Cinematic Creativity Research Articles

Permacinema

This article charts the contiguity of farming and film, blending permaculture and cinema to advance a modality of sustainable film theory and practice we call “permacinema.” As an alternative approach to looking and labour, permaculture exhibits a suite of cinematic concerns, and offers a model for cinematic creativity that is environmentally accountable and sensitive to multispecies entanglements. Through the peaceable gestures of cultivation and restraint, permacinema proposes an ecologically attentive philosophy of moving images in accordance with permaculture’s three ethics: care of earth, care of people, and fair share. We focus on work by Indigenous artists in which plants are encountered not only as raw material or as aesthetic resource but as ingenious agents and insightful teachers whose pedagogical and creative inputs are welcomed into the filmmaking process. By integrating Indigenous epistemologies and cosmologies we hope to situate permacinema in the wider project of cinema’s decolonization and rewilding.

Cultural and creative industries in the Arab region: the complementarity of the relationship between the economics of cinematic creativity and the Egyptian national

Cultural and creative industries in the Arab region: the complementarity of the relationship between the economics of cinematic creativity and the Egyptian national

The Creative Powers of the Everyday in Chantal Akerman's Films

This article analyzes the political representation of the female body within the everyday in the films Saute ma ville (1968), Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975) and Portrait d'une paresseuse (1986) by Chantal Akerman. It aims to reveal the ways in which her 'formalistic' mode of cinematic creativity shapes a quest to decipher and critique the everyday lives of women by portraying the commonplace through the lens of a political philosophy and an undeclared form of feminist humanism.

Great Flicks: Scientific Studies of Cinematic Creativity and Aesthetics

Great Flicks: Scientific Studies of Cinematic Creativity and Aesthetics

Great flicks: scientific studies of cinematic creativity and aesthetics

PREFACE 1. Prologue: The Scientist as Cinema Connoisseur? 2. Oscars, Golden Globes, BAFTAs, and Critics: Consensus or Dissension? 3. Story, Sights, Tricks, and Song: What Really Counts? 4. Rave Reviews, Movie Awards, and Box Office Bucks: Which Doesn't Belong? 5. The Script: Does the Narrative's Nature Matter? 6. The Auteur: Are Directors Experts or Artists? 7. The Stars: Sexism in Cinema? 8. Music: Is Silence Golden? 9. Razzies: So Bad It's Good? 10. Epilogue: The Science of Cinema? NOTES REFERENCES INDEX

Controversial and Volatile Flicks: Concurrent Dissension and Temporal Instability in Film Critic Assessments

Prior research has shown that the aesthetic assessments by film critics display a high level of concurrent consensus and temporal stability. However, neither the consensus nor the stability is so great as to preclude evaluative disagreements and reassessments (e.g., sleepers and faders). This investigation was designed to identify the predictors of these concurrent and temporal departures from critical congruence. The potential predictors were variables that emerged in previous research on the determinants of cinematic creativity: (a) financial data, such as production budget and box office performance; (b) movie awards and nominations in the major categories (viz. picture and the dramatic, visual, technical, and music clusters of honors); and (c) film attributes, such as the MPAA rating, running time, and screenplay characteristics like sequels, remakes, and adaptations (from plays, novels, nonfiction, etc.). Both simultaneous and stepwise regression analyses indicated that the cinematic exceptions to critical consensus and stability were predictable. However, because the predictors only accounted for between 10% and 15% of the variance and were not the same for dissent and instability, the departures cannot be said to contaminate the critics' evaluations in any systematic manner.

Irish Film and Television Review – 2008

The fortunes of Irish cinema took a paradoxical turn in 2008. Years of economic boom turned to bust and with it went long-held ambitions for a sustained period of cinematic creativity and even greatness. For most of a century the emergence — and then development — of Irish cinema had seemed stymied

Cinematic Creativity and Production Budgets: Does Money Make the Movie?

Although filmmaking requires substantial capital investment, it is not known whether cinematic creativity is positively correlated with the size of the film's budget. Therefore, budgetary impact was investigated in a sample of feature films released between 1997 and 2001. Although production costs were positively related to box office success (as measured by both first weekend and gross), such expenditures had no correlation with best picture awards and were negatively correlated with critical acclaim (as gauged by both film reviews and movie guide ratings). These divergent consequences could be partly interpreted in terms of how the budget and success criteria differentially correlated with what have been identified as the four creative clusters of filmmaking, namely, the dramatic, visual, technical, and musical.

Film Awards as Indicators of Cinematic Creativity and Achievement: A Quantitative Comparison of the Oscars and Six Alternatives

Although film awards are often taken as indicating the creative achievements that underlie outstanding motion pictures, critics have questioned whether such honors represent a consensus regarding cinematic contributions. Nevertheless, a strong agreement was demonstrated by investigating 1,132 films released between 1975 and 2002 that had received at least 1 award or award nomination from 7 distinct sources (Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Hollywood Foreign Press Association, British Academy of Film and Television Arts, New York Film Critics Circle, National Board of Review, National Society of Film Critics, and Los Angeles Film Critics Association). The results indicated that (a) almost all award categories exhibited a conspicuous consensus, the Oscars providing the best single indicator of that agreement; (b) Oscar awards provided meaningful information about cinematic creativity and achievement beyond that provided by Oscar nominations alone; (c) awards bestowed by the 7 organizations corresponded with more specialized awards granted by guilds and societies, with the Oscars usually providing the best correspondence; and (d) awards correlated positively with later movie guide ratings, the correlations being especially large in the categories of picture, direction, screenplay, and acting. The findings were discussed in terms of whether the awards can be considered to be indicative of cinematic creativity.

Film Awards as Indicators of Cinematic Creativity and Achievement: A Quantitative Comparison of the Oscars and Six Alternatives

Film Awards as Indicators of Cinematic Creativity and Achievement: A Quantitative Comparison of the Oscars and Six Alternatives

From May Fourth to June Fourth: Fiction and Film in Twentieth-Century China

What do the Chinese literature and film inspired by the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) have in common with the Chinese literature and film of the May Fourth movement (1918-1930)? This new volume in the Harvard Contemporary China Series - now under the editorial direction of Harvard University Press - demonstrates that these two periods of the highest literary and cinematic creativity in 20th-century China share several aims: to liberate these narrative arts from previous aesthetic orthodoxies, to draw on foreign sources for inspiration, and to free individuals from social conformity. Although these consistencies seem readily apparent, the contributors to this volume reveal that in many ways discontinuity, not continuity, prevails. Their analysis illuminates the powerful meeting place of language, imagery, and narrative with politics, history and ideology in 20th century China. Drawing on a wide range of methodologies, from formal analysis to feminist criticism, from deconstruction to cultural critique, the authors demonstrate that the scholarship of modern Chinese literature and film has become integral to contemporary critical discourse. They respond to Eurocentric theories, but their ultimate concern is literature and film in China's unique historical context. The volume illustrates three general issues preoccupying this century's scholars: the conflict of the rural search for roots and the native soil movement versus the new strains of urban exoticism; the diacritics of voice, narrative mode and intertextuality; and the reintroduction of issues surrounding gender and subjectivity.