in their work in years to come. But there is a further backstory here: American Apparel CEO Dov Char-ney claims, as the book relates, that the image was speaking to the men’s shared experiences, as well, as both were accused of being bad Jews, and of harassing women. And there is a follow-on to the story: Allen, who clearly did not appreciate the connections established by the poster, sued Charney for unauthorized use of the film still. So much for solidarity. All in, then, the front cover picture cues readers, before they have so much as cracked open this slim but compact study, to the simultaneous transparency and opacity of the iconic Hasidic male image. We know it when we see it, but what is it that we know? Indeed, throughout the book, Hammerman demonstrates that although the male Hasidic costume has a long history in popular culture, from its vaudevillian appearance on the Yiddish stage in nineteenth-century Romania, to Woody-Allen-as-Alvy-Singer and again as Charney’s “Rebbe” and beyond, the meanings produced and cultural work done by Hasidic costume are continuous and ever-changing. Hammerman’s book of film criticism, unusually, moves back and forth between American and French cinema. Hammerman justifies her choice at the outset, saying that France and America are both places where film plays a key role in culture, and also that the two countries offer a nice contrast [End Page 75] to each other, with the United States touting a multicultural ideal and France promising national unity (the analyses do not necessarily fall along national lines, however). The readings of the five primary films hinge on different theoretical frameworks. To explore the question of “authenticity” in The Frisco Kid (1979), for example, Hammerman employs James Clifford’s “predicament of culture,” derived from the 1977 trial of the Mashpee tribe; just as Clifford used the trial to determine how we understand the “authenticity” of a culture, so Hammerman investigates the “authenticity” of the film’s Hasidic rabbi who is primarily defined against his cowboy sidekick, as well as the Native Americans he encounters, even as he is also compared to the secular Jewish actor, Gene Wilder, who portrays him. Authenticity, explains Hammerman, is “relative and dependent on performances of the inauthentic.” (23) In her discussion of Les aventures de Rabbi Jacob (1973), Hammerman turns to Roland Barthes’s Mythologies to show how the diversity of multiculturalism is tempered by the universality of the “great family of man”; she also uses the concept of “drag” (in Butler, et al.) to read the costumed Hasidim as sites of ambivalence, which are ultimately neutralized in the film’s close, when the characters all return to their appropriate identities and ghettoized spaces. Deconstructing Harry (1997) is considered in light of Linda Williams’s porn theory; La petite Jérusalem (2005) in...

