Full-length Feature Film Research Articles

Reading Nanook's Smile: Visual Sovereignty, Indigenous Revisions of Ethnography, and Atanarjuat (The Fast Runner)

"Reading Nanook's Smile: Visual Sovereignty, Indigenous Revisions of Ethnography, and Atanarjuat (The Fast Runner)" puts ethnography and cinematic representations of Native Americans in crucial dialogue with the work of contemporary indigenous filmmakers. The author explores what it means for indigenous people "to laugh at the camera" as a tactic of what she calls "visual sovereignty," to confront the spectator with the often absurd assumptions that circulate around visual representations of Native Americans, while also flagging their involvement and, to some degree, complicity in these often disempowering structures of cinematic dominance and stereotype. She employs Atanarjuat (The Fast Runner) (2000), the first full-length feature film directed by an Inuit, Zacharias Kunuk, and produced by Igloolik Isuma Productions, Inc., a collaborative, majority Inuit production company, as her primary context for analysis to examine the ways this film is embedded within discourses about Arctic peoples that cannot be severed from the larger web of hegemonic discourses of ethnography. She does this first by discussing the pervasive images of Native Americans in ethnographic films and then by theorizing the ways that Atanarjuat intervenes into visual sovereignty as a film that successfully addresses a dual Inuit and non-Inuit audience for two different aims. More specifically, she interrogates how the Atanarjuat filmmakers strategically adjust and reframe the registers on which Inuit epistemes are considered with the twin, but not necessarily conflicting, aims of operating in the service of their home communities and forcing viewers to reconsider mass-mediated images of the Arctic.

‘Celluloid or Silicon?’ Digital Cinema and the Future of Specialised Film Exhibition

Cinema’s future is currently claimed to rest with the development of electronic cinema (e-cinema) and digital cinema (d-cinema). In many instances the terms are used interchangeably, though broadly speaking e-cinema is concerned with the development of digital technologies across the levels of film production, distribution and exhibition, whilst d-cinema is concerned with distribution and exhibition. According to Watson and Morris, d-cinema can be defined as ‘the projection of fulllength feature films to audiences in a purpose-built cinema where the quality of projection is not less than that provided by current 35mm technology’ (2002: 5). Put more simply, ‘digital cinema’ refers to the distribution and exhibition of feature films to cinemas for theatrical screenings. In large part this means material that was originally shot on film and subsequently transferred into digital form (often referred to as ‘telecining’). For the purposes of this discussion the definition of d-cinema largely excludes the production and post-production stages of film-making. As Culkin and Randle (2003: 81) point out: ‘For years to come, many or perhaps most mainstream motion pictures will continue to be shot on 35mm film, and that it is in mastering, distribution and exhibition that the current d-cinema revolution is taking place’.

Matrubhoomi: Gender Violence and the Motherland

“Writer-director Manish Jha extrapolates from our current reality to imagine an Indian village where, due to routine killing of female newborns, women have entirely been wiped out…the frustrations, fanaticism that follow in this gender-skewed village is the story of Matrubhoomi” (Wadhwa, 2004, http://www.countercurrents.org/gen- wadhwa 040304.htm ). Matrubhoomi, a full-length feature film in Hindi, was released in mid-2003. The film received an opening in limited theaters in India, and reportedly did not make good business ( http://in.rediff.com/movies/2003/oct/16jha.htm). Majority of the reviews that the film received note that its theme and treatment is too disturbing to be palatable for average audiences.

Melodrama and ethics in François Ozon's Gouttes d'eau sur pierres brûlantes/Water Drops on Burning Rocks (2000)

François Ozon's third full-length feature film, Gouttes d'eau sur pierres brûlantes/Water Drops on Burning Rocks (2000), was based on a text written by the German film-maker Rainer Werner Fassbinder, well known for his interest in melodrama in the films of the Hollywood director Douglas Sirk. Gouttes d'eau sur pierres brûlantes also imitated Fassbinder's filmic style and borrowed from his visual motifs. This article argues that, far from being merely a post-modern exercise in style, Ozon's film makes an important contribution to current debates in contemporary French film-making concerning the role of genre in film-making. It traces the ways in which Ozon's film is linked to Fassbinder's subversive project and argues the case that Ozon's own film can be seen as an ethical intervention.

