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Adam, Author at The Open College of the Arts - Page 3 of 6

To find out more details about the transfer to The Open University see A New Chapter for OCA.

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Adam


What do we want when we go to the movies? thumb

What do we want when we go to the movies?

Simple and honest entertainment, escape, terror, stimulation, a need to cry, a wish to laugh, to hang out with friends and have a good argument afterwards or to follow the ones we love, is that what we want from a visit to the cinema?

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Something different about Cinema? thumb

Something different about Cinema?

Is there something changing in film culture? Why not make it something to check out in 2017. Just how many wonderful scripts for women were produced and how many little-known or unknown true stories were re-told. I really hope that we are now going to see, as a matter of course, powerful scripts for great actresses and so long as a true story is stranger than fiction I’ll keep watching.

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Does the greatest film ever made really exist? thumb

Does the greatest film ever made really exist?

In the world of cinema a similar experience frequently comes with much referencing to the viewer’s sense of personal credentials to be a proper film-lover. The work I am talking about is the Frenchman Abel Gance’s epic Napoleon, released in 1927. Not only epic in length, Napoleon has also undergone a truly epic journey back to our screens thanks to one man, the film historian Kevin Brownlow who, in my view wins first prize for having the longest-running obsession about just one film in the history of cinema!

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Jim Jarmusch – A Consumate Filmmaker thumb

Jim Jarmusch – A Consumate Filmmaker

The vampire genre features in the Film Culture course with a special reference – and I make no apology for this – to Jarmusch’s wonderful 2013 classic, Only Lovers Left Alive. My affection for Jarmusch’s work is partly due to my sense of a kindred spirit; he worked as a sound recordist in the eighties as I did. There, sadly for me, the similarity ends. Musician, composer, editor, actor, camera operator, screenwriter and director, Jarmusch’s talents are many and with his latest film, Paterson, I am, yet again, in a swoon.

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Serious about sci-fi thumb

Serious about sci-fi

I have written about science fiction in the cinema before and students of the Film Culture course will know that the genre features in it too. At this time of year I am occupied most evenings – and on rainy afternoons too – watching the latest releases and catching up on what I have missed this year in order to have a view about which films to vote for in the 2017 BAFTA awards. To me, there is simply no substitute to watching movies on a giant screen and sci-fi has to be seen this way to be fully appreciated.

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Talking of the auteur? thumb

Talking of the auteur?

In the final assignment of the Film Culture course the student is asked to consider the influence of an individual director within the context of a cinematic movement. From time to time an audience can find itself well blessed with works from number of hugely influential and talented auteurs and 2016 has been no exception. I want to consider two directors whose work has resulted me in spending many emotional hours in darkness amongst the company of strangers.

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Night will fall – Part 2. thumb

Night will fall – Part 2.

Probably the most important quality a film-maker needs is curiosity. Couple that with serendipity and remarkable things can happen.

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Night will fall thumb

Night will fall

The Imperial War Museum is the recipient of all films and radio broadcasts and propaganda material produced by the British government and its armed forces during WWII. Most of the cameramen working in the theatre of battle during the war where conscripts who had worked as camera operators in British studios like Pinewood. However, some were trained by the army.

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Inspiring fairy tales thumb

Inspiring fairy tales

The Film Culture module asks the student to consider the part of myth and fantasy within the various genres of cinema and how this has influenced many aspects of the way we consume content, from the comic-strip and illustrated novels that spawned the Marvel franchise, to the contribution of Japanese cinema. When cinema embraces the fairy tale and speaks to audiences of all ages – invariably with animation, but not always, the experience of cinema can be truly immersive.

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