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Citizen Kane: Crash Course Film Criticism #1

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Further reading on the film.

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Newly restored and available for the first time on DVD, Albert Lamorisse's exquisite The Red Balloon remains one of the most beloved children's films of all time. In this deceptively simple, nearly wordless tale, a young boy discovers a stray balloon, which seems to have a mind of its own, on the streets of Paris. The two become inseparable, yet the world's harsh realities finally interfere. With its glorious palette and allegorical purity, the Academy Award-winning The Red Balloon has enchanted movie lovers, young and old, for generations.

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Newly restored and available for the first time on DVD, Albert Lamorisse's exquisite The Red Balloon remains one of the most beloved children's films of all time. In this deceptively simple, nearly wordless tale, a young boy discovers a stray balloon, which seems to have a mind of its own, on the streets of Paris.

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This is a great overview about an amazing passion project that took the filmmakers decades to complete. There's a full documentary on this, but you get the idea from this short news clip.

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Remaking Indiana Jones, Shot for Shot (Full Length)

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Eric Zala and Chris Strompolos, two best friends who, as young kids, decided to make their own Raiders of the Lost Ark adaptation, reenacting each scene of the film shot by shot. Now older, the two have finally raised the money to shoot the final missing scene (the plane scene).

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"PSYCHO" movie - Scene recreation [Lighting exercise]

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This is a fantastic recreation, particularly in regards to lighting and mise-en-scene.

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A better quality version is on PLEX, if you can access it.

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With its Oscar win for Best Original Screenplay, the film is (as of 2013) the only short film to win an Academy Award outside of the short film categories.

Lamorisse used his children as actors in the film. His son, Pascal Lamorisse, plays Pascal in the main role, and his daughter Sabine portrays a little girl.

Lamorisse added all the non-diegetic sound (and minimal dialogue in postproduction-as Jacques Tati did for his urban fantasies-resulting in a slight disconnect between what we see and hear, lending every moment an otherworldly, magical edge. ~http://www.criterion.com/current/posts/778-the-red-balloon-written-on-the-wind

Since its first release in 1956, the film has generally received overwhelmingly favorable reviews from film critics. When issued in the United States, film critic for The New York Times, Bosley Crowther, hailed the simple tale and praised director Lamorisse, and wrote, "Yet with the sensitive cooperation of his own beguiling son and with the gray-blue atmosphere of an old Paris quarter as the background for the shiny balloon, he has got here a tender, humorous drama of the ingenuousness of a child and, indeed, a poignant symbolization of dreams and the cruelty of those who puncture them."

Film Location/Setting: (Cited by Wikipedia)

The film serves as a color record of the Belleville area of Paris which had fallen into decay by the 1960s, prompting the Parisian government to demolish the area as a slum-clearance effort. Part of the site was built up with housing projects; the remainder was left as wasteland for 20 years. Some of what is seen in the film exists no more: one of the bakeries, the famous Y-shaped staircase situated just beyond the equally famous café "Au Repos de la Montagne", the long-gone steep steps of the passage Julien Lacroix where Pascal finds the balloon initially etc., the waste ground where all the battles took place. Instead of them stands today the Parc de Belleville.

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With its Oscar win for Best Original Screenplay, the film is (as of 2013) the only short film to win an Academy Award outside of the short film categories. Lamorisse used his children as actors in the film. His son, Pascal Lamorisse, plays Pascal in the main role, and his daughter Sabine portrays a little girl.

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Documentary films are a woven part of cinematic history. We explore the different types and share characteristics and examples of each.

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Poetic

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A short film about making up your mind.

Director/Editor- Andrew Norton
Director of Photography - Scott Pommier
Producer - Veronica Simmonds
Production Assistance - Nick Genova
Additional Interviews - Alex Kapelman

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Expository

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Nzingha Prescod is the #2 ranked women's foil fencer in the United States. In 2015, Nzingha became the first African-American woman to win an individual medal at the Senior World Championships. Should she medal individually in Rio at the 2016 Summer Olympics, she will be the first African-American woman to do so in the history of the sport.

Director: Anderson Wright

Director of Photography: Todd Martin

Post: Rock Paper Scissors
Executive Producer: Eve Kornblum
Editor: Dan de Winter
Producer: Lisa Barnable
Assistant Editor: Michael Shugarman
Flame Artist: Edward Reina
Flame Producer: Barbara Kontarovich

Color: CO 3
Colorist: Kath Raisch

Original Score: Andy Huckvale

Sound Design: Bobb Barito

Studio Gaffer: Erik Rooney
Key Grip: Andrew Daugherty

Production Assistant: Greg Gnade

Special Thanks:
Biff Butler
Marva Prescod
Peter Westbrook
Essane & Loweye Diedro
Tim Marino / TCS
Chemistry Creative
Ahmed Yilla

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This is a quick read that reviews the concepts of Visual Style. (Also analyzes the scene we watched in The Silence of the Lambs.)

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Parasite - Exploring Visual Language

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Exploring Visual Language and Symbolism in "Parasite"

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Abstract

This paper discusses the representation of violence in Brazilian cinema and television through analysis of the TV series City of Men (2003-7), which is a follow-up to the film City of God (2002), with the same actors, sets and non-linear narrative. The project began with the production of the TV episode Palace II (2000), which was developed into City of God's script. After receiving international acclaim, it resulted in the production of City of Men. In this context, it is important to emphasise the relationship between cinema and television and their particular features as products of the Brazilian audiovisual industry's renaissance in the 1990s. The representation of violence is analysed not only as a thematic issue common to Brazilian favelas but also as an aesthetic element of TV drama. The representation of the oppressed has been well known in Brazilian cinema since Glauber Rocha's manifesto "Aesthetics of Hunger" (1965), in which he argues that films need to be aggressive in order to truly expose poverty. The main point to be addressed, however, is whether the representation of violence in this series conveys, criticises or reflects about what is really happening in Brazilian favelas or if it merely offers an aesthetic look into poverty for the delight of audiences in Brazil and abroad.

Résumé

Cet article examine la représentation de la violence dans le cinéma et la télévision du Brésil, en analysant la télésérie Cidade dos Homens (2003-2007), une suite au film Cidade de Deus (2002) présentant les mêmes acteurs, les mêmes décors et un même récit non linéaire. Le projet débute avec la production d'un épisode télé intitulé Palace II (2000), qui servira ensuite de base au scénario de Cidade de Deus. Le succès critique du film à l'échelle internationale mènera ensuite à la production de Cidade dos Homens. Il est dès lors important d'insister sur la relation qu'entretiennent le cinéma et la télévision, ainsi que sur leurs caractéristiques particulières, durant la renaissance de l'industrie audiovisuelle brésilienne des années 1990. La représentation de la violence est analysée non seulement dans sa façon de thématiser un problème inhérent aux favelas brésiliennes, mais aussi en tant que composante esthétique de la fiction télévisuelle. La représentation des opprimés est un autre aspect bien connu du cinéma brésilien depuis le manifeste de Glauber Rocha, " Esthétique de la faim " (1965), dans lequel il avance que les films doivent faire preuve de violence pour révéler véritablement la pauvreté. Le principal enjeu, toutefois, sera de déterminer si la représentation de la violence dans cette série exprime, critique ou questionne ce qui se passe réellement dans les favelas brésiliennes ou si elle n'offre qu'un regard esthétisé sur la pauvreté, pour le simple plaisir du public brésilien et étranger.

Introduction

During the 1990s, the relationship between Brazilian cinema and television went through significant changes due to the renaissance of the audiovisual industry in the country. Many audiovisual products began to be produced in both television and cinema sectors targeting domestic and foreign audiences. In order to occupy a niche in the market, Brazil's largest television company, Rede Globo, started to produce series and miniseries that were later adapted to cinema.[1] One of the main production teams responsible for these productions was Núcleo Guel Arraes, which began to produce unique television programs during the 1980s and became an example of experimentation and innovation in Brazilian television in the following years.

This paper focuses on the analysis of episodes from the first three seasons of the TV series City of Men (Cidade dos Homens, 2002-5) that was originally created during the filming of the City of God footage. Rede Globo's program director Guel Arraes invited Fernando Meirelles, the director of City of God (2002), to create an episode for the TV program Brava Gente, which produced and broadcast adaptations of literary and theatrical texts. The project began with the production of the TV episode Palace II (2000), which was developed into City of God's script. The episode Palace II was adapted by Bráulio Mantovani from a chapter of Paulo Lins' book City of God and was directed by Fernando Meirelles and Kátia Lund. The episode was a result of an actors' workshop developed by the group Nós do Morro and the NGO Nós do Cinema for teenagers from different favelas in Rio de Janeiro.

After the success of City of God in film festivals around the world, the series City of Men was produced by the independent production company O2 Films in partnership with Rede Globo and was released in 2002. It is a follow-up to the film, using the same non-professional actors, settings, non-linear narrative and production team, which cheerfully narrates the life of the teenagers Acerola and Laranjinha, who live in a favela in Rio de Janeiro. The difference between the film and the television series is that City of God is a drama about Rio de Janeiro's drug dealers using the community as a background, whereas City of Men is a comedy about the community with drug dealers in the background.[2]

Four seasons of the series were produced and a film inspired by them was released in 2007. Both dwelt on the friendship between Laranjinha and Acerola, a friendship at risk due to the trafficking of drugs. City of Men won the Grand Prize of the Critics from the Associação Paulista de Críticos de Arte (São Paulo Association of Art Critics) in 2002, the ABC Cinematography Award for Best Cinematography in 2003 and the Geneva International Festival of Cinema and Television in the television category in 2004. The series was sold to more than 25 countries and Douglas Silva (Acerola) was nominated for an International Emmy in the Best Actor category in 2005.[3]

The first season featured four 30-minute episodes that present the 14-year-old protagonists Laranjinha and Acerola in four independent stories: Coroa do Imperador (The Emperor's Crown), O cunhado do cara (The Guy's Brother-in-Law), Uólace e João Vítor (Uólace and João Vitor) and Correio (The Mail). The 2003 season released five 30-minute episodes in which the two characters, now aged 15, experience common adolescent conflicts: their first job, their relationship with the opposite sex, the discovery of sexuality, the search for self-esteem and a sense of self-identity, and the experience of night life. The episodes are Sábado (Saturday), Ordinários (Ordinary People), Tem que ser agora (It Has to Be Now), Dois para Brasília (Two for Brasilia) and Buraco Quente (Hot Hole).

In the 2004 season, which comprises five 30-minute episodes and addresses serious issues such as paternity and the role of family in the community, the protagonists are 16 years old. The episodes are A Estréia (The First Time), Foi sem querer (I Didn't Mean It), Vacilo é um só (You Only Mess up Once), Hip Sampa Hop and Pais e filhos (Parents and Children). The 2005 season deals with the issues of violence and conflicts in the favela, difficulties in finding a job and insecurities related to the future. It includes five episodes: A Fila (The Line), Tá sobrando mês (Too Many Days in a Month), Atração Fatal (Fatal Attraction), As aparências enganam (Appearances Can Be Deceiving) and Em algum lugar do futuro (Somewhere in the Future).

In this article I will discuss the role that quality television drama programs can play in order to reflect, criticize, depict and deal with the current repercussion of urban violence in Brazil. The representation of poverty and violence on television has been done in programs that are sensationalist and show violent and banal images in live broadcasts of day-to-day crimes and violations of the law in the favelas and poor suburbs of major Brazilian cities. TV news and documentaries, as well as reality shows, denounce crimes but at the same time represent this reality in grotesque forms as a way to attract viewers' attention. In the meantime, these forms of representation fail either to challenge or to change reality and present a stereotyped view of poverty. In other words, television broadcasts a representation of favela violence that perpetuates a vision of poverty-stricken people as objects of commiseration, never as subjects in their own social reality.

