Film Club Research Articles

Ad hoc Screen Translation in Soviet Estonian Film Clubs

In Soviet Estonian official cinemas, foreign films were always dubbed into Russian with Estonian subtitles. Founded at the end of the Thaw, film clubs and other semi-official screening locations became popular as part of the alternative scene and unauthorised discourse. They screened uncensored original Western European and Hollywood films and thus the works of forbidden film directors and cinema movements from the West were introduced to a limited audience of film enthusiasts. Compared to other Soviet Socialist Republics, Estonia was in a privileged geographical and linguistic position to be able to access the films of the West via Finland. Film clubs looked beyond the Iron Curtain and opened up a cultural dialogue between the West and Soviet Estonia. This article analyses the repertoire of foreign films and different translation modes, social relations and the agency of the interpreters, and it looks at their interpretative act from theoretical perspectives discussed by Juri Lotman and Naoki Sakai. Lay Summary: In the era of Soviet Estonia, where foreign films were typically re-edited and dubbed into Russian, film clubs emerged as underground screening locations that offered uncensored original Western European and Hollywood films. These clubs played a crucial role in introducing the works of forbidden film directors and cinematic movements from the West to a limited audience of film enthusiasts. Soviet Estonia stood out in three significant aspects: 1) it was the only SSR to subtitle all films in the official cinema into Estonian; 2) it had a vibrant film club culture in universities with diverse repertoires from Finland, and all films had a live translation into Estonian, 3) and it had access to Finnish television broadcasting Western movies that were otherwise not shown in the Soviet Union (Estonian and Finnish are closely related languages that share many semantic and grammatical structures). Compared to other Soviet Socialist Republics, Estonia had the advantage of its geographical and linguistic position, facilitating a socio-cultural dialogue with the West. The various translation methods employed, often conducted on an ad hoc basis, social dynamics, and the role of interpreters in the film clubs, played a transformative role in dismantling the barriers of the Iron Curtain. Interpreters, by navigating the boundaries between the original films and their translations, significantly influenced the understanding of Western cinema and culture in Soviet Estonia.

CineMedicine: Impact of film club on medical students and the prospects

CineMedicine: Impact of film club on medical students and the prospects

Domesticating space: Media production pedagogy for the empowerment of marginalized youth

This article investigates the role of space in media and information literacy (MIL), especially when supporting learners’ production skills. The MIL framework is to a great extent focused on deconstruction of messages in a private position of reception, while the theoretical, didactic and ethical components of the production pedagogy are less developed. This multiple-case study analyses the situated agency of young people in a vulnerable position with regard to the spaces where agency is sustained. We develop the concept of production context into a more specific concept of production space and apply it to the film club in a suburb in Sweden. We combine qualitative analysis of critical situations in selected spaces with theoretical development of the idea of production space, to arrive at increased understanding of production skills and related media pedagogy.

“FILM CLUB” AS THE INTERACTIVE TECHNOLOGY IN PRE-SERVICE ENGLISH TEACHERS TRAINING

The article focuses on the theoretical substantiation of using the “film club” interactive technology as a relevant and effective tool for interactive learning in pre-service English teachers’ training. The aim of the presented study is to define the term interactive learning, provide its characteristics, ground the importance of the usage and suggest selection criteria of authentic videos in the integrated formation of professional foreign language communicative and methodological competencies of pre-service English teachers. It also outlines the stages of working with fragments of authentic videos within the implementation of the subsystem of exercises for the “film club” interactive technology. The article suggests practical advice on the implementation of the “movie club” interactive technology for the formation of foreign language communicative, professional communicative and professional and methodological competencies of pre-service English teachers at the “English Teacher’s Film Club” training session. It also provides an illustrative set of exercises for pre-service English teachers on the topic “In the World of Music” (Year 3 – Year 4) on the material of the film “The Bohemian Rhapsody”.

