Cinematic Tradition Research Articles

Isolated figures in a remote Scottish Landscape: place and identity in the films of Scott Graham

ABSTRACT The relationship between place and identity has had a very specific significance in the development of Scottish cinema. Until the 1980s Scotland tended to be depicted as an essentially rural and remote, a fantasy space characterised within the interlinked representational discourses of tartanry and kailyard by romantic and picturesque highland and island locations or parochial and backward villages and small towns. With the emergence of a New Scottish cinema in the 1990s, this was subsequently replaced by a focus on more realist narratives located in the urban centres of Glasgow and Edinburgh. In this essay, I will explore the work of Scott Graham, whose three features to date - Shell, Iona and Run – have provided a renewed engagement with a contemporary Scotland that (re)incorporates both the highland and island landscapes that provided the backdrop to the romantic tradition of tartanry, and the small-town setting familiar from the kailyard tradition. These settings are central to the identity and predicament of Graham’s protagonists, who are struggling with a sense of isolation, loneliness or lack of connection, alienated from place, community and even family. Consequently, Graham provides evidence for the continuing relevance of a distinctive Scottish cinematic tradition.

There is a time for everything: Slow cinema and Songs from the Second Floor

Through its mixture of similarities to and differences from typical slow cinema practices, Roy Andersson’s Songs from the Second Floor (2000) offers a unique perspective on what slow cinema can be. This is apparent in the film’s mise en scène and cinematography. While the use of long takes, minimalist performances and deep focus fit comfortably within slow cinema tradition, Songs from the Second Floor differentiates itself with its expansive mise en scène, vast set designs and stationary camera. The film further expands on slow cinema with its inclusion of tragicomic humour, which complements slow cinema’s modernist re-appropriation.

The construction of ‘Jacques Becker’: realism, popular film and the auteur in 1950s film criticism

ABSTRACT Jacques Becker is well known as an auteur, one of the few French directors working in the post-war period who has been hailed as an ‘uncle’ of the New Wave (alongside Robert Bresson, Max Ophuls, Jean-Pierre Melville and Jacques Tati). This article positions him in relation to the ‘quality’ and popular cinema of the period through an exploration of the critical discourses that coalesce around his films. Becker embraced an auteurist conception of cinema but operated in an industry that was dominated by a commercial, quality cinema of international co-productions, stars and films destined for export. Drawing on articles from both the specialist and general press, this article explores the construction of Becker as an auteur at the very moment when the politique des auteurs was setting out its stall in opposition to the Tradition of Quality and popular cinema more generally. By tracing how Becker came to occupy a unique position in post-war French film, it sheds light on the framing of popular, quality and auteur film in relation to key social, political and aesthetic discourses in play at this time.

‘Il disagio di stare al mondo’: Coming of Age, Masculinity, and Maradona in Paolo Sorrentino’s È stata la mano di Dio

ABSTRACT With È stata la mano di Dio (2021), Paolo Sorrentino returned to filming in Naples, his hometown, 20 years after his first movie. Going back home is a moment of rupture in his production. ‘È stata la mano di Dio represents for the first time in my career an intimate and personal film’, Sorrentino explains. In this article I argue that the movie offers a self-reflexive reading of his origins as a director celebrating the primacy of Diego Armando Maradona’s influence on his work. Focusing on the protagonist Fabietto, Sorrentino’s cinematic alter ego, I examine the entanglements of his coming of age as a young man and the spectacle of Maradona’s transnational heroism, which inspires Fabietto’s decision to become a director. As a model of creativity and perseverance, Maradona illuminates the cinematic dialogue that Sorrentino establishes with his Neapolitan mentor Antonio Capuano and the Italian cinematic tradition embodied by Federico Fellini.

Cultural Transmission in Korean Genre Films: Examining the Disaster Movie “Train to Busan” as an Example

In recent years, Korean films have become increasingly prosperous. In addition to borrowing from the classic Hollywood model, their genres have also widely incorporated local culture and values, revealing human nature. The combination of these two elements has broadened its dissemination worldwide and widely promoted Korean culture, providing some inspiration for the development of Chinese genre films. Taking the Korean disaster film “Train to Busan” as an example, this paper analyzes the general framework of cultural communication employed in South Korean films. By studying the film’s content and communication style, it becomes evident that Korean filmmakers blend local values into their narratives while referring to the Western film model. This nuanced approach not only captivates audiences but also carries cultural messages that resonate universally. At the same time, it is also compared with China’s films, which provides strategic reference for the international spread of Chinese films. By recognizing the strengths and weaknesses of both cinematic traditions, China's film industry can refine its strategies, enhancing its global reach while preserving its unique cultural identity. In essence, the success of Korean films offers valuable lessons and inspiration for the continued growth and influence of Chinese genre films in the global cinematic landscape.

