Improvisation in the theatre Improvising in theatre has taken place within both
realistic and non-realistic forms, but it has a special relationship to avant-garde
theatre. It can problematise the relationship between the actor and his role by
eliding ...
Author: Roger Dean
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 9781134376131
Category: Performing Arts
Page: 333
View: 891
First Published in 1997. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.1987–2004: mostly film, including Secrets and Lies and Vera Drake (three out of
thirteen stage only) iv. 2005: marks the start of a fourth, mixed period,
interspersing plays and films (stage: Two Thousand Years, 2005; Grief, 2011; the
revival of ...
Author: Anthony Frost
Publisher: Macmillan International Higher Education
ISBN: 9781137348135
Category: Performing Arts
Page: 320
View: 839
This established text explores the history, theory and practice of improvisation within the rapidly changing field of Drama, Theatre and Performance Studies. New material includes improvisation in film, stand-up comedy, LARPing, applied theatre and theatre sports. It contains a wealth of new exercises and examples from contemporary practitioners.Chance, coincidence, and improvisation are the recurring narratives of their films.
Step Across the Border (1990) focuses on Fred Frith's days as a nomadic
improviser; it won numerous awards and in 2000 was voted by Cahiers du
Cinema film ...
Author: Ajay Heble
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 9781136187148
Category: Music
Page: 462
View: 531
Improvisation is a performance practice that animates and activates diverse energies of inspiration, critique, and invention. In recent years it has coalesced into an exciting and innovative new field of interdisciplinary scholarly inquiry, becoming a cornerstone of both practical and theoretical approaches to performance. The Improvisation Studies Reader draws together the works of key artists and thinkers from a range of disciplines, including theatre, music, literature, film, and dance. Divided by keywords into eight sections, this book bridges the gaps between these fields. The book includes case studies, exercises, graphic scores and poems in order to produce a teaching and research resource that identifies central themes in improvisation studies. The sections include: Listening Trust/Risk Flow Dissonance Responsibility Liveness Surprise Hope Each section of the Reader is introduced by a newly commissioned think piece by a key figure in the field, which opens up research questions reflecting on the keyword in question. By placing key theoretical and classic texts in conversation with cutting-edge research and artists’ statements, this book answers the urgent questions facing improvising artists and theorists in the mediatized Twenty-First Century.Downplaying the importance of the scenario has for a long time been a part of the
art-film production mode, especially in a style where the documentary-like effect
requires a considerable amount of improvisation. What Tarr learned from direct ...
Author: András B. Kovács
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 9780231850377
Category: Performing Arts
Page: 256
View: 974
The Cinema of Béla Tarr is a critical analysis of the work of Hungary's most prominent and internationally best known film director, written by a scholar who has followed Bela Tarr's career through a close personal and professional relationship for more than twenty-five years. András Bálint Kovács traces the development of Tarr's themes, characters, and style, showing that almost all of his major stylistic and narrative innovations were already present in his early films and that through a conscious and meticulous recombination of and experimentation with these elements, Tarr arrived at his unique style. The significance of these films is that, beyond their aesthetic and historical value, they provide the most powerful vision of an entire region and its historical situation. Tarr's films express, in their universalistic language, the shared feelings of millions of Eastern Europeans.Coincidently this is precisely the same equipment used to shoot improvisational
films , attesting to both kinds of directors ' desire to achieve maximum flexibility for
cameras and bence for actor ' s ( or people ) . The similarities between cinema ...
Author: David A. Kalson
Publisher:
ISBN: WISC:89105688063
Category: Motion pictures, American
Page: 292
View: 542
Film: The. Transformation. of. Keaton's. Vaudeville. I. I N HIS STUDY of early
sound comedy, Henry Jenkins suggests, ... as with many of the vaudeville
performers who left the stage to make silent films, the practice of improvising was
central to ...
Author: Robert Knopf
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691004420
Category: Performing Arts
Page: 217
View: 974
An unprecedented look at the wide-ranging appeal of Keaton's genius, startingwith his early days in Vaudeville. 30 illustrations.as much flexibility as possible during the assembly of the film in post-production.
