Western Directors Research Articles

아시아 전통극 및 무술을 통한 배우의 현존 강화 훈련 방법 연구

The purpose of this paper is to examine the training methods used by Western directors influenced by traditional Asian performing and martial arts to strengthen the presence of actors. Despite the differences in the ways the Barba and Zarrilli encountered, experienced and applied traditional Asian performing and martial arts, their view of ‘actor training’ is relatively similar. The directors remind us of the importance of training - the process of ‘self-definition’ - through which the actor corrects his/her wrong perception caused by the lack of control of the body. The training that strengthens the presence of an actor should be an ‘non-daily’ training as well as ‘psychophysical’ wherein the mind and body are organically integrated. The actor needs training that enables breathing to be organically integrated with ‘ki-energy’ rooted in the danjeon area and that encourages the development of the ‘dilated body’ through the actor’s projection of his/her energy enabled by his/her spatial ‘sensory awareness’.

The Comparative Research on the Color Application of Chinese and Western Film Directors

As one of the common elements of films, color has always played its unique value. It not only decorates the pictures of the films but also assists in expressing the emotions and states of the characters. The extensive use of color in films reflects the self-innovation and technological breakthroughs of modern film and television art. From early black and white films to modern color films, the aesthetic trend of human beings is also evolving with the times. Chinese and Western directors have also made certain differences in the use of color due to subjective and objective factors. This paper takes the different color use styles of Chinese and Western film directors as the research object and adopts the comparative analysis method. Firstly, it briefly describes the development of color films, color functions, and several characteristics in films, and then introduces the different concepts of color used by Chinese and Western directors through specific examples and analyzes the reasons in detail. Finally, the differences in color consciousness and use style between the two are obtained. Chinese directors pay more attention to the symbolic expressiveness of color and are experts in using the freehand style of color, while Western directors attach significance to the structure of color in films, and the color use style is more realistic.

Left–Right Position in Moving Images: An Analysis of Face Orientation, Face Position, and Movement Direction in Eight Action Films

There are compositional biases in works of art that have been documented in static images. This study extends the analysis to moving pictures. We examined eight films by four different directors (Ford, Leone, Kurosawa, Chahine), each with a male actor in the major role. These directors are also from different countries (USA, Italy, Japan, Egypt). The analysis focused on three compositional aspects: a) the orientation of the face of the actor (which cheek was visible), b) the position of the face within the image (positioned either to the left of the screen showing the left or right cheek or to the right of the screen showing the left or right cheek), and c) the movement of the actor within the scene (moving to the left or to the right). Unlike in paintings there is no evidence that the left cheek was visible more often than the right. However, we confirmed that position and facing direction are related, i.e. the actor tends to face toward the centre of the screen. With respect to the analyses of movement, there was a greater frequency of movements from left to right, and this may explain the lower than expected frequency of the left cheek. Interestingly, we found a cultural trend in that the pattern of results from Western directors did not extend to the films by Chahine, which may be influenced by reading direction.

UM OLHAR SOBRE A INFLUÊNCIA DO ORIENTE EM ENCENADORES OCIDENTAIS DO SÉCULO XX

O presente artigo busca indicar influências orientais em alguns encenadores ocidentais do século XX, fazendo um levantamento de algumas características ditas orientais em métodos de atuação e encenação, sob o ponto de vista corporal. Conceituando primeiramente a denominação “Oriente”, procuro realizar uma abordagem com vistas a sinalizar pensamentos, técnicas e métodos orientais e sua influência em encenadores ocidentais, sendo estes: Constantin Stanislavski, Edward Gordon Craig, Bertolt Brecht, Antonin Artaud, Jerzy Grotowski, Eugenio Barba e Luís Otávio Burnier.

