Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Introductory Readings in Film Theory
Introductory Readings in Film Theory
Chapter 3
Film Studies: A Critical Scrutiny
Film studies today exists worldwide as a discipline with specific colleges and
universities dedicated to it. The aspects of film studies have grown to encompass
numerous methods for teaching history, culture and society. Many universities and
colleges run courses specifically geared toward the analysis of film, exemplifying the
studies with media and television studies, taking knowledge from all parts of visual
production in the approach. With the growing technologies such as 3D film and
YouTube, films are now concretely used to teach a reflection of culture and art around
the world as a primary medium. Due to the ever growing dynamics of film studies, a
wide variety of curricula have emerged for analysis of critical approaches used in
film. Although each institution has the power to form the study material, students are
the analysis of film form and style, a sense of ideological dimensions of film, and an
awareness of extra textual domains and possible direction of film in future (Rebecca
Murray, 2010).
In this chapter of the thesis, two courses from the undergraduate programmes
in English of Kannur University and of the University of Calicut titled ‗Film Studies‘
(Course Code 6B15FNG and Course Code EN5D01 respectively) are being discussed.
Both are from the undergraduate programme of B.A Functional English. The
curriculum of college level film studies programmes often include but are not limited
to the introduction to film Studies, modes of film studies, close analysis of film,
production.
encourage a broadly interdisciplinary and critical assessment of the roles that film and
the visual media play in our lives, to introduce students to the development of filmic
traditions, to provide them with the critical tools necessary to make informed
introduction to the construction of filmic works, and to broaden thinking about film
and media studies beyond the context provided by the Hollywood model.
and international contexts for filmmaking, to promote skills in both practical and
theoretical analysis of film texts and film culture and to develop in students an ability
studies and is often compared to television studies. Film studies is less concerned with
artistic, cultural, economic, and political implications of the cinema. In searching for
these social-ideological values, film studies takes a series of critical approaches for
the analysis of production, theoretical framework, context, and creation. In this sense
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the film studies discipline exists as one in which the teacher does not always assume
the primary educator role; the featured film itself serves that function. Also, in
studying film, possible careers include critic or production. Film theory often includes
the study of conflicts between the aesthetics of visual Hollywood and the textual
analysis of screenplay. Overall the study of film continues to grow, as does the
industry on which it focuses. Academic journals publishing film studies work include
Screen, Cinema Journal, and the Journal of Film and Video (Shawn Dwyer, 2010).
The learning outcomes for the Film Studies Student should develop a broadly
Student should be conversant with the history of international cinema and be able to
use that history to provide context for other works they encounter. They should be
assessment of film and filmic image. Students should have basic competence in some
critical responses to cinematic work based upon aesthetic or cultural values other than
the entertainment model that dominates the mainstream like the Hollywood, French
The scope of film studies have increased over the last few decades. The 21st
century has evolved a number of advantageous changes in the field of cinema, most of
which were unimaginable some decades before. This is due to the advancement of
the one that stands atop when technology in cinema is concerned. The arrival of
‗Jurassic Park’ (1993: directed by Steven Spielberg with Sam Neil and Jeff
Goldblum) and the ‘Lost World’ (1997: Spielberg with Jeff Goldblum and Julianne
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Moore) created an awe inspiring temper in the minds of spectators across the world.
Similarly, French Cinema, Italian Cinema and Indian Cinema too have attained big
changing growth in the recent past. As far as film studies as a discipline is concerned,
the progress in this field has paved way for thousands of people to find a career of
their own.
Film Studies gives students a disciplinary knowledge of film as an art form; its
history, aesthetics, craft, genres, and great directors and it situates film in its global
context with studies of cinemas all over the world. Students especially interested in
digital filmmaking can study screenwriting and film production, and undertake off-
campus film projects and internships in any film producing company. Why pursue a
acquire the ―visual literacy‖ required to understand, critique, and use moving images
intelligently and creatively. Knowledge and competency are the first goals of a
and combine film with other media and technologies in ways now
unimagined. Students of film can pursue careers in teaching at secondary school and
college levels, writing about movies, entertainment law, film producing, film industry
executive leadership, film and digital technology, and the wide range of businesses
Films are cultural artifacts created by specific cultures, which reflect those
cultures, and, in turn, affect them. Film is considered to be an important art form, a
attractions by using dubbing or subtitles that translate the dialogue. Films are made up
of a series of individual images called frames. When these images are shown rapidly
in succession, a viewer has the illusion that motion is occurring. The viewer cannot
see the flickering between frames due to an effect known as persistence of vision,
whereby the eye retains a visual image for a fraction of a second after the source has
been removed. Viewers perceive motion due to a psychological effect called beta
The origin of the name ‗film‘ comes from the fact that photographic film, also
called film stock, has historically been the primary medium for recording and
displaying motion pictures. Many other terms exist for an individual motion picture,
including picture, picture show, moving picture, photo-play and flick. A common
name for film in the United States is movie, while in Europe the term cinema is
preferred. In India, people use the common expression cinema despite all religion,
caste, region and culture differences. Going to cinema was even a part of the life style
of the Indians, especially those who worked on daily wages, finding relaxation.
Additional terms for the field in general include the big screen, the silver screen, the
cinema and the movies. Here is the course structure of Film Studies of Kannur
University:
A close analysis of the course structure of Film Studies of the B.A. Functional
a variety of facts. First of all, the structure of the course does not show any significant
sign that it is a course entirely and exclusively designed for films. Some desiccated
facts on films have been given for discussion without careful planning that a student
should benefit to find a career in the field of film. It is very much clear from the
objective of the course; it only asks the students to understand and analyse cinema as
an art form and as a cultural practice. Nothing is mentioned how someone can find a
career of if. Well, if the objective of the course is just to ask the students to watch
The first module of the course highlights the history and evolution of the
world cinema. How the art called film was born and the development of the silent film
to the talkies; the production and distribution houses etc. The contribution of the great
masters for the development of the art form is mentioned here, but not even one
person is identified in the syllabus as the great master. There is something told about
the differences between the mainstream cinema and the New Wave Cinema,
otherwise called as the art cinema and about the digital revolution in the art of film as
well.