As Winterbottom ... A film is no more the product of a single individual than is the
music of an improvising jazz group' (Gaut 1997: 166–7). While this analogy ...
Author: Bruce Bennett
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 9780231850537
Category: Performing Arts
Page: 224
View: 912
This comprehensive study of prolific British filmmaker Michael Winterbottom explores the thematic, stylistic, and intellectual consistencies running through his eclectic and controversial body of work. This volume undertakes a close analysis of a TV series directed by Winterbottom and sixteen of his films ranging from television dramas to transnational co-productions featuring Hollywood stars, and from documentaries to costume films. The critique is centered on Winterbottom's collaborative working practices, political and cultural contexts, and critical reception. Arguing that his work delineates a 'cinema of borders', this study examines Winterbottom's treatment of sexuality, class, ethnicity, and national and international politics, as well as his quest to adequately narrate inequality, injustice, and violence.It was a simple matter to pass between the fictional worlds of cinema and war,
and Cecil B. De Mille, for example, lost no time in improvising as an army captain.
The studio contingent formed the 'Lasky Home Guard'. Every Thursday evening ...
Author: Paul Virilio
Publisher: Verso
ISBN: 0860919285
Category: Performing Arts
Page: 95
View: 737
Looking at how the technologies of cinema and warfare have developed a fatal interdependence, this book explores these conjunctions from a range of perspectives. It gives a detailed technical history of weaponry, photography and cinematography, with accounts of films and military campaigns.intellectual involved in politics. e film is set in an imaginary Latin American
country, Eldorado, which undergoes a fascist ... 27 sequence shots and three
actors improvising situations of psychological, sexual and racial violence' (1985a:
33).
Author: Alisa Lebow
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 9780231850162
Category: Performing Arts
Page: 288
View: 182
When a filmmaker makes a film with herself as a subject, she is already divided as both the subject matter of the film and the subject making the film. The two senses of the word are immediately in play – the matter and the maker—thus the two ways of being subjectified as both subject and object. Subjectivity finds its filmic expression, not surprisingly, in very personal ways, yet it is nonetheless shaped by and in relation to collective expressions of identity that can transform the cinema of 'me' into the cinema of 'we'. Leading scholars and practitioners of first-person film are brought together in this groundbreaking collection to consider the theoretical, ideological, and aesthetic challenges wrought by this form of filmmaking in its diverse cultural, geographical, and political contexts.For decades, using improvisation has been one of the go-to tactics of
independent filmmakers. Improvisation with actors on set has long been seen as
a way of injecting authenticity, immediacy and realism into a film and there is
certainly some ...
Author: Julian Hoxter
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 9781441164261
Category: Performing Arts
Page: 312
View: 835
The Pleasures of Structure starts from the premise that the ability to develop a well understood and articulated story structure is the most important skill a screenwriter can develop. For example, good structure requires a great premise and rigorous character development. Without clear character motivations and goals--which are themselves indicative of key structural beats--your story is going exactly nowhere. Using the simple and flexible 'W' model of screenplay structure developed in the prequel Write What You Don't Know, Hoxter sets this out as its starting point. This model is tested against a range of examples which are chosen to explore the flexibility not only of that model but of movie storytelling more generally. Writers and students often worry that they are asked to work 'to formula'. This book will test that formula to breaking point. For example, the first case study will offer the example of a well written, professional, mainstream movie against which our later and more adventurous examples can be compared. So the lessons we learn examining the animated family adventure movie How To Train Your Dragon lead us directly to ask questions of our second case study, the acclaimed Swedish vampire movie Låt den Rätte Komma In (Let The Right One In). Both movies have protagonists with the same basic problem, the same goal, and they use the same basic structure to tell their stories. Of course they are very different films and they work on their audiences in very different ways. Our linked case studies will expose how simple choices, like reversing the order of elements of the protagonist's transformational arc and shifting ownership of key story beats, has an enormous impact on how we respond to a structural model that is otherwise functionally identical.... improvisatory urban folk - music techniques in conjunction with guitar and
microphone tradition long before ragtime or jazz reached Australia . amplification
that enabled them to explore and improvise Many women were improvising
cinema ...
