Film Analysis: And Soon The Darkness

In the film, Night of the Living Dead, the movie starts with two siblings, John and Barbara, driving to their father's grave to drop off flowers. John is reluctant to be there and is eager to leave while Barbara is trying to pray. John teases her like when they were children saying “They’re coming to get you, Barbara!” when they both see an unknown man. Barbara goes to apologize to the unknown man but it seems he is dazed and kills John. Barbara escapes and finds herself at an empty house. In the house, she meets Ben, who borders up to the windows after taking down 3 undead. After a bit of listening to a radio for the current status of the state of emergency, Harry and Tom come upstairs. We learn that two men, two women, and a child had been in the basement of the house during Barbara’s and Ben’s struggle with the undead. After much argumentation on if the basement or upstairs was safer between Harry and Ben, Harry went back downstairs to his wife and child. Tom and his wife, Judy, stayed upstairs with Ben believing they could properly border up the windows together. After much convincing from Helen, Harry’s wife, Harry and she join the others upstairs. While listening on the radio, they are given more updates of the state of emergency. The radio announcer suggests instead of staying in place, to now go to one of the designated “safe areas”. When places are announced, Tom says that one of the

Barry Jenkins’s 2016 film, Moonlight, is a work that is characterized by its silences, both in what is unsaid, as well as the unresolved nature of many of its central tensions. In the film, silence functions to emphasize the interiority of the film’s subject, and to make the audience aware of itself. Such strategic use of absence recalls John Cage's groundbreaking composition, 4'33; a work that is distinguished by its lack of any audible musical accompaniment. For many, the piece is reflective of Cage's sexual identity as a gay man; the silence functioning as a metaphor for the “closet” (Katz 241). The scholar Jonathan Katz has pushed against such a totalizing reading of Cage's oeuvre, by noting that silence was part of his larger aesthetic and religious practices, and thusly cannot be considered as simply an aural manifestation of the closet (242). Katz argues that, "Silence was much more than conventionally unmusical; it provided a route toward an active challenge of the assumptions and prejudices that gave rise to homophobic oppression in the first place. For Cage, silence was an ideal form of resistance, carefully attuned to the requirements of the cold war consensus, at least in its originary social-historical context." (241).

The film Moonlight was released October 21, 2016. Moonlight is all African American cast, and was awarded over 25 awards including the Academy Award for best picture. This film is a coming of age story that follows the dramatic ups and downs of the life of Chiron, a young Africa American man growing up in Miami. The plot begins from the time he is in elementary school to the time he reaches adulthood. The plot is structured in three stages of the life of Chiron and touches on the topics of the struggle of dysfunctional households via socialization, sexuality and sexual identity, physical and emotion abuse, and the process of accepting ones self.

“The most exciting moment is the moment when I add the sound… At this moment, I tremble.” (Akira Kurosawa) Sound is arguably the most important concept in cinema studies, being there ever since the beginnings. It can radically change the way a motion picture is looked at and it can render what the director may sometimes find hard to depict using only his camera. Looking upon silent cinema one discovers an era which wasn’t at all silent, but rich in sound of different forms, from the simple narration of the images shown on screen, accompanied by a piano, to the complex score later composed specifically for that film. An example of that complex score is shown in Sunrise, a film by F.W. Murnau, which lies at the border between silent cinema and sound cinema. Considered to be one of the first films with an actual score, Sunrise is a great example of the multitude of dimensions and effects sound can have.

Moonlight, a film directed by Barry Jenkins in 2016 is mainly about the life of a young black man growing up in Miami; he encounters his journey through his teenage years and into manhood. Chiron is a ten-year-old adolescent nicknamed "Little" who is taken in by a Cuban drug dealer “Juan” and his girlfriend. Chiron explores his sexuality as he falls in love with a close friend and reconnects with faces. Chiron then reconnects with faces from his past. The director Barry Jenkins captures several important moments in the elevation of human everyday experience. Chiron seeks out a father figure, Juan, in which he loses him to an early death. Juan directs Little to shape meaning of his own identity and self acceptance. Jenkins also portrays the real life aspects of violence, subjectification that demoralize his mental and physical appearance throughout Moonlight. Jenkins utilizes violence and drugs in Miami as a perception of realism based on how Chiron’s sexaulity is conditioned by the deriding of adolescent masculine becoming. Moonlight plays a significant role in the representation of the black community, hardship and gender identity performances. Chiron hides his sexuality while living in poverty, finding one’s true self and the emergence as an African American male.

This is a criticism of Moonlight, a film directed by Barry Jenkins. It is a coming-of-age story, telling the journey of a young gay black man named Chiron. Through linear character development the film follows a young Chiron from adolescence into adulthood while growing up with alpha males in Miamis black ghettos. The Story is told in three parts, with a different actor playing the lead role in each section: a young Chiron named “Little”, as a teen named “Chiron”, and an adult named “Black”. Despite a compelling lead performance by Mahershala Ali and Naomie Harris, and its great soundtrack, Moonlight falls flat and never gets out of the shadow of its typical cliche plot, all the while, the film continued to never overcome the obstacle of

The movie Before Night Falls directed by Julian Schnabel offers viewers a glimpse of how the homosexual community in Cuba was being mistreated under Fidel Castro’s regime. The true story is told in the eyes of Cuban poet Reinaldo Arenas. The film depicts Arenas life in Cuba and all of the awful experiences that he had to deal with as a homosexual. Eventually he was arrested for false accusations of being a molester, however, he was actually under arrest for being a homosexual. Between the 1930s and 1990s, the Communist Cuba was abusive to the LGBT community as shown in their actions of harassment towards homosexuals, imprisoning the homosexuals, or sending them to re-education camps.

