Day 1:The Radical Premise of Cinema & Beasts of the Southern Wild

DAY  1

The Radical Premise of Cinema

Overview:

From the start cinema was magic.  The illusion of a coherent time and space. The replaying of the real but framed and repositioned as present in the experience of viewing. Writ larger than life in the size of its projection. And come to life through the phenomena of the brain registering a series of still images as movement. It was also from its first displays inseparable from its relations to the social, economic, and technological.

These relations effected the both the modes of production and the modes of distribution. What was being framed and who was doing the framing, How it was produced, How and where it was seen.

Dominant structures in cinema emerged quickly, both in terms of the modes of production– such as epitomized by the Studio and Star System, but also in terms of aesthetic and narrative conventions. 

Some of Conventions of Cinema that emerged

Narrative Continuity
Recognizable stars
Clear genre
Producers/Studio Affiliation
Identification with the protagonist
Hiding the apparatus of the technology
Narrative resolution

Make-up/costumes
A single diegesis (with all the mise-en-scene supporting this single time-space continuum)

Cinema as a cultural experience has been around for just over a 100 years. In an extraordinarily short time the modes of production and modes of distribution have radically changed, as have systems and conventions for expression. From the beginning there have always been those the countered both the modes of production and narrative and aesthetic conventions in part or whole. 

Early Cinema - The Lumiere Brothers and collective viewing

Since its very beginnings Cinema held out both the potential for utopian and unique visions as well as for commercial success.

Where as Edison designed initially for the private viewer, and was most concerned with patents, sales and entertainment, The Lumeires travelled the world teaching the camera people all over to shoot. Resulting in over 1400 actuality films (the precursor to documentary) being made all over the world.

But no matter as commercial exploit, travelogue or news reel, film was from its initial public screening at the Grande Café a radical experience. Forays into cinema before that had been more like peep shows with a single -person viewer apparatus. From that moment in 1895 on, cinema was a collective viewing experience.

Clip One: Exiting the Factory, 1895, Louis and August Lumiére

At a moment when modernity and the Mass was emerging, the lumiére borthers were interested in mobilty, worker's and family lives, documenting culture, geography, technology, and what they called "Actualities" - bits of life.

 
Other clips viewed on Day 1:

Passsion of Joan of Arc, (1928) Theodore Carl Dryer

The story of a youth who trangessed gender, the church, and the inquisition.
Dryer was interested in the real - a sense of raw humanity. To do this he strippd away much of the conventions of silent cinema at the time.
Joan (Maria Renee Falconette) is shot with out make-up, almost entirely in a sustained close up.
The mise-en-scene is nearly bare. With an emphasis on the negative space (the space around Joan and her judges as just light or dark space) untethering them from a sense of place to produce a sense of dislocation and alienation.
Use of montage to heighten Joans internal state, as well as to create a social critique of the society around her.

An adherance to the real through the use of the archives of the trial.
Clip was also use to draw attention to the role of performance, and use of cinema to create transcendence.
The film was censored in France, Banned in Engand. The original prints were destroyed in a fire. A lost print was found in a Mental Asylum in 1981 is Olso and released.



The Bicycle Thieves (1948) (Vitorrio De Sica)

With the collapse of the Italian film industry - an opening for a new cinema
interested in the sentiments of the working class.
The beginning of Italian Neo-Realism

The Bicycle Thieves is shot in the streets of Italy using non actor. 
Bringing back the mise-en-scene
 authentic
Interested in ideas of authenticity, stripped and raw emotion social critique, and cinema as a social force or catalyst for change. One that had the potential to educate the people into revolt.
The use of a child to create an empathy in the viewer, but also to point to a deeper sense of humanity - where the relationship between father and son transcends the indignity of poverty.


Rosetta Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne (1999)
Also interested in the authentic - or experience of the real from an emotional perspective as well as through the mise en-scene.

Shot entirely with hand-held camera work. Camera becomes an extension of the Rosetta's experience of anxiety and society. It portrays her constant restlessness - desire to get out of her circumstances any which way possible.
The camera grows calmer only when she is calmer.
The film changed the laws for minimum wage in Belgium.
Showed an economic state in Belgium that had not been portrayed before
Similar interests driving it as the Bicycle Thief but the aesthitics of authenticity and the real have shifted .

Night of the Hunter, (1955) Charles Laughton
The use of the magical to create a rupture in the diegisis of the film.

Children as vehicles for social critique - embodying nature, and innocents.
Magical Realism - where the space between the real and the irreal is not signified by any kind of narrative device

Feature Film: Beasts of the Southern Wild, Benh Zeitlin, 2012

Benh Zeitlin. 2012. 91 m. PG-13. US. Fox Searchlight.