Film Genre Research Articles

Female Convict Scorpion: production context, gender politics, and cinematic excesses in a Japanese women-in-prison film series

ABSTRACT This article focuses on Female Convict Scorpion, a Japanese women-in-prison film series (1972–1973), which exemplifies studio-produced exploitation cinema. The series is influenced by the contemporaneous yakuza cycle and its anti-authoritarian social realist agenda. Produced during a time of rapid political-economic-social change in the country, the Female Convict Scorpion series combines exploitative content – the display of nudity, violence, and sensational subjects – with an underlying feminist sensibility, a mixture that embraces the ambiguities of commercial genre cinema. Through close textual analysis, this research explains the contradictions in this women-in-prison series by 1) providing evidence of the female gaze and the subversive narrative tropes, which reveals the feminist subtext in these films, and 2) examining the stylistic and narrative effects of cinematic excesses. This article, thus, re-evaluates these popular genre films as in a time capsule, documenting the significance of their expression of gender politics in 1970s Japan through the distinctive production context and presentation of cinematic excesses.

The Evolution of Film Genres: A Historical Analysis

Since its beginnings more than a century ago, cinema has undergone tremendous change as both an artistic medium and a cultural phenomenon. Changes and improvements to film genres are illustrative of this progression. looking back at the development of film genres from their inception all the way up to the current day. historical events, trends, and critical variables that have moulded cinematic genres. early film genres including silent comedies and melodramas emerged at this time, marking the beginning of cinema. Next, it explores how innovations in technology, such sound and colour, influenced the evolution of genres. Examining cinema history in chronological order, this study reveals pivotal epochs of experimentation and invention, such as the silent film era, the Hollywood musical heyday, and the blockbuster era.keywords:- Film Genres, Film History, Cinema Evolution, Genre Development, Silent Film Era, Sound in Film

“The name is Blacula!”: Identity and Palimpsest in William Marshall’s Vampire Diptych

Abstract: In the early 1970s, a new cinematic genre, the Blaxploitation film, emerged from a creative scene which saw Black actors, writers, and directors enabled to produce their own original works for the first time. Often accused of trafficking in unsavory racial tropes, Blaxploitation films nevertheless displayed aspects of America’s racial problems and subtly complicated Black stereotypes while capitalizing on them to entertain both Black and White audiences. Films such as Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song (dir. Melvin Van Peebles, 1971) and Shaft (dir. Gordon Parks, 1971) may be most recalled as having catapulted this genre to fame, but an often-overlooked subgenre—the Blaxploitation horror film—also offered its unique brand of cultural insight. William Crain’s seminal Blaxploitation horror film, Blacula (1972), and its fast-tracked sequel, Scream Blacula Scream (dir. Bob Kelljan, 1973), demonstrate the power of the Blaxploitation framework to transcend its harmful stereotypes and to expose oppressive cultural practices. Our analysis of this pair of Blaxploitation horror films focuses upon two aspects of their position as representatives of their subgenre: first, their influence upon the wider cinematic culture, particularly the culture of horror cinema; second, the ability of Blacula and its sequel to play with and against their racial stereotypes.

"Коснуться трансцендентного": о поисках человека встречи с богом (на основе фильмографии Андрея Тарковского)