Author: John Whiteoak
Publisher: Currency Press
ISBN: STANFORD:36105114320018
Category: Dance
Page: 734
View: 288
This book is unique in its comprehensiveness and its recognition of cultural diversity and community. In Dr Whiteoak's words: "Instead of taking a 'Who's Who' approach it will emphasise the what, when and how of music and dance in Australia as a more effective way of revealing the breadth, complexity and rich variegation of these related performance cultures. In creating a contents list that expresses this breadth and diversity, we considered the fact that all forms of music and dance activity in Australia have cultural significance or commonly appreciated meanings for one group or another." The book not only covers the history of concert music, opera and ballet in Australia; of music teaching, composition, instruments, venues, union activity; of Aboriginal music and dance and its appropriation, and all forms of popular and folk music and dance, but embraces the wide variety of immigrant influences from Europe, America and particularly the Pacific; sound art, computer music and electroacoustics; belly dance, debutante balls, subcultures, music videos -- and much more. Over 200 researchers contribute to each volume -- academics, practitioners and private researchers from all parts of Australia and beyond. The general editors are respected Melbourne musicologists. Dr Whiteoak's field is the history of popular music-making; and Dr Scott-Maxwell's doctoral thesis was in Asian and Pacific musical influences.CM: You mostly write your own film work? MF: Yes, you ... So in a sense you've
written a structure and now you're using their talent to improvise. It's pretty much
like taking a piece of improvised jazz in whatever form that would be. CM: Would
...
Author: Clive Myer
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 9780231504560
Category: Performing Arts
Page: 224
View: 682
Critical Cinema: Beyond the Theory of Practice purges the obstructive line between the making of and the theorising on film, uniting theory and practice in order to move beyond the commercial confines of Hollywood. Opening with an introduction by Bill Nichols, one of the world's leading writers on nonfiction film, this volume features contributions by such prominent authors as Noel Burch, Laura Mulvey, Peter Wollen, Brian Winston and Patrick Fuery. Seminal filmmakers such as Peter Greenaway and Mike Figgis also contribute to the debate, making this book a critical text for students, academics, and independent filmmakers as well as for any reader interested in new perspectives on culture and film.Film Foundation. Improvisation and a self-reflexive embrace of low production
values are not only the mark of underground cinema, but also associated with the
French New Wave, to which tradition the film belongs (see Romney 2003). Yet
the ...
Author: Andrew Nestingen
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 9780231850414
Category: Performing Arts
Page: 224
View: 162
Aki Kaurismäki is an enigma, an eminent auteur who claims his films are a joke. Since 1983, Kaurismäki has produced classically-styled films filled with cinephilic references to film history. He has earned an international art-house audience and many prizes, influencing such directors as Jim Jarmusch, Quentin Tarantino, and Wes Anderson. Yet Kaurismäki is often depicted as the loneliest, most nostalgic of Finns (except when he promotes his films, makes political statements, and runs his many businesses). He is also depicted as a bohemian known for outlandish actions and statements. The Cinema of Aki Kaurismäki is the first comprehensive English-language study of this eccentric director. Drawing on revisionist approaches to film authorship, the text links the filmmaker and his films to the stories and issues animating film aesthetics and history, nostalgia, late modernity, politics, commerce, film festivals, and national cinema.5 minutes): The two film narrators introduce themselves to the audience as the
siblings Vincent and Marie Minestrone. ... In comparison with the nymph-like,
improvising Annabelle Moore in the Edison films, the dancing performance
seems ...
