Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Disaster films History and criticism'
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1
Vermaak, Janelle Leigh. "Part one: "Horror versus terror in the body genre" : part two: "Silent planet"." Thesis, Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, 2007. http://hdl.handle.net/10948/636.
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This article seeks to investigate this balance and to interrogate the difference between horror and terror in an attempt to contribute to the development of a systematic genre typology. A brief history of the genre will be given, after which the focus will fall on contemporary Horror film, paying specific attention to the relationship between violence and horror, the theme of sacrificial violence, and the transgression of ‘natural’ laws. An eclectic approach is followed, drawing from literary theory, theology, psychology, and, of course, film theory.
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Graf, Matthew D. "The animation paradox : a study in believability." Virtual Press, 2008. http://liblink.bsu.edu/uhtbin/catkey/1397373.
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Animation has been an integral part of the entertainment industry for over seventy years. What is it about animated films that make them just as, or even more, captivating than live-action films? While animation is most typically associated with fantasy or escapism, there is certainly an element of reality exploration that causes animation to be more believable. Through examination of this and previous creative projects, it was found that a balance of fantasy and reality exploration, along with other key factors, help to make animation successful in relating to the viewer.Department of Telecommunications
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Guo, Yuqiao. "Post-disaster Transitional Housing for Displaced People." Scholarship @ Claremont, 2015. http://scholarship.claremont.edu/pomona_theses/124.
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Post-disaster displacement, with the increasing frequency and intensity of natural disasters, is quickly arising to become one of the most serious humanitarian challenges in the 21st century. As post-disaster housing spans several phases, the transitional housing phase is equally crucial as emergency sheltering and permanent housing: as dwellers remain in transitional housing projects up to years, their physical and emotional wellbeing is directly influenced by their surrounding built environment. Existing literature and practice have not paid enough attention to the built structures of post-disaster transitional housing. This thesis revisits past practices world-wide and architectural theory in the 20th century. Arguing that current transitional-housing design methodology is still deeply rooted in early 20th century Modernist ideologies, this thesis ties the missing link between architectural theory and humanitarian built environment design. Through examining theories and case studies, this thesis stresses the importance of approaching post-disaster transitional housing through the lens of architectural design, and makes suggestions for future improvements.
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Chow, Cheuk-wing, and 周卓穎. "Nostalgia, nature, and the re-enchantment of modern world in Hayao Miyazaki's anime." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 2012. http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B4839449X.
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The association between nostalgia, nature and disenchantment has been and still is a very common trope in cultural and literary studies (Saler 138) within the scope of modernity. In fact, it has almost become “a cliché of our time” (Saler 138) in which people often view modern experience as an oppressive status of disillusionment rather than a liberating condition of enlightenment.
Since this thesis aims to open up and point at different dimensions of modernity and become “part of a grandiose modernist project yet to be finished” (Hu 23-4), I would like to use Miyazaki’s works to argue that modernity is never a simple, one-sided condition of being ‘disenchanted’ as proclaimed by many scholars.
In order to pinpoint some of the contradictory impulsions and potentialities of the experience of modernity, this thesis would first start with a brief overview on the ideas of ‘disenchantment’ and ‘nostalgia’ and their relations to the experience of modernity.
The second part would be a general introduction to Miyazaki’s anime, briefly introducing his works in terms of style, content, characterization and such. In particular, I would like to point out how Miyazaki’s works have created alter-tales about disenchanted modernity by showing the multiple facets of modern life and exploring the possibility to (re)enchant modern experiences through his childlike protagonists and the fantastical form of anime.
Part three to five would be comprehensive textual analyses about Laputa: Castle in the Sky (1986), Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind (1984) and Spirited Away (2001) respectively, examining their relationships with and responses to the ambivalent experiences of modernity.
The concluding part of this thesis would reflect on the contribution as well as the limitation of my research in regards to the writing of modern experiences and the ongoing modernist project.published_or_final_version
Literary and Cultural Studies
Master
Master of Arts
5
Tso, Wing-bo, and 曹穎寶. "Representation of female vampires in Bram Stoker's "Dracula" and horror films." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 2004. http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B29940412.
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Gisler, Carolyn M. "Revisioning the documentary tradition from within : Patricia Gruben's Leylines (1993)." Thesis, McGill University, 1995. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=26689.
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Postmodernism, with its interrogation of reality and the im/possibility of representation, presented a legitimation crisis for the documentary which would potentially signal the end. Gauging by the renewed interest in the documentary tradition (in theory and practice) it is obvious that postmodernism had the reverse effect on documentary, freeing a filmmaking practice that had become hopelessly trapped within its own representational contradictions. In response to the challenge postmodernism presented, documentary theorists and filmmakers cleared a new space for documentary, and in the process reconsidered the limitations of Western epistemology and the ideal of 'representing reality'. This new space is reflected in the renewed interest in a new and more self-reflexive documentary theory and practice from the early 1980's onward. This essay will examine the transition which the documentary tradition has undergone in light of the shift from modernity to postmodernity: the shift from Grierson's heavily didactic social documentary to cinema verite and direct cinema and, finally, to the self-reflexive postmodern documentary. A textual analysis of Patricia Gruben's Leylines (1993), a recent postmodern documentary, will allow me to demonstrate how the contemporary documentary deals with the postmodern questions of history, representation, authority, knowledge, and subjectivity. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)
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Meachem, Dhugal. "Virtual worlds, non humans and power beams : a neoformalist analysis of the digital animation aesthetic in Hong Kong's mythical martial arts films." HKBU Institutional Repository, 2003. http://repository.hkbu.edu.hk/etd_ra/513.
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Ma, Ran, and 马然. "Chinese independent cinema and international film festival network at the age of global image consumption." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 2010. http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B46676314.
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Wong, King-tung, and 黃競東. "Reinventing the real: transfigurations of cinematic kung fu in the 21st century." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 2011. http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B47849885.
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Kung fu is a cinematic genre investing on the discourse of the “real”.
From Kwan Tak Hing, Bruce Lee, Jacky Chan, Jet Li to Donnie Yen, cinematic
representations of kung fu are inextricably intertwined with realism – real
techniques, real fighting and real body.
This paper is a theoretical reflection of “real kung fu” as a cultural
imaginary and its transfiguration since the 1950s. The discussion will focus on
recent developments of the genre in two major industries – digitalization of kung
fu in Hollywood and recent return of kung fu masters in Hong Kong through coproduction.
Through a parallel analysis of kung fu productions in a global context,
this project outlines and predicts possible reinventions of the genre in the first
decade of the 21st century.
On the one hand, the notion of “real kung fu” is reinvented by digital
technology. By applying Jean Baudrillard’s idea of “simulacra and simulation” to
the context of kung fu cinema, Leon Hunt’s tripartite scheme of authenticity and
Edward Said’s Orientalist discourse are (de/re)constructed in an age of digital
production. Through a scrutiny of The Matrix (1999) and Kung Fu Panda (2008),
I will demonstrate that the convergence of digital cinema and digital gaming
creates a new spectatorship that redefines kung fu with an alternative
understanding of body, time and space.