The article talks about the work of A. Tarkovsky on the example of his film “Stalker”. Soviet and foreign films of the 1960s and 70s reflected the evolution of the cultural paradigm that took place in the second half of the 20th century, which was characterized by the emergence of interest in religious topics. This interest contained elements of the modernization of religious faiths, the secularization of church culture, the emergence of new religious and cultural forms and a wide range of interpretations of Christianity. Soviet culture is also included in this process, but with its own peculiarities: atheistic dogmatics gives way to a religious renaissance characteristic of the subculture of the Soviet intelligentsia. A. Tarkovsky's work is directly related to this subculture, his films have become a religious and philosophical metaphor and a landmark phenomenon of the socio-cultural process – the Soviet Renaissance, which was characterized by “God-seeking” and a claim to a new understanding of historical faiths. Today, intellectual cinema is of interest to modern youth, however, in the context of a secular education model, not everyone knows and understands the content of the basic tenets of traditional faiths. Most often, religion is perceived as a preserved relic of the past or interpreted through a rational and philosophical aspect, the feature of which is the thesis: God is one, all religions are the same. Having classified a number of Tarkovsky's films, including the film Solaris, to the cinematic genre of video essays, the author uses a semiotic approach in the study of this work. In addition, the author's cinema is a unique point of view, so its interpretation involves an appeal to the personality of the author himself, the historical period during which the film was created and to those cinematic images and symbols that the director created. Analyzing the work of Andrei Tarkovsky, the following conclusions were drawn: the director's worldview was formed on the basis of religious ideas, which were characterized by syncretism. The director spoke about the need to create a new religious teaching or rethink the traditional religion. The film “Stalker” became a vivid example of attempts to implement these ideas. Examining the semantic content of the symbols of the film, we can say that despite Tarkovsky's statement about the importance of modernizing Christianity, the film images he created demonstrate the behavior of a person of traditional Christian culture.

A Functional Study of Film Sound Design in Science Fiction Films

As a form of art combining audio and visual, movie sound effect is an important element in building the story world of the movie. When sound films first appeared, they were recognized and welcomed by the public, and it is extremely important to use sound effects in narrative films so that the audience can have a better connection with the fictional world. As one of the popular cinema genres, science fiction movies were loved by the audience when they first appeared, attracting the audience's attention with brilliant special effects, but the role played by sound effects in them should not be neglected. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the role of sound effects in science fiction films, and will use Avatar, Inception, The Prestige and Gravity, the four films, respectively, to explain the three functions that sound effects have. They are to enhance the realism of the movie, to help complete the temporal construction of the movie and to express the inner world of the characters.

Chinese Cinemas of Self-Determination: Impacts of Films on Anti-Imperialism and Nationalism

Modern China witnesses a plethora of anti-imperialist and postcolonial themed films, which, in contrary from the former artistic medium, benefitted from evolving cinematic technologies that allow more rapid distribution of information. Consequently, such genre of films triggered multifaceted social impacts across the Sinophones. The late-nineteenth-century semi-colonial China, marked by a profound power imbalance with colonizers, incited widespread public outrage and introspection. With the introduction of cinematic industries in China in the 1920s, filmmakers seamlessly integrated anti-colonial and progressive ideologies into their screenplay, venturing to galvanize Chinese citizens for decolonization and self-determination. Due to the infusion of political rhetoric in films, the medium continuously evoked and prompted the Chinese populace, exerting a monumental influence on Chinese anti-colonial and anti-imperialist pursuits. The activeness of such genres in the present-day Chinese entertainment industry reflects their incremental incorporation into a modern Chinese identity, centering on postcolonial reflections. Accordingly, the author will explore anti-imperialist films from the fledgling Chinese film industry to their recurrent presence in contemporary Chinese cinema, which contributed to the shaping of a postcolonial Chinese identity.

Examining Film as an Eminent Source of Entertainment: A Case Study of Pakistani Youth

Aim of the Study: Films are narratives, means of communication and a mirror of a society, simultaneously. It is the finest form of escapism or entertainment as watching it makes one forget the realities. This research aimed to explore the prominence of film entertainment among Pakistani youth. Methodology: The study employed quantitative cross-sectional survey design to gather data from a representative sample of (N=202) Pakistani youth aged 18 and above. Findings: The findings revealed that a significant majority of Pakistani youth (84.2%) consider films an eminent source of entertainment. The study identified the popularity of various film genres among the youth, with action, thriller, and drama genres being the most preferred. It also found that personal interest; recommendations from peers or friends, and media exposure are the factors influencing film preferences among the youth. Conclusion: The research concluded that films hold significant appeal and influence among Pakistani youth, serving as a meaningful and pleasurable form of entertainment that shapes their cultural identities and personal lives.

