Suchergebnisse

This book looks closely at films by the most renowned directors of contemporary Chinese art cinema: Hou Hsiao-hsien, Tsai Ming-liang and Wong Kar-wai. It argues that these directors have collectively authored a distinct cinema of time across the realms of national and transnational film culture

Abstract
How do you get people interested in something they know nothing about? Something old, forgotten—and in black and white with subtitles? 'Taiwan's Lost Commercial Cinema: Recovered and Restored' is a project to screen old Taiwanese-language films (taiyupian), mostly from the 1960s, in Europe. It was a learning experience in working with Taiwanese culture in Europe. This report is my effort to reflect on that experience and I try to answer two questions. First, what is so interesting about these films? Second, why was it so difficult to make the initial breakthrough and what made it possible in the end? There are many different elements at play. But I have come to understand that the environment for screening alternative, archive, and art films has changed over the decades to create both new problems and new possibilities, among which the potential for universities to be cultural incubators has been crucial.

"The 1960s was a rich decade for British cinema audiences. Alongside Hollywood films, from Westerns such as The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962) and The Dirty Dozen (1967) were musicals including West Side Story (1961), Mary Poppins (1964) and The Sound of Music (1965), and epics such as The Longest Day (1962), Cleopatra (1963) and The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965) Towards the end of the decade, a new style of filmmaking emerged, with movies such as The Graduate (1967), Bonnie and Clyde (1967), Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) and Easy Rider (1969). Although the total number of screens in the UK declined from over 3,000 in 1960 to little more than half this by the end of the decade, British cinema itself remained buoyant. The decade saw the release of many so-called 'kitchen sink' dramas including Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960), A Taste of Honey (1961) and This Sporting Life (1963), together with the 'Swinging London' films such as Darling (1965) and Alfie (1966). It witnessed the birth of the James Bond franchise with Dr No in 1962, followed by five other 007 films by 1969. The well-established 'Carry On' franchise produced many more films: 15 in all between 1960 and 1969. British director David Lean directed the epics Lawrence of Arabia (1962) and Dr Zhivago (1965). Drawing on first-hand memories from over 1000 cinema-goers, Screen Memories reveals what it was like to see these and other films in British cinemas in the 1960s. The authors explore what the social experience of cinema-going was like during this decade. They consider how cinema-goers constructed meanings from the films they watched - through a complex process of negotiation between the films concerned, their own social and cultural identities, and their awareness of changes in British society. Their examination helps the reader envision what light the cultural memory of 1960s cinema-going sheds on how the Sixties in Britain is remembered and interpreted. Either, as many have argued, a period of transformative change, or, as an era marked by considerable continuity with the 1940s and 50s. Positioning their study within debates about memory, 1960s cinema, and the seemingly transformative nature of this decade of British history, the authors reflect on the methodologies deployed, the use of memories as historical sources, and the various ways in which cinema and cinema-going came to mean something to its audiences"--

The present tensions in Belgrade–Pristina relations highlight the relevance of a consensus regarding the question of Kosovo. This article argues that the cyclical nature of Kosovo's history has been muted by the thesis 'Kosovo is a unique case' which through unilateral decisions produced various legal schizophrenias. These legal schizophrenias embodied in a power triangle—Ahtisaari Plan–European Union Rule of Law Mission in Kosovo (EULEX)–Kosovo's Constitution. Despite gaps and inherited chaos, the indisputable achievements of the EU's efforts in normalizing relations between Belgrade and Pristina show that the EU not only can facilitate peace but also possesses the capacity to achieve a consensus. Already there is a 'silent' consensus among actors on the status of Kosovo—the European protectorate. The article also discusses institutional design based on the consensus, which aims to promote shared narratives.

Second-hand smoke, also known as environmental tobacco smoke (ETS), is one of the most harmful indoor pollutants. Exposure to ETS is a worldwide silent cause of mortality and morbidity. Although ETS had been decreased for 20 years, a lot of people who do not smoke still exposed to ETS at home, work, public places, and in vehicles. ETS is a risk factor for many important diseases such as lung cancer, chronic obstructive lung disease, asthma, cardiovascular diseases, upper and lower respiratory tract infections, and sudden infant death. In this article, the harmful effects of ETS and the effects of smoke-free environment regulation on ETS exposure were reviewed.

