Practice and Politics, Issues and Themes (homework 2)

Practice and Politics

1. Practice is defined as the way in which a film is produced and completed. In British Realism this has generally meant independent production.
 
2. The politics will influence their practice by the varying degrees they will seek to be free or distinct from the mainstream  and will look to demonstrate a commitment to specific sets of ideas about the social world.
 
3. Ken Loach's point was 'the way you make a film is an important way of validating the ideas in it'.
 
4. Practice and Politics in film mean to refer to aspects outside of the text which nevertheless influence the form, structure, content and style.
 
5. Film makers whose intent is to show life "as it really is" areas much reacting to the way the world is 'constructed' by the majority of mainstream films and the practices, as they are commenting on aspects of temporary social life.
 
6. Social realist texts often comment on, correct, or break away from previous conventions and practices regarded as 'realist'.
 
7. Samantha Lay informs us that the different movements, moments and cycles in British Social realism have been informed by a reforming and occasionally, subversively through a political spirit.
 
8. Andrew Higson's phrase "moral realism" means that morals can be defined within texts that have been generated from an idea, a goal and even a mission.
 
9. Lay explains that separating practice from politics is difficult, because of factors such as in the 'now' movements and cycles. She also states that a film maker's politics will heavily influence their methods of cinematic codes and conventions and this will mould and reduce the practice and production of text and its crucial place within a competitive market.
 
10. Grierson’s mission was to educate and inform audiences, through documentary form.  His documentary productions stood outside of the British mainstream film industry because of their comprehension relating to social purposes.
 
11. The lack of funds and resources affected documentary production styles in Britain during the ‘1930’s and 40’s’. To overcome these factors the film makers collaboratively chose a unit style of production opting for documentary truth. 

12. Lay states that the filmmaker’s commitment to documentary truth is a sociological commitment rather than an aesthetic commitment. This reflects their practice of engaging ordinary people instead of actors also they used original location shooting.

13. The British New wave filmmakers , like previous filmmakers were heavily influenced by their political beliefs and Stephen Lacey demonstrated this conclusion though Linsey Anderson’s quote.

                “The rejection of the studio system was tied closely to a rejection of a particular view of the world, which both the theatre and the cinema attacked as being ‘snobbish, anti-intelligent, emotionally inhabited, wilfully blind to the conditions and problems of the present, dedicated to an out-of-date, exhausted national ideal’” (1995: 166)

 

14. Tony Richardson, Karel Reisz, Lindsay Anderson and Lorenza Mazzetti formed the free Cinema group. The Free Cinema group produced documentaries and short films that were both visually exciting and creative. The main principle was to make independent films that were free from profit and studio interference and this gave them the freedom of choice to choose exactly what subject

matter they wanted.

 

15. Their ambitions and intentions were to extend the range of cinematic representation; these were to include the working classes outside of London to the industrial towns of the North.

 

16. British New Wave directors claim that realism could be achieved if regional stage actors were cased in their regionally authentic location.

 

17. They establish that the character and place were interconnected. The backdrop of the actors’ location that is inclusive of their environmental factors connects them to a characters story.

18. Loaches work from the 1960’s to the 1990’s was greatly informed by practice and politics. Furthermore, he was one of the new filmmakers during the 1980 to speak out against the Thatcher government and as an extreme consequence many of his documentaries during that era were never screened. The importance of filming realism to Roach was to keep the setting naturalistic and to use non big screen actors. His political view within his documentaries was to explore and exploit conflicts in society and general inequalities.

19. The collaborative unit-style approach to filming gave the directors the banner of free cinema and authorship was particularly impossible to highlight one director to another for their personal contribution.  Overtime this unit style began to decline and the contemporary scene moved to promote films as a product of just one director as author.

 

ISSUES AND THEMES

 

20. The term content in made up two joined aspects as part of the whole. The first relevant issue is about the issues and themes that social realists intend to investigate. The second content issue is about the types of representations that are established. These content issues help to combine films and texts to their specific moment in time.

 

21. Content is usually linked to themes and issues. These are usually combined to a film maker’s intent.

 

22. Lay suggests that a filmmaker’s choice of issue relating to British social realism, will often relay a message or mission to inform, throughout the theme.

 

23. Specific issues from any era will reveal how society adapted their social and cultural attitudes.

 

24. The themes and issues of any period can be contrasted to a different point in time to answer questions and highlight the importance of change. Moreover, they will also identify the central theme for each period and depict how issues were resolved and dealt with.

 

25. The phrase “slice of life” within social realism texts implies life as it was or is.

 

26. An understanding of socio-historical context is important, because it emphasises reality at a specific point in time.

 

27. Lay’s idea that film texts are “constructs”, as they are constructed in a realist mode and it is through these constructs that themes and issues can be analysed to convey what reality is being portrayed and from whose point of view.

 

28. Lay explains the differences between issues and themes by stating that issues relate to distinctive social problems that were/are topically apparent of that period. For example drug dealing, alcoholism and sexual abuse and these can be referred to as labels. Many issues; however as time moves on, are subject to change. Different issues can be identified relating to society of that time. Lay explains themes are deeper; they are not as explicit as issues. They lie behind issues, collecting them together to give an overall theme. Some of these themes can be identified as changing gender roles, national identity and the struggles of the traditional working classes.