Film & Media Studies - Page 5

Book Review: Interpreting Cinema: Adaptations, Intertextualities, Art Movements by Jasbir Jain

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Reviewed by

Somdatta Mandal

Former Professor of English, Visva-Bharati University, Santiniketan, W.B. Email: somdattam@gmail.com

 Volume 12, Number 4, July-September, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n4.24

Film studies now has become a full-fledged discipline with several theoretical approaches lined up behind it and has a strong foothold in serious academics. Films are now read from various perspectives as text, as a serious novel is read over and over again, since every successive reading/viewing yields additional insights into their meaning. Interpreting Cinema: Adaptations, Intertextualities, Art Movements by eminent academician and scholar Jasbir Jain is a collection of sixteen essays which explores the academic aspect of film studies and has a wide range of primarily Hindi films for discussion crossing decades, genres and cultures. The essays in this volume take up adaptations from fiction and drama both from within the same culture and across cultures and explore the relationships between cultures and mediums. There are individual essays on relationships, theoretical frameworks and art movements, reflecting the intimate connection between critical theory and filmmaking…Full Text PDF

One Danger and Eleven Types of Academic Disquiet Whilst Hunting for Cinematic Christ-figures

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Anton Karl Kozlovic

Researcher in Department of Media and Communication, Deakin University, Victoria, Australia. Email Id: akozlovi@deakin.edu.au

 Volume 12, Number 4, July-September, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n4.17b

Abstract

Christ-figures increasingly permeate the popular cinema, but hunting for them is not necessarily a benign or unproblematic activity. Following a selective review of the film and religion literature, and a preliminary scan of the popular cinema utilizing textually-based humanist film criticism as the guiding analytical lens, one danger and eleven types of academic disquiet were explicated herein. Namely: (1) When Factual Minimalism Equals Certainty: Holy Hope, (2) Misidentification: When Something Supposedly “Christian” Was Something Else, (3) When Nothing Equals Something: Creatio Ex Nihilo, (4) Spiritually Negating Christian Iconography: Form Versus Substance, (5) Some Problems with the Secular-is-Sacred Argument, (6) Film is Not a Substitute for Faith, Religion, or God, (7) Rewriting the Film: Aesthetic Violence?, (8) Tenuous Links, Strained Associations, and Uncertain Correspondences, (9) Rejecting Overt Religion for Covert Religion: Distorting Theology and Misdirecting Faith?, (10) From Symbolism Fatigue to Symbolism Cynicism, and (11) Pattern Appeasement: From Being Uncritical to Narrative Insights. It was concluded that being cognizant of the inherent dangers and sources of academic disquiet is a valuable means of expanding one’s visual and intellectual imagination, and also useful for the postmodern church. Further research into the subtextual sub-genre of the religion-and-film field was encouraged, warmly recommended, and is already long overdue.

Keywords: Christ-figure, religion-and-film, sacred subtexts, Jesus Christ

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Reassembling Film Interpretation: Using Technique, Technology and Film Sciences in a Latin American Context

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Victor Hugo Jimenez

Associate Professor, Art & Enterprize, University of Guanajuato. Email: vhjimeneza@gmail.com

 Volume 12, Number 4, July-September, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n4.01

Abstract

Cinematic interpretation requires input from the praxis of film making, and involves extensive and slow understanding of artistic parameters like colorimetry, color cognition, editing and cinematography. These technical aspects may be extracted from knowledge of contemporary digital media that are commonly intrapolated into films. Technological media and its applications clarify how semantic units are generated and processed for understanding the kinetic effects of films. Filmic praxis affects communication of “story”, creating the best opportunity for insight into the weltanschauung of the media.

Keywords: cinematography, synergised interpretation, film praxis



Reflection of Social Conflict of Kazakhstan of the 90s of the 20th Century by Visualizing Spatial Models in the Film Directed by Darezen Omirbaev

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Yembergenova Dinara1, Akhmedova Aizhan2 & Abikeeva Gulnara3

1Kazakh Leading Architectural and Civil Engineering Academy, Almaty, Republic of Kazakhstan, dinarae@bk.ru, ORCID: 0000-0002-9133-1993

2Kazakh Leading Architectural and Civil Engineering Academy, Almaty, Republic of Kazakhstan, aizhan.akhmedova@googlemail.com, ORCID: 0000-0003-3935-3957

