Independent Films May Also Qatar University Roma
Examine two of the films listed in this module. One must be a foreign film from the M6 Foreign Films Selections (18 films) and the other an independent film from the M6 New Independent Cinema Selections (20 films). You will find many options if you scroll down each page, or you could select movies that you have cleared with the instructor in advance. Write a short (1000 words) essay focused on the following question: What are the characteristics of independent film with particular regard to performance beyond the basic definition? In other words, how do your films EXPAND the basic definition? The presentation and readings will help you understand the basic definition. You must do more than merely show how each of your movies meet the basic criteria as an independent film. The movies in this section are easily identified as meeting the basic definition, but you need to go further in your analysis for your essay. Please avoid extensively summarizing the plot at the expense of analyzing the actor’s performance.
Please place this information in your header:
Name
Word Count
Independent Film Title (date)
International Film Title (date)
Give your essay a title and center it below the header information.
if you are still wondering what to do, I’ll try to simplify it for you as much as possible here:
- You know the basic definition of an independent film from the presentations, readings and videos.
- You know that independent and foreign films both fit the basic definition (e.g., budget, produced outside the big studio, cast, story, etc.).
- As you know from watching the presentation in this module, when you watch movies today with strong ensemble casts or art films with international actors made independently outside the dominance of the corporate studios, you are witnessing the effect of foreign films on the Hollywood film industry.
- Therefore, do not merely describe how your independent and international films meet the basic definition, but focus on how they expand the definition. Find elements in the films that you recognize as being unique and influential. Consider how your films might affect the way big-budget films are made.
- Some examples include camera techniques, storyline, personal issues that concern a director, a role that a celebrity might not usually perform.
- This assignment is the culmination of the course, pushing you to think for yourself and try to find elements that distinguish your independent and foreign film from the mainstream. You can’t merely say ”budget under $20M” or “premiered at Sundance” and leave it at that.
- As an example, the producers of the big-budget ($110+M) big-studio bomb Ghost in the Shell could have learned a lot from the independent film Ex Machina ($16M). A good essay on Ex Machina would focus on the elements in the film that make it important and meaningful other than its budget and foreign origin (UK). I might also bring in examples from the film Her, which has an independent feel to it (what does that mean?), released by a small U.S. studio and had a relatively low budget.
- A simple way to look at this assignment is to ask whether your chosen films could teach Hollywood and the money machine of CGI-driven movies. Many students seem to think this assignment is about identifying why their choice is independent when the basic definition is clear in the presentation and readings. This assignment requires higher levels of critical thinking. The best papers are very specific in saying how these films EXPAND the basic definition. What can Hollywood learn from Indies? Why are independent film festivals like Sundance so important? Why do top actors do indies when they can make more money doing television or a CGI feature? What do your selected films have that could enhance major studio film making?
Film Response Hints:-
Here are some hints that may help clarify the direction for your independent film essay. The presentation and readings list the basic elements along with other features that characterize independent films.
A basic definition of independent film is:
A film that is produced outside the studio system. This means there are limitations to the budget, funding sources, cast, story and distribution.
That distinction has been rendered moot with the rise of the “independent” labels of the major studios, such as Lionsgate, Castle Rock, The Weinstein Company, Paramount Vantage and Fox Searchlight. You could find many films that move fluidly between “studio” and “indie” when it comes to the production and distribution aspects. Also, consider that George Lucas made the last three Star Wars films independently, yet these are not considered “indie” films. For example, independent films might focus on personal issues that the director thinks are important (e.g., race, gender, relationships, politics, society). It could also mean that it was made with a hand-held camera or without a big corporate studio breathing down the director’s neck. Independent films may also feature relatively unknown actors giving extraordinary performances, or a big-name celebrity actor performing a gritty role that might not be possible in a blockbuster.
We are looking for you to identify characteristics of the performance on film that distinguish it from mainstream blockbuster studio films. For instance, the films that appear at the Sundance Festival feature performances with more emphasis on acting, or more personal approaches by director and cast as compared with larger films with big stars, big budgets and spectacular special effects. A better definition would be that an independent film is one that makes the most of very little to produce a unique, moving film while using unconventional techniques to expose audiences to topics they didn’t realize they cared about such as an issue that the director addresses such as racism,, gender or politics. Describe the elements that you think expand the definition in the independent or foreign films that you choose to analyze.
