Film Director Research Articles

Ear to the ground. Searching for ourselves in each other


 
 
 An acclaimed Polish cinematographer and documentary film director describes his meeting with Sergey Paradjanov in the 1970s in Kiev. Stok found himself there in connection with the shooting of Piotr Studziński’s documentary film about one of Ukraine’s mathematicians. Despite the difficulties created by the Soviet totalitarian state to isolate Paradjanov, Stok managed to reach the director and also to watch his documentary film about the frescoes in Kiev at a special secret club screening. In his essay – a memoir – the author describes the differences between life in the Soviet Union and in more liberal Communist-ruled Poland. He characterizes Paradjanov’s artistic profile and his fate in the Soviet Union.
 
 

Ukrainian cinematography in the context of intercultural cooperation


 
 
 The article describes the production and distribution of Ukrainian films and establishes scientific guidelines that will contribute to a comprehensive analysis of Ukrainian cinema in the intercultural space. An analytical method was used to develop this topic, which is necessary for studying the art history and cultural aspect of the problem. In addition, the author used the methods of systematization and generalization to argue for the originality of Ukrainian cinematography and its place in modern culture-creating processes. The scientific novelty of the study is that it describes the work of film directors whose films were created as international projects.
 
 

Rozmowa z Jerzym Hoffmanem


 
 
 An interview with the Polish film director Jerzy Hoffman was recorded on 11–12 July 2022 at his estate in the village of Sikory Yuskie in the Warmian-Masurian Voivodeship. Jerzy Hoffman is perhaps the most popular Polish film director in Ukraine. His films gained recognition even before Ukraine gained independence. However, his most notable work is Ogniem i mieczem [With Fire and Sword, 1999], which starred the great Ukrainian actor Bohdan Stupka (1941–2012) as Hetman Bohdan Chmielnicki. The collaboration continued in the film The Old Tale. When the Sun Was a God (2003). In 2008 Jerzy Hoffman made a four-part documentary film Ukraine. The Birth of a Nation.
 The conversation touched on issues related to these films, completed and unrealized projects on Ukraine, reflections on the history of Polish-Ukrainian relations and the role of Jerzy Hoffmann’s work in establishing them. As a filmmaker who closely follows events in Ukraine, he shared his impressions and predictions about how the ongoing war will change and transform Ukraine and the world.
 
 

Rozmowa z Krzysztofem Zanussim


 
 
 An interview with the Polish film director Krzysztof Zanussi was conducted on 12 July 2022 at his home on the outskirts of Warsaw. The filmmaker has collaborated with Ukrainian artists, traveled extensively in Ukraine, supported Ukrainians during the war and even sheltered Ukrainian refugees in his home. The conversation focused on his collaborations with Ukrainian artists, in particular the prominent Ukrainian actor Bohdan Stupka (1941–2012). He played the lead role in Krzysztof Zanussi’s film And a Warm Heart (2008), for which he received the Best Actor award at the Third Rome International Film Festival for the first time in the history of Ukrainian cinema. The conversation also touched on the director’s personal ties with Ukraine, his views on the problems of the development of Ukrainian culture, his memories of creative contacts, including those during the Soviet period, and his experience of working with Russian artists. The filmmaker shared his thoughts on the war in Ukraine and its possible consequences, including those for the development of art.
 
 

The paradox of tranquility and brutality: Soundtrack dissonance in Squid Game Series

Music has been a fundamental element of the art of film since its earliest examples. The “soundtrack”, as a recorded song or composition used to support film scenes, usually has features that coincide with the theme of the film, the emotion of the scene in which it is used, or the film images. However, sometimes it can be seen that film producers and directors choose music to accompany film scenes that is completely contrary to the dominant emotion in the scene. They use music that has a cheerful character for a drama scene, sad for a happy scene, fun for a horror scene, etc. According to the theorists of different historical periods of film literature, the aim of these choices, which shake the viewers’ expectation of harmony between the scene and music, is to try to offer new and different perspectives to the viewers perception through the paradox of scene atmosphere and music. With this kind of use, considered as soundtrack dissonance in the study, brand new meanings can be produced from the combination of opposing elements that neither the film scene nor the music alone can produce individually. This study aims to analyse the game scenes selected from “Red Light, Green Light”, the first episode of the Squid Game series broadcast on the Netflix digital platform in 2021, as an example of soundtrack dissonance.

