Film & Reality

1. Film & Reality Engl 332 Langah

2. Main tradition of Western aesthetics • Art imitates nature (Aristotle) or ‘holds mirror up to nature’ (Hamlet) • The same idea reflects through the paintings from early Renaissance to late 19th century • Balzac’s and Tolstoy’s novels and Ibsen’s and Chekov’s plays also represent nature and society. • ALL THIS HAPPENEDED THROUGH THE INTRODUCTION OF PHOTOGRAPHY AND MOTION PICTURE CAMERA • IN OTHER WORDS, ART CREATED AN ILLUSION OF REALITY

3. Main tradition of Western aesthetics • Film like any other form of art should create alternative world through the manipulation of the camera (like painting??) Some film theorists that we discuss today: • SeigfriedKracauer: • Andre Bazin • Jean-Louis Baudry • Gilles Deleuz • Stephen Prince

4. SeigfriedKracauer: • Film literally photographs reality. It is a representation of artists emotions; it is special privilege of film to record and reveal the physical reality. German political culture is reflected in cinema. • German cinema helped to prepare the audience for Hitler’s rise and diverted audience from serious appraisal of social realities.

5. Andre Bazin • French theorist in 1940s • Photography and cinema are discoveries which satisfy the obsession with realism. Photographic image is mechanical representation of reality and we therefore accept the object represented or re-produced in a film as real. (Avant grade or experimental cinema is alternative film tradition where the director can alter photographic reality by distorting images ( e.g., slow motion, reverse motion and freeze frame).

6. Jean-Louis Baudry • Compares the experience of film to that of dream • Many features of film resemble dream • The spectators movements are inhibited; he sits in a darkened room and is unable to engage with reality • The images he/she views are projected on the screen • Alternative view: Neol Carroll suggests that we understand film better than we understand dreams and the spectator is not inhibited but can also go out and have a smoke.

7. Gilles Deleuz • French philosopher • Instead of representing an already deciphered reality, film creates an ambiguous reality that resists deciphering • Modern cinema introduces situations in which characters no longer know how to react, in spaces we no longer know how to describe • We no longer know the difference between the subjective and objective, imaginary and real, physical and mental – not because we are confused but because there is no secure place from which to ask these questions.

8. Stephen Prince • Computer based images and digitalization challenge the notions of photographic realism • Photographic realism is replaced by ‘reality effect’ • Cinema records the world and transforms it too.

9. Notes on realism • In literary and art theory realism refers to: • the ability of signs and images to accurately or convincingly represent a reality. In some ways, then, these are two (even if trivially) similar uses of the term since both in philosophy and in literary studies realism has to do with the relations between signs (of thought or language) and the world of objects. • faithfully represent life as it is: • reject idealizing conventions and formulae • take subjects from contemporary life: • represent middle class attitudes: • refer to work of a particular period:

10. Sources: Course Pack: • Chapter titled ‘Film and Reality’ pages 135-142. • Read the article titled: ‘Realism in Literature’ that will be uploaded on the blog along with the slides for (Slide 1: History of Film Theory and Slide 2: Fim & Reality) this week.

11. Class Activity Add one paragraph (titled: applying ‘film and reality theories’) to your reviews of ‘BOL’, ‘KhudaKeLiye’ and ‘Kite Runner’ and try to answer these questions: • How far do you think these films become a representation of reality or nature? Or how far does the art of film making depict nature? • Can you apply any of these theories to the films that we have discussed in this course? How? • Or you can also critique some of the major views proposed in theories and support your argument with examples from the films that you have reviewed so far.