Art House Research Articles

A Critical Appreciation of the Commercial Blockbusters by Zhang Yimou

It is essential to note that for the past two decades the majority of the Fifth Generation directors have experienced an obvious shift of film-making from art cinema to the production of commercial blockbusters. By means of borrowing Hollywood’s “high concept” cinema, the local blockbusters featuring Chinese cultural elements are very emphatic about symbolism and visual effects of productions that are bringing to the audience new and stirring feel. And in the blockbusters of Chinese style, the stardom and renowned directors are the guaranteed success of box office. In terms of thematic subjects, the representative director Zhang Yimou has with certainty showcased his reflections on the unlimited power hierarchy and the impulse to deconstruct it in his works, which contain social and cultural allegories and morality problems of family. The so-called “commercial blockbusters” as <i>Hero</i> and <i>House of Flying Daggers</i> have utilized the unique on-site shooting and color effects to achieve the desired results. At the same time Zhang Yimou has in his art house works benefited from Akira Kurosawa, master of the genre, and some technicalities in gangster film. Zhang’s blockbusters of swordsman and Wuxia (martial art) have made an immense box value owing to their tactic violation of the mainstream ideologies. As a result, they are not regularly categorized as the most significant movie of the day. Being Zhang’s last blockbuster, <i>Curse of the Golden Flower </i>takes advantage of merging spectacular scenes and artificial staging for the purpose of authentic representation and imagination. This is also materialized by his cleverly adapting the original work of fame by Cao Yu, a contemporary playwright. Zhang Yimou’s blockbusters, with his special aesthetic, has largely succeeded in an economic sense, but failed ideologically to merge in the mainstream cinema of China.

Industrial Heritage and Pathways for Cultural-Creative Development in Bamberg, Germany

This article contributes to the ongoing authorized heritage discourse, following recent heritage concepts such as open heritage, and examines the industrial heritage and pathways for cultural-creative development in the city of Bamberg, Germany. Bamberg is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, but not on account of its industrial heritage, although some former industrial sites are located within the borders of the current World Heritage Site. We describe three adaptively reused sites that have slightly differing forms of protected status (listed building and ensemble) and show that authorized listing helps to ensure the survival of buildings and material structures over time as documents of an industrial past. However, other industrial sites need the engagement of locals, and refer to what Laurajane Smith describes as heritage as a cultural process. Diverse concepts and cultural-creative developments are evident in the reuse of industrial sites in Bamberg, but these contribute little to urban development strategies. When industrial heritage assets feature in the city’s development strategy, they are seemingly leveraged to drive real estate projects, such as at the former Erba textile site. Additionally, the Otto-Friedrich University (through its Am Zwinger building), and an engaged bottom-up initiative to reuse a former boiler house, enable slightly different development pathways—knowledge-based versus art-based, respectively. The university has a long-term perspective and promising impulses for heritage uses, whereas the Kunstraum (Art House) initiative still struggles to secure support for its medium-term prospects. We argue that the industrial heritage sites need authorized support <em>and</em> agency through engagement, to ensure long-term perspectives for cultural-creative uses.

Cultural Literacy in Indonesian Language Learning for Foreign Speakers (BIPA): Overcoming Barriers and Fostering Language Proficiency with Cross-Cultural Understanding Issues

This study explores the main challenges in teaching Indonesian language (BIPA) in international classrooms, particularly addressing the limited knowledge of Indonesian culture that learners encounter in BIPA. Another significant challenge is the constraint of materials and teaching strategies related to Indonesian culture, especially regional cultures, which may have an impact on BIPA instruction in Indonesia. The primary goal is to enhance the use of the Indonesian language among foreign learners through cross-cultural understanding and a cognitive approach that supports its implementation. This research also aims to identify the impact of community practices on language learning, believing that interaction within this community enhances students' language abilities. Using a linguistic phenomenology design, this study involves direct classroom observations supported by field notes, providing insights into interactions and teaching practices. Semi-structured interviews with instructors contribute to a deeper understanding of perspectives and challenges in teaching BIPA, particularly concerning cross-cultural understanding in its instruction. Findings indicate that not all BIPA instructors utilize cultural materials and strategies in teaching. However, with high levels of student knowledge about Minangkabau culture, such as food, art, clothing, and traditional houses observed in West Sumatra, gaps in their learning arise. Time management issues emerge as a significant concern affecting the effectiveness of teaching cross-cultural understanding in foreign language instruction. This research provides valuable insights for enhancing BIPA instruction in international classrooms, emphasizing the importance of understanding community practices in cross-cultural understanding in BIPA instruction.