Representation of Forms of Sexual Harassment in Women Through Film in the Perspective of Muted Group Theory

Sexual harassment is a serious issue that takes many forms, such as exploitation, coercion, or sexual abuse without consent. This type of harassment is a form of gender injustice that can manifest in various forms of marginalization and subordination towards women. Women can feel restricted in their ability to express themselves freely due to the dominance of men in society. As a result, there has been an increase in the number of cases of sexual harassment of women in society. This has prompted film directors to address the issue in their works, such as the film Virgin the Series. This research aims to analyze the representation of sexual harassment towards women in this film, which is available on the Disney+Hotstar application, using the perspective of muted group theory. The theoretical framework used in this study includes the concept of representation by Stuart Hall, the concept of sexual abuse, adolescence, and women, as well as Roland Barthes's semiotic theory and the grand theory of silence (The Muted Group Theory). The researchers utilized a qualitative research method and applied Roland Barthes's semiotics approach to analyze the text and visuals in this film. The findings indicate that the film portrays various forms of sexual harassment toward women, such as physical, oral, non-verbal, gestural, visual, and psychological harassment. These depictions further strengthen the position of women as subordinates, as explained by the muted group theory

A Narrative of Rural Storytelling in Intergenerational Succession among Chinese Film Directors

Chinese society, at its essence, revolves around a core of agrarian culture. With a historical foundation deeply rooted in agriculture, the civilization of tilling the land has coursed through our collective veins for millennia, becoming an indelible facet of our identity. Chinese filmmakers, whether consciously or unconsciously, have exhibited a proclivity for rural themes, utilizing them as a canvas to convey sentiments of the countryside. This artistic inclination subsequently unfurls an exploration of the primal desires that smolder within the "peasant" at the core of one's being, obscured beneath the veneer of ancient asceticism. In the lexicon of Chinese cinematic discourse, the categorization and delineation of the Sixth Generation of directors have attained the status of established conventions. Surveying the spiritual odyssey and socio-cultural milieu of these directors throughout the 20th century, one discerns that they grappled with disparate historical imperatives, pursued divergent artistic ideals, and fashioned distinct cinematic personas. Yet, amidst this tapestry of variation, one common thread emerges as their unifying essence: the narrative of the rural heartland. It lies concealed at the very core of their artistic identities, resonating as the most profound "root" amidst the multiplicity of their individual endeavors.

Features of the organization of the concept Director at different stages of age development

The article is devoted to the study of the features of the concept “Director” at different stages of age development. The study involved 638 respondents (pupils, students, film directors, psychologists) aged from 6 to 80 years. To identify the features of the organization of mental experience, the results of a directed associative experiment were analyzed (stimulus word - Director). The results of the study indicate that, as the age development and the mastering of professional activity, there is an increase in the differentiation and hierarchy of signs - first, the core and the outer periphery are distinguished, then the core, near, far and outer peripheries, and then - the differentiation of signs within the core. In the mature group of respondents and the group of film directors, the differentiation of features decreases, but there is an increase in the integration of features, which manifests itself in a decrease in differences between the core and the center. The basic characteristics of the director's personality are clarified - smart, responsible and creative. A significant predominance of emotional and evaluative features of the concept “Director” was revealed. A hypothesis has been put forward about the relationship between the measure of severity of the emotional and evaluative features of the concept “Director” and the measure of the integration of individual mental experience.

