Shrove Tuesday

The word shrove is a form of the English word shrive, which means to obtain absolution for one's sins by way of Confession and doing penance. Thus Shrove Tuesday gets its name from the custom for Christians to be "shriven" before the start of Lent. Shrove Tuesday is the last day of "shrovetide", somewhat analogous to the Carnival tradition that developed separately in countries of Latin Europe.

In the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia and Canada, Shrove Tuesday is alternatively known as "Pancake Day" or "Pancake Tuesday" due to the tradition of eating pancakes on the day.
Catholic and Protestant countries  traditionally call the day before Ash Wednesday "Fat Tuesday" or "Mardi Gras". The name predated the Reformation and referred to the common Christian tradition of eating special rich foods before the fasting season of Lent.
In Germany it is known as Fastnachtsdienstag (also spelled Faschingsdienstag, or Karnevalsdienstag) or Veilchendienstag . It is often celebrated with street processions (called Karnevalsumzüge) or fancy dress. The processions are typically smaller than the ones on Rosenmontag. In Kindergartens and most Elementary Schools it is celebrated with fancy dress. When celebrated in schools, it is normally handled as a kind of half-holiday: classes are off and the school day begins some hours later.
In the Netherlands it is known as "vastenavond", though the word "vastelaovond" usually refers to the entire period of carnival in the Netherlands.

SEASONS of NORWAY

With its imposing mountains, endless plateaus and echoing valleys, Norway is a country where nature takes the lead. Using time-lapse, this film attempts to capture the ebb and flow of the seasons and is a result of one year of planning, a second year of shooting and four months of editing.

20,000 kilometers have been travelled, 200,000 photos taken and 20 terabytes worth of hard drives filled. Months have been spent hiking through the mountains, sleeping in tents and travelling through the entire country hunting for the best locations.

SEASONS of NORWAY is shot and edited by Morten Rustad. The video is available in up to 8K resolution (7680*4320 letterboxed).

INFORMATION ABOUT THE FILM CAN BE FOUND AT: http://www.mortenrustad.com

Amsterdam/ Chinese New Year

China is the home of the largest film studio in the world, the Hengdian World Studios, and in 2010 it had the third largest film industry by number of feature films produced annually. In 2012 the country became the second-largest market in the world by box office receipts. In 2016, the gross box office in China was CN¥45.71 billion (US$6.58 billion). The country has the largest number of screens in the world since 2016, and is expected to become the largest theatrical market by 2019.China has also become a major hub of business for Hollywood studios.

Y Pestis

A study by an international team of researchers published in October 2010 confirmed Y. pestis was the cause of the Black Death and later epidemics on the entire European continent over a period of 400 years. The team used ancient DNA and proteins recovered from the bodies of plague victims buried in Hereford in England, in Saint-Laurent-de-la-Cabrerisse in France, and Bergen op Zoom in the Netherlands to identify the pathogen. They found two previously unknown, older strains of Y. pestis that had spread from China by two different routes, rather than the modern Y. p., orientalis and Y. p. medievalis.

Dutch introduction to the new president

Viral videos are among the most common type of viral phenomena. A viral video is any clip of animation or film that is spread rapidly through online sharing. Viral videos can receive millions of views as they are shared on social media sites, reposted to blogs, sent in emails and so on. When a video goes viral it has become very popular. Its exposure on the Internet grows exponentially as more and more people discover it and share it to others.

The people of Merida

Mérida has been populated since prehistoric times as demonstrated by a prestigious hoard of gold jewellery that was excavated from a girl's grave in 1870. Consisting of two penannular bracelets, an armlet and a chain of six spiral wire rings, it is now preserved at the British Museum. The town was founded in 25 BC, with the name of Emerita Augusta (meaning the veterans – discharged soldiers – of the army of Augustus, who founded the city; the name Mérida is an evolution of this) by order of Emperor Augustus, to protect a pass and a bridge over the Guadiana river. Emerita Augusta was one of the ends of the Vía de la Plata (Silver Way), a strategic Roman Route between the gold mines around Asturica Augusta and the most important Roman city in the Iberian Peninsula. The city became the capital of Lusitania province, and one of the most important cities in the Roman empire. Mérida preserves more important ancient Roman monuments than any other city in Spain, including a triumphal arch and a theatre.

