Fiction Film Research Articles

Analysis of TV Film Scoring and Communication Efficiency Based on Artificial Intelligence

The spread of TV movies has brought free participation in film reviews. Movies have brought freedom of time and space for comments. You can publish your own comments at any time without time restrictions. You can publish comments on forums, blogs, vote, and various websites, film companies, and even individuals to hold special online film competitions or film review activities. With the gradual maturity of film types, a series of subtypes such as artificial intelligence, interstellar civilization, and alien species have been derived. These contents have different emphases on type characteristics and narrative characteristics, although the subtypes of films have some common characteristics in essence. Based on artificial intelligence, this paper studies the scoring analysis and communication efficiency of TV and film. By adjusting the recommendation through user feedback, the average absolute error has been improved by 18% and the accuracy has been improved by 24%. Moreover, through four rounds of feedback, the accuracy of online computing recommendation for new users is very close to that for old users. This shows the superiority of artificial intelligence algorithm in solving the problems of cold start and complex interest recommendation. It can be predicted that artificial intelligence will become a unique cultural phenomenon. Its cultural connotation is all inclusive and worthy of continuous research and exploration by future generations. Artificial intelligence appears more and more frequently in science fiction films and presents more rich and detailed diversity and complexity.

See the Rough Road of Science Fiction Films in China from “The Wandering Earth”

See the Rough Road of Science Fiction Films in China from “The Wandering Earth”

Rebooting the end of the world: Teaching ecosophy through cinema

The global pandemic has pushed many of us to online streaming services. A particular genre in these services is the ‘end of the world’ science fiction film, in and through which the speculated results of processes such as climate change are depicted. CGI technology is frequently deployed to create images of the end of the world, which is a backdrop to the narrative of, ‘saving ourselves amidst the ruins’. This philosophy of education essay will critically examine ten films in order to: Explain how ‘the end of the world’ images connected to processes such as climate change, obscures and displaces attention from the real, scientifically proven processes that are not so entertaining, but are still deadly. The images are created by capital and its machines for audience attention and have little to do with real social change. Science sits in an ambiguous position in this paper in that the real processes of climate change proven by science may be funded by capitalist mechanisms that can also be their cause. Introduce a reformulated notion of ecosophy from the work of Félix Guattari, Murray Bookchin, Arne Næss and Andre Gorz. This essay will suggest that ecosophy has the potential to teach the underlying split between depictions of the end of the world through the capitalist machine and the real social change necessary under climate change. Ecosophy is in the context of this essay a specific conceptual construction designed for teaching about climate change through cinema.

Disabling discourses: contemporary cinematic representations of acquired physical disability

Film, a powerful publicising agent of knowledge, can have detrimental ideological and material implications contributing towards the systematic exclusion of disabled people. The paper explores how acquired physical disability is constructed within three contemporary mainstream fiction films. Guided by theoretical disability models and stereotypic representations of disability, identified by seminal authors in the field, the discussion highlights discourses that are perpetuated, challenged, or omitted within cinematic portrayals of disability. The paper also addresses how these discourses contribute to the maintenance or subversion of ableist power. The data underwent a multimodal analysis guided by critical and cinematic discourses. While steps towards more nuanced and diverse representations of acquired physical disability are evident, the films continue to perpetuate hegemonic discourses, emotionally provocative, and caricatured portrayals of disability. Arguably, contemporary disability fiction films are still largely produced for, and consumed by, abled audiences. Recommendations for transforming cinematic representations of the disabled are addressed. Points of interest Films can communicate accurate knowledge as well as damaging stereotypes to the public. Disability has often been portrayed negatively in films and thus it is important to critically analyse films about disability. The paper discusses three contemporary films in which the main actors have an acquired physical disability. What is said about disability through the films’ dialogue, and how disability is shown through camera angles, music, and props was analysed. The research found that films about acquired physical disability continue to produce negative stereotypes about disability. Thus, discrimination against disabled people is continued. Encouragingly, some stereotypes about disability were seen to be challenged in the contemporary films. Future films need to be more inclusive of disability. Characters need to be complex, all-rounded individuals, with disability being only one facet of their personhood.

Books Briefly

Books Briefly

Violence against Women and Girls: Female Filmmakers Critique the Menace

Violence against Women and Girls: Female Filmmakers Critique the Menace

Seeing and Interpreting Visions of the Next Age in Interstellar

Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar (2014) uses multiple styles of cinematography – documentary, painterly and expressionistic – to guide interpretation of its apocalyptic review of history. Within the prologue and epilogue of the science fiction film, clips from interviews originally filmed for Ken Burns’s The Dust Bowl (2012) invite questions about how to interpret documentary, revisionist and eschatological reviews of history. Cinematography functions as a self-reflexive cue to spectators within and outside the mise-en-scène to engage in eschatological interpretation. The representation of spectatorship and vision reveals the challenge of interpreting prophetic visions of the last things and the next age, which are conventions of the apocalypse genre.

Time perception in film is modulated by sensory modality and arousal.

