Midterm Film Movements

Question 1

French New Wave stylistic/form components

Answer 1

• similar style to documentary
• shot on location w/ available light
• over/underexposed
• graphic discontinuity
• casual, unpolished, grainy
• style is noticeable
• free editing; discontinuous
• editing draws attention to itself
• can be repetitive or change pace
• long takes, violates 180 degree rule, jump cuts, quick cuts
• self reflexivity; breaking the 4th wall

Question 2

French New Wave narrative/thematic components

Answer 2

• plots based around chance and digressive episodes
• open ended
• moments in the film that don’t relate to plot
• no strong goal or purpose
• Came from “cahiers a du cinema”; notebook cinema critics
• engaging with styles and themes of film
• criticized formulaic prestige pictures

Question 3

Postwar Art Cinema

Answer 3

• against classical narrative modes
• realism and authenticity
• characters lack goals
• authorial expressiveness (auteur)
• ambiguity

Question 4

Japanese New Wave

Answer 4

• Youth culture became an important film market after WW2
• late 50s-70s
• rejection of tradition
• characters have sex, do drugs, etc.
• critical of Japanese society

Question 5

British Kitchen Sink style/format elements

Answer 5

• foreground the personal vision of the director
• shot on location
• “Long Shot of Our Town from That Hill”
• documentary aesthetics; long takes, imperfect lighting, etc.
• use of unknown actors
• low budget

Question 6

British Kitchen Sink narrative/thematic elements

Answer 6

• British cultural movement in the 50s and 60s
• developed out of 1930s documentary movement and the free cinema movement
• making viewers privy to the lives of the working class
• banality of life; we all use the kitchen sink
• placed in the protagonists POV but we also pity them
• social problem films
• everyday subjects
• adaptations of “angry young men” novels
• working class protagonists who want to escape their current situation
• authenticate but poeticize
• beauty out of squalor
• place becomes a sign of reality

Question 7

1930s British Documentary Movement

Answer 7

• Government funded
• no central artistic theory; more about the impact
• socially responsible, educational, or instructional
• highlighted the working class and its struggles
• wanted to create political reform
• often contained reenactment
• big critique of what was presented/shaped by the middle and upper classes

Question 8

Free Cinema Movement

Answer 8

• Mid 1950s
• Documentaries
• Tried to get rid of the elitist middle/upper class influence in documentaries about the working class
• Belief in freedom, importance of everyday people, and significance of the everyday
• the image speaks

Question 9

First Cinema Movement

Answer 9

• commercial films made for profit and enterainment (ex: Double Indemnity)
• passive viewer
• bourgeois worldview
• reality as conceived by the ruling classes
• closed text (the ending is resolved, we understand what happens, there are limited meanings)

Question 10

Second Cinema

Answer 10

• alternative to first cinema
• non-standard language ie non-traditional film techniques
• draws attention to itself as a film
• cultural decolonization
• “art cinema”
• experimental but not explicitly political
• “trapped inside the fortress” (upper class audience)

Question 11

Third Cinema narrative/goals

Answer 11

• made by countries under colonial powers/subjigation
• populations do the talking
• questions structures of power (particularly colonialism)
• aims for the liberation of the oppressed
• dialogue with history to reveal hidden history
• challenges viewers to reflect on the experience of poverty and subordination; how it is lived, not imagined
• interactions amongst the masses
• education and dialogue
• non-standard film language
• active viewers, participatory cinema
• political and revolutionary goals
• want to be easy to understand

Question 12

Third Cinema style/form

Answer 12

• Hand held camera
• natural lighting
• fast film stock
• ambient sound
• professional and non professional actors
• imperfect sound and image
• involve the audience rather than distance them

Question 13

Fourth Cinema

Answer 13

• Indigenous cinema
• produced by the indigenous populations of a particular country
• tied to “fourth world” nations

Question 14

New Hollywood Cinema

Answer 14

• challenged and took advantage of the production code’s decline in the 60s and 70s
• new narrative structures and strategies
• different world view
• creatively daring
• movie brats: generation of directors who went to film school
• old genres made new
• more violent/sexual
• targeted youth audiences
• protagonists are not reliable/likeable; they are ambiguous
• endings are open