Mocny przedmiot pożądania. O istotnej roli rekwizytu we współczesnych filmach elevated genre

The aim of the article is to analyze the use of props in the contemporary elevated genre – in particular in post-horror films, but also other artistic interpretations of genre cinema, often realized under the auspices of A24 studio and “refined” with a strong, political theme (concerning, for example, racism, class differences, gender inequality, etc.). Props, which have always had important semantic functions in genre cinema, are now becoming even more crucial tools than in the 1960s or 1970s (in which context Italian giallo, spaghetti westerns and American progressive genres are alluded to). Significantly marked objects perform symbolic and narrative functions and become part of visual communication (they appear on posters and in advertising materials).

The Western as a Genre of Cultural Mobility

The Western is, in many respects, the essential American film genre, “a cornerstone of American identity” (Kitses). Yet, despite its distinctly American character, the genre has exerted a fascination all over the world. This contribution examines the Western as a site of transnational cultural exchange and as an illustration of what Stephen Greenblatt calls cultural mobility. In the work of Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai (1954) and Yojimbo (1961), Western elements are evoked, which provide complex comments on the influence of American culture on Japan in the post-WWII years. While Seven Samurai appears to embrace the promise of class eradication as a result of Westernization, its American remake The Magnificent Seven (1960) shows a particular fascination for the decidedly Japanese aspects of the material, namely the idea of a warrior class dissociated from society. The Italian remake of Yojimbo, Fistful of Dollars (1964), shows how the Western can function not only as an external comment on American culture, in its cynical redefinition of the cowboy hero, but also as an amalgam of cultural practices and symbols, reaching from Japanese samurai codes to Christian Catholic redeemer imagery, that through their stylization expose the performativity of culture as such.

Obraz służb mundurowych w kinie PRL (1968–1990)

The article discusses film motifs focused on the image of a militiaman, a Security Service agent, a prison guard, a soldier, a border guard, and a fireman in Polish television and cinema films. In order to capture the image of the uniformed services of the Polish People’s Republic as broadly as possible, all such motifs available to the Polish viewer were analyzed, but film genres were not distinguished as a separate criterion. In a chronological sense, the author focuses on films shot after March ’68, only mentioning earlier ones. This caesura seems important because after the brutal actions of the Citizens’ Militia against Polish intellectuals in March 1968 and the intervention of the Armed Forces of the Polish People’s Republic in Czechoslovakia in August of that year, the party and state authorities wanted to influence a positive image of the uniformed services among Polish society. The chronological framework ends in 1990 – the last year when it comes to the cinema screens of works shot in the People’s Republic of Poland. The image of uniformed services that emerges from the analysis is multicolored and multifaceted. Certainly, a common feature is the portrayal of Poles wearing uniforms as punitive, disciplined, and humble towards the authorities. There are many more differences. It is basic to distinguish between rank-and-file officers or soldiers and officers. The former are often not very intelligent and are often ridiculed, especially the militiamen. Officers are often portrayed in an exemplary manner, as intelligent men with a high level of personal culture. Both of them have courage. The image of a militiaman was presented most fully, while the image of a customs officer, a border guard, and a fireman was presented least well.

Scripting Disability as the ‘New’ Bollywood: Pitching, reflecting, researching and negotiating

In this article, I explore the role of screenwriters and dialogue writers within the more extensive filmmaking process of New Bollywood. Drawing on ethnographic data, I foreground the creative tools, research and negotiations that prompt screenwriters to conceptualise and pitch character arcs that feature disability while positioning the writer as central to diversify film genres. By building on scholarship on production cultures, scripting and disability studies, I draw upon factors that navigate the writer’s gaze from non-hereditary filmmaking networks to foreground disabilities in scripts and character arcs in efforts to strategise that they do not classify as reductive pathologisations and supercripping cultures. This article pays close attention to the conditions, identity politics, biases and situated vulnerabilities of writers that shape the assemblages of scripting disability rhetorics. The data from semi-structured interviews, with an explicit focus on three films and their script ideation and production pedagogies, illustrate these interlinkages and insights.