Here, when the attempt is made to talk about the history of the world‘s most
celebrated art form, all the relevant historical aspects should be touched upon; like the
origin and development of the very art form; the role and place of Italian Cinema and
French Cinema in the world movie scenario and the like. The eminence of Russian
Cinema too deserves much attention. Coming to Indian cinema, the rise of various
As the new art form of the twentieth century, film immediately and
continuously invited theoretical attempts to define its nature and function. Mostly as a
result of film's own inferiority complex as the youngest of the arts, the impetus for
much of early film theory was to gain a degree of respectability. Preceding film by
thousands of years, plays and dances had elements common to film: scripts, sets,
terminology later used in film theory and criticism applied, such as mise en scene,
roughly, the entire visual picture at any one time. Moving visual and aural images
were not recorded for replaying as in film. The Camera Obscura was pioneered by
Abu Ali al-Hasan Ibn al-Hatyam (965-1039), an Arab scientist, born in Cairo, who
astronomy, engineering etc) in his ‗Book of Optics‘ in 1021, and later near the year
1600, it was perfected by Giambattista della Porta (1535-1615), an Italian scholar who
lived in Naples at the time of Reformation. The camera obscura, Latin for 'dark
room'; literally, 'darkened chamber', is an optical device that projects an image of its
surroundings on a screen. It is used in drawing and for entertainment, and was one of
the inventions that led to photography. The device consists of a box or room with a
hole in one side. Light from an external scene passes through the hole and strikes a
surface inside where it is reproduced, upside-down, but with color and perspective
preserved. The image can be projected onto paper, and can then be traced to produce a
dimensional drawings in motion were demonstrated with devices such as the zoetrope,
devices, such as magic lanterns and would display sequences of still pictures at
sufficient speed for the images on the pictures to appear to be moving, a phenomenon
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achieve the desired effect, and the underlying principle became the basis for the
series of stereoscopic images of a galloping horse, arguably the first "motion picture,"
though it was not called by this name. Muybridge was an English photographer,
known primarily for his important pioneering work, with use of multiple cameras to
capture motion, and his zoopraxiscope, a device for projecting motion pictures that
pre-dated the celluloid film strip that is still used today. This technology required a
person to look into a viewing machine to see the pictures which were separate paper
prints attached to a drum turned by a hand crank. The pictures were shown at a
variable speed of about five to ten pictures per second, depending on how rapidly the
In the United States, to make a comparison, around 144 different colleges and
universities offer courses in film studies and this number continues to grow each year
with new interest in the film studies discipline. Colleges offering film degrees as part
of their arts or communications curriculum differ from colleges with a dedicated film
programme. The curriculum is in no way limited to films made in the United States; a
wide variety of films can be analyzed. With the United States' film industry second
worldwide only to India, the attraction for film studies is high. To obtain a degree in
the United States, a person is likely to pursue careers in the production of film,
especially directing and producing films. The people who choose to study film desire
the capacity to analyze the numerous films released in the United States every year in
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a more academic setting. Films can reflect the culture of the period not only in the
contrast, Film Studies hasn‘t had a particularly self-reflexive bent when it comes to
examining its institutionalization. While there have been numerous accounts of the
history and development of film theory as a relatively autonomous set of ideas and
precepts regarding cinema, the more concrete aspects of the discipline, including its
own establishment within the academy, have received relatively scant attention. The
book titled Inventing Film Studies presents essays which examine the entire history
of Film Studies, as well as the discipline‘s nascent prehistory, in order to chart key
moments of institutional foundation, paths not taken, and other spectres that continue
to haunt our methodologies to this day, many without our ever having understood
Film Studies, it generally coalesces around the 1960s and ‘70s with the application of
shifted Film Studies into the humanities, since cinema‘s closed textual system seemed
Inventing Film Studies (2008) offers original and provocative insights into the
linked the origins of the discipline to late-1960s developments in the academy such as
structuralist theory and student protest. Yet this collection reveals the broader material
and institutional forces-both inside and outside of the university-that have long shaped
the field. Beginning with the first investigations of cinema in the early twentieth
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century, this volume provides detailed examinations of the varied social, political, and
contributors explain how multiple instantiations of film study have had a tremendous
historical insights into the present, contributors also consider the directions film study
Studies shows how the study of cinema has developed in relation to a constellation of
cinema and the social sciences, between film programs and nation-building efforts,
and between universities and U.S. avant-garde filmmakers. They analyze the
evolution of film studies in relation to the Museum of Modern Art, the American Film
Council movement of the 1940s and 1950s, the British Film Institute, influential
journals, cinephilia, and technological innovations past and present. Taken together,
the essays in this collection reveal the rich history and contemporary vitality of film
studies.
By the 1880s the development of the motion picture camera allowed the
individual component images to be captured and stored on a single reel, and led
quickly to the development of a motion picture projector to shine light through the
processed and printed film and magnify these "moving picture shows" onto a screen
pictures". Early motion pictures were static shots that showed an event or action with
no editing or other cinematic techniques. The motion picture camera or the movie
snapshot at a time, the movie camera takes a series of images; each called a "frame".
The frames are later played back in a movie projector at a specific speed, called the
‗frame rate‘ that is the number of frames per second. These innovative silent films
had gained a hold on the public imagination. Around the turn of the twentieth century,
stories. The scenes were later broken up into multiple shots of varying sizes and
angles. Other techniques such as camera movement were realized as effective ways to
portray a story on film. Rather than leave the audience in silence, theater owners
would hire a pianist or an organist or a full orchestra to play music fitting the mood of
the film at any given moment. By the early 1920s, most films came with a prepared
list of sheet music for this purpose, with complete film scores being composed for
major productions.
cinema when the film industry in United States flourished with the rise of Hollywood,
Downtown Los Angeles. Due to its fame and cultural identity as the historical center
of movie studios and movie stars, the word ‗Hollywood‘ is often used as a metonymy
winning American film director) in The Birth of a Nation, (premiered with the title
The Clansman, a 1915 silent film, set during and after the American Civil War, the
film was based on Thomas Dixon's The Clansman, a novel and play. The Birth of a
Nation is noted for its innovative camera techniques and narrative achievements, and
its status as the first Hollywood blockbuster. It has provoked great controversy for
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promoting white supremacy and its positive portrayal of the Ku Klux Klan) and
Intolerance: Love's Struggle Through the Ages, a silent film in 1916, is considered
one of the great masterpieces of the Silent Era. Professor Theodore Huff, one of the
leading film critics of the first half of the twentieth century, stated that it was the only
motion picture worthy of taking its place alongside Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, and
and film theorist noted in particular for his silent films Strike, Battleship Potemkin and
October, as well as historical epics Alexander Nevsky and Ivan the Terrible. His work
vastly influenced early filmmakers owing to his innovative use of and writings about
montage). Other notable experts like Friedrich Wilhem Murnau (1888-1931), one of
the most influential German film directors of the silent era and a figure in the
expressionist movement in German cinema during the 1920s. Some of his films have
been lost, but most still survive) and Fritz Lang (1890-1976), an Austrian-German-
American filmmaker, screenwriter, and occasional film producer and actor. One of the
best known émigrés from Germany's school of Expressionism, he was dubbed the
"Master of Darkness" by the British Film Institute), inspired by the meteoric war-time
progress of film through Griffith, along with the contributions of Charles Chaplin,
Buster Keaton and others, quickly caught up with American film-making and
continued to further advance the medium. In the 1920s, new technology allowed
filmmakers to attach to each film a soundtrack of speech, music and sound effects
synchronized with the action on the screen. These sound films were initially
century. The critic of film in an academic setting has not existed through the entire
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history of film. Not to be confused with the technical aspects of film creation, film
studies exists only with the creation of film theory which approaches film critically as
an art. Because the modern film became an invention and industry only in the late
producers and directors existed significantly before the academic analysis that
Early film schools focused on the production and subjective critique of film
rather than on the critical approaches, history and theory used to study academically.
Since the time film was created, the concept of film studies as a whole grew to
analyze the formal aspects of film as they were created. Established in 1919 the
Moscow Film School was the first school in the world to focus on film. In the United
States the USC School of Cinematic Arts was the first cinematic based school, which
was created in agreement with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
They were also the first to offer a major in film in 1932 but without the distinctions
that are assumed in film studies. Universities began to implement different forms of
cinema related curriculum without, however, the division between the abstract and
practical approaches.
natural colour. While the addition of sound quickly eclipsed silent film and theater
musicians, colour was adopted more gradually as methods evolved making it more
practical and cost effective to produce natural colour films. The public was relatively
processes improved and became as affordable as black and white film, more and more
movies were filmed in colour after the end of World War II (1939-1945), as the
competition with television, which remained a black and white medium until the mid
1960s. By the end of the 1960s, colour had become the norm for film makers.
With the decline of the studio system in the 1960s, the succeeding decades
saw changes in the production and style of film. Various New Wave movements,
including the French New Wave, Indian New Wave, Japanese New Wave and New
Hollywood, the rise of film schools and the advent of educated independent
filmmakers were all part of the changes the medium experienced in the latter half of
the 20th century. Digital technology has been the driving force in change throughout
University) seeks the differences between the mainstream cinema and the art cinema
or the New Wave. The inclusion of the topic in the course structure will definitely
facilitate the students on the differences between these two contrastive genres.
Normally, every boy and girl at the beginning of his/her becoming an adult will be
forming an inclination towards the commercial cinema which is full of events. But the
students should also be brought to the fact that there is something more than the world
of fantasy. They must be able to read a film rather than watching a film. It is roughly
said that the second half of the 21st century witnessed the rise of the New Wave
Cinema, with the French, Indian, Japanese, Italian and Iranian movies coming to the
limelight.
