Tarkovsky’s Solaris and the Frailty of Perceptual Certainty

August 7, 2015

My interest in this was piqued while watching Adam Curtis’s excellent documentary Bitter lake (available to watch here or here). He used the main narrative motif of Tarkovski’s film as a metaphor to explain the impact of the Afghanistan campaign on Soviet...

EVOLUTION OF THE AMERICAN GANGSTER MOVIE – PART TWO

August 6, 2015

The ‘Godfather’ movies are significant in the history of the gangster film in that unlike their antecedents from the 1930’s they differ in that they don’t provide the same strength of narrative closure with a clear moral compass, often these...

Approaches to studying narrative

Narrative – Structuring Stories Table of contents Story, plot, inference and diegesis. Restricted and non-restricted narratives Frame shot and sequence Narrative emphasis Narrative story and plot Narrative structures our interpretation of stories, and thus can be used...

Django Unchained, representations and ‘positioning the audience’

October 14, 2014

The following is an exchange between one of my students and I, broadly made on the topic of psychoanalytical approaches to film analysis. Her contribution attempts to describe and explore the nature of representations in Django unchained (Tarantino US 2012), which my...

Evolution of the American Gangster Movie – Part one

May 2, 2014

The ‘Godfather’ movies are a significant step in the evolution of the American gangster film, in that many of the repertoires of elements conform to the classic conventions but present them in interesting and innovative ways. As films they  (well at least...

An interesting topic for discussion or research

April 29, 2014

Recently my group have been exploring the relationship between documentary and propaganda films. One of our key points of reference has been Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the will 1934. And our discussions has raised the problematic of the amorality of formalism...