Madder

Rubia was an economically important source of a red pigment in many regions of Asia, Europe and Africa. The genus name Rubia derives from the Latin ruber meaning "red".

The plant's roots contain an anthracene compound called alizarin that gives its red colour to a textile dye known as Rose madder. It was also used as a colourant, especially for paint, that is referred to as Madder lake. The synthesis of alizarin greatly reduced demand for the natural compound.

 

Colorflower

Colorfulness, chroma, pure color and saturation are related but distinct concepts in colorimetry and color theory, referring to the perceived intensity of a specific color. Colorfulness is the visual sensation according to which the perceived color of an area appears to be more or less chromatic. Chroma is the colorfulness relative to the brightness of a similarly illuminated area that appears to be white or highly transmitting. Therefore, chroma should not be confused with colorfulness. Saturation is the colorfulness of a color relative to its own brightness. Though the general concept is intuitive, terms such as chroma, saturation, purity, and intensity are often used without great precision, and even when well-defined depend greatly on the specific color model in use.

Fontaine de Vaucluse

Geography
Fontaine-de-Vaucluse ("spring of Vaucluse") is built around a spring in a valley at the foot of the Vaucluse Mountains, between Saumane and Lagnes, not far from L'Isle-sur-la-Sorgue. It is named after the spring, the source of the River Sorgue.


Fontaine-de-Vaucluse
Hydrography
The fountain, or spring, of Vaucluse, situated at the feet of a steep cliff 230 metres high, is the biggest spring in France. It is also the fifth largest in the world with an annual flow of 630 million cubic metres.

The fountain of Vaucluse surges in March for about 5 weeks and then subsides. The increased flow of water swells the Sorgue to flood. The mechanism behind the surging remains somewhat of a mystery.

Sur le Pont

Sur le Pont d'AvignonOn y danse, On y danse
Sur le Pont d'Avignon
On y danse tous en rond

On the bridge of Avignon
We all dance there, we all dance there
On the bridge of Avignon
We all dance there in a ring

 

Made in France

A slide is a specially mounted individual transparency intended for projection onto a screen using a slide projector. This allows the photograph to be viewed by a large audience at once. The most common form is the 35 mm slide, with the image framed in a 2×2 inch cardboard or plastic mount. Some specialized labs produce photographic slides from digital camera images in formats such as JPEG, from computer-generated presentation graphics, and from a wide variety of physical source material such as fingerprints, microscopic sections, paper documents, astronomical images, etc.

Reversal film is sometimes used as motion picture film, mostly in the 16 mm, Super 8 and 8 mm "cine" formats, to yield a positive image on the camera original. This avoids the expense of using negative film, which requires additional film and processing to create a positive film print for projection.

Carnival Collage

Carnival is a Western Christian festive season that occurs before the liturgical season of Lent. The main events typically occur during February or early March, during the period historically known as Shrovetide (or Pre-Lent). Carnival typically involves a public celebration and/or parade combining some elements of a circus, masks, and a public street party. People wear masks and costumes during many such celebrations, allowing them to lose their everyday individuality and experience a heightened sense of social unity. Excessive consumption of alcohol, meat, and other foods proscribed during Lent is extremely common. Other common features of carnival include mock battles such as food fights; social satire and mockery of authorities; the grotesque body displaying exaggerated features, especially large noses, bellies, mouths, and phalli, or elements of animal bodies; abusive language and degrading acts; depictions of disease and gleeful death; and a general reversal of everyday rules and norms.

 

Movie-tricks

Practical effect techniques
The use of prosthetic makeup, animatronics, puppetry, or creature suits to create the appearance of living creatures.
Miniature effects, which is the use of scale models which are photographed in a way that they appear full sized.
Mechanical effects, such as aerial rigging to simulate flight, stage mounted gimbals to make the ground move, or other mechanical devices to physically manipulate the environment.
Pyrotechnics for the appearance of fire and explosions.
Weather effects such as sprinkler systems to create rain and fog machines to create smoke.
Squibs to create the illusion of gunshot wounds.