The New Wave cinema was a movement that started in France during the
1950s but the celebrated filmmakers like Claude Chabrol, Francois Truffaut, Jean-Luc
Godard, Louis Malle, Eric Rohmer, Alain Resnais, and others. The Auteur Theory too
was a co-product of the New Wave, calling for films to express the director‘s personal
overshadowed the subject matter. Among the most important New Wave films were
Godard's Breathless (1959), Truffaut's The 400 Blows (1959), and Resnais's
Hiroshima mon Amour (1959). The Auteur Theory is which holds that a film's
director is its ―author‖ (French, auteur). It originated in France in the 1950s and was
promoted by Francois Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard and the journal Cahiers du
Cinéma. The director oversees and ―writes‖ the film's audio and visual scenario and
therefore is considered more responsible for its content than the screenwriter.
Supporters maintain that the most successful films bear the distinctive imprint of their
director.
Module II of the syllabus looks forward to the theories associated with the art
of filmmaking and other technical aspects like recording, image and sound
technologies, production process, the soundtrack, post production process like editing,
mixing and effects etc. but all these portions will require highly advanced laboratory
and studio facilities. Unfortunately not many colleges in Kannur University have
these facilities. This is a total practical aspect and therefore cannot be simply said
about in the class. The students and teachers should go out of the lecture hall and
actually make a film that will require a lot of money and effort.
For the technical aspects in filmmaking, there are wonderful courses run in
the MET Film School of London that makes films, teaches people to make films, and
students write, produce, direct and edit their own short films and are supported by
their tutors and a professional editor. Students benefit from hands-on experience via
sessions with tutors, access to state-of-the-art HD technology and the use of the
college‘s own stage. The B.A Honours in Cinematography (2 Years) run by the MET
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Film School of London is an unrivalled programme for those who want to take a lead
storytelling techniques and provide practical skills by training students in the use of
professional digital cameras. The students will work across a range of formats
including film, tape, digital, HD and tapeless. Creative, theoretical and practical
abilities are developed as students learn how to tell visual stories including drama,
comedy and documentary. The course is designed to develop a solid grounding in the
post-production workflow from shoot to online and grade. Equipped with the broadest
possible knowledge of digital cinematography, the students can graduate with a show
Year one of the core modules, the institution provides digital video production
film grammar, established industry conventions, the basic concepts and fundamental
cinematography, lighting, sound, Final Cut Pro and non-linear editing techniques.
Media Studies is an introduction to the key issues and debates that surround mass
communication and the media. The students will study film, television, advertising,
the press and other forms with an understanding of the role of the media in
contemporary society. Writing for the screen explores the screenwriting process
blocks. They will write research and develop their own original screenplay and learn
how to access their creativity and improve their craft. Applied Digital Technologies is
a portion to a key set of digital manipulation and creation tools to allow the students
to get an overview of the impact these technologies have upon the art and technique
of filmmaking. They will develop a core set of software skills that will serve as a
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foundation for their development. They are given opportunities to make their own
documentary films and to master the theories and practice in the documentary
tradition.
the art of filmmaking that is analyzing film, broadcast and new media, professional
necessary for the production of moving images. Planning production and project
management is planning for the creation of the moving images. The Institute also
provides several graduate programmes such as B.A Film and Television, B.A Visual
number of film collections. At present the Oxford University Library owns a well-
World Cinema, Egyptian Cinema, Indian Cinema and Japanese Cinema. The
university has links with British Film Institute and British Universities Film and
Video Council and European Cinema Online Database that will provide plenty of
information for those who are interested in movies. The University of Cambridge
does not offer any graduate course in Film Studies but it runs an M.Phil in Screen
At the end of the last module features the Indian Cinema; a brief history, the
great masters of Indian cinema and Bollywood versus the parallel cinema. Of course,
it deserves much importance because the Cinema of India is the second largest film
industry in the world. By size and strength Hollywood may overcome Indian cinema
but when the variety of Indian films is looked at there is no other industry that can
stand along with Indian cinema. Almost all vernacular movie industries of India are
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very rich in content and structure; Bengali cinema is robust from its very long
tradition. The Hindi and Tamil Cinema have got a substantial number of global
audiences; Malayalam Cinema is always bounteous in its content and meaning. The
importance of Indian Cinema is very much authorized from the fact that the Oxford
University owns a rich collection of the Indian Cinema with more than 1500 DVDs.
The Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) was established by the
recommendation of the Film Enquiry Committee for imparting training in the art and
techniques of film making. The syllabus and the courses of studies were drawn up, in
the original instance, upon the advice of Remy Tessonneau, Director of the Paris
Institute des Hautes Etudes Cinematographiques (IDHEC) who paid a visit to Pune in
March 1961 and prepared a draft outline for teaching in five courses, viz. Screen-play,
The Institute used to run the acting course too but was stopped in 1978 since the
National School of Drama was running a parallel in New Delhi. Many of the present
luminaries like Subhash Ghai, Shatrughan Sinha, Jaya Bacchan are products of this
acting school.
Regular courses at the FTII started in 1961. The Television Training Wing
which started functioning in 1971 in New Delhi moved to Pune in October 1974. The
FTII became a society in October under the Registration of Societies Act of 1860,
The Film Wing of the Institute is intended to provide technical training in the
production films and to undertake research in different fields connected with films.
The main functions of the Institute are to: (a) Impart training in all aspects of film
production and other allied subjects (b) Grant diplomas and certificates to successful
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trainees who have completed the prescribed course and (c) Co-ordinate the activities
for training of film technicians in India. Intensive training, both theoretical and
cameras. The Institute has two studios and three projection theatres. There is also a
modern film processing laboratory for processing 35mm and 16mm black and white
film.
connected with film-making and subscribes to periodicals, both Indian and Foreign.
There is also a Film Library containing films both Indian and foreign, apart from
films made by the students. The Film Library has also a good collection of Indian and
Western Music discs. The FTII is the one of the five prestigious film schools left
around the world that teaches a proper film course funded by the Government. The
other four are in Australia, Cuba (which is on the verge of closing), Germany, and,
Moscow. The Institute is also the member of the famous CILECT (Centre
Cannes, France. The Institute is more famous for serious practioners of cinema and it
is always judged by the quality of its products. Personalities who occupy position of
eminence and success in the film industry speak in laudatory terms of the students
who have worked with them after taking their diplomas from the Institute. In
particular, the excellence of the technical training, given in the course of Motion
Picture Photography, Sound Recording and Sound Engineering and Editing has been
largely extolled. Almost all diploma holders in these subjects have secured
the skills are needed. Every year as much as 80 per cent of the awards at the National
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Film Festivals are swept by the past or present products of the Institute. Some of the
outstanding names who have passed out from the Institute are: Mani Kaul, Kumar
Shahani, and Feroz Chinoi who have won distinction as directors of feature films and
K.K. Mahajan, S.K. Nag and S.M. Dubey as motion picture cameramen. B.S. Biswas
and Narendra Singh won fame in sound recording whereas Subhash Ghai, Rehana
Sultan, Navin Nischal, Anil Dhawan and Rakesh Pandey have distinguished
themselves in motion picture acting. In the field of documentaries and short films,
distinguished themselves. The Trade Shows held by the Institute have kept the
Industry informed about the kind of work which the students are capable of achieving
The three year graduate courses in film and television at the FTII are provided
Direction, Animation and Computer Graphics and Feature Film Screenplay Writing
and all of them are highly promising and even foreigners come there to get a degree.
Courses offered in television alone are One Year Certificate courses in Direction,
The Government of India established the famous Satyajit Ray Film &
of Information and Broadcasting. The Institute was subsequently registered under the
West Bengal Societies Registration Act, 1961. Located at Kolkata and named after the
legendary film maestro Satyajit Ray, the Institute, the second of its kind in the
Television. Besides offering regular full time courses, the Institute has plans to
films. In addition, research work on film and television related issues are also in the
offing.