To Be Free of Air: Narrative and Negation in the Alexander Plays

Drawn from the life experiences of Adrienne Kennedy and her son Adam P. Kennedy, the Alexander plays represent the central character, Suzanne Alexander, as a prolific writer often struggling to breathe in the suffocating, epistemic air of narrative. A similar trope finds notable resonance in Afropessimist theories. As such, this analysis attends to the Alexander plays and three overlapping premises: first, that Afropessimism and its conjoined critique from Black feminists reveal significant understandings as narrative theory; second, that the epistemological questions raised by Afropessimism in regard to narrativity reverberate across the Alexander pieces; and last, that the Alexander stories challenge the racializing force of narrative, but with questions as to the fundamental efficacy of such efforts. These premises then span a three-part study. The first part concentrates on She Talks to Beethoven, The Film Club, and The Dramatic Circle, all of which deal with Kennedy's travels to/from Ghana and the role of narrative in the conscription of Black subjecthood to social death. Attention then goes to The Ohio State Murders, where the violent drama of emplotment that would seem to enact a constant state of narrative/loss for Black subjects is undercut by a nondramatic, academic reading. Finally, focus turns to Sleep Deprivation Chamber along with two other Alexander pieces, Letter to My Students on My Sixty-first Birthday by Suzanne Alexander and Motherhood 2000—all emanating from Adam Kennedy's experience of being racially profiled. Here, narrative's condition of non-altering negation receives scrutiny. The question of "what can be done" then circles back to how Black writers working through and against narrative employ various discursive strategies to envision possibilities of social justice that should be, but may never be, realized.

Pelatihan Penerjemahan dan Pembuatan Takarir Inggris-Indonesia bagi Guru dan Siswa SMAN 2 Purwokerto

People now have access to a broader and more diverse selection of audiovisual shows thanks to Era 4.0. As a result, the demand for watching and translating audiovisual shows in foreign languages (in this case, English) into Indonesian or other local languages is increasing. Thus, the goal of this project is to provide subtitle translation training to students and teachers at SMAN 2 Purwokerto in Central Java, who have the potential to learn translation media well because they have language classes and a film club. It is believed that this activity will help students and teachers at SMAN 2 Purwokerto develop their interests and expertise in the field of translation, particularly subtitle translation, which will be very useful in their professional lives.

USING VYGOTSKY’S THEORY ON THE ORGANIZATION AND FUNCTION OF A SCHOOL FILM CLUB - AN ACTION RESEARCH

<p>Lev Vygotsky's theory states that individuals' development is a result of socializing. Individuals are influenced by other individuals in the social environment. In this way, individuals’ internal cognitive functions are formed. At the same time, they create a social status and gradually build their personal appreciation for the world and the social reality around them. In this learning process, the active participation of a student himself/herself is necessary, while teachers’ role is also important. Teachers contribute to knowledge's acquisition of knowledge by students. They encourage their students, while knowing the students’ needs and abilities, and using the declining support method within a group of peers. In this study, action research was used as a form of self-reflective inquiry, known for its distinguished and liberating character. Teachers who participated studied and tried to understand their social or educational practices, to improve them. On the other hand, the critical friend and teachers’ facilitator contributed to this process of intertwining research with action and theory with practice. This study used action research and Vygotsky’s theory on the organization and function of a school film club. Using active learning strategies, elementary school students of the 5th & 6th grades, discussed, shared emotions and creatively wrote. Τhey developed their social, cultural and linguistic abilities. Also, relationships within the school community were developed. </p><p> </p><p><strong> Article visualizations:</strong></p><p><img src="/-counters-/edu_01/0957/a.php" alt="Hit counter" /></p>

Excitement lies elsewhere: Teenage film-makers and popular culture

When teenagers are given access to digital media equipment, their teachers and film club leaders may hope that they will take the opportunity to make films of personal significance. Instead, young people often choose to engage in a parodic dialogue with popular culture, in a process which feels more familiar and/or comfortable to them, providing as it does a creative space unburdened by expectations of sincere expression. From a survey of numerous short films made in Scotland, it is evident that the use of pastiche and parody facilitates both progressive and reactionary perspectives, often within the same film. Exploring a series of detailed case studies of films made by young people in Scotland in the early 2000s, this article argues that parody can provide for young people an aesthetic distance from personal expression, which, ironically, is unexpectedly revealing of generalised teenage sociocultural attitudes.