Peckinpah's Tragic Westerns: A Critical Study (review)

Reviewed by: Peckinpah's Tragic Westerns: A Critical Study Leonard Engel Peckinpah's Tragic Westerns: A Critical Study. By John L. Simons and Robert Merrill. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2011. 232 pages, $40.00. Do we need another book on Sam Peckinpah? A resounding "Yes" if it is as original and provocative as Peckinpah's Tragic Westerns is. None of the previous books on Peckinpah has focused so intensely on tragic action, specifically, on "the tragically irreversible nature of time" in his films (1). Concentrating on five Westerns and acknowledging how each is different from the others, John Simons and Robert Merrill define their chief task as honoring and explaining "these differences even as we pursued the features which make our five tragic Westerns tragic" (1). This is a novel approach. Excellent studies of Peckinpah's Westerns have been made by Jim Kitses, Michael Bliss, David Weddle, and Paul Seydor, among others, but none has so closely followed the major characters' pathways to "disastrous ... tragic conclusions" (2). Peckinpah, the authors conclude, "is the only tragedian among the major Western directors" (2); none of them possessed his tragic vision. These are bold statements and, no doubt, will be vigorously debated, but Simons and Merrill provide solid arguments and cogent examples to support their views. While exploring Peckinpah's tragic vision in chapter 1, the authors render an extensive survey in which they discuss the nature of tragic action, from its classical origins to the present, and apply it to well-known and little-known Westerns (this may be the best chapter ever written on the subject). Then in the remaining five chapters they discuss each of Peckinpah's tragic Westerns: Chapter 2—"The Double Vision of Tragedy in Ride the High Country," 3—"Noon Wine: A Tragic Pastoral," 4—"The Tragedy of Love in The Wild Bunch," 5—"Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid: The Tragedy of Pat Garrett," and 6—"Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia: The Revenger's Tragedy." Time and space do not permit comment on each of these chapters, but a brief word about chapter 5 is necessary. In addition to providing a thorough analysis of Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, including extensive comment on the various versions that have appeared since the theatrical release in 1973, Simons and Merrill critique the key elements of the other major Billy the Kid films (especially The Left-Handed Gun, director Arthur Penn, 1958) and show not only how these films influenced Peckinpah, but how he subtly nuanced scenes and dialogue to achieve his own artistic designs. This chapter is an amazing tour de force in film criticism. As Peckinpah's admirers know, most of his films have engendered controversy, some of it volatile (recall Pauline Kael's famous statement in a New Yorker review about fascism in Straw Dogs [1971]: "the first American film that is a fascist work of art" [vol. 47, no. 50, January 29, 1972, p. 84]), but the three films examined in the latter three chapters, Wild Bunch [End Page 224] (1969), Pat Garrett, and Bring Me the Head (1974), have also been at the storm center of heated debate on numerous occasions. In their penetrating analysis and meticulous research, Simons and Merrill integrate their own incisive exploration with the major issues raised by critics, and they also provide a valuable guide to the filming and postproduction of the films. Anyone wishing to learn about the various versions of each film, the cuts made, the material restored, followed by more cuts, and then more restorations (and, of course, the interminable battles Peckinpah had with the Hollywood money men) need go no farther. It's all here: in the discussion and in the many footnotes—a masterly piece of research, rendered in highly readable prose. Paul Seydor is probably the foremost scholar of Peckinpah, the one who has written most extensively, persuasively, and passionately about his Westerns. In their examination of the nature of tragic action and the tragic hero, Simons and Merrill have gone beyond Seydor; their analyses have opened up these five films and have provided new, in some cases stunning, insights. They have helped us see and understand how Peckinpah "transformed" the...

