Parallel Cinema

1948, which was filmed in eight to ten minute-long segments (Bacchus). Although the directors of New Wave were not the first to utilize this technique, they certainly played a part in solidifying the long take within modern cinema. Some famous examples of its use in Hollywood cinema are in Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman (2014) and Marin Scorsese's Goodfellas (1990). Oftentimes, the long take was only the result of a New Wave director’s unique sense of camera movement. Just as painters use…

new in Bollywood, earlier, it was a rare exception. Issues perceived as women’s problems formed the crux of ‘alternative or parallel cinema’ of the 1950s and 1960s era. The New Cinema Movement of the 1970s was an attempt to bridge the two worlds of popular and art cinemas. This time saw the churning of many women-oriented movies in Bollywood. But, some success in popular cinema of such movies saw the light of the day only during 1990s. 2000 was a decade which marked the making of some…

examples/chosen film Surrealism is an artistic cinema style that purposely deviates from traditional, Hollywood-style film conventions. Originally a literary movement, surrealism was first introduced to cinema in the 1920s by filmmakers André Breton, Salvador Dali and Luis Buñuel. Early filmmaking was often experimental, with directors and producers exploring the technical processes of mise en scène, narratives and post-production alterations. Surrealist cinema was adventurous, challenging…

Direct Cinema and Cinéma vérité appear as two cinematic practices that explore film aesthetic and philosophy in relation to the “truth” they seek to present. Both of this avant-garde movements hold differences in terms of approach(interventionism and self reflexivity versus pure observation) but they are historically important as they challenge traditional cinema and struggle to find an approach to best present the reality in situations…

In October of 2015, the RISD Museum showcased the work of two Turner Prize winning artists, Martin Boyce and Luke Fowler: Boyce’s work as a four-month exhibit of primarily sculpture and Fowler’s as a single screening of his film All Divided Selves. The two artists are contemporaries both living in Glasgow, but their similarities go beyond generation and nationality; they both present everyday reality in a way that makes us question our assumptions, while suggesting undertones of fear and…

Thomas Alva Edison was the most prolific inventor in American history. As a 19th century pioneer, he introduced America to innovation or invention, research, development and commercialization. His largest contributions to cinema include the phonograph, light bulb, kinetoscope, the first motion picture and the first film production studio. The inventor was born to Sam and Nancy on February 11th, 1847 in Milan, Ohio. As a child, Edison was a poor student and teachers saw little potential in him.…

In cinema, the act of watching or spying at other peoples’ lives is referred to as voyeurism. Originally, the word voyeurism means “[gaining] sexual pleasure from watching others when they are naked or engaged in sexual activity” (Oxford Dictionary, Oxford University Press), but in cinema, voyeurism has been used as a plot tool for decades. Hitchcock films depict the roles a man and woman have in marriage through various tools, but in Rear Window, it is through voyeurism that the story is set in…

Artist, Nam June Paik began using magnetic tape in Portapacks, SONY’s portable, analogue video recording unit, as well as experimenting with and exhibiting cathode ray tube televisions as a sculptural object, in 1960s Germany. By 1968, the Museum of Modern Art had already begun acquiring and exhibiting Paik’s video work. Yet the bonafide rise of video as a museum object, and the scholarship that would follow, is associated with the succeeding decade. Moving image, derived from magnetic tape, had…

The theme and the message of artistic art forms are largely at the mercy of the various perceptions that individuals have about them as no two individual perceptions are completely alike. This notion is especially evident when reviewing and interpreting the ideas of classical film theorists and their opinions on the purpose of what the unique art form of film is meant to be, and what methods should be used in order to achieve that purpose. This contrasting difference across different realms of…

Opening with a sequence that parodies that of Universal Pictures with the digital film’s core message of "UNIVERSAL PIRACY” asserted in bolded gold text within the last few seconds, the work reminiscent of an old Hollywood epic is a “part trash cinema and part remix manifesto” that argues against copyright, instead advocating freedom for media piracy. Its collage-narrative tells of a grand quest of a 1955 Elvis Presley rebel clone brought back from the past by video pirates to transform the…