Notes
The following material is from Wikipedia.
The 1980s: Moviemaking and Protest – Around the World.
- The Horse Thief (1988) dir. Tian Zhuangzhuang
- spoke truth to power
- themes of the mystical
- Yellow Earth (1985) dir. Chen Kaige
- village film
- far away from modernity and cities
- yellow and green color scheme, landscape like
- framed imagery like Chinese paintings
- male and female stood together
- “used emptiness within the frame as a compositional element”
- Raise the Red Lantern (1991) dir. Zhang Yimou
- boldly symmetrical
- striking red/orange color palette
- House of Flying Daggers (2004) dir. Zhang Yimou
- uses slow-motion to dramatize motion
- beautiful imagery
- Repentance (1984) dir. Tengiz Abuladze
- told in almost a comic book matter
- echoes the movie Arsenal
- digs up dead body, a symbol that atrocity can’t be buried
- Arsenal (1929) (introduced in Episode 3) dir. Alexander Dovzhenko
- Come and See (1985) dir. Elem Klimov
- soviet film
- puts soundtrack over screams, creates an eerie effect
- greatest war film ever made
- Long Goodbyes (1971) dir. Kira Muratova
- strange editing style, splintered cuts to different parts of the scene, seemingly random
- uses long lens to make space feel thin
- theme of how people can suffocate each other
- about psychological bondage instead of social themes
- banned because of the form of the film
- A Short Film About Killing (1988) dir. Krzysztof Kieślowski
- yellow-green imagery
- echoes Psycho
- about the dirt and sickness of fear
- scene wear man is strangled lasts 3 minutes
- murder reduced to a sock, spit, and dentures, very innovative
- fury of death
- end of film finally uses natural white light
- changed the death penalty in Poland
- Psycho (1960) (introduced in Episode 8) dir. Alfred Hitchcock
- Wend Kuuni (1983) dir. Gaston Kaboré
- landmark film in African cinema
- complex timeline, puts a flashback inside another flashback, does this with very little dialogue
- speaks truth to the past
- Yeelen (1987) dir. Souleymane Cissé
- intense filming
- tracking shots, camera movements as if in a shootout, sci fi sound in the background
- dissolve shots where characters turn into animals, symbolization
- magic realist film
- Video Killed the Radio Star (1979) (music video) dir. Russell Mulcahy
- first music video broadcasted
- Flashdance (1983) dir. Adrian Lyne
- shows how music video influenced film
- Top Gun (1986) dir. Tony Scott
- part of “Reaganite dreamland”
- pure male fantasy
- fast editing
- Blue Velvet (1986) (introduced in Episode 3) dir. David Lynch
- American dream
- idealized American small town
- The Elephant Man (1980) dir. David Lynch
- takes place in victorian england
- beautifully crafted imagery
- surrealism of Lynch’s imagination
- works with unconscious material
- likes to combine beauty of life with its terror
- Do the Right Thing (1989) dir. Spike Lee
- Lee thumbed his nose at white america
- use heightened colors to match films boiling themes
- uses tilted camera angles, similar to that in The Third Man
- shows imbalance of the world of the story
- The Third Man (1949) dir. Carol Reed (introduced in Episode 5)
- Return of the Secaucus 7 (1980) dir. John Sayles
- wasn’t edited in a flashy MTV way, truthful in that the style of editing was very patient
- not mainstream, not Hollywood
- Subway (1985) dir. Luc Besson
- described as hyperactive
- Les Amants du Pont-Neuf (1991) dir. Leos Carax
- “punky sense of outrage at modern life”
- glossy
- about homelessness
- An American in Paris (1951) dir. Vincente Minnelli (introduced in Episode 5)
- lots of color
- ecstasy and agony
- Labyrinth of Passion (1982) dir. Pedro Almodóvar
- reflects goth side of 80s, lots of purple
- anarchic
- echoed editing style in A Hard Day’s Night
- challenged old fashioned Spain with sex and style
- A Hard Day’s Night (1964) (introduced in Episode 8) dir. Richard Lester
- The Quince Tree Sun (1992) dir. Víctor Erice
- little camera movement to capture the passing of time, the delicacy of the moment
- “national detox”, a return to the truth
- My Beautiful Laundrette (1985) dir. Stephen Frears
- “waltz of multicultural Britain”
- “knee in the balls for the right wing government”
- My Childhood (1972) dir. Bill Douglas
- scene where grandma reaches back towards boy, facing away from camera: simple scene, but one of the greatest moments of reconciliation
- Gregory’s Girl (1981) dir. Bill Forsyth
- looked at young people in normal places
- gives poetic feel by tilting camera angle
- Distant Voices, Still Lives (1988) dir. Terence Davies
- signature: very slow dissolve edit
- framed symmetrically
- uses slow forward tracking shot from Intolerance
- combines beauty and pain, holy cinematic way of speaking truth to power
- Intolerance (1916) dir. D. W. Griffith (introduced in Episode 1)
- Young at Heart (1954) dir. Gordon Douglas
- A Zed & Two Noughts (1986) dir. Peter Greenaway
- perfectly symmetrical framing
- The Last of England (1988) dir. Derek Jarman
- tempestual
- themes of Italian rubble movies from after WW2
- fast editing
- lots of red overtones
- imagery of magic, dance, and frenzy
- Videodrome (1983) dir. David Cronenberg
- idea that a machine can be sensual
- Crash (1996) dir. David Cronenberg
- extremely sensual
- Neighbours (1952) dir. Norman McLaren
- stopmotion
- electronic score
- uses white picket fence to symbolize suburbia
- Jesus of Montreal (1989) dir. Denys Arcand
- speaks truth to power, power is the audience, makes audience feel uncomfortable