Film Festivals

The Golden Globe Awards are presented annually by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA) to recognize outstanding achievements in the entertainment industry, both domestic and foreign, and to focus wide public attention upon the best in motion pictures and television. The formal ceremony and dinner at which the awards are presented is a major part of the film industry’s awards season, which culminates each year with the Academy Awards.

The Academy Award (informally known as the Oscar) is an accolade by the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) to recognize excellence of professionals in the film industry, including directors, actors, and writers. The formal ceremony at which the awards are presented is one of the most prominent award ceremonies in the world and is televised live in more than 200 countries annually. It is also the oldest award ceremony in the media; its equivalents, the Grammy Awards (for music), Emmy Awards (for television), and Tony Awards (for theatre) are modeled after the Academy. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences itself was conceived by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studio boss Louis B. Mayer.

The 1st Academy Awards ceremony was held on May 16, 1929, at the Hotel Roosevelt in Hollywood to honor outstanding film achievements of the 1927–1928 film season. It was hosted by actor Douglas Fairbanks and director William C. deMille.

The Berlin International Film Festival (German: Internationale Filmfestspiele Berlin), also called the Berlinale, is one of the world’s leading film festivals and most reputable media events. It is held in Berlin, Germany. Founded in 1951, the festival has been celebrated annually in February since 1978. With 274,000 tickets sold and 487,000 admissions it is considered the largest publicly-attended film festival worldwide. Up to 400 films are shown in several sections, representing a comprehensive array of the cinematic world. Around twenty films compete for the awards called the Golden and Silver Bears.

Moscow International Film Festival abbreviated as MIFF, is the film festival first held in Moscow in 1959. From its inception to 1995 it was held every second year in July, alternating with the Karlovy Vary festival. The festival has been held annually since 1995.

The festival’s top prize is the statue of Saint George slaying the dragon, as represented on the Coat of Arms of Moscow. Federico Fellini’s 8½ is the most famous film to premiere at the MIFF and win the top prize. Nikita Mikhalkov has been the festival’s president since 2000. The Stanislavsky Award has been introduced recently to be presented to outstanding actors visiting the festival, such as Jack Nicholson and Meryl Streep.

The Cannes Film Festival (French: le Festival de Cannes), founded in 1946, is one of the world’s oldest and most prestigious film festivals. The private festival is held annually (usually in May) at the Palais des Festivals et des Congrès, in the resort town of Cannes, in the south of France. The most prestigious award given out at Cannes is the Palme d’Or (“Golden Palm”) for the best film.

The Venice Film Festival (Italian: Mostra Internazionale d’Arte Cinematografica) is the oldest film festival in the world. Founded by Count Giuseppe Volpi in 1932 as the “Esposizione Internazionale d’Arte Cinematografica”, the festival has since taken place every year in late August or early September on the island of the Lido, Venice, Italy. Screenings take place in the historic Palazzo del Cinema on the Lungomare Marconi. It is one of the world’s most prestigious film festivals and is part of the Venice Biennale, a major biennial exhibition and festival for contemporary art.

The festival’s principal awards are the Leone d’Oro (Golden Lion), which is awarded to the best film screened at the festival, and the Coppa Volpi (Volpi Cup), which is awarded to the best actor and actress. In 2002, the San Marco Award was introduced for the best film of the Controcorrente (“Against the stream”) section.

The Golden Raspberry Awards, called the Razzies for short, is an annual award ceremony held in Los Angeles to recognize the worst in film (the worst acting, screenwriting, songwriting, directing, etc.). The term raspberry is used in its irreverent sense, as in “blowing a raspberry”.

Current awards are voted upon by the membership of the Golden Raspberry Award Foundation (GRAF). Traditionally, nominations are announced one day before the Motion Picture Academy announces its Oscar nominations, and the awards are presented one day before the Oscar ceremony.

HOME TASK

Project work: prepare a 3-5 minutes’ talk on the world’s most famous and prestigious film festivals or the award ceremonies that have been held in the world this year. Speak about the history of the festival, its top prizes, contests, nominations and laureates, opening and closing ceremonies, celebrities who have visited it, etc.

S e c t i o n 2. Movie Genres

Introduction into a Genre Study

Any movie in genre study is as important as any other. Some are more interesting, certainly some produce better results when studied than others, but there is democracy in genre.

Some genres are more interesting, but none is “better” than the other: there are Westerns and Space Operas and High School Pictures. A number of pictures involve generic mixtures. Movies come from movies, and any given movie repeats things from hundreds of others. The several ways repetition functions in genre give a hint of its blind force and mercurial flexibility.

Every genre produces a sense of new scenarios. Each genre describes, devises its scenarios so they differ from those of the other genres. This in turn relates to the way each genre works, resembling but differing from all other genres; and this is determined in part by the genre’s source, its heritage, its individual evolution.

Everyone is an expert on movies; even more people claim to be experts on movie genre. Genre study is one of those things that goes without saying: you know like they did in the old movies. To let anything go without saying is a mistake if you are attempting to make study serious. Such a sentence as – “Star Wars” is a Western – is not a serious statement.

A movie’s genre is its chief label. One can then refine that label by more labels: subgenres, sub-subgenres, ramification of place and profession, conventions of character and story line (boy meets girl, boy loses girl). In this case we could even make a checklist of types, situations and elements included. It might make a system, but the system wouldn’t tell us much about the way film genres work.

Any movie is formed by generic language, with exchanges, transfers, transformations, exceptions. Genre is not stereotype or cliché; genre is a dynamic flow of interchangeable parts involved in combinations which resemble organic growth, not a set of laws.

Every movie is the product of its historical context, and the exchange between movies of whatever period is paramount in genre study; this is how movies talk to each other, and to us.

What are the genres? We may choose to name them this way; the three great families of genre are:

1) Western

2) Women’s

Some British critics call Women’s Pictures Melodrama, but this term is useful in dramaturgy, but Women’s better suggests how this powerful genre affects all the other genres.

3) War

War Film is Combat Films of World War II. Movies about other Wars don’t belong in this genre because they are not defined, do not work the same way.

The next three major genres are translations from drama or fiction:

1) Comedy

2) Musical

3) Costume

Four more are simply great subjects:

1) Crime

2) Spy/ thriller/ private eye

3) Action/ adventure

4) Horror

Science Fiction and Epic complete an even dozen major genres.

There are many more genres: they are the great movie places – city, jungle, outer space; great movie conveyances (also great subjects) – the car, the train.

There are motifs that move from genre to genre – birth and death and marriage and theft; there are events – dream, chase – so intrinsically filmic that when they appear in a movie, sometimes only for a moment, the movie tilts in their direction.

There are Family Pictures and High School and Inventor. Finally there are auteur genres.

Дата добавления: 2015-11-16