 

Camera shaking

Image stabilization (IS) is a family of techniques used to reduce blurring associated with the motion of a camera or other imaging device during exposure. Generally, it compensates for pan and tilt (angular movement, equivalent to yaw and pitch) of the imaging device, although electronic image stabilization can also be used to compensate for rotation. It is used in image-stabilized binoculars, still and video cameras, astronomical telescopes, and also smartphones, mainly the high-end. With still cameras, camera shake is particularly problematic at slow shutter speeds or with long focal length (telephoto or zoom) lenses. With video cameras, camera shake causes visible frame-to-frame jitter in the recorded video. In astronomy, the problem of lens-shake is added to by variations in the atmosphere over time, which will cause the apparent positions of objects to change.

Corpus Christi

The Feast of Corpus Christi (Latin for Body of Christ) is a Latin Rite liturgical solemnity celebrating the belief in the body and blood of Jesus Christ's Real Presence in the Eucharist. It emphasizes the joy of the institution of the Eucharist. The latter had previously been observed only on Maundy Thursday, in the somber atmosphere leading to Good Friday.

The feast is liturgically celebrated on the Thursday after Trinity Sunday or, "where the Solemnity of The Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ is not a holy day of obligation, it is assigned to the Sunday after the Most Holy Trinity as its proper day"

Rubio Tinctorum

Rubia is a genus of flowering plants in the Rubiaceae family. It contains around 80 species of perennial scrambling or climbing herbs and subshrubs native to the Old World. The genus and its best-known species are commonly known as madder, e.g. Rubia tinctorum (common madder), Rubia peregrina (wild madder).

Rubia was an economically important source of a red pigment in many regions of Asia, Europe and Africa. The genus name Rubia derives from the Latin ruber meaning "red".

The plant's roots contain an anthracene compound called alizarin that gives its red colour to a textile dye known as Rose madder. It was also used as a colourant, especially for paint, that is referred to as Madder lake. The synthesis of alizarin greatly reduced demand for the natural compound.

 

Joop Geesink

Joop Geesink (The Hague, April 28, 1913 - Amsterdam, May 13, 1984) was a famous Dutch film producer. He is best known for his work with dolls. Best known is his creation of Joop Geesink Loeki the Lion which cheered over 30 years the advertising of the Dutch television.

He began his career as a set designer for the Dutch theater revues. Soon he became interested in film and animation especially with Marten Toonder (known by the stories of Tom Puss and Oliver B. Bumble), he established a filmstudio . Marten Toonder focused on cartoons and Joop Geesink loved dolls movies. The partnership lasted from March 1942 to March 1943.

Campers & more

 

 

The Motion Picture Association (MPA) is an American trade association representing the five major film studios of the United States, as well as the video streaming service Netflix. Founded in 1922 as the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA) and known as the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) from 1945 until September 2019,[3] its original goal was to ensure the viability of the American film industry.

Unnavigable river

River engineering is the process of planned human intervention in the course, characteristics, or flow of a river with the intention of producing some defined benefit. People have intervened in the natural course and behaviour of rivers since before recorded history—to manage the water resources, to protect against flooding, or to make passage along or across rivers easier. From Roman times, rivers have been used as a source of hydropower. From the late 20th century, river engineering has had environmental concerns broader than immediate human benefit and some river engineering projects have been concerned exclusively with the restoration or protection of natural characteristics and habitats.

Spectacle Exhibition

The Swiss artist Jean Tinguely (1925–1991) played a key role in the rise of kinetic art in the fifties. With over a hundred machine sculptures, most of which are in working order, paired with films, photos, drawings, and archive materials, the presentation takes the public on a chronological and thematic journey of Tinguely’s artistic development and ideas, from his love of absurd play to his fascination for destruction and ephemerality.

 

Northern Lights (Aurora Borealis) in Tromsø.