At the same time, I will emphasize that City of Men displaces the focus on the spectacle of violence and provides a non-stereotypical view of lives in Rio de Janeiro's favelas through the eyes of two teenagers who have to deal not only with their own adolescent issues but also with violence and drug trafficking on a daily basis.

Brazilian Quality Television Drama Programs

In scholarly Brazilian circles, the discussion of quality television was initiated by Machado (2000) in a seminal article entitled "Televisão: a questão do repertório" (Television: The Question of Repertoire) reproduced in the book Discursos e Práticas de Qualidade na Televisão (The Discourse and Practice of Quality on Television) (Borges and Reia-Baptista 2008), a volume which adds to this discussion and promotes debate between Latin American and European academics. In his article, Machado reframes the question of quality on television and calls our attention to the importance of television as an aesthetic medium like many others, such as cinema, literature and theatre, proposing a repertoire of creative works produced for the small screen. With the purpose of replying to this call, La Ferla (2008) proposes a repertoire of Argentinean programs that explore the medium's creative potential.

Many other authors collaborated on the book, providing an overview of the question of quality in the discourses and practices of TV. It is worth highlighting, for the purpose of this article, the importance given to the analysis of drama programs in the book. Machado (2000) argues that one cannot criticize television without analysing the programs which, in the first instance, make the medium. In this sense, the articles written by Machado and Velez (2008), Andacht (2008), Fechine (2008), Virino (2008) and Knox (2008) provide a wide range of readings on the analysis of quality TV drama series.

Within English-speaking academia, many authors have worked with this theme. The debate in the United Kingdom began in the 1980s and involved many commentators aiming to define strategies to regulate the market and preserve the social responsibility of television. The BBC has been recognized as a benchmark for the production of quality drama programs since its creation, as argued by Brandt (1981, 1993), Caughie (2000), Jacobs (2000), Cooke (2003) and Borges (2009). More recently, due to the proliferation of U.S. television series and their competition with British series in national and international markets, the debate has heightened, with contributions from many authors, such as Jancovich and Lyons (2003), Creeber (2004, 2004a), Hammond and Mazdon (2005), Nelson (2007) and Akass and McCabe (2007).

Regarding Brazilian television, Fechine and Figueroa (2008) have carried out remarkable work within the Culture and Contemporary Media Research Group on the audiovisual products developed by the Núcleo Guel Arraes at Rede Globo. Since its early years, Rede Globo has appropriated the discourse of quality in the Brazilian broadcasting landscape in order to distinguish itself from other television channels. It built and disseminated what is known as the "Padrão Globo de qualidade" (Globo quality standard), which is associated with

technical excellence in broadcasting (signal reception, coverage, image definition, etc.), entrepreneurial success (the best infrastructure, latest-generation equipment, highest salaries and best ratings) and technical and aesthetic professionalism (daring visual programming, setting and costumes as in Hollywood industry, use of special effects, investment in national storytelling with renowned actors, etc.)
Fechine 2008, p. 223

The author emphasizes that currently the concept of quality is focused on broadcasting drama programs that are intrinsically related to national identity, social responsibility, commitment to democracy and cultural pluralism, as well as to the renewal of television formats.

One of the most successful production teams that meet the ethical and aesthetic demands of the "Globo quality standard" is the Núcleo Guel Arraes, created in 1991. It has contributed to consolidating an audiovisual output that offers, at the same time, technical and aesthetic quality and popular appeal. This production team has also been responsible for the first partnerships with independent production companies and pioneered integrating cinema and television in the Brazilian market.

Guel Arraes, who worked with French director Jean Rouch, produced important works for Brazilian television even before the creation of Núcleo Guel Arraes. During the 1980s he produced, in association with directors and screenwriters from the independent video movement, marginal cinema and alternative theatre of the 1970s, programs such as Armação Ilimitada (Unlimited Plotting) (1985-88) and TV Pirata (Pirate TV) (1989-90). In the 1990s Núcleo produced programs such as Programa Legal (Nice Program) (1991-93),[4]Brasil Legal (Nice Brazil) (1995-97), Comédia da Vida Privada (Comedy of Private Life) (1995-99) and Muvuca (Cultural Melting Pot) (1998-2000).

At the turn of the century, Núcleo Guel Arraes produced series and mini-series with original scripts and adaptations of literary and theatrical texts which were later adapted to cinema in co-productions between Globo Filmes and independent production companies. In the case of original scripts, the main productions are the series Os Normais (Regular People) (2001-3), which narrates the hilarious life of a couple in their thirties, adapted to cinema under the title Os Normais-O Filme (Regular People-The Film) in 2004. They also produced the mini-series Invenção do Brasil (The Invention of Brazil) (2000), which narrates the arrival of the Portuguese in Brazil. It was produced during the celebration of Brazil's 500th anniversary in 2000. Due to its great success, it was adapted to cinema with the title Caramuru-A Invenção do Brasil (Caramuru-The Invention of Brazil). Fechine (2008, p. 224) points out that the films resulting from these productions were heavily criticized because they were not seen as technically or formally innovative and because they reproduced television language on the big screen. Guel Arraes replies to these critics by reasserting the importance of television for the rebirth of Brazilian cinema: "Maybe, sometimes, it is more important to make popular cinema and avant-garde television" (quoted in Fechine 2008, p. 224).

In terms of adaptations, Núcleo Guel Arraes produced the mini-series Auto da Compadecida (A Dog's Will) (1999), an adaptation of the homonymous play by Ariano Suassuna, adapted to cinema in 2000 following great critical and popular success. Also, three chronicles written by the playwright Nelson Rodrigues, O primeiro pecado (The First Sin), Diabólica (Diabolical) and Cachorro (Dog), were adapted to cinema under the title Traição (Betrayal) (1997), and in 2002 to television for the program Brava Gente (Wild People) (2000-3).

Outstanding academic works have been written on the analysis of these series and mini-series and also on the relationship between cinema and television. Discussing the differences between both media in his analysis of Auto da Compadecida (A Dog's Will), Pucci (2005, p. 82) affirms that differences are related to exhibition, reception and medium but not language, as all audiovisual products are created with the same tools. If one has to point out differences, it should not be between languages, but between arts and media. Figuerôa analyses the Auto da Compadecida (A Dog's Will) and Caramuru-A Invenção do Brasil (Caramuru-The Invention of Brazil) series and films and states that, on one hand, the use of digital technology hinders the separation between both languages but, on the other hand, it highlights inherent interferences in production and reception processes that have implications for the means of expression of both audiovisual products.[5]

In fact, Guel Arraes and his team have produced series and mini-series that stood out in Rede Globo's audiovisual landscape. They reflect upon and criticize television language and its intertextuality with other media, present a dialogue amongst television, cinema and advertising aesthetics, explore intelligent humour and parody, and bring a different viewpoint to important issues that permeate Brazilian society. Another aspect to highlight is the experimentation of new television formats and storytelling deriving from an indistinctiveness between fiction and non-fiction, the documentary register and drama. In addition, Fechine (2008, pp. 228-29) calls our attention to the importance of reinterpreting social reality and cultural production from popular, peripheral and unofficial perspectives.

Brazilian Cinema and the Representation of Poverty

In the last fifteen years, Brazilian audiovisual products such as television series, mini-series, films and even advertising campaigns, present a clear dialogue amongst television, cinema and advertising languages. This dialogue can be perceived in terms of audiovisual language, as there is an aesthetic overlap amongst different media, and also in commercial terms due to the requirements of the overall audiovisual market. This aesthetic overlap is due to the fact that many cinema professionals began working for television and advertising agencies in the 1990s, when Fernando Collor's government dismantled Embrafilme and its system of financial subsidies. The skills acquired in the advertising industry, which is highly developed in Brazil, were explored and experimented with in television and cinema.

The films produced during the period known as the renaissance of Brazilian cinema (from 1994/95 to 2002) were a result of the financial subsidies provided by the audiovisual law.[6] In general terms, the films of this period use aesthetic elements of television and advertising languages; are co-productions between cinema, television and independent production companies; promote a dialogue between fictional and non-fictional narrative elements; and deal with themes related to violence, mainly urban but also in the hinterlands. The use of social problems as a theme in films and television drama programs increased with the social crisis and consequent growth of poverty and urban violence in Brazil in the 1990s. Oricchio (2003, p. 229) refers to films that exist between the languages of cinema, television and advertising, deal with social and political issues and are also open to dialogue with Hollywood cinema as "impure cinema."

Many film productions-fictions and documentaries-present the favela as background. These include Um Céu de Estrelas (A Starry Sky) (1996), by Tata Amaral, Como Nascem os Anjos (How Angels are Born) (1996), by Murilo Salles, Cronicamente Inviável (Chronically Unfeasible) (2000), by Sérgio Bianchi, O Invasor (The Invader) (2001), by Beto Brant, Ônibus 174 (Bus 174) (2002), by José Padilha, and Cidade de Deus (City of God) (2002), by Fernando Meirelles; and also the documentaries Notícias de uma Guerra Particular (News from a Personal War) (2003), by João Moreira Salles and Kátia Lund, and Santo Forte (The Mighty Spirit) (1999), by Eduardo Coutinho. On the other hand, Guerra de Canudos (The Battle of Canudos) (1997), by Sergio Rezende, Baile Perfumado (Perfumed Ball) (1996), by Lirio Ferreira and Paulo Caldas, and Central do Brasil (Central Station) (1998), by Walter Salles[7] are set in the hinterlands.

Colucci (2009) analyses the relationship between documentaries from this period and urban violence in the films Notícias de uma Guerra Particular (News from a Personal War) (1999), O Rap do Pequeno Príncipe contra as Almas Sebosas (The Little Prince's Rap Against the Wicked Souls) (2000), Ônibus 174 (Bus 174) and O Prisioneiro da Grade de Ferro (Prisoner of the Iron Bars) (2004). She emphasizes the Brazilian historical and social contexts that play an important role in the elaboration of an artistic and also critical discourse about violence and analyses passages between images from different media (film, video and photography) as a dialogue between cinema and television languages and also as an intent to renovate film language through the incorporation of fictional cinema procedures into documentary. She also claims that these films can be analyzed as an audiovisual ethnography of urban violence in Brazil in this period as they were produced as an ethnographic observation "centered in the construction of a shared look that results from the interaction and the confrontation between distinct cultural worlds" (Barbosa and Cunha, quoted in Colucci 2009, p. 5). In the same manner, Ismail Xavier (in Conti 2000) claims that documentary films incorporate different views on the social structures and give voice to different social subjects, turning them into a "discrete ethnography."

The depiction of extreme poverty and oppression has always been on the agenda of Brazilian cinema. In the 1960s, hinterlands, favelas and suburbs were the main settings of many Brazilian Cinema Nôvo films, which showed "another" Brazil, one that was not shown by the mainstream media. The great leader of Brazilian Cinema Nôvo was Glauber Rocha, who affirmed in his "Uma Estética da Fome" ("An Aesthetic of Hunger") manifesto, written in 1965, that the cinema needs to be aggressive in order to truly expose extreme poverty.[8]

In his manifesto, Rocha shows the impotence of Brazil in the face of colonialism, demonstrating that the country had changed hands from one colonizer to another and criticizing the paternalism of developed countries towards Latin America. Rocha is interested in showing suffering without folklore, paternalism or resigned humanism. He argues that Latin America's hunger is not only an alarming system; it represents the very nerve of society.