Making a Home for Film, Making Film a Home: The Nomadic Cinephilia of Ruun Nuur

Making a Home for Film, Making Film a Home:The Nomadic Cinephilia of Ruun Nuur Girish Shambu (bio) Cinephilia in the twenty-first century has been the site of a profound rupture. This rupture, enabled by digital and internet technologies, has remade the entire "moving image supply chain" from production to consumption. In the case of film exhibition, specifically, one might trace the birth of this transformation to the moment when Netflix began offering streaming as an option for some of its movies and TV shows in 2007.1 This shift accelerated during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, as thousands of movie theaters around the country closed, and film exhibition moved en masse from physical to virtual spaces. The disruption experienced by large theater chains and the simultaneous growth of streaming have commanded the headlines in film exhibition news since the pandemic began. However, what risks being overlooked is the broad array of innovations already underway that promise to alter and expand the landscape of future film exhibition—not just in the virtual realm but in that of physical screening spaces. Nicolas Rapold, in an essay for the Criterion Collection website, celebrates the rise of microcinemas and the role they play in reimagining cinephilia post pandemic.2 The term microcinema dates back to the 1990s, and refers to small, local DIY film spaces or series that often feature eclectic, imaginative programming. In the case of Brooklyn alone, he cites such disparate microcinemas as the thirty-seat Spectacle Theater, with its wide-ranging programs of rare and obscure art cinema and genre films; Union Docs, devoted to nonfiction work; and Light Industry, whose focus is primarily experimental and artists' cinema. Further, his examples of microcinemas go well beyond the United States and [End Page 201] include "Filmhuis Cavia in Amsterdam; Los Otros in Manila, Philippines; the Sudanese Film Club (spotlighted in last year's festival documentary Talking About Trees [FR, 2019]); and the Red de Microcines network of community exhibition spaces across Peru." Rapold argues that even though the pandemic has prevented microcinemas from holding physical screenings, they have been better positioned than larger, traditional theatrical spaces to navigate the crisis. Some have switched to streaming, others to drive-in screenings; in general, their smaller scale has allowed microcinemas a measure of financial flexibility. Other factors, like the transitory nature of their programming and their ability to use multiple locations (since most microcinemas don't own and operate their own brick-and-mortar space) have added to this flexibility. If all this bodes well for their post-pandemic future, microcinemas are making an additional, less-discussed but important contribution to cinephilia through nomadic cinema. This alternate form of film exhibition refers to traveling cinemas, which have a rich and varied history, especially in Asia and Africa. A documentary devoted to the tent cinemas of India, The Cinema Travellers (Shirley Abraham and Amit Madheshiya, US, 2016), attracted global attention in film culture after being screened at the Cannes Film Festival in 2016.3 It helped unearth a valuable account of traveling cinemas that were part of religious fairs (jatras) in Maharashtra in the 1940s.4 In Africa, mobile cinema units consisting of vans with projectors and collapsible screens date at least as far back as that decade, when they were used by colonial governments (for example, by the British in Nigeria) to mount showings of both developmentalist documentaries and Western fiction films for audiences in remote locations.5 Traveling cinemas continued to flourish in Africa after decolonization. For example, after Morocco's independence from France in 1956, the government instituted a film caravan program that became popular; its aim was to educate and entertain rural audiences that had no access to theaters.6 The present-day Sunshine Cinema, for instance, belongs to this lineage. A solar-powered mobile cinema network founded in 2013, it holds film screenings all over southern Africa while explicitly aiming to build communities around social justice issues.7 The cinema screens a variety of African feature films, documentaries and animated films, while partnering with local organizations that are engaged with social issues related to the themes of the chosen films. In this sense, Sunshine Cinema is influenced...

The Cambridge Mental Health Film Club: lessons to learn, feedback, expansion and development of a standard operating protocol

AimsTo report on our progress and feedback running the Cambridge Mental Health Film Club. To share the recent development of a Standard Operating Protocol to help others organise Mental Health Film Screenings in order to foster discussion, engage the public, reduce stigma about mental health and build understanding.BackgroundCinema lends itself to exploring social and mental health issues such as stigma in an enjoyable way within a limited time and budget. Viewing a film with those from different backgrounds and having a chance to discuss perspectives on meaning and significance is an effective way to promote a collaborative stance and expand perspectives. We have been running a Mental Health Film Club in Cambridge for the past 3 years and have recently celebrated our 10th screening.MethodWe give details of our screenings and feedback. We also share our Standard Operating Protocol which covers important topics such as resources to find suitable films, obtaining copyright permission, finding suitable venues, supporting open discussions, use of social media and promoting inclusivity.ResultOur Mental Health Film club shows three films a year and over time has opened up to both professionals and members of the public who are interested in discussing mental health through movies and supporting recovery. We have screened many challenging and interesting films: from the impact of religious control on emergent adolescent sexuality (‘The Miseducation of Cameron Post’) to a classic film on Alcohol Dependency (‘Days of Wine and Roses’). We also support local festivals with a similar mental health theme (e.g. MEDFEST) and have recently run a very successful screening with the University of Cambridge Psychiatry Society which was introduced by a student offering subjective experience of growing up with a sibling with an Autism Spectrum Disorder (‘Life, Animated’). We promote screenings and publish all film discussions on our website (www.tinyurl.com/psychfilmclub) and Twitter in order to contribute to resources for educational use within Psychiatry training and to further involve the wider public. Feedback shows that our sessions are highly rated at helping audiences see mental health in a new way with post film discussion especially valued.ConclusionOur experience and practical advice can inspire others to start a Mental Health Film Club and promote cohesion, resilience and collaborative thinking within their locality. For future events we plan to expand into more public engagement via local Film Festivals. We welcome delegates ideas, experiences and film recommendations.