Websites of note

Websites of note

William Alwyn: the art of film music

William Alwyn was a leading composer of British film music in the 1940s and '50s, a time when the British film industry was at is peak. His scores ranged from documentaries to almost 80 full-length feature films, including classics such as Fires were Started, Desert Victory, Odd Man Out, The Fallen Idol, and The History of Mr Polly; he was adept at any musical genre, from classical to cartoon slapstick, and in the process worked with legendary directors, including Carol Reed, David Lean, Humphrey Jennings, and Anthony Asquith. Alone with Vaughan Williams he was granted the distinction of a separate title credit; columnists mentioned him alongside Bliss, Bax and Walton. However, as the reputation of the British film industry declined in the 1950s, so musical snobbery against those who were its leading lights became unpleasantly raw. In recent years, however, with sensitive performances of his film and concert music available on CD, this most appealing of composers has enjoyed something of a renaissance. In this long overdue reassessment, Alwyn's films are analysed and put into the context of his biography, the film industry, and of society at large: the author shows in particular this remarkably versatile composer developed a hitherto unrecognised grammar of film music which enhanced every film on which he worked. He also examines his work for war propaganda, radio, and the concert hall. The volume is enhanced by the most complete filmography, discography, and bibliography of the composer's works yet published, as well as listings of his concert and radio music.

THE MAKING OF THE FILMTHE LAND HAS EYES

The Land Has Eyes is a full-length feature film set on the Polynesian island of Rotuma in the South Pacific. The film was written and directed by Vilsoni Hereniko, who was born and raised on the island, and coproduced by his wife, Jeannette Paulson Hereniko. It is the first film to be nominated for an academy award by the Republic of Fiji. This paper documents the issues involved in making the film, including the logistic and cultural problems confronting the couple before, during, and after production. Responses to the film by Rotuman and nonRotuman audiences, and by critics, are presented. A number of issues associated with indigenous filmmaking are also discussed.

Cinema in the first person: Sabine Franel's Le Premier du Nom

In France, one of the hits at the cinema in the summer of 2003 was Sam Garbarski's Le Tango des Rashevski/Rashevski's Tango (2003) in which a Jewish Ashkenazi family questions its identity after the death of the grandmother, the pillar of the family. This comedy drama is the latest link in the chain of what the French call the ‘Jewish family’ genre of films. This article deals with one of the most enjoyable examples of this genre: Le Premier du Nom/The First of the Name (2000), Sabine Franel's first full-length feature film, presented at the 2000 Cannes Film Festival. Sabine Franel uses her camera to explore the past in an attempt to trace the genealogy of her family taking the life and times of her ‘great ancestor’ Moïse Blin—le Premier du Nom—an Alsatian Jewish rabbi and peddler of the eighteenth century as a starting point. This article seeks to show how Sabine Franel's own identity as a Jewish woman and a filmmaker has been intricately woven into this work not only through her essential presence in the film, albeit as a reluctant character, but also in the mise-en-scène and narrative. No portrait of Moïse Blin remains and instead cinema enables Sabine Franel to substitute her own features for his invisible portrait: her own filmed self-portrait then becomes the repository of her family's diasporic identity.

Oz before the rainbow: L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz on stage and screen to 1939

Although obvious source for 1939 MGM musical Wizard of was L. Frank Baum's children's book, author reminds readers in this text that various stage and screen dramatizations of Baum's story preceded and influenced 1939 film. Musical-comedy elements in MGM film, extensive scenes with Kansas farmhands, and even ending in which Dorothy realizes that her visit to Oz was only a dream, all originated in stage or film versions rather than in pages of Baum's book. This illustrated text contains rare photographs, film stills, sketches, theatre programmes and movie advertisements from different productions. Piecing together Chicago and Broadway stage productions (1902-3) from contemporary reviews, surviving script pages and published song lyrics, Mark Evan Swartz shows how Baum and his many collaborators worked to transform book into a popular theatrical attraction - often requiring significant alterations to original story. He documents how show evolved during its tour of US, changing songs or adding topical jokes to keep production fresh. Swartz makes clear that popular stage musical influenced silent film depictions of Oz, including a multimedia show (1908), a one-reel short produced by Selig Studios (1910) and a full-length feature film (1925) that portrayed Dorothy as a flirtatious flapper and co-starred Oliver Hardy as Tin Woodman. Comprehensive examinations of each production provide behind-the-scenes information, including: battles over legal rights to Baum's stories and over financial backing for each play or film; different strategies to market each production; set and costume designs; special effects (how to create a tornado on stage); box-office receipts; and reactions of audiences and newspaper critics. To offer a comparison of different versions, Swartz also provides a full plot-synopsis of each production - including lyrics from early musicals, some written by Baum himself. The book concludes with an examination of famous MGM film, first version of story to locate Oz in a land Somewhere over Rainbow. Swartz argues that Baum created the first truly American fairyland, using language and imagery that would be familiar to ordinary American child.

