Component 2 section C; Film movements: Silent cinema
Silent Cinema
Realism Vs Expressionism
- This debate centres on wether film should be realist or an expressive medium
- Should a filmmaker be concerned with representing the world as is e.g. documentary
- or should a filmmaker regard the medium as a creative one in which the everyday world is transformed
- in history this is all traced all the way to 1895-1902 in France
- the lumbers conceived this view
Film: Realist or expressive?
This debate centres on whether film should be a 'realist' or an 'expressive' medium. In other words, should a filmmaker be concerned with representing the world as is-for example, in the manner of a documentary-or should a filmmaker regard the medium as a creative one in which the everyday world is transformed? The Lumiéres Brothers conceived of this new invention as one for recording found reality and in so doing encouraging the spectator to gaze freshly on a world that might otherwise be taken for granted. By contrast George Méliès made fantasy films of great imagination and creativity.
Modernism
Modernism refers to the broad movement in Western arts and literature that gathered pace from around 1850, and this is characterised by a deliberate rejection of the styles of the past; emphasising instead innovation and experimentation in forms, materials and techniques in order to create artworks that better reflected modern society.
Futurism
Futurism rejected the classical past.
Launched by the Italian poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti in 1909.
Among the modernist movements futurism was exceptionally vehement in its denunciation of the past.
What the futurists proposed instead was an art that celebrated the modern world of industry and technology.
Futurist painting used elements of neo-impressionism and cubism to create compositions that expressed the idea of the dynamism, the energy and movement, of modern life.
Cubism
Cubism was a revolutionary new approach to representing reality invented in around 1907-08 by artists Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque. They brought different views of subjects (usually objects or figures) together in the same picture, resulting in paintings that appear fragmented and abstracted.
Constructivism
The constructivists believe art should directly reflect the modern industrial world.
Pablo Picasso's cubist constructions influenced vladimir Tatlin. These were three dimensional still lives made of scrap materials. Tattling began to make his own but they were completely abstract and made of industrial materials.
The material formation of the object is to be substituted for its aesthetic combination. The object is to be treated as a whole and thus will be of no discernible 'style' but simply a product of an industrial order like a car, an aeroplane and such like. Constructivism is a purely technical mastery and organisation of materials.
Tatlin, Malevich
Constructivism was the new art form of the revolution. Art also had to free itself from its bourgeois past; new ideas and experimentation were taking place in all the arts. Easel painting was linked to bourgeois decadence. There needed to be new forms.
After 1917, Russian artists formulated the theories of Constructivism using a combination of technology, science and art.
Silent cinema
Films of the 1920s are often considered among the greatest masterpieces. Dialogue driven narrative was perceived as dragging cinema backwards as a form of theatre, rather than brilliantly new, innovative and artistic form of visual expression it was proving itself to be.
Soviet montage - Dziga Vertov 1896-1954
Real name David Kaufman Dziga was a nickname meaning spinning top
Wife - Elisaveta svilova (co-editor)
brother - Mikhail Kaufman (cameraman)
they felt the task of soviet film was to document reality to reveal truth and were opposed to the fiction film that depends on artifice 'the ordinary fiction film acts like cigars or cigarettes on a smoker. intoxicated by the cine-nicotine the spectator sucks from the screen the substance that soothes his nerves distorting his protesting conciseness'
Man with the movie camera (Vertov USSR, 1929)
He was described as a 'Film hooligan' producing 'unmotivated camera mischief'. He made the man with the movie camera as a visual symphony as a self reflexative film about making the film. As a self proclaimed 'experiment in the cinematic communication of visible events'
Social
- in 1929 soviet revolution
- ideas about the role od the new society citizen
- Openness to experimentation initiated under lenin
Historical
- in 1928 Stalin introduced the first five-year plan whose chair aim was to rapidly expand industrial production to bring a vast country into line with western Europe
Political
- Vertov associated with the revolutionary LEF group. in 1928 the first all union party congress
Technological
Vertov had worked on the gait-trains, mobile propaganda centres sent to the eastern front and the far corners of the soviet union. their task was to dismember propaganda through films
Institutionalisation
Early 1922 Lenin established a fixed ratio between entertainment and documentary films this was 75% fiction film 25% documentary films by 1925 cinema was a vital public institution
Discuss how far your chosen film or films reflect aesthetic qualities associated with particular film movement ?
Construcitvism was an artistic and architectural philosophy that originated in Russia beginning in 1913 by Vladimir Tatlin. This was a rejection of the idea of autonomous art that shows how the and a celebration of a new industrial world. A follower of this movement called Dziga Vertov, (David Kaufman) was described by Eisenstein as a 'film hooligan' as he made the film: Man with a Movie camera as a visual symphony, showing a self-reflexive film about making this film. Vertov expresses the many advantages in Russia in a largely expressive way. This is contrasted by the realist everyday actions of Russians that Vertov films.
This is evident in the scene in which, around 40 minutes in the film, where Kaufman; the cameraman is in the smelting factory putting himself in danger, the realist actions of this worker is complemented by Kaufman as he is demolishing the ideas of the bourgeoisie as he is attempting to do the same work labour the other men are doing. Therefore taking away the division between the rich and poor.
