Within Isaac Julien Playtime exhibition that is presented by Fort Mason Center for Arts and Culture with the Kramlich Collection and San Francisco Art Institute, there is a film called Better Life (Ten Thousand Waves). This film is located in the Gray Box Gallery, within the San Francisco Art Institute. Based on Isaac Julian’s essay entitled “The Multilayered Storytelling in Film Installation”, Better Life conveys Julian’s style of “incorporating different artistic discipline”to create a unique poetic and visual language that is within the ‘art context’. By repeating 1000 waves the form of calligraphy and poetry, it conveys loss and separation ; The movement of Mazu and the lover convey the Chinese perspective of the tragedy. conveys the theme of migration that the Chinese cockle pickers did in search for a better life. The experience conveyed focus and darkness in the meaning of the work . With the repetition of 10000 waves in the form of a poetry and calligraphy, it conveys the loss and death of the tragedy . To pay homage to the inspiration for the film, Isaac Julian incorporated sections of the poem of the same name in the film by having a narrator recite particular sections. While the female narrator states, “I have no time to make love to my wife” the woman head and eyes are facing down. The visual and audio of the still is a paradox; even though the narrator is stating an infinitive verb of ‘to make’, the woman is lifeless. Her eyes are lifeless By
What is your version of the "good life" using three aspects of life and is it the same as the person next to you? Everyone has their own idea of the "ideal life" and no two people have the same exact idea. Some may have the idea of money, clothes, and cars while another may have the idea of family, no death, and a big house. The two individuals have two completely different points of view, interests, likes, dislikes, and aspirations. My version of the "good life" is nothing like the other examples but it is okay because it is supposed to be different. Personally my "ideal life" include having enough money to sustain and be comfortable, having a successful career, and having a lifetime supply of puppies and dogs. There are reasons behind why I have chosen these specific aspects of a possible life and they will be explained in the paragraphs to follow.
The movie A Better Life directed by Chris Weitz is the story of a troubled family who is trying to overcome the cultural barriers that have been thrown in their direction. A father named Carlos is trying to earn a living in order to provide his son Luis a better life than he has endured. The family moved from Mexico to California when Luis was a small baby. The audience learns throughout the movie that Luis’ mother left shortly after the move because she found bigger and better things. By doing this she left Carlos to take care of Luis and battle all of the negative influences in the society such as fighting and gangs. Over time, Carlos and his son drift apart and are now at the awkward teen phase.
The movie “A Better Life” is about an illegal immigrant Carlos and his son Luis. They are constantly at odds and his father works very hard and is still very poor. His son Luis is being influenced by local gangs that his father doesn’t approve of. Carlos strives to be self-employed however his vehicle is stolen and he and Luis set off to find out who took and get it back. Once he gets his vehicle back he is arrested and deported. His son and he have one last meeting before he is sent back to Mexico and he begs him to succeed. The end of the movie show Carlos being led back across by a coyote and is determined to go home.
A distinctly visual aspect of demonstrating the experience of the characters kindles curiosity in the audience to involve and instill emotional understanding of the context. Through the use of distinct and unique techniques, composers create an emotional response that can have a significant effect on the responders’ attitude on the world. The play ‘The shoe-horn sonata’ explores the crisis of circumstances as John Misto depicts the forgotten history of the women captured and imprisoned during WW2. Misto explores the experiences of the Australian nurses and the government’s response to their pleads of salvation, to emotionally bind the audience and the characters. Likewise, David Douglas Duncan involves the audience by evoking a feeling of pity and empathy in his Korean War photograph. He creates sentiment for the loss of innocence and employs distinctly visual elements to convey the horrifying nature of war. He profoundly highlights power in the photograph to explore the despair felt by the weak fleeing Korean citizens. Hence, both authors elevate the context with a visual representation of the individuals’ struggles to create curiosity and emotional rapport with the audience to improve the understanding of the characters experiences.
The Shoe Horn Sonata provides an insight into the lives of two women who were made prisoners of war by the Japanese and explores the little known and horrific conditions and events the women endured. With the use of distinctively visual techniques, John Misto brings Bridie and Sheila’s experience vividly to life. Through the use of projected images, sound, music and symbolism; the horrors of war, survival and resilience are portrayed throughout the drama.
I watched the 2011 movie “A Better Life”, directed by Chris Weitz for this assignment. This
During all play, we viewed a hard destiny of each character, solid personal dramas and tragedies, but cleverly hidden in the comedy “box.” Sadness sorrow chases away the fun adventure, consisting of punctures bumbling mafioso and awkward romantic encounters of strange lovers and children's frankness of the young heroes who throw away their foolishness and started to be more
Most pieces of art have a deeper meaning than what is simply expressed on the surface. Through emotions, symbols, and motifs, an artist can portray a unique story; however, despite the use of creative symbols, distinct stories can show a similar theme. Two such examples are the short film Destino by Salvador Dali and Walt Disney and The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, which share the common theme of “the struggle of obtaining dreams”. Based on what is shown in these works of art, it is a challenge to attain dreams.
