Cross-Cultural Blog

The aim of the film usually depends on its genre. As a rule, films are supposed to make you emotionally resonate. Actions use lots of fights, chases and destruction in order to impress spectators and to show them the last technical innovations and to persuade that the evil always loses. With the help of historical films you can find out more facts about past events. Detective stories can make you think a lot, trying to unravel the mystery. Thrillers keep you in constant tension, horrors – in fear. Dramas and tragedies describe conflicts of one person with society, relations between people as they are in real life. Comedy is supposed to make you laugh, relax and feel happy. Fantasy films let you feel some magic atmosphere of the other world based on mythology and populated by fantastic creatures; science fiction is an attempt to predict the future life of humanity. Documentary deals with real events and people, without any fiction and invention. It focuses on particular problems and events and usually makes you change your attitude to something. Also there are adventures, musicals, fairy tales, philosophical films, westerns, gangsters’ films, family films, disasters films, erotic films, animated films and many others. Moreover, in most of the cases we can see combinations of genres in one film that makes it really unique, unforgettable and exciting.

There are so many enriching and entertaining films that sometimes it is a problem to chose what to watch. Film festivals help us to solve it. They demonstrate the most attractive films to us, because films are assessed by jury of international celebrities.
Nowadays there are dozens of film festivals, and the most famous are: the Cannes festival, the Berlin festival, the Venice festival and etc. All of the films at the festivals are assessed by jury of international celebrities. Festivals provide actors, especially starlets, with great opportunities, reveal both masterpieces and duds. They also put an emphasis on independent and innovative film making and guarantee distribution for non-mainstream and non-Hollywood films. Festivals are annual events. All of them have their own awards and places where they are held.
The Cannes festival is a French film festival which was founded in 1938. This festival soon became one of the top festivals. Its award is olive-branch (which is actually a symbol of peace)

Picture 1. Cannes festival

The Berlin festival is a German film festival. It is one of the three major festivals in Europe. Its prize is Golden Bear.
The Venice festival is the world’s oldest film festival (1932). Its award is Golden Lion

Picture 2. Oscar statuettes

The Oscars are awarded every year by the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science. These statuettes are awarded to actors, film directors, screenwriters and so on for outstanding contributions to the film industry. The Oscars were first awarded in 1927. The first winners were chosen by five judges. Nowadays all of the members of the Academy vote. The ceremony is attended by most Hollywood stars, although some famous stars, such as Woody Allen, refuses to go, even if he wins an award. The oldest winner of an Oscar was 80-year-old Jessica Tandy for her performance in the film “Driving Miss Daisy” in 1990. The youngest was Shirley Temple when she was only five years old. The statuette is of soldier standing on a reel of film. Oscar is one of the top ceremonies of awards. Its award is a gold-plated figurine which is awarded annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for the best film work in various categories, e.g. Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress. In 1928 Frances Marion said about it: “the statuette is a perfect symbol of the movie business – a powerful athletic body clutching a gleaming sword, with half of his head, the art that holds his brain, completely sliced off”

Picture 3. Oscar awards

And now we are going to describe in a few words the features of cinema in different countries, using the examples of France, Korea, Latin America and Russia.
France
France is the motherland of cinema. Cinema emerged there onn 28 of December 1895 when a presentation of “Cinematography of brothers Lumiere“ took place. Since then, French Cinema has been one of the most respected in the world and is inferior to only Hollywood. In the beginning of its developing, French cinema was mainly turn cinema. Stunts had the main role in films. In 1910 Comedies was famous and well-known around the world.
The developing of world cinema-process gave birth to the so called “Holliwood theory”, the meaning of that was “entertainment”. It became dominant in the world, except Russia. Just before World War II the company “paramount” opened in France its subsidiary. But there wos not a single work, that deserved attention. In 1933 there was found the so called “League of morality”, that influ-enced cinematography in Europe and France very much. This organization had the right to approve or prohibit movies from being demonstrated.
After the war there appeared a movement against commercial cinema. It was guarded by the representatives of avant-garde in cinema. They worked on the formal experiments and expanded the cinema opportunities.
Contemporary image of French cinema was formed after World War II, when we can observe the tendency of humanism. Modern French cinematography is considered very subtle work, where psychology and dramatic effect of the subject combine with piquancy and artistic beauty of shooting.
Korea
Korean cinema has undergone a major transformation since the late 1980s. Its subjects and styles have been diversified and refined.
The Koreans found a very effective way of regulating the film production and increase the national cinema. Before it was like this, the American movies displaced the Korean cinema in the Korean cinemas. The Koreans changed the law and enforced the cinemas to demonstrate native Korean movies at least 100 days a year. That way they developed the market. This encouraged many more new films production. The Korean movies constitute a big part in the national market.
The cinema of South Korea, China, Japan, Vietnam, Taiwan, Thailand conquers the hearts of the audience with its variety, with that odd combination of beautiful images, strange Eastern philosophy, sudden emotional contrasts, and unexpected characters.
Latin America
The situation of Latin American cinema today is that of a series of medium to small, sometimes tiny, national film industries, all of them plagued by structural weakness and small markets, but supplied with a wealth of talent and imagination. It is also a cinema with a proud and inspirational history of aesthetic and political radicalism.
Nowadays Latin American film-makers identify a problem: a lack of effective producers, who know how to bring the right team together, mount the finance, and shape a production. Without this kind of facilities which can be taken for granted only in advanced economies, it would be a small miracle to succeed in shooting a movie in many parts of Latin America
Among other things, the epic is not a well-developed genre in Latin American cinema. There has also been a distinct return to the genre of melodrama, which in the 60s and 70s had been strongly dis-paraged by the political susceptibilities of the revolutionary left.
Russia
The Cinematograph appeared in 1896 when Charles Aumont (French theatrical entrepreneur) brought cinematograph to Russia. For the next decade distribution and exhibition of films remained in the hands of French companies (who in 1904 and 1905 established offices in Russia and began making films for Russian audience)

Picture 4. First Russian Movie Theater named “Aurora”

Since 1917 October Revolution there was a disruption of Russian film industry and massive emi-gration of directors and actors. And until the collapse of the USSR in 1991 it was controlled by the Com-munist Party.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union our Native Cinema has been in decline. Its revival began in the XXI century only. But Russia still has not developed its own authentic style yet. Most of good films imitate Hollywood style or German, of French films. So, Russian cinema is too young, but very promising and rapidly developing.
So, as you can see, cinema is developing in almost every country and everywhere such develop-ment has its specific way. Today we can see the process of globalization in almost every sphere of our life – in politics, business, science, communication, education, etc. And cinematograph is not an excep-tion. It doesn’t matter where you are from, who you are and what you are interested in, you probably enjoy watching films sometimes. And probably you go to movie from time to time. So, you can be influenced by cinematograph in some way, right?
Cinematograph plays great role not only as the international entertaining business, but also as the way of expressing opinions and emotions, which would be understood everywhere. It helps us look at the same things with different eyes, with the eyes of creators of the movie. In other words, cinema erases any political, ideological, religious and racial borders, the borders that prevent us from understanding other cultures in everyday life. That's why, we believe, cinema is an effective instrument of cross-cultural dialogue and mutual understanding in the world, and it has almost unlimited resources to strengthen intercultural cooperation.

Questions:

What kind of non-Hollywood cinema do you like? (countries, genres, directors)
What cinema festival would you like to visit?
What film do you associate with yourself?
If you were an actor, what kind of role in cinema would you like to play?