Pentium - History of Audiovision: Asian film 2

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Subject guarantor:

Viera LANGEROVÁ

Name of lecturer(s):

Viera LANGEROVÁ

Learning outcomes of the course unit:

The course provides basic coordinates of individual cultures and the optics which allow an understanding of film as a reflection, symptom of the internal life of a far-away society.

Mode of study:

Lecture (45 min.) Screening

Prerequisites and co-requisites:

No other requirements

Recommended optional programme components:

None

Course contents:

Even though films from Asia on domestic TV and in cinemas are rather sporadic events, learning about this area considering the gradual economic and cultural dynamics of Asia make it more and more current.

The course description is primarily from a cultural-historical context of Asian countries. Individual topic focus on issues in cultural comparisons of the East-West Axis, cultural communications and cultural differences and manners reflected in film. Finally, in the program, there are wider topics of globalization and its role in film.

This approach enables a focus on the content aspect of individual films and provides a deeper look into Asian Cultures. We will cover topics, characteristics important for this area from the viewpoint of their society identification. The idea of the compilation of lectures is synthetic in character and tries to avoid encyclopedic culminations of facts and names. It also avoids the to date practice of dividing national cinemas and their chonological history or the profiling of individual artists.

The topic hierarchy will be in socio-cultural reference terms of three main areas:

China

India

Islamic areas

The selection of individual films for screening may change, or possibly only demonstrative examples will be shown.

The lecture program is scheduled over two semesters of the school year.

Recommended or required reading:

China.

Yingjin Zhang : Screening China. Center for Chinese Studies, Universtiy of Michigan. 2002

Federico Rampini: Čínské století. Dokořán. 2008

Ľubica Obuchová: Číňané 21. století. Academia 1999

Viera Langerová: Filmový zemepis : kontinentálna Čína, Hongkokng, Tchajwan. SFÚ 2010

Miriam Lowensteinová: V Koreji se Korejcům nevyhnete. Lidové noviny 2010

Jiří Janoš: Japonsko a Korea. Dramatické sousedství. Academia 2008

Antonín Líman: Mistři japonského filmu. Paseka 2012

Viera Langerová: Vietnamský tucet. Slovenské divadlo 3/2012

India

Nasreen Munni Kabir: Bollywood. The Indian Cinema Story.Chanel 4 Books 2004

Derek Bose: Brand Bollywood. A New Global Entertainment Order. Sage Publications.2006

Lalitha Gopalan: Cinema of Interruptions. Oxford University Press 2003

William Dalrymple: Věk bohyně Kálí. Rub a líc dnešní Indie. Metafora 1999

Islamic areas

Hamid Dabashi : Close-up. Iranian Cinema, Past, Present and Future. Verso, 2001

Jean-Pierre Filiu : Apokolypsa v islámu. Volvox Globator 2009

Afshin Molavi: Toulky Persií. BB/art 2004

Asuman Suner: New Turkish Cinema. I.B.Tauris 2010

www.kinokultura.com (Central Asia)

Planned learning activities and teaching methods:

A/Eastern Asia

1. Film Map of Eastern Asia

Eastern Asia is influenced by Chinese culture and their philosophic-religious concepts - Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism. Each country of this area - China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Thailand has developed a peculiar film culture.

The introductory lecture will cover their common civilization foundations and that which separates them. The experience of China and Vietnam with Communism and the monarch tradition in Thailand and the militaristic past of Japan and Korea are projected into film narratives and the various historical trajectories have influenced it and other areas which will be covered in the following lectures.

Film: Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter ...and Spring. 2003 (South Korea)

Director: Kim Ki-duk

2. Art and Revolution

The change of the political regime in China and Vietnam brought to film a multitude of new topics and normative Communist asthetics with its ideological challenges, fundamentally reformatting traditional attitudes and the needs of the new powers, placed on film. Aside from these topics we will also touch upon the influence of Soviet film in both of these countries.