The role of adult facilitators in arts-based extracurricular settings: Perceived factors for success of adult-youth relationships.

Extracurricular arts programmes and supportive adult relationships provide youth with opportunities for positive development, however, more research about how relationships within these programmes develop and what factors and practices adults use to guide their work would help to improve youth programmes' outcomes. Eight Film Club facilitators at an after-school film-making club for students in grades 5 through 8 were interviewed about their perceived their role and what practices they successfully utilised. The semistructured interviews were then thematically analysed. Facilitators perceived the development of authentic and supportive relationships provided a foundation for meaningful learning. Rather than being directive, the facilitators had a collaborative approach to engagement, which allowed for social and emotional learning opportunities and established youth agency. Relationships within creative extracurricular spaces, which are youth-led and include supportive adult facilitators may provide young people with valuable opportunities for social, emotional and identity development.

МЕТАМОРФОЗЫ КИНОКЛУБНОГО ДВИЖЕНИЯ ВЧЕРА И СЕГОДНЯ

The article is based on the studies by the Department for the Development and Approbation of Film Education Methods (VGIK) in the field of amateur film associations and cinema clubs. The authors profile the history of the Russian film club movement and analyze the significance of such associations for cultural enlightenment and comprehensive education of a personality. Such a survey is included in the international process of the formation of a cinephile community, who in the USSR were called nothing short of “kinomany” (movie addicts). A hundred years of experience of Russian film education, in the forms of both spontaneous amateur one and complex state one, is considered as a source of methods and best practices to be implemented in modern media education. The article also explains the influence of film clubs and their repertoire on the distribution and popularization of cinema works, especially on the so-called festival and “shelved” films, limited in release then and now becoming a battleground between commercial and artistic priorities of the filming process. The text contains stories and descriptions of participants in the film club movement: the founders of associations, curators and critics. Their interviews make it possible to imagine a three-dimensional picture of the life of cinema lovers’ communities. The main milestones in the history of the film club movement in the USSR and in the world are traced: the formation in the 1910s–1920s, the decline in the 1930s–1940s, the revival of the international festival movement abroad after World War II, and in Russia—during the perestroika, the crisis of the 1980s–1990s, the creation of the Cinema Club Federation, attempts to revive the Friends of Soviet Cinema Society, and modern trends related to the film club work in the context of international cooperation, which was initiated by the VI World Festival of Youth and Students. The Soviet experience is studied in correlation not only with the strengthening in Western Europe of such phenomena as film clubs and film lovers’ associations, but also with the formation of specialized art cinemas and the experiment of the cinema club network, which is predicted to play a special role in the post-pandemic era. Among other things, the authors’ attention is focused on the delicate balance, that accompanied the entire history of the film club movement: the balance between initiative of the people, a spontaneous mass movement, and state efforts to organize and structure this process, between the desire for creative freedom and strict censorship of the elite. The authors consider the domestic and foreign cinema club experience as an opportunity to distribute works of the Russian cinema art among the most interested audience and to establish a system of limited cinema club distribution, which would bring originators and the public closer together.

Channeling the State: Community Media and Popular Politics in Venezuela by Naomi Schiller