Here lies the tragic originality of Cinema Nôvo for world cinema: our originality is our hunger, and our greatest woe is that, because it is felt, this hunger is not understood. From Aruanda to Vidas Secas, Cinema Nôvo narrated, described, poeticized, discoursed, analyzed. It aroused the themes of hunger: characters eating dirt, characters eating roots, characters stealing to eat, characters killing to eat, characters fleeing to eat, dirty, ugly, starving characters living in dirty, ugly, dark houses.[9]

One of Rocha's main arguments concerns the representation of extreme poverty in a revolutionary form in order to take the audience out of their inertia. To fulfill this imperative Rocha created an "aesthetic of violence," which presents unbearable images in order to destroy clichés about poverty and to contradict audiences' expectations. In this sense, it is important to emphasize that Rocha is defending an aesthetic of violence and not the aestheticized violence that we are used to watching on television or in Hollywood films.

Brazilian researcher Ivana Bentes (2001) raises issues about the "renaissance" films in relation to Rocha's manifesto. She maintains that these films are promoting what she calls a "cosmetics of hunger" and not an aesthetic of hunger and, for this reason, that they do not create a dialogue with the principal questions posed by Cinema Nôvo. In her opinion, Brazilian cinema has not matured in the course of its own history and has vulgarized the representation of misery and violence using television and advertising techniques. Bentes affirms that Rocha removed himself from critical realism and classical narrative to create a kind of aesthetic apocalypse and to shake the audience from its lethargy. In comparison, she also claims that films produced in Brazil during the Renaissance lack political perspective and aesthetic experimentation.

Bentes' opinion was very controversial and opened up a debate among producers, critics and academics. The release of City of God in 2002, which for many reasons became a benchmark in Brazilian cinema, triggered a heated debate. This discussion extended to television drama programs and reached the series City of Men.

City of God is based on facts and adapted from the homonymous book by Paulo Lins, who lived for 20 years where the film is set. It narrates the story of the residents of the "City of God" favela since its creation in the 1960s from the viewpoint of its main character, Buscapé. Buscapé recalls the past to build the narrative and give his own account of the dilemmas experienced by the community, controlled by drug traffickers and trafficking. He tells his own story intermingled with the lives of secondary characters, Zé Pequeno, Dadinho, Bené, Cenoura, Cabeleira and Mané Galinha. In this sense, the film depicts the poverty and violence experienced by children and teenagers who live excluded from the consumer society.

Despite using non-professional actors and being based on facts, the film's narrative depicts the violence and exclusion experienced by the residents of the community through techniques that envision violent cruelty as an amazing spectacle. Guns, drugs, robberies and murders are the elements that permeate the narrative and build a very negative viewpoint of favela life. On the other hand, the depiction of the violence experienced by the teenagers in City of Men is of another order, as they suffer the effects of poverty and exclusion as well as drug trafficking and violence, but the viewpoint is much more positive and human than in City of God. City of God represents a dead end and a hopeless world, while City of Men shows that there is hope, despite the difficulties.

Television and the Representation of Violence: An Analysis of City of Men

Although television critics criticized the aesthetic quality of Brazilian films which originated in television drama programs, the adaptations of literary and theatrical texts for series and mini-series broadcast by Rede Globo were, nonetheless, recognized as quality products. In the case of City of Men, authors have expressed contradictory opinions; television critics such as Bucci (2002, quoted in Andacht 2008, p. 243) have highlighted its diminishment compared to City of God, while Luis Carlos Merten has emphasized the dramatic force of the characters, who have appeared in cinema ( City of God), television ( City of Men) and cinema again ( City of Men film).[10] As mentioned above, Bentes (2001) also criticized the aesthetic qualities of the work. Yet, within academia, some of the qualities of the series have been highlighted by authors such as Andacht (2008), who proposes a semiotic analysis of the series, and Schwertner (2007), who provides a reading of the series' production conditions and the depiction of favelas residents and black people by the media. Taddei (2009) analyses the images and representation of Rio de Janeiro in the first episode of the series, Coroa do Imperador (The Emperor's Crown). Rocha (2008) examines the representation of favela residents in television narratives, combining content and genre analysis of the programs Central da Periferia (Suburban Train Station) (2006), Linha Direta (Direct Line) (2004), Globo Repórter (Reporter Globo) (2004) and City of Men (2002).

I would argue that City of Men was co-produced specifically for the medium and is unique in many respects in comparison with other innovative quality audiovisual products broadcast on Brazilian television. There is no doubt that the series follows the parameters of television industry production, which avails itself of ample technical, human and financial resources, depends on audience ratings and requires an agile system of production to meet the channel's quality standards. One of the series' directors, Fernando Meirelles, recalls that Rede Globo required an audience rating of 20 points in the first season in order to produce the second one. Also, footage of a 30-minute episode had to be completed in one week.[11]

In addition, series are television's main genre and, in the case of Brazilian television, rely on the visual literacy of soap opera audiences. Viewers became accustomed to identifying themselves with the characters and plots of serialized fictional programs. Yet, unlike the Brazilian soap operas that promote a standard format in which various dramatic units present a Manichean and stereotyped vision of social classes and highlight their differences, City of Men subverts this format and creates serialized episodes that in fact call viewers' attention precisely to this sort of vision. Andacht (2008, p. 241) describes the use of urban violence in soap operas such as Mulheres Apaixonadas (Women in Love) as quoting reality as they separate the fictional from the "real" world. Realist soap operas are fictions with a didactic message, the so-called social marketing practised by Rede Globo. He points out, however, that City of Men 's tele-realism differentiates amongst these narratives, homogeneously integrating the indexes of favela daily life, such as settings and actors, into the fictional plot.

In my view, City of Men brought a new element into the Brazilian audiovisual landscape and innovated in many ways, the most important consisting of its documentary characteristics. It makes use of excellent technical means to narrate a story that amazed the audience, who were not accustomed to watching the life of common people from Brazilian favelas on television. In this sense, the series provides a different understanding of Brazilian favelas and presents a viewpoint of people with families, jobs and problems similar to any other social group. The story of Acerola and Laranjinha presents a chronicle of Rio de Janeiro in which black and poor people also participate. The image of them is not stereotyped, so it does not reaffirm prejudice. The series has dramatic appeal, mainly through the use of humour, but at the same time reveals a sort of truth about life in the favela.

In spite of being a fictional story that follows its protagonists' lives for five years, City of Men expresses the viewpoints of favela through the accounts from which the scripts originated, which not only provide the series with authenticity but also direct viewers' attention to teenagers' dilemmas around their self-esteem in their search for a Brazilian identity. In addition, footage of teenagers, women and favela residents in the supplementary DVD material[12] shows their awareness of their own condition and confirms that they feel their values are well represented on the screen. In fact, their way of life is part of Brazilian reality and for that reason they must not be seen as objects of commiseration.

Audiences watch the viewpoint of those who live with violence on a daily basis through a handheld camera, voice-over and settings that show the daily relationships between residents and drug dealers. The stories told are not Manichean, that is, those in which the impoverished fringe of society is always composed of criminals who are the embodiment of evil, while middle class teenagers are good people and will be successful in their lives. They present a different view of the favela. In this sense it is very different from City of God as it does not focus on the spectacle of violence. In addition, the series disseminates useful narratives which, according to Mepham (1990, p. 60), stimulate the democratization of society and promote the exercise of citizenship. Useful narratives also motivate the development of the personality and social life of the audience. In this sense, the series' narratives entertain and deflect attention from real life but also call viewers' attention to social and political issues.

One of the program's directors, Regina Casé,[13] calls our attention to the fact that the series is not a documentary, as the characters are performed by non-professional actors. I would argue, however, that it has a documentary nature, as all the stories are based on the teenagers' and residents' experiences. Also, episodes are produced, shot and edited using documentary techniques, including the use of a handheld camera and voice-over to show characters' accounts and viewpoints; and the use of natural lighting, direct sound and local settings to give authenticity to the narrative. Despite the fact that the actors are prepared for the performances, the dialogues are improvised and based on their own life experience in a favela. In this sense, the narrative mingles fictional and non-fictional discourses by using ethnographic techniques to prepare the actors.

Likewise, Andacht (2008, pp. 243-44) points out the importance of actors' biographies that mingle with fictional narrative and employs the concept of documentary value elaborated by André Bazin (1985, quoted in Andacht 2008, p. 246). The fact that the actors actually lived in favelas "generates a specific effect of the real" and for this reason the facts they represent are partially true.

The main issue about audiovisual works that show the reality of favelas is that they depict an external point of view, as most of the professionals who create and produce the programs have not experienced violence in their daily lives. In this sense, the poor have no voice as social actors and are represented from an external viewpoint that conveys a way of looking and perceiving reality and imposes an authoritative discourse. In this case, it is important to bear in mind that even though audiovisual professionals produced City of Men episodes, the stories were based on accounts and viewpoints of those who live in various Rio de Janeiro favelas.[14] For instance, Paulo Lins affirms that the scripts for Correio (The Mail) and O Cunhado do cara (The Guy's Brother-in-Law) came from his own experience and observation of favela life.[15]

In fact, O2 Filmes and Núcleo Guel Arraes professionals worked for the industrial and commercial system but managed to produce programs that made a difference, questioning in some way what had been done on television until then. On the one hand, they used intelligent humour to captivate the public and gave visibility to the urban violence that devastates all major cities in Brazil. On the other hand, they did not ignore the human dimension of those who live in precarious conditions in those cities.

In this sense, one can argue that television accomplishes its social role by broadcasting positive images of poor peoples' lives. Wolton (1996, p. 124) suggests that television has the ability to present itself as the mirror of society, in the sense that it allows society to see itself through the representations exhibited on screen. In general, the favela is represented in Brazilian television as a place of exclusion, where there is only violence, poverty and drug trafficking while the media represent the middle and upper class neighbourhoods in a positive manner. Although portraying a fictional narrative, City of Men displaces our understanding of this current representation. It shows residents' difficulties related to problems with violence and drug trafficking but also makes visible favela life and exhibits another view of teenagers' dreams, aspirations and daily activities.

The series positions itself in that tenuous frontier between fictional drama and documentary. In terms of drama, it narrates the adventures of two boys coming of age, and in terms of documentary, it is based on everyday favela life in Rio de Janeiro. In the background, the series addresses several issues that give authenticity to the narrative and generate viewers' awareness of the difficulties experienced by favela residents, mainly children and teenagers. The main issues dealt with in the series are the exposure of teenagers' critical viewpoint on violence and their awareness of the difference between the two worlds-the favela and the southern zone;[16] and teenagers' lives and dilemmas and the codes of ethics and conduct that have to be followed by favela residents. Also, at another level, the series shows the relevance of civil society organizations such as community associations and NGOs in promoting cultural and artistic activities that help children and teenagers cope with the problem of urban violence.[17]

The first season episode Coroa do Imperador (The Emperor's Crown) shows boys' school routines and establishes parallels between drug dealers and their army and the history of Brazilian independence, which occurred when the Portuguese royal family fled to Brazil to escape from Napoleon Bonaparte's invasion of their land in the early nineteenth century. It clearly shows how day-to-day life with violence, firearms and the law of the strongest occupy children's imaginations. The images show the reality of the drug trafficking and the audio refers to Napoleon Bonaparte's history. Metaphorically, the importance the teacher gives to the emperor's crown is associated with the value of drugs in children's minds. Napoleon's soldiers are compared to drug dealers, whose hierarchy is also military; the drug chief is called a lieutenant and introduces his soldiers in the film. In this episode teenagers recall their experiences with violence. They are able to name different types of guns and recall having witnessed many murders. It also presents their thoughts on their own identities, as they state that all the boys working in drug trafficking are respected and have some kind of power over them. On the other hand, they acknowledge that they die very young, before reaching the age of 18.