Integrated Module (which is the first year for all students of the 3-year PG Diploma
programme) as well as conducting the 2-year specialisation module (i.e. 2nd and 3rd
years for those who opt for `direction & screenplay writing). The Integrated Module is
specialisation department (Direction, Camera, Editing and Sound) and the inter-
development of this art form. Specialisation starts with a series of theory classes and
directorial process. Exercises are designed to develop narrative skills and ability to
construct mise-en-scene (an expression used in theatre and film to describe the design
workshops on various aspects of directorial skills and strategies. The department has a
viewing room, a computer lab and a basic post-production set-up. Apart from the
Gopalkrishnan, K Hariharan, Rina Mohon, Jiri Menzel, Vikas Desai, Kamal Swarup,
music/song recording studio with permanent and temporary booths, a mixing studio, a
background and Foley recording studio, two dedicated digital workstations, three
Digital Audio Workstations (DAW) and a digital workstation with surround mixing
facility. All the studios are equipped with the most modern and sophisticated
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acoustics and electronics are also part of the syllabus to make a complete sound
recordist in the true sense. Many specialisations are offered at the institute in
the association of the world's major film and television schools. Its goals are to
provide a means for the exchange of ideas among member schools, and to help them
understand the future of education for creative personnel in film, television, and
regional and international co-operation among its member schools, and to the
encouragement of film and television training in the developing world. CILECT has a
contributor to cultural and communication development. The first article of its statutes
pledges the membership to give help and advice to all who have need of audio-visual
and research. The CILECT was founded in Cannes in 1955 with the intention of
stimulating a dialogue among film schools in the deeply divided world of those times.
Its membership was drawn from eight countries: Britain, Czechoslovakia, France,
Italy, Poland, Spain, the Soviet Union and the United States. By the year
2009, CILECT had grown to include 143 institutions from 58 countries from the five
continents. A significant number of the world's leading film and television makers are
maintaining the standards of teaching and learning in its member schools, and to
artistic, economic, social, and technological change so too has CILECT. Over the
years, it has continuously reviewed its activities and adapted its programmes to
contemporary needs. With the relaxation of international tensions among the great
powers, the diminishing of national frontiers and the emergence of new technologies
The Cinema of India consists of films produced across India, including the
cinematic culture of Mumbai along with the cinematic traditions of provinces such as
Bengal, Assam, Orissa, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Punjab, Kerala and Andhra Pradesh.
Indian films came to be followed throughout Southeast Asia and the Middle East,
where modest dressing and subdued sexuality of these films was found to be
United Kingdom and the United States continued to give rise to international
About 700 of the total films produced in India a year, 300 each are in Telugu
and Hindi, while the rest are in other languages. However, Hindi films account for
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about half of the total revenue generated by cinema in India. The provision of 100%
foreign direct investment has made the Indian film market attractive for foreign
enterprises such as 20th Century Fox, Sony Pictures, and Warner Bros. Prominent
Indian enterprises such as Zee and UTV also participated in producing and
distributing films. Tax incentives to multiplexes have aided the multiplex boom in
India. By 2003 as many as 30 film production companies had been listed in the
National Stock Exchange of India, making the commercial presence of the medium
felt. In the 21st century, Indian cinema, along with the American and Chinese film
industries, became a global enterprise. Enhanced technology paved the way for
the manner in which content reached the target audience. Indian cinema found
markets in over 90 countries where films from India are screened. The country also
Mira Nair, Deepa Mehta etc. found success overseas. The Indian government
extended film delegations to foreign countries such as the United States of America
and Japan while the country's Film Producers Guild sent similar missions throughout
Europe.
In India film remains the most popular as well as the cheapest form of mass
entertainment. Yet, film studies as a discipline has not really caught the imagination
choice worldwide, I realized that there was only one university in India offering a
It should be noted that film studies has little to do with film production, for
which we do have a few reputed institutions in India. The Film and Television
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Institute of India (FTII), Pune, and Mass Communication Research Centre (MCRC),
New Delhi, are only two examples. Film studies is a broad-based interdisciplinary
programme that examines films as both high art and popular culture, as aesthetic
experience and as cultural industry, as art forms and as an innovative and developing
technology with cultural, social and political significance. Film studies , in short, is all
Film studies as a discipline began in the 1960s, with the increased availability
of films on the 16mm format. The more portable format of 16mm made films
available for scholarly analysis in the same way that printed texts had made the study
of 'literature' possible. Still, 16mm projection limited the mode of engagement with
film texts, which were typically screened once, and then only subsequently discussed.
analysis, given that they were in print form. The academic study of film and other
visual media expanded considerably in the 1980s, when video was introduced. VHS
tapes made films not only readily available for classroom screening, but also for
relatively effortless reviewing and close analysis, given the ease with which one could
pause, rewind and fast-forward. The effect of video technology on the discipline of
film studies cannot be underestimated, and in the last two decades the number of film
dramatically, and the discipline has become firmly established within academia.
New digital video and computer technologies, specifically DVD, have further
increased the modes of engagement, and offer new possibilities for film and media
teaching and research. Digital projectors have provided teachers and researchers with
more opportunities to subject such material to critical analysis, and offer more
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pedagogical possibilities, allowing for creative engagement with high quality images
presented on classroom screens. With computers, it has become relatively easy to shift
digital material from one format to another, to make copies, clips and excerpts from
original sources for the purpose of study, analysis and critique, and for representation
Digital technology also made it easier to archive and store films digitally.
Most of the films of Satyajit Ray, for example, have been digitally archived and are
now readily available in Western classrooms. Institutions like the Yale Centre for
Media and Instructional Innovation (yalecmi2) and Stanford Centre for Innovation in
technologies to make the pedagogy and research within film studies more effective in
its many economic sections during the early twentieth century. Tickets were made
affordable to the common man at a low price and for the financially capable
cinema halls as this affordable medium of entertainment was available for as low as
tailored to appeal to these masses. The young Indian producers began to incorporate
elements of India's social life and culture into cinema and brought with them ideas
from across the world. This was also the time when global audiences and markets
became aware of India's film industry. Ardeshir Irani released Alam Ara, the first
Indian talking film, on March 14, 1931. Following the inception of 'talkies' in India
some film stars were highly sought after and earned comfortable incomes through
acting. As sound technology advanced the 1930s saw the rise of music in Indian
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cinema with musicals such as Indra Sabha and Devi Devyani marking the beginning
The period from the late 1940s to the 1960s is regarded by film historians as
the 'Golden Age' of Indian cinema. Some of the most critically acclaimed Indian films
of all time were produced during this period. In commercial Hindi Cinema, examples
of famous films at the time include the Guru Dutt films Pyaasa (1957) and Kaagaz Ke
Phool (1959) and the Raj Kapoor films Awaara (1951) and Shree 420 (1955). These
films expressed social themes mainly dealing with working-class urban life in India;
Awaara presented the city as both a nightmare and a dream, while Pyaasa critiqued
the unreality of city life. Some of the most famous epic films of Hindi cinema were
also produced at the time, including Mehboob Khan's Mother India (1957), which
was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, and K.
believed to have inspired the Hollywood film The Dirty Dozen (1967). Madhumati
(1958), directed by Bimal Roy and written by Ritwik Ghatak, popularized the theme
The period also saw the emergence of a new Parallel Cinema movement,
mainly led by Bengali cinema. Early examples of films in this movement include
Chetan Anand's Neecha Nagar (1946), Ritwik Ghatak's Nagarik (1952), and Bimal
Roy's Two Acres of Land (1953), laying the foundations for Indian neorealism and the
"Indian New Wave". Pather Panchali (1955), the first part of the The Apu Trilogy
(1955-1959) by Satyajit Ray, marked his entry in Indian cinema. The Apu Trilogy
won major prizes at all the major international film festivals and led to the 'Parallel
Cinema' movement being firmly established in Indian cinema. Its influence on world
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cinema can also be felt in the "youthful coming-of-age dramas that have flooded art
houses since the mid-fifties" which "owe a tremendous debt to the Apu trilogy".