Samuel Beckett and Cinema by Anthony Paraskeva

Reviewed by: Samuel Beckett and Cinema by Anthony Paraskeva Colin Gardner Samuel Beckett and Cinema. Anthony Paraskeva. London: Bloomsbury, 2017. Pp. 195. $108.00 (cloth); $37.95 (eBook). In a 1967 interview with Cahiers du cinéma, Jean-Luc Godard revealed: "I once intended to make a film of Happy Days. … I'd have liked to do it because I had a text and all I needed to do was film it. I'd have had just a single tracking shot beginning in long shot and ending in close-up. It would have started at precisely the distance necessary to bring me into close shot in an hour and a half, to end on the last sentence. It was just a matter of elementary arithmetic, a simple calculation of speed in relation to time."1 Although Beckett was notoriously opposed to cinematic adaptation of his stage plays (he once rejected Ingmar Bergman's request to direct a film version of Waiting for Godot, arguing that he did not want the play "Bergmanized"), Godard's strict harnessing of the gestic expressiveness of the diegetic action to the spatiotemporal exigencies of the cinematic apparatus would probably have been fully approved by the playwright. Indeed, after Film (1965) and the 1966 film adaptation of Play (Marin Karmitz's Comédie), his writings and directorial style had already begun to break the clear distinction between mechanical reproducibility and the contingency of the fluid theatrical event. This interdisciplinary focus on exact precision of timing and gestic movement—as well as the complete eschewal of improvisation—is central to Anthony Paraskeva's brilliant new book, which situates Beckett's methods as a writer-director within a historical double register of two [End Page 225] key moments in cinematic modernism. As he puts it, "Beckett did not write and direct for stage and screen in isolation … but within the context of a culture of interconnected representations between film, theatre and literature. Beckett's theatre practice, from the beginning of his work as a director in the mid-sixties, belongs to a modernist tradition of hybrid interactions between theatre and cinema" (Samuel Beckett and Cinema, 2). The first wave of such interactions is marked by the young Beckett's interest in the pictorial and temporal innovations of silent film, influenced by the work of Soviet directors such as Sergei Eisenstein (Paraskeva begins with Beckett's 1936 letter to the latter requesting admission to the Moscow State School of Cinematography), Vsevolod Pudovkin, and Dziga Vertov. Equally important were the robotic biomechanics of Vsevolod Meyerhold (which, with Kleist's writings on the marionette theater, were to become an important influence on the seemingly effortless lack of self-awareness in Ronald Pickup's performance in Ghost Trio); French impressionist filmmakers such as Jean Epstein, Germaine Dulac, and Marcel L'Herbier; and the vaudevillian slapstick of silent comedians such as Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton (who would go on to star in Beckett's Film). Drawing upon references in Beckett's letters and other archival material, Paraskeva shows that there is clear evidence Beckett was a regular film-goer and that he was also familiar with the theoretical writings of the day, most notably the avant-garde film journal Close-Up (1927–33) and the work of Rudolf Arnheim, whose 1933 book Film is predicated on the fact that the unique virtues of film as an art form derive not from its indexical realist properties but from the exploitation of its limitations: lack of sound and color and the inherent flatness of the cinema screen. These limitations were superseded by the coming of the sound film, whose overdetermined synchronization of dialog and image turned all formal innovation into pure spectacle, a case of true cinema being killed in the cradle. Antonin Artaud, for example, fought against the completion of the open-ended "meaning" of the image by speech—the major encumbrance of sound cinema—by developing his vision of a "language of signs, gestures and attitudes having an ideographic value as they exist in certain unperverted pantomimes."2 As Paraskeva argues, "For Artaud, the transition to sound had obstructed the development of an anti-naturalist silent cinema still in its infancy...

The Case for Further Advancing the Performance of Displays

Timo Kunkel Robert Wanat If there is one word to describe the difference between displays today and at the turn of the last century, it’s ubiquity. Modern consumers are surrounded by displays in their everyday lives, from the mobile devices we use when on the move to the TVs we enjoy at home for entertainment to the cinema screens we watch while socializing. It has become difficult to spend a day without once looking at a display. At the same time, expectations regarding the performance of these screens have steadily increased. This motivates display manufacturers to improve the capabilities of their devices and increasingly accommodate the challenges that changing viewing environments impose. Despite those complex challenges, amazing progress has been made in the last few decades in understanding how human visual perception works and how to use that information to create displays with improved image rendering consistency, accuracy, and overall capability. Though there is still a ways to go, the viewer experience today is more compelling than it has ever been. In this edition of Information Display, we pay close attention to high-performance displays, particularly in the Frontline Technology section. The articles there are centered around high dynamic range (HDR) imaging, which is currently one of the most prominent technological subfields. We believe that the lessons about the development of HDR pipelines that are explored in this issue will also benefit other high-performance display trends, such as AR/;VR, folding displays, 8K (see page 17 for an in-depth look at this trend), and very high framerate displays. The articles also focus on cutting-edge display technologies for home entertainment and automotive applications. Both of these contexts present different and sometimes unique challenges that have to be approached with a focus on how the visual system performs within the framework of the specific environment. One example discussed in the pages ahead is the effect of screen reflections and surround light, which are major challenges for image display and therefore need to be addressed as such. We can be even more specific with this illustration: Rendering accurate colors at very low ambient luminance levels is not as important for a TV display that is observed at high peak ambient illuminance levels–for example, a living room during the daytime—as colors rendered at very low luminance levels are likely less perceivable under this condition. Rather, in this case, the benefit from ambient compensation approaches that retarget those colors to improve their visibility exceeds that of having chromatic accuracy in the low luminances. However, accurate color rendering in low luminance levels becomes crucial in dark ambient environments, such as a living room at night or in a cinema. For automotive displays, accurate low-luminance appearance becomes even more important as there is a safety factor: Information must be communicated to drivers without distracting them while they’re in traffic. Many more concepts and examples are discussed in further detail. Ultimately, each article tells a part of the story and showcases how our industry is actively working on not only improving the status quo but also seamlessly rendering more accurate image quality, regardless of how consumers want to view their content. Timo Kunkel is a senior color and imaging researcher in the CTO office of Dolby Laboratories, Inc. His main areas of interest are advanced display and imaging technologies and exploring how we can continue to bring them closer to human perception. Kunkel can be reached at Timo.Kunkel@dolby.com. Robert Wanat is a senior color scientist for Dolby Laboratories, Inc. His work revolves around creating models of the human visual system that simulate visual perception and how it is affected by changing viewing conditions. Wanat can be reached at Robert.Wanat@dolby.com.

