Number Of Filmmakers Research Articles

Dislocations of the National: Colombian Cinema and Intercultural Spaces

The importance of the global co-production market had a considerable impact on Colombia with a significant number of filmmakers working transnationally or residing in other countries. This paper analyses the challenges to the concept of “national cinema” implicit in the work of three filmmakers producing in those conditions: Laura Huertas Millán, Felipe Guerrero, and Camilo Restrepo. Such challenges are translated into their modes of production and their technical and aesthetic choices. Here, I analyse to what extent their films may be read as resisting dominant modes of production. My discussion also questions the seductions of capital vis-à-vis a self-declared “artist’s independence”. The work of these filmmakers goes along with Laura Marks’s interrogation of how senses and bodily presences can become vital links to home for filmmakers in diaspora, and how cinema may create a medium providing a sense of place and culture. Finally, this article questions whether, in the foregrounding questions of place and positionality, these filmmakers unsettle established narratives of national cinema through counter-hegemonic perspectives.

Shooting ‘sublime blondes in tight dresses’: the paparazzi in fiction film and television from La dolce vita to Dirt

In his 1960 film La dolce vita, Italian filmmaker Federico Fellini called his photographer ‘Paparazzo’. Although photographers who snap celebrities, with or without consent, and sell the results to the press existed before La dolce vita, Fellini’s nickname for them endured. The figure of the paparazzo has, from that moment, served as a convenient tool for a number of filmmakers to observe, get close to, and unveil their favourite subject: the blond bombshell – as illustrated by Sylvia (Anita Ekberg) in La dolce vita, Jill (Brigitte Bardot) in Vie privée/A Very Private Affair and Stormy (Stormy Daniels) in the television series Dirt. Using Visual Studies methodology, this article analyses what is at stake when representing the male photographer’s perspective as he captures the blonde woman in his viewfinder. This article argues that the film director uses the paparazzo as an agent of visibility and discovery to unveil the female character, to glorify her, but also to degrade her.

Guest editors’ introduction: Nostalgia, Culture and Identity in Central and Eastern Europe

The end of communism in the USSR and its satellite states produced a wave of collective euphoria that had not been seen in Europe since May 1945. Nowhere was this excitement stronger than in the former socialist countries themselves, where many felt that service had, as it were, been resumed. As former Czech dissident Vaclav Havel put it at the time, after decades of following the wrong track, we are yearning to rejoin the road which was once ours too.1 Signs that things were returning to normal were everywhere: West Germans received their Os si neighbours back into the fold by giving each of them 100 West-Deutschmarks as so-called welcome money; Hungarians could once again sit alongside their Austrian cousins and thrill to La Traviata at the Vienna Opera; and Muscovites finally got to taste their first Big Mac. The socialist dream had been cancelled, but in its place there was to be another utopia, a consumerist paradise, buttressed by liberal democracy at home, and lasting peace abroad.Barely two decades later, there is, to paraphrase Marx and Engels, a new spectre haunting Central and Eastern Europe - the spectre of nostalgia. The idealization of the is, of course, a fundamental part of human nature. Regret for a lost idyll can often colour our way of looking at the world. Recalling memories of a bygone era, as Vladimir Jankelevitch has put it, sharpen[s] nostalgia and underline^] the irreversibility of the past.2 Until recently, nostalgia was essentially a private affair. Today, however, we can see a new type of nostalgia emerging, a collective form stretching over the entire area of the former USSR and its satellite states. This phenomenon is all the more paradoxical when one considers that the period on which this nostalgia is focused - the Soviet era - was once so roundly rejected by those who appear to feel it most keenly today. Perhaps this should not surprise us, however. As Svetlana Boym put it in her seminal work on the subject, [post-socialist] nostalgia became a defense mechanism against the accelerated rhythm of change and economic shock therapy.3 At one time this feeling was limited to emigres fondly reminiscing about their distant mother country. Now, however, it also appears to touch those who live where they always have, but whose homeland no longer officially exists.This new nostalgia has begun to attract considerable scholarly interest in recent years.4 It takes an astonishingly wide variety of forms, including the popularity among Berlin shoppers of the Ostpaket (East German products in their original packaging), the reaffirmation of stereotypical gender roles in Russian glamour culture,5 the reappearance of Soviet brands of chocolate and other fast-moving consumer goods, the rise of nationalism in countries such as Hungary and the Czech Republic, and the rehabilitation of long-forgotten artists or literary genres. This tendency to look at the through rose-tinted spectacles can also be seen in numerous published collections of Soviet photographs of the 1970s,6 or on countless social media pages, both institutional and personal.7 It is quite distinct from traditional forms of nostalgia, as the term Ostalgie, widespread in the former East Germany, suggests.8 Despite Serguei Oushakine's claim that this new kind of nostalgia does not aim at political restoration, there is often an important political subtext.9It is in the arts that this new (n)ostalgia is perhaps given its most complex expression. In her most recent novel, for example, Russian author Svetlana Alexievitch laments the demise of homo sovieticas.l0 A number of filmmakers and artists have also attempted to capture this sickness for the past (nost-algia). These include Stanislav Govorukhin, director of The Russia We Have Lost (Rossiia, kotoruiu my poteriali, 1992) and Wolfgang Becker, who is best known for Good bye, Lenin! (2003). In Moscow, the Memory Art exhibition in 2012 of paintings by Ukrainian artists Vlad Yurashko and Vika Shoumskaia, which took as its main theme the events of 1991 and their impact on collective consciousness, was followed by an international conference field in the city's Higher School of Economics, titled The USSR: Life After Death. …

