ipl-logo

Individualism In Third World Cinema

1442 Words6 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Communalism in third Worldcinem Cinema

It is an aesthetic norm that Third World films follow a realist mode. These films use the camera to emphasise the realism aspects endorsed from the everyday lives. Odo Okere (cited in Gugler, 2003:10) references Ousmane Sembene in using the camera to reflect the everyday lives
The deliberate slowness and simplicity…characterises all the films, particularly in the use of long takes. The attempt is partly to allow the audience enough time, and with minimum difficulty, to digest information and partly to reflect the reality of the slowness which characterises much of African life. The need to maintain spatial and temporal realities also compels an unspectacular camera display. It will be seen, for instance, that almost throughout, his (Sembene) …show more content…

Third Worlds, unlike Western Worlds, do not emphasise the individualism, rather, they emphasis on communalism. Thus, the rejection of close-up shots is the rejection of this notion of individualism in Third World cinema. The close-up shot is rejected by the Third World film-maker as it “(i) calls attention to itself; (ii) it eliminates social considerations; and (iii) it diminishes spatial integrity” (Gabriel, 1989:45). Elelwani hardly uses the close-up shots. In almost 90% of the film the director uses medium shots and long shots. Instead of the use of close-up shots to show the deep emotions of character, like it is the case with Hollywood cinema, Elelwani situates the characters and their emotions in the entire community. The audience gets to know the characters feelings through how the other community members interact with and treat them. As Gabriel argued; close-up shots seclude characters from the communities they live in, it makes them powerful or hopeless beings that deserve sympathy or praise. Elelwani rejects that. In this film we see the community as part of the challenges that Elelwani faces and also as part of the

Show More
Related
698 Words | 3 Pages

The film focuses on the characters lives and how they can keep going when they struggle with society. The film uses rhetorical strategies such as pathos, ethos, and logos to make this movie bring emotions, blank stares, and leave the audience to question reality. The purpose of the specific camera shots and angles is to provide an appropriate view of the movie. Lastly, the use of persuasion to allow the audience to interpret what the film says versus the thoughts in their head. The film does a good job of pointing out the flaws in our system and a specific culture that the flaws

Read More
511 Words | 3 Pages

The intriguing world of Casablanca, displays a wondrous mise-en-scene in fashion that accentuates emotions and feeling through aspects of cinematography. From the movement of the camera, to the intricacy of the shot distances chosen to be included within the frame, the film reveals important elements of the diegesis without uttering a sound. The cinematography of Casablanca gives the audience an insight into the intimacy of Rick and Ilsa's relationship, and seeks to situate the viewer’s attention to the space and time of the film. Throughout the film, Rick’s romantic relationship, or rather previous relationship, with Ilsa appears to be a focal point of the film.

Read More
1606 Words | 7 Pages

City of God is Brazil’s most critically praised film of recent years. Based on the book of the same name by writer Paulo Lins, which in-turn was based on a true story. This essay will focus on the cinematography and cinematic conventions of the film and how sound and music plays a big role in the opening sequence, it will also focus on visual design and lighting in the film Synopsis City of God is a violent, fast-paced movie that tells the tale of the residents of this Brazilian slum. Events are seen through the eyes of a poor black youth who is too scared to become an outlaw but too smart to get saddled with an underpaid, menial job. He grows up in an extremely violent environment and watches as many of his peers are easily sucked into a

Read More
989 Words | 4 Pages

Hotel Rwanda directed by Terry George and released in 2004, is one of the films that most accurately depict the reality of the Rwandan Genocide in 1994. This genocide marks one of the most bloody and abrupt in the history of genocides where the Tutsi began slaughtering the Hutu. The story is told through the main character Paul Rusesabagina’s heroic acts as a hotel manager and his dedication to his family and people. The story centers on him and his family sheltering Hutu refugees at the Mille Colline Hotel in Kigali, resisting the Tutsi rebels as they began the massacre of Hutu families almost overnight. The film clearly portrays how and why the genocide began and it is through this that theoretical concepts such as ethnic violence and ethno-political mobilization can be drawn.

Read More
2800 Words | 12 Pages

Over the past century, film has served as a powerful means of communication to a global audience and has become a vital part of the contemporary culture in a world that is increasingly saturated by visual content. Due to the immediacy and the all-encompassing nature of film, the process of watching a film, is widely perceived to be a passive activity by the general masses. However, quoting Smith in his article about the study of film, “nothing could be further from the truth.” The study and understanding of film as an art form enhances the way we watch and appreciate films. It requires the audience's active participation and interaction with the film in order to fully comprehend the directors' intention behind every creative decision.