An aurora, sometimes referred to as a polar light or northern light, is a natural light display in the sky, predominantly seen in the high latitude (Arctic and Antarctic) regions. Auroras are produced when the magnetosphere is sufficiently disturbed by the solar wind that the trajectories of charged particles in both solar wind and magnetospheric plasma, mainly in the form of electrons and protons, precipitate them into the upper atmosphere (thermosphere/exosphere), where their energy is lost. The resulting ionization and excitation of atmospheric constituents emits light of varying colour and complexity. The form of the aurora, occurring within bands around both polar regions, is also dependent on the amount of acceleration imparted to the precipitating particles. Precipitating protons generally produce optical emissions as incident hydrogen atoms after gaining electrons from the atmosphere. Proton auroras are usually observed at lower latitudes.

King of Cowboys

Thomas Edwin Mix (born Thomas Hezikiah Mix; January 6, 1880 – October 12, 1940) was an American film actor and the star of many early Western movies between 1909 and 1935. Mix appeared in 291 films, all but nine of which were silent movies. He was Hollywood's first Western megastar and is noted as having helped define the genre for all cowboy actors who followed.

Ice-sailing

An ice boat (often spelled as "iceboat") is a boat or purpose-built framework similar in functional design to a sail boat but fitted with skis or runners (skates) and designed to run over ice instead of through (liquid) water. Ice yachting is the sport of sailing and racing iceboats. Sail-able ice is known in the sport as "hard water" versus sailing on liquid or "soft" water. A related sport, land sailing, utilizes a configuration with an iceboat-like fuselage or frame equipped with wheels instead of runners. Iceboats commonly used for racing are usually only for one person, but several classes of two-seat and multiple-seat iceboats are more or less common. On some boats, a "side car" can be fitted to take others along for a ride.

The DP

A cinematographer or director of photography (sometimes shortened to DP or DOP) is the chief over the camera crews working on a film, television production or other live action piece and is responsible for making artistic and technical decisions related to the image. The study and practice of this field is referred to as cinematography. Some filmmakers say that the cinematographer is just the chief over the camera and lighting, and the director of photography is the chief over all the photography components of film, including framing, costumes, makeup, and lighting, as well as the assistant of the post producer for color correction and grading.

The cinematographer selects the camera, film stock, lens, filters, etc., to realize the scene in accordance with the intentions of the director. Relations between the cinematographer and director vary; in some instances the director will allow the cinematographer complete independence; in others, the director allows little to none, even going so far as to specify exact camera placement and lens selection. Such a level of involvement is not common once the director and cinematographer have become comfortable with each other; the director will typically convey to the cinematographer what is wanted from a scene visually, and allow the cinematographer latitude in achieving that effect.

EL EMPLEO / THE EMPLOYMENT

This short film written by Argentine artist Patricio Plaza and directed by Santiago Grasso provides a strong message on work, alienation and how each of us takes part in a system in which people exploit other people, helping an unfair system continue functioning.

The highlight of the short lies of course in its acid humor, and how it creatively replaces objects with human beings that are being used as such. To transmit a sense of alienation slow visual rhythm and audio pace are used (except for the street scene), together with de-saturated colors, expressionless characters with black eyes (many of the characters remain static) and monotonous background ambient sound.

 

 

Drowned city

Reimerswaal is a lost city in the Netherlands.

The present-day municipality of Reimerswaal is named after this city, which was granted city rights in 1374. The city was destroyed by repeated floods, and the last citizens left in 1632. Nothing remains. It was located north of the current municipality, on the east end of the Oosterschelde, on land which is now called the Verdronken Land van Reimerswaal ("Drowned Land of Reimerswaal").