Author: Martin Loiperdinger
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 9780861969029
Category: Performing Arts
Page: 160
View: 174
Invented in the 1890s and premiered in Paris by the Lumière brothers, the cinematograph along with Louis Le Prince's single-lens camera projector are considered by film historians to be the precursors to modern-day motion picture devices. These early movies were often shown in town halls, on fairgrounds, and in theaters, requiring special showmanship skills to effectively work the equipment and entertain onlookers. Within the last decade, film archives and film festivals have unearthed this lost art and have featured outstanding examples of the culture of early cinema reconfigured for today's audiences.The Echoes of May Alison Smith, Lecturer in Contrinetal European Cinema
Alison Smith ... movement : either documentary cinéma vérité : ' seizing reality as
it passes , using the methods of television and improvising the image as it goes
along ...
Author: Alison Smith
Publisher: Manchester University Press
ISBN: 0719063418
Category: Performing Arts
Page: 296
View: 924
This book focuses on the debates which shook French cinema in the immediate aftermath of the student revolution of May 1968. Alison Smith examines these effects across the spectrum of French production, the rise of new genres and re-formulation of older ones. Chapters investigate political thrillers, historical films, new naturalism and Utopian fantasies, dealing with a wide variety of films. A particular concern is the extent to which filmmakers' ideas and intentions are contained in or contradicted by their finished work, and the gradual change in these ideas over the decade.His movies have benefited from his marginal position—his sustained creativity
shows scant connection to either the mainstream or the indie milieu. Jost's films
are both formal and political, improvised yet carefully planned, pushing narrative
to ...
Author: Emanuel Levy
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 9780814752890
Category: Social Science
Page: 601
View: 728
A Los Angeles Times Bestseller The most important development in American culture of the last two decades is the emergence of independent cinema as a viable alternative to Hollywood. Indeed, while Hollywood's studios devote much of their time and energy to churning out big-budget, star-studded event movies, a renegade independent cinema that challenges mainstream fare continues to flourish with strong critical support and loyal audiences. Cinema of Outsiders is the first and only comprehensive chronicle of contemporary independent movies from the late 1970s up to the present. From the hip, audacious early works of maverick David Lynch, Jim Jarmusch, and Spike Lee, to the contemporary Oscar-winning success of indie dynamos, such as the Coen brothers (Fargo), Quentin Tarentino (Pulp Fiction), and Billy Bob Thornton (Sling Blade), Levy describes in a lucid and accessible manner the innovation and diversity of American indies in theme, sensibility, and style. Documenting the socio-economic, political and artistic forces that led to the rise of American independent film, Cinema of Outsiders depicts the pivotal role of indie guru Robert Redford and his Sundance Film Festival in creating a showcase for indies, the function of film schools in supplying talent, and the continuous tension between indies and Hollywood as two distinct industries with their own structure, finance, talent and audience. Levy describes the major cycles in the indie film movement: regional cinema, the New York school of film, African-American, Asian American, gay and lesbian, and movies made by women. Based on exhaustive research of over 1,000 movies made between 1977 and 1999, Levy evaluates some 200 quintessential indies, including Choose Me, Stranger Than Paradise, Blood Simple, Blue Velvet, Desperately Seeking Susan, Slacker, Poison, Reservoir Dogs, Gas Food Lodging, Menace II Society, Clerks, In the Company of Men, Chasing Amy, The Apostle, The Opposite of Sex, and Happiness. Cinema of Outsiders reveals the artistic and political impact of bold and provocative independent movies in displaying the cinema of "outsiders"-the cinema of the "other America."... Palace cinema in Leningrad on an afternoon in 1925 the chances are that you
would see a film with improvised piano ... Extraordinary Adventures of Mr West in
the Land of the Bolsheviks directed by Lev Kuleshov, or one of his earlier films, ...