This paper will analyze Improvisation In a Persian Garden (Mary Catherine Bateson), Seeing (Annie Dillard), and Landscape, History, and the Pueblo Imagination (Leslie Marmon Silko). Going through the Purpose, audience, context, ethics, and stance of each author’s piece.
The entire show was wonderful, the title, “The Story Continues”, was a perfect fit. Both artists distributed their eye for art, making each of their art works appealing to the eye, having to reach out and send a message. Every painting feed off one another with meaning. The theme seemed to be earth, nature, and how everything played a part in the circle of life. Comparing to each other. The exhibit includes oil canvases, acrylic, mixed media, found objects, frames, pigmented papers, and steel frame.
Peter weir’s film “The Truman show” visually communicates his concerns about the power of the media and the impact it has on society and individuals, through the use of many techniques the composer attempts to engage and inform their audience about how through its manipulations the media affects society and individuals. Victor Kelleher uses manipulation of the visual to communicate ideas about his novel “The Ivory Trail” through the book cover.
The paradoxic realism that defines Jacques Demy’s film The Umbrellas of Cherbourg is evident even in the title sequence. Pastel umbrellas dance over the cold gray sidewalk, falling in and out of perfect symmetry. People walk to work, to school, no doubt grumbling that they are caught in the rain. Life goes on, but a mundanity of life suddenly becomes worthy of Michael Legrand’s sweeping orchestrations. In contrast, Hollywood musicals made it their job, their purpose to make people forget that the rain was there at all; to provide an idealistic escape from a harsh, weary world. Eventually, these addictive fantasy worlds and conventional narratives about love and the human experience became uninteresting—war, counterculture, and a growing desire for revolutionary art turned audiences away from such fuzzy comforts and towards radical cinema. The genre needed something new to shock it back to life, and this shock came in striking form with The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. By subverting classical Hollywood conventions by way of an unresolved ending, sung-through musical style, and taboo subject matter, Demy’s The Umbrellas of Cherbourg provided an escape from the never-ending formulaic cycle of musical films threatening to bulldoze the genre into delirious self-obsession, giving life to the form of musicals and restoring them to what they have always had the capacity to do: reveal the most vulnerable, intimate truths of what it is to be a human being, to fall in love, and to fall out
Through their effectual and extensive use of distinctly visual elements and techniques, John Misto’s play ‘The Shoe-Horn Sonata’ and the song ‘I was only 19’ by Redgum, offer a variety of perceptions of the world. Distinctively visual elements and techniques assist us to develop an awareness of languages in other texts and allows us to understand how our perceptions of and relationships with others and the world are shaped through written, spoken and visual language. The play ‘The Shoe-Horn sonata follows the experience of two former women POW, describing their experiences, and trying to reconcile their differences. This play challenges the reader to look past the pain of these characters, at the wider social and political context, which allowed
For many years, the United States has been the destination for a variety of immigrants. Undoubtedly, the majority of immigrants that seek lives within the U.S borders are from Mexico and most often embark on the journey to states in the Southwest such as Arizona, Texas, New Mexico, Nevada, and California. “A Better Life” takes place in East Los Angeles, California and tells the story of an undocumented man named Carlos, who has to struggle with the obstacles that come along with being illegal. The director, Chris Wietz, established a film that not only shined light on such a talked about controversy and the issues surrounding it, but also presented it from the perspective of someone who has to fight the system on a daily basis. In this review, I will touch upon the symbolism within the film, and the theme of hardships of immigrants.
Naomi Greene once said that, “Pier Paolo Pasolini was the more protean figure than anyone else in the world of film.” This means that Pasolini was a versatile film director because he simplified cinema into the simplest way possible, while still visually embodying an important message to his cinematic viewers. Because of his encounter with Italy’s social changes, it influenced the writing and films he chose to write. His aspirations regarding his written work “Cinema of Poetry” explains how a writer usage of words and a filmmaker’s choice of images are linked to how cinema can be a poetry of language. He characterizes cinema as irrational and his approach on free indirect point of view is used to achieve a particular effect in his body of work. His claims made in the Cinema of Poetry illustrate why he stylized his films in the manner he did, such as Mamma Roma through the images he portrayed on screen. By examining Pasolini’s approach to poetic communication in the Cinema of Poetry, we can see that these cinematic attributes about reality and authenticity depicted in Mamma Roma are utilized to question cinematic viewer’s effortless identification of cinema with life. This is important to illustrate because Pasolini wants to motivate viewers to have an interpretative rather than a passionate relationship with the screen.