Гимн сталинской номенклатуре в «Кавалере Золотой Звезды»: роман Семена Бабаевского и фильм Юлия Райзмана

One of the most popular novels in late Stalinist USSR, The Bearer of the Golden Star (1947–1948) by Semyon Babayevsky, is seen now as a representative symbol of “grand” or “varnishing” style in literature – to the same measure as the eponymous film (1950) by Yuliy Raizman did for the Soviet cinematic tradition. High official status of both texts guaranteed by Stalin’s awards matched the overwhelming success they both enjoyed with general public. The author here makes an attempt to examine the possible reasons of this popularity and offers a look at The Bearer of the Golden Star as at panorama both of a newborn after the World War II privileged social stratum, nomenklatura, and a system of social elevators leading to it – as much demanded by its target audience. The modes of fictional re-interpretation of real bureaucratic procedures are considered as well as the authors’ dealing with the key characters representing different nomenklatural positions; and also some «ethnographic» characters used to blur the border between social strata, so that the Soviet “new ruling class” could still be seen as an integral part of “working people”. The paper also deals with operational mechanisms of manipulative political metaphors and with those means Semyon Babayevsky and Yuliy Raizman used to ensure the highest possible level of propaganda impact. Special attention is also paid to the figure of Stalin as the key element in the “Grand style” mythology that form a hidden suggestive structer of the text.

Social Media, Female Victimisation and Autonomy in Contemporary Hungarian and Romanian Cinema

In recent years, a number of Hungarian and Romanian films incorporated new media techniques and mechanisms in order to thematize the paradoxical effect of social media platforms which, besides connecting individuals and communities, can become a vehicle of their social isolation. However, while Hungarian films like I Hope You Die Next Time:) (Remélem legközelebb sikerül meghalnod, Mihály Schwechtje, 2018) and FOMO: Fear of Missing Out, Attila Hartung, 2019) present teenage, male individuals (mis)using social media as part of their coming of age process, fuelled by a desperate need to connect with their peers, in one of the latest, award-winning features of versatile Romanian director Radu Jude, Bad Luck Banging or Looney Porn (Bărbădeală cu bucluc sau porno balamuc, 2021) social media is challenging the (sexual, gendered) autonomy of the female protagonist and fuelling a heated socio-political debate around sexual roles, liberties and moral responsibilities in a contemporary Romanian society torn by contradictory value systems. Regarding social media as a platform of identity quests and moral attitudes, my article aims to situate these films in the Hungarian and Romanian cinematic traditions, analysing and comparing them in terms of cultural representations of female and male victimisation, as well as agency and autonomy. I will argue that these films exemplify the gendered modes of self-representations (selfies) and gazes in social media and beyond, a model subverted only by Jude’s film reiterating the female flâneur as the freely moving subject of the gaze.

"Shunkan on Devil Island": Domesticating Political Exile in the Japanese Puppet Play “Heike nōgyo no shima”

This essay discusses the scene entitled Shunkan on Devil Island from Chikamatsu Monzaemon’s early modern puppet play The Heike on the Island of Women as a commentary on social and political strictures of the early modern Tokugawa shogunate, which increasingly regulated social and commercial life as it sought to maintain control of the burgeoning cities of Edo and Osaka in the early 1700s. The play is loosely based on the medieval epic war tale Tale of the Heike (Heike monogatari), a beloved and foundational text that has found numerous afterlives in Japan’s theatrical, narrative and cinematic traditions. Shunkan on Devil Island refashions the Heike’s story of the Buddhist prelate Shunkan (banished to Devil Island following a botched coup attempt) as a specifically early modern tale by introducing a female character, Chidori, who becomes the wife of one of Shunkan’s two fellow male exiles and therefore a member of the "family" that they, as aristocrats banished to a distant island, create. Through exploring the idea of family relations on the remote Kigaigashima, Chikamatsu recasts the well-known tale of Shunkan on Devil Island to create a utopic staged space that comments on the oppressiveness of the early modern polity experienced acutely by the urban audiences of the early 18th century.