MLR, .,   Transilvania Unplugged) both individually and collectively explore the existential tensions produced by prescriptive notions of national identity by asserting the complexity of individual experiences of affect and belonging (p. ). is monograph is a timely and significant contribution to understanding the effect of Bolivarian cultural policy, and its inherent contradictions, on the ‘minor’ contemporary literature produced by Venezuelans (p. ), both within the country and in exile. More broadly, it will appeal to scholars and students interested in the tensions between national cultural policies, publishing, and experimental literature. U  R P P Channeling the State: Community Media and Popular Politics in Venezuela. By N S. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. . xiv+ pp. $.. ISBN ––––. How does a DIY film club become a television station? is is one of the questions behind Channeling the State, a book that investigates the workings of CatiaTVe, a government-sponsored, community-led broadcaster that, since , has operated from Caracas. In its prime the channel aired eighteen hours a day. Seventy per cent of content was created by residents of Catia, a low-income district of the capital. Schiller traces the station’s origins to . Its directors began as a group of students and activists who established a community film club in the neighbourhood of Manicomio. With government funding, they bought a  mm film projector and hung a makeshi screen from the raers of an open-air sports centre. ey invited the people of Catia to watch the revolutionary missives of the s, when anti-capitalist Latin American film-makers resolved to use their chosen media to promote social change, and to challenge the hegemony of Hollywood. Perhaps frustrated by low turnouts, the Manicomio Film Club soon purchased a VHS player and built a collection of pirate videos. ese included action blockbusters and Disney animations, giving showtime to the man who, quite literally, gave a friendly face to aggressive free-market policies and who suppressed unionization among his cartoonists. e organizers, we are informed, were aware of such contradictions . ey counteracted a desire to attract larger audiences with discussions that deconstructed these commercial features. Schiller’s opening with a brief history of the Cine Club confirms that the s was an exciting, if challenging, time for film-makers in Venezuela. Although the country spent most of the decade reeling from an economic crisis, it would also eventually, in , see the creation of a National Film Commission (CNAC). Many of CNAC’s directors and associates had graduated from the school of New Latin American Cinema, which in  held a keystone festival in the Venezuelan city of Mérida. Following the principles of revolutionary film, the CNAC sought to engage with the popular urban sectors and, around the time of its inauguration, premiered feature films in Catia. In  the Manicomio Film Club acquired a hand-held camera and began making local-interest newsreels that were screened in public  Reviews spaces. e watershed election of Hugo Chávez in —which serves as Schiller’s point of departure—initiated the process known as the Bolivarian Revolution, creating new opportunities for grass-roots media. A suite of constitutional reforms provided the legal and infrastructural frameworks that allowed for the formalization of CatiaTVe. e community channel, like dozens across the nation, acquired permission to broadcast on the television network. In many respects, the Manicomio Film Club anticipated the Bolivarian tenor of local autonomy, although it received more governmental funding once CatiaTVe expanded its operations. Did this new proximity between state and people entail the co-optation of grass-roots labour? No, is Schiller’s unwavering answer, because the state is neither ‘a coherent thing to be seized’ (p. ) nor a ‘collection of institutions always already predisposed to enacting a particular kind of politics’ (p. ), but, instead, the ‘ever-unfolding result of daily power-laden interactions between poor and elite social actors’ (p. ). Participating in debates over agency, power, and representation in the Bolivarian Revolution, she argues that the creators of CatiaTVe ‘experienced, understood, and created the state through the process of making media’ (p. ). us Channeling the State rehearses its argument not by analysing content or ratings. Rather, Schiller claims, much along the lines of New Latin American Cinema...

Film club as a tool for developing the culture of experience among parents

While observing the difficulties that parents experience in communicating with their adolescent children (for example, ignoring, misunderstanding, or underestimating the problems faced by teenagers, inability to build trust-based relationships, difficulties in discussing complex topics of interpersonal relationships, life choices, school problems, self-determination, etc.), the authors emphasized the need to search for methodological tools that can help overcome these problems of intergenerational communication through developing the culture of experience among parents. A film club for parents was chosen as a method. 30 parents of children (4–20 years old) watched a German TV series DRUCK (based on a Norwegian TV series SKAM) in Moscow from January to December 2020 offline and online. The functioning of this club was built over the methods of polylogue, non-judgmental interview, and amplification of sense. Observations, questionnaires, and interviews of the club members at the end of meetings allowed the authors to conclude the effectiveness of such a format for developing the culture of experience among parents and improving intergenerational relations. It was also proved that teen series have a great potential for developing the culture of experience among parents since they address topics relevant for teens and help observe the emotions and behavior of teens in a psychologically safe environment. Based on the study results, the authors developed methodological recommendations for organizing such film clubs and holding meetings for parents.

Poetica: Schriften zur Literatur, Übersetzungen und Gedichte by Gershom ScholemHerbert Kopp-Oberstebrink Hannah Markus Martin Tremel Sigrid Weigel