Film: Red Ladies' Dept. 1961

Director: Xie Jin

3. Return to lost culture.

The advent of Communism in China a migration of traditional culture to Taiwan, where it continued to develop in a relatively new situation and largely maintained historical constants in the works of Hou Hsiao Hsiena, and Edward Yang. A similar fate may be seen in the works of the Vietnamese exile Tranh Anh Hung who emigrated to France. The traditional model of the Chinese narrative and its changes in the time of cutural shift.

Film: The Scent of Green Papaja, 1993, Vietnam

Director: Tranh Anh Hung

4. Confucianist tradition and Film

The historical Chinese influence on Japan is long and is reflected on many levels; writing, clothing, governmental organization and in particular religion. Chinese Confucianist tradition significantly influenced the Samuraj tradition and its rules. It also extended to the formation of Japanese militarism. The Military tradition contained martial arts as well.

The subject of the lectures will be the basic postulates of Confucianism and tracing these principles in film.

Film: Seven Samurajs, 1954

Director Akira Kurosawa

5. Aesthetization of force, beauty of death.

Frequent occurences of force and its film depiction in Asian film is a subjective consideration of alternative ideology. The potential to shift suppressed aggressive feelings into an acceptable form. Sadism, masochism, torture, which are found in films are the in the end more of human fantasy which in everyday life must be kind and tolerable in the precise social code.

The relation of the idea of force, sex, death and beauty; their historical-cultural context and the projection into film will be another part of the lectures in this block.

Film: Peppermint Candy (1999)

Director: Lee Chang Dong

6. Poetry lines.

A radically differing field of Asian film is the poetic tradition of the subtleties of human worlds, full of nostalgia, loneliness, and often linked to natural cycles. These harmonically join elements the tragic, melodramatic and moralizing. They are inspired by the traditional aesthetics of the poetic space and its literary and graphic image. In Japan these form in a precise and disciplined line, originating, primarily from the Shogun military government ruling the country from the 13th to the end of the 19th century. The consistent opposition which for the western public was for a long time, largely unknown.

Contrasting traditions coming from the refined court culture and military culture often vary and are visible in many Asian countries.

The lecture focuses on a mapping of these typical polarities.

Film: Late Spring. 1949, Japan

Director: Yasujiro Ozu

7. The Great Reconstrution and the advent of the new generation.

In the 1980s and during the following decades there have been many changes, not only in China, but in Vietnam and following the fall of the military government in South Korea. The fifth generation of Chinese artists reacted to the new situation of the reinterpretation of history and bring new elements to their version of traditional visuality. This lecture will trace the common and varying features in the shift of societal-historical factors, their reflection in film in various countries.

Film: Rasie the Red Lantern, 1991, China

Director: Zhag Yi Mou

8. Children of the megapolis

The topic of urbanization, stories of internal migrants and their often tragic fates in the mazes of huge cities appear often and in various time shifts. In Japanese film this is linked to generational issues. In China this topical discouse formed at the end of the 1990s, among the 6th generation of artists. The borders between spaces of the rural and urban, social results of the shift from the village to the city and modernization processes are dealt with in film. These will be topics of further lectures.

Film: The Suzhou River, 2000, China

Director: Lou Ye

9. East-West Cultural exchange

Experience with colonialsim in Vietnam, and French culture found their „sympathizers“ in many countries of this territory. Multicultural Shanghai, the pre-war film center of China, in which the successful melodrama genre was formed, inspired American examples. Traces of Russian classics in Japan are part of the extensive inter-cultural discourse which with be the subject of the lectures.

Film: What time is it over there?, 2001, Taiwan

Director: Tsai Ming-liag.

10. The East in the flames of hybridization.

From an explanation of hybridization, which is an endless brew in Eastern Asia, we come to the Hong Kong film production phenomenon and collaborations between China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and other countries. The common denominator of this topic is globalization, which continues to more intensively create new, cosmopolitan culture, in which the initial Asian community and the US and Europe take part.

Film: Chunking Express, 1994, Hong Kong

Director: Wong Kar-wai

11. Commericalization tradition.

Myths and legends for export.