Obecność Victora Sjöströma w twórczości Ingmara Bergmana na przykładzie filmu "Tam, gdzie rosną poziomki"

Ingmar Bergman was a filmmaker deeply immersed in the tradition of both classical and silent cinema. It can be inferred from his comments that Victor Sjöström played a particularly important role in his work. This article attempts to trace Sjöström’s influence on the film Wild Strawberries, on which, according to Bergman, he was to have a considerable impact. The study juxtaposes selected elements of Sjöström’s works with the film in focus and presents a broader cinematic-historical context to show Bergman’s profound connection with the silent film era and the significant role that Sjöström played in his development.

Deracinating ethnic minors: the affect of authoritarian certitude

ABSTRACT The figure of the ethnic minor is a heavily inscribed representational subject in PRC cinema. Coming out of a socialist cinematic tradition as images of thoroughly assimilated, phlegmatic adults-in-waiting, the portrayal of ethnic children in PRC cinema today assumes more nuances as an art-house cinema verité aesthetics demands ethnic children enact their social presence in a complex network of social relations fraught with the tension between modernity and tradition, identity structures and their restructures. This paper examines two 2018 films about ethnic minors in Tibet and the Uyghur region of China—Wangdrak’s Rain Boots by Lhapal Gyal and A First Farewell by Wang Lina, respectively. Through the lenses of what Félix Guattari calls “partial subjectivity” and the “social machine,” the article demonstrates how the two films portray weather forecast and linguistic ability in Mandarin Chinese as socializing conduit of Chinese state power and produce for the ethnic children an affect of authoritarian certainty. The paper argues that those two films critique the PRC’s current ethnopolitical strategies in the said regions, which place a premium on a monoglot and monovocal articulation of a pan-Chinese identity at the cost of impoverishing a polyvocal ethno-social reality.

Sublime aesthetics in Philippe Grandrieux’s Un lac

ABSTRACT In this article, I assess Philippe Grandrieux’s Un lac (2008) through the lens of the sublime. I offer a formal analysis of the film supported by contemporary theorists who have previously articulated the stakes of Grandrieux’s work in the tradition of narrative cinema. Similar to prior research, my work sets out to understand Grandrieux’s aesthetics and how his filmmaking attempts to engage spectators’ sensory engagements and alter their perceptions of film. Where I diverge is in demonstrating how the theory of the sublime is useful for theoretical understandings of Grandrieux’s films and experimentations with narrative cinema more generally. Specifically, I turn to Un lac’s protagonist Alexi as an anchor to unpack Grandrieux’s experimental cinematography, editing, and sound. Following this, I examine the film through Cynthia A. Freeland’s conceptualization of sublime cinema. I conclude that the snowy landscapes, overwhelming woods, treacherous weather, and fragile bodies in the film work to diminish and dismantle the human figure. I draw on recent theories of cinema and affect to argue that the sublime encourages us to rethink our ontological presuppositions – Un lac posits an alternative to anthropocentrism.

Lovely heteronormative families in a harmonious society? The docudrama representations of the human‐pet relationship in contemporary China

AbstractThis study examines docudramatic representations of human‐pet relationships in China, applying the conversational storytelling research method. The study takes Modern Furry Tale (MFT, 2021), a controversial docudrama streamed on the Tencent Video platform as its targeted case. The article argues that contemporary Chinese docudramas do not so much “document reality” as continue a “cinematic tradition” of presenting “selected reality” by showing an idealized view of the pets“ living conditions and their owners” family lives. Describing and constructing friendly and companionable pet‐human relationships, these docudramas reinforce the dominant “positive energy” state ideology, propagandistic mainstream family values, and repressive gender ideologies.

Nebulous Cinema

Abstract As billowing masses averse to stillness and defined by perpetual variability, clouds, fog and mist share common ontological properties. This article will group them together under the rubric of the “nebulous,” and probe its conceptual and aesthetic relationship with film. Fog, smoke and mist are pervasive through the entire history of cinema and crop up in an array of genres and modes. What would film history look like if traced from the perspective of these cloud forms? The article hopes to sketch out the first contours of such a history by honing in on a durational cinematic tradition, from the “landscape film” of the 1970s through to contemporary slow cinema. It will conceive of such a history as intermedial both in the sense that it extrapolates the boundaries of the film medium and in that it treats fog, mist and clouds as elemental “media” in their own right.

