...several countries in Africa continue to face today. Sierra Leone, in particular, has struck an interest because of the many films and readings that try to depict this story of the civil war. In class, we have viewed two films representing the problems with child soldiers in Sierra Leone which include films titled Blood Diamond and Ezra. Both films represent opposite sides of the spectrum, as Blood Diamond shows the Western view of child soldiers and Ezra represents the first African view of child soldiers. Before discussing the two films, there are also two articles that depict the issues of child soldiers in great detail. In the first article by A. B. Zack-Williams titled, “Child Soldiers in the Civil War in Sierra Leone,” the author describes the reasons behind children even joining rebel based armies such as the RUF, why children are chosen as soldiers against their will, and the examination of policies that are yet to be instilled on this matter. The first valid point that the author makes is the purpose of the RUF (Revolutionary United Front). The focus of this organization is to seek a better life for the people in Sierra Leone. They feel as if their lives have been wasted because of poor housing, malnutrition and no opportunity to succeed and that the government is to blame. With that said, the RUF seeks to take drastic control over the way they live by slaughtering the innocent people in the towns of Sierra Leone as a representation of what they are capable of doing to...
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...foretells the desire for inner peace”. Spielberg’s statement precisely embodies the underlying meaning in both films “To Live” and “Hero” (Person of the Year). Both films reinforce the idea that humanity conquers all. Humility and benevolence are hard to come by, easily trotted upon, and often taken advantage of. However, it is only through personal strife that we often embody these qualities and begin to develop inner piece. Both films employ powerful and sad events to help expose political shortcomings and ailments that have a direct and real result on society. I believe that at the heart of Yimou’s cinematography is the idea that, after all is said and done, goodwill humanity will prevail. In “To Live”, a Chinese family experiences more misfortunes than blessings. Because of gambling, unfortunate circumstances, and political instability and change, we see Fugui and his family go through a traumatic transformation from riches to rags. But what’s captivating to watch is that as life becomes more difficult and situations worsen, Fugui begins to appreciate the finer things in life. He soul wakes up to morality and purpose when for so long it was bogged down by selfishness, power, and earthly desires. Through cultural symbolism, we are reminded of the important values perpetuated by this film. From the puppet shows to an eclectic mix of Chinese instrumentation, the film garners your attention despite the language barrier. While grabbing your attention through effective story...
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...Enrico (“Rico”) Bandello who epitomized the rise and fall of the gangster. Edward G. Robinson was the first Gangster star in this genre. These career criminals live double lives as respectable business men, who defy the law, and are tough who also operate under a cloak of fear portrayed as respect. The popularity and appeal of these films during the 30’s was divided among the public. Some would see these films as a sort of participation in the rebellion against a failed government and others would see them as revenge against the bad guys. Hollywood would put the gangster in a mostly retributive frame with the negativity of the gangster myth ratifying the belief in the public enemy system. This would be seen as the result of the collapse of law enforcement in a society or loss of morality, and ultimately social disorder. William Wellman’s The Public Enemy (1931) starred James Cagney as the fast talking and cocky Tom Powers and his most famous line, “I’m on top of the world Ma!” This is an example of a well dressed man with street smarts who is a criminal bootlegger and womanizer. One of the films most controversial and pivotal scenes is when Tom Powers assaults his floozy girlfriend with a grapefruit by slamming it into her face at the breakfast table. Howard Hawkins “Scarface: The Shame of a Nation” (1932) starred Paul Muni as a Immature, power hungry, monstrous and beastly hood in prohibition era Chicago, whose character was loosely based on Al Capone. This is the first movie...
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...Christopher R walters Professor Webb Film 101 November 30, 2016 Film Elements In film, we watch, we observe and we enjoy films for they are captivating for people. Movies tented to be moving and some movies become symbolism in movie history; but some movies are loved for their artistic similarity’s and people don’t stop there but they become captivated by the message at hand as well as the creators who shaped those films. One such person named Alejandro Gonzalez born on August 15, 1963 is a Mexican film director, producer, screenwriter, and former composer. He also is the first Mexican director to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director and the Directors Guild of America Award for great Directing, for his work in the movie Babel. Not just Babel he also maybe another film called Amores Perros and both films show us the similarity to one another and how those differences are not just visual acuities but also imagery and sound related. Amores Perros a dark damp picture with an overly gray and not bright scenery to make the aspers as set in real life. This movie is about different aspects of people’s lives from rich to poor and the correlating aspects that bring them to gather but then the meaning can go deeper each of these stories are broken...