Facing the growing influence of Hollywood productions, whose political and economic pressure continues to increase, attention was directed to the creation of one's own commercially successful exports of a capable model. Aside from history, another inspiring territory is literature and its narratives, classic novels but also folk stories about demons and spirits. Hong Kong has the leading position in the commercialization of Chinese traditional heritage and its experience with martial arts films.

In this lecture we come to the reformating of traditional literature into its commercial version.

Film: Journey to the West, 2013, Hong Kong China

Director: Stephen Chow, Derek Kwok

12. Exotifying and Ethnograpy

The Chinese 5th generation, represented by Zhang Yimou and Chen Kaig, successfully exotified history. This popular path inspired artist looking for topics rural environments and created a picture of China differing from everything that we can see in most films. Portraits of nature and life in the village forming social and, often, power struggles. These lectures will be a short historical excursion to the development of the genre in Chinese film and will be compare with its variation in East Asian film.

Film: Tuya's Marriage, 2006, China

Director: Wang Quan'an

13: Chinese Versions of popular culture

Out of the definition of popular culture comes that folklore and the arts are greatly connected. In Thailand, filmmakers worked on raising this example to an artistic level and created exceptional films which captured audiences at world festivals. This process may be seen in parallel in Japan. The lecture will be devoted to television work as well, which includes much of the popular formulas.

Film: Tropical Malady, 2004, Thailand

Director; Apichatpong Weerastehakul

14. Love story, The phenomenon of the East.

Though Asia maintains a cult of martial arts and male heros, love stories also found their place. Its tradition is in other cultural environments and largely relies on religion. The origin and culturally conditioned form of emotional display and the relation betwen a man and woman in all East Asian cultures.

Film: Three Times, 2005, Taiwan

Director: Hou Hsiao Hsien

B/India

1. Extasy, infantilism and the fast-film industry.

India, with billions of population is called by the surrounding countries as sub-continent. Similar to China, it creates a cultural center, defined primarily by volcanic and ecstatic religion. This defines largely the dynamic the visual film culture which reflects the demands, taste and mentality of the audience. Producing 800 films yearly, it has the elements of mass industry production and thought may joke about the manner of filming, it is greatly successful around the world. Films come not only from Bollywood in India, and are related to differing traditions which in the 50s and 60s were represented by the famous Indian directors Bimal Roj, Satjajit Raj, and Mrinal Sen.

The introduction will be a outline lecture of the new territory and its cultural basis.

Film: Kama Sutra. 1996, India

Director: Mira Nair

2. Masala: form synthesis

Many talk of Indian cinema as a single cinematic genre; musical melodrames, or musicals. An explanation of the concept of Bollywood, terminology, which arose in the 80s and replaced the „Hindi Film“ designation. Everything related to its existence and development will be covered in the followling lecture series.

Film: Devdas. 2002 + examples from the film Devdas from 1955.

Director: Sanjay Leela Bhansali

3. Western inspiration.

Though we look at Indian, Iranian, or Chinese westerns (and many other genres) sarcastically, their perfection and often comical approximations are to many the only available manner of how to acquaint an audience of billions, often illiterate, with the West. In Bollywood films there are as a dream spaces and selected visages sometimes surprising for foreigners.

With the same idea we continue with the topic of hybridization from the previous block. We compare forms and content.

Film: Embers (Sholay), 1975, India

Director: Rames Sippy

4. Creative Hollywoodization

The success of directors from India in Hollywood is unusual, Mira Nair, Shechar Kapoor, or Manoj Night Shyamalan and also Deepa Mehta are proof of this.

Particular affinity and understanding are not only the result of common financial interests. Generating a new production, coming half-way between India and America rise under the pressure of globalization and its audience is in the billions, from China, across Russia to the Middle East.

This lecture will be devoted to Hollywood/Bollywood collaboration, everything that is produced and with consideration of globalization.

Film: Bollywood/Hollywood, 2002, India

Film: Deepa Mehta

5. Tabu: from joy to terror

Prohibition systems and exact rules in caste societies create environments with many paradoxes. Sensuality and body cult are in opposition to the prohibiition of depicting sexual contact between men and women. Thought, long ago, a kiss was tabu, Bollywood is experimenting in this field and has raised a wave of approval as well as protest.