Satyajit Ray and Ritwik Ghatak went on to direct many more critically-acclaimed 'art
films', and they were followed by other acclaimed Indian independent filmmakers
such as Mrinal Sen, Adoor Gopalakrishnan, Mani Kaul and Buddhadeb Dasgupta.
During the 1960s, Indira Gandhi's intervention during her reign as the Information
Some of the Indian films from ‗the Golden Age of Indian Cinema‘ are often
included among the greatest films of all time in various critics' and directors' polls. A
number of Satyajit Ray films appeared in the Sight & Sound Critics' Poll, including
The Apu Trilogy (ranked 4 in 1992), The Music Room (ranked 27 in 1992), Charulata
(ranked 41 in 1992) and Days and Nights in the Forest (ranked 81 in 1982). The 2002
Sight & Sound critics' and directors' poll also included the Guru Dutt films Pyaasa
and Kaagaz Ke Phool (at 160), the Ritwik Ghatak films Meghe Dhaka Tara (ranked
231) and Komal Gandhar (ranked 346), and Raj Kapoor's Awaara, Vijay Bhatt's
Baiju Bawra, Mehboob Khan's Mother India and K. Asif's Mughal-e-Azam all tied at
346. In 1998, the critics' poll conducted by the Asian film magazine Cinemaya
included The Apu Trilogy (ranked 1), Ray's Charulata and The Music Room (both at
11), and Ghatak's Subarnarekha (at 11). In 1999, The Village Voice top 250 "Best
Film of the Century" critics' poll also included The Apu Trilogy (ranked 5). In 2005,
The Apu Trilogy and Pyaasa were also featured in Time magazine's "All-TIME" 100
Unlike Hollywood and any other world cinema, Indian Cinema has got a
spectacular variety. Indian cinema is not confined to a single language; it is very rich
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in a quite large number of highly developed regional and vernacular languages like
Malayalam, Hindi, Oriya, Bengali, Guajarati, Kannada, and Thelugu etc. some of the
regional cinema is confined to the state where that language is spoken but some of
them have national and international acceptance. The Hindi film ‘Lagaan’ by Aamir
Khan has won Oscar nomination but failed in winning it. ‘The Slumdog Millionaire’
directed by the British filmmaker Danny Boyle had won seven Oscar awards in 2008.
Some of the Hindi movies and Bengali movies had entry in various film festivals
across the world. Indian music also gained much global access; latest of them are
syllabus for the students to watch. Movies like ‗Bicycle Thieves‘, ‗Battleship
Potemkin‘ and ‗The Colour of Paradise‘ are must watch films for their artistic merits
and international recognition. This will undoubtedly give the students an outlook on
good movies. Some of the Malayalam movies listed are of certain qualities. A lot
many films should have been included in the list form various languages and
countries so that the students will get a better idea about global cinema on the whole.
An investigation into the movies given in the list is a necessity here, before an
The listed film ‗Bicycle Thieves’, originally Italian ‗Ladri di biciclette’, also
known as The Bicycle Thief, is a 1948 Italian neorealist film directed by Vittorio De
Sica, tells the story of a poor man searching the streets of Rome for his stolen bicycle,
that he needs for work. The film is based on the novel of the same name by Luigi
Bartolini and was adapted for the screen by Cesare Zavattini. It stars Lamberto
Maggiorani as the poor man Antonio Ricci, searching for his lost bicycle and Enzo
Staiola as his son Bruno Ricci. The film is frequently in the lists of the best films ever
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made. It was given an Academy Honorary Award in 1950, and, just four years after its
release, was deemed the greatest film of all time by the magazine Sight & Sound's poll
of filmmakers and critics in 1952. The film has been placed sixth as the greatest ever
made in Sight & Sound's latest directors' poll, conducted in 2002, and tops the BFI list
post-World War II economy of Italy. With no money and a wife and two children to
support, Antonio Ricci is desperate for work. He is delighted at last to get a good job
of hanging up posters, but on the sole condition that he has a bicycle for work. His
wife Maria sells their bedsheets in order to get money for a bicycle from the
pawnbroker. They get one, but it is stolen by a young thief who snatches it when he is
hanging up a poster. At the end of the film, in one of the most resonant scenes,
Antonio is sitting on the curb outside the packed football stadium. He looks at the
bicycles parked outside the stadium and as he cradles his head in despair, a fleet of
bicycles mockingly speeds past him. After some time, struggling with the thought,
whether to steal one for himself, he decides to snatch one that he spots outside an
apartment. Unluckily, he is seen taking the bike and caught by a crowd who slap and
humiliate him in front of his son. He is taken to the police station but after seeing
how upset Bruno Ricci is, the owner of the bicycle declines to press charges. The film
ends with the pair dolorously trudging uphill, with Antonio clutching Bruno's hand
and those both reduced to tears of frustration and shame. Antonio and his family now
longer any better than a thief. This will certainly leave something indelible in the
minds of the viewers. By watching this film the students will come to know the
pathetic condition of unemployment prevailed in Europe after the World War II.
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Eisenstein that presents a dramatised version of the mutiny occurred in 1905 when the
crew of the Russian battleship Potemkin rebelled against their oppressive officers of
the Tsarist Regime. The Battleship Potemkin has been called one of the most
influential propaganda films of all time, and was named the greatest film of all time at
the World's Fair at Brussels, Belgium, in 1958. Eisenstein wrote the film as a
revolutionary propaganda one, but also used it to test his theories of "montage". The
experimenting with the effect of film editing on audiences, and Eisenstein attempted
to edit the film in such a way as to produce the greatest emotional response, so that
the viewer would feel sympathy for the rebellious sailors of the Battleship Potemkin
and hatred for their cruel overlords. In the manner of most propaganda, the
characterization is simple, so that the audience could clearly see with whom they
should sympathize. The film is composed of five sequences; (1) Men and Maggots in
which the sailors protest at having to eat rotten meat; (2) Drama at the Harbour in
which the sailors mutiny and their leader, Vakulynchuk, is killed; (3) A Dead Man
Calls for Justice in which Vakulinchuk's body is mourned over by the people of
Odessa; (4) The Odessa Staircase in which Tsarist soldiers massacre the Odessans;
and (5)The Rendezvous with a Squadron in which the squadron ends up joining the
sailors' side. It would tremendously persuade the students opting film studies by
studying the films and the biography of Eisenstein. This film will take the students to
Potemkin failed to attract masses of viewers, but the film was also released in a
the Soviet Union and overseas, the film shocked audiences, but not so much for its
political statements as for its use of violence, which was considered graphic by the
standards of the time. The film's potential to influence political thought through
emotional response was noted by Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, who
called Potemkin a marvellous film without equal in the cinema and anyone who had
no firm political conviction could become a Bolshevik after seeing the film.
poignant tale; the story is completely overwhelmed by the picture's lush visuals. The
narrative involves a poor father, Hossein Mahjoub, who feels unable to cope with his
bright, brave blind boy, so he takes the boy to his paternal grandmother to live. The
boy's sisters already live with her. In a mountain meadow bursting with colorful
find his granny (Salime Feizi). His two, sisters (Elham Sharifi and Farahnaz Safari)
form his advance party. Dressed in colorful, native Iranian costumes, they find his
granny and lead her to the tree behind which he is hiding. The movie consists of small
vignettes. A typical one concerns a baby bird, which Mohammad hears crying in the
grass. Digging slowly, he locates the bird under some leaves. Using his acute sense of
hearing, he climbs a tree until he discovers the mother bird wailing away in her nest.