Dr. Robert J. (Bob) Parker

It is with sadness that we announce the passing of Dr. R. J. (Bob) Parker, Professor Emeritus, on October 30, 2010 at the Victoria Hospital, Winnipeg, surrounded by his wife Margaret and family. Dr. Parker first joined the Department of Animal Science in 1959 as a Research Officer shortly after receiving a B.Sc. Agriculture (1958) from the University of Glasgow, a Scottish Diploma in Dairy from the West of Scotland Agriculture College and a post Graduate Diploma in Agriculture from the University of Reading. In 1961 Dr. Parker enrolled in the M.S.A. (Animal Breeding) program at the University of Toronto (Guelph) receiving his M.S.A. in 1962 followed by a Ph.D. in Animal Genetics from Michigan State University (1967). In 1966 Dr. Parker was appointed as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Animal Science, University of Manitoba, and quickly moved through the ranks to Full Professor. As an Academic, Dr. Parker always maintained that the primary function at the University is teaching and that the focus should be on student education; facilitating their learning and developing their problem-solving skills. The quality of education offered to our students in the Faculty of Agricultural and Food Sciences was of utmost importance to Dr. Parker and, over an 18 month period (1992/1994), he chaired a curriculum Task Force that revised the curriculum for the Faculty. The new curriculum was applauded from within and outside the University as being forward-looking, offering progressive programs that eliminated Departmental boundaries and focused on desired learning outcomes for the students that would meet both student and employee needs. Dr. Parker maintained a strong research program for most of his academic career, securing funding from NRC/NSERC, Agriculture Canada and other sources, graduating 10 M.Sc. and 7 Ph.D. students and publishing 78 peer-reviewed articles of which many were invited papers. His involvement in training and mentoring graduate students was very much on a one-on-one basis, fostering students’ critical thinking, always pushing the boundary. Dr. Parker was a very active participant in University and community life. During his tenure he served on some 60 University, Faculty, and Departmental committees. As a member of CSAS he served as Western Director and Chair of theMembershipCommittee (1972 1974), Executive Committee for the Canadian Animal Genetics Workshop (1974 1976), Secretary/Treasurer, Western Branch (1983 1987) and two terms asDirector,Western Branch (1987 1992). Concurrently, Bob served on many external research and industry committees. He was always willing to serve, and often accepted a leadership role. From 1986 to his retirement Dr. Parker was active as an administrator: Associate Head of Animal Science (4 years), Acting Head and Head of Animal Science (6 years), AssociateDeanResearch (4 years) and at the same time Director of the Glenlea Research Station (10 years). Dr. Parker’s activities anddecisions as administratorwere based on a set of guiding principles that included openness, integrity, fairness, equity, discretion, and compassion. In times of fiscal constraints, when tough decisions had to bemade, he carefully considered all implications to programs and people and chose the least damaging. He was well respected by his peers and subordinates and received the Administrator of the Year Award in 1995. Although Dr. Parker won numerous recognitions and awards throughout his career, two need special mention. Upon his retirement in 1997 Dr. Parker received the title Professor Emeritus and his colleagues and friends established the Robert J. Parker Graduate Fellowship in Animal Science. Dr. Parker passed away on Saturday October 30, 2010. He will be sadly missed, but dearly remembered by family, friends and colleagues for his sound advice, sense of humor, his warm laughter and his passion for life.

William Faulkner's Go Down, Moses: An American Frontier Narrative

This essay seeks to extend Faulkner's imaginative writings beyond the temporal, spatial and aesthetic parameters of regionalism and modernism, according to which his work has been widely read. In an exemplary reading of his 1942 novel Go Down, Moses, I recontextualize Faulkner's fiction in a broader literary and discursive tradition of the US frontier narrative. To draw out the frontier meanings and tropes of Go Down, Moses, I examine closely those texts – Faulkner's and others' – that circulate around the major fiction and necessarily exert, I argue, interpretative pressure on it. These more secondary or contiguous texts include Faulkner's screenwriting for two of the great Hollywood Western directors, John Ford and Howard Hawks; his short stories and speeches; James Fenimore Cooper's Leatherstocking tales; and the political discourse that emerged in response to the democratic crisis of the 1930s. Certain tropes and narratives – to do with colonialism, for example – that have been submerged within the Faulknerian southern narrative of the plantation, begin to surface, to reset the narrative in relation to a national project. Reading Faulkner in this way constructs a critical frame that is both diachronic and transregionalist, and thus contributes to current debates articulated within the revisionary project of new southern studies about the ways in which we think and write anew about the post-South.