Movie-Made Jews: An American Tradition by Helene Meyers

Reviewed by: Movie-Made Jews: An American Tradition by Helene Meyers Nathan Abrams Helene Meyers. Movie-Made Jews: An American Tradition. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2021. 224 pp. Any new book on the representation of Jews on screen is always welcome, especially one that considers a fast-moving topic that presents lots of new examples. Into the breach steps Helene Meyers’s Movie-Made Jews: An American Tradition. Meyers’s basic premise is not only that Jews make movies that feature Jews but also that such movies help to make Jews, in that movies can help to shape viewers’ sense of themselves as Jews. Thus, there are not only the Jews in the movies but also those who make them and those who watch them, and Meyers aims to shift attention toward the latter rather than focusing purely on the on-screen representations. Meyers pays close attention to the production and reception histories of these diverse films. An example she provides is how, after making Protocols of Zion in 2005, its director Marc Levin rejoined a synagogue. In terms of structure, because Meyers’s stated goal is “to chart a usable tradition of continuity and change rather than a narrative of progress” (13), she has organized the chapters of her book thematically rather than chronologically, while remaining attuned to chronology within those chapters. Naturally, for any book about Jews, antisemitism is the predictable subject of the first chapter after the introduction. It begins with Gentleman’s Agreement before considering School Ties, The Believer, and The Protocols of Zion, which, very timely, explores post-9/11 conspiracy theorists, neo-Nazi groups, evangelical Christians, and Jewish Hollywood insiders. Levin’s film, Meyers, says “seems especially prescient viewed from the post-Charlottesville, post-Pittsburgh era” (13), as well as in the age of QAnon (not discussed here). The next chapter explores a set of fiction films that deal with the Holocaust through indirection, where the Shoah is present at a remove, including The Pawnbroker, Enemies, A Love Story, Crimes and Misdemeanors, Barton Fink, and A Serious Man. Entitled “Focusing on Assimilation and Its Discontents,” chapter 4 considers The Way We Were, Next Stop, Greenwich Village, Crossing Delancey, Avalon, and Liberty Heights. In chapter 5, “Assertively Jewish Onscreen,” Meyers considers unapologetic representations of cultural and religious Jews. Here, the selections may be considered contentious as they include another Woody Allen film (Whatever Works) as well as a film in which he stars, Fading Gigolo. Interestingly, chapter 6, “Queering the Jewish Gaze,” discusses I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry alongside Trembling before G-d. Chapter 7, “Cinematic Alliances,” focuses on representations of Jews in relation to other groups. It is here that Meyers discusses Schindler’s List rather than under the section on the Holocaust, which some may consider an unusual choice but makes sense in not following the typical tendency. Finally, chapter 8, “Epilogue: Cinematic Continuity and Change through a Feminist Lens,” focuses on two Jewish feminist documentaries of 2018: Paula Eiselt’s 93Queen and Julie Cohen and Betsy West’s RBG. [End Page 194] Thankfully, Movie-Made Jews is not another survey of American Jewish cinema relying on the old favorites, although the choices of the earlier chapters do tend toward the predictable. Neither is it purely restricted to feature films; rather, the book blends fiction and documentary films, which is unusual for a book of this type. It also does not purely focus on what is on screen in the belief that “Jewish stories of film production and reception” are central to the history of American Jewish cinema (5). Consequently, it offers a methodological challenge to what is still a limited field in Jewish studies scholarship. The pleasure in reading such a book, then, comes when the reader is introduced to a variety of new films; because of her deliberate decision to include documentaries, I am sure that readers both familiar and new to the topic will make some discoveries. Meyers’s aims are ambitious and there is a clear commitment to education beyond the academy. As she states, “Movie-Made Jews is, quite intentionally, a work of cinematic and religious pluralism. By highlighting a diverse cinematic tradition that...