 Reviews spaces. e watershed election of Hugo Chávez in —which serves as Schiller’s point of departure—initiated the process known as the Bolivarian Revolution, creating new opportunities for grass-roots media. A suite of constitutional reforms provided the legal and infrastructural frameworks that allowed for the formalization of CatiaTVe. e community channel, like dozens across the nation, acquired permission to broadcast on the television network. In many respects, the Manicomio Film Club anticipated the Bolivarian tenor of local autonomy, although it received more governmental funding once CatiaTVe expanded its operations. Did this new proximity between state and people entail the co-optation of grass-roots labour? No, is Schiller’s unwavering answer, because the state is neither ‘a coherent thing to be seized’ (p. ) nor a ‘collection of institutions always already predisposed to enacting a particular kind of politics’ (p. ), but, instead, the ‘ever-unfolding result of daily power-laden interactions between poor and elite social actors’ (p. ). Participating in debates over agency, power, and representation in the Bolivarian Revolution, she argues that the creators of CatiaTVe ‘experienced, understood, and created the state through the process of making media’ (p. ). us Channeling the State rehearses its argument not by analysing content or ratings. Rather, Schiller claims, much along the lines of New Latin American Cinema, it is the creation of new world-views, and all the messiness that this entails, that engenders revolutionary praxis. e result is a fascinating behind-the-scenes account that draws on months of ethnographic fieldwork. We are offered intimate access to workshops, production sets, editorial meetings, press conferences, and on-location shootings. e author is sympathetic to the core values of CatiaTVe and, by extension, to the egalitarian drive that for some underpinned the Bolivarian Revolution. It is much to her credit, then, that her analysis foregrounds tensions within the collective and carefully examines contradictions in their strategies. e book’s framing of CatiaTVe as a legacy of New Latin American Cinema makes it an essential reference for researchers of film and participatory film-making. e mediascape in Venezuela has seen a dramatic decline in diversity since the research was conducted. As such, Channeling the State also constitutes an important, if lamentable, historical artefact. U  L R J Poetica: Schrien zur Literatur, Übersetzungen und Gedichte. By G S. Ed. by H K-O, H M, M-  T, and S W in collaboration with T H. Berlin: Jüdischer Verlag im Suhrkamp Verlag. .  pp. € ISBN – –––. is magnificent collection contains a cornucopia of texts by the doyen of twentiethcentury Jewish Studies, who was also a master of German literature. It collects essays, translations, reviews, poems, and letters; and its subjects range from the Song of Songs to the Book of Job, from the Talmud to the Zohar, and from Bialek MLR, .,   and Agnon to Martin Buber. Indeed, this volume places Scholem on a par with the finest German Jewish thinkers, alongside Moses Mendelssohn and Hermann Cohen, inasmuch as he raises his philological commentary to the level of philosophy . e essays illuminate topics such as translation, the Talmudic style, Aramaic, or the nature of language with its ‘heavenly alphabet’. Scholem’s insights into areas far beyond his specialism such as the Halakhah and the Aggadah are as incisive as they are definitive. roughout we follow a scintillating intelligence in pursuit of truth. e dialogue between religion and politics which sustains Scholem’s endeavours is manifest from the start, as he enters the polemical fray: whether taking issue with Buber or performing a hatchet job on Philip Roth’s Portnoy’s Complaint, he battles against mediocrity and cant with the ferocity of a prophet. When his contemporaries were celebrating the First World War, he assailed the hostilities in a poem that attacks the ‘Mythos der Völkermord’. Yet he can be conciliatory, too, as in his poem to Ingeborg Bachmann with its typical scepticism: ‘Die Stunde der Erlösung ist vorüber’. In ditching Messianism he had the courage to discard one of the central tenets of Judaism. Ironically, nothing better shows the depth and intensity of the German–Jewish symbiosis, the existence of which he denied, than Scholem’s commentary on Luther...

Poetry and digital media for improving upper elementary African American science learning

ABSTRACT This study aims to analyze a case study of the Digi-Stars Science Film Club, which focused on using poetry, and digital media to improve upper elementary African Americans’ science learning. Fourth and sixth grade students enrolled in an urban, parochial school took part in the club. Performance fluency skills of the students were measured before and after teaching sessions of digital storytelling, filmmaking, and guided, expressive reading of science plays, poems, songs, and raps. The results indicated that the creation of poetry with digital media projects improved students’ writing quality for ideas, organization, word choice, sentence fluency, and conventions. The digital storytelling improved the use of story elements and science vocabulary. Students’ digital stories demonstrated a steady progress in the elements of digital storytelling, media competency, and agency of students. Opportunities and challenges of implementing culturally responsive science pedagogy are discussed.

Oficinas de cineclube itinerante: compartilhando o cinema brasileiro

Por meio da parceria entre os Projetos “Oficinas Culturais 2018” e “Programa Terceira Idade na Universidade” foram desenvolvidas oficinas de cineclube itinerante com as pessoas idosas. O projeto teve como objetivo promover, a partir das experiências audiovisuais nacionais, o conhecimento da produção do cinema brasileiro, assim como o intercâmbio cultural e a reflexão crítica entre os diferentes costumes, crenças, discursos e valores decorrentes das relações sociais na sociedade brasileira. As oficinas foram organizadas em eixos temáticos, focados na transformação social e empoderamento de idosas e idosos, além de, proporcionar um espaço de lazer recheados de conhecimentos e afetos.