During the Week of Respect for the Elderly, the seminar "I Age Healthily, I Age Happily" was held...

The "I Age Healthily, I Age Happily seminar, which attracted great attention, was held at Şişli Municipality Nazım Hikmet Cultural Center and Art House.

Three <i>Bad Kids</i>, One Loving Killer: Red China Noir in Blakean Symmetry

The twelve-episode Chinese TV series Yinmi de Jiaoluo (隱秘的角落 Hidden Corner, translated as The Bad Kids [2020]) dances on a Blakean “The Tyger and the Little Lamb” tightrope between childlike innocence and homicidal nihilism, between an art house sensibility and a pop culture chained to party propaganda. Amidst the flood of ethnocentric and jingoistic police procedurals “with Chinese characteristics” on TV, director Xin Shuang (辛爽) energizes his tour de force with a sensibility ranging far beyond Chinese shores, flirting with Western artists and metaphysical self-reflexiveness torn between good and evil, innocence and meaninglessness. Xin Shuang adapts Zijin Chen’s (紫金陈) eponymous web novel while imbuing the series with an off-kilter, haunting Yeatsian “terrible beauty” of violence and attraction.1 The Bad Kids made a killing not so much in profits as in the true art of Sino Noir, or Red China Noir. The eponymous “bad kids” blackmail a murderer to obtain funds for a life-saving surgery. Courting his own death, this “loving” killer saves one of the three kids from an asthma attack and spares the other two out of a fatherly compulsion to sire his own offspring, to pass on the legacy of revenge and guilt, to prolong his life—his afterlife, rather—as he confides: “I want you all to live—to live like me.” The Bad Kids’ Red China Noir teeters on a Blakean symmetry of love and hate, East and West.

Mapping Spirituality in the Art of Sook Jin Jo

Abstract Korean-born artist Sook Jin Jo has produced a multidisciplinary array of sculptural installations for over three decades. Her primary materials consist of discarded wooden furniture, abandoned industrial materials, and trees from the natural environment. The assemblages, installations, and public art projects from these materials offer a renewed perspective on art. Sook Jin Jo broadens her philosophical interpretation of art by transforming crude objects into significant art. Her materials are taken from various resources not only to create original visual forms, but also to convey profound meaning in our everyday lives. In the context of “Being is born of Non-Being,” the artist’s spiritual and philosophical views are deeply connected to Taoism, which is coherent with Zen Buddhism. Meditation Space (2000) invites people to contemplate nature in a manner that resonates as a sacred space. Jo’s recent distinguished works have comprehensively synthesized the pieces she has done so far. In Art House (Art + Architecture) and Art House Chapel II (Art + Architecture), two nondenominational chapels extend beyond institutional religions. Her work profoundly touches the meaning of spirituality and harmony that embraces the history of the sites she utilizes within the art context. Jo’s site-specific works correspond to the healing of human beings and society rather than being aligned with traditional religious beliefs.

USE OF PAINTING SALES WEBSITE AS A MARKETING COMMUNICATION MEDIA IN TAKMUNG VILLAGE, BANJARANGKAN SUB-DISTRICT, KLUNGKUNG DISTRICT

