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NOTES ON SOME IMPORTANT TERMS FOR FILM STUDIES

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Gopa B. Caesar:
Altman, Robert: Early in his career, Altman attempted to debunk the founding myths of American history by deconstructing genre conventions, notably of the western in McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971) and the detective film in The Long Goodbye (1973). He won critical acclaim for his satirical films with large ensemble casts, such as M*A*S*H (1970) and Nashville (1975), which capture both the intimacy and spontaneity of human interaction and the corrosive influence of societal institutions like the media. Like many of his contemporaries, Altman did not present clear moral distinctions between good and evil, heroism and cowardice, charity and greed. Through what some have seen as a pessimistic view of human nature, he shifted the blame for society’s ills away from individuals and toward systems and institutions.
Brakhage, Stan: A leading theorist and practitioner of American avant-garde cinema, Brakhage was both a Romantic concerned with personal states of consciousness and a modernist who experimented with the materials available to him as an artist. In films such as the epic Dog Star Man (1961–1964), he explored different forms of vision, from the purely cinematic surfaces of the film strip and the effects of projected light, to things that normally are invisible to the human eye, such as medical footage of internal organs. Brakhage combined mythic interpretations of human existence with deeply intimate portrayals of his body, his family, and his natural environment.

Gopa B. Caesar:
Sembene, Ousmane: An accomplished writer before becoming a filmmaker, Sembene is a renowned master storyteller and satirist. Influenced by Third-World revolutionary writers and his involvement with the French Communist Party, Sembene has attacked the exploitation of African workers in Black Girl (1966), government corruption in Xala (1974), and religious persecution in Ceddo (1977). His incisive, allegorical films expose the hypocrisies and injustices of neocolonial power relations, in which the West retains a destructive influence over African governments and societies. Sembene rejects the individualism of Western narrative cinema by stressing the importance of collective solutions to Senegal’s social and political problems, which he believes can come only from the disenfranchised and impoverished masses rather than the bourgeoisie. In order to reach Senegal’s multilingual population and encourage active spectatorship, Sembene emphasizes symbolic and metaphorical meaning over dialogue.

Buñuel, Luis: Throughout his prolific career, Spanish director Buñuel attacked the major institutions of modern European society—fascism, the Catholic Church, and the bourgeoisie—and became one of the great satirists in the history of cinema. Like Hitchcock, Buñuel exposed the perversions lurking beneath the surface of middle- and upper-class propriety. He began his career with a series of surrealist films such as L’Age d’Or (1930), then after a long hiatus moved to Mexico, where he gained acclaim for films such as Los Olvidados (1950) and Él (1952), which combined social realism, black humor, and psychological analysis. In his later career, Buñuel produced his greatest films, Viridiana (1961), The Exterminating Angel (1962), and Belle du Jour (1967), in which characters attempt to escape the hypocrisy, false idealism, and conformity of their lives.

Other major directors: Woody Allen, Shirley Clarke, Brian De Palma, John Frankenheimer, Stanley Kubrick, Joseph Losey, George Lucas, Sidney Lumet, Terrence Malick, Nagisa Oshima, Nicolas Roeg, Martin Scorsese.

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