3Turan University, Almaty, Republic of Kazakhstan, gabikeyev@googlemail.com; ORCID: 0000-0001-8493-1547

 Volume 12, Number 2, April-June, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n2.19

Abstract

The article highlights the issue of social and cultural clashes of different segments of the population of Kazakhstan. Art is a way of communication;  so Darezen Omirbaev expressed his opinion about the current situation in independent Kazakhstan in 1991 through the film “Kairat”. According to the plot, the main character, Kairat, leaves his village and moves to a big city – Alma-Ata. These are two fundamentally different spaces, both architecturally and socioculturally. As the director demonstrated, – the city did not accept a resident of another class, a different type of thinking. Kairat, as a representative of the Kazakh-speaking culture of Kazakhstan, ineptly tries to integrate into the Russian-speaking urban environment. The frames are filled with archetypal images that allow a more in-depth look at the conflict between the film and society. The article provides data that demonstrate how the situation with the film industry and language policy in Kazakhstan has changed.

Keywords: Film, Director, Kazakh Cinema, Language Policy, Social Conflict, Space, Kairat, Darezhen Omirbaev.

Metaphors of Igbo Worldviews on Ghosts as Mystical Realities: Interpretations of Filmic Portrayals as Archetypal and Imaginative Visual Aesthetics in Two Nollywood Films

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Emeka Aniago1, Chukwuemeka V. Okpara2 & Uche-Chinemere Nwaozuzu3

1 Senior Lecturer in Department of Theatre & Film Studies, University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Nigeria. ORCID id 0000-0003-3194-1463. Email Id:  emekaaniago@gmail.com   

2 Senior Lecturer in Department of Fine & Applied Arts, University of Nigeria, Nsukkka, Nigeria

3Associate Professor in Department of Theatre & Film Studies, University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Nigeria  

 Volume 12, Number 1, January-March, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n1.43

Abstract
This study examines the aesthetics and shades of portrayals of ghosts as supernatural and metaphysical realities in two Nollywood films Heart of a Ghost and A Ghost Story as representations of Igbo worldviews on ghosts’ realities. Our aim is to present an analytical explanation of the filmic attributions in relation to historical as well as the subsisting socio-cultural worldviews of the Igbo people regarding ghosts. Therefore to extrapolate on the subsumed Igbo worldviews and philosophies about ghosts in the selected films, this study adopts theoretical purviews on magical realism and Charles Peirce’s inclination on interpretive community theory as the preferred conceptual praxis. Furthermore, this study applies critical interpretive analysis as the adopted analytical approach. Thus, the relevance of these portrayals to the subsisting socio-cultural worldviews about ghosts among the Igbo forms part of our thematic purview. Essentially this study sufficiently provides plausible answers to questions bothering on whether ghosts exist in the manner portrayed in the two films, as well as plausible analysis of the significations of ghosts’ appearances in clothing and whether ghosts do change their clothing like humans from time to time.

Keywords: actual, archetypal, ghost, Igbo, imaginative visual aesthetics, magical realism, worldview

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Haptic Perception Meets Interface Aesthetics: Cultural Representations of Touchscreen Technology in the Aftermath of the iPhone 2007

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Katheryn Wright

Associate Professor, Core Division, Champlain College, USA

ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-6485-9549. Email: kwright@champlain.edu

Volume IX, Number 3, 2017 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v9n3.02

Received August 10, 2017; Revised September 12, 2017; Accepted September 15, 2017; Published September 20,  2017.

Abstract

The touchscreen is something other than a boundary between real and illusory worlds, or what Anne Friedberg (2009) calls a “virtual window” (p. 96). The aesthetics of that ‘something else’ is not determined by the technology itself, but by its use in a myriad of cultural practices including how it is represented as a commodity and an experience. This article examines the representation of touchscreen technology following the release of the iPhone in 2007, comparing a Nine Inch Nails rock concert and Blackberry commercial from 2008 with Bjork’s album/app Biophilia and an American Express advertisement from 2011. Comparing these media experiences reveals a representational shift that occurs between the introduction of the touchscreen and the cultural integration of this technology just three years later. A focus on breaking through the frame of the screen shifts into screen interfaces as the building blocks for the virtual construction of “hybrid space” (De Souza e Silva, 2006).

 Keywords: screen, touch, interface, haptic, body

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