The Death of Multiculturalism in the EU and Commissioning Balkan Cinema

In order to support cultural dialogue in the territory of West Balkans (Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia) the EC has extended the rules on aid for film production until the end of 2012, financing only films with peace-making topics. A number of filmmakers took advantage of this situation and financed their films. As a result of this type of commissioning, we are witnessing the surge of socially responsible filmmaking in the region. Although many of the authors were recognized filmmakers that received praise and international awards for their past work, none of their commissioned films succeeded artistically and in the box office. As a matter of fact they were either ignored or became an object of public ridicule, failing miserably with topics that were supposed to enlighten Balkan nations. Most recently, the Chancellor Merkel, Prime Minister, Cameron and President, Sarkozy in their public statements pronounced the death of multiculturalism in the EU. Although when those three delivered these provocative statements, they were most likely not having film on their minds. However, one can not ignore the parallel between commissioning Balkan cinema and failure of its socially responsible filmmaking. By careful analysis of the most prominent EC funded film productions this paper will attempt to find an answer to this dilemma.

An Encomium to Richard Raack, Historian-Filmmaker

An Encomium to Richard Raack, Historian-Filmmaker | Rollins Peter C. Rollins Oklahoma State University An Encomium to Richard Raack, Historian-Filmmaker Film & Historyhas known Richard Raack for twenty years, beginning our relations with him in the late 1960s when "The Historian as Filmmaker" theme was very popular at American Historical Association meetings. Both Richard Raack, and his colleague, Patrick Griffin, were the center of much discussion because of their historian-made documentary entitled Goodbye Billy: America Goes to War, 19171918 (1972). This short historical compilation ignited considerable excitement because of the philosophical position behind the film—that historians should wrest the researching and making ofhistorical films away from the showbiz folks. John O'Connor, Editor of Film & History opened the pages of the journal to these two pioneers, allowing them to explain their reasons and methods. The call to action was electric! Raack and Griffin were endlessly generous with their writings, bibliographies, and other advice to novices—to include a graduate student named Peter Rollins. Both were willing to talk on the telephone and to share their thoughts for revolutionizing methods in making historical films for the classroom. Alas, the revolution never occurred. But R.C. Raack has shared his insights and writings with a whole generation of historians. Richard, Pat, and I worked together to make Will Rogers 1920s: A Cowboy's Guide to the Times (1976), an experience which changed my life as a scholar and artist. During the project, I was shown how to research filmic materials in archives; how to record the materials; how to process the film; and how to edit and mix. A number of crises also taught me how to handle the tensions and vicissitudes ofproduction and post-production. We really got our hands dirty with that project and I have been a better scholar—and filmmaker—as a result. At the same time, Richard Raack was tapping his language skills in German, Polish, and Russian to conduct both film research and major historical research in the archives of Berlin, Warsaw, and Moscow. His revolutionary book of 1995, Stalin's Drive to the West: The Origins ofthe Cold War has profited from Richard's language skills and his willingness to expend his own savings in the search for truth. At a recent conference at Salisbury, Maryland, a number of filmmakers (with no training in history) presented themselves to the assembled scholars as "historians." One of the British producers got up at a very elaborate, evening session and said directly, "I am a historian." Only Richard Raack was curmudgeon enough to challenge these claims; indeed, Richard has exemplified the kind of scholar and filmmaker we were promised in the 1960s. Like a scholarly Moses, he stands at the edge of the Promised Land, sipping a glass of California wine and chortling over the absurdities of our fin de siede. He scans the horizon ... Perhaps a new generation will bring along a group of creative people who will fulfill the promise ... Surely, we hope so .... Until then, we celebrate the work of Richard C. Raack— a fine and original scholar, lover of all the arts, and one of the first historian/filmmakers. May there be many more and may Film & Historyhelp to promote that movement! Cover for Raack's film resource material workbook for Goodbye Billy. Vol. 28.3-4(1998) | 57 ...

