Independent Cinema

·     ·     According to the Crash Course video, Why do cinema audiences end up with "only reboots and dystopian fantasies"?

·     A lot of the time Hollywood is driven by trends. The success of one film or genre inspires others to follow them and create something analogous.

·     According to the Crash Course video, what is Classical Hollywood Cinema?

·     Classical Hollywood Cinema is a era between the 1930s&1950s.Their stories were chaste, formulaic and mostly upbeat.(The good guys always won, and husbands and wives couldn’t even share a bed.)

·     What is high key lighting and who uses it?

·     Classical Hollywood used a flat, generic form of lightning called High key lighting  that ensured the entire image was clearly visible.

·     What happened in the European Film Industry after WW2?

Italian Neo-Realism

·     Who was Roberto Rossellini and what did he do?

·     Roberto Rossellini was a director before the war and started shooting again right after it ended. After living through that violent time, he craved a more raw and authentic style. His equipment was destroyed because of the war, however that didn’t stop him from bringing what he had in mind to live. As he used it to his advantage to reflect a harsh reality they saw around them. Filming the first Italian Neo-Realism film Rome: open city.

·     Which film movement was he associated with?

·     “How do you make more authentic, irreverent movies than Hollywood?”

·     What happened in the late 1950s in France?

·     A group of opinionated young film lovers started writing for a movie magazine (Cahiers du Cinema). They hated the studio system and the films coming out of them. 

·     What did critics of the Studio System accuse them of?

They accused them of making unimaginative literary adaptations that mimicked the classical Hollywood style. And that the studio system in US and France were spoon feeding their audiences rather than respecting their intelligence.

·     Who was Jean-Luc Godard?

·     He was part of the opinionated film lovers who wrote for the magazines. who wrote a scathing attack on 21 major French directors

·     Did Jean-luc Godard admire any Hollywood directors? Elaborate.

·     Yes, he liked John Ford, Howard Hawks and

·     What is the French New Wave?  Describe and name 3 directors and films.

·     It was when the critiques began creating their own films and they became recognized as major international film stars.

   Jean-Luc Godard shot Breathless
 Jacques Rivette made Paris Belongs to Us
 Claude Chabrol made his second film Les Cousins
 and Francois Truffaut directed The 400 Blows

·     What happened in the US in 1948 and what effect did it have on their film industry?

·     There was an antitrust  lawsuit (United states vs Paramount Pictures) which forced the major studios to give up their theatre chains. This made the film industry be full of all types of films not just the type the biggest studios wanted to show in their theatres.

·     What happened in the US in the 1970s? Describe.

In 1060s After losing their theater chains, they began facing stiff competition from television. As 1970 approached, the Baby boom generation was coming of age, the Vietnam War was in full swing, American politics was at its most violent since the Civil War, and Studio films seemed increasingly out of touch. Tickets sales were falling, and studio executives were in an outright panic.

·     What do studio executives like?

Money

·     Why was Bonnie and Clyde a watershed moment in US film history?

·     Because it was about a pair of charismatic depression era bank robbers on a crime spree. It was a American film that was like a French New wave film. It included unapologetic sexuality, casual humor and brutal violence. 

·     Which other films were made in this period?

·     Easy rider (Denis Hopper and Peter Fondas1969)

·     . The graduate (1987) a

·      Midnight Cowboy (1969)

·     What is New Hollywood Cinema? When was it? Name 3 directors and films.

·     It is when old studio executives began to retire and new ones joined, they were shaped by the same social forces as the younger film makers ( the rise of counterculture and  Watergate era politics).Small film makers were able to be financed by major Hollywood Studios.New Hollywood cinema (the window of creative control and experimentation)lasted from1967-1980s.

·     Directors like

·      Taxi Driver( Martin Scorses 1976),

·     The Godfather(Francis Ford Coppola 1972)

·     Carrie 1976 (Brian de Palma 1976)

·     What were Summer Blockbusters? When did they arise? Give 2 examples of directors and films.

·      Steven Spielberg and George Lucas created the first summer blockbusters were Jaws, Star Wars and Raider of the Lost Ark .Instead of overtly wrestling with the socio-political upheaval of the 60s and 70s.these films offered a chance to escape.a more pure form of entertainment that appealed to a wider audience.

   

   

·     What happened to Hollywood Studios at this time?

·     The studios were being purchased by multinational, large corporations which changed the way the studios worked. There was now stockholders to satisfy marketing departments to consult and risk assessment to consider. It was all very corporate.

What happened to US Cinema in the 1990s? Describe with examples
The arrival of a new set of independent film makers and mini studios Directors like Spike Lee, Steven Soderbegh, Paul Thomas Anderson and Quentin Tarantino made films for independent companies like Miramax and New Line Cinema. Although they didn't have the resources of the major film studios, the success of films like Do the Right thing and Pulp Fiction showed there  was a hunger for risky, original American films that continue today.

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