Read More
739 Words | 3 Pages

In the article, “A Million Dollar Exit From the Anarchic Slum-World: Slumdog Millionaire’s Hollow Idioms of Social Justice”, Mitu Sengupta responds to how the slums and its citizens are presented in the film Slumdog Millionaire by Danny Boyle. Sengupta describes the slums as run-down and then goes on to specifically address the poverty that exists in India. When writing about the portrayal of the slums, Sengupta states, “Slumdog depicts the ‘slum’ as a feral wasteland, a place of evil and decay that is devoid of order, productivity and compassion”(599). Sengupta uses imagery to illustrate to viewers the unsanitary conditions that the people of Mumbai experience on a daily basis.

Read More
937 Words | 4 Pages

At different points in the film various Indian social elements are reflected. The movie starts off with the Dharavi locality, one of the biggest slums in the world. Everything in the locality, right from the housing, sanitation and hygiene lack standard and are in a very deteriorating state. The presence of slums in India reflects the overpopulation in

Read More
1103 Words | 5 Pages

Iran has always had a legacy of challenging the existing the status quo, be it with regards to politics, society or culture. Iran waged a revolution against the modernising Pahlavi regime to establish a conservative clerical government under Khomeini. Iranians have projected various forms of resistance to the onslaught of colonialism. Hamid Dabashi says that without these forms of groundbreaking initiatives or resistance, Iranian subject would have been historically denied or colonially modulated (Dabashi 2001:213). These modes of resistance have given a historical agency to the Iranian subject.

Read More
1617 Words | 7 Pages

Among many advocacies contributed to on-going and loosely constituted film movement “New Latin American Cinema” starts from 1960s, the manifesto “Third Cinema” highlighted certain significant traits of film in Latin America. The word “third” does not necessarily refer to the Third World, yet it suggests a particular response to the first and second cinema, namely the mainstream industrial production in Hollywood and European auteur film respectively. These cultural hegemonic countries, such as United States, United Kingdom and France, are also the imperialist enforced neo-colonialism to Latin American countries. In conjunction with the struggle for national and continental autonomy in Latin America, filmmakers endeavour to liberate people from

Read More
1004 Words | 5 Pages

Many of the camera angles used within the film gives us closer viewings and more emotion to the scenes, most of which manifested controlling power and views on challenges involving poverty. This relating us back to the theme “Brutality of Humanity”. With the camera angles making the poverty challenges further detailed, helps us to relate the film technique ‘camera angles’ back to “Brutality of Humanity”. The Rembrandt lighting and split lighting shows us the dramatic scenes of poverty challenges, where others help represent poverty and challenges within.

Read More
1223 Words | 5 Pages

Film takes photography to another level. Film, or the cinema “is objectivity in time.” For the first time with film “the image of things is likewise the image of their duration, change mummified as it were”. Bazin argues "only the impassive lens, stripping its object of all those ways of seeing it, those piled- up preconceptions, that spiritual dust and grime with which my eyes have covered it, are able to present it in all its virginal purity to my attention and consequently to my love.

Read More
848 Words | 4 Pages

Case Question 1: Most aspects of foreign culture, like languages, religion, gender roles, and problem solving strategies, are hard for a casual observer to understand. In what ways do do Hollywood movies affect national culture outside the United States? What aspect of U.S culture do Hollywood films promote around the world ? Can you observe any positive effects of Hollywood movies on world culture?

Read More
867 Words | 4 Pages

Which came first, the chicken or the egg? This question has been hotly debated for centuries with no hardline conclusion. The question “do films shape culture, or does culture shape films?” has the same cyclical, unanswerable nature. Films cannot change culture without in some way reflecting it, and films cannot reflect culture without in some way affecting it. Film is inextricably intertwined in today’s culture, both as a means and as an outcome.

Read More
1813 Words | 8 Pages

The concept of Social realism as a film genre is to portray the ‘real life’ of a working-class society. Social realism films depict the social, political and economic injustices’ that influence and impact people in society (Taylor, 2006). It is raw and gives the audience a true indication of what life is like (Lay, 2002). Social realism first came about during an economic downfall in the 1920s. It was an art movement that social realists started, to represent the working class.

Read More
836 Words | 4 Pages

In our society today, every individual’s ideas can be exchanged in various creative forms. The short film medium, being a form of social commentary, is a pertinent driving force behind shifts in personal values. Thus short films as a textual form have great value and impact to society due to their versatile delivery. Steve Cutts’ Happiness (2017) is a satirical film whose fast-paced nature prioritises meaning over matter to critique the constant pursuit of happiness in misplaced interests. Erez Tadmor and Guy Nattiv’s Strangers (2003) depicts a singular scenario and builds tension to convey the overcoming of entrenched racial divides.

Read More

More about Individualism In Third World Cinema

Related Topics

Open Document