Parallel Cinema

Juan Antonio Bayona’s El Orfanato (2007) is a Spanish horror film that illustrates the Spanish ghost story while also representing the tragic loss of childhood. Laura returns to the orphanage where she was raised, hoping to re-open it. Instead, her son Simón goes missing seemingly at the hands of ghosts from her past. The disappearance and subsequent death of her son, as well as her reunion with her ghostly childhood friends symbolizes significant aspects of Spain’s traumatic history. This can…

When Anand Patwardhan, popularly known for his socio-economic and human rights oriented films like Bombay Our City (1985), entered the realm of documentary filmmaking in 1971, he challenged the institutions dominating Indian documentary film production, distribution and censorship. Whereas when Paromita Vohra, acclaimed for her documentaries on urban life, popular culture and gender like Morality TV and Loving Jihad (2007), entered much later, in 1995 she had to deal with a completely different…

Most often than not we find ourselves reminiscing the nostalgic moments of the past that have had a major impact on us that still play a key role in our lives today. Upon visiting the Frost Art Museum located at the Florida International University, I was convivially welcomed into the museum with a heartfelt “hello, thank you for coming”. However, it was not the warm welcome that made me feel nostalgic but more so when I entered the elevator to reach the second floor. As soon as the elevator…

suspense and through his artistic choices he is the author of his films. Hitchcock has his own persona and often appeared in cameos in his films. His unique style leaned away from studying films as a genre but through an auteur approach, Cashiers du Cinema written by the father of auteruirsm, Andre Bazin. Bazin stresses on mise-en-scène, the content of images, that reveals the filmmaker’s vision. To be an auteur a director must present reoccurring characteristics of style that serve as their…

Fordham (2013) argues that “Brand Nue Dae” is part of this new wave of “reconciliatory cinema” which aims to project a more optimistic resolution were Indigenous communities can themselves resolve their own concerns. The political issues within the film are intertwined in an often subtle as well abstract manner, through the use of complex…

The first article I am using as a reference in my research comes from Cine-Tracts, A Journal of Film, Communications, Culture and Politics. Written by film theorist David Bordwell, “Camera Movement and Cinematic Space” brings forth a close examination of the functions of camera movement in cinematic representation using a perceptual approach. He describes movement in cinematic space as a cinematic process, which seeks “systematically to station the viewer as subject before an idealized,…

Horror stories are becoming increasingly popular in today’s era. The inquisitiveness of nature, behavior, and mysterious happenings in this specific genre have sparked interest in the unknown. When literary trends escaped the Age of Reason, literature was brought back to its traditional times when mysteries were fascinating. The most attainable model of creative narrative developed from the Middle Ages. The Middle Ages consisted of periods of crime, barbarism, works of witches, scientific…

PATHER PANCHALI- A FILM REVIEW Pather Panchai (Song of the little road) presents to us the complexities of life in all their rythimic harmonies. The film directed by Satyajit Ray is a poignant story of poverty and starvation at various levels and yet a story that challenges the notion that poor are bereft of happiness. Entwined into the film are moments of abject poverty meet moments of small joys that only the poor experience. The whistling sound of the train, running behind the ‘mithai wala’…

will be some harmony found anywhere in the montage, however the composition will not allow it. One of the most disorienting out of all the choices made has to do with the movement and direction of the camera. To start, Melvin Van Peebles’s use of parallel editing is showing us the chase from both perspectives. However, the inconsistency of the screen direction loses the viewer in chaos making it so that we have to play the game of ‘find Sweetback’ just like the officers in the film. Almost…

This is demonstrated by the refusal to give him a sword and the people carrying Maximus's dead body and leaving Commodus to rot on the ground. However, this does not discount the Roman's part in the spectacle, entertained by men killing each other, parallel to the contemporary dystopia film, the Hunger Games. Moreover, Gladiator spent more time focusing on the evil of a particular character, Commodus. He justifies his haineous deeds by not being loved by his father,…