The "Ozification" of American Children's Fantasy Films: The Blue Bird, Alice in Wonderland , and Jumanji

The "Ozification" of American Children's Fantasy Films:The Blue Bird, Alice in Wonderland, and Jumanji Joel D. Chaston (bio) Recently a national touring company presented a stage version of L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900) at the Juanita K. Hammons Center for the Performing Arts in Springfield, Missouri, where I live, a surprising event since the town's major community theater had performed the same play a few months before. Despite a long-standing interest in Baum's novel, however, I did not go to either production. I had already attended the play a couple of years before in Toronto. More to the point, since all of these productions were based on the script of the 1939 MGM film version of The Wizard of Oz, I had seen it done better on television virtually every year since I was a child.1 That new dramatizations of The Wizard of Oz should be inspired by the MGM film instead of Baum's book will not surprise anyone who has ever tried to teach the latter. Students often mistakenly refer to the film as the "original" text and think of the novel as the "adaptation." The popularity of the film, which Jonathan Fricke suggests is "the most widely seen and most familiar film in history," has, for many viewers, eclipsed the work that inspired it (241). Indeed, Carol Billman's article on The Wizard of Oz, "I've Seen the Movie," argues that the film "transcends its original in American popular culture," producing a vision that "overlays and conditions readers' responses to L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" (100). As a result, many subsequent literary sequels and film adaptations draw on the 1939 film. While The Wonderful Wizard of Oz has inspired a multitude of sequels, several recent novels about Oz, including Geoff Ryman's Was (1992), Thomas L. Tedrow's Dorothy: Return to Oz (1993), and Gregory Maguire's Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West (1995), incorporate elements of the MGM film into their vision of Oz.2 Filmation's Journey Back to Oz (1971), ABC's television series The Wizard of Oz (1990-91, recently rebroadcast on cable by Home Box Office), and Disney's Return to Oz (1985) are, in reality, sequels to the MGM film and not the novel.3 On 22 November 1995, the movie script and its songs were reincarnated as Turner Network Television's The Wizard of Oz in Concert: Dreams Can Come True (directed by Louis J. Horvitz and featuring Jewel as Dorothy, Joel Grey as the Wizard, and Natalie Cole as Glinda), and in 1996 the film metamorphosed into CBS's The Wizard of Oz on Ice, with Olympic gold medalists Oksana Baiul as Dorothy and Victor Petrenko as the Scarecrow.4 Perhaps the greatest influence of the film version of The Wizard of Oz has been on other non-Oz motion pictures. In Over the Rainbow: The Wizard of Oz as a Secular Myth of America (1991), Paul Nathanson notes some of the many allusions to MGM's Oz in films as diverse as Labyrinth (1986), Good Morning, Vietnam (1987), and Made in Heaven (1987), to which one could add more recent references in Wild at Heart (1990), Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare (1991), My Own Private Idaho (1991), Children of the Corn II: The Final Sacrifice (1993), Rockadoodle (1994), and Twister (1996). As Alan C. Elms has noted in a 1983 article in The Baum Bugle, a number of science fiction films, in particular, seem to have borrowed their plots from MGM's Oz, including Star Wars (1977), Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), Time Bandits (1981), and E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial (1982).5 The overpowering impact of The Wizard of Oz on film adaptations of other children's fantasy novels, however, has only been treated superficially. Since the 1939 release of the MGM film, a number of filmmakers have attempted to recreate its popularity (and eventual monetary success) when adapting other works of fantasy to the screen. In creating these adaptations, Hollywood has recast sometimes very different literary fantasies as new versions of...