Author: James Naughtie
Publisher: Hachette UK
ISBN: 9781444726930
Category: History
Page: 400
View: 949
THE MAKING OF MUSIC is the story of our musical history, its origins and how it has shaped us. We have all grown up with a common background noise, whether we realise it or not. The tradition of European music that took shape in medieval monasteries, then in churches and courts, and moved into the salons, concert halls and theatres in later centuries, is in our cultural bloodstream. James Naughtie delves into the colourful, turbulent world of music - its characters, traditions and mysterious power - in a delightfully lively and personal way. His story is richly peopled and animated by moments of drama: what it was like at the first night of The Rite of Spring, when the dancers could neither hear their instructions nor could Stravinsky continue conducting because the booing was so loud; how it must have felt for Beethoven to scratch Napoleon's name off the dedication page of the 'Eroica' Symphony because he believed the emperor to have betrayed the French Revolution. As when presenting the Proms, James Naughtie brings to THE MAKING OF MUSIC that particular blend of expertise and approachability set to delight the aficionado and the uninitiated alike.It can be said with certainty that the writers and directors of early cinema used the
dramatic potential of sound to create complex stories. Certain myths,
assumptions, and preconceived ideas about silence, improvisation, deafness,
hearing, and, ...
Author: Richard Abel
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253108705
Category: Performing Arts
Page: 344
View: 413
The Sounds of Early Cinema is devoted exclusively to a little-known, yet absolutely crucial phenomenon: the ubiquitous presence of sound in early cinema. "Silent cinema" may rarely have been silent, but the sheer diversity of sound(s) and sound/image relations characterizing the first 20 years of moving picture exhibition can still astonish us. Whether instrumental, vocal, or mechanical, sound ranged from the improvised to the pre-arranged (as in scripts, scores, and cue sheets). The practice of mixing sounds with images differed widely, depending on the venue (the nickelodeon in Chicago versus the summer Chautauqua in rural Iowa, the music hall in London or Paris versus the newest palace cinema in New York City) as well as on the historical moment (a single venue might change radically, and many times, from 1906 to 1910). Contributors include Richard Abel, Rick Altman, Edouard Arnoldy, Mats Björkin, Stephen Bottomore, Marta Braun, Jean Châteauvert, Ian Christie, Richard Crangle, Helen Day-Mayer, John Fullerton, Jane Gaines, André Gaudreault, Tom Gunning, François Jost, Charlie Keil, Jeff Klenotic, Germain Lacasse, Neil Lerner, Patrick Loughney, David Mayer, Domi-nique Nasta, Bernard Perron, Jacques Polet, Lauren Rabinovitz, Isabelle Raynauld, Herbert Reynolds, Gregory A. Waller, and Rashit M. Yangirov.I yearned for closeness and intimacy, I wanted imperfection and improvisation—
like the era itself. I knew that Van Sant knew that world. And I knew that there had
once been another plan: he had thought about shooting the film like a 1970s ...
Author: B. Ruby Rich
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 9780822399698
Category: Performing Arts
Page: 352
View: 812
B. Ruby Rich designated a brand new genre, the New Queer Cinema (NQC), in her groundbreaking article in the Village Voice in 1992. This movement in film and video was intensely political and aesthetically innovative, made possible by the debut of the camcorder, and driven initially by outrage over the unchecked spread of AIDS. The genre has grown to include an entire generation of queer artists, filmmakers, and activists. As a critic, curator, journalist, and scholar, Rich has been inextricably linked to the New Queer Cinema from its inception. This volume presents her new thoughts on the topic, as well as bringing together the best of her writing on the NQC. She follows this cinematic movement from its origins in the mid-1980s all the way to the present in essays and articles directed at a range of audiences, from readers of academic journals to popular glossies and weekly newspapers. She presents her insights into such NQC pioneers as Derek Jarman and Isaac Julien and investigates such celebrated films as Go Fish, Brokeback Mountain, Itty Bitty Titty Committee, and Milk. In addition to exploring less-known films and international cinemas (including Latin American and French films and videos), she documents the more recent incarnations of the NQC on screen, on the web, and in art galleries.The earlypart ofthefilm, when Tião and Iracemaare together, is completely
dominated byPereio's overblown, largely improvised performance, reducing the
other characterstovirtual silence. And while the decision to film in 16mm was
made not ...
Author: Timothy Barnard
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 9781136545559
Category: Literary Criticism
Page: 426
View: 207
First Published in 1996. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.