Analisis Resepsi Orang Tua Di Bekasi Mengenai Kekerasan Dalam Film Girl In The Basement

Films are often a reflection of reality in real life. This research is an analysis of parents in Bekasi regarding the film Girl in the Basement to find out the meaning of parents to the film by using the Encoding-Decoding Theory. The film girl in the basement is a film that reflects the phenomenon of violence against children that occurs in the family scope. The methodology in this research is a qualitative approach, and the constructivist paradigm with the research method is reception analysis from Stuart Hall. This research also used a study to determine the position of the informant, which consists of dominant position, negotiation, and opposition. This study interviewed six informants, and this research concludes that the informants are obliged to say that the film Girl in the Basement is a crime genre film. Parents educate children about violence; and sexual abuse. In interpreting violence, four informants were in a dominant position (did not agree to vote), and the rest were negotiation and opposition.

The Evolution of Feminism in Chick Flicks from the Early 21st Century to the Present

With Barbie making a strong comeback, chick movies, a commercial film genre that primarily concentrates on female characters, have recently become more popular in peoples eyes. The feminist underpinnings of this genre have also been well shown. However, there is still a research gap in the connection between feminism and the development of chick flicks from the early 21st century to the present. Therefore, this article uses feminist theory to analyze how feminism has evolved in chick flicks throughout this period as well as how typical chick flicks have developed during this time. According to the research, the development of chick flicks has gone through three stages: the peak period, the bottleneck period, and the return to the golden period. Meanwhile, feminism has evolved from focusing just on the rights and status of women to achieving gender equality and womens intellectual awakening. Conclusions can be drawn based on the analysis of this article given that chick movies are primarily about women and focus on womens issues: the evolution of feminism in chick flicks from the early 21st century to the present tends to appear in a better situation with the development of social feminism.

Рецензіяна монографію Баталіної Христини Фрідріхівни «Дитина як втілення зла у фільмах жахівдругої половини ХХ–початку ХХІ сторіччя»

H. F. Batalina's monograph is devoted to the problem of creating the image of a child as the embodiment of evil in horror films of the second half of the 20th - beginning of the 20th century. The topic formulates an important problem, primarily of a moral and psychological nature. The relevance of the work lies in the fact that "a certain niche, currently unfilled in the Ukrainian cultural space, is being explored in a situation where Ukrainian cinema is beginning to take steps to meet the audience and enter wide distribution with genre films" [p. 22 of the manuscript]. H.F. Batalina points out that "the study of the problem of the child as a cinematographic object, except for a few exceptions, is not developed in the scientific film literature, although such a need is increasingly expressed as one of its important tasks" [p. 22 of the manuscript]. It should be added to the above that the research is also relevant because the image of a child in horror films is not a norm for post-Soviet society, is not inherent in the culture of modern Ukraine, but is planted by cultural traditions of Western countries (for example, the planting of the Halloween holiday). Therefore, the research of H.F. Batalina allows us to understand where and why other traditions appear in the culture of Ukrainians. We are convinced that the degree of validity of scientific statements, conclusions and prospects for solving the problem of finding archetypal and semiotic during the creation of the image of children in films of the horror genre, which is reflected in the monograph, has a sufficient level to recommend the above-mentioned scientific work for publication. We consider the specification of the categorical and terminological apparatus of film horror based on the philosophical and aesthetic aspects of the problem to be an important achievement of H. F. Batalina's research. We respect H. F. Batalina's confident attempt to offer the scientific community an author's vision of the paradigm of genre features of horror films. Time will demonstrate the functionality of the proposed features, and reveal the shortcomings and dominant advantages of such a paradigm. Since we are followers of the principle of Karl Popper's fallibilism (in the understanding of the concept of "fallibilism" by Charles Peirce), which implies the axiom that any scientific knowledge is fundamentally not final, but only an intermediate interpretation of the truth, which involves the subsequent replacement by a better interpretation, we assert: the author's vision of the paradigm of genre features of the horror film has the right to exist and needs further practical verification, which, in our opinion, is already a victory for scientists. F. Batalina and the victory of scientific thought in the field. The monograph is made at a sufficient scientific level, contains important theoretical provisions and has practical significance. We have an individual, theoretically and operationally supported research position that contributes to the formation of modern theory.

