{"id":68104,"date":"2023-02-08T10:43:15","date_gmt":"2023-02-08T17:43:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/?p=68104"},"modified":"2023-02-09T16:23:55","modified_gmt":"2023-02-09T23:23:55","slug":"global-film-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/global-film-day\/","title":{"rendered":"Celebrate Global Film Day with a foreign film\u00a0(or three)"},"content":{"rendered":"

*Editor\u2019s Note: The \u201cViews from NAU\u201d blog series highlights the thoughts of different people affiliated with NAU, including faculty members sharing opinions or research in their areas of expertise. The views expressed reflect the authors\u2019 own personal perspectives.<\/em><\/p>\n

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\"PaulBy Paul Helford<\/h3>\n

Teaching Professor, Creative Media and Film<\/h4>\n

Professor Helford has a lifetime of experience watching, writing about and educating students and community members about film. He teaches screenwriting, the art of cinema and film production and is the workshop director for the School of Communication.<\/p>\n

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In 2020, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (they give out the Oscars) established\u202fGlobal Movie Day for \u201cfilm fans around the world to celebrate their favorite movies and engage with Academy members and filmmakers across social media\u2026 (and to explore) the power movies have to reach, connect and inspire people around the world.\u201d This year\u2019s celebration is on Feb. 11.<\/p>\n

Movies have been a global medium since their inception. The first public performance is generally regarded as an 1895 showing in France by the Lumi\u00e8re Brothers, who astounded audiences with their single-shot, one-minute \u201cactualities\u201d like \u201cArrival of a Train<\/a>.\u201d\u00a0 Not long after, Georges M\u00e9li\u00e8s, a French contemporary of the Lumi\u00e8res, produced more complex films that boasted early stop-motion special effects, as in 1902\u2019s \u201cA Trip to the Moon.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

\"movieDuring the silent film era and after World War I, while the American film industry was setting the world standard with its studio system of production, Soviet filmmakers advanced the art of editing, creating works of propaganda and art, represented brilliantly in the classic 12-minute Odessa Steps sequence from \u201cThe Battleship Potemkin\u201d (1925), which has lost none of its power after nearly 100 years. Meanwhile, German filmmakers\u2019 used Expressionism to distort the mise-en-sc\u00e8ne\u202fand present subjective points of view, never done better than in the renowned, endlessly referenced and imitated \u201cThe Cabinet of Dr. Caligari\u201d (1920).<\/p>\n

From the Depression through World War II, while other nations’ film industries were devastated by world events, the American film industry thrived. After the war, American films, while popular worldwide, felt the weight of a censorious production code and competition from a little box people had in their homes called television. Meanwhile, around the world, film artists were making movies with adult themes that were becoming increasingly popular here.<\/p>\n

Italy\u2019s Neo-Realism movement often used non-actors moving through devastated Italian bombed-out locations in brilliant films like Roberto Rossellini\u2019s \u201cRome, Open City\u201d (1946), Vittorio De Sica\u2019s \u201cBicycle Thieves\u201d (1948) and Federico Fellini\u2019s \u201cLa Strada,\u201d (1954). Influenced by Neo-Realism and adding hand-held cameras, unscripted dialogue and long tracking shots to on-location shooting, the French New Wave movement sprung from a group of writers for the French film journal Cahiers du Cin\u00e9ma, which is where Fran\u00e7ois Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard<\/a> began their careers. Their film debuts, Truffaut\u2019s \u201cThe 400 Blows\u201d\u202f(1959) and Godard\u2019s \u201cBreathless\u201d\u202f(1960), made a profound impact on cinema. \u202fThe only French New Wave female director was Agnes Varda, whose distinctive, realistic neo-documentary films addressed women\u2019s and other social issues, as in the marvelous \u201cCl\u00e9o from 5-7\u201d (1962).<\/p>\n