- This debate centres on wether film should be realist or an expressive medium
- Should a filmmaker be concerned with representing the world as is e.g. documentary
- or should a filmmaker regard the medium as a creative one in which the everyday world is transformed
- in history this is all traced all the way to 1895-1902 in France
- the lumbers conceived this view
Film: Realist or expressive?
This debate centres on whether film should be a 'realist' or an 'expressive' medium. In other words, should a filmmaker be concerned with representing the world as is-for example, in the manner of a documentary-or should a filmmaker regard the medium as a creative one in which the everyday world is transformed? The Lumiéres Brothers conceived of this new invention as one for recording found reality and in so doing encouraging the spectator to gaze freshly on a world that might otherwise be taken for granted. By contrast George Méliès made fantasy films of great imagination and creativity.
Modernism
Modernism refers to the broad movement in Western arts and literature that gathered pace from around 1850, and this is characterised by a deliberate rejection of the styles of the past; emphasising instead innovation and experimentation in forms, materials and techniques in order to create artworks that better reflected modern society.
Futurism
Futurism rejected the classical past.
Launched by the Italian poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti in 1909.
Among the modernist movements futurism was exceptionally vehement in its denunciation of the past.
What the futurists proposed instead was an art that celebrated the modern world of industry and technology.
Futurist painting used elements of neo-impressionism and cubism to create compositions that expressed the idea of the dynamism, the energy and movement, of modern life.
Cubism
Cubism was a revolutionary new approach to representing reality invented in around 1907-08 by artists Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque. They brought different views of subjects (usually objects or figures) together in the same picture, resulting in paintings that appear fragmented and abstracted.
Constructivism
The constructivists believe art should directly reflect the modern industrial world.
Pablo Picasso's cubist constructions influenced vladimir Tatlin. These were three dimensional still lives made of scrap materials. Tattling began to make his own but they were completely abstract and made of industrial materials.
The material formation of the object is to be substituted for its aesthetic combination. The object is to be treated as a whole and thus will be of no discernible 'style' but simply a product of an industrial order like a car, an aeroplane and such like. Constructivism is a purely technical mastery and organisation of materials.
Tatlin, Malevich
Constructivism was the new art form of the revolution. Art also had to free itself from its bourgeois past; new ideas and experimentation were taking place in all the arts. Easel painting was linked to bourgeois decadence. There needed to be new forms.
After 1917, Russian artists formulated the theories of Constructivism using a combination of technology, science and art.
Silent cinema
Films of the 1920s are often considered among the greatest masterpieces. Dialogue driven narrative was perceived as dragging cinema backwards as a form of theatre, rather than brilliantly new, innovative and artistic form of visual expression it was proving itself to be.
Soviet montage - Dziga Vertov 1896-1954
Real name David Kaufman Dziga was a nickname meaning spinning top
Wife - Elisaveta svilova (co-editor)
brother - Mikhail Kaufman (cameraman)
they felt the task of soviet film was to document reality to reveal truth and were opposed to the fiction film that depends on artifice 'the ordinary fiction film acts like cigars or cigarettes on a smoker. intoxicated by the cine-nicotine the spectator sucks from the screen the substance that soothes his nerves distorting his protesting conciseness'
Man with the movie camera (Vertov USSR, 1929)
He was described as a 'Film hooligan' producing 'unmotivated camera mischief'. He made the man with the movie camera as a visual symphony as a self reflexative film about making the film. As a self proclaimed 'experiment in the cinematic communication of visible events'
Social
- in 1929 soviet revolution
- ideas about the role od the new society citizen
- Openness to experimentation initiated under lenin
Historical
- in 1928 Stalin introduced the first five-year plan whose chair aim was to rapidly expand industrial production to bring a vast country into line with western Europe
Political
- Vertov associated with the revolutionary LEF group. in 1928 the first all union party congress
Technological
Vertov had worked on the gait-trains, mobile propaganda centres sent to the eastern front and the far corners of the soviet union. their task was to dismember propaganda through films
Institutionalisation
Early 1922 Lenin established a fixed ratio between entertainment and documentary films this was 75% fiction film 25% documentary films by 1925 cinema was a vital public institution
Discuss how far your chosen film or films reflect aesthetic qualities associated with particular film movement ?
Construcitvism was an artistic and architectural philosophy that originated in Russia beginning in 1913 by Vladimir Tatlin. This was a rejection of the idea of autonomous art that shows how the and a celebration of a new industrial world. A follower of this movement called Dziga Vertov, (David Kaufman) was described by Eisenstein as a 'film hooligan' as he made the film: Man with a Movie camera as a visual symphony, showing a self-reflexive film about making this film. Vertov expresses the many advantages in Russia in a largely expressive way. This is contrasted by the realist everyday actions of Russians that Vertov films.
This is evident in the scene in which, around 40 minutes in the film, where Kaufman; the cameraman is in the smelting factory putting himself in danger, the realist actions of this worker is complemented by Kaufman as he is demolishing the ideas of the bourgeoisie as he is attempting to do the same work labour the other men are doing. Therefore taking away the division between the rich and poor.
This needs to be finished - there are bullet points in the essay, no introduction, and no conclusion. Please let me know, via email, when you've written a polished version of this.
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