A courageous step was the film by Deepa Mehta about a lesbian relationship.

The lecture will explain the historical background of this event and its critical foundation, of which Bollywood had a significant part.

Film: Fire, 1996, India

Director: Deepa Mehta

6. The legacy of colonialism

Though the story of colonial topics have been the providence of British artists (Ghandi, Journey to India, etc.) the first Oscar for Indian film was inspired by this period.

The popularity of Bollywood film in Britain is greater than domestic films. The Indo-British film legacy is, today, the subject of film history research.

A discussion of collonialism also includes mentions of Pakistan, a one-time part of India. Though it is an Islamic state, the fact is, that among some of the greatest Bollywood stars are those of a generation whose parents, at the separation from India, moved to Pakistan. Collaboration of those countries is also in film.

Film: Lagaan, 2001, India

Director: Ashutosh Gowariker

C/ Islamic countries.

1. Islam and film

In countries, where religion dominates, which theoretically supports and limits the potential of spreading art, there is a developed film culture. This, primarily, is Iran, but today are known film from the largest Islamic country, Indonesia, and Malaysia and the Middle East. Also a part of this portfolio are post-Soviet Central Asia and Afghanistan. A particular postion is taken by Turkey.

The subject of these lecture will be a general image of the position of film is these parts of the world and an acquaintance with Islamic depiction tradition.

Film: Osama, Afghanistan

Director: Siddiq Barmak

2. Shiitism and aesthetics of mourning

The schism which occured in Islam in the 7th century, divides this religion into two main currents; Sunni and Shiite. The differences between these two Islamic branches are filled, even in differing arts with „rhetoric“ of Shiitism, full of oppressive fatalism, melancholy, mourning in thrarted desires and hope with visible quick, apocalyptic ends.

How the theological philosophy of Shiitism influenced Iranian film will be the subject of this lecture.

Film: Marriage of the Chosen, 1989, Iran

Director: Mohsen Machmalbaf

3. The source of the poetic-mystic consellation

The link of Persian poetry and film, which was a lively inspirational source, is reflected in the films of the most important Iranian artists. Abbas Kiarostami was inspired by poetry in many of his films. Disciplined and covert emotionalism of poetry, comes from Islamic mysticism, particularly the non-orthodox Suffite school.

As well, there is a comparison of the Western „body cult“ and the Eastern „cult of secrecy“, which belong to the spectrum of film visuality, which at the end of the 80s and particularly in the 90s grabbed the world audience.

Film: Where is My Friend's home? 1987, Iran

Director: Abbas Kiarostami

4. A whiff of Melancholy

Another variation of „mourning“ is offered by Turkish film, originating from differing configurationos of religion and history, that formed the current cultural context. The term „hüzün“ and its melancholic level which is key for a deeper undetanding of the meditative poetry of Turkish film.

Film: Distant, 2002, Turkey

Director: Nuri Bilge Ceylan

5. Nomadic Wandering

This topic is linked primarily to Central Asia and the culture of nomads and their constant mobility and religion which exists on the edges of Shamanism and Islam.

Two divergent cultural examples meet; the traditional life of Steppe herders and everything which was incorporated into that culture during the decades of Sovietization. This cinematography is dominated by the topic of urbanization, connnected to the internal migration from the village to the city and all, Kazah, kyygyz, Uzbek, and lesser developed Tadjik and Turken peoples cope with their traditional cultural heritage, present in film with ethnographic topics.

Film: Beshkempir, 1998, Kyrgyzstan

Director: Aktan Abdykalykov

6. Humor without censorship

The position of humor in patriarchal muslim society is complex is directed by a long list of rules. No less, in literature and later in film, this genre appears. Iranian comedies are practically unknown to us and this goes for all countries of that area. Presentation of this topic will develop from literature, the character of Hodju Nasredin, theatre and Persian comedy form „ru-howzi“ and there will also be a mapping of the situation in the contemporary comedy genre.