On the other hand, the Ip Man trilogy (2008-2010) and Legend of the Fist:
The Return of Chen Zhen (2010) show that there is a possible return of kung fu
masters in local martial arts co-productions. Instead of a nostalgic return to the
established genre in the 1970s, these realist kung fu films reinvent the genre by
synthesizing different paradigms of realist styles and renegotiating the longstanding
difficult relationship between nationalism and modernity.published_or_final_version
Comparative Literature
Master
Master of Philosophy
10
McMahon, Orlene Denice. "Listening to the French new wave : the film music and composers of postwar French art cinema." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2012. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.610716.
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Hu, Tze-yue Gigi. "Understanding Japanese animation : from Miyazaki and Takahata anime /." Thesis, Hong Kong : University of Hong Kong, 2002. http://sunzi.lib.hku.hk/hkuto/record.jsp?B24729954.
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McGinney, William Lawrence. "The Sounds of the Dystopian Future: Music for Science Fiction Films of the New Hollywood Era, 1966-1976." Thesis, connect to online resource, 2009. http://digital.library.unt.edu/permalink/meta-dc-9839.
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Johnson, Stacey. "Taking pictures, making movies and telling time : charting the domestication of a producing and consuming visual culture in North America." Thesis, McGill University, 1998. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=35900.
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The dissertation examines how image-making, a common pastime, was made common. It investigates the ways in which the production and consumption of images in the context of the North American family contributed to the development of a distinctly domestic and privatized visual culture, and the transformation of the home into a site for privatized spectatorship.Four cultural forms (No. 1 Kodak, Box Brownie, Cine Kodak and Cine Kodak 8) are specified in this development, all pioneered by the Eastman Kodak Company. The dissertation traces Eastman Kodak's direct involvement in the popularization of image practices. It analyzes strategies used by them to make this possible, namely an appeal to the becoming lifestyles of the bourgeois and middle-classes.
The analysis links the popularization of image-making and consuming practices to other popular amusements (i.e. cycling, cinema-going) to work against an artifact-centred analysis. Issues of gender and generation are critically evaluated as concepts used to instill image-making as a popular, family practice. Shifts in modern temporal and spatial experience, as well as mobility are also explored in relation to popular image-making.
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Belzile, Germain. "Documentaires québécois de 1970 à 1980, esthétique du montage." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 1997. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk3/ftp04/mq26159.pdf.
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Lam, Nga Li. "The poetics and sexual politics of the Shaws' huangmeidiao films." HKBU Institutional Repository, 2006. http://repository.hkbu.edu.hk/etd_ra/699.
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Kovacic, Mateja. "Technologies and paradigms of vision: from the scientific revolution of the Edo period to contemporary Japanese animation." HKBU Institutional Repository, 2016. https://repository.hkbu.edu.hk/etd_oa/317.
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This thesis is mainly concerned with uncovering the meanings and associations embedded in the field of popular culture production in Japanese and European sociocultural contexts, using a comparative approach to unearth the effects, materials, and paradigms of the technological and scientific discourses during the Scientific Revolution. Linking the fields of the anthropology of technology and science, popular culture, and material culture studies, the thesis offers a historical overview of the development of machines and visual technologies in the Edo period, arguing that visuality is the key to delayering the cultural history of technology and science in Japanese popular culture, animation in particular. The objective of this work, therefore, is to look at the assemblage of the scientific, technological, and philosophical discourses to unveil the cultural processes between optical regimes, scientific practices, and popular culture. In its emphasis on the interconnectedness of visual technologies and the field of popular culture production, the thesis asserts that scientific development, particularly under the influence of the Scientific Revolution and Japanese Rangaku scholarship, is closely tied with the function of entertainment in Japanese society. With the understanding of technology as a total social phenomenon that interlocks the material and the symbolic in a complex network, which produces meanings and associations, the thesis further stresses the view that intellectual history cannot be separated from material culture studies; it also grapples with a number of existing scholarships on the history of science, particularly their inattentiveness to cultural histories in their historical surveys of scientific development. Finally, this work closely examines Oshii Mamoru's Ghost in the Shell and its sequels and the anime TV series Psycho-Pass to explore the tangled responses to the ideologies of the Euro-American mode of modernity.
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Murphy, Caryn E. "Teen ages: Youth market romance in Hollywood teen films of the 1980s and 1990s." Thesis, University of North Texas, 2001. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc2749/.
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This thesis examines the differences between teen romantic comedy films marketed to Generation X teenagers in the 1980s and Generation Y teenagers in the 1990s, focusing on the presentation of gender roles, consumptive behavior, and family. The 1980s films are discussed within the social context of the Reagan era and the conservatism of the New Right. The 1990s films are examined as continuing a conservative sensibility, but they additionally posit consumption as instrumental to achieving an idealized romance. Romantic comedy is traditionally a conservative genre, but these films illustrate female liberation through consumption. The source of difference between the cycles of teen romantic comedy is attributed to the media's attempt to position Generation Y teenagers as ideal consumers.
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Insell, Maria Katherine. "Avant-garde film theory and praxis : an historical analysis of the narrative/anti-narrative debate." Thesis, University of British Columbia, 1988. http://hdl.handle.net/2429/28074.
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This analysis of the narrative/anti-narrative debate in avant-garde film theory and praxis is contextualized in terms of the developments in Modernism in the visual and plastic arts. The problems raised by the aesthetic strategies formal autonomy versus narrative appropriation are explored by examining several discrete historical paradigms rather than following a strict linear historical chronology of the development of Modernism and avant-garde practices. Therefore the late 1930's East/West debates between the four writers associated with the Frankfurt school were discussed because their discourses reveal a spectrum of possibilities which span each end of this polarized autonomy/efficacy argument. The discourses look at the issues of production aesthetics and reception aesthetics also. Within the parameters of East/West debates, the positioning of the subject in terms of "distracted habit" or "praxis" are critical considerations to a reception aesthetic. Another historical paradigm for this debate was the writing and film practice which emerged from the nexus of the events of May 1968. The East/West debates informed this writing and the development of the aesthetic questions raised by Peter Wollen in the "Two Avant-Gardes." Here the important issues of materialism, ontology, and the development of human perception are raised. The return to narrative is represented by the "second" avant-garde's film practice (Godard, Straub etc.) and informs the issues of new narrative in feminist film practices. This is narrative with a difference however. Here questions of language and the production of culture are critically examined and naturally the narrative/anti-narrative debate continues. Finally, these issues are brought foreword to the contemporary context and related specifically to the production of avant-garde film in Canada. One can see this contemporary debate in light of the past, however, the conclusions drawn by the thesis do not presume to resolve the narrative/anti-narrative debate or prescribe one particular approach, since this will arise from actual practice. The intention of the study is to introduce the central issues raised by social commitment/artistic autonomy and contribute to a better understanding of theoretical and practical implications of the debate over the use of narrative.Arts, Faculty of
Theatre and Film, Department of
Graduate
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Tyrrell, Kimberley English Media & Performing Arts Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences UNSW. "???The monsters next door???: representations of whiteness and monstrosity in contemporary culture." Awarded by:University of New South Wales, 2007. http://handle.unsw.edu.au/1959.4/35639.
