The Story of Film Episode 12 – Fight the Power: Protest in Film

The 1980s: Moviemaking and Protest – Around the World.

• The Horse Thief (1988) dir. Tian Zhuangzhuang – Spoke truth to power. Utilizes slow motion. Different from western traditions. Utilizes a vulture like metaphor, of vultures eating a body, then bringing the soul into the sky. Utilized widescreen, and cool colors.
• Yellow Earth (1985) dir. Chen Kaige – Greatest village film in the 80s in China. Far away from modernity/cities. A sense of scale. Women in Maoist cinema were supposed to be strutting, and heroic. This film differentiated from that tradition. Imagery was framed like Chinese painting, either heavily showing the sky, or the ground. Utilized emptiness as a component. Ideas associated with Taoism.
• Raise the Red Lantern (1991) dir. Zhang Yimou – Boldly symmetrical, and strikingly orange/red.
• House of Flying Daggers (2004) dir. Zhang Yimou – Utilized digital cinema. Utilizes ultra-widescreen, and slow motion to show grace.
• Repentance (1984) dir. Tengiz Abuladze – Created a sensation. It is a almost comic book manner. Inspired by “Arsenal”. Metaphor of “atrocities can’t be buried”.
• Arsenal (1929) (introduced in Episode 3) dir. Alexander Dovzhenko – Inspired a scene in “Repentance”, with a buried person.
• Come and See (1985) dir. Elem Klimov – Changes the camera so a person can look big to small, utilizing wide angle lens. Utilizes a ringing sensation to simulate tinnitus. Utilizes a scene in a bog, showing fear, and they’re screams were muted. Extremely physical.
• Long Goodbyes (1971) dir. Kira Muratova – Censored in the Soviet Union. Utilizes a jump cut to a train. Utilizes a shot where two actors talk to each other, but they don’t even face each other. They are in the same frame. Utilizes a jump cut on hands, also utilizes splinter cuts. Scene changes to an aerial shot. Later, a scene is filmed in a lens so long, it seemed paper thin. About psychological bondage. It’s camera angles were similar to that of surveillance, which was one presumed reason why the Soviet Union censored it.
• A Short Film About Killing (1988) dir. Krzysztof Kieślowski – Heavily utilizes yellow/green imagery. Shows how one person could cause damage in a regular life. About the dirt/sickness of fear. Utilizes a chocking scene. A single death lasts 3 minutes. Also shows the ugly fury in death, where the protagonist dies quickly, It changed the death penalty of Poland.
• Psycho (1960) (introduced in Episode 8) dir. Alfred Hitchcock – Similar shot to that of “A Short Film About Killing”. About fear/entertainment.
• Wend Kuuni (1983) dir. Gaston Kaboré – A landmark in African cinema. Camera is shot from a distance. Shows a flashback within a flashback.
• Yeelen (1987) dir. Souleymane Cissé – Means Brightness. Utilizes a tracking shot around an actor. Also utilizes a zooming shot to a character’s eyes. In a wild setting, yet utilizes a synth/futuristic soundtrack. Heavily utilizes depth of field. Shows characters transitioning similar to that of animals. A magic realist film.
• Video Killed the Radio Star (1979) (music video) dir. Russell Mulcahy – Broadcasted their first music video. Song was about video, utilized fast editing, pink lights, etc.
• Flashdance (1983) dir. Adrian Lyne – Heavily influenced by music videos, pure impressionism.
• Top Gun (1986) dir. Tony Scott – Rich color, a roller coaster in the sky. Utilizes shots of the pilot in the cockpit similar to that of Star Wars. Many shots are around 2 seconds.
• Blue Velvet (1986) (introduced in Episode 3) dir. David Lynch – Camera pans as if it were floating. White picket fence, children walking to school in slow motion, velvety textures. The eye of the duck scene was also important.
• The Elephant Man (1980) dir. David Lynch – Completely different to that of “Blue Velvet”. Shows the surrealism. The eye of the duck was always important.
• Do the Right Thing (1989) dir. Spike Lee – Built like a pressure cooker. Used heightened colors to use it’s balling (boring?) (boiling?) themes. Utilized tilted camera angles. Borrowed from “The Third Man”. Utilizes saturated color. Places a quote in the end.
• The Third Man (1949) dir. Carol Reed (introduced in Episode 5) – The non-horizontal camera shows the world of the story.
• Return of the Secaucus 7 (1980) dir. John Sayles – Felt truthful because the camera just observed, no fast cuts.
• Subway (1985) dir. Luc Besson – Filmed like a car chase on roller skates. Wide angle shots.
• Les Amants du Pont-Neuf (1991) dir. Leos Carax – Shows the outrage of modern life. Shows a modern dance, yet turns into a drunken scene. Glossy and wasteful, in a glossy and wasteful age.
• An American in Paris (1951) dir. Vincente Minnelli (introduced in Episode 5) – Color, splashed across the scene. Shows romantic ecstasy and agony.
• Labyrinth of Passion (1982) dir. Pedro Almodóvar – Utilizes the color purple to represent the 80s. Shows a porn shoot, with bright color. Challenged old fashion Spain with sex/style.
• A Hard Day’s Night (1964) (introduced in Episode 8) dir. Richard Lester – Shows the stylistic antics, and camerawork that makes you feel you’re there.
• The Quince Tree Sun (1992) dir. Víctor Erice – Shows a man painting, no camera moves, and uses natural light, to show the passage of time. A National Detox.
• My Beautiful Laundrette (1985) dir. Stephen Frears – In London, a high level shot like a musical, yet placed in a Launderette. Yet, cuts to a sex scene, with the dancing within the background.
• My Childhood (1972) dir. Bill Douglas – Bold. Shows poverty. An actor is always behind another character. Utilizes a low shot to show power. Spaces filmed tight. A simple scene.
• Gregory’s Girl (1981) dir. Bill Forsyth – Looked at young people in the ordinary places where they fall in love. For most of the film, it’s horizontal, yet it changes to become tilted.
• Distant Voices, Still Lives (1988) dir. Terence Davies – Shows a family home terrorized by a brutal father. Shows a flashback/back in time cut without cutting the image. Utilizes audio to represent this. Utilizes a tracking shot through the hallway. Also uses a slow dissolve in the end. Always framed symmetrically. About stillness. Inspired by “Intolerance”. Shows pain within cinema. Makes a shot that transcends the pain. Speaks truth to power.
• Intolerance (1916) dir. D. W. Griffith (introduced in Episode 1) – Inspired “Distant Voices, Still Lives”, with it’s tracking shot.
• Young at Heart (1954) dir. Gordon Douglas – Also inspired Davies. Camera glides to a perfect world.
• A Zed & Two Noughts (1986) dir. Peter Greenaway – Frames perfectly symmetrical, taking it further, with twins on each side. Everything is symmetrical, except the woman in the center, she only has one leg.
• The Last of England (1988) dir. Derek Jarman – Shows a bleak landscape. Fast cutting 80’s style cuts. As if it were an ideological storm. Shows rage and values. Utilizes magic, dance, and fantasy.
• Videodrome (1983) dir. David Cronenberg – Utilizes lighting in one shot. Shows the idea of a machine being central. Shows how obsessed we are with screens.
• Crash (1996) dir. David Cronenberg – About the difference between materials, hard and soft.
• Neighbours (1952) dir. Norman McLaren – Stop framing animation. Utilized an innovative electronic score, and a white picket fence.
• Jesus of Montreal (1989) dir. Denys Arcand – Shows the brutalization of Christ. Made the audience feel uncomfortable. Speaks truth to power, yet the audience is the power.