Foreign Film selection:-
A Touch of Sin (China) (2013) Steeped in violence and sorrow, this is an astonishing movie from the Chinese director Jia Zhangke. Divided into four chapters, it was inspired by a series of widely reported violent conflicts in China that haunted him. Together the vignettes allow Mr. Jia – as he put it to me in an interview – to “paint the face” of contemporary China. Zhao Tao, Mr. Jia’s wife and frequent star, plays Xiao Yu, a young receptionist at a sauna. It’s immediately clear that she’s having a rough go of it. She’s in an affair with a married man and his wife not only knows it, but one evening assaults Xiao Yu with the help of two thugs. Like all the sections, this one is largely a slice of brute naturalism spiked with beguilingly surrealistic moments, many involving animals. The overall mood is one of escalating, palpable unease. Yi Yi (Taiwan) (2000) A packed, enthralling three-hour chronicle of modern Taiwanese family life, “Yi Yi” has the heft and density of a great novel. Its point of view is shared among Yang-Yang, his older sister, Ting-Ting, and their father, N.J., a video-game designer in the grip of a quiet but intense midlife crisis. (Links to an external site.)Roger Ebert (Links to an external site.) described “Yi Yi” as “a movie in which nobody knows more than half the truth, or is happy more than half the time,” something that could also be said (optimistically) of life itself. And “Yi Yi” is one of those movies that you remember less as something you saw than as something you experienced, as if you were one of the Jians’ Taipei neighbors. Timbuktu (Mauritania) (2015) Not far from the ancient Malian city of Timbuktu, proud cattle herder Kidane (Ibrahim Ahmed aka Pino) lives peacefully in the dunes with his wife Satima (Toulou Kiki), his daughter Toya (Layla Walet Mohamed), and Issan (Mehdi Ag Mohamed), their twelve-year-old shepherd. In town, the people suffer, powerless, from the regime of terror imposed by the Jihadists determined to control their faith. Music, laughter, cigarettes, even soccer have been banned. The women have become shadows but resist with dignity. Every day, the new improvised Shariah law courts issue tragic and absurd sentences. Kidane and his family are being spared the chaos that prevails in Timbuktu. But their destiny changes abruptly. Cemetery of Splendour (Thailand) (2016)Soldiers with a mysterious sleeping sickness are transferred to a temporary clinic in a former school. The memory-filled space becomes a revelatory world for housewife and volunteer Jenjira, as she watches over Itt, a handsome soldier with no family visitors. Jen befriends young medium Keng who uses her psychic powers to help loved ones communicate with the comatose men. Doctors explore ways, including colored light therapy, to ease the mens’ troubled dreams. Jen discovers Itt’s cryptic notebook of strange writings and blueprint sketches. There may be a connection between the soldiers’ enigmatic syndrome and the mythic ancient site that lies beneath the clinic. Magic, healing, romance and dreams are all part of Jen’s tender path to a deeper awareness of herself and the world around her. Dheepan (France) (2016)Dheepan is a Tamil freedom fighter, a Tiger. In Sri Lanka, the Civil War is reaching its end, and defeat is near. Dheepan decides to flee, taking with him two strangers – a woman and a little girl – hoping that they will make it easier for him to claim asylum in Europe. Arriving in Paris, the ‘family’ moves from one temporary home to another until Dheepan finds work as the caretaker of a run-down housing block in the suburbs. He works to build a new life and a real home for his ‘wife’ and his ‘daughter’, but the daily violence he confronts quickly reopens his war wounds, and Dheepan is forced to reconnect with his warrior’s instincts to protect the people he hopes will become his true family. Under the Same Moon (La misma luna) (Mexico) (2007)Tells the parallel stories of nine-year-old Carlitos and his mother, Rosario. In the hopes of providing a better life for her son, Rosario works illegally in the U.S. while her mother cares for Carlitos back in Mexico. Unexpected circumstances drive both Rosario and Carlitos to embark on their own journeys in a desperate attempt to reunite. Along the way, mother and son face challenges and obstacles but never lose hope that they will one day be together again. Mountains May Depart (China) (2016)The life of Tao, and those close to her, is explored in three different time periods: 1999, 2014, and 2025. Sing Street (Ireland) (2016)A boy growing up in Dublin during the 1980s escapes his strained family life by starting a band to impress the mysterious girl he likes. Girlhood (France) (2014)A girl with few real prospects joins a gang, reinventing herself and gaining a sense of self confidence in the process. However, she soon finds that this new life does not necessarily make her any happier. Oppressed by her family setting, dead-end school prospects and