Wong Kar-wai’s Films and the Culture of the Kawaii

Since 1988, year of release of As Tears Go By, many academic texts have been written about Wong Kar-wai and his films. Among themes dealt with are 1) Wong's emergence from Hong Kong cinema scene and exceptional status he enjoys within that scene; and 2) similarities between Wong and an extremely wide range of Western directors. The twofold concentration on Wong's Hong Kong origins on one hand, and his compatibility with Western cinema on other, can be explained through Wong's almost unique ability to make films that appear to be equally Chinese and Western, or equally local and global.1 However, in my opinion, any limitation of analysis to dialectics of Eastern and Western elements runs risk of bypassing by real sources of Wong's oeuvre. I am not aware of single study that attempts to integrate Wong in wide, though limited, cultural sphere of modern or post-modern Asia. Stephen Teo points to Wong's Asian literary influences, such as novels of Osamu Daizai and Haruki Murakami. He even sees a film like 2046 [as] living proof of Wong's global and pan Asian strategy (it features stars from all Asian territories mentioned, while device of having these stars speak in their own mother tongues is also part of strategy) (152-53). I want to extend Teo's anticipations and explain Wong's work by not reducing it to selective amalgamation of East and West, but by understanding it as phenomenon flowing out of sphere that must be considered as having culture of its own: sphere of modern Asian culture. By using this approach, I seek to avoid relativism like that expressed by Jenny Kwok who claims that the Third World is so infiltrated with First World images and narratives that it is not possible to identify Third World 'national' symbolic products anymore (22), relativism that affirms that national characteristics do not exist at all. On other hand, I want to avoid essentialism that sees films and all cultural productions as expressions of national culture. Wong's world is neither traditional Chinese one nor globalized or international one, but that of lower middle-class inhabitants of

The Floating World of Nouveau Chinoiserie: Asian Orientalist Productions of Greek Tragedy

Criticism is increasingly being levelled at western directors who, in the name of a vague intercultural aesthetic, embark on experiments combining western texts with various kinds of oriental movement, costume, and music. In this article, Catherine Diamond raises the same issues in regard to productions of western drama in Asia, and offers a detailed analysis of three productions of ancient Greek tragedies to reveal how a new kind of non-specific orientalism has come to pervade the international stage, originating no less in Asia than in the West. Lavish productions, mounted to impress the international festival circuit rather than to engage local audiences, appropriate western tragedies primarily on account of their status in the western literary and theatrical canon; and rather than offering new interpretations of the texts from a different cultural perspective, they contribute to the creeping ascendancy of superficially exotic spectacle. Catherine Diamond, a dancer and drama professor, is currently a director with Thalie Theatre, the only English-language theatre in Taiwan.

Nature and Society in Akira Kurosawa's Throne of Blood

It is important for Western audiences to establish a proper context for the films of Akira Kurosawa. He has often been called the `most Western' of Japanese film directors (and is certainly the best known of them in Europe and America), but though he freely admits influence from Western directors and painters and has based several of his films on major Western texts, he insists that his borrowings have always been adapted to the modes and aesthetics of traditional Japanese thought: so much so, in fact, he says, that `I feel that among Japanese directors today I must be the most Japanese' (Yakir, 57). And in none of his work is recognition of a specific cultural context more important than in his two samurai adaptations of Shakespearean tragedy: Kumonoso-jo, his 1957 black-and-white version of Macbeth, obscurely titled Throne of Blood in English though 'The Castle of the Spider's Web' (or `Cobweb Castle') is its more literal and pertinent translation; and Ran—meaning `Chaos'—his 1983 adaptation of King Lear in cinemascope and colour.

Theatre and the World: Performance and the Politics of Culture

In this passionate and controversial work, director and critic Rustom Bharucha presents the first major critique of intercultural theatre from a 'Third World' perspective. Bharucha questions the assumptions underlying the theatrical visions of some of the twentieth century's most prominent theatre practitioners and theorists, including Antonin Artaud, Jerzsy Grotowski, and Peter Brook. He contends that Indian theatre has been grossly mythologised and taken out of context by Western directors and critics. And he presents a detailed dramaturgical analysis of what he describes as an intracultural theatre project, providing an alternative vision of the possibilities of true cultural pluralism. Theatre and the World bravely challenges much of today's 'multicultural' theatre movement. It will be vital reading for anyone interested in the creation or discussion of a truly non-Eurocentric world theatre.