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The focus of this thesis is the examination of whiteness as a dominant identity and subject position. Whiteness has conventionally assumed a normative, monolithic status as the template of humanity. Recent theorising has attempted to specify and denaturalise whiteness. In order to participate in this fracturing of whiteness, I analyse examples in which it functions as a site of contested and ambiguous contradiction. To this end, I use contemporary monstrosity to examine whiteness. Monstrosity is a malleable and culturally specific category of difference that measures alterity, and by displaying discursive functions in an extreme form offers insight into the ways in which deviance and normativity operate. I argue that the conjunction of whiteness and monstrosity, through displaying whiteness in a negative register, depicts some of the discursive operations that enable whiteness to attain such hegemonic dominance. I deploy theories of marginalisation and subjectivation drawn from a variety of feminist, critical race, and philosophical perspectives in order to further an understanding of the discursive operations of hegemonic and normative subject positions. I offer a brief history and overview of both the history and prior conceptualisations of monstrosity and whiteness, and then focus on two particular examples of contemporary white monstrosity. I closely examine the representation of monstrosity in serial killer films. The figure of the serial killer is typically a white, heterosexual, middle class male whose monstrosity is implicitly reliant upon these elements. In my discussion of the recent phenomenon of fatal shootings at high schools in North America, I investigate the way the massacre at Columbine High School functions as the public face of the phenomenon and for the unique interest it generated in the mass media. I focus on a Time magazine cover that featured a photograph of the adolescent perpetrators under the heading The Monsters Next Door, which condensed and emblematised the tension that they generated. It is through the perpetrators uneasy occupation of dual subject positions???namely the unassuming all American boy and the contemporary face of evil???that their simultaneous representation as average and alien undermines the notion of whiteness as neutral and invisible.
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Whitney, Allison. "Labyrinth : cinema, myth and nation at Expo 67." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 1999. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk1/tape7/PQDD_0025/MQ50586.pdf.
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Bisson, Vincent J. 1984. "Historical Film Reception: An Ethnographic Focus beyond Entertainment." Thesis, University of Oregon, 2010. http://hdl.handle.net/1794/10816.
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xi, 180 p. A print copy of this thesis is available through the UO Libraries. Search the library catalog for the location and call number.Drawing upon theories from folkloristics, history, and audience studies, this thesis analyzes historical films, their reception, and the importance of history and film in everyday life. Using an interdisciplinary approach, I demonstrate how a folkloric perspective may contribute to and strengthen the study ofhistorical films by emphasizing the attributes of narrative and belief at the vernacular level of reception. With an ethnographic and qualitative focus on the informal, common, and everyday film viewing habits of specific individuals in relation to historical belief, this project provides empirical evidence that is necessary for a more accurate understanding of the function and reception of historical films. This study also re-examines the formal aspects of historical films in relation to historical re-construction, the definition and categorization of such films, their reception, their function beyond entertainment, and the need for an integration of new research in both audience studies and folklore studies.
Committee in Charge: Dr. Daniel Wojcik, Chair; Dr. Jeffrey Hanes; Dr. Bish Sen
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Castillo, Gilbert Gerard. "Gender, Identity, and Influence: Hong Kong Martial Arts Films." Thesis, University of North Texas, 2002. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc3354/.
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This project is an examination of the Hong Kong film industry, focusing on the years leading up to the handover of Hong Kong to communist China. The influence of classical Chinese culture on gender representation in martial arts films is examined in order to formulate an understanding of how these films use gender issues to negotiate a sense of cultural identity in the face of unprecedented political change. In particular, the films of Hong Kong action stars Michelle Yeoh and Brigitte Lin are studied within a feminist and cultural studies framework for indications of identity formation through the highlighting of gender issues.
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Palmer, G. E. "Basil Wright : definitions of documentary." Thesis, University of Stirling, 1990. http://hdl.handle.net/1893/2150.
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A close textual analysis of the films of Basil Wright between 1931 and 1938. This work will give a fresh perspective on the working methods of one of the senior members of the British Documentary Movement. It will also discuss the influence exerted by the leader of this group John Grierson. Seven films will be looked at in detail beginning with The Country Comes to the Town and concluding with Face of Scotland. In these detailed analyses we will discuss how the ideological thinking of the group found expression through Wright The purpose of studying an individual is to judge what measure of freedom individual members of the unit were permitted. In seven chapters we will chart the growth of the movement from Gnerson's Dnfters in 1929 to Wright's Face of Scotland in 1938. During the period the Movement went through changes in direction which had a direct bearing on the style of Wright's work. In order to understand these changes we shall chart Wright's development from cutter in late 1929 to senior member in the late thirties. Each chapter will begin with socio-historical data on the subject Wnght was filming. Also included in this section is material on key personnel and details of shooting. This is followed with a close analysis of the form and meaning of Wright's style. In the conclusions we will discuss Gnerson's reaction to the films in question as well as giving further political and historical data. The purpose of this thesis is to re-evaluate Wright's early work and to judge how much it is a reflection of the middle-opinion group whose ideas on social policy find expression in some of the films.
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Ng, Stephanie Yuet Wah. "Modes of production in post-war cantonese cinema : bricolage and sing-song comedy." HKBU Institutional Repository, 2013. http://repository.hkbu.edu.hk/etd_ra/1532.
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Smith, Keith. "Kodak's worst nightmare Super 8 in the digital age: A cultural history of Super 8 filmmaking in Australia 1965-2003." Thesis, Edith Cowan University, Research Online, Perth, Western Australia, 2004. https://ro.ecu.edu.au/theses/1612.
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This project charts the extraordinary history of the Super 8 film medium, a popular amateur home movie format first introduced in 1965 and largely assumed to have disappeared with the advent of home video technologies in the early 1980's. Kodak's Worst Nightmare investigates the cultural history of the Super 8 medium with an emphasis on its (secret) life since 1986. lt asks how (and why) an apparently obsolete consumer technology has survived some 35 years into a digital future despite the emergence of technologically-advanced domestic video formats and Eastman Kodak's sustained attempts since the mid-80s to suppress, what is for it, a patently unprofitable product line. Informed by the work of Heath (1900), Zimmermann (1995), and Carroll (1996), this project takes the unusual step of isolating a specific amateur film medium as its object of study at the centre of a classic 'nature vs. nurture' debate. Arguing against a popular essentialist position which attributes the longevity of Super 8 to its unique, irreplaceable aesthetic, Kodak's Worst Nightmare proposes that Super 8 film has been a contested site in a social, cultural, political, and economic nexus where different agencies have appropriated the medium through the construction of discourses which have imposed their own meanings on the use and consumption of this cultural product. In an extraordinary cycle of subjugation, resistance and incorporation, this project finds that the meanings and potentials of Super 8 have been progressively colonised by differing institutions - firstly by Eastman Kodak ('domestic' Super 8), secondly by the alternative,independent film movement ('oppositional' Super 8 and 'indie' Super 8), and finally by the mainstream film and television industry ('professional' Super 8"). In an amazing contradiction, it is argued that Super 8 in its current incarnation has emerged as the exact opposite of Kodak's original discursive construction of its amateur status - it has become a professional medium for commercial production. Drawing together related work in the histories of domestic photography and communications technologies, and the cultural practice of everyday life, this project contributes to an area which is seriously undertheorised in the literature of film theory and cultural studies- the social, political and cultural role of amateur film technologies.