KRONIK FILMEDIA’S RECEPTION TOWARDS FLORIAN GALLENBERGER’S COLONIA

This paper analyzes the audience’s reception of Colonia, a 2016 film by Florian Gallenberger. As a popular work, Colonia is a docudrama film that presents historical events happened in Chile during the coup of General Augusto Pinochet in 1973. The problems analyzed in this article are the reception process of respondents and the quality of Colonia as popular films. The film is chosen for the study as it received five nominations from German Film Awards 2016 and won Bavarian Film Awards 2016 for Best Production category, but it only has a rating of 26% from 47 reviews by Rotten Tomatoes. The respondents involved in this study are members of Kronik Filmedia of Diponegoro University. Kronik Filmedia is the university film club that focuses on producing short films and appreciating films by conducting film discussions. The purpose of the study is to describe the reception processes of respondents who are affected by their horizon of expectations and to prove that not all of popular works are low literature. The theory used in this paper is the Aesthetic of Reception theory by Hans Robert Jauss. The main concept of this theory is horizon of expectations. Horizon of expectations is a reader’s preferences from the previous experiences or readings. For the methodology, this paper uses qualitative research and focus group discussion as the data collecting method. Focus group discussion is a gathering data method by means of interviewing respondents in a forum consisted of five to eight people. Focus group discussion is an effective method to observe a social phenomenon or a case study. The data obtained is then analyzed as texts to draw a conclusion. The research involves eight members of Kronik Filmedia as respondents. The results of the research show the reception of Kronik Filmedia as Colonia can satisfy and even surpass seven out of eight respondents’ horizon of expectations as the film goes to be more ‘interesting’ and ‘thrilling’. All respondents also view that Colonia is worth to be studied and discussed as those of high literature.

Looking Back and Away: Jaime Barrios's <em>Film Club</em> (1968)

Looking Back and Away: Jaime Barrios’s Film Club (1968) Jessica Gordon-Burroughs (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1 and 2. Photocopy from Rodger Larson Personal Archive, photograph of Jesus Cruz and Jaime Barrios, Photo. Hella Hammid. Courtesy of Rodger Larson. The scene in Figures 1 and 2 was captured by photographer Hella Hammid1 on location during the filming of A Park Called Forsyth, a twelve-minute student film shot in the summer of 1967, in the context of productions made by the students at the Young Film-makers Foundation (YFF).2 In the foreground, the photo captures [End Page 281] seventeen-year-old student filmmaker Jesús Cruz (Figure 1) and Chilean film teacher and filmmaker Jaime Barrios (Figure 2), a Bolex camera on a tripod between them. Cruz’s short film, like many amateur student films of the period, is replete with blood and gore. The film portrays a gang conflict in which one gang leader strangles another with a bicycle chain in an “empty Forsyth Park, a park made of stone, concrete and a few scraggly trees” surrounded by an “aura of loneliness and abandonment.”3 The photo betrays little of this narrative machinery of violent reprisals and urban social dissolution and instead outlines a taut, concentrated visual and tactile connection between student, teacher, and the apparatus of visual representation. Barrios arrived in New York City only a few years earlier in 1963 to attend the School of Visual Arts and at the time of this photograph was active in an experimental scene, which overlapped with the New York Underground and tightly intertwined with his media activism at the YFF.4 The YFF, founded by art educator Rodger Larson alongside Barrios and New York philanthropist Lynne Hofer, was a community outreach project for New York City youths dedicated to training them in the art of 16mm filmmaking. Larson was also inspired by the underground scene, albeit as a viewer and occasional collaborator, even as he evolved into an important figure in U.S. community film education.5 Hammid’s photo, for its part, was employed for promotional use by the YFF and subsequently as the first image featured in Larson’s A Guide for Film Teachers to Filmmaking by Teenagers (1968).6 Later emulated throughout the country as part of the nationwide War on Poverty, the guide was a manual on 16mm student film production, intended as a blueprint of the New York City film workshops. If we understand the gaze—or, more broadly, the nature of visuality—as a confluence of subjective, spatial, and historical contingencies, the still images of Cruz and Barrios represent a significant point of convergence in regard to the visual politics of the YFF. The camera’s focus and object of representation—the Bolex camera—is visually placed at a crossroads and, centered, divides the frame in two. The symmetry of the two photographic subjects—Cruz and Barrios, in profile and facing each other—is interrupted by the lens, which is directed toward Cruz. On the left, Cruz, dressed in a starched white button-down shirt and with neatly cut hair, extends his arm parallel to the frame to the tripod, while Barrios, in an unironed denim shirt and with long wavy hair, steadies the tripod from below so as to set it at the height of Cruz’s gaze. Barrios’s hands are cut from the frame, while Cruz eyes the angle of the camera. The camera is manifestly fixed on [End Page 282] the park in which the two filmmakers find themselves, yet Cruz is seemingly looking into a dark, opaque lens as the camera points toward him. In Figures 1 and 2, the film’s director is the Bolex’s subject of representation in a twist of the film’s declared directorial logic, foregrounding a counterintuitive cinematic production of self. As such, the photo, in its entirety, constructs a tight yet enigmatic visual relation between the two filmmakers. Though each of the photographic subjects seems concentrated on some element of the camera, both Cruz and Barrios could also be interpreted as looking at one another in a confrontation between symmetrical yet asymmetrical figures, intersubjectively...