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...Born into Brothels is a documentary style film that follows around the children that live in the red light district in Calcutta. All of the children's mothers are prostitutes in the brothel to make sure they will have enough to survive. Some of the mother's care and talk about sending the kids off to university and some think of the children as a burden. This film was engaging because of the way it portrayed the children's lives, it made me feel sympathy and sadness for them, and it allows you to become invested in the children. The film did not portray the lives of these children in a way that made it seem like it was just a bad situation for the time being and they would eventually get out of the red light district. The documentary was...
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...Johnston Film Essay Avatar The critical acclaim that followed the box office destroyer, Avatar, out shined most films since the creation of Hollywood and the American cinema composition. Coming in at the second highest grossing film of all times only behind Titanic, James Cameron and his crew of artistic creators surely gave their audiences something to talk about. The film takes place in two separate worlds, the industrialized earth and the beautiful and plush avatar infested world of Pandora. The controversy of the film is centered on the humans mining the world of Pandora for a highly valuable element worth an estimated $20 million dollars a kilogram. The artistically drawn battle between the humans and the natives of Pandora, bring about a reminder of several classically organized stories that seem to follow along the same paths that Avatar treads upon. With this controversy that is being brought to light, the issue of race, racial tolerance and other problems dealing with color are brought up throughout the film in a multitude of ways. Whether it be embodied in the thoughts and processes of the characters, through the actual actions of the film, or the eerily similar comparisons that can be made between Avatar and other racially charged films, race is definitely a subject that was vividly dug up when the film crossed the minds of the viewers. Many reviews of the film Avatar put most of the racist charges and blames of inequality onto the writers of the film and...
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...故事不单单讲的是妇女的苦难，同时，孩子们的苦难是导演最想要表达的方面我觉得。第二，导演对于故事描述的视角也是这部电影说服我的方面。在这个电影中，强烈的反差是以孩子们的视角描述了他们的理想中的生活与现实的生活的对比。这是电影中一直想要表达给观众的观点，我认为。 I was deeply persuaded by the film. First of all, this film tells a true; a totally different story from the environment which I am living. I was moved by the story by many ways, women's helpless, corruption of the society and children's fate. Child’s fate is main point filmmakers want to deliver audiences in the story. From the background, women project children’s future who are living in Calcutta's Red Light area. The story is not just talking about women’s suffering, children's suffering is the most important thing the director want to deliver I think. Secondly, Directors’ angle of the story is the most important reason why this movie persuades me. According whole film, a strong contrast can tell which is based on the children’s dream lives and real lives. 不生硬的在影片中加入旁白、采访、对话，导演而是作为一个演员，或者更准确来说作为真实生活在孩子们当中的人，引导事件发展。导演没有直接拉开摄像机与孩子们的距离，简单的背景介绍并没有给人一种采访的感觉，反而像是人物在对话一样真实自然。而孩子们照片的介绍，更不是简单生切，导演用流畅的镜头运动展现了照片的含义，从局部细节到照片全景，从左边角落的人物的脸到右面拥挤的街道，孩子的照片就是生活的一部分，不夸张不造作，就是生活。 Directors don’t put narratages, interviews, and dialogues optionally. The directors were acting as guides during the film; they were more precisely act real people among the children’s lives. They were guiding whole film. Directors were not directly put any distance between the camera and children. A simple background description doesn't give people a feeling like interview, but it...