Takmung village is one of several in the Klungkung area. Takmung Village has a popular tourist destination known as "Nyoman Gunarsa Classical Painting Museum," which is famous for its paintings. However, Takmung Village itself is less known to the public as a village of artists. In contrast to Kamasan Village, Takmung Village's artists are much less known, and many of them do not have their stalls or time to sell their artworks. The use of websites comes in handy in this problem, which helps artists to advertise their services and sell their artwork online. Aside from providing information and selling its products, a website works as an indirect representation of its professionalism and legitimacy. In addition to the local artist, it helps introduce other artists. Therefore, by utilizing the art on this website, artists from various parts of the Klungkung district can also become famous. This study created the Griya Art House, an art gallery, implementing the Research and Development methodology as its foundation. Data Flow Diagrams and Entity Relationship Diagrams are used in this study's website creation procedure. The final result of this study stated that the effectiveness of the sales website on the purchasing power of paintings was demonstrated to be effective with a total of three product purchases. The creation of this website is expected to be able to contribute to the community in Takmung Village, Banjarangkan District, Klungkung Regency, especially artists as assistance in the form of website applications that are applied in marketing their work.

From the Grand Hotel to the Piazza Grande

The Locarno Film Festival is one of the oldest film festivals in the world. Founded in 1946, it is today widely recognized as an international hub for emerging cinema. However, what remains little known is that it was originally conceived as a touristic attraction managed by a few film professionals, and thus had to fight hard to impose its artistic and cultural ambitions over the interests of the tourism and film industries. This article shows that, considering that Locarno was neither created nor supported by political authorities or cultural institutions, its evolution heavily depended on the economic interests of a tourist organization and professional associations of film producers, distributors, and cinema operators. Looking beyond the official narrative publicized in commemorative books depicting the festival as a privileged place for avant-garde cinema since its early years, the article demonstrates that Locarno’s specialization in new cinema was decided in a context of commercial pressures and increasing competition between film festivals. Focusing on the period during which it evolved from a small-scale, provincial celebration to an international platform for art house cinema, it argues that the so-called cinephile editions of 1966–70—when the directors of the event decided to completely distance themselves from the tourist imperatives and commercial function of the festival—must be understood as a radical and short-lived experience in the history of Locarno, rather than a representative trend.

Mitologi, Kosmologi dan Religi Orang Sentani

This article describes the culture of the Sentani people who inhabit the area around of Sentani Lake and its surroundings. This study describes the views of the Sentani people related to the mythological, cosmological and indigenous of religions in their culture. In Sentani culture, the world consists of three levers, the world in the ground as a high place for the spirits of the dead, the world on the earth's surface where humans live, and the world above the sky is occupied by the good and evil spirits. The world on the surface of the earth is divided into the world of human life, and the world of spirits, where spirits, gods and supernatural are inhabited starting from within the individual, in houses, villages to mountains, lakes, rivers, forests, rocks and seas. All spirits, gods and supernatural are connected through certain rites, symbols, and material cultural relations. These relations are concretized through art carvings, boats, house ornaments, rituals, body carvings, beads and drums, and others. This study intends to reveal and describe the structure of human cognition related to aspects of mythology, cosmology and public belief. This research is a descriptive type of research with an ethnographic approach that collects data through observation, in-depth interviews, and relevant literature studies.

Get involved! Krétakör: Crisis, Part III – The Priestess, 2011

The twelfth production of the contemporary art centre Krétakör (Chalk Circle) was part of the “Crisis Project,” presented twice in its entirety and on view at the TRAFÓ House of Contemporary Arts, and the result of a societal therapy through interdisciplinary art. The current study reconstructs, employing the Philther Method, from the perspective of community theatre and education in theatre, this societal workshop. The analyses re-contextualise, for their own sake, the concept of participation by straining the boundaries of public education, understood as community art.

Liberating Hollywood: Women Directors & the Feminist Reform of 1970 as American Cinema by Maya Montañez Smuckler