 

Picasso's Guernica

A still life is a work of art depicting mostly inanimate subject matter, typically commonplace objects which may be either natural (food, flowers, dead animals, plants, rocks, or shells) or man-made (drinking glasses, books, vases, jewelry, coins, pipes, and so on). With origins in the Middle Ages and Ancient Graeco-Roman art, still-life painting emerged as a distinct genre and professional specialization in Western painting by the late 16th century, and has remained significant since then. Still life gives the artist more freedom in the arrangement of elements within a composition than do paintings of other types of subjects such as landscape or portraiture. Early still-life paintings, particularly before 1700, often contained religious and allegorical symbolism relating to the objects depicted. Some modern still life breaks the two-dimensional barrier and employs three-dimensional mixed media, and uses found objects, photography, computer graphics, as well as video and sound

Amsterdam as filmlocation

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A filming location is a place where some or all of a film or television series is produced, in addition to or instead of using sets constructed on a movie studio backlot or soundstage. In filmmaking, a location is any place where a film crew will be filming actors and recording their dialog. A location where dialog is not recorded may be considered as a second unit photography site. Filmmakers often choose to shoot on location because they believe that greater realism can be achieved in a "real" place; however, location shooting is often motivated by the film's budget. Many films shoot interior scenes on a sound stage and exterior scenes on location.

It is often mistakenly believed that filming "on location" takes place in the actual location in which its story is set, but this is not necessarily the case.

Capital of Norway: Oslo

A film treatment (or simply treatment) is a piece of prose, typically the step between scene cards (index cards) and the first draft of a screenplay for a motion picture, television program, or radio play. It is generally longer and more detailed than an outline (or one-page synopsis), and it may include details of directorial style that an outline omits. Treatments read like a short story, but are told in the present tense and describe events as they happen.

Crystals

CRYSTAL can be experienced in Eindhoven. The permanent artwork consists out of hundreds of LED-crystals which brighten when people touch them. Designer Daan Roosegaarde calls them “Lego from Mars”. The name refers not only to its futuristic design, but also to its endless potential to play.
The Crystals are placed in a black tunnel at the Natlab, the place where Einstein once worked, where Philips produced its lightbulbs, and the first CD was presented. 

CRYSTAL is a perfect match, the Crystals are white geometric shapes with LEDs inside. The local floor has a magnetic field which allows the Crystals to light-up. CRYSTAL is therefore one of the latest innovations in light. 

I Daniel Blake

A 59 year old carpenter recovering from a heart attack, befriends a single mum and her two kids as they navigate their way through the kafkaesque impersonal benefits system. With equal amounts of humour, warmth and despair. Heartfelt and emotional until the end

I, Daniel Blake is a 2016 British-French drama film directed by Ken Loach and written by Loach's frequent collaborator Paul Laverty. The film stars Dave Johns, Hayley Squires, Dylan McKiernan, and Briana Shann.

It won the Prix du public at the 2016 WAMA film festival in Poland.

It won the Palme d'Or at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival l.

Frame by Frame

When the Taliban ruled Afghanistan, taking a photo was a crime. After the regime fell from power in 2001, a fledgling free press emerged and a photography revolution was born. Now, as foreign troops and media withdraw, Afghanistan is left to stand on its own, and so are its journalists. Set in a modern Afghanistan bursting with color and character, FRAME BY FRAME follows four Afghan photojournalists as they navigate an emerging and dangerous media landscape – reframing Afghanistan for the world, and for themselves. Through cinema verite, intimate interviews, powerful photojournalism, and never-before-seen archival footage shot in secret during the Taliban regime, the film connects audiences with four humans in the pursuit of the truth.

Dutch Dark Chapter

 

Early documentary films, originally called "actuality films", lasted one minute or less. Over time, documentaries have evolved to become longer in length, and to include more categories; some examples being: educational, observational, and docufiction. Documentaries are very informative and are often used within schools, as a resource to teach various principles. Social-media platforms (such as YouTube) have provided an avenue for the growth of the documentary-film genre. These platforms have increased the distribution area and ease-of-accessibility; thereby enhancing the ability to educate a larger volume of viewers, and broadening the reach of persons who receive that information. 

 

VR-movie theatre

 Most 2016-era virtual realities are displayed either on a computer monitor, a projector screen, or with a virtual reality headset (also called head-mounted display or HMD). HMDs typically take the form of head-mounted goggles with a screen in front of the eyes. Some simulations include additional sensory information and provide sounds through speakers or headphones. Virtual Reality actually brings the user into the digital world by cutting off outside stimuli. In this way user is solely focusing on the digital content.