After uniting mother and son, Mohammad slowly retreats to the relative safety of the
ground. Most scenes celebrate the joys of the Iranian countryside, where the film is
set. Clouds float by, woodpeckers peck and rain pours. The problem with all of this
pastoral beauty is that, with the absence of much dialog, the picture is frequently
sleep-inducing. The gripping ending makes the film much more intense than its PG
After the Islamic Revolution in 1978, his interest in cinema brought him to
act in various films, notably Boycott (1985) from Mohsen Makhmalbaf. His debut as a
director and screenwriter is marked by Baduk (1992), his first feature film that was
presented at the Directors Fortnight in Cannes. Children of Heaven (1997) won the
"Best Picture" at Montreal International Film Festival and was nominated for Best
Foreign Film Academy Award. The Color of Paradise (1999) has also won the "Best
Picture" award at Montreal International Film Festival. This film has been selected as
one of the best 10 films of year 2000 by Time Magazine and the Critics Picks of the
New-York Times. "Baran" has won several major awards worldwide, notably the
"Best Picture" award at the 25th Montreal World Film Festival and nominated for the
European Film Academy Award. In 2001, during the Afghanistan war, he produced
which won the Fipresci Award at Thessaloniki Festival. In 2005, he directed "The
Willow Tree" that won four awards at the 2005 Fajr Festival in Tehran.
The documentary film suggested ‘9/11’ (2002 )is about the September 11,
2001 attacks in New York City, in which two planes crashed into the buildings of the
World Trade Center. The film was directed by Jules and Gedeon Naudet, and NY
firefighter James Hanlon. The inclusion of this class of documentary film will
certainly influence the students to impart knowledge among the viewers while
the students know about the Japanese culture and mythology. It is a 1990 magical
realism film based on actual dreams of the director, Akira Kurosawa, at different
stages of his life and it is based more on imagery than on dialogue. The dreams are
eight separate segments in the following order: Sunshine through the Rain, The Peach
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Orchard, The Blizzard, The Tunnel, Crows, Mount Fuji in Red, Village of the
of having bagged eight Oscars in all. This 2008 British film directed by Danny Boyle,
adaptation of the novel Q & A (2005) by Indian author and diplomat Vikas Swarup.
Set and filmed in India, the film tells the story of a young man from the slums of
(Kaun Banega Crorepati in the Hindi version) and exceeds people's expectations,
thereby arousing the suspicions of the game show host and of law enforcement
officials.
After its world premiere at Telluride Film Festival and subsequent screenings
at the Toronto International Film Festival and the London Film Festival, Slumdog
critical acclaim. It later had a nationwide grand release in the United Kingdom on
9 January 2009 and in the United States on 23 January 2009. It was premiered in
Mumbai on 22 January 2009. Slumdog Millionaire was nominated for ten Academy
Awards in 2009 and won eight, the most for any film of 2008, including Best Picture,
Best Director, and Best Adapted Screenplay. It also won seven BAFTA Awards
(including Best Film), five Critics' Choice Awards, and four Golden Globes. Slumdog
Millionaire has stirred controversy concerning language use, its portrayals of Indians
Slumdog Millionaire is highly acclaimed, named in the top ten lists of various
newspapers. The film also won seven of the eleven BAFTA Awards for which it was
nominated, including Best Film; all four of the Golden Globe Awards for which it
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was nominated, including Best Drama Film; and five of the six Critics' Choice
Awards for which it was nominated. The much acclaimed title sequence has been
honoured by a nomination at the prestigious 2009 Rushes Soho Shorts Festival in the
'Broadcast Design Award' category in competition with the likes of the Match of the
Day Euro 2008 titles by Aardman and two projects by Agenda Collective.
Malayalam writer Paul Zacharia. The film explores the master-slave dialectic in a
obeys all the orders of his master, whether it is to make his own wife sexually
available to his master or in killing Pattelar's kindly wife, Saroja. When Pattelar
escapes to a jungle, due to his own deeds, Thommy escorts him like a pet. But when
Pattelar gets killed Thommy exults in freedom.Vidheyan won the State Film awards
for best film and best director for Adoor Gopalakrishnan. Mammooty won the
National Film award for Best Actor for this film in 1993. It also won the Netpac
Award at the Rotterdam International Film Festival, along with the Interfilm Award -
1987), a Malayali filmmaker and screenwriter. The story revolves around the
incidents following the death of a young naxalite, upon whose death his friends travel
to the village where his mother lives to inform her of the death of her only son. The
and fiction, the film maker shot many actual leftist political strikes that took place in
Kerala during that time. Amma Ariyan is considered to be a complex movie. Since its
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release in 1986, critics have read several layers of meaning into its obvious simple
layer of story. The incidents that led to the production of Amma Ariyan are as striking
This is not a very authoritative analysis of the course structure of Film Studies
of Kannur University, but there is a feeling that some justice has been done. Quite a
lot more of the world‘s best movies from all genres could have been included as must
watch movies but there is certain limitation. A suggested list of the best movies is
given at the end of this chapter after the analysis of the syllabus of the Film Studies of
Kannur and Calicut universities. As the next step of the proposed research work, the
course structure of Film Studies of the University of Calicut is being analysed in the
following section. What is found in common with the two course structures is that
many of the movies suggested for the students to watch are common in name and
genre.
areas like the inclusion of the world‘s best films for the students to watch. Module I of
the Film Studies of University introduces the terminology used in the art of
filmmaking like mise en scene, long takes, deep focus, close/medium/long shots etc.
This will help the students to know how a film is shot using different camera
techniques rather than sitting in front of the television set or in a theatre to enjoy a
movie. By showing certain selected scenes from movies to illustrate these shots and
other film techniques, an interest could be enkindled in the minds of the students with
4. Charulatha-Indian Classic
5. Rashomon-Asian Classic-Japanese Cinema
6. Chemmeen-Malayalam Classic
Reading List
1. Amy Villarejo. Film Studies: The Basics. London & New York
Routledge. 2007
2. Warren Buckland. Teach Yourself Film Studies, London, Hadden.
3. Virginia Wright Wexman A History of Film Delhi, Pearson
4. Susan Hayward. Key Concepts in Cinema Studies London Routledge.
5. J. Dudley Andrews The Major Film Theories: An Introduction New
Delhi Oxford
6. Michael Silverman (eds) ‘Elements of Literature’ The Elements of Film.
New Delhi, OUP Pages 1451-1491
The editing part of module I explains the various methods of editing and
montage; these are needed as for a student to have some basic information on editing
that is the internal work of movie. But to teach the students the different types of cuts
and rules the college should have well-facilitated studios or at least the students must
be taken to an outside studio where these amenities are provided. But it all seems
impossible in the context of the colleges here in Kerala and the government is not
Module II discusses the various film genres like the narrative, avant-garde,
documentary, thriller, horror, fantasy, historical and animation movies. But the
strange thing is that not many movies have been suggested that belong to these
genres. Module III introduces the major movements in the history of film like the
silent era, classic Hollywood cinema, Neo-Realism and French New Wave; the
inclusion of the film theories by celebrated filmmakers like Sergei Eisenstein, Andre
Bazin, and Laura Mulvey will give the course an international prospect, though very
limited.
horror; Horror Films are unsettling films designed to frighten and panic, cause dread
and alarm, and to invoke our hidden worst fears, often in a terrifying, shocking finale,
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Horror films effectively center on the dark side of life, the forbidden, and strange and
alarming events. They deal with our most primal nature and its fears: our nightmares,
our vulnerability, our alienation, our revulsions, our terror of the unknown, our fear of
primitive, and revolting traits that simultaneously attract and repel us are featured in
the horror genre. Horror films are often combined with science fiction when the
threatened by aliens. The fantasy and supernatural film genres are not synonymous
with the horror genre, although thriller films may have some relation when they focus
on the revolting and horrible acts of the killer/madman. Horror films are also known
as chillers, scary movies and the macabre. Some old movies just are not scary
anymore-times, techniques and audiences have moved on. Yet there are some classic
films that can still provide a genuine jolt, and are well worth the ride. Across the
genres of suspense, horror, science fiction or the supernatural, here are some of the
best chillers from the 1960s and 70s. Be warned - these are not for the kids. The
Exorcist (1973) still scares the willies out of people every time they see it. A very
nasty demon possesses an innocent young girl, and the Catholic Church tries to cast it
out. Be warned that the restored director's cut of The Exorcist has even more deeply
The world‘s first horror movie was about only two minutes long, titled Le
Manoir Du Diable (1896) translated The Devil’s Castle and was directed by the
French filmmaker Georges Meiles; it was the predecessor of the later vampire films.