The Author’s Voice in Genre Films. Miracle and Unidentified by Bogdan George Apetri

Romanian cinema after 1989 was mainly oriented towards creations through which directors sought to win critical acclaim and awards at international festivals, but which were not addressed to the general public, as films belonging to a cinematic genre generally do. In this paper we discuss how Romanian director George Bogdan Apetri, now living in New York, represents a distinct voice in Romanian cinema today. In his films Unidentified and Miracle, he manages to harness his dual cultural perspective (American and Romanian), combining the conventions of the crime fiction genre but also elements specific to the Romanian New Wave, making two films that are pleasing to the audience but at the same time part of the arthouse circuit.

The Power of the Dog : Whose Gaze? Reading Savage's Novel, Watching Campion's Film

Abstract: The chapter compares and critiques two versions of one story: the original novel and its cinematic treatment over 50 years later. It briefly reviews changes in clinical and social ideas about gender and sexuality, especially homosexuality, during the 20th and 21st centuries. Then it addresses theoretical differences between the genres of text and film, and the idea of the "male gaze." Through close readings of the novel and the film, it demonstrates energies and tensions between concepts of male and female, gay and straight.

Essayistic Tendencies in the Performing Arts

This article reflects on five recent performances described in different ways as essay or as essayistic by the artists themselves. Inspired by how the essay form has disseminated, over the last decades, into film, resulting in the established genre of the essay film, it explores what the transposition of the essay onto the stage looks like. The works of Ogutu Muraya, Silke Huysmans and Hannes Dereere, Ho Rui An, Mobile Akademie Berlin, and Jozef Wouters serve as case studies to examine how a performance can be discussed as an essay or as being essayistic.

How do Films Reflect our Societies Today? An Analysis of Films and Film Genres

“Avengers: Endgame”, released in 2019, became the highest-grossing film of all time, surpassing $2.8 billion in worldwide box office revenue. Its massive success demonstrates the immense popularity and widespread appeal of blockbuster films, attracting millions of viewers and generating significant economic impact. Thus, today, films are not only a form of art, but also play a significant role today as a powerful medium of storytelling, entertainment, and reflection of culture and society. In the digital age, films have evolved to encompass various genres, styles, and distribution methods, making them a powerful medium that continues to play a significant role in shaping our world.

The Power of Verbal Expression Examining Language Function in the Short Film ‘The Darkest Blue’

This research aims to examine and describe the language functions employed in the dialogues by the cast of the short film "The Darkest Blue" (2021). The qualitative descriptive method is utilized to analyze the data extracted from the dialogues in the film. The language function theory proposed by Holmes (2011) and Halliday (1992) is employed to analyze and categorize the language functions found in the dialogues of the cast. The identified language functions in this study include emotive, phatic, directive, and instrumental. Notably, the emotive function emerges as the most frequently used in "The Darkest Blue," as it serves to convey the characters' emotions and thoughts. The findings of this study contribute to a deeper understanding of language functions employed in various film genres, particularly in the context of short films. It sheds light on how language functions enrich the portrayal of characters and enhance storytelling in films. 

PERAMALAN GENRE FILM TERPOPULER BERDASARKAN DATASET MYMOVIE MENGGUNAKAN METODE AUTOREGRESSIVE INTEGRATED MOVING AVERAGE (ARIMA)

At this time the film industry is experiencing very rapid progress, this is because extraordinary technological developments have had a major influence on the film industry. Successful films tend to have a large audience. To find out why the audience likes a film, there are several variables that must be considered, one of which is the genre of the film. This research was conducted to predict what film genres the audience is most interested in. To predict the genre of this film using the autoregressive integrated moving average (arima) method. The autoregressive integrated moving average (arima) method or commonly known as the Box-Jenkins method is a method used to make precise and accurate short-term forecasts, compared to long-term forecasts which usually tend to be flat (flat/constant). From this research a prediction of the popularity or number of viewers of each film genre will be generated which can be used as a reference to find out what genre of film the audience is interested in. So that film production companies can adjust film releases according to their interests. audience, in order to gain greater profits.