Историчность внешней политики ЕС: историко-культурные условия наднациональной субъектности

Importance. Unlike national subjectivity, European foreign policy is quite historical, that is, it is not mythologized and has a chronologically distinct beginning. How then is the continuity inherent in subjectivity achieved if supranational foreign policy can be represented as a series of discrete solutions? Based on the fact that any foreign policy is a locus of cultural relations, the historical and cultural conditions of European subjectivity were examined on the example of European cinema. Materials and methods. A cultural method of historical research was formulated; materials were selected that seamlessly relate to the European tradition of cinema. Results and Discussion. Some conditions of supranational subjectivity were highlighted – first of all, it is a transformative experience associated with war. Conclusion. Cinema shows what European foreign policy is made of in addition to discrete solutions – ideas and traditions cannot show this, whereas modern cultural forms allow it to reveal the location of supranational subjectivity in the historical and cultural dynamics of the 20th century.

Less Punk, More Splatter: Heavy Metal, Horror Video, and the Literary Nasties of Shaun Hutson

Less Punk, More Splatter: Heavy Metal, Horror Video, and the Literary Nasties of Shaun Hutson

Impact of Films on the Youth of India

Abstract: Cinema is the most complex and powerful art form in the present world. India has had a rich tradition of cinema for many decades and the impact of cinema on youth is tremendous. People watch movies for different personal reasons, but whatever the reason may be, watching films consciously and subconsciously impacts their minds. This paper is an attempt to understand the impact of films on the youth of India. It comprises a mixed-method study divided into 10 parts. In order to make it more concentrated on one aspect of the big universe of cinema, this paper focuses only on the impact of “films” and not another type of cinematic media form like shows, YouTube videos, ads, plays etc., on the youth of India

Portret artysty w wieku dojrzałym. Analiza porównawcza „Patriotyzmu” Yukio Mishimy z filmową biografią tego artysty „Mishima” w reżyserii Paula Schradera

This article constitutes a comparison of two films — Patriotism (1965) by Yukio Mishima and Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters (1985) by Paul Schrader, a biographical film about the Japanese writer and director of the first film. The article focuses on how the latter film imitates the former, both in formal style and in showing the act of suicide. The analysis also covers problems of adaptation, theatricality, homoerotism and the tradition of Japanese cinema.

Alternatives to Love: Indian Cinema Reinvented in Greater Asia

As conventional Bollywood continues to thrive, independent productions supported by Netflix and other streaming apps are embracing more insurgent themes and challenging storylines. While Netflix steers its Asian production arm toward South Korea, India remains a vital focus on the world cinema scene. Following the lead of maverick actor/producer Amir Khan in the wake of Dhobi Ghat (2010), films such as A Death in the Gunj (2016) and Sir (2018) not only feature women’s themes but aggregate the colour and movement of Indian cinema while enlisting serious subject matter. Netflix and other streaming apps may provide a vital platform, but the traditions of culture and cinema predate this distribution opportunity by centuries.
 Drawing from film theorists such as Ashvin Devasundaram, Madhuja Mukherjee, Chidananda Das Gupta and Neelam Sidhar Wright, I examine the two exemplary films as textual analysis and story-based in a historical context. Along with the influence of Hindu mythology, this paper seeks a template for effective, globally relevant cinema which does not pander to Edward Said’s notion of Orientalism. While considering the storytelling traditions of Rabindranath Tagore and Satyajit Ray as literary and cinematic voices, this paper also consults Western screenwriting gurus Stephen Cleary and Robert McKee in its search to support the artistic aims of streaming-based art cinema from India. India, especially at this time of pandemic crisis, deserves to be championed for its centuries of unrivalled artistic achievement and unparalleled cinematic exuberance.

Creating Islands in Film: The Interplay of Location, Mind and Cinema

This article is a comparative study on the representation of islands in cinema and how film viewers make sense of islandscapes by activating cognitive processes and previous knowledge about islands and cinema. I focus on Bergman’s Summer with Monika (1952) and L. Wertmüller’s Swept Away (1974) in order to identify those cognitive processes in films from two different cinematic traditions and times. The concept of island is a domain that includes knowledge about islands, human experiences of islands and dynamic cognitive structures (see Lakoff and Johnson 1980). In this article I integrate those elements to a more comprehensive view of meaning making in cinema that includes several layers. At a cognitive level, image schematic representations can evoke standard metaphors such as island is container or island is support, but additional meanings such as island is paradise and freedom is islandscape emerge. At a discursive level, islands are often situated in the space of the Other versus the Self generally located in the mainland, and this ideological construct is related to a central tenet in the Western worldview: the opposition Nature/Human. Although these films dramatize possible biocentric alternative views such as reinhabitation (Snyder 2013), the dominant anthropocentric worldview is still favored.