Moonlight is an American drama film that chronicles the life of African-American male Chiron, who is being raised by a careless mother in a harsh Miami neighbourhood. Its most prominent themes are love, stereotypes and identity. The filmmakers create meaning from these through combining different elements of aesthetics (the style or look of a motion picture). Aesthetic effect refers to the practise of using different elements of a film (mise-en-scene, sound, cinematography and editing) to generate film form.

This chaotic fight scene is an emotional appeal because, the audience gets to see the changes Chiron goes though in a matter of minutes from being happy and brightly lit to angry and violent. The dynamic camera movement the music, and camera angles all serve to influence the audience. The erratic movement of the hand-held camera creates a feeling of unease, the music, which is unintrusive, serves to separate Chiron from his surroundings, which helps put us inside his head. The juxtaposing scenes of the night at the beach and the entire fight scene from beginning to end lead the audience to feel a rollercoaster of emotions. Since Chiron is such a realistic character who is easily relatable the audience is happy when he is happy, and troubled

During the film, I was able to hear the victims’ account of what happened to them as the portrayed their encounter with sex trafficking as well as their families experience. The youth remained anonyms for their own protection but, consisted of young girls in their early to middle teens. The girls were unanimous in their explanation as to why they would participate in the documentary, where they would be at risk of unmasking their identity. They didn’t want any other children to be sexually exploited, and have to live through the suffering that they have and continue to undergo. The consistent theme heard in the girls’ and their families’ stories was that their lives are forever changed. Before being trafficked, the girls were described as bright, vibrant, happy young ladies and after they are portrayed as broken, angry, and isolated. A representation that their innocence was lost. It was very heartbreaking to hear the trauma the youth underwent, as they described physical abuse and the use of drugs to control them. They were sold for sex up to 20 times a day without any choice but to comply. The mothers described how they felt when they first saw their children on the web page Backpage.com for sale. It was devastating. I couldn’t even image having to see my children in that type imagery being sold for sex. Once their babies returned home it was an adjustment. They blamed themselves as parents for letting this happen to their children. The youth also blamed themselves, they

When you educate a young girl, she has fewer children, she takes better care of her children, she marries at an older age, and she also contributes to her country's economy. Therefore, why is the education of women so greatly underestimated in many parts of the world? This is a question that has caused many individuals to take action against the act of prohibiting a woman the right of receiving an education. To begin with, education enables parents, and the rest of society, to see the value of a girl. As stated in the film Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide, "Educate a girl, and she can change the world around her." Education acts as a safe haven for many young women and as an opportunity of having an advancement

Many live attempting to decipher the riddle of life. What is life? What is the purpose? What makes? Even though we only seek happiness why can’t we ever seem to achieve it? When we do reach happiness why can’t we seem to grasp it and hold it for more than the few short hours that pass like seconds? The question we must answer first is “What makes happiness, true?”

Slavery is a modern, pervasive problem. Human trafficking has been found in every state in America (humantrafficking.org). It seems that most Americans likely live within a comfortable drive of someone who is being exploited through human trafficking. There is a growing trend in human trafficking toward sexual exploitation (Bennetts, 2011). The Information Age has helped to create new opportunities for sex trafficking to flourish.

Torben Grodal, stresses and acknowledges that it is through the aesthetic strategies that of a film that uses human behaviors and perception to create feelings and move emotion throughout a film (Whittock, 1998). The lightening of a movie depends on the type of story that the director wants to tell. It can be beautifully manipulated to assist the actors in convincing the audience to not only believe the story, but to go along for the ride. To Kill a Mockingbird was shot in black in white. As stated, this was done to date the movie back to 1932, and to provide simplicity of that time. However, even within the confines of black and white film, lighting is important. Many of the scenes of the movie are shot in soft lighting and low levels of color contrast with shades of grey. This is primarily used to provide the soft, romantic, and nostalgic feel of the 1930’s.

“43% of victims are used for forced commercial sexual exploitation, of whom 98% are women and girls” (UNGIFT). Women and girls are ensnared in sex trafficking in a variety of ways. Some are lured in with offers of real and legal work in restaurants, massage parlors, or anything else. Others are promised marriage, education and a better life. Still others are sold into trafficking by boyfriends, friends, neighbors or even parents (SOROPTMIST). Many of the girls and women are also forced into pornography. With all of the types of sexual exploitation comes abuse. Sexual, physical, and emotional are all types of abuse put onto females in human trafficking. Many people traffic others in hopes of getting money, work done, or just pure pleasure.