Classical Cinema in the 21st Century

Cinema Year Zero: Tik Tok and the Grammar of Silent Film: https://mubi.com/notebook/posts/cinema-year-zero-tik-tok-and-the-grammar-of-silent-film

• The social media platform Tik Tok built on an expanding user base of short form video-makers using one-minute video loops, shot and edited entirely on a mobile device
• For the majority of Tik Tok creators, their output has more in common with a home movie 
• Its expanding popularity inspires imitation and aggravation
• Foundational techniques developed by Thomas Edison, Georges Méliès, and the Brothers Lumière live again in this new digital landscape
• Motion pictures were dismissed as either a passing fancy or serious threat to more “legitimate” entertainment.
• The current “discourse” surrounding streaming media, and its growing share of the “attention economy,” is as old as the cinema itself
• Live performance dominated the cultural climate of the late 19th and early 20 centuries- Molière or Berlioz 
• Like many American musical phenomena, race and age intersect to play a crucial role, as dances pioneered by teenagers, often people of colour, make their way into the mainstream 
• White America’s wholesale co-opting of Black music and dance predates the Civil War- early motion pictures cemented this cultural appropriation into our developing national identity 
• Depicting the popular dance as some kind of cultural “curio,” the two-minute film catapulted a “craze” developed by enslaved people across the colour line and onto the national stage.
• Tik Tok’s technical limitations reflect the same visual grammar that defined early cinema-  in 2020, as in 1908, the alchemy of in camera editing, stop motion, pantomime, and subtitles still makes for a moving image indeed.
• Stop and start recording effectively eliminating the need for linear editing
• The earliest motion pictures were proto-documentaries, static shots of everyday life, lasting only as long as a camera magazine would allow 
• Users use ump cuts and ironic musical accompaniment to wryly comment on our personal, societal, and economic failings
• Early moviegoing audiences were equally drawn to the medium’s potential to titillate and frighten 
• Cinema’s emergence also coincided with a wave of “reform movements” in the west
• Early exhibitors used this opportunity to spin occasionally lurid, cautionary tales focusing on sexuality, violence, or substance abuse—thereby opening up new avenues through which audiences could engage with social ills from a safe distance
• Tik Tokers are using the tools at their disposal to inspire crucial dialogue around many of our issues.
• Modern wave of auto-didact auteurs
• Tik Tok creates a “safe space” to address and examine anxiety, insecurity, and prejudice
• Before 1950, all films were shot on highly-volatile nitrate film stock
• Artistry and social commentary aside, the content favoured by this disparate filmmaking eras is immaterial – so long as it attracts and distracts.

Lady Bird, Instagram & André Bazin: Objective Subjectivity:

• Cinema and cameras can grant us access to the objective reality of our lived experiences

Bazin’s Film Theories:

• Believed camera have an inherent realism- best use of a camera is to exploit its natural realism 
• Bazin liked post war Italian cinema- Italian neo-realism
• Neo-realism includes films shot on location, actors, non-actors and long takes. The films narrative mimics lived experience 
• Neo- realism shows ‘the succession of concrete instants of life, no one of which can be said to be more important than the other’ 
• We only se pieces of the narrative and are tasked by piecing it together ourselves- this is elliptical film making which is fabricated construction
• Neo-realist films reach an objective truth by ‘rejecting analysis, whether political, moral, psychological, logical or social of the characters and their actions’
• The films show life as it is rather than twisting reality to support a pre-existing view of the director
• ‘The camera is able to strip its object of all those ways of seeing it, those piled- up preconceptions that spiritual dust and grime which my eyes have covered it and present it in all its virginal purity to my attention and consequently to my love”
• With access to a camera phone anyone can explore these Bazin’s theories that cameras strip objects of spiritual grime and can cultivate love for the objects and experiences around them 
• Platforms like Instagram use short videos to encourage us to show a focused clip from reality to create moments of objectivity 

Roberto Rossellini’s Italian Neo-realist film ‘Rome, open city’ 

With reference to two scenes, explain the ways in which Rome, Open City can be considered a ‘realist’ film.

Rossellini’s Italian neo-realist film is said to be one of the most influential films ever that significantly marked and kickstarted the neo-realist moment. The film ‘Rome, open city’ integrates post-war cinema, having been filmed only a few months after the Nazi occupation, and therefore brought Italy into its golden age of film making. This film specifically paved the way for the distinctive characteristics that we find in neo-realist films, such as long takes, shooting on location and non-actors. For example, in the film, we see the German transportation is attacked after the men are taken by the Gestapo. This showcases the ruins of Rome after the war and uses the rubble on the streets to its cinematic advantage to show the authenticity and realism of the film. Shooting on location helped speak to a war-torn population watching the film by forcing them to relate to their own experiences of this and connect it with the real life events they’ve experienced. The reality of the rubble in the streets tells a story to the audience as it echoes the horrors of war that would still be vivid in many peoples minds. Similarly, the mix of real locations and mainly local non-actors provokes genuine reactions and forces the actors, as well as the audience, to seek realism in the film by relating to what is being shown on screen. For example when the people are ordered by the Germans out of the buildings and are gathered on the streets, we see the true fear and violence that they are faced with.  Another example of this is the opening shot of German soldiers patrolling the war-torn streets, presenting it as a historical documentary of life rather than a work of fiction. Rossellini had to work with limited film equipment meaning in the film there is varied image quality and a constant use of handheld shots, which lent a feeling of authenticity and added a documentary style as the events are actually happening.