Writing Question
For this assignment you will screen another film that is known for employing, in varying degrees and methods, cinematic realism. You will consider these methods and strategies of realism in essay form. To get started you shall pick and screen one of the movies listed below, all available to stream for free on Kanopy.
Once you have screened your movie, I want you to respond to it in the contexts of this unit. How does the film express itself “realistically” and by what standards of realism? Maybe the production choices reflect this realism, and/or the acting or subject matter. How does it compare to Italian neorealism and/or any of the movies we screened for this unit? How does the film you screen make use of realism for its own purposes? What are the intentions of your film’s realism, do you think? How does its realism connect to and/or buttress the film’s messages and meanings? How does its construction of realism reflect the culture and moment of its production? You needn’t answer all the above questions; they are meant to give you direction.
Choose one title from among the following list of films (all available to stream for free on Kanopy):
KILLER OF SHEEP (Charles Burnett, 1978, US) — According to Kanopy’s writeup: “Focusing on everyday life in Black communities rarely featured in American cinema, Burnett’s films combine lyrical storytelling with a starkly neorealist, documentary-style approach most famously seen in KILLER OF SHEEP, the chronicle of a slaughterhouse employee’s daily struggles and the emotional baggage he carries home.” This was Burnett’s thesis film, I believe, at UCLA film school.
THE EXILES (Kent Mackenzie, 1961, US) — Denis Lam of the New York Times writes of THE EXILES, “[This] film about American Indians living on the edge of downtown Los Angeles in the 1950s, is both a chronicle and a casualty of neglect: a movie about a forsaken community that itself became a lost object. Directed by Kent Mackenzie, a first-time filmmaker who had just graduated from the University of Southern California, it is a poetic and empathetic hybrid of fiction and documentary. The nonprofessional actors play versions of themselves: young Indians, newly relocated from reservations and adrift in working-class Bunker Hill.”
LA PROMESSE / THE PROMISE (Dardenne brothers, 1996, Belgium) — Set in contemporary Belgium, this film brought international attention to the Dardenne brothers, known for carrying the torch of cinematic realism. In it a teenager comes to terms with his father making a living off the backs of exploited, undocumented workers.
OLD JOY (Kelly Reichardt, 2006, US) — According to Kanopy’s writeup: “Two old friends reunite for a quietly revelatory overnight camping trip in this breakout feature from Kelly Reichardt, a microbudget study of character and masculinity that introduced many viewers to one of contemporary American cinema’s most independent artists. As expectant father Mark (Daniel London) and nomadic Kurt (Will Oldham) travel by car and foot into the woods in search of some secluded hot springs, their fumbling attempts to reconnect keep butting up against the limits of their friendship and the reality of how much their paths have diverged since their shared youth.”
POETRY (Chang-dong Lee, 2010, South Korea) — This quiet, poetic take on aging, Alzheimer’s, and more stretches the boundaries of realism. Where does the poetic meet with the everyday, and how do we realize poetry in our own lives and not just on the written page?
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