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Tsakiri, Maria. "What are you looking at? : representations of disability in documentary films." Thesis, University of Stirling, 2015. http://hdl.handle.net/1893/24517.
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This study sets out to explore the representations of disability in documentary films. Its starting point is that when such representations of disability films are under examination, one needs to take into consideration a level of complexities that come with disability, the construction and functionalities of representations, and more particularly the impact of documentary films on understanding disability. In order to address this issue, I draw upon disability theory and disability aesthetics, crip theory and crip willfulness, as well as practices of good looking, synthesising in this way a theoretical framework that responds to matters of intersectionality and criticality in relation to the analysis of representations of disability. To this end, I employ a mixed method design, which is based on participant observation, the methods of the written festival and a critical disability studies (crip) analysis for examining selected documentary films alongside a thematic analysis of semi-structured interviews that were conducted with disabled viewers who attended the Emotion Pictures – Documentary and Disability Film Festival in Athens, Greece. Its findings indicate that representations of documentary films familiarise viewers with disability. This familiarisation and the development of political engagement by depicting crip killjoys are the key elements that create representations of a different context and meaning in comparison to those produced by media and fiction films. My analysis reveals that depictions of crip killjoys who are conscious of their political identity, speak out and take action are depictions that ask for political engagement. As such, they can produce good staring. Visibility and social dialogue are two of the benefits of disability film festivals that are highlighted by disabled viewers.
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Steenveld, Lynette Noreen. "South African anti-apartheid documentaries 1977-1987: some theoretical excursions." Thesis, Rhodes University, 1991. http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1002939.
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This study examines anti-apartheid documentary production in South Africa between 1977 and 1987. These documentaries were produced by a variety of producers in order to record aspects of South Africa's contemporary social history, and as a means of contributing - in some way - to changing the conditions described. While the 'content' of the documentaries is historical and social, and their intention political, this study is aimed at elucidating how a documentary, as a representational system, produces meaning. The study is therefore located within the discourse of film studies. My study is based on the theory that a documentary is the embodiment of several relationships: the relationship between social reality and documentary producers; the social relationships engaged in, in the production of the text; the relationship between the text and its audience 1, and the relationship between the audience and its social context. This informs my methodological approach in which analysis appropriate to each area of study is used. Using secondary sources obtained through standard library research, I pursue social and historical analysis of the 1970s and 1980s in order to contextualise both the producers of the documentaries, and their audience. The social relations of production of a text are examined using material gathered through extensive interviews with the producers and published secondary material. How this impinges on the documentary is ascertained through detailed textual analysis of 30 documentaries. For analytical clarity each chapter focuses on a specific aspect of documentary - although I do show how the various relationships impinge on each other. This research finds that the documentaries faithfully reflect the anti-apartheid ideology dominant in the extra-parliamentary opposition in the period under discussion - to the extent that all forms of consciousness are framed by this discourse. An examination of the textual strategies used shows that they are bound by the conventions of broadcast television. They therefore construct a spectator-text relationship which is not consistent with the political concern that democratic relationships be established as the basis of a post-apartheid society. In other words, there is an inconsistency between the ideology espoused, and the way in which film- and videomakers, in their specialised field of production, practise their politics. This can be attributed to the over-riding political intention of the documentarists 'to record' what is happening, and to establish a popular archive which can be used by extra-parliamentary opposition groups in their struggle against apartheid.
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Tsang, Wai-ho, and 曾煒豪. "Post-9/11 American gothic family in The hills have eyes duology and Twilight saga." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 2012. http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B48395079.
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9/11 attacks open the 21st Century into the fear of the Other, which is coincidentally at the core of the Gothic tradition. In post-911 Gothic texts, the tension of Self and Other can be seen from the gothic family (representing homeland and country) and the gothic monster (representing foreign, dangerous intruder) respectively. This essay is a close study of two sets of Hollywood films dealing with such tension - Twilight saga and The Hills Have Eyes duology. It is argued, with Foucault’s notion of Power/Knowledge, that such Hollywood gothic productions further create and hence reinforce the fear of, but not suppress, the Other. The 21st Century Gothic genre is therefore no longer subversive, but appropriated to educate the unaware public.published_or_final_version
Literary and Cultural Studies
Master
Master of Arts
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MacCormack, Patricia (Patricia Anne) 1973. "Pleasure, perversion and death : three lines of flight for the viewing body." Monash University, Centre for Women's Studies and Gender Research, 2000. http://arrow.monash.edu.au/hdl/1959.1/7835.
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Beaulieu, Renée. "Le poids des autres, suivi de La cohérence des personnages dans les scénarios de films." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 2000. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk1/tape3/PQDD_0019/MQ53922.pdf.
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Robinson, Scott E. (Scott Elmon) 1961. "Dichotomy in American Western Mythology." Thesis, University of North Texas, 1991. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc500528/.
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The fundamental dichotomy between savage and civilized man is examined within the archetypal Western myth of American culture. The roots of the dichotomy are explored through images produced between 1888 and 1909 by artists Frederic Remington and Charles Russell. Four John Ford films are then used as a basis for the "dichotomous archetype" approach to understanding Western myth in film. Next, twenty-nine "historical" and "contemporary" Western movies are discussed chronologically, from The Virginian (1929) to Dances with Wolves (1990), in terms of the savage/civilized schema as it is personified by the roles of archetypal characters. The conclusion proposes a potential resolution of the savage/civilized conflict through an ecumenical mythology that recognizes a universal reverence for nature.
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Jooste, Rina. "Representing history through film with reference to the documentary film Captor and Captive : perspectives on a 1978 Border War incident." Thesis, Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/10019.1/85668.
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Thesis (MA)-- Stellenbosch University, 2013.ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This dissertation is supplementing a documentary film entitled Captor and Captive – the story of Danger Ashipala and Johan van der Mescht (2010), referred to as Captor and Captive, with a duration of 52-minutes. The film follows the story of two soldiers caught up in the disorganized machine of war. Johan van der Mescht, a South African Defence Force (SADF) soldier was captured in 1978 by Danger Ashipala, a South West Africa People’s Organisation (SWAPO) guerilla fighting for Namibian independence. Van der Mescht was held as a prisoner of war (POW) in Angola before being exchanged for a Russian spy, Aleksei Koslov, at Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin in 1982. The main focus of the dissertation is to provide an analysis of representing history through film, with reference to Captor and Captive. It explores the manner in which history can be represented through the medium of film and add value to historical text, as well as historical text adding value to film, and how the two mediums can supplement each other. In this instance, Captor and Captive was produced first and the research conducted was used to inform the dissertation. It briefly discusses the history of documentary film within South Africa; the reality of producing documentary films reflecting on Captor and Captive and the theoretical principles involved in the craft of documentary filmmaking. The dissertation further provides details of the capture of Van der Mescht and his experience as a POW in Angola, against the backdrop of the Border War that waged between 1966 and 1989 in South West Africa (SWA) and Angola. The political landscape and various forces at work within southern Africa during the period of Van der Mescht’s capture are discussed. It also provides detail of the role of Van der Mescht’s captor Ashipala, and the liberation movement SWAPO. With independence in 1990, South West Africa became Namibia and will be referred to as such for the purpose of the dissertation. Mention will be made of other POWs during the Border War, providing a brief comparative analysis of their respective experiences.
AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Die verhandeling is aanvullend tot die dokumentêre rolprent Captor and Captive – the story of Danger Ashipala and Johan van der Mescht (2010). Die rolprent het ‘n 52- minute speeltyd, en daar word daarna verwys as Captor and Captive. Dit handel oor twee soldate wat vasgevang is in die chaos van oorlog. Johan van der Mescht, lid van die Suid Afrikaanse Weermag, is in 1978 gevange geneem deur Danger Ashipala, lid van die Namibiese bevrydingsorganisasie SWAPO. Van der Mescht is as ‘n krygsgevangene in Angola aangehou, en 1982 uitgeruil vir ‘n Russiese spioen, Aleksei Koslov. Die uitruiling het by Checkpoint Charlie in Berlyn plaasgevind. Die verhandeling gee hoofsaaklik ‘n uiteensetting van die manier waarop geskiedenis aangebied word deur die visuele rolprentmedium, met verwysing na Captor and Captive. Die wyse waarop ‘n rolprent waarde kan toevoeg tot historiese teks, en hoe historiese teks op sy beurt weer waarde kan toevoeg tot ‘n rolprent word ondersoek, asook die wyse waarop die twee mediums mekaar kan aanvul. Captor and Captive is vervaardig voor die verhandeling aangepak is, en die navorsing is gebruik ter aanvulling van die verhandeling. Verder word die agtergrond en geskiedenis van dokumentêre rolprente in Suid Afrika kortliks bespreek; die realiteite rondom die vervaardiging van dokumentêre rolprente, met verwysing na Captor and Captive, en teoretiese aspekte betrokke by die vervaardiging daarvan. Die verhandeling verskaf inligting omtrent die gevangeneming van Van der Mescht en sy ondervinding as ‘n krygsgevangene in Angola. Dit word geskets teen die agtergrond van die Grensoorlog (1966 tot 1989) in Suidwes Afrika en Angola. Die politieke omgewing en groeperinge binne Suider Afrika gedurende Van der Mescht se gevangenisskap word bespreek. Verder word inligting oor Ashipala, wat verantwoordelik was vir Van der Mescht se gevangeneming bespreek. Die bevrydingsorganisasie SWAPO, waarvan hy ‘n lid was, word ook bespreek. Suidwes Afrika verander sy naam met onafhanklikheidswording in 1990 na Namibiё, en vir die doel van die verhandeling word daar na Namibiё verwys. Daar word melding gemaak van ander krygsgevangenes gedurende die tydperk van die Grensoorlog, en ‘n vergelyking tussen die ondervindinge van die onderskeie krygsgevangenes word kortliks ondersoek.
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Katona, Leah Andrea. "The Use of Violence as Feminist Rhetoric: Third-Wave Feminism in Tarantino's Kill Bill Films." CSUSB ScholarWorks, 2008. https://scholarworks.lib.csusb.edu/etd-project/2759.
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For the purpose of this thesis, the main focus of the feminist rhetorical criticism method was specifically linked to gender-related power inequities. This method was especially appropriate for the analysis of how film violence is used as a feminist rhetorical strategy in the Kill Bill films. This thesis is more closely aligned with challenging rhetorical standards as it sought to identify feminist counter positions of rhetoric in film violence.
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Gille, Quentin. "Propositions pour un paradigme culturel de la phono-cinématographie: des phono-scènes aux vidéoclips et au-delà." Doctoral thesis, Universite Libre de Bruxelles, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/2013/ULB-DIPOT:oai:dipot.ulb.ac.be:2013/209309.
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La proposition centrale de cette thèse est double. D’une part, il s’agit de jeter les bases d’un modèle historique qui réunirait tous les dispositifs audiovisuels qui associent des images animées à une chanson populaire qui leur est préexistante sous un même paradigme culturel que nous baptiserons « phono-cinématographie ». Celui-ci aurait débuté vers la fin du XIXe siècle, avec l’invention du kinétoscope d’Edison, pour aboutir à nos jours avec l’émergence des vidéos musicales interactives sur Internet. D’autre part, il s’agit de nous interroger sur le rôle a priori central que les Beatles occupent au sein de cette histoire de la chanson populaire mise en image. Notre hypothèse principale est que le vidéoclip, tel qu’il s’est institutionnalisé au début des années 1980 pour ensuite se perpétuer jusque dans les années 2000, n’a rien d’une pratique culturelle (voir même d’un média) figé(e) :bien au contraire, cette pratique/ce média a été l’objet de réélaborations continues tant sur le plan de la production, de la diffusion que de la fonction.Notre approche se situe à cheval sur l’histoire du cinéma, de la musique populaire et de la télévision. En nous appuyant sur certaines propositions théoriques et certains concepts formulés dans le champ des études cinématographiques ainsi que dans le champ des performance studies, nous serons particulièrement attentif aux questions de représentation qui se déploient dans ces différents dispositifs phono-cinématographiques :à savoir, les premiers films chantants (les phono-scènes Gaumont et les Vitaphone shorts), les juke-boxes équipés d’un écran (les Soundies et les Scopitones) et enfin les vidéos musicales télévisées (les films promotionnels et les vidéoclips).
Doctorat en Information et communication
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Kaplan, Stacey Meredith 1973. "The modern(ist) short form: Containing class in early 20th century literature and film." Thesis, University of Oregon, 2010. http://hdl.handle.net/1794/10574.
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ix, 182 p. A print copy of this thesis is available through the UO Libraries. Search the library catalog for the location and call number.My dissertation analyzes the overlooked short works of authors and auteurs who do not fit comfortably into the conventional category of modernism due to their subtly experimental aesthetics: the versatile British author Vita Sackville-West, the Anglo-Irish novelist and short-story writer Elizabeth Bowen, and the British emigrant filmmaker Charlie Chaplin. I focus on the years 1920-1923 to gain an alternative understanding of modernism's annus mirabulus and the years immediately preceding and following it. My first chapter studies the most critically disregarded author of the project: Sackville-West. Her 1922 volume of short stories The Heir: A Love Story deserves attention for its examination of social hierarchies. Although her stories ridicule characters regardless of their class background, those who attempt to change their class status, especially when not sanctioned by heredity, are treated with the greatest contempt. The volume, with the reinforcement of the contracted short form, advocates staying within given class boundaries. The second chapter analyzes social structures in Bowen's first book of short stories, Encounters (1922). Like Sackville-West, Bowen's use of the short form complements her interest in how class hierarchies can confine characters. Bowen's portraits of classed encounters and of characters' encounters with class reveal a sense of anxiety over being confined by social status and a sense of displacement over breaking out of class groups, exposing how class divisions accentuate feelings of alienation and instability. The last chapter examines Chaplin's final short films: "The Idle Class" (1921), "Pay Day (1922), and "The Pilgrim" (1923). While placing Chaplin among the modernists complicates the canon in a positive way, it also reduces the complexity of this man and his art. Chaplin is neither a pyrotechnic modernist nor a traditional sentimentalist. Additionally, Chaplin's shorts are neither socially liberal nor conservative. Rather, Chaplin's short films flirt with experimental techniques and progressive class politics, presenting multiple perspectives on the thematic of social hierarchies. But, in the end, his films reinforce rather than overthrow traditional artistic forms and hierarchical ideas. Studying these artists elucidates how the contracted space of the short form produces the perfect room to present a nuanced portrayal of class.