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...group of homeless men and women who live in an abandoned subway tunnel in New York City. They have built one room huts, they even have electricity, pets, beds, and they work hard to scrounge to earn money. They feel lucky to be a step above the homeless on the street who have nothing to call their own. Their participation in the making of this film allows them to eventually move out of the tunnels when forced to by Amtrak officials. This is not just a film on the lives of the homeless, it is about human condition. How they got there, how they get by, and how they get out. We learn in detail the cause and effects of how this small group of people ended up living in a tunnel together and formed a community. Some have turned to drugs to forget the horrors of losing children and doing jail time. Others are simply unwanted by their familes or society. As dangerous as it looks, they found the safest place to live where they could still live their lives on their own terms; never losing their wit and humor. Decisions on making this documentary were all made spontaniously. The director Marc Singer does not appear in the film, Singer explained his process by stating, "I'd been living in the tunnel for about three months before the idea came up about making the film and really became good friends with the people" (Singer, 2000). He had never even seen a movie film camera before. Singer ultimately used a 16mm camera with black-and-white Kodak film, at the suggestion of friends, because...
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...Films such as Edward Scissorhands, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and Big Fish have a whimsical style like Walt Disney, and dark mood like Edgar Allan Poe’s pieces of literature. This is because Tim Burton, the director of these film, was inspired by these people and he creates their type of style using cinematic techniques. Some examples of film techniques that all these films share are flashback, low-key lighting, and non-diegetic sound. Flashback is when a scene goes in to the past to show previous events. Low key lighting is when a scene is flooded with shadows and nondiegetic sound is when there are sounds and music that are only meant for the viewer to hear. FIlm techniques can use many different types of effects and ways to create...
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...Introduction The production of the film “Kisapmata” (Blink of an Eye) by Mike De Leon depicted a religion-based Third World patriarchy which reflected the dread, confinement, culture of violence and oppression during the Marcos regime. It showcased different symbolisms in terms of Marcos’ dictatorship during his reign in the Philippines. Each character of the film reflected what role to play in line with the Marcos regime. In addition, most of what the film depicted is how much patriarchy was alive back then in the Philippines. As observed, the characters portrayed different symbolisms. The most evident character in the film is the father who symbolizes “Marcos”. He played the role passably as an oppressive, harsh, and a “control freak” kind of father that the film highlights profusely. The actions he portrayed in the film symbolized the deeds of Marcos during his reign. Noel, his son-in-law, Mila, his daughter, and even his wife were the ones who lived under fear of his power. The father, as a patriarch, was seen in different levels of his manipulation on the lives of the newlyweds. In parallel with this situation is the Marcos’ reign along with his obsolete parliament. This clearly showed the oppression that Marcos possessed towards the Filipinos during his time such as the midnight-to-dawn curfew and the limitation of what the media can report out to the people. If anything, the patriarchy shown by the film made us realized that it was also the convention among families...
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...Film and Politics: Term Paper Salaam Bombay! Directed by Mira Nair in 1988, “Salaam Bombay!” is a fine piece of cinematic art that portrays the unfortunate reality of how life is for street children in Bombay, India. The film makes a brave jump from the typical, happy-go-lucky, capitalist representation of life on the streets, to a more convincing one. Following the daily struggles of children living on the streets of Bombay, this film sheds light on the socio-economic realities of their lives. In this paper, I will analyze “Salaam Bombay!” in terms of its ability to provide a near accurate depiction of urban poverty in India, and the lives of its street children. “Salaam Bombay!” follows the story of a young boy, around the age of twelve, named Krishna. Shortly into the movie we find Krishna living on the streets of the largest city in India, Bombay, surrounded by drug addicts, prostitutes, pimps, and other homeless children like him. Through a conversation Krishna has with a drug addict he befriends, we discover that Krishna was abandoned by his mother at an Apollo Circus where she tells him that he can only come back home once he raises five hundred rupees to pay his brother back for destroying his bicycle. Krishna, named Chaipau by those around him, starts working as a tea deliverer for a local teashop so he can earn enough money to go back home. As the film traces Krishna’s struggles to earn enough money and survive on the streets of Bombay, his story clashes with...