In the same episode, Acerola compares the difference between the favela and the neighbouring southern zone of Rio de Janeiro, located near the beach. The police do not protect anyone in favelas, whereas residents are protected by drug dealers on condition that they respect their code of ethics and conduct. During a parallel editing, voice-over sequence, Acerola compares the lack of safety in the southern zone, where CCTV cameras and iron railings protect houses from thieves, with the complete safety enjoyed in the favela, where there are neither cameras nor robberies. The drug dealers' code of ethics and conduct prevents robberies, assaults, quarrels and disorder.[18] Only the drug dealers can be violent in their disputes with their rivals for control of the area or in conflicts with the police. Whoever disobeys the rules is either killed or has to leave the favela. On the other hand, Acerola mentions that "playboys," who live in the southern zone, only have contact with this reality through television or when they go up there to buy drugs.

Reflecting on the same topic from a different perspective, the episode Uólace e João Vítor (Uólace and João Vitor) shows that teenagers from the favela and the southern zone share the same dilemmas, insecurities and concerns. Also, they are afraid of each other because they do not know the life and the way of thinking of their neighbours. However, one is not better than the other. In one sense, such stories help to deconstruct the myth, found mainly among the Brazilian middle class, that those living in favelas are criminals. Most favela residents are poor, work in the southern zone and try to live the best life they can. They respect and are on familiar terms with the drug dealers, as the police do not offer any kind of protection.

Uólace is Laranjinha's real name and João Vitor is his neighbour who lives in the southern zone beside the favela. Like Laranjinha, João Vitor was born to a single mother, who works hard to pay for his studies, and does not have money to do everything he would like to. The similarity of the boys' preconceived viewpoints is shown via the editing of images shot at a shoe store and their interior monologues. Both boys would like to buy the most recent model of Nike runners, but, while looking at them at the shop window, Laranjinha thinks that João Vitor has two bodyguards and João Vitor thinks that Laranjinha is involved with two criminals. So, João Vitor and Laranjinha run away from one another in despair.[19]

The series also reflects on teenagers' lives and dilemmas and depicts character development through issues around sexuality, pregnancy and paternity. Sábado (Saturday) depicts the cultural programs available in favelas on the weekend, such as the funk balls, in which teenagers present their dance groups called "bondes." The episode highlights the discovery of sexuality by using teenagers' narration to describe their first sexual experience and to reveal the development of their self-esteem through their black identity.

Tem que ser agora (It Has to Be Now) addresses the issue of teenage pregnancy and the importance for the protagonists of not being a virgin. This episode also presents differences and affinities between favela and southern zone residents. Although from different social backgrounds, teenagers and youngsters have to negotiate their leisure space on Rio de Janeiro beaches. A Estréia (The First Time) depicts Laranjinha and Acerola's loss of virginity and Foi sem querer (I Didn't Mean It) shows the loss of teenagers' dreams when Acerola's girlfriend Cristiane, a 14-year-old teenager, discovers she is pregnant, thus requiring them to change their plans for the future, as they have to assume responsibility for their actions. Acerola needs to get his first job to sustain his child and Cristiane has to leave school, despite being one of the best students in her class. Pregnancy is a dilemma experienced by many teenagers in favelas who have to leave school and cannot work as there is no place for their children in daycare. In addition, many teenagers are sons and daughters of single mothers and have not been officially recognized by their fathers.

In Pais e filhos (Parents and Children), Cristiane gives birth, Acerola begins to work in a bar and Laranjinha places an ad in the newspaper looking for his father. This episode addresses the dilemma Acerola faces when he becomes a teenager father and, unlike Laranjinha, needs to keep his job. It also deals with the difficulties experienced by Cristiane as a teenage mother.

The characters address the prejudices and difficulties favela residents face in getting a job, even if they have completed their studies and have their documents in order. In their dialogues, they confirm that black and poor people only get jobs as domestic employees and garbage collectors, as they are never seen working in different jobs. The prejudice of southern zone residents is also exposed through characters' dialogues. Although they claim that they do not hold prejudices, they do not want to share their leisure space, the beach, with favela residents. To corroborate this perspective, the study carried out by Araújo (quoted in Taddei 2009, pp. 6-7) on Brazilian soap operas and miniseries shows that black people have always been represented in Brazilian television drama in a stigmatized manner, as slaves or holding jobs that require low qualification such as waiters, babysitters, domestic employees, drivers, gardeners, etc.

City of Men also shows the hierarchical organization and institutionalization of social functions performed by drug dealers in favelas and suggests the importance of community associations by depicting their day-to-day activities. The series reveals that violence and social exclusion do not occur only in economic terms but are also based on ethical and political factors. From this perspective, exclusion is invisible not only in media representation, but also in the exercise of their social role as citizens. For this reason, community association and NGO activities are very important in this context, as they develop another perspective on life that can influence the future of children and teenagers. In fact, City of Men discusses more than police and drug dealers' violence and oppression in favelas. It exposes the symbolic violence experienced through discrimination and the impediment to the exercise of citizenship rights, as every citizen has the right not to be humiliated on account of their ethnic or financial background.

The episodes Correio (The Mail), Buraco Quente (Hot Hole) and Vacilo é um só (You Only Mess Up Once) present daily favela violence, the relationship between the community association and drug dealers and the rules imposed by the latter. Their code of ethics and conduct has to be respected and anyone who disobeys it is summarily executed. Correio (The Mail) deals with the delivery of letters by the postman and the relationship between the community association and the drug dealers. The drug dealers manage favela life and the community association serves as an intermediary agent, trying to solve residents' problems before they ask the drug dealer chief to solve them. The two groups maintain a good relationship, but this does not mean that the community association is involved in the trafficking of drugs; the community respects the drug dealers, as they control the favela. As the postman cannot deliver letters because there are no formal addresses, he leaves them at the community association. Acerola and Laranjinha are recruited to deliver the letters so they decide to name the streets and elaborate a map in order to facilitate the postman's work. But this generates many problems, mainly because the police can get a street map and locate the houses, which makes it easier to arrest drug dealers.

In Buraco Quente (Hot Hole), Espeto, Laranjinha's cousin and a major drug trafficker, is betrayed and informed on to the police by a colleague. Espeto manages to flee from an ambush; the images of his escape are shot with a handheld camera with direct sound and are edited at a frenetic pace. While getting away, he gets shot and loses the bag containing the drug-trafficking money. With the help of his girlfriend Zuleide, Laranjinha and Acerola, Espeto finds the bag with the money in the forest, but he refuses to kill the betrayer. For this reason, he gets permission to leave trafficking. He looks for a job as garbage man for the city of Rio de Janeiro, but he is not accepted because he is illiterate and has no documents. As a good happy ending, Espeto has to leave the favela for some time but at least he is not involved with trafficking anymore.

In Vacilo é um só (You Only Mess Up Once) Laranjinha flirts with trafficking and related privileges while he is going out with Tina, who works in trafficking. Tina's father disobeys the rule that bans robberies within the favela and is made to pay for his error. In a scene of extreme violence, Tina almost kills her father, but decides that a beating is enough. The father ends up in hospital recovering for two months and Laranjinha realizes that, even with its privileges, drug trafficking is not worthwhile.

Most of the episodes make use of a classical narrative structure presenting a happy ending with a moral that suggests the difficulties lived by favela residents, mainly children and teenagers, yet they offer a different perspective that does not incriminate the characters. I cannot argue that there is an aesthetic of violence that presents unbearable images, as Glauber Rocha proposed. However, the representation of violence in City of Men contains aspects of what Bentes (2001) called a "cosmetics of hunger," as television is a medium that incorporates other media and their aesthetic languages. For instance, it presents fast editing; uses the resources of animation to open up windows and create visual metaphors in the narrative and shows images of video game gunshots that mingle with images of TV news. In this sense, the so-called "cosmetics of hunger" meets the standard of aesthetic quality required by Rede Globo, and these images are included in the television flow of a broadcasting system that is overloaded with violent images. On the other hand, City of Men promotes audience identification through the use of humour and brings a new understanding of favela life through an authentic representation of reality presented in a cheerful way. In addition, the main characters are teenagers and present their own vision of violence, which is neither ingenuous nor conditioned by media discourse.

In terms of the quality television debate, the main issue to be addressed is related to the representation of violence on television that is neither trivial nor spectacular. Bentes (2001) asks: "How [is one] to create a new mode of expression, comprehension and representation of the phenomena related to poverty, hinterland and favela, their characters and drama?" In my opinion, City of Men is an aesthetic proposition which makes one reflect upon various aspects of poverty and urban violence. I also believe that a new mode of expression will only be possible when media begin to show the viewpoint of those excluded from the consumer society. Although not revolutionary, as documentaries have done this sort of thing before, it is a very interesting way to give voice to those who are not usually represented by the media or are depicted in a stereotypical or deprecatory manner. Considering Brazilian television history, which is based on Rede Globo hegemony, this project is an innovative way of telling stories that are useful in initiating debates about important issues and in changing preconceived opinions.

Brazilian television accomplishes its social role by giving access to different voices and viewpoints and by making visible the many projects that are being developed in Rio de Janeiro. Finally, the series satisfies market requirements as a creative audiovisual product that is commercially viable in national and international markets.

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From City of God to City of Men: The Representation of Violence in Brazilian Cinema and Television - Cinémas

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This paper discusses the representation of violence in Brazilian cinema and television through analysis of the TV series City of Men (2003-7), which is a follow-up to the film City of God (2002), with the same actors, sets and non-linear narrative.

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Defining Cinema Novo

Cinema Novo marks an important moment in the history of Brazilian cultural productions because it is understood as the first instance where Brazilian films began to gain a consistent level of positive critical reception outside of Brazil. Cinema Novo has long been popular among academics because it is a movement heavily imbedded with political, philosophical, and historical meaning. These films generally emphasized social and political problems in Brazil in an effort to promote economic reform. While it is difficult to place a clear chronological time frame on this era, we can say that it lasted from the late 1950s to the early 1970s.

Part of the problem with establishing this timeline is that the filmmakers of Cinema Novo never produced films in a ?consciously? Cinema Novo style. In other words, although Cinema Novo has been associated with certain moviemakers, with an ideal and with an esthetic form, it was not the explicit intention of the filmmakers to create this new movement. Thus, Cinema Novo is a label that scholars and film critics (including some of the filmmakers) use retroactively to describe and organize films of that era. Furthermore, it was not an enclosed form of expression allowing a specific group of directors could to Cinema Novo films. It was, in theory, open to anyone who made films in this new style.[1] Anselmo Duarte?s O Pagador de Promessas for example, has many similarities with Cinema Novo in terms of subject matter, but Duarte was not a part of the ?Cinema Novo? circle.

The guiding principle of the Cinema Novo esthetic was to have film show life as it ?actually was.? In this sense, it was heavily influenced by Italian Neo-Realism and like it, its production process included the use of non-actors and 16mm cameras. The French New Wave and its Auteur style also influenced Brazilian directors. Additionally Brazilian directors were attracted to French New Wave?s low budget and independent production methods. The fusion of these two principles was captured in the phrase: ?uma camera na mão, uma ideia na cabeça? (a camera in the hand, an idea in the head). This saying, attributed to filmmaker Glauber Rocha has become synonymous with the movement, as it describes a determination to make films that reflected the directors? ideas while using very little money to do so.