FESPACO Film Festival

FESPACO Film Festival Colin Dupré (bio) The Pan-African Film and Television Festival of Ouagadougou (Festival Panafricain de Cinema et de Television de Ouagadougou–FESPACO) was set up in Burkina Faso (Upper Volta at the time) in 1969. Born out of a modest private initiative, it received official backing from the Burkinabe authorities in 1972. That year, awards were introduced, the first editions not having had any competition sections. By the sixth edition (1979), the FESPACO adopted a biennial rhythm, the festival starting on the final Saturday in February every odd year. This choice was partly motivated by Tahar Cheriaa, founder of the Carthage Film Festival (JCC), who wanted to avoid competition between the two events. Set up in Tunisia in 1966, the JCC was originally intended to be a festival for films from sub-Saharan Africa, North Africa, and the Arab world. In practice, however, even though Ousmane Sembène won its first prize in 1966 with La Noire de… / Black Girl (Senegal), the JCC soon became a festival focused on the Maghreb, Mashriq, and Arab world in general. Placed under the authority of the Ministry of Culture, Tourism, and Communications, the FESPACO continues today to reflect the determination of the Burkinabe government. Michel Ouedraogo has been its Delegate General since taking over from Baba Hama in 2008. As it became institutionalized, the event adopted clear objectives, aiming principally to encourage the distribution of all African films, to facilitate contacts and exchanges between film and audiovisual professionals, and to contribute to the emergence, development, and safeguarding of African film as a means of expression, education, and consciousness raising (Statuts du FESPACO, 1999). The best of African film production is thus screened at the festival. At the end of the feature film competition, three major awards are attributed: the Gold, Silver, and Bronze Étalons de Yennenga (Yennenga Stallions). Short films are awarded the Gold, Silver, and Bronze Poulains (Foals). The horse plays a highly important role in the epic founding myth of the Mossi people, Burkina's majority ethnic group. Princess Yennenga met her future husband, Riale, thanks to his mount. Their child was the first in the line of the founders of the Mossi Empire. They named him Ouedraogo, [End Page 282] which means 'the stallion,' in reference to the horse that brought about their meeting. A Festival of its Kind The FESPACO brings together a considerable number of film enthusiasts. Today it easily attracts over half a million spectators. It is characterized by its popular dimension, lacking in a lot of other international film festivals. The Ouagadougou festival is one of the rare festivals to offer the general public the possibility of seeing the films selected during the competition, and on no other condition than buying one's ticket. Right since the outset, one of the FESPACO's major stakes has been to show African films to African audiences, and that at a time when the continent's screens were flooded with American, French, and Indian films. Largely inspired by Pan-Africanism, this militancy has remained unfailing since 1969 and has translated into Africans' desire to reappropriate their culture and develop their cinema. A real showcase for African film, the FESPACO helps 'keep a finger on the pulse' of filmmaking on the continent and makes it accessible to the world. FESPACO: Birth and Evolutions Born thanks to the initiative of a few enthusiasts, the FESPACO was created by the Franco-Voltaïque Cultural Centre (CCFV) film club in 1969 under the name of the Ouagadougou First African Film Festival. It emerged in a favorable context, several cultural initiatives having been launched across the continent, and notably in the domain of film. From the rudimentary nature of its first editions, it has evolved into a major event on the international cultural agenda. It was renamed FESPACO in 1972. That year, the Burkinabe government decided to institutionalize it, in an effort to thereby benefit from this showcase. Indeed, whatever the period, the FESPACO has always represented a key asset in Burkinabe diplomacy. Each regime has benefited from the platform that the event represents to convey certain positions to the international community. That was the case in 1983, for example, when...