Hindi Cinema Made in Northeast India: A Case Study of Three Directors

Mainstream Hindi cinema with pan-Indian presence has been stereotyping its regional identities by presentation of the lifestyle and cultural identities. India’s Northeast is also a victim of this ongoing phenomena in the hundred-year-old history of Indian Cinema. No mainstream major Indian filmmaker came forward to make any film on the backdrop of Northeast till recent years, with a remarkable exception like Mary Kom, made on the outstanding life of a global boxing icon hailing from this region. Kalpana Lajmi directed films like Ek Pal and Daman on the backdrop of Assam are in fact productions undertaken at the initiative of co-producer and iconic Assamese legend Dr Bhupen Hazarika. As opposed to this scenario, there had been few initiatives by film directors hailing from Northeast to highlight this region before the Hindi speaking mainstream Indian cinephiles through the production of original Hindi language films on the backdrop of this region. This study explores a selected few Hindi films directed by filmmakers from Northeast India like Dr Bhupen Hazarika, Jahnu Baruah and Dr Bhabendra Nath Saikia to examine how this region, its people and culture have been presented and to what extent their films Mera Dharam Meri Maa, Apeksha and Kaalsandhya impacted mainstream Hindi audience in understanding and accepting the unique identity, lifestyle, culture and social norms of this region.

Pesan Dakwah Dalam Web Series

Web series is a serial viewing format that is broadcast via web-based internet technology such as YouTube and Vimeo. Web Series have a broadcast concept that is similar to television shows, but Web Series are shorter in duration, have clearer storylines and conflicts and are not long-winded. A strong story makes the audience understand and become more involved in the story, so this media is often used to convey preaching messages. Like one of the Web Series entitled "Story Of Dira" belonging to the B3E Production Youtube Channel. Various series that have been produced have achieved success, both in Indonesia and abroad. One of the achievements of the film When Hafidz Falls in Love was winning awards as favorite film and best director at ISMEFEST, 1st place at KUA Fest 2020, Ministry of Religion of the Republic of Indonesia. The purpose of this study is to find out what da'wah messages are contained in the Web Series Story Of Dira. The type of research used by the author in analyzing the Story Of Dira web series is library research using a qualitative approach. The data was analyzed using Roland Barthes' semiotic analysis. The research results show that the Web Series Story Of Dira contains a da'wah message, namely the message of the aqidah da'wah conveyed in this Web Series is about faith in Allah, faith in qhada and qhadar. The message of sharia da'wah is about prohibitions on dating, covering one's private parts, marriage, ta'aruf. The message of moral preaching is about telling the truth, forgiving, helping each other, inviting people to study and loving animals. Where the preaching message above is analyzed based on Roland Barthes' semiotic analysis approach, namely by examining signs or symbols with the meaning of denotation, connotation and myth.

Modern domestic cinematography in Ekaterinburg citizen's assessment in conditions of global challenge to Russian culture

The article examines the state of the national cinema in the context of Russian culture global challenge. In modern conditions, cinema should play an important role in the dissemination of national values. Cinema should be an effective means of patriotic education of the individual.The research methodology was a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods. This study was conducted in the city of Yekaterinburg in Russia. An online survey was conducted among Yekaterinburg residents who are interested in and watch national movie. 600 people were questioned, on the basis of the spontaneous sample. Depths interviews with experts (20 experts) are applied on purpose to identify main problems dealing with national movie. Film critics and directors from the city of Yekaterinburg acted as informants.The study has revealed that modern Russian cinema does not fully fulfill the functions assigned to it. According to Yekaterinburg residents, Russian cinema is inferior to foreign cinema in a number of indicators such as: acting, plots, filming quality, directing. As a result, the Yekaterinburg audience is practically not interested in it. If, nevertheless, a Russian-made film is chosen as a film for screening of the film, then the main reason is get an insight into the lives of other people, the Russian reality, and get to know the society issues.