Another more memorable and influential; of the early films was Germany‘s silent
expressionistic landmark classic, Das Kabinett des Doktor Caligari (1919) translated
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The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari from the director Robert Wiene, about a ghost-like
hypnotist-therapist in a carnival named Dr. Caligari (Werner Kraus) who calls pale-
skinned, lanky, black leotard-wearing Cesare (Conrad Veidt, later known for his
haunted murderer), from a state of sleep. The shadowy, disturbing, distorted, and
cityscapes, was shot in a studio. It was brought to Hollywood in the 1920s, and later
influenced the classic period of horror films in the 1930s - introducing many standard
horror film conventions. As with many classic films (i.e., Invasion of the Body
Snatchers (1956), the original story was altered (due to its insinuation that "authority"
epilogue and prologue) was added to soften its message. This made the film appear to
Silent Films are those films of the early 19th century that were without
synchronized sound, from the earliest film (around 1891), until 1927, when the first
'talkie', The Jazz Singer (1927) was produced, although there were a few other 'silents'
later on, such as City Lights (1931). Calling them silent films is something of a
misnomer - movie theatres and other dream palaces provided pianists, wurlitzers, and
other sound machines, and some films were produced with complete musical scores.
Most early silents were accompanied with a full-fledged orchestra, organist or pianist
to provide musical background and to underscore the narrative on the screen. Some
even had live actors or narrators. Unfortunately, many of the early classics have been
lost to decomposing nitrate film bases and outright destruction. Many early silent
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films were dramas, epics, romances, or comedies (often slapstick). One-reelers (10-12
minutes) soon gave way to four-reel feature-length films. Early masters of cinema
during the silent years included Cecil B. De Mille, known for his epics such as The
Ten Commandments (1923), Erich Von Stroheim's dramatic tale of the degenerative
effects of avarice in Greed (1924), King Vidor's war drama The Big Parade (1925)
and his simple yet dramatic story The Crowd (1928) of a young couple in the city
his silent melodramatic masterpiece Sunrise (1927). The early pioneering director D.
W. Griffith was often identified with epics including: the Civil War saga The Birth of
Classic Films are often distinguished as unique works of cinema that have
transcended time and trends, with indefinable quality. Classic films are often
universal favorites that hold up after repeated rescreenings. Classics are renowned
films of first rank, reference points in film mythology, or films that have become a
part of American cultural folklore. Given here are some examples of real classic
movies: Citizen Kane (1941) Gone with the Wind (1939) Casablanca (1942) Grand
verite) are on some actual events, personality, and place etc. Today, documentaries
have branched out and took many forms since their early beginnings and some of
forms include the following: 'biographical' films about a living or dead person
(Madonna, John Lennon, Muhammad Ali - When We Were Kings (1996), Robert
Crumb, Stephen Hawking in A Brief History of Time (1992), or Glenn Gould) and the
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Among the six movies given for case studies, two are also suggested in Film
becomes a justice hereto examine the four remaining movies. The Godfather , also
known as Mario Puzo's The Godfather is a 1972 American drama film based on the
1969 novel of the same name by Mario Puzo and directed by Francis Ford Coppola. It
stars Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, James Caan, and Diane Keaton. The story spans ten
years from 1945 to 1955 and chronicles the fictional Italian-American Corleone crime
family. Two sequels followed: The Godfather Part II, in 1974, and The Godfather
Part III in 1990. The Godfather received Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best
Actor, and Best Adapted Screenplay, and has been selected for preservation in the
United States National Film Registry. In addition, it is ranked as the second greatest
film in American cinematic history, behind Citizen Kane, on the AFI's 100
Years...100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition) list by the American Film Institute.
Lonely Wife, is a 1964 film by Satyajit Ray, based upon the novella Nastanirh (The
Mukherjee and Sailen Mukherjee. It tells the story of a lonely housewife, known as
Charu (Madhabi Mukherjee), who lives a wealthy, secluded and idle life in 1870's
Calcutta. Her husband, Bhupati (Sailen Mukherjee), runs a newspaper, The Sentinel,
and spends more time at work than with his wife. However, he notices that Charu is
lonely, and asks his cousin, Amal (Soumitra Chatterjee), to keep her company. Amal
is a writer and is asked to help Charu with her own writing. However, after some
time, Charu and Amal's feelings for each other move beyond those of a mentoring
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relationship. Charulata won Satyajit Ray his second Silver Bear for Best Director at
the Berlin International Film Festival in 1964. He had won the same award in the
previous year with Mahanagar. Charulata also won the Golden Lotus Award for Best
the characters and plot). Rashomon can be said to have introduced Kurosawa and
Japanese cinema to Western audiences, and is considered one of his masterpieces. The
film won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, and also received an Academy
Honorary Award at the 24th Academy Awards. The film depicts the rape of a woman
and the apparent murder of her husband through the widely differing accounts of four
witnesses, including the rapist and, through a medium, the dead man. The stories are
mutually contradictory, leaving the viewer to determine which, if any, the truth is.
Chemmeen (1965) stayed in the minds of every Malayali right from its
release. Widely successful, it was translated into languages such as English, Russian,
German, Italian and French apart from several Indian languages. When it was adapted
into a film it had won critical acclaim and commercial success. The Malayalam
version of Chemmeen was directed by Ramu Kariat and it had won the Indian
President's Gold Medal for the Best Film of 1965. The inclusion of Chemmeen will
certainly help the students to have an idea of the history and development of
me over e-mail some of the worlds best classic movies; some of them belong to the
genre of horror or scary movies but they do have a touch of elegance. The movies that
she told me are The Exorcist (1973), The Night of the Living Dead (1968), Village of
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the Damned (1960), The Haunting (1963) and The Omen (1976). Another film analyst
named Rebecca Murray had suggested some were of the opinion that those horror
movies are indeed real classic films because they have stood the test of time.
The curriculum construction of Film Studies should not be biased in the sense
that students should not be made to believe that only old movies are good movies and
no new movies could be included in the genre called classics. Of course, classics bare
that name because the theme were very strong and those directors had taken so much
pains fighting with adverse circumstances and they finally brought them out to the
public to watch. The research work proposed also considers and recommends some of
the modern movies to be included in the syllabus of the Film Studies; students will
certainly enjoy them. The first of them is The Pianist, a 2002 film directed by Roman
Jewish pianist working for Warsaw Radio, sees his whole world collapse with the
outbreak of World War II and the invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939. After the
radio station is rocked by explosions from German bombing, Szpilman goes home
and learns that Great Britain and France have declared war on Nazi Germany. The
movie is full of captivating scenes about the Nazi atrocities over the Jews.
and acted by Charlton Heston that had won eleven Academy awards before Titanic
(1997, by James Cameron) did the same. Gladiator (2000) directed by Ridley Scott
and cast by Russell Crowe and Joaquin Phoenix, is definitely a must watch movie!
Saving Private Ryan, a 1998 movie directed by Steven Spielberg depicts the horrific
war scenes during the invasion of Normandy in World War II. Many of the battling
Shyamaprasad, and Thaniye (2007) by Babu Thiruvalla are some of the movies
students of Film Studies will need to watch from Malayalam. The Tamil movie
Subramaniapuram (2008) directed by Sashi Kumar and cast by Jai, Sashi Kumar and
Swati is a film that should be included in the best movies list of south India. K. Sasi‘s
Poo (2008) is a rare good film, with a girl protagonist, quite uncommon in south film
industry.