The lack of capital that characterized Cinema Novo, which was originally a hindrance, became a calling card of the movement, creating what would later be dubbed ?the aesthetic of hunger? by Glauber Rocha in his manifesto by that same name published originally in 1965. This was a combination of European inspired aesthetics adapted to the Brazilian reality. As film director Ismail Xavier comments, ?the overall demands of the modern European cinema d?auteur ? the denial of technical restraints, production of values, and narrative codes ? acquired, in Brazil, an anticolonialist thrust.?[2] The rationale for this aesthetic principle was that the form of the movie (i.e. the ways in which it is shot and produced) should reflect the subject matter. Crucially, Rocha held that ?hunger in Latin America is not simply an alarming symptom; it is the essence of our society. Herein lies the tragic originality of Cinema Novo in relation to world cinema. Our originality is our hunger and our greatest misery in that this hunger is felt but not understood.?[3] However, in his reflections on the movement Rocha believed that hunger had been misunderstood by the more developed outside world (he singled out Europeans). For them, hunger is glorified as a means to engage with their ?nostalgia for the primitive.? He holds that traditionally, hunger has been avoided, but that only through the clear cultural engagement with hunger can it be understood. Aside from the form, and clear preference for marginalized movie subjects, the Aesthetics of Hunger also had a special focus on violence, which Rocha called ?the most noble manifestation of hunger.? This is so because he holds that Brazil is still effectively a colony and that only through violence will the colonizer finally become aware of the colonized.[4] Therefore, we may say that the aesthetic of hunger emphasized hunger through form (i.e. low cost production), subject matter (i.e. marginalized protagonists) and in results (violence). This cinematic style, known as the ?aesthetic of hunger,? became closely associated with Cinema Novo and has been its legacy. However, it is important to understand that this is not representative of all Cinema Novo films.

Sources of Content: Literature Expressed in Cinematic Form

So where did they get their ideas? While Cinema Novo acquired a lot of influences from outside of Brazil (Italy and France and, to a lesser extent, the United States), obviously there were Brazilian elements within this film genre. Theatre, popular music, and folk literature all greatly influenced these filmmakers. While Brazil struggled initially to create its own movie industry, Cinema Novo filmmakers were influenced by their predecessors. These included works of early filmmakers such as Humberto Mauro, from Minas Gerais, the maker of Ganga Bruta (1933) and Mario Peixoto, from Rio de Janeiro, who made the outstanding avant-garde film Limite (1931).[5]

Although it is impossible to state that a film had just one singular source of influence, certain elements are so present in films that we may state that the relationship is one of parody (in the literary sense) or allegory. As such, we can trace some broad relationships.

One frequent source of inspiration for Cinema Novo filmmakers was literature. At times this was a direct relationship, as is the case with a movie like Nelson Perreira dos Santos? Vidas Sêcas (1963), which is an adaptation of the famous novel of the same name published by Graciliano Ramos de Oliveira in 1938.

Special mention must be made of the Brazilian Modernist movement, which began in 1922, and from which the filmmakers also gathered inspiration. Brazilian modernism is often cited as one of the first autochthonous ?high? cultural movement in Brazilian History. Traditionally Brazilian cultural producers looked somewhat imitatively towards Europe and would reproduce works with similar styles. Furthermore, there was often a concern in the nineteenth and early twentieth century with creating a ?truly national? cultural expression. The modernist turned the imitation so criticized by intellectuals into a cultural movement unto itself through the principle described as antropofágia. Its premise arose through artistic manipulations of images of cannibals in early Brazilian history. The result is that artists are free to ?consume? artistic expressions from abroad and ?digest? their positive elements and ?reject? those that do not work. What is left is what has been ?digested? into the Brazilian culture thus making it stronger. This will be an extremely important principal, especially for the third phase of Cinema Novo (1968-1972).

Other novels were present as inspiration, but in a less open way. For example Euclides da Cunha?s Os Sertões (1902) is an obvious inspiration in Glauber Rocha?s Deus e o Diabo na Terra do Sol (1964). Da Cunha?s book, which depicts the final expedition to destroy the town of Canudos and its messianic leader Antonio Conselheiro, was an inspiration for many Cinema Novo filmmakers especially those of the first wave.[6] Other films drew inspiration from the history of Brazil, as was the case with Carlos Diegues?s Ganga Zumba (1963), which portrays the seventeenth-century maroon society of Palmares and its struggles against Portuguese colonial authorities. However, despite its reliance on other cultural products, Cinema Novo was a very politically involved and inspired form of film production. Many of these reclaimings of older artistic works were done as a way to allegorize current problems of Brazil while escaping censorship.

Emergence of Cinema Nova in the 1950s

Although filmmaker Carlos Diegues states, ?Cinema Novo has no birthdate,?[7] making the definition of when Cinema Novo came into being is quite difficult, we can contextualize the movement by focusing on the events around which it emerged. Film scholar Randal Johnson places the ?roots? of Cinema Novo in the early1950s when filmmakers Alex Viany, Rodolfo Nanni and Nelso Perreira dos Santos first began to articulate the need for an ?independent national cinema.?[8] Politically, it emerged around the end of the second Vargas era (1951-54), because Brazilians were experiencing a period of freer cultural expression.

However it was during this time that a major event happened in the history of Brazilian film: the Hollywood style Vera Cruz production company went bankrupt. The failure of the Companhia Cinematográfica Vera Cruz, which opened in 1949, is connected to the rise of Cinema Novo. Its films were high-cost Hollywood style productions intended to compete with American films in Brazil. Its most successful movie, O Cangaceiro, a Western about bandits in the northeast of Brazil, came at the end of its existence and was not successful enough to solidify the production company?s finances.[9] Vera Cruz?s insolvency in the mid-1950s solidified the belief held by many people that Brazilian productions simply could not compete with foreign films. The only other avenues still available to many moviemakers were the lowbrow but popular movie genre of chanchadas. Low production cost auteur films were the only way to effectively make movies that were more high-culture.

It is important to understand that Brazilian productions did not occur in a cultural vacuum. Brazilian cinemas showed not only Vera Cruz and chanchada films, but also foreign films. In the 1950s Hollywood secured important shares of the Brazilian cinema market, creating an ?unfavorable position [for national filmmakers] in a domestic market ruled by Hollywood.?[10] Paradoxically, the presence of Hollywood films, produced not only the market rationale and conditions of Cinema Novo, but also images against which Cinema Novo sought to fight. The dominant images of Brazil in films of the 1950s era (and in some cases still to this day) derive from the World War II-era Good Neighbor policy of the Franklyn Delano Roosevelt administration, through which the United States would engage in a foreign policy of aid, cultural exchange (although this was unequal) and non-intervention so as to secure greater Brazilian assistance in the war effort. While the Good Neighbor policy did not focus solely on Brazil nor on cinema, it did have tremendous effect on cultural productions. As cultural critics have noted: ?The Good Neighbor Policy, its ideology of mutual exchange, and this international event provided an ideal vehicle for the Vargas regime?s promotion of Brazilian export, and Brazil thus drew on Hollywood stereotypes of tropical excess to bolster its image abroad and to attract foreign visitors.?[11] The Vargas government?s engagement with Hollywood stereotypes indicates that Brazilians clearly knew about and played with these symbols. Important images of Brazil arose during the Wolrld War II era, which still frame the conceptions of many Americans about Brazilians. Carmen Miranda and Zé Carioca are the two most recognizable figures of this time. Many filmmakers and artists reacted to these images. ?The Miranda lookalikes that we see in the chanchadas of the 1950s similarly reveal Brazil?s acknowledgement of its stereotypical Hollywood representation and can therefore be interpreted as an ironic comment on the U.S. film industry?s falsification and homogenization of Latin identity in the Good Neighbor years and beyond.?[12] Thus, it was precisely because these images were homogenous and false that they were utterly incapable of portraying the Brazilian reality. Cinema Novo arose out of an artistic need to create an antithesis to the Hollywood stereotypes and production system.

Phase One: Cinema Novo (1969-1964)

Generally, Cinema Novo is divided into three phases following somewhat major political changes occurring in society more broadly: first phase (1960-1964) the second phase (1964-1968) and the third phase (1968-1972). The first phase arose during and continued in the immediate aftermath of the Juscelino Kubitschek administration (1956-1961) and included the turbulent years of the brief Jânio Quadros (1961) and João Goulart (1961-1964), which culminated in the military coup of 1964. The coup, in some ways, was a response to the growing political polarization in Brazilian society. The left became increasingly nationalistic and looked to solve deep structural problems of Brazil in a decisive manner. The right became increasingly distrustful of the left and leftist politicians. Thus, they became much more willing to call upon the military to intervene to ?restore sanity? to the Brazilian political system. This polarization was rooted in both positive and negative reactions to Vargas era policies; particularly those designed to either help or coopt workers. The Cuban Revolution in 1959 further complicated the political environment because it proved that a successful socialist revolution could occur in a Latin American context. Just as the Haitian Revolution in 1791 had created a panic among slave owners and inspired slaves to rebel, the Cuban Revolution made conservative politicians and elites extremely paranoid of leftist policies.

These political conditions heavily influenced Cinema Novo filmmakers. Cultural critic Randal Johnson argues that ?Within this historical context, middle class artists and intellectuals, such as those who created Cinema Novo, became increasingly politicized and sought to commit their art to the transformation of Brazilian Society, a transformation they erroneously thought imminent.?[13] Johnson points out that this first phase was one in which ?national questions? reflected the ongoing debates throughout society.[14] Films of this phase tend to be more optimistic regarding the potential for social change in the country. This is a reflection of a critique of the developmentalist policies of the Vargas, and, especially the Kubitschek administrations. It is also the product of the belief that the State?s intervention in the Brazilian reality would bring concrete benefits to the poor. ?Cinema Novo was very much a product and reflection of the idealism of that period; indeed, the filmmakers? progressive, revolutionary spirit and hopes for a more just if not egalitarian society were not radically different from the utopian sentiments of the early planners and builders of Brasília.?[15] Thus they believed that the films produced could contribute to the creation of knowledge and finding a solution to social and economic problems. Showing national problems was the first step in obtaining a solution to them.

Indeed the films of the first phase tend to reflect the concern the filmmakers had to show the nation?s ills in a highly personal and stylized way, a traditional marker of the auteur cinema. One of the central political and historical questions of the time was the issue of land reform. A highly controversial issue, it has been linked with Brazil?s colonial legacy of unequal land granting patterns that benefited the wealthy and the politically well-connected. Many critics saw this land problem as the historical cause of Brazil?s unequal distribution of wealth. This assessment was prevelant not only in Brazil, but in many countries in Latin America. Therefore, land reform was not a vague political question without any precedence. By 1960 many countries in Latin America had engaged in or had attempted to engage in land reform (Mexico and Cuba being the two major examples in Latin America at the time). Johnson holds this concern over the rural peasantry as the exemplary model of the first phase of Cinema Novo, although many films deviated from this thematic focus.[16]

There are two films that are classic examples of the confluence of these socio-economic issues. The first is Nelson Perreira dos Santos? Vidas Sêcas (Barren Lives) (1963). The film is an adaptation of a canonical Brazilian novel about the plight of an extremely poor landless peasant family and its struggle to survive in the Brazilian Northeast while facing harsh environmental conditions (drought) and powerlessness in a society where power and wealth are held by a few and used to control the masses. This adaptation remains faithful to the original novel and as such the ending is open to interpretation as to its utopian/dystopian message. In this movie the political implications are clear: the roots of the family?s plight are Brazil?s unequal distribution of land and wealth. Thus, the major themes addressed in this film ( e.g. poverty, violence, corruption, and powerlessness) are all linked to the central theme of inequality.

