An Alternative Documentary Film: Three Tales

Steve Reich is a contemporary composer who is best known for his contribution to minimalist music. As well as being one of the pioneers of modern music, he also teamed up with Beryl Korot in 1998 to create a documentary-digital video opera, in the form of an installation and performance. Video installation became a very popular art medium since 1970s, but Three Tales is one of the rare examples of this form of art in documentary form.

Three Tales is made of three parts; each of these parts recalls an historical event that occurred in the past. The first part, Hindenburg, is a collection of historical footage, photographs and interviews about the German zeppelin that was built during 1930s and its explosion in New Jersey after crossing the Atlantic. The second part “Bikini” is another collection of archived material in footage, photography form on U.S. atom bomb tests conducted at Bikini Island that also shows footage on islanders who had to leave the island. Final part “Dolly” is about the cloned sheep in Scotland during late 1990s and shows footage on human body, machines and D.N.A. related technological images. It is possible to see interviews done with scientists like Richard Dawkins or James Watson throughout the work. Three Tales not only is a video installation, but as mentioned previously, it is also a performance where 16 musicians are on the stage providing live music during the screening of the documentary.

Reich and Korot have managed to contribute to film studies a new approach with this project; one one hand, it is true that it seems as an experimental project, but on the other, it nevertheless has almost all the necessary characteristics of a film: the exception is that it has more, in the sense that its audience is able to hear the soundtrack performed live. I’d strongly recommend Three Tales to anyone interested in documentary film and contemporary music.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=caJ-MoESHyI&feature=related

Film as a tool for Propaganda: Manufacturing Truth

The North Star (1943) was a film produced by Samuel Goldwyn that was written by Lillian Hellman and directed by Lewis Milestone. It has been known as one of the most controversial movies in film history and apart from that, it is a great example of the power vested in cinema as a tool for propaganda. Originally released in 1943, the film was intended to sympathize Americans with Soviet Russia by neglecting Stalin’s harsh ruling period and its effects on townsfolk and farmers of the countryside. It showed the daily lives of Soviet Russians as simple and pastoral lives on countryside, as if collective working was compulsory and the traces of communism on daily lives was nearly invisible. As political history suggests, the film was released at a time when U.S. and Soviets were allies. 2^nd World War was a period of history when White House approached Hollywood film industry to “clarify” U.S. relations with Soviets and many films like Mission to Moscow (1943), Song of Russia (1944) or Days of Glory (1944) were produced by kind requests of president Franklin Roosevelt. Everything seemed so rational especially after Nazi Germany invaded Soviet territories and the war became even more brutal: U.S and Soviets were now brothers in arms (Damian Cannon, 2000). What could be more bona-fide than to praise Russian life, humanizing it, and to show its people as fellow victims of this violent war?

The North Star was nominated for 6 Oscars, and everything changed when the war was over, and these two brothers in arms had now found themselves enemies-to-be for a long time to come with the cold war. Samuel Goldwyn was now called over by the House Un-American Activities Committee to respond for his “naïve” and pro-communist image of the Soviet Russia. This led to one of the most interesting and desperate moments in film history: The North Star was recut, and re-released with the name Armored Attack on 1957, but this time, its cute details about soviet farmland life was removed, the location was changed from Russia to Hungary with the use of a voice over, and it became a movie about the Soviet Invasion of Hungary! An important thing to mention here is that the film was only recut, not re-filmed!

Propaganda is socially determined; its success is determined by the factors that are present that particular context, time and environment. What the story tells has to make sense in front of an audience and this social context allows existence and success of propaganda. The state of mind in which society is, is of great importance for the accomplishment of discourses: fear, suspicion, enemies and monsters are usually “defined” concepts by the use of mass media and its instruments. As we can see, producing facts is possible and manufacturing truth is only a matter of perception.

Reference:

- D.Cannon, 2000. Film Notes 2. State University of New York : Retrieved from: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/filmnotes/filmnote2.html

Further Reading:

- Eilene Toppin Ording, 2010. The North Star: Classic Controversial Film from 1943. Retrieved from : http://www.suite101.com/content/the-north-star-a192511

- Andrea Passaflume, 2000. The North Star. TCM Turner Classic Movies. Retrieved from : http://www.tcm.com/thismonth/article.jsp?cid=276075&mainArticleId=276063

Transnational Cinema: Comedy or Tragedy?

When reading studies on transnational cinema, we come across with some sub genres like “cinema of duty” and “cinema of pleasures and hybridity”, that makes it possible to analyze transnational films from a context based perspective rather than analyses focused on production, when needed. Cinema of duty is generally used to describe social-issue-based, problem portraying films that somehow have a darker side. Cinema of pleasures and hybridity, on the other side, stands for a cinema that is closer to the comedy genre that celebrates ethnic and cultural differences through colorful representations.

According to some scholars there is a shift from cinema of duty towards cinema of hybridity and pleasures since 1990s (Deniz Göktürk, 2000). Although it is not very easy to determine which genre of transnational cinema is more efficient in building a stronger image about diaspora and migrant cultures, we should still be critical towards what image is being constructed. There are times when we see the rise of transnational films that refer to a specific culture or nation and there are times when a certain subject is left out of the picture. Power struggles among states play an important role in here; cinema is a great political instrument when there is a need to build up a new image in people’s minds. For instance, when we look at the list of holocaust films, we see that Israeli films, compared with United States or Germany are very little in numbers. In some way, this means that U.S. and Germany (as a country who contributed a lot to the strengthening of the concept of holocaust) has still more things to say than the real victims of holocausts on cinema.

Cinema of pleasures and hybridity can be seen as a more gentle, empathetically successful and anti-violent genre of cinema. Therefore, its effects on viewers are usually commemorated with laughter, sympathy and joy. This is the point where this type of a cinema may become dangerous: the previously known image about a certain culture, perhaps a stereotype, is subject to change. This is one of the reasons why transnational cinema examples should also be analyzed from a historical and political perspective as well: the events that occurred in history should be taken into consideration while looking at these films. The reframing of minorities and diaspora cultures is a double-ended discussion; the objectivity of cinema should always be questioned because there are more double standards than we can actually see. U.S. film industry is gigantesque when compared to Israeli or Turkish cinema; therefore it has more budget and more power to create while “3^rd world” countries have to be cautious in spending their precious money.

Reference:

- D. Göktürk, 2000. Turkish delight - German Fright: Migrant Identities in Transnational Cinema. School of Modern Languages, University of Southampton

Further Reading:

- Katherine Pratt Ewing, 2006. Between Cinema and Social Work: Diasporic Turkish Women and the (Dis)Pleasures of Hybridity. CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY, Vol. 21, Issue 2, pp. 265–294, ISSN 0886-7356

- Barbara Mennel, 2010. Politics of Space in the Cinema of Migration. GFL Journal, N.3, Gainesville , Florida