the boys law in the neighborhood, Marieme starts a new life after meeting a group of 3 free-spirited girls. She changes her name, her dress code, and quits school to be accepted in the gang, hoping that this will be a way to freedom. The Death of Mr. Lazarescu (Romania) (2006) The title is a spoiler. When we first meet Dante Lazarescu, a retired Bucharest resident in his early 60s (though he looks older), he is complaining of stomach pains. A little more than two and a half hours later – more or less in real time – he has left this world, unmourned and all but unnoticed. Why should we care? That is the question – not at all rhetorical – posed by Cristi Puiu’s bleak, gripping, weirdly funny second feature. At the Cannes Film Festival, “The Death of Mr. Lazarescu (Links to an external site.)” was a word-of-mouth sensation. “Did you see that three-hour Romanian movie? Oh, man. You’ve gotta see it.” And that’s still true. Mr. Puiu’s film was an early sign of the flowering of Romanian cinema that would bring international acclaim to young auteurs like Cristian Mungiu (“4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days”) and Corneliu Porumboiu (“Police, Adjective”). Like his colleagues (and sometime rivals), Mr. Puiu uses long takes and minimal camera movement to create a sense of lived reality that is absorbing almost to the point of claustrophobia. He zeroes in remorselessly on the petty absurdities and large iniquities that define life in Romania more than a decade after the fall of Nicolae Ceausescu’s Communist dictatorship. New Independent cinema movies selection:-
Additional Options: The Hurt Locker (USA) (2009)Kathryn Bigelow made history when she became the first woman to win the Oscar for best director, for this film. At long last, a brilliant female director was recognized for her art by a male-dominated industry that remains pathologically resistant to equality. It was a cinematic and political milestone then; it still is. And while it may seem paradoxical that Ms. Bigelow was honored for a war movie in which women are largely physically absent, masculinity – with its discontents, rituals, enigmas and staggering, annihilating capacity for violence – has long been her great subject. That this violence is also self-annihilating is an anguished truth in The Hurt Locker, which is set in and around Baghdad during the war in Iraq the year after the American invasion. The story tracks three members of an army explosive ordnance disposal squad that disarms roadside bombs. The story’s axis point is the squad’s volatile team leader, Staff Sgt. William James (Jeremy Renner), whose expertise has morphed into a ghastly mania. He doesn’t just take avoidable risks – sweat cascading off him, an exasperated James removes his protective bomb suit while trying to disarm an explosive – he rushes right at them. Inside Llewyn Davis (USA) (2013)Follow a week in the life of a young folk singer as he navigates the Greenwich Village folk scene of 1961. Guitar in tow, huddled against the unforgiving New York winter, he is struggling to make it as a musician against seemingly insurmountable obstacles — some of them of his own making. Watch for the cat and the melancholy performance of Oscar Issac. Krisha (USA) (2016)Krisha returns for Thanksgiving dinner after ten years away from her family, but past demons threaten to ruin the festivities. The Witch (USA) (2016)New England, 1630: William and Katherine try to lead a devout Christian life, homesteading on the edge of an impassible wilderness, with five children. When their newborn son mysteriously vanishes and their crops fail, the family begins to turn on one another. ‘The Witch’ is a chilling portrait of a family unraveling within their own sins, leaving them prey for an inescapable evil. The Invitation (USA) (2016)Will and Eden were once a loving couple. After a tragedy took their son, Eden disappeared. Two years later, out of the blue, she returns with a new husband… and as a different person, eerily changed and eager to reunite with her ex and those she left behind. Over the course of a dinner party in the house that was once his, the haunted Will is gripped by mounting evidence that Eden and her new friends have a mysterious and terrifying agenda. But can we trust Will’s hold on reality? Or will he be the unwitting catalyst of the doom he senses? Burning Sands (USA) (2017)Deep into Hell Week, a favored pledgee is torn between honoring his code of silence or standing up against the intensifying violence of underground hazing. Mississipi Damned (USA) (2009)In the years 1986 and 1998 three black children living in Mississippi deal with poverty, violence and abuse. Young Kari the main character, is a talented pianist who hopes to pursue a career in it one day. Her sister Leigh is struggling to hide her lesbian relationship with her girlfriend, Paula. Their cousin Sammy, is a star basketball player. Each child deals with their dysfunctional family, including gambling, alcoholism, and poverty. |