Reviewed by: Liberating Hollywood: Women Directors & the Feminist Reform of 1970 as American Cinema by Maya Montañez Smuckler Alicia Kozma Maya Montañez Smuckler, Liberating Hollywood: Women Directors & the Feminist Reform of 1970 as American Cinema. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2019. In 2015, Hollywood studios made headlines as the as the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) accepted a request made by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Southern California to investigate systemic discrimination in the hiring of women film directors. While mainstream media reported the inquiry as a potential watershed moment for gendered labor equality in the industry, little was made of the fact that the EEOC had been down this road with Hollywood before. Thankfully, Maya Montañez Smuckler's Liberating Hollywood: Women Directors & the Feminist Reform of 1970as American Cinema painstakingly narrates the lesser-known history of the intersection between employment oversight, Hollywood guilds, studios, and the fight for women's equal participation in filmmaking. Combining oral history, interviews, and in-depth archival research focused on internal guild publications, press coverage, legal records, and trades, Montañez Smuckler reconstructs the advocacy efforts of three professional unions—the Directors Guild of American (DGA), the Screen Actors Guild of America (SAG) and the Writers Guild of American (WGA)—from the late 1960s to the early 1980s, as the rise of "Women's Committees" within each union fought in various ways against the hiring discrimination of women film workers. These efforts intersected with the federal efforts to diversify the Hollywood labor pool, beginning with a late 1960s EEOC hearing on job discrimination and ending with a devastating mid-1980s ruling that stymied legal recourse for discriminated workers. Intertwined with this history, Liberating Women recounts the rise of women filmmakers in Hollywood during this time of heady time of social, cultural, and political change. The book's prologue traces the impact of the New American Cinema movement of the 1950s and 1960s in New York City as a critical creative space for the women directors like Shirley Clarke and Juleen Compton, precursors to the women who would spur on more than a decade of creativity and advocacy in Hollywood. Chapter 1 notes the first attempts of feminist reform as the second wave feminist movement bisected the growing number of women directors vocal about their lack of opportunities in Hollywood. The EEOC makes its first foray into Hollywood in 1969, requiring the industry set measurable benchmarks for hiring minority workers; women film workers were not included in this plan because the EEOC did not consider them a large enough pool of workers to merit protections. In what would become a recurring standard, the EEOC left it up to the studios to enforce hiring benchmarks and protections in good faith. jThey did not live up to their requirements, and with the exclusion of women workers from agreement, it was left to guild women to demand their own seats at the table. Chapters 2 and 3 integrate institutional efforts at gendered labor equality while focusing on the individual women working within and without the Hollywood system as writers, producers, and directors. For many of these women, Liberating Hollywood is the first substantial academic treatment of their work. While Montañez Smuckler does not claim that these women worked in communication with one another, they do represent a cadre of film laborers fighting to produce work in a system that was openly hostile to their inclusion. Many of these women may have [End Page 67] not been professional colleagues, but they exist in camaraderie with one another. While both chapters provided professional biographies and overarching critical filmic and industrial analysis, Chapter 2 chronicles women directors through their "cultures of production" (77) and Chapter 3 through the rise of the "new women's film" (159). Chapter 2, then, traces the studio, art house, and/or exploitation work of Elaine May, Barbara Loden, Karen Arthur, Joan Micklin Silver, Penny Allen, Stephanie Rothman, Beverly and Fred Sebastian, and Barbara Peeters. Chapter 3 includes Joan Darling, Jane Wagner, Joan Tewkesbury, Joan Rivers, and Claudia Weill. While these two chapters primarily concentrate on individual filmmakers, Liberating Hollywood does not lose the thread of its larger spotlight on...

PARTISIPASI MASYARAKAT DALAM PENGELOLAAN KAMPU ADAT DESA KARANG BAJO KECAMATAN BAYAN KABUPATEN LOMBOK UTARA


 
 
 
 The problems studied in this study are related to community participation in the management of the traditional village of Karang Bajo, Bayan District, North Lombok. The purpose of this study was to describe the participation of the community in Karang Bajo village in managing the traditional village. The research method used is descriptive qualitative with the research location in the traditional village of Karang Bajo village. Data collection techniques used in-depth interviews with observation techniques related to community participation. Data analysis techniques used are data reduction, presentation, data analysis, and drawing conclusions. Vertical participation is marked by the presence of outsiders who become leaders in involving the role of the community such as indecon from NGO, AMAN, KOMPAK, Rinjani Lodge, Institutions (STP Mataram, Unram, UIN Mataram, UGM) PT Bali Nusra and the local government. Horizontal participation is characterized by the role of the community in managing things or activities that are formed between the communities themselves in the form of mutual cooperation, deliberation and consensus and so on. Meanwhile, physical participation in Karang Bajo village refers to the form of the community's role in the form of objects that can be seen in the construction of traditional schools and the manufacture of art houses as olshops for community crafts. Non-physical participation found is community participation in the form of ideas or ideas in the management of Traditional Kampu in Karang Bajo village which can be seen in the ideas of a number of outside parties on vertical participation (partners) on tourism counseling, tourism management training, assistance in the preparation of tour packages and so on.
 