Virtual reality environment can be captured using 360° stereoscopic spherical video and 360x360 surround sound from professional VR video cameras. The users can emerge in the virtual reality environment using head-mounted displays.

Im Memoriam : Manuel

Manuel is a fictional character from the BBC sitcom Fawlty Towers. Played by Andrew Sachs, he is one of the most iconic characters in British comedy history. He reappeared for a small sketch with John Cleese in We Are Most Amused in November 2008.

Manuel himself appeared on the audio adaptations of Fawlty Towers as a linking narrator, explaining things from his point of view, when the series was released in audio format. The first two episodes released did not feature him at all, as the dialogue was edited and short burst of piano music would indicate a change of scene. However, when the whole series was re-released, they were re-edited with Manuel's linking commentary.

Loving Vincent

The art form of film is different from painting. Painting is one particular moment in time, frozen. Film is fluid, seeming to move through space and time. So first we had a Painting Design team spent one-year re-imagining Vincent’s painting into the medium of film. These paintings along with the storyboard and Computer Generated Layout Animatic formed the basis on which to plan our live action shoot.

All the characters in Loving Vincent are performed by real actors either on specially constructed sets, designed to look like Vincent’s paintings, or against Green Screens with the Loving Vincent Design Paintings composited in through a live view system on the set.

The live action material was then combined with Computer Animation for elements such as birds, horses, clouds and blowing leaves and composited together with the Design Paintings to create the Reference Material for the Painting Animation.

 

A Pretty Dutch Town

Dordrecht filmed from the Wijnhaven and Voorstraatshaven canal, which flows into the river Maas. In the background is the Grote Kerk visible and (sailing) boats along the shore. This film from 1910 is coloured by stencilling.

Film from the collection of Cinema Museum (London), restored by EYE Filmmuseum.

Evidence: the film

EVIDENCE
Evidence is an 8 minute 35mm film authored by Godfrey Reggio, during his term as director of Fabrica - a new school founded by Benetton - and a student collaborator, Angela Melitopulos. the film was shot in Rome during March 1995 and edited by Miroslav Janek, a collaborator of Fabrica, with music by composer Philip Glass.

Evidence looks into the eyes of children watching television - in this case Walt Disney’s "Dumbo". Though engaged in a daily routine, they appear drugged, retarded, like the patients of a mental hospital. Evidence is about the behavior of children watching television - an activity whose physiological aspects have been overlooked in the current controversy surrounding television.

Video as Evidence

Video captured by citizens and activists can be instrumental in drawing attention to human rights abuses, calling for investigations and advocating for change. But many filmers want their videos to do more: they want their footage to expose abuse and help bring about justice. However, the quality of citizen video and other content rarely passes the higher bar needed to function as evidence in a court of law.

The Video as Evidence Field Guide provides basic and advanced practices activists can use to increase the likelihood that their footage can serve as evidence in criminal and civil justice processes, for advocacy, and by the media. It also aims to help activists and lawyers better collaborate on capturing and collecting valuable video evidence.
Download the guide for free at http://vae.witness.org/

Usage of metadata

French avant garde

The avant-garde are people or works that are experimental, radical, or unorthodox, with respect to art, culture, and society. It may be characterized by nontraditional, aesthetic innovation and initial unacceptability, and it may offer a critique of the relationship between producer and consumer.

The avant-garde pushes the boundaries of what is accepted as the norm or the status quo, primarily in the cultural realm. The avant-garde is considered by some to be a hallmark of modernism, as distinct from postmodernism.

Early stop motion

Stop motion (hyphenated stop-motion when used as an adjective) is an animation technique that physically manipulates an object so that it appears to move on its own. The object is moved in small increments between individually photographed frames, creating the illusion of movement when the series of frames is played as a fast sequence. Dolls with movable joints or clay figures are often used in stop motion for their ease of repositioning. Stop motion animation using plasticine is called clay animation or "clay-mation". Not all stop motion requires figures or models; many stop motion films can involve using humans, household appliances and other things for comedic effect. Stop motion using objects is sometimes referred to as object animation.