Touching Queerness in Disney Films Dumbo and Lilo & Stitch

Disney’s influence as a cultural purveyor is difficult to overstate. From cinema screen to television programming, vacation theme parks to wardrobe, toys and books, Disney’s consistent ability to entertain children as well as adults has made it a mainstay of popular culture. This research will look at two Disney films, Dumbo (1941)1 and Lilo & Stitch (2002),2 both from distinctly different eras, and analyze the similarities in artistic styling, studio financial climate, and their narrative representation of otherness as it relates to Queer identity.

Core Color Rendering Algorithms for High Dynamic Range Display

As is well known, colors as they exist in the real world must be adjusted so as to look correct and pleasing when displayed on a TV or a cinema screen. In color science, the process of converting these “scene-referred” colors to “display-referred” colors is termed “rendering.” The Academy Color Encoding System (ACES) is a good example of a set of open-source picture rendering algorithms. In this paper, the authors, who both participated in the development of ACES, discuss the pros and cons of various rendering techniques and share the results of their latest work. Specifically, we present a method of applying a tone curve that preserves color ratios and has better noise properties than earlier techniques. This algorithm has been successfully used as part of a larger parametric rendering system for high dynamic range display. One of the nice properties of this algorithm is that it has a simple and robust inverse.

Renovating The Room: audience reception and paratextual intervention

ABSTRACTDespite being labelled ‘the Citizen Kane of bad films’ upon its release, The Room (2003) and its enigmatic director/writer/star Tommy Wiseau have gained a cult following worldwide. This article examines how reception of The Room and of Wiseau has evolved as a result of paratexts claiming to expose the truth behind the film’s production and the Wiseau persona. While The Room has gained a cult following centred upon participatory cinema screenings, the film’s lifespan has been sustained by paratexts promising to expose the authentic nature of the film and Wiseau. By examining both The Room and the Wiseau persona, the way paratexts have helped ‘renovate’ their images can be observed, giving them a ‘second life’ of devoted cult followers. The Room continues to draw fans in cinemas worldwide; and this success has brought Wiseau the fame he openly courts. The article proposes that the desire of the audience to uncover the authentic Wiseau is an integral part of the cultification of The Room. Ultimately, I contend that the paratexts which have developed around the production and reception of The Room have served to reinforce the film’s cult status, and that the mystery of Wiseau’s ‘true’ persona is central to the ongoing cultification of the film.

‘The most objectionable story I have ever had to report on’: Film censorship in post-Second World War Britain and the re-telling of Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Body Snatcher

Abstract Existing research on British censorship during the 1940s has often favoured the notion that a so-called ‘H’ ban effectively upheld the import, production, and exhibition of the horror film in Britain during the later-half of the Second World War. However, through an analysis of contemporary critical reception and censorship discourses, it becomes apparent how this ‘ban’ was nowhere near as clearly defined as is often argued. While the ‘H’ ban may have succeeded in barring a small number of low-brow fantasy horror films from cinema screens the genre prevailed in various guises, with the films of producer Val Lewton bringing about a shift away from fantasy towards representations of the everyday. Furthermore, the role of the script supervisor at the British Board of Film Censors clearly demonstrates an alternative to censorship through an involvement with the studios prior to production in order to avoid such restrictions. This article therefore presents an analysis of such negotiations at the BBFC during this period, with Lewton’s production of The Body Snatcher (Wise, 1945) representing an example of how horror remained a fixture on British screens, through both self-censorship and a move away from the type of film typically associated with the ‘H’ classification.