Committee in charge: Paul Peppis, Chairperson, English; Michael Aronson, Member, English; Mark Quigley, Member, English; Jenifer Presto, Outside Member, Comparative Literature
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Hart, Hilary 1969. "Sentimental spectacles : the sentimental novel, natural language, and early film performance." Thesis, University of Oregon, 2004. http://hdl.handle.net/1794/297.
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Advisor: Mary E. Wood.
xii, 181 leaves : ill. ; 29 cm. Print copy also available for check out and consultation in the University of Oregon's library under the call number: PS374.S714 H37 2004.The nineteenth-century American sentimental novel has only in the last twenty years received consideration from the academy as a legitimate literary tradition. During that time feminist scholars have argued that sentimental novels performed important cultural work and represent an important literary tradition. This dissertation contributes to the scholarship by placing the sentimental novel within a larger context of intellectual history as a tradition that draws upon theoretical sources and is a source itself for later cultural developments. In examining a variety of sentimental novels, I establish the moral sense philosophy as the theoretical basis of the sentimental novel's pathetic appeals and its theories of sociability and justice. The dissertation also addresses the aesthetic features of the sentimental novel and demonstrates again the tradition's connection to moral sense philosophy but within the context of the American elocution revolution. I look at natural language theory to render more legible the moments of emotional spectacle that are the signature of sentimental aesthetics. The second half of the dissertation demonstrates a connection between the sentimental novel and silent film. Both mediums rely on a common aesthetic storehouse for signifying emotions. The last two chapters of the dissertation compare silent film performance with emotional displays in the sentimental novel and in elocution and acting manuals. I also demonstrate that the films of D. W. Griffith, especially The Birth of a Nation, draw upon on the larger conventions of the sentimental novel.
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Kemlo, Justine. "A systemic-functional framework for the multimodal analysis of adaptation: the case example of Dracula." Doctoral thesis, Universite Libre de Bruxelles, 2012. http://hdl.handle.net/2013/ULB-DIPOT:oai:dipot.ulb.ac.be:2013/209633.
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This thesis proposes a multimodal systemic functional model for adaptation. Its aim is to provide the analyst with wider insight into the process(es) of adaptation but also with a complex yet manageable apparatus which enables comparison and articulation of these comparisons over and above intersemiotic boundaries. The model has been applied to the case example of Bram Stoker's novel Dracula and seven different film adaptations.Doctorat en Langues et lettres
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Ross, Simon David. "Nostalgia in postmodern science fiction film." Thesis, Hong Kong : University of Hong Kong, 2001. http://sunzi.lib.hku.hk:8888/cgi-bin/hkuto%5Ftoc%5Fpdf?B23472741.
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Souza, Shirly Ferreira de. "O sertão como dado, São Saruê como aspiração : o documentário O País de São Saruê entre a utopia e a política." [s.n.], 2010. http://repositorio.unicamp.br/jspui/handle/REPOSIP/280625.
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Orientador: Iara Lis Franco SchiavinattoDissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas
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Resumo: Um silêncio forçado. Sete anos de interdição (1971-1978) pelo Serviço de Censura e Diversões Públicas do regime militar. Vinte e cinco anos para finalmente ser acessível ao público (1979-2004). Eis a trajetória do documentário O País de São Saruê, de Vladimir Carvalho, lançado em 1971, cujo argumento é marcado pelo olhar sobre o sertão nordestino como uma região subdesenvolvida do país. A principal questão desta pesquisa é compreender essa trajetória à luz da memória e do esquecimento, ou seja, qual a imagem de Brasil que tanto o diretor quanto os censores buscaram deixar (ou ocultar) para as gerações futuras. Para tanto, abordaremos a construção do tema do subdesenvolvimento na narrativa fílmica e em que medida esta revela o engajamento político do diretor; quais as justificativas dos censores para interditar o filme; a repercussão dessa ação censória na imprensa da época; como o filme se apropriou da cultura sertaneja para construir uma narrativa política e ao mesmo tempo lírica e utópica, singular no campo do documentário brasileiro.
Abstract: A forced silence. Seven years of interdiction (1971-1978) by the department of Censorship and Public Entertainment of the military regime. Twenty-five years until finally it becomes accessible to the public (1979-2004). There it is the path of the documentary O País de São Saruê [The Country of Saint Saruê], by Vladimir Carvalho, launched in 1971, which is based on the view about the northern backcountry as an underdeveloped region of the country. The main goal of this research is to understand this path under the light of memory and forgetfulness; that is what image of Brazil that was tried to be left or disregarded by the author as well as by the censors to the future generations. Moreover, we will approach the construction of the theme on the underdevelopment in the filmic writing narrative and to what extension it reveals the director political engagement: what were the justifications of the censors to interdict the film; the consequences of this censor act in the press of the time; how the movie took over the backcountry culture to create a political narrative and at the same time utopian and lyrical, unique in Brazilian documentary field.
Mestrado
Politica, Memoria e Cidade
Mestre em História
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Balan, Canan. "Changing pleasures of spectatorship : early and silent cinema in Istanbul." Thesis, University of St Andrews, 2010. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/1985.
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This project explores a curious facet of early cinema that has not been studied as yet: the relationship between Turkish modernity and the culture of spectatorship within the context of the late nineteenth century’s viewing habits along with the era of early and silent cinema in Istanbul. The aim of this project is to examine the evolution of viewing habits in Istanbul at a particular period in which a radical cultural transformation was experienced, namely from the 1890s to the 1930s, when the late Ottoman era with its pre-cinematic shows, the cinematograph, and silent films led to the early Turkish Republic and the end of silent cinema. In order to cover the shift in the reception of early cinema, this study makes use of revisionist works on early cinema and on modernity in Ottoman history. To this end, newspapers, novels, memoirs and consular trade records that formed the majority of the primary sources of this project are analyzed. The transformation of Istanbulite spectatorship was initially experienced through a rupture in the late nineteenth century created by the global flow of mechanical images. The cinematograph was viewed by a multi- ethnic public that was accustomed to seeing both traditional and other more widely recognized pre-cinematic shows such as the shadow play, public storytelling, dioramas, panoramas and magic lanterns. At first the early cinematograph displays were haphazard and parts of other shows. Yet, the international influence of the early cinema attracted a curiosity-driven public even if the same public was critical of the imperfect technology of the apparatus. With the outbreak of World War I, nationalist resistance played a role in the reception of popular European films, particularly Italian melodramas. The end of the war caused the demise of the Ottoman Empire and the foundation of the Turkish Republic, after which, cinema started to be seen as an educational tool in the service of nation-building.