"Ecstasy of Difference": Bertolucci's "The Last Emperor"

The Sino-Italian connection has long history, beginning with Marco Polo, Venetian who first revealed to West. As Zhang Longxi points out, has furnished West since that time with a better reservoir for its dreams, fantasies, and utopias.' Antonioni's documentary film on China, Chung Kuo, but one expression of Italy's continued fascination with China. In his discussion of Antonioni's film, Umberto Eco emphasizes the search for as potential utopia by frantic, neurotic West.2 Similarly, Bernardo Bertolucci, first Western director permitted to shoot in Forbidden City, traditional capital of Chinese emperors, has said that China had become front projection of our confused utopias.3 Bertolucci's The Last Emperor, thus, invokes problematic image of as myth and symbol of difference and as ultimate Other/double of West.4 Emperor, like Bertolucci's other films, about revolution and utopia. The focus of Bertolucci's meditation on fate and prospects of revolution in our time has evolved from an revolution (as envisaged in 1900) to real one which, however, in Longxi's words, is obviously not concerned with per se but with learning about self in West.5 Yet The Last Emperor's utopian vision implies expulsion of feminine from new and improved society. Toward end of movie, no women remain in it. Women (except perhaps in 1900) are excluded from communist utopia envisaged in most of Bertolucci's films, but Last Emperor goes one step further and banishes them from text. The annihilation of women in this film enacted through film's dialectics of interior/exterior, darkness/light, which ultimately assumes orthodox Freudian binarism of feminine/masculine and Lacanian division of imaginary versus symbolic.6 In Emperor, both protagonist's desire and text itself follow an Oedipal configuration generated by search for father-tutor and by repudiation of mother. This configuration entails acceptance of Lacanian symbolic and rejection of imaginary, latter being articulated through infant's dyadic relationship with mother. Whereas The Last Tango in Paris (1972) demonstrates attachment to Lacanian imaginary

Dancing with "Faust": A Semiotician's Reflections on Barba's Intercultural Mise-en-Scene

The first week of the I987 International School of Theatre Anthropology (ISTA) in the Salento region of Italy took place under the sign of Faust. Eugenio Barba brought together Eastern performers (Japanese and Indian dancers1 and musicians) and (Western) spectator-participants in a collective response to Faust-especially Goethe's Faust, but also Marlowe's as well as the whole Western tradition of the popular character and myth. The work, which lasted five mornings from 6 to Io A.M., was not supposed to lead to a finished performance nor was it to be presented to an audience outside the group. Was it then an exercise meant to explore a Western director's engagement with Indian and Japanese dancers? Or was it a Western production, however unfinished, which exhibited the characteristics of a miseen-scene? I tend toward the second hypothesis, although Barba carefully sustained the ambiguity of his and claimed rather to present a work in progress trying out the possibility of a Eurasian theatre. In what follows, one of the participants-simultaneously judging and taking part and hence forever contaminated by ISTA and deprived of his cherished neutrality-offered the Bari roundtable2 not so much a description of the B.A. BA of BA(r)BA method as a way of imagining how his on Faust might be described with semiotic tools. The anecdotal circumstance of this relazione was once again the challenge to semioticsissued by theatre anthropology-to give an account of the activity of the performers and the mise-en-scene. The (tactical) response to this kind of challenge consists in saying yet again: semiotics has no particular use; it is the artist who makes use of semiotics: let us merely describe this use by examining the reelaboration of Japanese and Indian gestural traditions through Barba's mise-en-scene. If, as I have suggested elsewhere, every (especially linguistic) translation is an appropriation of the source culture by the target culture (Pavis forthcoming), we might say, by analogy, that Barba appropriates oriental performance traditions by transforming and rewriting them on the stage for a Western audience. We could then identify a series of appropriations: (i) semiotic, (2) ideological, (3) narratological (in the broad sense). Nonetheless, the term appropriation opens the way to an unfortunate misreading

Mei Lanfang: A Case against and a Model for the Occidental Stage

Shimamura, a character in Kawabata Yasunari's Snow Country, continued studying dance while refusing to see it-the reality of this remote dance, he said, would only destroy the dream his study had created. A European theatre artist, however, must see Asia. The artist becomes eloquent about the Chinese, Japanese, or Balinese actor not from the neutrality of intellectual knowledge but from rapt observation. The Western director responds to concrete encounters with the Oriental stage-the material reality of which discloses to him a foreign, unimaginable art.1 The early part of this century was punctuated with decisive encounters of this nature: Sada Yakko in 1900, Hanako in 1904, Ichikawa Sadanji in 1928, and Balinese theatre in 1931.