The second classic example of the first phase of Cinema Novo is Glauber Rocha?s Deus e o Diabo na Terra do Sol (Black God, White Devil) (1964). Like Vidas Sêcas, it also tells the story of a family struggling to survive in the arid Northeast of Brazil. The protagonist, Manuel (played by Geraldo del Rey) struggles against all manner of oppressions that conspire to maintain the people of the northeast in figurative chains. In the story, Manuel and his wife Rosa must go from group to group (essentially savior to savior) in their struggle to survive. Like Vidas Sêcas, this movie is critical of the economic structure of the Northeast at the time of production. The travels of Manuel from his patriarchal landowner to the messianic Sebastião and finally to the violent bandit Corisco represent a sharp criticism of the region?s history of highly unequal wealth distribution and the cultural and historical conditions that made criminal violence and fanaticism possible. It makes various references to real historical events such as the massacre at Canudos and the banditry symbolized by the quasi spiritual connection between Corisco and the memory of the bandit Lampião. However, despite Rocha?s clear position inside the Cinema Novo movement, the high symbolism of his early films is uncharacteristic of first-phase films, and would only become more prevalent after 1964.

Os Fuzis (the Guns) (1964) by Mozambican-born director Ruy Guerra engages in a similar vein of social criticism. Like Deus e o Diabo na Terra do Sol and Vidas Sêcas, it is critical of a power structure that is top-down and does not protect the rights of the people. Os Fuzis tells the story of the tensions and struggle between the starving residents of a town and the soldiers who are sent in to protect the food store of a politician. In all three of these movies, there is a clear Marxist vision of Brazil?s social problems in which the workers are forced into subservience by those who own the land because they have control over the means of food production. As a result, the protagonists are pressured to obey or else lose access to the source of their sustenance.

Despite the preference in these early films for discussing the problems of rural Brazil, there were films that engaged with questions and issues in an urban environment as well. In the film Cinco Vezes Favela (1962) director Carlos Diegues shows the harshness and dog-eat-dog world of favela residents in Rio de Janeiro. It does not follow the traditional storyline arc of classic Hollywood. Instead it shows five separate stories about five separate people struggling through their day-to-day lives. Major themes found in this movie are hunger, poverty, violence, and corruption.[17]

Phase Two of Cinema Novo (1964-1968)

On March 31 and April 1 1964, the Brazilian military overthrew the democratically elected government of João Goulart. The coup had a tremendous effect on the left, ?The speed and bloodlessness of the coup left Goulart supporters in total disarray. They began to realize how overconfident they had been, which led to much recrimination about responsibility for key errors.?[18] This sense of disappointment is understandable especially if we take into account that the military met no resistance to its takeover even after pro-Goulart leaders called on supporters to go into the streets.[19] This disarray extended to the Cinema Novo filmmakers, as well. It wiped away the optimism they had in seeing the steady rise of the leftist policies of the João Goulart?s administration. The policy-makers of the military regime rolled many of Goulart?s policies back in an effort to combat inflation. The orthodox stabilization plan, while successful in combating inflation also led to a ?fall in real wage rates and public spending cuts.?[20]

During this time period Cinema Novo shifted its perspective from the rural Northeast to the city. This was a more introspective phase of the genre in which filmmakers tried to answer questions about the failure of the left.[21] The feeling was extensive, ?[i]n the arts and in the social sciences, the post-1964 period is one of strong political and aesthetic criticism of pre-1964 populism.?[22] Films were part of this process as well, and Glauber Rocha?s Terra em Transe ( Land in Anguish) (1967) is perhaps the clearest example of this political despair. It tells the story of a young reporter who is struggling to comprehend the political situation of his country, the fictional Eldorado. He is deeply depressed by what he sees as lies perpetrated by politicians of both the left and the right. He is also deeply disappointed in himself and the intelligentsia for their inaction. The movie is a not so subtle allegory for the overthrow of the Goulart administration by the military. This is part of what Ismail Xavier describes as the process in which ?[a] self-analysis of the intellectual was developed, and it was Rocha, in Land in Anguish, who on the aesthetic level best formulated the reflection on the failure of the revolutionary project.?[23] Gone was the optimism of the earlier Deus e o Diabo na Terra do Sol. In Terra en Transe there is no glorious ending.

Paulo César Saraceni?s O Desafio (The Challenge) (1965) is another movie directly focused on the questions generated by the Brazilian coup.[24] On the surface it is a movie about interclass love between the wife of a rich industrialist and a young leftist student. However, through the dialogue we can appreciate several moments where questions arise about the inability to understand the military coup and the failure of the left to implement lasting change. Like Terra em Transe, O Desafio is also deeply pessimistic in tone. Although these two films share a gloomy undertone they are also more explicitly political than their previous counterparts. In part this arises out of a disappointment with politicians, and because the Brazilian military had not yet passed censorship laws aimed at quieting dissident voices that would force Cinema Novo directors to alter the tone of their films and their manner of presentation.

One major change during the second phase was the abandonment of Cinema Novo?s outright rejection of commercialism. Although the movement?s roots sought to disassociate art from commercialism, by the mid-1960s a debate emerged about the ability of Cinema Novo to sustain itself without a broader appeal. This was due to the success of the conservative modernization of the media by the military regime, which saw other cultural production methods greatly improve.[25] Cinema Novo films, however, were not able to take full advantage of these new advances. For example they had to pay a higher percentage than other filmmakess to distributors and exhibitors to display their films. This higher rate was due to increased risk of a Cinema Novo movie being commercially unsuccessful and, thus, economically unviable for the producer or distributor.[26] Its esthetic style also faced critics. In this regard Cinema Novo was not unlike the Brazilian Modernist Movement of the twenties, ?which called in theory for a democratization of art but in practice remained an elitist form of expression.?[27] Recognizing this problem, filmmakers began to make movies that sought greater appeal, such as comedies or once again the adaptations of canonical novels, which was the case with the movie Menino de Engenho [Plantation Boy] (1965), an adaptation of the novel of the same name, written by José Lins do Rego.

Phase Three of Cinema Novo (1968-1972)

In 1968, the military regime passes Institutional Act No. 5, which limited freedoms to a greater extent than had been previously the case. The act temporaily closed Congress, deemed radical political opposition a violation of ?National Security? and introduced greater censorship.[28] This repressive political atmosphere led many intellectuals and artists into ?self-exile.? For example Glauber Rocha left Brazil in 1971 and spent most of the remainder of his life in exile. This new repressive regime meant that films could no longer be openly political. As a result filmmakers developed numerous forms of artistic manipulation, such as allegories based on comedy and history, to pass the censors.

Out of this moment, the increased censorship and the need for greater marketability, arose the third phase of Cinema Novo: Tropicalism, a form of cultural production originally associated with the work of musicians Gilberto Gil and Caetano Veloso in which foreign cultural productions are co-opted by Brazilian artists to create and strengthen cultural productions. The inspiration for this movement was found in the modernist of the 1920s, especially writer Oswaldo de Andrade, who advocated for this style of interaction between Brazil and foreign cultural productions. Ismail Xavier reminds us that, while intertextuality (or the influence of other texts upon a new text) of cultural productions may not seem like a highly polemical issue, it shocked and angered many people who felt that it watered down Brazil?s ?original? cultural products.[29] What is especially interesting is that this intense mixing of cultural productions led to a gaudy and kitsch aesthetic, which was the antithesis of the earlier Cinema Novo minimialist esthetic principle.

The two most popular films of this phase were Joaquim Pedro de Andrade?s Macunaíma (1969) and Nelson Pereira dos Santos? Como Era Gostoso o Meu Françes (How Tasty was my little Frenchman) (1971).[30] Despite their popular appeal both movies are allegorical. Macunaíma is a film adaptation of the novel of the same name by modernist writer Mário de Andrade.[31] It is a comedy that tells a fictitious folklore of a Brazilian native named Macunaíma who is born a full-grown and black man (played by the actor Grande Otelo) and then is turned white by the waters of a geyser (from then on the part is played by Paulo José). This is often read as a critique of Brazilian policy-makers attempts to whiten the population during the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century. In the film?s climax, the villain attempts to shove Macunaíma into a pool where the Brazilian dish of feijoada is being prepared so that he may devour him. Randal Johnson and Robert Stam note that ? Both films [ Macunaíma and Terra em Transe] clearly express the need to locate discussions of the ?national? at cultural levels, first by positing the investigation of the formation of symbolic universes and national imaginaries as a necessary complement to analyses of economic domination and, secondly, by calling for self-criticism and for assessments of cultural practices that would link national identity and political processes in order to help explain the recent defeat [of democracy].?[32] Like Terra em Transe, Macunaíma is also highly critical of everything from revolutionaries to the inherent and persistent racism in Brazilian society.

Como era gostoso o meu françes is also a highly allegorical film with popular appeal. It takes as its point of departure the texts of early colonial Brazil. In this film a French Huguenot is captured by a native tribe in Rio de Janeiro. He is then integrated into the tribe and, as a part of the process, he is given a wife. The film ends with his being killed and eaten by the tribe including his wife. Again as in Macunaima, anthropofagie is a defining theme. But more importantly, its criticism of the military regime is not readily apparent, which allowed it to pass the censor. According to one critic, ?[t]his film plays on the idea of the natural ?savage, sinless life? in order to destroy idyllic expectations of a harmonic encounter between cultures, making the audience confront the inevitable violence implicit in territorial expansion.?[33] The resulting message is clear if we take into consideration that many of the Cinema Novo filmmakers were Marxist-influenced and believed that Brazil was still a colony, thus, violence and the territorial expansion can be read as a critique of the violence of capitalism and imperialism. And it is important to understand that this political view fits into the broader tropes found within Cinema Novo films;

Economically and religiously, Europe constructed an imaginary of salvation and of plenty as the telos of its spectacular migration to the tropics: Eldorado, earthly paradise, the promise of redemption in the New World, the American Dream. It is precisely this imaginary, the result of an alliance between the Christian theology of salvation and military mercantilist pragmatism, that the Brazilian cinema brings back on a different register between 1964 and 1974. Once associated with the ruling classes, these imaginary constructs are deliberately inverted, for filmmakers argue that the concrete future defined by the Utopian voyages were, after all, a preamble to hell rather than paradise.[34]

Thus, Como era gostoso meu françês represents an example of how Cinema Novo directors liked to allegorize Brazilian history through its inversion and perversion creating a product filled with critical political messages.

Government Policy and Cinema Novo

Finally in order to have a well-rounded view of the movement, we must explore the role of the government in Cinema Novo. It is well known that the government during the time of Cinema Novo (1960-1972) was not generally engaged with policies that would produce a ?healthy? film industry. Censorship made work especially hard for artists, and harassment by government officials led many people to self-exile. However, it is simplistic to state that the relationship between the state and Cinema Novo was simply antagonistic. Government subsidies were an important source of revenue for many filmmakers. Randal Johnson points out that through a variety of programs and subsidies aimed at promoting Brazilian films there ?was the beginning of a tacit alliance between the state and Cinema Novo, an alliance that would continue with the federal government's creation of the Instituto Nacional do Cinema (National Film Institute) in 1966 and Embrafilme in 1969 and that would become formalized in 1973 when Roberto Farias, Cinema Novo's chosen candidate, became head of Embrafilme.?[35] This relationship does not take away from the messages provided by Cinema Novo, but should rather serve to complicate the history of the movement. It should always be remembered that despite the wishes of many filmmakers, film is not only art; it is also an industry. The fact that Cinema Novo directors engaged with parts of the State for financial support does not mean that they were endorsing state policies at other levels.