While these days it seems studios will make movies out of just about anything,
film producers of Hollywood have always found inspiration for great films from
novels. Whether classic literature from the 19th century or pulp novels featuring hard-
boiled private eyes, some great films have been made from novels. Here are some
written widely about movies from all eras for over 10 years and works as the senior
Emily Brontë‘s classic literary work, featuring the great Laurence Olivier playing a
former orphan taken into a wealthy family, who later grows up to love and be spurned
by his foster sister, Catherine (Merle Oberon). Made in the greatest year of
Hollywood‘s history, Wuthering Heights was a grand and sweeping romantic drama
that mainly stuck to the source material, sans the ending where Heathcliff and
Catherine walk off together hand-in-hand – the exact opposite of Brontë‘s original
that earned eight nominations at the Academy Awards and won the Oscar for Best
adaptations ever made directed by David Lean. The movie naturally deviated from its
source material. Numerous characters from Dickens‘ sprawling work; the death of
Pip‘s sister occurs early than in the novel and comes from illness; Miss Havisham
passes away during Pip‘s illness; and the ending occurs 11 years after the events in
the film. Still, Lean‘s adaptation was a stunning achievement that earned Oscar
nominations for Best Picture, Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay.
became a bestseller on the strength of his 1969 crime novel, The Godfather (1972),
which brought audiences inside the mafia world for the first time. With famed
producer and studio head Robert Evans at the helm, Paramount Pictures snatched up
the rights to the novel and hired a young, relatively inexperienced director named
Francis Ford Coppola to direct the epic crime drama starring Al Pacino, James Caan,
Robert Duvall, Diane Keaton, Talia Shire, John Cazale and Marlon Brando as Don
Vito Corleone. The iconic film was a triumph for all, winning Oscars for Coppola and
Paramount, while rejuvenating the career of the difficult Brando and becoming one of
Some of the Hitchcock movies are listed here according to the suggestion by
Rebecca Murray (a member of the San Diego Film Critics Society, a member of
Broadcast Film Critics Association, a group of professional movie critics whose votes
Made during his early career in Britain, The 39 Steps (1935) is stamped with
by an icy blonde who's not sure she can trust him. It's a spy mystery that jaunts across
the streets of London to the Scottish countryside, with a tight plot and clever dialogue.
The 39 Steps is an early Hitchcock suspense film made in Britain, with a number of
Hitchcockian themes that would be seen again in his American work, most notably
North by Northwest. Here, a charming hero wrongly accused of murder sets out on his
own to save jolly old England from a master spy, while literally handcuffed to a
pretty, icy blonde who can‘t stand him. Hitchcock had already made 18 films, but The
39 Steps brought him international fame and the attention of Hollywood (Rebecca
Murray, 2011).
failed nerve and lost love as Hitchcock's masterpiece movie. It's filmed in a dreamlike
haze on the oddly empty streets of San Francisco, as Jimmy Stewart pursues Kim
Novak, another elegant Hitchcock blonde, who seems to slip in and out of her dead
lovers who are made for each other, but can't quite come to a place of trust, and for
good reason. The plot's a little iffy, but that's not the point in this almost surreal tale.
You'll find yourself thinking back on its slow, dreamy scenes for days after you see it.
Received with mixed reviews when it came out in 1958, Vertigo is now viewed as one
of Hitchcock‘s masterpieces, a dreamlike tale of obsession and the hopeless search for
lost love. Among its requisite Hitchcockian elements: voyeurism, taut suspense, and a
gorgeous, ice-cool blonde. Filmed in locations around San Francisco that seem oddly
empty of life, Vertigo used camera angles and techniques innovative for its time, and
much copied in later years. The murder-mystery plot backbone would be hard to buy
from any other filmmaker, but with this Hitchcock film noir, the plot is beside the
point.
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Psycho (1960) is not Hitchcock's best film, but perhaps his most famous.
Shocking in its day, it seems tame by modern horror movie standards, but countless
horror movies owe a great deal to this classic Hitchcock film. Janet Leigh is a comely
criminal who rips off her boss and makes a very bad decision to spend a night at the
Bates Motel. There she meets Norman Bates, mild-mannered momma's boy and
serious psycho. He likes to spy on motel guests and gets a little agitated, which leads
Cary Grant, as an upright American agent and Ingrid Bergman as the daughter of a
German spy. Bergman - at heart an American patriot - is a notorious party girl and a
drinker. Grant recruits her as an agent to infiltrate a Nazi plot in Rio, and of course
falls in love with her. Cary lets her go off to serve her country in the arms of the chief
local Nazi, Claude Rains. Terrific sexual tension and nail-biting suspense, along with
great examples of Hitchcockian that serve both as plot devices and symbols.
TV news reporter, Laurie has worked for more than 20 years in Washington, DC as a
writer. During her career, she has written scripts and speeches for Hollywood stars
and celebrities from the worlds of movies, television, politics and science), a list that
might be useful to the undergraduate students taken film studies as an optional course.
bartender, a Bulgarian beauty and a blue parrot. Most of all, Casablanca has a great
love story. Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman are lovers torn apart by duty in
the usual suspects" and watch it for the first time or the 50th.
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Dr. Strangelove (1964) is a black comedy that deftly disembowels the idea
that nuclear war is winnable; Dr. Strangelove is a Cold War film that transcends its
time. Bleak, suspenseful, quirky and hugely funny, it's a reminder that not so long
ago, we all stood at the brink of global destruction and that it wouldn't take much to
Frankenstein (1931) is not the first Frankenstein film, but the first full-on
Whale, Frankenstein is in fact the name of the mad scientist and monster-maker. Then
unknown, Boris Karloff plays the nameless monster, who manages to evoke sympathy
from the audience despite his grotesque form, hideous face and shocking violence.
Dracula (1931) was a hit back in the day, but it really drags compared to many
of the terrific Dracula films that were to come. Nevertheless, it launched Bela Lugosi
as the first American movie version of the hypnotic, undead count and his blood-
drinking ways, and established the character in movie mythology. Lugosi is fun in the
role, and the film has some lovely cinematography, but he's just not as sexy as many
The Invisible Man (1933) is another entry in the mad scientist run amok genre,
the special effects in The Invisible Man hold up pretty well - a tribute to James
Whale's expert direction. A very young Claude Rains stars as the hero who is in fact
unseen for most of the film, causing mayhem among the villagers, laughing insanely
and plotting world domination. It's got Whale's touches of dark humour throughout,
old. One of the classic old horror/sci-fi movies from Universal Studios, The Invisible
Man is among the original mad scientist films. It features special effects that still hold
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up surprisingly well in the story of a young genius brought to insanity by his own
dangerous experiments.
beneficial for the students who learn it. It should not allow them to just watch films as
the students who have aspiration to become a film crew or actor. Most of the study
materials are inadequate in their description; many movies have been listed, but none
of them bears details of director, country, language etc. The books and essays
suggested too, do not cite the names of publishers, edition and year of publication and
so on. Perhaps the designers must have left it to the teachers and students. Today,
Malayalam movie industry is witnessing a lot more innovation that it is moving away
from the old-trodden path, which means introducing a lot of good directors and actors
who do not come from the so-called stardom. Examples for these are the movies titled
Salt and Pepper, Rithu, Asuravithu, Manushyamrugam, Traffic and all. A lot of daring
directors too come up with their own ideas who presented them impressively.
For those who opt film studies as a course for which they have a penchant to
achieve the maximum, the syllabus must be made very expansive. With the
mushrooming of too many channels the doors are open for them to find a career of
their choice. Though film studies is only one of the many courses the undergraduate
students have to study, there is no mistake in giving them the maximum information
and experience they would love to benefit from. That is why the syllabi of film studies
of both Kannur and Calicut Universities indeed have a lot to be included in them to
achieve the aims and objectives they wish their students must achieve.