A Museum of Human Hunting: Thomas Bellinck’s Speculative Documentary

Abstract: This essay explores the performance series Simple as ABC (2016 - ongoing) by Belgian film and theatre director and activist Thomas Bellinck as an exemplary artistic reflection on border regimes and the technological apparatus of mobility management. Based on extensive research into the most acute forms of human-hunting today, the mechanisms of border control and migration, Bellinck claims the speculative documentary as a counter-genre to “documentary taxidermy.” The speculative documentary investigates the objectification and de-humanization of the Other as an undesirable data-subject by interrelating the ethics of the “sovereign” gaze and looking-from-above management with the looking-from-below perspective of criminalized bodies and borderland communities. By questioning the interweaving of documentary forms with hegemonic representations of the Other, I argue that statements of truth in documentary theatre need to become unsettled, so that the genre avoids becoming complicit in the solidification of essentialist identity politics and the regulative production of narrative protocols.

From Yale to Hollywood: A Journey in Film Directing with John Badham

John Badham is a film and television director whose creative works are notable for the ways they have influenced a range of American cultural norms and attitudes, especially in the 1970s. Indeed, his commercial and creative success, Saturday Night Fever (1977) was recognized by the Library of Congress in 2001 for its cultural, historic, and aesthetic significance. The director began his career in theater and television and quickly broadened into feature filmmaking. His films have been nominated for five Academy Awards and two Emmy Awards, and he has won three Saturn Awards from the Academy of Science Fiction and Fantasy. In this interview for Film Matters, John Badham—also a professor at Chapman University—shares his early influences, his formative years in Hollywood, and his creative approach to filmmaking, including the importance of sound and innovative adaptation.

Этторе Скола. Исторические и семейные хроники 1980-х

The article explores the language and themes of the films made by Italian film director Ettore Scola in the 1980s. The author of the article considers this period of Ettore Scola’s career in the context of the general evolution of his cinematography and the development of Italian cinema — movement from early Italian-style comedies to historical frescoes and parables of elusive time. Scola’s films not only reflect the social, political and cultural changes in the Apennine Peninsula in the last three decades of the 20th century, but also address universal, philosophical themes. These melancholic stories often contain a warning of danger and a reminder of responsibility for our actions which can lead to irreparable consequences. In 1983, the director made one of his best and most famous films, Ballando, ballando, in which the characters do not speak a word. Presenting a Parisian ballroom as a model of history, Scola argues that the value of a person’s private life is undeniable, and that it is he, the hero emerging from the elements of everyday life — funny, absurd, and contradictory, but able to hope in spite of unbearable circumstances — who is its main protagonist. In The Family (1986), this model is a flat in Rome, where the protagonist’s family has lived for decades. Finally, Skola’s What Time Is It? (1989) develops the findings from his previous films, but unlike them, it does not present a group portrait in an interior setting against the backdrop of the 20th century but a dialogue between two characters — father and son — taking place during a city walk on a single day. However, this chamber family chronicle is also imbued with reflections on the relationship between an “ordinary” man and the time of big history.

Confronting the Wound: Feminicidio on the US-Mexico Border

Abstract: This essay focuses on the social crisis Brown subalternized women have faced in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, since the early 1990s. I study counterhegemonic representations of the Juárez feminicides to bring out of the shadows the tacit, and tangible, social, cultural, spiritual, and even physical repercussions of these murders. Stemming from the “theories of the flesh” put forward by Gloria Anzaldúa (1942–2004), Cherríe Moraga (b. 1952), and other Chicana and Latina writers and scholars, I investigate manifestations of the wound in Lourdes Portillo’s highly acclaimed documentary Señorita Extraviada (2001) and Mexican film director Carlos Pérez Osorio’s Netflix documentary The Three Deaths of Marisela Escobedo (2020), along with Marisela Treviño Orta’s play Braided Sorrow (2005). Drawing on Stephanie Fetta’s theories of the soma and somatic analysis, I examine testimonios and other articulations and renderings of the wound as a means of discussing the internalized and somatic responses to the psychosocial repercussions brought forth by this wave of feminicides.