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...Course: Acting Demands in the Making of a Movie Film production is an art that tries to reveal the realities of a given society at present, in the past or the anticipated future occurrences in a society or the whole universe. Besides entertainment, movies are made with the object of perpetuating a given theme. Actors’ choices and circumstances are the major tools for enhancing a given theme in a film (Gong, 27). Moreover, films are produced with an insightful and educative view to bringing to light past occurrences in a given situation or a society with different themes embedded. To build these themes in a film of a given genre, the actors are faced with numerous and varying demands that requires them to feature in multiple scenarios and faces numerous circumstances. This paper seeks to analyze the acting demands faced by the main actors in the movies: Spartacus and The Year of Living Dangerously. Spartacus is an epic film produced in 1960 by Edward Lewis with Stanley Kubrick as the director. The film was inspired by the heroic struggles of Spartacus a slave leader who led a widespread rebellion against the Romans in the quest for freedom for the slaves (Olivier, 1960). The film was based on Howard Fast’s novel of the same name incorporating events of the third servile war and the life story of Spartacus. The film went on to win four Academy Awards and has been ranked among the most successful film of the 20th century. However, the success of the movie came from...
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...The Fall is a film featuring two main characters, Roy and Alexandria. The film[‘]s black and white opening scene introduces us to Roy and also prevails [presents?] his injury while acting as a stunt man in silent films. Alexandria on the other hand, had fallen and is suffering a broken her arm. The cripples find each other within the hospital where Roy begins to tell Alexandria an epic story, a story which brings color into their dull, sick lives. Throughout the movie, the fantasy world of the story and the reality of Roy and Alexandria’s life [lives] begin to mesh into one, and through this, it is evident that they’re friendships [their friendship] with each other is what brings the color and life back into one another’s once lonely lives. The film begins with Roy’s fall while working as a stuntman for black and white films. Not only is the colorless, silent film making it evident that the film is taking place in a time before colored film existed, perhaps the 1930’s, the black and white is significant to the scene because that is when Roy becomes crippled, which in a sense takes the color out of his life. After that scene, the film then cuts to a beautiful mansion, which happens to be the hospital Roy and Alexandria are resided at. Outside of the hospital, we are shown both vibrant cool and warm colors, the bright blue sky, the intensity of the orange in the oranges and greens in the landscaping, which makes it appeal as a happy, lively place. When the scene shoots to inside...
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...grave difficulties for the protagonists, are explored somewhat differently across the mediums of film and text. John Ruane’s cinematic interpretation of Tim Winton’s text provides a useful and constructive alternative perspective of these thematic difficulties. The Australian Family depicted in ‘That eye, the sky’ is the quintessential Australian country family. The depiction of the Flack family in the novel describes the stereotypical image of the Australian family. More…They live in a country cottage with chickens in the yard, holes in the asbestos wall sheeting and Sam Flack, the head of this house, drives a Ute. This description places the family in a stereotypical Australian place. The narrator in the novel, Ort, provides the reader with an insight into life as a member of the Flack family. For example, the reader can understand what Ort is thinking, when he… This example shows us the thought process that Ort goes through and the reader views his perspective of his family. In the film, the casting of Jamie Croft as Ort is believable and appears as one would imagine. Not only is the image of Ort believable but also how and what he thinks provides the viewer with a greater insight into the family. The film, however, misses out on important scenes, such as Ort’s first day of school and his mother’s attendance at Church. It is sad that the important scenes in the novel weren’t in the film as they reflect Ort’s changing world. Ort has to suddenly grow up and is a confused, young boy...
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...as an anthropologist, based on the perceptions of his film Nanook. Three ways Flaherty fits the bill as an anthropologist are by displaying ethnographic details in his film, the use of anthropological methodology, and last but not least, portraying reality based on the materials and activities in the film. Firstly, as soon as Nanook begun, viewers were able to see the geographical local and the lives of the individuals participating in the film. According to Ruby, the “essential in good drama is designed in Nanook to transform the audience’s ethnocentrism into empathy for a people, a culture, and a hero” (Ruby 2000, 74). Basically, by viewing Nanook viewers are able to see the aspects of a culture that is focus on the “human versus the environment” (Ruby 2000, 74). The film includes a representation of the daily activities that occurred in the lives of the...
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