 
 

International Film Festivals as a Field for Agonistics and Resonance: Contact Zones with Russian/Soviet Films

The international film festival, which seems to have landed in South Korea by accident in the mid‑1990s, is a historical product. Technically, film festivals in South Korea were a hybrid and indigenous cultural movement that appeared at the crossroads of the Korean democratic movement in the 1980s and the global situation in the post-cold war era in the 1990s. From the 1980s film movement to the establishment of the art house cinema in the 1990s and the Busan International Film Festival in 1996, these developments did not emerge as parallel events, but rather as a culmination of epic tensions. The main purpose of this article is to expand on previous discussions that have never shown much interest in how the international film festival combines global and local aspects. The film movement created by Korean films and the international film festivals of the 1980s and 1990s symbolised the journey to social resonance aimed at communicating with the audience about new Korean films by highlighting ‘agonistics’ and ‘resonance’ between Korean and ‘other’ films.

Theorizing Transregional Cinemas

Theorizing Transregional Cinemas David Pettersen (bio) Niels Niessen. Miraculous Realism: The French-Walloon Cinéma du Nord. Albany: SUNY Press, 2020. 338 pages. $95 hardcover. $33.95 paperback. Niels Niessen's new book Miraculous Realism is a fascinating study of films from the French-speaking part of Belgium (the Wallonia region) and the industrial French north (the city of Lille and the Nord–Pas de Calais region). The book fills an important gap because there is not a significant number of scholarly monographs on Wallonian cinema in English, and regional films within scholarship on French cinema tend to be treated as elements of a national cinema or international auteurist, art house cinema. However, the interest of Niessen's study goes beyond just making a corpus of lesser-known films visible. The book also represents a significant methodological intervention into how to study regional cinemas, especially regions that extend across national borders. Niessen finds inadequate now well-established approaches to studying transnational cinemas, the cinemas of small nations (Mette Hjort), and approaches to large regional cinemas such as those of Europe, so he develops his own "small regions" approach to what he terms the Cinéma du Nord, or Cinema of the North. Miraculous Realism argues that the Cinéma du Nord is a transregional cinema in southern Belgium and northern France that exists as more than just a scholarly category thanks to shared [End Page 377] cultural, linguistic, historical, and industrial reasons. The shared French language is of course the most obvious link, but Niessen makes the compelling case for cultural and historical connections in that these two parts of Belgium and France are working-class rust belt regions that relied on heavy industry such as coal mining. However, they failed to diversity their economies and consequently have struggled in a postindustrial Europe from the 1970s on. Miraculous Realism makes the case for a regional aesthetic tradition in filmmakers such as Robert Bresson and Maurice Pialat and in a common emphasis on secular understandings of humanism and grace that results from the historical importance of Catholicism in the two areas. Niessen also examines how national and regional governments and local media producers have fostered regional media industries within each of the two countries and developed synergies across the national border. I found the book's overall argument for the usefulness of a Cinéma du Nord as a category to be convincing. The risk of such a regionally focused study is that the choice to emphasize lesser-known Belgian and French films could make it difficult to connect with general readers who do not work on those films or their regions. Neissen negotiates this risk directly by structuring the book around two very well-known films, Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne's Rosetta, made in Wallonia, and Bruno Dumont's L'Humanité, filmed in the French north. Both films were released in 1999, and both won awards at the Cannes Film Festival. All three filmmakers have gone on to become recognizable auteurs who have been well discussed by scholars. Miraculous Realism makes the strong case that scholars have much to gain by thinking of these films and filmmakers in terms of a regionally inflected Cinéma du Nord. The book's four chapters are methodologically diverse. Chapter 1 sets out to answer the question of what links Rosetta and L'Humanité through close analysis of both films that tease out how each is a covert passion story underneath a veneer of documentary realism. Neissen argues that both ultimately reflect on what kinds of consolation religion can offer in a secular, postindustrial age. Chapter 2 is split into two parts. The first part presents an economic history of northern France and southern Belgium in which Niessen argues that what links these two areas as a transregion is a shared Catholicism and a similar lack of response to deindustrialization. The second part of the chapter is about histories of cinematic representation of Wallonia, with strong roots in the documentary tradition and in northern France through films that combine local rootedness with audience appeal outside the area. [End Page 378] Chapter 3 focuses on a detailed analysis of the industrial structures of the...

