Global Film Flashcards
Memorize
Ida context
Directed by Pawalikowski in 2013
Budget $2.6 million
Box office $15.3 million
Pawlikowski wanted to make a film about the creation of modern Poland – the weight of history, the role of the church
He doesn’t want to use ‘cinematic tricks’ to detract from the meaning. Realistic shots
Based on post-war Polish society and history, the role of the Communist government and the Catholic Church
Pawel Pawlikowski drew on his own background for the film. His mother was Catholic, his father was Jewish, and he learned late in life that his grandmother had died in Auschwitz.
Set in 1961, during the Stalinist dictatorship, Ida follows a young girl who discovers her parents were jews killed in the holocausts. She is about to take her vows to be a nun when she is introduced to her aunt Wanda who tells her about their family. They’re purposefully opposite characters, Ida being innocent and nervous compared to Wanda’s chaotic promiscuity. They go on a physical and emotional journey discovering things about their late family in a realistic way
Ida Cinematography
Filmed in colour – converted to black/white in post-production
Black/white and 4x4 ratio to evoke period set (1960’s)
Low-contrast b/w images
Still camera throughout – fixed on a tripod with very few exceptions
Frequent use of shallow focus to pick out detail and draw attention to it
Location shooting
Often scenes shot with single camera
Frequent placing of characters at the bottom or corner of frame
Moving handheld camera for end scene
Only some subtitles. Sometimes don’t know what they’re saying, only the energy from the actors
Ida Mise-en-scene
Framing makes use of space above the characters
Rule of thirds; decentred decomposition
Placing of characters at bottom of frame/in corners
Natural Lighting frequently used
Single source of lighting within indoor shots
Setting on location – Lodz
Contrast of the looks of Ida and Wanda
Minimal facial expressions (Ida’s actress was amateur so she’s not very expressive, purposeful decision to make her seem desensitised and quite)
Performances are all naturalistic not expressionistic – understated and realistic
No star personas to distract the audience from issues and themes presented
Ida Editing
Straight cuts between scenes – no cross fading or fades to black
Long duration shots, one camera position
Use of eye-line matches to link shots
Occasional use of sound to link across scenes
Scenes presented chronologically
Cross cutting between locations used once in motel room/nightclub sequence – not for suicide/’not ready for vows’ scenes
Many potential scenes cut for economy – Ida arriving in the city for the first time
Ellipsis around car crash ‘scene’
Random short scenes shoved together, not necessarily a strict running along story: documentary like
Ida Sound
Only diegetic sound throughout – emphasis of natural/ambient sounds and silence
No ‘soundtrack’ music except for the final scene .
Diegetic Music heard from radio and record player and jazz band
Jazz band play John Coltrane composition ‘Naima’ – named after his wife who converted him to Islam
No dialogue until almost three minutes into film
Not a large amount of dialogue, more focus on actions
Sound often used across scenes to link them
Describe Cinematography in the Body Excavation scene
Opens with a long establishing shot. The shot leaves around 1/5th of empty space above the depicted characters (perhaps to make evangelical elucidations and anchors to the film’s plot). In the shot on the left, we see the juxtaposition between the dark trees on the left (implying grief and melancholy) and the light sky and background forestry (implying hope and purity whilst also hyperbolising the notions tied to the aforementioned left trees).
The high angle on the man who was excavating the bodies
to would likely cause the audience to feel sympathetic prior to discovering that this man was the one who killed them. With this knowledge, the shot type in combinations with the
man’s performance, would likely work to depict his deep sense of shame in relation to his prior actions/self. The centring of the man in the shot and the angle means that his head and body are bowed towards us, perhaps as he is visually (and metaphorically) praying for both the audience’s and God’s forgiveness.
Describe Sound in the Body Excavation scene
The silence at the beginning of this scene is hyperbolised by the
pleonastic and naturalistic sound of the prior scene (rain and car door being closed). This silence works similarly to the effect of the static, long takes by allowing the audience mental space for reflective and
meditative thinking.
Describe Mise-en-scene in the Body Excavation scene
The dark setting here of the black dirt and the man’s dark coloured outfit could work to reflect the dark nature of the situation
and the man’s fragmented and regressive psyche. The majority of shots within this sequence are held on screen for a prolonged period of time to give audiences time to contemplate the actions of the main characters and feel a sense of empathy/melancholy or the main characters. The trees in the background creates the implication that this is a scary and
unrecognisable environment.
The performance of the actresses reflects their intensive melancholy as they sit with their arms around their knees (an act of self consolidation) and their
heads facing the grounds (reflective, perhaps they are trying to avoid
facing the truth of the once-violent situation). This notion of self
consolidation is also applicable to the man digging the whole who,
too, sits with his arms around his legs and his head bowed in grief and regret.