Cinema Novo as a cultural expression did not have mass appeal inside Brazil. It was often criticized as too erudite for mass consumption. However true that may be, it is impossible to gain a proper understanding of the history of Brazilian film as an industry and as an art form without taking Cinema Novo into account. We must remember that Cinema Novo is representative of a school of thought within Brazilian Cinema from the late 1950s to the early 1970s (again, it?s difficult to delineate), as such, it should not be taken as an all-encompassing history of film at that time. Yet, given its high critical praise and its popularity among intellectuals and film critics from all over the world, Cinema Novo?s reach and its cultural resonance are extensive, and have served to open up the country to foreign eyes.

Cinema Novo Directors

Alex Viany

Arnaldo Jabor

Carlos Diegues

David Neves

Glauber Rocha

Joaquim Pedro de Andrade

Leon Hirszman

Mário Carneiro

Nelson Pereira dos Santos

Paulo César Saraceni

Ruy Guerra

Cinema Novo Films

-First Phase-

-Second Phase-

-Third Phase-

Sources

Diegues, Carlos, ?Cinema Novo?in Johnson, Randal and Robert Stam. Brazilian Cinema. East Brunswick: Associated University Presses, 1982. 64-67.

Johnson, Randal. ?Brazilian Cinema Novo? Bulletin of Latin American Research 3(2)1984, 95-106.

Johnson, Randal and Robert Stam, Brazilian Cinema. New York: Columbia University Press, 1988.

Rocha, Glauber. ?Aesthetic of Hunger? trans. by Burns Holyman and Randal Jonhson https://www.amherst.edu/media/view/38122/original/ROCHA_Aesth_Hunger.pdf accessed on 12/16/12.

Sadlier, Darlene. Brazil Imagined: 1500 to the present. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2008.

Shaw, Lisa and Maite Conde. ?Brazil through Hollywood?s Gaze: From the Silent Screen to the Good Neighbor Policy Era.? Latin American Cinema: Essays on Modernity, Gender and National Identity. Ed. Lisa Shaw and Stephanie Dennison. Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Company, 2005.

Skidmore, Thomas E. Brazil: Five Centuries of Change 2nd ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.

Xavier, Ismail. ?Eldorado as Hell: Cinema Novo and Post-Cinema Novo ?Appropriations of the Imaginary of Discovery.? Mediating Two Worlds: Cinematic Encounters in the Americas. Ed. John King et. al. London: British Film Institute, 1993.

Xavier, Ismail. Allegories of Underdevelopment : Aesthetics and Politics in Modern Brazilian Cinema. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997.

[5] Xavier 1997, 21.

[10] Xavier 1997, 9.

[23] Xavier 1997, 23.

[25] Xavier 1997, 23.

[29] Xavier 1997 25.

[33] Xavier 1997, 238.

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Defining Cinema Novo Cinema Novo marks an important moment in the history of Brazilian cultural productions because it is understood as the first instance where Brazilian films began to gain a consistent level of positive critical reception outside of Brazil.

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Battleship Potemkin essay - Bill Nichols

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Battleship Potemkin essay - Bill Nichols

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Battleship Potemkin essay - Bill Nichols

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New Film Of The Week - Battleship Potemkin

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Battleship Potemkin (1925)  Full Movie in HD English Subtitles

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Soviet Montage: Crash Course Film History #8

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Eisenstein's Methods of Montage Explained | Russian Soviet Montage Theory | VIDEO ESSAY

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Strike (Eisenstein, 1925) — English Intertitles — HD Quality

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German Expressionism: Crash Course Film History #7

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Charlie Chaplin |  Luzes da Cidade (City Lights) - 1931 - Legendado

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NOTE: I don't know why this article links to a photo of the Trump brothers, but power through to the article.

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The most un-put-downable movie book of the season is also the most un-pick-uppable one: "The Charlie Chaplin Archives" (Taschen), which is the size of a small suitcase and weighs in at fourteen pounds, packed tightly with five hundred and sixty pages' worth of thick and glossy paper bearing a treasure trove of superbly printed images alongside a relentlessly fascinating collage-like textual biography of Chaplin. It's an apt tribute to the filmmaker, whose artistry transcends the cinema and spans world-historical dimensions.

The book's editor, Paul Duncan, who also wrote or co-wrote ten of its fifteen chapters, states his aim in the first line of his introduction-"to show you how Charlie Chaplin made his films"-and he has access to an extraordinary trove of documents for the reconstruction, "preserved thanks to Charlie's half brothers Sydney Chaplin and Wheeler Dryden." The Chaplin family made these materials available to Duncan and his collaborators, but their involvement doesn't seem to have inflected the substance of the book, which also ranges widely through Chaplin's private life, including its lurid, scandalous, and criminal byways.

Even if the book were published without its images, solely as a collection of its wide-ranging texts, it would still provide crucial visions of Chaplin's artistry and its inescapable coalescence with his life. He was born in 1889. His childhood in London was burdened with desperate poverty; the son of a struggling actress, he got his first acting job at fourteen, enjoyed success in the music halls, and, in 1910, sailed with the Fred Karno troupe for a three-year gig in the United States. Another member of the company, Stan Laurel (later of Laurel and Hardy), reported on Chaplin's antics aboard ship:

Charles put his foot up on the rail of the boat, swung his arm landward in one of his burlesque dramatic gestures, and declared, "America, I am coming to conquer you! Every man, woman, and child shall have my name on their lips-Charles Spencer Chaplin!"

The rodomontade was, Laurel saw, a gag, but the essence of its truth was soon realized. In 1913, in Philadelphia, the company manager received a fateful telegram from representatives of Mack Sennett's Keystone Studios: "Is there a man named Chaffin in your company or something like that."

Chaplin was overjoyed by Keystone's salary of one hundred and fifty dollars a week, but less happy with movies themselves. He wrote to his brother Sydney: "Just think Sid, £35 per week is not to be laugh[ed] at and I only want to work about five years at that and then we are independent for life. I shall save like a son of a gun." Chaplin told his Keystone colleague Chester Conklin, "I'm going to get out of this business. ... I figure the cinema is little more than a fad." But a month into his contract, after an unsteady beginning with Keystone, he spontaneously, accidentally adopted a costume consisting of Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle's large trousers, a smaller actor's tight jacket, and Arbuckle's father-in-law's derby. Then Chaplin decided to add, as he put it, "a small moustache, which, I reasoned, would add age"-he was only twenty-four-"without hiding my expression."

I had no idea of the character. But the moment I was dressed, the clothes and the makeup made me feel the person he was. I began to know him, and by the time I walked onto the stage he was fully born. When I confronted Sennett I assumed the character and strutted about, swinging my cane and parading before him. Gags and comedy ideas went racing through my mind.

Charles Chaplin, Jr., said of the Tramp: "It was just released whole from somewhere deep within my father, it was really my father's alter ego, the little boy who never grew up: ragged, cold, hungry, but still thumbing his nose at the world." The Tramp, Chaplin also said, "is always quick to do things for his own protection and he is clever in dodging brickbats and rebuffs of others and sliding adverse conditions off on some other fellow. He does not care who falls so long as he gets out safe and sound." Buster Keaton, meanwhile, was careful to distinguish his own screen persona from Chaplin's: "Charlie's tramp was a bum with the bum's philosophy. Lovable as he was, he would steal if he got the chance. My little fellow was a working man and honest."

But a philosophy it was, and with it, Chaplin's ambitions and ideas took flight. He sought to invent gags and routines for his character, but he also became keenly aware that performance in movies doesn't exist in isolation from framings, rhythms-the entire compositional aspect of cinema. He took control of the stories and the production of his films over all; he became a director and screenwriter, and also edited his movies.

As the Tramp, Chaplin became a nearly instant celebrity: his fame and fortune rose meteorically. So did his artistry, along with critical recognition of it. In 1915, one critic wrote, "He was born to laughter as much as Edison was born to invention, and Tolstoy was born to world literature." Another added, "Sitting in a house of a thousand persons the other night one could feel the stillness that settled over the gathering as the realization sunk deeper that the player was more than a comedian."

Chaplin, on that boat in 1910, may have been joking about the triumphant destiny that awaited him in the United States, but once he had realized his basic dream of financial independence, he expanded the boundaries of what independence could mean. His self-realization involved an unprecedented artistic freedom that was bound up with his expansion of the burgeoning, still incipient art of the cinema. As Chaplin developed his on-screen persona, he also made explicit his sense of an artistic calling, through the increased refinement and scope of his films, through the audacious and socially critical subject matter, the anarchic tone, and the exacting craft by which he realized them.

Chaplin became fabulously wealthy, and he made his wealth a tool of his art. Already in 1918 he knew that he couldn't make films on "a schedule," so he became the owner of his own studio, free to build and undo sets, develop stories improvisationally (including film sequences that he'd never use), reshoot relentlessly, and seek his cinematic ideal through unremitting labor (as with the two hundred takes that went into the famed feeding-machine sequence in "Modern Times"). He could dispose of money as he saw fit and was answerable to no studio boss in his decisions; he said that he sought to create "a new form, a sort of visual music."

In 1922 he undertook, with conspicuous intent, an art film: "A Woman of Paris," based loosely on the real-life scandal of a former chorus girl, now high-society grande dame, on whose account a man killed himself. It would be a drama akin in tone to that of a serious novel, and Chaplin, the writer and director, didn't star in it, but took only a brief cameo. One of its stars, Adolphe Menjou, said that, though it was a silent film, Chaplin "insisted on our learning dialogue and saying it exactly as it was written, something that none of us had ever done before in pictures. This was because he felt that certain words registered on the face and could be easily grasped by the audience."

Chaplin, a master of pantomime, long rejected talking pictures, which were launched with "The Jazz Singer" in 1927. He made the silents "City Lights" (released in 1931) and "Modern Times" (1936); in the latter, the Tramp sings-in a language of Chaplin's own invention-but Chaplin vowed that, though he might need to make talkies, the Tramp would never talk (and he never did). Not wanting to be behind the times, Chaplin turned to talking pictures and made a film very much of its moment: " The Great Dictator," his burlesque of Adolf Hitler. Though he never played the Tramp again, he gave himself other roles of a distorted majesty: in "The Great Dictator," the dual role of the Hitler-like dictator and the Tramp-like Jewish barber; in his first postwar film, " Monsieur Verdoux," a hyperrefined Bluebeard (based on the real-life murderer Henri Désiré Landru, a story idea suggested to him by Orson Welles).

"The Charlie Chaplin Archives" also details the predatory aspects of Chaplin's private life: his sexual relations and marriages with young women under the age of consent; his efforts to avoid prosecution and to prevent scandal (as when he paid a doctor twenty-five thousand dollars to falsify the date of the birth certificate of one of his children); the details of divorce proceedings that were fodder for the press; and the paternity suit, in the mid-nineteen-forties, that led to his denunciation in the Senate. In 1945, the film historian F. X. Feeney writes, "Senator William Langer put forward bill S.536 calling for the Attorney General to investigate and determine whether the 'alien' Chaplin should be deported because of 'his unsavory record of law breaking, of rape, or the debauching of American girls 16 and 17 years of age.' " Feeney adds that Langer may have had an ulterior motive-he was associated with pro-Nazi groups. But the accusations in question were based in fact.