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Lefler, Thomas J. "In Search of a Transcendental Film Style: The Cinematic Art Form and the Mormon Motion Picture." Diss., CLICK HERE for online access, 1996. http://patriot.lib.byu.edu/u?/MTGM,23527.
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Dorworth, Vicky E. "Learning about the criminal justice protagonists: a content analysis of gender messages in the crime film genre." Diss., Virginia Tech, 1994. http://hdl.handle.net/10919/27987.
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Various forms of popular culture serve to educate and socialize as well as influence human behavior. In a discipline such as criminal justice, little is known by the general public about the individuals involved with the system: the law enforcer, the victim, and the offender. Therefore, the construction of reality for most is likely to come from media representation.
A content analysis was used as a method to systematically evaluate crime films over a period of 20 years to investigate what gender messages were apparent in the genre. A sample of 42 crime films was drawn beginning in 1972 through 1992. The main and supporting characters were analyzed to determine if gender differences existed in regard to occupational representation, victimization, and offending. Focus was on occupational representation. The data was compared to the official data to ascertain whether the gender representations in the films reflected the official data. Trends over the 20 year period were analyzed to determine if the portrayal of women and men over the years reflected the changes experienced in the criminal justice system.
The research provided an understanding of the content of this form of popular culture. Males were more likely included in the films than females. This is consistent with the reality of male domination in the field of criminal justice and with past research which indicated that women were often excluded from films. Computed Chi-square tests indicated that significant relationships existed between sex and evidence of the police personality; sex and character appearance in casual, uniform, and seductive attire; sex and use of all types of force; sex and use of expert and coercive power; and sex and aggression as a style of conflict resolution. T Tests revealed that there were sex differences in character appearance in uniform and seductive attire, use of aggression as a style of conflict resolution, commission of crime, and commission of nonviolent crime.
The films closely represented the official data in regard to male and female violent offenders with a small overrepresentation of female violence and an equally small underrepresentation of male violence. Women were underrepresented as property offenders and men were overrepresented. In terms of victimization, women were overrepresented as victims of violent crime and property crime.
Over the two decades, women were consistently absent when compared to the number of men casted in the films; were consistently underrepresented as law enforcers, with the exception of two, three year intervals; and were most often casted as wives or girlfriends of law enforcers except in one, three year interval. Men were most likely to be seen as law enforcers in every interval, again consistent with the male domination seen in the law enforcement field. Sexism Level I films, indicating extreme sexism, was found to be at least in 67% of all films for each three interval except from 1984 to 1986.Ed. D.
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廖志強. "<<中聯>>電影解讀 : 在啓蒙, 批判, 包容之間的意識形態 = Interpretation of 'Zhong Luen' (Union Motion Picture)'s films : the ideology of englightenment, criticism and toleration." HKBU Institutional Repository, 2000. http://repository.hkbu.edu.hk/etd_ra/212.
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Rositzka, Eileen. "The cinematic corpography of war : re-mapping the war film through the body." Thesis, University of St Andrews, 2017. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/13075.
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In this thesis, I explore the ways the sensory experience of war is staged as a corporeal apprehension of space in the Hollywood war film. Placing an emphasis on films that foreground tactile, and sonic experience in combat as a key dimension of symbolic meaning in the depiction of war, I move beyond the emphasis on optics and weaponised vision that has largely dominated contemporary writing on war and cinema in order to highlight the wider sensory field that is powerfully evoked in this genre. In my conception of war cinema as representing a somatic experience of space, I am applying a term recently developed by Derek Gregory within the theoretical framework of Critical Geography. What he calls “corpography” implies a constant re-mapping of landscape through the soldier's body. Gregory's assumptions can be used as a connection between already established theories of cartographic film narration and ideas of (neo)phenomenological film experience, as they also imply the involvement of the spectator's body in sensuously grasping what is staged as a mediated experience of war. While cinematic codes of war have long been oriented almost exclusively to the visual, the notion of corpography can help to reframe the concept of film genre in terms of expressive movement patterns and genre memory, avoiding reverting to the usual taxonomies of generic texts. The thesis focuses on selected films exemplary of the aesthetic continuities and changes in American cinema's audio-visual representation of war (with each chapter centring on a specific military conflict and historical constellation): All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), Paths of Glory (1957), Objective, Burma! (1945), Fury (2014), Men in War (1957), The Boys in Company C (1978), Rescue Dawn (2006), and Zero Dark Thirty (2012).
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Ng, Hei Tung. "The representation of the mothers in J-horror." HKBU Institutional Repository, 2007. http://repository.hkbu.edu.hk/etd_ra/836.
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Dedman, Stephen. "Techronomicon (novel) ; and The weapon shop : the relationship between American science fiction and the US military (dissertation)." University of Western Australia. School of Social and Cultural Studies, 2008. http://theses.library.uwa.edu.au/adt-WU2008.0093.
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Techronomicon Techronomicon is a science fiction novel that examines far-future military actions from several different perspectives. Human beings have colonized several planets with help from the enigmatic and more technologically advanced Zhir, who gave spaceships and habitable worlds to those they deemed suitable and their descendants. The Joint Expeditionary Force is the military arm of the Universal Faith, called in when conflicts arise that the Faith decides are beyond the local government and militia and require their intervention. Leneveldt and Roader are JEF officers assigned to Operation Techronomicon, investigating what seems to be a Zhir-built defence shield around the planet Lassana. Another JEF company sent to Kalaabhavan after the murder of the planets Confessor-General loses its CO to a land-mine, and Lieutenant Hellerman reluctantly accepts command. Chevalier, a civilian pilot, takes refugees fleeing military-run detention camps on Ararat to a biological research station on otherwise uninhabited Lila. The biologists on Lila discover a symbiote that enables humans to photosynthesize, which comes to the attention of Operation Techronomicon and the JEF's Weapons Research Division. Leneveldt and Roeder, frustrated by the lack of progress on Lassana, are sent to Lila to detain the biologists, who flee into the swamps. Hellerman's efforts to restore peace on Kalaabhavan are frustrated by the Confessors, and his company finds itself besieged by insurgents. The novel explores individuals' motives for choosing or rejecting violence and/or military service; the lessons they learn about themselves and their enemies; and the possible results of attempts to forcibly suppress ideas.
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Hwang, Yun Mi. "South Korean historical drama : gender, nation and the heritage industry." Thesis, University of St Andrews, 2011. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/1924.