About the Contributors

About the Contributors

Do spatial climate messages increase pro-environmental engagement? Evidence from a survey experiment on public transport

ABSTRACT Using a survey experiment among a special sample composed of art house cinema visitors, we investigate whether spatial climate messages increase subjects' willingness to pay for an inclusion of public transport fares in cinema tickets as well as their willingness to use public transport in case such a combined ticket is introduced. Based on previous findings, we expect emphasizing the positive impact of public transport usage on the local level to have a greater effect on subjects' preferences for public transport than a message that highlights the global consequences. Contrary to these expectations, our results show that the global treatment increases subjects' willingness to pay compared to the local treatment and the baseline. Both treatments increase subjects' willingness to use public transport. Conducting a sub-sample analysis, we find that also the local message increases the willingness to pay for a combined ticket among respondents who lack a financial interest as they already own a season ticket for public transport.

Exploring film marketing in the new age digital era. Four cases of marketing European art house film productions

Exploring film marketing in the new age digital era. Four cases of marketing European art house film productions

The New Media Marketing Strategies of Chinese Low-Budget Art House Films

Marketing is a vital part of the film industry; film marketing uses various methods to let audiences know about a film and then go to the cinema to watch it. Compared with the western film industry, the marketing consciousness in the Chinese film industry started late. Also, due to the relatively special art form, the low-budget art house films always failed to carry out effective marketing with cost restrictions as a result. However, emerging social media offers new opportunities for the marketing of low-budget art house films, which provides filmmakers with a convenient and inexpensive advertising platform. New media film marketing is more and more involved in the whole process of film production and distribution, and it affects the box office results to a great extent. Therefore, the new media film marketing plays an important role in the development of the film industry. The research on how Chinese low-budget art house films use new media for marketing is very useful for the Chinese film industry.

In conversation with Stallone Vaiaoga-Ioasa

Becoming a feature film director is a privilege available to only a handful of people, no matter where in the world they live. In Oceania, access to filmmaking is arguably more constrained because the market conditions under which commercial films are produced do not favour small, geographically dispersed and linguistically distinct communities. Opportunities to make publicly funded, critically acclaimed Pacific films in metropolitan centres like Aotearoa New Zealand are vanishingly small. Often when they are made, these ‘art house’ Pacific films primarily appeal to audiences outside of the communities in which they are set. Stallone Vaiaoga-Ioasa has challenged this status quo by pioneering a mode of populist commercial filmmaking for Samoan (and other Pacific Island) audiences in the islands and across the diaspora. His commitment to making entertainment that is relevant to and reflects contemporary Samoan culture has been remarkable. On the eve of Vaiaoga-Ioasa’s fourth feature film release, filmmaker/academic Sarina Pearson sat down with him to talk about how he developed the ‘Stallone model’, the films he has made, and his plans for the future.

Gendered Labour in the Neo-Art House

This article excavates and analyzes women’s labor in the neo-art house industry. Focusing on the labor histories gleaned from interviews, I offer a reconceptualization of the art house industry post-digital exhibition transition; detail an initial schema of the challenges facing women-identified laborers in the industry, including gendered divisions of labor and financial precarity; and consider internal advocacy efforts some neo-art house workers have created to advance diversity and challenge sexual harassment, among other social justice issues.