Contemporary Nordic art film comedy

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

When walls collapse! Rethinking the sites of memory in Hakim Belabbes’s Collapsed Walls (2022)

ABSTRACT Hakim Belabbes’s Collapsed Walls (2022) is an innovative Moroccan film that visually retells a set of stories from the life experience of the filmmaker in the city of Bejaad (Morocco). Grounding our work in transnational cinematic approaches and in cultural studies, our reading of Collapsed Walls attempts to holistically (de)encode the filmic construction of the contextual, the formal, and the thematic narratives that suffuse the film. We shed light on how this film engages with Belabbes’s cinematic style and how the Moroccan cultural identity is reshaped through his poetic filmic narratives. The methodology is bolstered by non-participant observation at the avant-première of the film in Casablanca on 20 May 2022, as well as an interview with the film director. Belabbes was trained in Chicago, where he lives, but the transnationality of his films is blurred by his heavy focus on his hometown, as a source of inspiration and as an iconic representation of his cultural identity. The other main characteristic of the disruptive approach to transnationalism in Belabbes’ films is permeated by what we have dubbed the ‘genre’s transnomadism’, considering the liminal, dialogic and transborder use of genres in Belabbes’ work. Collapsed Walls’ transnational resonances create a disruptive version of experimentation at the heart of the real narrative of the film, creating a knot of contrasts and ambivalent discourses through the negotiation of the real and the unreal, the spiritual and the sublime, the sacred and the profane.

영화감독 심훈의 영화예술에 대한 인식 고찰

영화감독 심훈의 영화예술에 대한 인식 고찰

How long is a good story? Compressed narratives in British screen advertising since 1955

The sixty second commercial has held a privileged status with the British television advertising industry since 1955. Recent scholarship in the useful film paradigm offers a promising starting point to analyse the design craft of the industry, as does scholarship on early advertising film. But in order to fully understand the evolution of this privileged status it is necessary to understand the conflicts that drive the different sectional parts of the tripartite supply chain and the organisations that regulate the design such as the Advertising Producers’ Association and Design and Art Direction Awards. It is also necessary to understand the use of certain devices film directors use in this compressed narrative form. Textual density is a primary one. Narrative in screen advertising remains under-researched. This article examines a range of commercials from the 1960s to the 2020s which utilise these devices to engage audiences in stories that sell brands, demonstrating some of the varied and transmedial way that narrative works across different categories of product and multi-media campaigns.

FILM-INDUCED TOURISM: THE IMPACT OF DESTINATION EXPOSURE BY LOCALLY-MADE MOVIES ON TRAVEL TO JAPAN

Japan has long been a prominent film destination, having given the world Akira Kurosawa (1910-1998), the great film director and cult movie figure. The influence of Japan on Hollywood production is evident and well-established, however there are limited studies concerning the influence of locally made Japanese movies in film-induced tourism in Japan. There exists an underutilized opportunity of destination exposure in Japanese film markets through locally made movies that can induce audiences’ travel behavior; thus, it is crucial to understand the impact of destination exposure specific in the Japanese film market. The study adapted the modified meaning transfer model, and this characterizes product placement as a transformative process whenever viewers can see the things without needing to utilize them. Experimental Quantitative research design was utilized in this research with 30 respondents chosen through purposive sampling. This established the following factors to effectively and objectively gather data: (1) treatment factors which is destination exposure, (2) the scope or variation of attributes in which the treatment factors were measured are affective attribute and affective affinity, (3) the manner in which the data were gathered and recorded through pre-testing and post-testing of a Likert scale modified instrument which measure travel intention through familiarity of culture and attractions and the desire to visit Japan, (4) the criteria provided the conclusions and implications for the recorded data as well as the treatment of paired T-test. The study found that destination image as a single determinant is significant factor in influencing travel intention of the participants. Age showed significant difference with travel intention before exposure to destination image while desired duration of travel is found to be significant in familiarity of destination image before exposure.