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From the dynamic landscape of contemporary South Korean cinema, one trend that stands out is the palpable revival of the historical drama (known as the ‘sageuk’ in Korean). Since the early 2000s, expensive, visually striking, and successful costumed pieces have been showcased to the audience. Now rivalling the other mainstream genres such as gangster action, romantic comedy, and the Korean blockbuster, the sageuk has made an indelible impact on the national film industry. Even so, the cycle has yet to receive much critical attention. This thesis addresses the gap, driven by the question, what is the impetus behind the surge of the ‘historical’ witnessed in recent sageuk films? For this, I first take a diachronic view of the historical context of the genre, which later serves as the reference point for the genre memory. Adopting a synchronic approach, I then examine the industrial, political, and social contexts in Korea at the turn of the new century that facilitated the history boom. While national memory and transnational politics fuelled Koreans’ interest in their past, the popular media – cinema, television, publishing industry, and performance theatre – all capitalised on this drive. The government also took part by supporting the ‘culture content industry’ as a way to fashion an attractive national image and accelerate the cultural export system. Collectively, these efforts translated to the emergence of history as a commodity, carving a unique space for historical narratives in the national heritage industry. As such, different agents – the consumers, the industry, and the state – had their stakes in the national mobilisation of history and memory with competing ideological and commercial interests. Ultimately, the sageuk is the primary site in which these diverging aspirations and desires are played out. In chapters that follow, I engage with four main sub-types of the recent historical drama, offering textual and contextual readings. The main discussion includes the ‘fusion’ sageuk (Untold Scandal), the biopic (King and the Clown and Portrait of a Beauty), the heritage horror (Blood Rain and Shadows in the Palace), and the colonial period drama (Rikidozan, Blue Swallow and Modern Boy). While analysing the generic tropes and narrative themes of each film, I also pay attention to contemporary discourses of gender, and the cultural treatment of masculinity and femininity within the period setting. Such investigation, in turn, locates the place of the historical genre in New Korean Cinema, and thus, offers a much-needed intervention into one of the neglected topics in the study of cinematic trends in South Korea.
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Barnett, Vanessa. "Tasha: A practice-based problematisation of Australian comedy cinema’s representation of gender, family and nationhood." Thesis, Edith Cowan University, Research Online, Perth, Western Australia, 2014. https://ro.ecu.edu.au/theses/1411.
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Between 2007 and 2012, 140 fictional feature films were financed with the assistance of Australian film funding bodies. Of these 140 films, only 31 featured female protagonists and of these 31 films, only 8 were comedies (see Appendix B). These figures show statistically, Tasha, the creative film component of this research project, is not a typical Australian comedy film; it is the story of Tasha, an unemployed girl from Girrawheen in her early twenties, who has lost her sense of identity. As Australian films such as Little Fish¸ Candy, Jedda and Muriel’s Wedding would suggest, this is certainly not an uncommon premise in Australian national cinema. However, this is not all there is to know about Tasha; she is preoccupied, not by a love interest or by a drug addiction, but by ninjutsu, and vigilantism. This is where Tasha finds its unique approach to Australian cinema’s historic treatment of the woman-centred narrative. That said, beneath Tasha’s unconventional surface arguably lies a truly Australian comedy film.
The exegesis component of this project re-interprets Bazin’s question, “Qu'est-ce que le cinéma?” (What is cinema?), with a theoretical framework inspired by Australian film theorist Tom O’Regan’s influential text, Australian National Cinema. The exegesis begins by looking at Australian national cinema as a whole, then narrowing the focus to Australian comedy cinema. O’Regan (1996) describes Australian cinema as a national cinema; a cinema that embodies Australian culture, society and history. The focus is on Australian comedy film texts, and their social, political and cultural contexts. Tasha, the creative film project, is what O’Regan would term a “problematisation” of Australian comedy cinema.
The key argument of this project is that Australian national comedy films are uniquely Australian, cinematic explorations of individual identity, socio-cultural identity, landscape and family. Australia laughs about what it knows best, these four narrative and aesthetic preoccupations being central to Australian socio-cultural values and attitudes, to understanding the concept of Australianness. Australian comedy cinema is a problematic genre unto itself. The theoretical component of this project is a profile of Australian comedy cinema’s homogenised representation of Australianness. Tasha is then presented as an alternative. This investigation aims to both improve, and demonstrate an understanding of Australian comedy cinema as a problematisation of gender, culture, landscape, family and identity.
Tasha responds to the research question, “What is Australian comedy cinema?” by revealing that even an Australian action comedy with exciting stunts and fight scenes, is still a story of an individual’s sense of identity, family, and place. Such stories are arguably the hallmark of Australian comedy cinema; this carries a uniquely Australian sense of quirkiness. It remains the domain of the underdog: the battlers, larrikins, and of course the ockers. It still carries the same messages; never forget who you are, who your friends and family are, or where you came from. Despite its unconventional narrative, subject matter, soundtrack and aesthetics, Tasha proves to be no exception; it is still easily identified as a truly Australian comedy film.
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Schnoor, Andrea. "Redefining masculinity : the image of civilian men in American home front documentaries, 1942-1945." Virtual Press, 1999. http://liblink.bsu.edu/uhtbin/catkey/1133730.
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Redefining Masculinity presents an analysis of the American government's portrayal of civilian men in World War II documentary films. The majority of the films, which serve as a primary source for this study, were created by the Office of War Information (OWI) as a means of stimulating home front support for the war. The government's portrayal of civilian men advocated a significant modification of gender roles. According to the OWI, men understood the politics of war, were aware of the national context of sacrifices, and were able to carry the government's message into American households and defense plants. As a result of their war consciousness, civilian men in government documentary films partially claimed the traditional domestic realm of women and redefined American gender roles as interactive and overlapping. The intersecting gender spheres in OWI films exemplify that men experienced manhood not in isolation from women. This propagandized image of civilian men during the Second World War supports the claims of scholars who criticize the ideology of "separate spheres" to describe socially constructed domains of the male and female gender. In contrast, the thesis findings show that the social, political, and economic definitions of male and female roles can be altered, extended, or adjusted when economically, politically, and culturally expedient.Department of History
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Fleming, David H. "Drugs, danger, delusions (and Deleuzians?) : extreme film-philosophy journeys into and beyond the parallel body and mind." Thesis, University of St Andrews, 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/985.
Full textAbstract:
Drugs, Danger, Delusions (and Deleuzians?) opens up a philosophical investigation into a series of ‘extreme’ mind and body films drawn from different historical contexts. Through two sections and four distinct chapters, cinema is explored as an agent of becoming that allows viewers to think and feel in an affected manner. Investigating a broad spectrum of extreme narratives focusing on drugs, hooligan violence, insomnia and madness, the project provides a focused historical understanding of the films’ affective regimes and aesthetic agendas. The different lines of flight and escape explored on-screen all somehow appear to spiral around the same issues, concepts, ideas and philosophies. Utilising the cinematic theories of Gilles Deleuze along with his philosophical work co-authored with Félix Guattari, the thesis aims to investigate a range of related films, that in the extreme, reveal underlying models of an integrated or parallel mind and body and immanently embedded identity; wherein the concept of a stable and fixed being is replaced by that of a fluid becoming. All chapters investigate how immanently embedded characters embark upon extreme or dangerous lines of escape, where the reinvention of living and thinking is explored and made visible. The first section investigates a range of ‘head-films’ that take the mind as their theme, but are found to plicate and expand consciousness into the parallel body. The second section investigates extreme body films that push the sensory-motor schema to its limits so that thought, perception and consciousness become affected. The two interrelated sections investigate how the films and filmmakers employ different regimes of mind and body cinema to aesthetically convey and relay these concepts to the spectator. The project thus strives to develop Deleuzian paradigms beyond their original scope to explore parallel-image regimes and sequences that allow spectators to think and feel the films’ underlying philosophical concepts and positions.