Refine
Document Type
- Article (7) (remove)
Language
- English (7) (remove)
Has Fulltext
- yes (7)
Keywords
Institute
- Extern (1)
History films personalize, dramatize and emotionalize historical events and characters. They revive the past by exemplifying it in the present, engage ongoing discourses of history and as a result have proven to be the most influential medium in conveying history to large audiences. History films are regarded as an attractive, motivating and efficient (supplementary) teaching and learning medium in history as well as in foreign language classes. As part of the course "Historical Survey of Germany" (BA German-programme at University Putra Malaysia) history film projects on important periods and events in German history were conducted. The article introduces a film project on World War II and describes the pedagogical approach which aims to develop three core competencies of historical understanding – Content Knowledge, Historical Empathy/Perspective Recognition and Narrative Analysis. It discusses selected general findings provided as qualitative data in group and individual assignments. While the responses to questions related to Content Knowledge and Narrative Analysis show that students achieved higher competency levels, the participants showed shortcomings in the rational examination of historical characters, their perspectives and motivations for their actions. Time, practice and guidance can be identified as key factors in developing historical literacy competencies further.
The discipline of adaptation studies has come a long way from its academic inception in novel-to-film studies. Since George Bluestone's seminal 1957 study Novels into Film, often regarded as the starting point of modern day Anglo-American adaptation studies, the discipline has seen a continual widening of its methodology as well as of the material scholars are willing to regard as adaptations. Particularly since the turn of the 21st century and the increasing institutionalization of the discipline as distinct from literary or film studies, adaptation scholars have widened the scope to include a broad range of media, encompassing not only the traditional adaptations from novels and drama into film, but also novelizations of various other media, video game and comic adaptations, TV series, opera, theme parks and tie in vacations, and many more. Others have included the study of media franchises as dependent on adaptation. As part of this redefinition of the discipline, scholars have also widened their discussion to bring to the centre aspects that were not originally the main focus of adaptation researchers' comparative textual analyses, including industrial structures, legal frameworks, and, most frequently and emphatically, questions of intertextuality and the cultural and ideological embeddedness of adapted texts.
This psychophysiological study is the first to examine the relationship between emotional tears and emotional piloerection (i.e., goosebumps). Although both phenomena have been related to peak states of being moved, details about their temporal occurrence and the associated levels of physiological arousal have remained unknown. In our study, we used emotionally powerful film scenes that were self-selected by participants. Our findings show that even within peak moments of emotional arousal, a gradation of intensity is possible. The overlap of tears and goosebumps signifies a maximal climax within peak moments. On the side of the stimulus, we found that displays of prosocial behavior play a crucial role in the elicitation of tears and goosebumps. Finally, based on the results of a formal film analysis of the tears-eliciting clips provided by our participants, as compared to randomly extracted, equally long control clips from the same films, we show how the technical and artistic making of the clips was optimized for the display of social interaction and emotional expressions.
Nolan brings a fairly recognizable style to all his movies, often described as "dark" or "gritty." The tone is relentlessly serious, and the narratives are infused with the ambiguity and pessimism of film noir. His protagonists are, without exception, tortured, obsessed men, struggling with the loss of loved ones or past mistakes. Not only do these men face an uncaring world with murky morality, their sense of self is also unstable. To go along with the faulty memories and self-deceptions of his characters, Nolan also has a knack for misleading his audience with convoluted narratives. As Fisher puts it, he specializes in puzzles that can't be solved. 'Inception', to my mind, makes an excellent showcase for all these themes. Therefore, through an examination of its use of space and architecture as metaphors for the mind, I aim to determine the concept of the malleable self that underlies all of Nolan's movies.
Walter Salles is probably the most widely known Brazilian director and producer. This article offers a portrait of his work over the last two decades as part of the cinematic and cultural changes that took place in Brazil. It starts with a historical overview of Brazilian film history and will then take a closer look at the films directed by Salles and his activities as producer. By looking at the evolution of the Brazilian film industry in the last ten to fifteen years in terms of market structures as well as aesthetic qualities, two major references become apparent: the more (but not only) commercial oriented productions of Globo Filmes, which often meet public taste and rely on a well-proven television language; second, the movies of Walter Salles as well as the films produced by Videofilmes, a company run and founded in 1987 by him and his brother, the documentarist João Moreira Salles. Videofilmes not only fosters many of the somewhat marginal, smaller film projects, but also serves as support for more artistically orientated movies.
At the beginning of every story of murder there is always a body. If the murderer is a serial killer, there is, of course, more than one. More importantly, the bodies left by the serial killer are not likely to be intact and whole. What he leaves behind and what we, the audience, will get to see is the body in pieces, dismembered, scattered. A series of snapshots, partial views, and close-ups, inflicting cold sharp shocks, is all we may glimpse: the head of Benjamin Raspail floating in a jar of formaldehyde in The Silence of the Lambs, a finger removed by the serial killer from his landlord’s hand in Kalifornia, a ziploc bag of fingers recovered from a flooded drainpipe in When The Bough Breaks, a surgically severed hand used to leave misleading fingerprints on a wall at a crime scene in Seven.
The problematic economic situation in most parts of Russia today is nevertheless the ideal climate for the flourishing of the arts. Especially in St. Petersburg there grows a fascinating new experimental music scene, from Moscow we receive new impulses in literature such as the poet Alina Vituchnovskaja... Russian cinema always had a good reputation, and the new generation of Russian filmmakers clearly tries to keep up with it.