Wanda Jakubowska’s Cinema of Commitment

The purpose of this article is to provide a general overview of the work of Wanda Jakubowska (1907–98), the first Polish, female film director to gain national and international recognition. Her career spanned over 50 years, in which she directed 14 full-length feature films, thus being the longest working film director in the history of Polish cinema. She was also one of the highest profile filmmakers to join the Polish communist party after the Second World War and in subsequent years represented the ‘party line’ among her fellow film-makers, and lobbied the party on behalf of the cinema industry. The article looks at style, ideology and the most important themes of Jakubowska’s work. Its focus is on her films about concentration camps and about contemporary Poland. The article also attempts to establish whether and to what degree Jakubowska was a feminist.

An Innocent Woman, Unjustly Accused? Charwe, Medium of the Nehanda Mhondoro Spirit, and the 1896–97 Central Shona Rising in Zimbabwe

The rising of the Ndebele and southwestern and central Shona people against colonial rule in the 1890s has become one of the classic cases of such resistance. Yet, since the independence of Zimbabwe in 1980, very little fresh research has been carried out on the subject. This paper re-examines the role of Shona religious authorities in the rising, especially that of the medium of the Nehanda spirit of the Mazowe valley in the central Shona area. In just over a century, the figure of “Mbuya Nehanda” has become the best-known popular symbol of resistance to colonial rule in modern Zimbabwe. She has been commemorated since 1980 in statues, street names, a hospital, posters, songs, novels, and poems, and is soon to be the subject of a full-length feature film. This paper examines the historical basis behind the legend.This legend runs as follows: the historical “Nehanda” was supposed to have been the daughter of the founding ancestor of the Mutapa dynasty, who lived in the fifteenth century. Her ritual incest with her brother Matope gave supernatural sanction to the power of the Mutapa state. After her death, she became a mhondoro spirit, and this spirit possessed a number of mediums (masvikiro, singular svikiro). During periods of possession by the spirit, the svikiro was regarded as speaking with the voice and personality of the original Nehanda and not with her own. In the last part of the nineteenth century one medium, Charwe, was responsible for the organization of resistance to the government of the British South Africa Company and the settlers in the Mazowe valley, and in particular for the killing of H.H. Pollard, Kunyaira, the extremely oppressive Native Commissioner of the area. This resistance began in June 1896, and from then until her capture in late 1897 the Nehanda medium was a major factor in the war. Tried and sentenced to death in March 1898, she refused to convert to Christianity and struggled right up to the moment when she was hanged.

Disability in full-length feature films

The purpose of this study was to assess frequency of disabling conditions in feature films and the general quality of these films (as judged by professional film critics reviews and movie going consumer ratings) over an 11-year span. 'Psychiatric disorder' were most frequently depicted. Professional film critics were markedly more negative in their reviews than ratings made by movie going consumers.

A Comprehensive Career Education Program at the University of Cincinnati

Conclusions. Students must undergo a thorough orientation. The program does not allow a student to enroll in another course or to hold a part-time job. Careful screening of forieng nationals as to their knowledge of English is essential. For optimum coordination and communication between the German Division and the College of Business Administration, and between the German Division and the students enrolled in MIBS, there must be an overall director of the program, with a reduced teaching load. A monitored laboratory workshop should be required and not voluntary. Cassettes should indeed be available for extra practice at home but not on a voluntary basis. The cultural (short) films must be edited thoroughly before they are considered in order to avoid outdated or uninformative ones, and full-length feature films should be chosen with a view toward education rather than entertainment. Occasional free conversation sessions are recommended

Union of Soviet Socialist Republics — Cinematography: Addendum to the Progress Committee Report

Motion-picture theaters in the USSR continue to enjoy a high degree of popularity. The yearly attendance reached 4.6 billion in 1974, which means that, on the average, each person in the USSR visited a motion-picture theater 18.3 times during the year and 235 new full-length feature films were produced. At present, 690 wide-screen motion-picture theaters and movie halls are equipped for showing films printed on 70mm stock. Some of the films, released in 1974, were photographed on 70mm negative stock and a number of films were enlarged to 70mm positives from 35mm masters.