One of the most unique and influential filmmakers of that era was Swedish writer-director Ingmar Bergman, whose films, like\"Seven \u201cThe Seventh Seal\u201d (1957) and \u201cPersona\u201d (1966), delve into big existential questions about mortality, religion, faith and loneliness. While simultaneously, director Akira Kurosawa, the first Asian filmmaker to achieve international prominence, opened the west to a Japanese cinematic experience. His first commercial and critical success was \u201cRashomon\u201d (1950). Subsequent works include \u201cThe Seven Samurai\u201d (1954), arguably the greatest action movie of all time, and \u201cYojimbo\u201d (1961), later adapted by Italian filmmaker Sergio Leone\u2019s \u201cA Fistful of Dollars\u201d (1954), the first Spaghetti Western, dubbed in English and the film that made Clint Eastwood a star.<\/p>\n

All the recommended Neo-Realism, New Wave, Bergman and Kurosawa titles are streaming on HBOMax and most, including \u201cFistful,\u201d are rentals at Apple TV.<\/p>\n

When I first discovered foreign films in the late 1960s, I\u2019d find them in Chicago area art houses and revival theaters, my favorite of which was the Clark Theater in downtown Chicago, which had a new double feature every single day!\u00a0Now when I visit L.A., I always try to go to a Laemmle theater, which programs independent and foreign films; the tagline is: \u201cNot afraid of subtitles.\u201d\u00a0 Which leads to my recommendation: Watch non-English language films with subtitles, not dubbed. You want to hear the original actors\u2019 dialogue, most of which is recorded live. Besides, it seems everyone uses subtitles today. Netflix recently revealed that 40 percent of its global users have subtitles on all the time, while 80 percent switch them on at least once a month.<\/p>\n

There are exceptions. Animated film dialogue is not recorded live. So, for me, films like 2022\u2019s Danish animated documentary and triple Oscar nominee \u201cFlee\u201d (Streaming Hulu, rental at Apple TV) doesn\u2019t suffer much from a well-done dubbed version. Nor do films like those by the great Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki (\u201cSpirited Away,\u201d \u201cHowl\u2019s Moving Castle,\u201d and many others streaming at HBOMax), although I typically watch with subtitles.<\/p>\n

\"RRRAnd I did finally resort to the dubbed version of the thrilling three-hour 2022 Indian action-adventure epic \u201cRRR\u201d (Streaming on Netflix). It was shot in Hindi, but neither that, nor any of the other three language options synced up, so I finally watched it dubbed.\u00a0 Highly recommended, \u201cRRR\u201d out-Hollywoods Hollywood and includes terrific Bollywood song and dance, for which it won one Golden Globe and received an Oscar nomination.<\/p>\n

Today, everything is right there in our TV rooms.\u00a0 The biggest lament I hear from other film lovers (and you\u2019ve probably said it yourself) is that, there\u2019s too much to choose from.\u00a0 To that end, I try to keep up with new films, American and other, as they are being released, but ultimately depend on each year\u2019s Oscar nominees to help me sort through them.<\/p>\n

This year, I am most looking forward to non-English language Best Picture nominees, \u201cAll Quiet on the Western Front\u201d (Netflix)\u00a0and \u201cTriangle of Sadness\u201d (Apple TV rental). I\u2019ll finish my Global Film Day recommendations with three favorites from last year\u2019s Best International Film Oscar nominees: \u201cDrive My Car,\u201d a 3-hour Japanese film about a stage actor and his driver (HBOMax, Apple TV rental);\u00a0 \u201cThe Worst Person in the World,\u201d a surprising Norwegian romantic comedy- drama (Hulu, Amazon and other rental); and a must- see for anyone who works in education, \u201cLunana: A Yak in the Classroom\u201d (Apple TV rental), the first Bhutanese film to ever be nominated about a young man who fulfills his country\u2019s mandatory teacher training in the most remote school in the world at an elevation of more than 11,000 feet in the town of Lunana.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

*Editor\u2019s Note: The \u201cViews from NAU\u201d blog series highlights the thoughts of different people affiliated with NAU, including faculty members sharing opinions or research in their areas of expertise. The views expressed reflect the authors\u2019 own personal perspectives. By Paul Helford Teaching Professor, Creative Media and Film Professor Helford has a lifetime of experience watching,…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":68109,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-68104","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-views-from-nau"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68104","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68104"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68104\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68109"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68104"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68104"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68104"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}