Film Appreciation

During the 1970s, Shaw Brothers and Hammer Films sought to blend kung fu spectacle with traditional genres. The fruits of this endeavor – The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires and Shatter, both 1974 – were castigated by mainstream critics as idiosyncratic and incoherent. The films’ appropriation by cult audiences, however, is predicated precisely on their purported incoherence. This essay argues that incoherence constitutes a tacit and undertheorized criterion for cult movies, and – insofar as it is conceived as a homogenous phenomenon – tends to offer an uninformative barometer of a cult film’s value. In contrast, I propose several levels of coherence, the better to specify the cult film’s unities and disunities across a range of dimensions. Most centrally, I explore the alleged incoherence forged by fusing kung fu with the norms of horror (Legend) and crime thriller (Shatter). Arguing that both films obey canonized principles of storytelling, I go on to examine the effects that their apparent incoherence has upon the viewer’s experience. The essay also points toward the relevance of transnational coproduction for grasping both the viewer’s activity and the critical neglect of coherence in the Shaws-Hammer movies.

Adapting the  story of one of the greatest heroine’s in Literature  can be  a challenge  even for the smartest  film director.  Yet many  film makers  have  willingly  accepted the challenge and  have created  visual  narratives  of  Leo Tolstoy’s  master piece,  ANNA KARENINA  which  continues to be perceived  as  one of the finest  love stories  ever written.
This paper attempts an appreciation of the 1997 US film directed by Bernard Rose with Sophie Marceau  in the role of  Anna Karenina.  In appreciating the film, the  investigator examines how  Bernard Rose has exploited  mise-en-scene  viz; actors, lighting, décor, props, costume, music etc.  and used film techniques like  montage to create symbolism and  evoke  impressions which helps  transform  a  film into a work of art.
Key Words: Adaptation, Director, Mise-en-scene, Montage, Visualization

Objective: In the course " Understanding of cinema " , we will cover the history of film from its origin to the present day: with each lecture, we'll cover a period of the progress of film history, looking at developments in every decade through movies that were produced from the 1890s to the 2000s. Our overview will offer a compromise between depth and breadth. Each of the screenings will be provided with a brief introduction followed by an interactive discussion after the screening. There will be heavy emphasis on watching short and feature films so that we can more rigorously dissect their formal grammar in light of historical context. Our main goal is to make students familiar with: the basic language of film analysis and composition (editing, mise-en-scene, lighting, etc); a range of scholarship and epistemology specific to film (auteur theory, documentary, genre, philosophy of cinema, music, etc.); the broad social, institutional, historical developments of the medium over the last 120 years, the major textual elements of cinema (narrative, characterisation, plot, symbolism). In this course, we will evaluate films as texts and as works of art, focusing on developing vocabulary for discussing (and writing about) a film's aesthetic, historical, and cultural contributions, as well as interpreting films critically. The structure of the syllabus: Each unit will be divided into three parts: first part will deal with the historical point of view, second part will deal with the theories of filmmaking as well as philosophy of cinema, in third part we are having screenings which will cover the points from part one and part two. The successful student will: 1. Acquire a conceptual framework necessary to think, write, and speak about film. 2. Learn the basic concepts in cinematic language. 3. Gain an understanding of the philosophy of cinemas. 4. Be able to differentiate between form and content in a movie. 5. Gain an understanding of the history of films and film technologies. Themes of the subject: aesthetics, philosophy of cinema, music in movies, cinematic language, history of cinema, movies and painting, ethics of cinema.

Assamese cinema is about to attain nine long decades of its existence with a lot of promises while leaving a rich legacy on the way. Like any other film industry anywhere in the world, it has also seen good and bad times on the way. But it has learnt to take all of them in its stride and move ahead in a robust manner. Today, Assamese cinema has climbed new heights of glory acquiring even global accolades in addition to being already recognized as an entity to be taken seriously in the national domain as well. This long journey would not have been possible without ample contribution from generations of filmmakers, directors who did care enough to take the challenge of presenting good cinema to the society from time-to-time. Being a regional language cinema industry with comparatively lesser number of audiences till date, it has been able to achieve for itself a respectful position in the world of Indian cinema. And thereby contributing invaluable contents to the overall cinema movement of the country and also the world. This paper is an effort to trace the journey of Assamese films from its humble beginning to the present day era. And also examine the various milestones of the meaningful development to an established brand making its presence felt in a comfortable manner against all odds. So, Assamese cinema seems to have come of age.