Colored stencil film

Each frame of an extra print of the black-and-white film to be colored was rear-projected onto a sheet of

frosted glass, as in rotoscoping. An operator used a blunt stylus to trace the outlines of areas of the projected image that were to be tinted one particular color. The stylus was connected to a reducing pantograph that caused a sharp blade to cut corresponding outlines through the actual film frame, creating the stencil for that color in that frame. This had to be done for each individual frame, and as many different stencil films had to be made as there were different colors to be added. Each of the final projection prints was matched up with one of the stencil films and run through a machine that applied the corresponding dye through the stencil. This operation was repeated using each of the different stencils and dyes in turn.

Dutch Cinema Trailer - The Curious World of Hieronymus Bosch

Marketing a film
When a new film is made, it has to be advertised like any other new product, to let people know it exists and to encourage them to go to the cinema to see it.
The advertising of a film is known as film promotion or film marketing and the people who are responsible for this are the distribution company, so–called because they distribute (give out) the films to the cinemas and distribute the promotional material around the country.

The way in which a film is promoted can have a huge effect on whether or not it is successful. Films are expensive to make and if the public do not buy tickets at the box office to see the film, a lot of money will be lost.

 

It's all about Sensation

Crash is a 1996 British-Canadian psychological thriller film written and directed by David Cronenberg based on J. G. Ballard's 1973 novel of the same name. It tells the story of a group of people who take sexual pleasure from car crashes, a notable form of paraphilia.

The film generated considerable controversy upon its release and opened to mixed and highly divergent reactions from critics. While some praised the film for its daring premise and originality, others criticized its combination of graphic sexuality and violence. It premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Special Jury Prize, considered the third-most prestigious prize of the festival.
As a photographic print is the positive made from its negative, so also the positive of self-crashing is arranging for a disaster to occur on the highway, and then watching the carnage from a preselected observation post. Disasters other than on the highway may be arranged — catastrophic fires, for example. For those members of the general public who have a touch of sadomasochism in them, disaster as an unrehearsed event is often a large part of the appeal of entertainment stunts and sports, from the circus to stock-car racing.

Garden of Earthly Delights

Here’s how the Dutch animators behind this project explain what’s unfolding before your eyes:

[We] cleared the original landscape of the middle panel of Bosch’s painting and reconstructed it into a hallucinatory 4K animation. The creatures that populate this indoor playground embody the excesses and desires of 21st century Western civilization. Consumerism, selfishness, escapism, the lure of eroticism, vanity and decadence. All characters are metaphors for our society where loners swarm their digital dream world. They are symbolic reflections of egos and an imagination of people as they see themselves – unlike Bosch’s version, where all individuals more or less look the same. From a horny Hello Kitty to a coke hunting penis snake. From an incarnate spybot to headless fried chickens. These characters, once precisely painted dream figures, are now digitally created 3D models. All of them have been given their own animation loop to wander through the landscape. By placing them altogether in this synthetic fresco, the picture is never the same. What the animation and Bosch’s triptych have in common is that you’ll hardly be able to take it all in, you can watch it for hours.

Moving Image Research Collections

In support of the mission of the University of South Carolina, Moving Image Research Collections (MIRC) preserves films and videos produced outside the American feature film industry, making them available to present and future audiences.

For more information about MIRC's history and holdings, visit our Collections page. Search for individual items in our Reference Catalog, or browse the collections in our finding aid repository.

Watch thousands of videos online on MIRC's Digital Video Repository.

Flying saucers

Science fiction film (or sci-fi) is a genre that uses speculative, fictional science-based depictions of phenomena that are not fully accepted by mainstream science, such as extraterrestrial lifeforms, alien worlds, extrasensory perception and time travel, along with futuristic elements such as spacecraft, robots, cyborgs, interstellar travel or other technologies. Science fiction films have often been used to focus on political or social issues, and to explore philosophical issues like the human condition. In many cases, tropes derived from written science fiction may be used by filmmakers ignorant of or at best indifferent to the standards of scientific plausibility and plot logic to which written science fiction is traditionally held.