Considerable research has shown that theperception of time can be distorted subjectively, but little empirical work has examined what factors affect time perception in film, a naturalistic multimodal stimulus. Here, we explore the effect of sensory modality, arousal, and valence on how participants estimate durations in film. Using behavioral ratings combined with pupillometry in a within-participants design, we analyzed responses to and duration estimates of film clips in three experimental conditions: audiovisual (containing music and sound effects), visual (without music and sound effects), and auditory (music and sound effects without a visual scene). Participants viewed clips from little-known nature documentaries, fiction, animation, and experimental films. They were asked to judge clip duration and to report subjective arousal and valence, as their pupil sizes were recorded. Data were analyzed using linear mixed-effects models. Results reveal duration estimates varied between experimental conditions. Clip durations were judged to be shorter than actual durations in all three conditions, with visual-only clips perceived as longer (i.e., less distorted in time) than auditory-only and audiovisual clips. High levels of Composite Arousal (an average of self-reported arousal and pupil size changes) were correlated with longer (more accurate) estimates of duration, particularly in the audiovisual modality. This effect may reflect stimulus complexity or greater cognitive engagement. Increased ratings of valence were correlated with longer estimates of duration. The use of naturalistic, complex stimuli such as film can enhance our understanding of the psychology of time perception.

‘I went there to live’: A case-study of Šarūnas Bartas’s Tofalaria and Few of Us

I argue that contemporary filmmakers, including today’s most artistically acclaimed Lithuanian film director, Šarūnas Bartas, whose works examine an ethnographic subject, question the rigid distinction between art and ethnography and prompt us to rethink the definition of ethnographic film. However, since they are primarily interested in the result, these filmmakers inadvertently perpetuate a cinematographic colonialism instead of trying to challenge obsolete models of representing other cultures. To make my point, I analyse two of Bartas’s early films: Tofalaria (1986) and Few of Us (1996), both shot in the area of the Eastern Sayan Mountains informally known as Tofalaria and inhabited by the Tofalars, the smallest indigenous ethnic group in Russia. Although they focus on the same subject, these films employ two different strategies of filmmaking and visual representation: Tofalaria can be considered as a conventional ethnographic documentary in which a voice-over describes the images and tells the story of the Tofalars, whereas Few of Us is a fiction film which has a narrative structure and features professional actors alongside local amateurs. Both films share the same premise: Tofalar culture and the Tofalars themselves are dying. Moreover, Tofalaria is depicted as a non-place, to use Marc Augé’s term, and has therefore lost its anthropological meaning.

Knowing everything: Interview with Maura Delpero

In this interview, Italian filmmaker Maura Delpero reflects on her career and the filmmaking process for the fiction film Hogar (Maternal) () about teenage motherhood in a Buenos Aires religious centre, as well as on her three documentaries: Moglie e buoi dei paesi tuoi (‘Choose your wife and oxen from your own town’) () about couples from different cultural backgrounds in South Tyrol, Italy; Signori professori (‘Professors’) () about the Italian school system and Nadea e Sveta (‘Nadea and Sveta’) () about female eastern European immigrants in Italy. Delpero discusses the differences and similarities between her non-fiction and fiction films, exploring topics such as the preparatory work, the storyboard, the timeframe, the locations, working with professional and non-professional actors, film techniques and production issues.

The Great Leap Backward: Forgetting and Representing the Mao Years

The Great Leap Backward: Forgetting and Representing the Mao Years

Review: Post-Horror: Art, Genre and Cultural Elevation, by David Church

Review: <i>Post-Horror: Art, Genre and Cultural Elevation</i>, by David Church

Is there no place like home? Women’s quest for their place in Maura Delpero’s cinema

This article is the first academic study on the Italian filmmaker Maura Delpero and analyses her fiction film Hogar (Maternal) (2019) and documentaries Signori Professori (‘Professors’) (2008) and Nadea e Sveta (‘Nadea and Sveta’) (2012). The three films are discussed individually and also through a comparative analysis that investigates the modes of filmic representation of the female search for a place in the world, thematic and stylistic recurring elements and dynamics between fiction and non-fiction filmmaking in Delpero’s works. Discussion of Delpero’s films is augmented with the director’s own reflections on her work as expressed in an interview the article author conducted in May 2020.

Red Planets

The desert in the South of Jordan is a popular location for multimillion-dollar productions of science fiction films. The combination of vast arid lands and lucrative tax rebates offered by the Royal Film Commission make the Jordanian desert a desirable backdrop for expeditions to hostile extraterrestrial planets. Dune (2021), Mission to Mars (2000), The Martian (2015), Last Days on Mars (2013), Transformers (2007), and The Red Planet (2010) are a few of the feature film titles produced by American companies and filmed in Jordan’s Wadi Rum. This article argues that the cinematic portrayal of worlds ravaged by resource scarcity and climate peril too often sustains the perception of the desert as an unruly, lawless, and dead land. While the environmental humanities often aim to shift the scale of our historic lens to bear witness to the entire earth, this article reflects on the stakes of further abstracting the specificity of geography and extending the colonial imaginaries of wasteland. Reflecting on the process of capturing images of landscapes in the Middle East, the article considers desert locations as unique “extractive zones” wherein the topsoil is captured and circulated as high-definition images. Thinking of filmmaking as extractive means defining images as materials, and considering the laws, labor, and cultural imaginations merged in this process.