The charges against Chaplin's sexual conduct were soon followed by allegations about his political sympathies. Chaplin, though still a British subject, was active politically in the United States, giving speeches to sell war bonds in 1918, giving radio broadcasts in 1933 in favor of New Deal programs, advocating alliance with the Soviet Union during the Second World War. He was accused of harboring Communist sympathies; he was denounced in 1947 by the House Un-American Activities Committee; and he went virtually overnight from hero to pariah. "Monsieur Verdoux" was the subject of critical attacks (though it was famously and magnificently praised by James Agee) and was a box-office failure.

Chaplin followed it with a film set in Great Britain, " Limelight," in which he plays Calvero, an elderly, once-celebrated, now fallen music-hall performer in London on the eve of the First World War-exactly the time that the real-life Chaplin made the leap from the stage to movies. Though based loosely on the experience of another actor, Calvero is also a counterfactual self-portrait of a Chaplin who was untouched by the cinema and left to squander his uniquely dynamic character in an art form that was itself in its senescence. The actor Norman Lloyd-who was in "Limelight" and, now a centenarian, is in "Trainwreck"-saw "Limelight" as Chaplin's way of "saying, 'I, Charlie Chaplin, doubt that I can make people laugh any longer.' " It's as if, in the wake of scandal, persecution, and failure, as well as the inevitable changes of age and shifts in public taste, he dramatized the feeling that he had lost his touch.

In 1952, in the midst of McCarthy-era paranoia, when Chaplin sought to travel to London for the première of "Limelight," his reëntry permit was revoked; needing to reapply for entry as an immigrant and thus to give accounts of his political activities and personal life, he stayed away, moving to Switzerland.

In Great Britain, he made the loftily furious comedy " A King in New York," with its raging satire on urban modernity, advertising, television, Hollywood, plastic surgery, rock and roll, and-above all-McCarthyite investigations and persecutions. Though he was politically free, he faced difficulties in a British studio, where the working methods were constrained by sedimented traditions and stringent union regulations. Chaplin's assistant Jerry Epstein reports that crew members called a strike when Chaplin dared to move a chair on the set; the film historian Jamie Russell adds that the vice-president of United Artists "advised Epstein to have his name removed from the credits to save his career." It's one of his greatest films-and it went unseen in the United States until 1973, because Chaplin refused to release it here.

In 1959, federal officials hoped to entrap Chaplin at an immigration office with a question about a girlfriend's abortion-he'd have been forced either to admit it, rendering himself "mandatorily excludable," or to perjure himself.

His last film, " A Countess from Hong Kong," shot in 1966, stars Marlon Brando and Sophia Loren. The book reveals that, though the substance of the story derived from his reminiscences of a 1936 visit to China with the actress Paulette Goddard, the spark of the story was Chaplin's admiration for John F. Kennedy, on whom Brando's role was to be based. Chaplin and Brando, however, worked poorly together; Brando was miserable, but said, with an ironic admiration, "Charlie doesn't direct as much as he conducts. You feel as if you were part of a musical score." Chaplin was more blunt:

I think you're likely to kill your enthusiasm if you delve too deeply into the psychology of the characters you are creating. ... Brando came to me once and said, "I don't quite understand. What is the motive?" I said, "I don't know and if I did, it wouldn't be very much. But if you do it this way, it will come off." He never came to me again.

"The Charlie Chaplin Archives" is a virtual oral history of Chaplin, with Chaplin's own voice at the center of it. The copious selection of quotes is so evocative that a reading of the book veers toward a recitation, or even a singing, of it. Duncan's book comes very close to fulfilling the vastness of its ambition-a revelation of Chaplin's creative process, even to the furious core of energy, passion, lust, and sheer will that fuelled it-and to the evocation of its victims. The collage of archival texts proves its efficacy from the start, with the book's foreword, by Chaplin himself, an excerpt from an unpublished preface to his 1964 autobiography; it's a text of such incendiary power that Chaplin could obviously not publish it; its introduction to the artist's life is brazenly self-revealing, painfully accurate, and tragic:

In this record I shall tell only what I want to tell, for there is a line of demarcation between oneself and the public. There are some things which if divulged to the public, I would have nothing left to hold body and soul together, and my personality would disappear like the waters of the rivers that flow into the sea.

However, here I must state that I have no morals in the sense that I abide with them in awe. I respect no book of rules for they have been written by someone else.

Chaplin's art overflowed the bounds of cinema and raised the tides of history; but Chaplin's life also overflowed the bounds of law and norms and submerged those who stood in the path of his desires. The story of Chaplin's success is the story of the cinema itself-an accidental art that raises the infinitesimal to the infinite, that sees through modest or constrained circumstances to capture and exalt the essence of character. The titanic force of his character admitted no distinction between creator and destroyer; his character was mightily unified, and the simplicity of his ineffable grace is forged from the fusion of unbearable contradictions.

Richard Brody began writing for The New Yorker in 1999. He writes about movies in his blog, The Front Row. He is the author of "Everything Is Cinema: The Working Life of Jean-Luc Godard."
Read more "

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Charlie Chaplin's Scandalous Life and Boundless Artistry

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The most un-put-downable movie book of the season is also the most un-pick-uppable one: "The Charlie Chaplin Archives" (Taschen), which is the size of a small suitcase and weighs in at fourteen pounds, packed tightly with five hundred and sixty pages' worth of thick and glossy paper bearing a treasure trove of superbly printed images alongside a relentlessly fascinating collage-like textual biography of Chaplin.

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Screenplays: Crash Course Film Production #1

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Hollywood Screenwriter Attempts To Write A Scene in 7 Minutes | Vanity Fair

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StoryCircle Worksheet PDF - StudioBinder

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0:00 / 7:40•Watch full video

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This is a fantastic look into how a genre mashup, in this case Western/Sci-Fi, works.

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Georges Melies - Master of Illusion: Crash Course Film History #4

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Zoom Podcast - Amy Nicholson
Go to around 3:30 to hear her piece on A Trip To The Moon

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A new way to discover and listen to the world's podcasts

Subscribe to any show for free and download episodes for offline listening.

All your listening is automatically synced across devices so you can pause on one device and resume on another with the Google Assistant.

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A new way to discover and listen to the world's podcasts Subscribe to any show for free and download episodes for offline listening. All your listening is automatically synced across devices so you can pause on one device and resume on another with the Google Assistant.

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A kind of tongue-in-cheek article that highlights the anti-imperialism of A Trip To The Moon

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The Sections Edition: The Association for Political and Legal Anthropology

As science fiction becomes science reality how can humankind avoid lunar imperialism and maintain peaceful terrestrial relations?

The year is 1902. Our setting is a Jules Verne-inspired film studio on the outskirts of Paris. Illusionist and director Georges Méliès is about to produce one of the most influential films ever made- (A Trip to the Moon) . Recognized as a "carnivalesque" satire that poked fun at nineteenth century science and boasted strong anti-imperialist vibes, the silent, 12-minute film made a lasting impression on the history of cinema and changed global perceptions on the accessibility of the moon. What was once extreme and unreachable was now a boundary that could be overcome and conquered.

Although the prospect of lunar colonization posed an impressive achievement, Méliès portrayed a lunar colonization (complete with a war against the extraterrestrial natives) reminiscent of the violent European colonization of the Americas. As the NASA 2020 budget increases funding for lunar programs by 82 percent and commercial companies partner with the Commercial Lunar Payload Services program, returning man to the moon-and furthermore, lunar colonization-appear less science fiction and more science reality. How can humankind peacefully colonize the moon, heeding lessons learned from Méliès's fiction and the violence of our own terrestrial colonialisms? How can tensions among peoples of Earth be managed as competitive lunar economic development begins in earnest?

One of the most complex aspects of expanding human civilization into and out of our solar system is not technological advancement or funding, but maintaining a sociocultural and economic balance between the moon and the earth ), presumably the first people in space will be those with access to the economic resources necessary to pay for a ticket. Influenced heavily by largely westernized cultures, the early days of twenty-first century lunar exploration will probably be subject to settler-colonial ideologies and competitive reactions that could result in systematic and capitalistic violence similar to what Méliès portrayed throughout and among the handful of cultures attempting lunar missions. As I mentioned in Mandel 2017 Le voyage dans la lune. The Elysium Effect (

The commercial space company Moon Express promotes a mission to expand Earth's social and economic spheres to the moon in an effort to democratize space, support a new space renaissance, and utilize lunar resources to such an extent that they hope to one day refer to it as Earth's eighth continent. However, if we want to reach a point where we can consider the moon an eighth continent-a modular addition to Spaceship Earth-we will have to do so in collaboration and not competition with our earthly neighbors. Sure, competition spurs innovation, take the Ansari X Prize for example, but such competition might ultimately result in a lunar frontier civilization that is ultimately divided.

With the "open for business" sign patriotically nailed into Tranquility Base in 1969 and current growing interest in economic lunar expansion, come new boundaries to be watchful of and a colonial history worth reflecting on.
Although it may be nice to imagine a blend of cultures cooperating as one unit across the lunar surface, this perspective underestimates the power and value of distinctive cultural differences, diversity, and political divisions. Already, I have witnessed during hearings on issues relating to outer space in the US Senate and House of Representatives, rising tensions among China, Russia, and the United States overshadow proceedings. Concerns regarding the security of the United States, the creation of a space force, competition for extraterrestrial resources, and maintaining the lead in the commercial space race are at the forefront of political debates, and echo the Cold War-influenced space race which began six decades after Méliès's production.
From my experiences as an anthropologist working in the commercial space industry, I believe tensions can be managed and space colonized peacefully, as long as access to space continues to be democratized. I don't just mean transition to a democratic political regime, but rather giving all earthlings equal access to outer space and all its splendors. The next step may be a progressive (and weightless) march guided by the entrepreneurial visions of the leading space players of this decade. Companies like Worldview, Space for Humanity, Blue Origin, and Virgin Galactic hope to make space more economically and physically available to all-not just the wealthy elite. While space tourism may seem like a moonshot from lunar colonization, it's a step in the right direction.

Fast forward to the summer of 1969, to 41'15" N, 23°26'00" E, better known as Tranquility Base. Neil Armstrong is about to take "one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind." This moment will never be reflected on as "carnivalesque" and is far removed from political satire (although political it certainly was). In the same way Satio Tranquillitatis, lunar coordinates 00 Le Voyage dans la lune pushed turn-of-the-century French society to consider the moon as a potential realm of human interaction, the moon landing acted as arguably the most transformative moment in human history. With it, we not only realized that humans could interact with other planetary bodies, but understood that what was once considered extreme-an unreachable boundary-was now attainable, meetable, and open for development (see Olson, 2010). But with the "open for business" sign patriotically nailed into Tranquility Base in 1969 and current growing interest in economic lunar expansion, come new boundaries to be watchful of and a colonial history worth reflecting on.

Savannah Mandel works at the American Institute of Physics as a science writer. She recently earned an MSc in social anthropology from University College London, having studied the anthropology of human space exploration, for which she conducted fieldwork at Spaceport America in 2018. Her written works are inspired by technoscapes, material culture, and a deep love of all things science fiction.

Cite as: Mandel, Savannah. 2019. "Lunar Imperialism (And How to Avoid It)." Anthropology News website, July 12, 2019. DOI: 10.1111/AN.1219

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The Sections Edition: The Association for Political and Legal Anthropology As science fiction becomes science reality how can humankind avoid lunar imperialism and maintain peaceful terrestrial relations? The year is 1902. Our setting is a Jules Verne-inspired film studio on the outskirts of Paris.

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The Lumiere Brothers: Crash Course Film History #3

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The Royal Tenembaums Sample Scene - Full

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The Royal Tenembaums Sample Scene - Full

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Movie: The Royal Tenenbaums - Scene: Backstory