Analyse the suicide scene
Ida
Near the end of the film, a scene focuses on Wanda again in a long duration shot. The camera doesn’t move from the place in Wanda’s home and the audience watches as she walks in and out of frame. There’s more sound in this scene than usual; throughout the film there has been very little dialogue and absolutely no non-diegetic sound, focusing only on ambient sounds within the scenes from the characters. In this scene, Wanda turns on a record to add to the diegetic sound, but there is still no dialogue, the audience just watches her move around her room before jumping out of the window. She moves close to the window several times and it’s implied what she’s about to do, but it takes quite a long time, again with no cuts in the long shot of the room, before she does it. The camera stays in the same place for a few more seconds before cutting away after she jumps, letting it settle into the audience. It’s very unusual to modern films in the way Pawlikowski doesn’t move the camera and allows all focus to be on the room and character. There are several seconds with nothing happening in the scene that could be cut-edited, but the waiting makes it loyal to real life. The audience watches everything happen in real time, just observing and waiting. At what is supposedly set at the same time as this, Anna is also going full circle in her story. Pawlikowski had an opportunity to include a popular artsy shot where he cuts from one character to another, watching their ‘downfalls’ but elected to have one after the other. He puts emphasis on the importance to him of the way the scenes are shot. This aesthetic quality gives the film such a different impactful energy, placing significance on the story and what’s happening in the frame, rather than artsy film techniques that Pawlikowski believed would take away from the impact he was trying to create here.
Taxi Tehran Context
Jafar Panahi directed the film and is under house arrest in Iran because of what he creates. He’s highly critical of Iranian society and those in charge, and has been barred from making films but still manages to do so. In Taxi Tehran, Panahi tries to address snippets of everything of concern to him in Iranian society. It has no credits because it would implicate people being part of it, so we are unaware if the actors are even actors. A large variety of ordinary people get into his taxi and have conversations with him about their days.
Iranian new wave began in 1964 with films like The Serpent’s Skin and important social documentaries like Face 75. Within a few years it became a well established style, and the people encouraged it to prosper despite the ‘rules’. They’re typically documentary, culture and politics orientated, directly combatting the governments wishes of avoiding ‘sordid realism’.
Taxi Tehran Cinematography
Fixed ‘dashboard’ camera rotated by Panahi at times. Every move deliberate. Presents ‘reality’. Documentary style.
Mostly a fixed camera with no movement or re-focussing – camera itself moves as taxi moves.
‘Hana’ camera – point-of-view shots – what she is filming.
Shots that show Hana filming and what she is filming and also the framing in her viewfinder.
Like Ida - no ‘cinematic tricks’, quick edits, zooms, ‘vertigo shots’, pulling focus etc.
Camera remains within the taxi throughout the film
Taxi Tehran Editing
Very little ‘editing’ within the film. Broader editing point about how themes are developed through what is included in the film and what is excluded
Long shot durations
Some cuts between shots. Classic shot/ reverse shot in conversations at times.
Like Ida - no quick edits, fade outs, wipes, dissolves, cross-fades.
Narrative presented is linear – no cross-cutting between scenes.
Taxi Tehran Sound
Adding to the documentary feel the sound is almost completely diegetic throughout.
The sounds of the city and dialogue between Panahi and his passengers and between passengers dominates.
Occasional sounds of ‘modern’ technology through smart phones and radio.
Occasional non-diegetic music – in opening scene for example.
In film music is often used to direct audience emotional response – not here. We are supposed to make up our own minds about what we are seeing.
Taxi Tehran Mise-en-scene
Camera focusses on what is outside the taxi – i.e. Tehran and what is inside the taxi – the driver and passengers. We appear to be seeing the ‘real’ Tehran rather than an idealised version.
‘Costumes’ worn by actors emphasize realism and appear natural.
The ‘city’ is presented as being a mixture of modern and traditional reflecting the duality of Iranian culture and the clashes between competing values of fundamentalism and modernity.
This also applies to the appearance of the actors.
Lighting is presented as natural and the film is entirely set on location in Tehran.
Because Panahi can’t be interviewed we have little information about the authenticity of the actor’s performances.
We know that some of the characters appearing are real people – Panahi, Hana and Nasrin Sotoudeh the human rights lawyer - but not the other characters.
We know there are ‘non-professional’ performances but not if all performers are ‘non-professional’. To include noted Iranian performers would undermine the authenticity that the film seeks to present.
The ‘non-professional’ performances enhance the film’s authenticity
We can speculate that the dialogue is improvised rather than scripted.
Analyse the scene with his niece
Taxi Tehran
Hana creates a mini-me of him in the car, and demonstrates the character of a naïve filmmaker. They discuss what can make a ‘distributable film’ highlighting the censorship Iran puts on their media, and how Panahi is trying to directly combat it. The shots up to this point have been lots of long duration dash-cam shots, making it feel real and amateur. The shots are longer in this scene and swap between him and his niece more often as they converse, and eventually swap to what Hana is filming with her own camera which is very shaky emphasizing the realism of it being held by a child. The rules Hana has been told to respect are listed out and are things Panahi himself is ignoring in this very film. Hana has a disagreement with another child about him taking someone’s money as it made her film ‘undistributable’. She asks him to return it so he can fit the required archetype of ‘the hero’ in her film. This issue is one particularly close to Panahi as a filmmaker, and is exposing the unfair laws that are in place both directly and indirectly. He organises the film so the topics seem to come up naturally in everyday life. It is exposing the appearance the government wishes to portray, compared to the reality which no one is allowed to show. There’s very limited non-diegetic sound; almost all of it is background noise from inside and outside the taxi and raw conversation. This mirrors the documentary style many Iranian new wave films possess, and allows the issues to be presented without flashy new cinematographic techniques. The lighting and costume is all natural, allowing it to blend the lines between what’s real and fictional within the film.