Science Fiction and Political Imagination: ELLs Co-constructing Critical Social Justice Narratives in the ELT Classroom

Abstract Engaging with social, political, and cultural topics can pose challenges in English language teaching classrooms. These sites represent linguistically diverse settings housing distinct ideologies. This article documents classroom interactions that began with exposure to a science fiction film and progressed to a discussion of contemporary sociopolitical concerns that resonated with ELLs. Drawing on this case study, the article explores how an instructor and her ELL students addressed sociopolitical topics in a science fiction–themed classroom. The author analyzes student–teacher and student–student interactions in the classroom and the instructor’s subsequent self-reflection. Findings suggest that, when adopting intellectually stimulating materials that foster ELLs’ agency in learning, teachers need scaffolding to meaningfully incorporate such tools into a critical pedagogical approach.

Роль эвристического потенциала в реализации технической образности в зарубежной научной фантастике

The paper aims to identify the main features and the focus of imagery realization of heuristic potential by the example of technical vocabulary in the screenplays of English science fiction films. The article clarifies the role of heuristic potential in solving screenwriting problems, identifies the mechanism of heuristic metaphorical selection in the screenplays of science fiction films in the English language, proves that the characteristics of the technical sphere can be used as the primary source of units during the figurative reinterpretation of problematic screenwriting situations. The scientific originality of the research lies in the fact that it studied technical imagery based on the screenplay text for the first time which expands the understanding of an image during its amplification (development, completion) in order to seek understanding between the characters. As a result, it has been proved that heuristic potential uses technical imagery to solve important screenwriting problems, and that leads to the moments of inspiration and discovery of new solutions on the basis of technical imagery schemes.

Animating Truth: Documentary and Visual Culture in the 21st Century

Animating Truth: Documentary and Visual Culture in the 21st Century

How Pandemic Films Help Us Understand Outbreaks: Implications for Futures and Foresight

We analyzed 30 pandemic films and developed a processual model to explain the social-level coping mechanisms to confront pandemics as portrayed in films. The model describes the underlying collective understanding of disease outbreaks. The model suggests that pandemic films divide the disease outbreak into three phases: emergence, transmission, and termination. Concurrently, three social processes tend to be activated to cope with the pandemic: healthcare, political, and public awareness. This model is used to compare the social imaginary reflected in films with the current COVID-19 outbreak. The resemblance of the model and the current outbreak suggests that fictional pandemic films may still follow our collective understanding of the pandemic dynamics. Four scenarios are suggested as road maps for futures and foresight practice concerned with future pandemic outbreaks.

Addressing the Future with Data Visualization in Science Fiction Films: Dystopia or Utopia

The subject of the research is the methods and techniques of addressing the future in dystopian and utopian films. The object of research is visual effects and ways of displaying the future, which allow us to convey to the viewer the meaning of the narrative. In the process of research, special attention is paid to the possibilities of science fiction films that create another world with the help of special effects, emphasizing many themes and hidden ideas, while depicting a fairy tale. Special emphasis is placed on the fact that modern technologies, the possibilities of creating visual effects have changed the film industry, as a result of which it has strengthened the genre convergence of utopian and dystopian film products, as a result of which it has become possible to create plausible worlds so that science fiction films are perceived in a more immersive way. The main conclusions of the study are the conclusion that the modern tradition of visualizing science fiction films embraces and interweaves dystopias and utopias within the framework of one work, as a result of which the narratives are doubly fictional: they create a utopian or dystopian place as a backdrop for history, and at the same time the place itself becomes history. The author's special contribution lies in the fact that in the process of research, visual techniques of representing the future in cinematic fiction are highlighted, which invariably contain cultural meanings. The scientific novelty of the research is to identify and analyze the most typical techniques of reproducing the future in science fiction films using visual effects, which include brutalist architecture, creating an image of the future city.

A CASE STUDY COMPARING GOOD PRACTICE IN THE USE OF PEDAGOGICAL RESOURCES IN HOLOCAUST EDUCATION IN ENGLAND AND REPUBLIKA SRPSKA

The aim of this study is to analyze good practice in teaching about the Holocaust, comparing the use of pedagogical resources in Republika Srpska (Bosnia and Herzegovina) and England (United Kingdom). The paper compares the use of three types of pedagogical resources used in history classes: fictional films, documentaries, and photographs of Holocaust atrocities. Comparison is drawn between a developing and post-conflict society (Republika Srpska) and the well-established and reputable English educational system. By cross-referencing teachers’ and students’ answers, the paper attempts to identify good practice of notable value to be shared and exchanged. The research method firstly incorporated questionnaires, followed by interviews and then lesson observation. Data revealed that teachers in both education systems do not appear to consider all the educational benefits of film screening. The way teachers from England use pictures of Holocaust atrocities and organization of school trips seem to be applicable to the context of Republika Srpska, as well as being useful for classroom practitioners beyond these two education systems.