Let There Be Light

The influential career of Leni Riefenstahl has been a point of great contention amongst scholars and filmmakers over the last few decades. The legacy Riefenstahl leaves behind are her achievements and failures of her

Firstly, it is important to understand how the documentary form is best suited to illustrate the film’s theme. In order to do this, one must have an overview of the documentary style of filmmaking. Documentaries concern themselves with the “exploration of

In the book "All the light we cannot see" By: Anthony Doerr tells the story of a young girl named Marie and her struggles of being blind yet also tells the story of a young boy named Werner and his struggles of being fored into work in a coal mine. As a young reader I would say that this book is very engaging and interesting. Although the book starts out slightly confussing as soon as you understand what is going on it is easy to follow. Marie and her father have to quest from thier hometown in Paris where Marie has lived her whole life to delvier this precios diamond to a musseum. This is the part of the story where I got realy engaged and was eaver to read more. As all of this is happening Werner is tring to find out how he can get out of

Justice in a Corrupt Society Civil rights activist, Martin Luther King, once said, "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." During World War II, the oppression of nations such as France was sought by Nazi Germany. Marie-Laure LeBlanc, a native Parisian, finds herself struggling between standing up to the oppression of her German occupiers and surviving their ruthless conduct. Similarly, Werner Pfennig, a German radio expert, feels caught in an ethical dilemma between his moral upbringing and acting according to the Hitler Youth’s cruel demeanor. In Anthony Doerr’s novel, All the Light We Cannot See, a prominent theme developed through metaphors, dialogue, and allusions is that justice should not be ignored in times of oppression.

The radio that is presented from the book “All the Light We Cannot See” is a metaphor for the hope and the many untold stories in World War II. The characters Marie-Laure and Werner were trapped in a seemingly hopeless situation during the German occupation in Normandy during World War II. The radio that was found, and restored, by Werner gave them a sense of hope when they would listen to stories and lessons from voices around the world. Although the children could not do anything about the war that was raging outside and their possible inevitable fate, the radio gave them a brief mental break from their troubles. The radio is important in the story because the radio admits soundwaves that we cannot see in the same way we cannot see light.

The movie M depicts a society where everyone is in fear of something, and everyone is doubting others; the central idea of this movie is that no one is safe and everyone is “isolated.” The movie M shows the influence of German Expressionism movement by incorporating many ideas from it. This movie incorporated many shadows which was a very significant part of German Expressionism; the audience relies on the serial killer’s shadow to know his presence in many scenes. The first half of the movie is slow-paced, and the shadow of the serial killer is huge (exaggeration). Techniques such as Mise-en-scene is utilized in this movie, for example, when the serial killer kidnaps, Elsie, audiences don’t see him killing

The documentaries “Night and Fog”, and “Capturing the Friedmans”, both were created to move their audience in a way to get desired reactions. Nevertheless, while they both were created to move their audience, the motivation behind the two are quite different. “Night and Fog was created to serve as a warning for people about the dangers of cruelty, while “Capturing the Friedmans was made in a way to have viewers question the guilt of the two Friedmans convicted of sexuals assault.

This documentary has a voice which is the most important part of any movie, furthermore, it has it own way of living and breathing and speaking to

To begin with, some of the significant differences between documentaries and fiction films are transparency and aesthetics. Documentaries present existing, authentic narratives supported by original stimuli of the situation-

Surrealism is a movement that built off of the burgeoning look into art, psychology, and the workings of the mind. Popularly associated with the works of Salvador Dali, Surrealist art takes imagery and ideology and creates correlation where there is none, creating new forms of art. In this essay I will look to explore the inception of the surrealist movement, including the Surrealist Manifesto, to stress the importance of these artists and their work in the 20th century and beyond. I also will look to films from our European Cinema course to express how films incorporate the influence of surrealism both intentionally and unintentionally.

Wong Kar Wai’s In the Mood for Love has a spectacle of visuals, depicting sensuality through music,

Gunning goes on to define the cinema of attraction as “a cinema that bases itself on the quality that Leger celebrated: its ability to show something. Contrasted to the voyeuristic aspect of narrative cinema analyzed by Christian Metz, this is an exhibitionist cinema,” (Gunning, 230). It’s a cinema before narrative where the focus lied in testing the boundaries of what was possible with the medium, much like avant-garde today. It’s a cinema where narrative was always second, if even there, to the spectacle of what was possible with the medium. Lumiere’s Demolition of a Wall displays some of the possibilities of the medium quite clearly in its later half when the reel is re-winded to create the effect of the wall rebuilding itself. As Gunning reminds us, we should never forget that “in the earliest years of exhibition the cinema itself was an attraction,” (231). Cinema was defined by the machine instead of the films in this period, and thus the simple fact of being able to see moving pictures was itself astounding. Looking at Maxim Gorky’s first accounts of viewing a motion picture in his article The Kingdom of Shadows, he writes the “extraordinary impression it (cinema) creates is so unique and complex that I doubt my ability to describe it with all its nuances,” (Gorky 7). The people of the

An individual detailed analysis on the style, editing techniques Mise-en-scene and cinematography in the film "Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind".

In the 1931 film “City Lights”, Charlie Chaplin “opens our eyes”, so to speak, about how society values trivial elements of people over the deeper person by using blindness. In this film, Chaplin brilliantly mixes lighthearted comedy with deep and complex ideas about problems with society. Chaplin uses music, gags, and a genuine love connection to portray this point in multiple ways throughout the movie. Chaplin also took the bold step of not making a talking movie, even though they were available at the time, making the details in the pictures and sounds he was creating that much more important. What makes “City Lights” so special, and different from other comedies, is Chaplin’s natural blend of comedic scenes with tense and serious scenes. Chaplin weaved together a masterpiece that culminates in the end with the lady seeing who she fell in love with, which is also the moment Chaplin slaps the viewer in the face with the realization that the priorities in society are misguided and that the important things cannot be seen with the eye.

I enjoyed reading your post this week. I think that Maya Deren’s avant-garde film, Meshes of the Afternoon (1943), is subjective realism. In fact, I enjoyed the challenge of watching this film because after the fourth time, I realized the editing that distorted the time sequence. After trying to keep up with the film through jump cuts, and trying to understand what the repeated images of the key, knife, and the flower; I realized and understood that this is a dream-like film with no direct patterns. Overall, my interpretation of the film is a personal struggle of a woman regretting her decision of death from a life where being a female with all of the restrictions back in the 1940’s became too much for her to bare.