10 Contemporary Scottish cinema
نویسنده
چکیده
In an article in the Scottish cultural magazine, The Drouth, Mark Cousins provocatively bemoaned the lack of a vibrant film culture in Scotland. Putting Iran's cinematic achievements forward as a – perhaps surprising – example, Cousins identifies several reasons for Scotland's underdevelopment, most of which revolve around a lack of experimentation and a general absence of interest in exploring the capabilities of the film form. This he puts down to the dominance of an accomplished literary tradition and the consequent development of oral culture rather than a visual alternative. Blame is also laid on various training schemes and funding initiatives espousing the rigid frameworks of mainstream film-making practices without allowing much room for new forms and practices to emerge (Cousins 2006: 12–13). That diagnosis seems hard to accept when considering the diversity of recent films made in and about Scotland. Contemporary offerings include films skilfully working within mainstream genres but also films that push the boundaries of dominant forms and representations. However, this sort of experimentation, or even what might be called an avant-garde approach, is not necessarily a new development in Scottish cinema. On the contrary, there is a history of an avant-garde in Scottish cinema that has often been overshadowed by critical accounts and debates concerned with more dominant modes of representation. This chapter aims to reassess the development of a Scottish Art Cinema (Petrie 2000) alongside a consideration of avant-garde film-making practices. In addition to discussing recent Scottish film offerings, stretching across a wide variety of genres – both art house and mainstream – the chapter will refer to the largely ignored work of the experimental film-maker, Margaret Tait, in
منابع مشابه
On the Rooftop: A Study of Marginalized Youth Films in Hong Kong Cinema
Researchers of contemporary Hong Kong cinema have tended to concentrate on the monumental, metropolitan and/or historical works of such esteemed directors as Wong Kar-Wai, John Woo and Tsui Hark. This paper focuses instead on a number of low-budget films that circulated below the radar of Chinese as well as Western film scholars but were important to local young viewers, i.e. a cluster of films...
متن کاملForeshadowing Contemporary Digital Cartography A Historical Review of Cinematic Maps in Films
Through an historical review of cinematic maps – or “cinemaps” – this paper argues that contemporary digital cartography was conceptualized in films. This argument is first developed through a discussion of the emergence of animated maps in docudramas of the 1910s. These early cinemaps were followed by more sophisticated examples that foreshadowed the structure and design principles of “modern”...
متن کاملTraditional Content and Narrative Structure in the Hindi Commercial Cinema
The commercial Hindi cinema has been subjected to domestic and foreign criticism for its exceptionally formulaic and stereotypical feature productions. These productions, however, have their sources in the oral and written epics and the popular dramatic genres of traditional Indian culture. Content borrowed from the Ramayana, the Mahabharata, and other pan-Indian tales frequently enlarges and r...
متن کاملSex and Horror
The combination of sex and horror may be disquieting to many, but the two are natural (if perhaps gruesome) bedfellows. In fact, sex and horror coincide with such regularity in contemporary horror fiction that the two concepts appear to be at least partially intertwined. This is not to suggest that the sex–horror confluence is an exclusively contemporary phenomenon. For instance, Hunter Gardner...
متن کامل