Film: Fire Keeper, 2009, Iran

Director: Mohsen Amiryoussefi

7. Versions of realism

The relationship to realistic depiction in this territory is historically different from the European and its forms were applied to the end of the 19th century with broadening modernization. How the concept of neorealism was incorporated into Iranian film is explained and what influence the Russian Realist School had in the cinema of Soviet Central Asia, that is, a comparison of the differing concepts of realism and its function in Asian film.

Film: Three Brothers, 1997, Kazahstan

Director: Seryk Aprymov

Assessment methods and criteria:

Grading based on attendance and final written test results.

Course web page:

Note:

Lecturer: PhDr. Viera Langerová PhD.

Film journalist and publicist; Graduate of Film and Theatre Research at the Fine Arts College in Bratislava; Post-graduate studys in Culturology at the Charles University in Prague and Inter-cultural Communications at Bussines School (Tallinn, Estonia).

She worked as an editor of the magazines Film and Theatre, Dialog, Slovak Views, and Chief editor of the Czech-Slovak monthly paper Listy, and a collaborator with the Associated Press in Slovakia. After residing for four years in Kazahstan, Kyrgyzstan and five years in Pakistan she covers Asian cinema and Post-communist Europe cinema. She is the author of the book: „Filmovy Zemepis: Continental china, Hong Kong, Taiwan“ (2010) and a travelogue of Urdu, Parda, Burka, "Five Year in Pakistan (2011), and a number of studies and professional articles.

She has lectured on film at the Tallinn University and the Baltic Film and Media School in Estonia. She is also a consultant at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival, The International Film Festival of Muslim Film in Kazan (Russian Federation), The International Film Festival Duhok in Iraq and is a program consultant on the Festival of Iranian Film in Prague. She is also a curator, taking part on preparations for a retrospective of Kazah film at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (1999), and in the program of the Focus on Kurdish Film at the Karlovy Vary Internationl Film Festival (2013)

Further information:

This course is an elective for all AMU students

Schedule for winter semester 2014/2015:

The schedule has not yet been prepared

Schedule for summer semester 2014/2015:

	06:00–08:0008:00–10:0010:00–12:0012:00–14:0014:00–16:0016:00–18:0018:00–20:0020:00–22:0022:00–24:00
Mon
Tue
Wed	místnost 207 Učebna 2 (Lažanský palác) LANGEROVÁ V. 14:50–18:05 (přednášková par. 1)
Thu
Fri

Date	Day	Time	Tutor	Location	Notes	No. of paralel
	Wed	14:50–18:05	LANGEROVÁ V.	Učebna 2 Lažanský palác		přednášková par. 1

The subject is a part of the following study plans:

• Animation - Master (faculty subject, optional subject)
• Documentary Film - Master (faculty subject, optional subject)
• Documentary Film - Bachelor (faculty subject, optional subject)
• Animation - Master (faculty subject, optional subject)
• Scriptwriting and Dramaturgy - Bachelor (faculty subject, optional subject)
• Scriptwriting and Dramaturgy - Master (faculty subject, optional subject)
• Film Directing - Bachelor (faculty subject, optional subject)
• Film Directing - Master (faculty subject, optional subject)
• Cinematography - Bachelor (faculty subject, optional subject)
• Cinematography - Master (faculty subject, optional subject)
• Production - Bachelor (faculty subject, optional subject)
• Production - Master (faculty subject, optional subject)
• Audiovisual Studies - Bachelor (qualification subject, faculty subject, optional subject)
• Editing - Bachelor (faculty subject, optional subject)
• Editing - Master (faculty subject, optional subject)
• Sound Design - Bachelor (faculty subject, optional subject)
• Sound Design - Master (faculty subject, optional subject)
• Photography CZ - Bachelor (faculty subject, optional subject)
• Photography CZ - Master (faculty subject, optional subject)
• Audiovisual Studies - Master (qualification subject, faculty subject, optional subject)
• Restoring of Photogrphy (faculty subject, optional subject)