"This beautifully produced new paperback edition of "Silent Images" explores a puzzling contradiction: Despite the multitude of artifacts and texts that have come to us from ancient Egypt, much still remains obscure regarding the lives of women. Women were, from the historical perspective, silent - but how should this silence be interpreted? What was the reality of women's lives behind the standardized images? We know that their chief role in society as mothers and anchors of the family was honored and respected, although it meant a degree of segregation and, in most periods, excluded them from public office. Nevertheless, in law they were the equals of men and they could, and did, own property, which they administered and disposed of themselves. Zahi Hawass's book searches for a more realistic picture of women's lives in ancient Egypt. As well as reconsidering the evidence from tomb and temple, the author draws on unpublished material from his excavations at the workers' cemetery at Giza, which sheds light on the womenfolk of the workmen who built and maintained the pyramids."--Publisher's description

This study attempts to understand, within a global and comparative context and with an emphasis on issues related to class, a number of representative aesthetic approaches and narrative forms to be found in a particular regional cinema – that of Hong Kong – as so many characteristic forms of artistic or cultural responses to the social phenomena that inevitably arise in accompaniment to a society's process of modernization or development. The assumption is that the modernization of a society – when it is open to global trends and currents and follows a Western-led, capitalist direction – brings with it a host of shared, inevitable social transformations that filmmakers, with the formal and stylistic resources that are current and available to them at a given time and place, respond to with the aim of intervention, reflecting changes that are taking place in society even as they play a role in effecting those very changes. The foreground of the study is the postwar development of Hong Kong cinema as a site of multiplicity from the Fifties to the present, but it is seen against the background of the myriad practices – classical Hollywood, European art cinema, various national or Third World cinemas – that make up the system of world cinema as a whole. A number of issues central to the modernization of a society are considered in five thematic chapters – on poverty, social advancement, the lives of women, intellectuals, and youth culture – that explore how filmmakers from different periods and locations have addressed such issues in their work. The method is at once structuralist and historicizing – by situating individual texts within a comparative context that synoptically scans the variety of significant options available in the treatment of a particular subject matter, the formal possibilities and limitations – as well as the social and political implications – of a particular conception of the cinema become much more apparent. This desire to "spatialize" (to borrow Jameson's notion) film history by suggesting a social community of texts or a synchronic set of options is complemented by a temporal or diachronic concern for changes in the zeitgeist, for generational differences and paradigm shifts, that allow for some sense of the relationship of an individual film to the history of cinema to emerge. This study can be considered, then, as an experiment at envisioning one possible way of practicing film history at a macro level and in a comparative and cross-cultural manner, whereby the paradigmatic shifts or epistemic revolutions of world cinema are viewed from a semi-peripheral and unexpected perspective (a location such as Hong Kong), in a way that relates what appear to be representational dilemmas of a purely local nature to more universal concerns, while embedding an account of a particular territorial cinema's evolution within the larger narrative of regional and global cultural developments. ; published_or_final_version ; Comparative Literature ; Doctoral ; Doctor of Philosophy

The present paper argues that the transformation of the relationship between public and private spheres lies at the heart of the process of change in Eastern Europe, and that the exclusion of women and the de-grading of feminine identity currently in train are not contingent to, but rather a fundamentally constitutive feature of, the democratisation of Eastern Europe. This contrasts with existing accounts of social transition which have focused exclusively on the reconstruction of the public sphere. The paper characterises the changing nature of patriarchy in Eastern Europe, and explains why such changes have as yet not met with serious feminist challenge. It does so by highlighting the way in which the formal structures of state socialism acted to foster neo-traditionalism and traditional gender identity, and by showing how traditional gender identity has acted as a vital vehicle for change. Drawing on historical comparisons, it is argued that Eastern Europe's silent revolution may in fact be seen as a dramatic illustration of the masculinism at the heart of Western democracy.