RUSSIAN FORMALISM

Russian Formalism is the name for a group of literary scholars and linguistsin Russia from the 1910s to the 1930s.The leading members were OsipBrik,Boris Eikhenbaum, Roman jakobson,ViktorShklovskii, Boris Tomashevskii, and JuriiTynianov. They developed a series of innovative theoretical concepts, claims,models, and methodological norms concerning various aspects of the literary system and its study.

Russian Formalism was never a school with a uniform principle, whether theoretical, historical, ormethodological.Russian Formalism’s major contributions can be approached in terms of basic perspectives and majorresearch areas.The literariness orartfulness of a work of literature, that which makes it an aesthetic object, resides entirely in its devices,which should also form the sole object of literary studies.RussianFormalism was a constantly evolving and changing originality in which concepts, hypotheses, and modelswere formulated, deeply discussed, and modified or replaced as soon as insufficiencies were discovered ornew questions arose that the Formalists could not handle.It was more an ongoing process of self-conscioustheorizing than a finished theory.

A school of literary theory and analysis that emerged in Russia around 1915, devoting itself to the study of literariness. The literary historical processis a key concern for the Russian Formalists. Russian Formalism made a difference between sjuzet (plot) and fabula (story). The plot is strictly literary, whereas the story is raw material awaiting the organizing hand of a writer. The plot is not merely the events of the story; it also encompasses the literary devices used to narrate the story.Russian Formalism formally ended in early 1930s.

THE MYTH OF TOTAL CINEMA- ANDRE BAZIN

Andre Bazin co-founder of magazine cahiers du cinema started writing about films in 1943. Bazin observed and analyzed the current scenario of development of technology in cinema was merely for monetary gain. He stated very few ‘savants’ use technology to make a real hype in cinema. He was in constant argument. Bazin who was in support of realism has wrote the book ‘The Myth of Total Cinema’. He argued for the inventors of photography and cinema were not just enough with getting technology for sale. He does admit that few were largelyapprehensive with this – but they were determined for the imitation and reproduction of the “real” world.Bazin states that The Real primitives of the cinema, existing only in the imaginations of a few men of the nineteenth century, are in complete imitation of nature. Every new development added to the cinema taking it nearer to its origins.

Realism means getting imaginative idea in to existence. Technology was an ad on to achieve realism. Bazin explains ‘The cinema is an idealistic phenomenon. He argued that no technology or monetary investment can make it look realistic.

Bazin theories explained that even though new technology will come up in the future, the height and volume of realism will be infinite. Technology will only help to make it look more real. But the aesthetic value will still remain the same. He believes the desire for realism is the natural, organic start and end point of the cinema.

TRANSFERENCE AND SYNESTHESIA

Transference was first described by Sigmund Freud, who acknowledged its importance for psychoanalysis for better understanding of the patient's feelings.Transference can also be described as a reproduction of emotions relating to repressed experiences, especially of childhood, and the substitution of another person for the original object of the repressed impulses.  Its gets transfer from one to other. In love and in psychological growth, the key to realization is the ability to sustain the tension of the counterparts without leaving the process, and that this tension allows one to grow and to transform.

There are four major type of transference:-

1.     Paternal Transference: - In this state we turn the other person to be as our father.

2.     Maternal Transference: - It’s develops at early stage when we are mostly attached with mother. It’s most deep and emotional transference.

3.     Sibling transference: - This is mostly seen when parents are missing or busy. We replace them with sibling i.e brother or sister who stays with us at that point of time.

4.     Other Transference: - We classify people. For eg policeman, fireman, doctor.

Synaesthesia – the transfer of information from one sensory modality to another, or mingling of the senses – is often used to enhance imagery in writing. The word “synesthesia” or “synaesthesia,” has its origin in the Greek roots, syn, meaning union, and aesthesis, meaning sensation: a union of the senses.Synaesthesia is a perceptual condition of mixed sensations. There are various form SynaesthesiaGrapheme- Synaesthesia, Sound - color synesthesia.

Synaesthesia is the subjective sensation of a sense other than the one being motivated. Synesthesia may also be useful in deciding the question of how mental processing can be so efficient given the abundance of mentally stored information and the wide variety of problems that we meet, which must each require highly specific although different, processing solutions.

FEATURES OF RUDOLF ARNHEIM'S THEORY OF FILM

Rudolf Arnheim is best known for his famous book on silent cinema film as art. He is one of the famous scholars in the fields of art and art history; he gave completely his work on the theory of cinema. His theories described form, perception, emotion and their role in contemporary film and media studies. He also contributed in the works on the visual arts to bear on film and media. His theories on the film help us to refine our grasp of film as art.

Arnheim’s movie writings in relation to modernism, his strong dislike to sound as well as color in movie, the forming of his early ideas on movie against the social and political backdrop of the day, the wider uses of his way in which something is done, and the implications of his work for digital media.
1) a special camera that filmed scenes in five languages at the same time – the camera was equipped with to do with vision filters to select those elements that were compatible with different countries’ tastes; and the movie was developed using developing solutions flavored with tomato sauce for the person from Italy version, ‘bouillabaisse’ for the French, Bavarian amber fluid for the German, and tea for the English

2) A technique of recording sound on a thread, for editing by a dress-maker or tailor

3) The Erotoscope, a telescope that radiated invisible ultraviolet rays, through which a special guardian was able to discover any violations of public morality in the cinema during the projection; the guilty had to pay a fine, according to the gravity of the offense

4) the discovery of a movie singular form of bacteria that infected the the group most likely to be interested and led to ‘screen-phobia’ – the extreme dislike of movie screenings – which after further two weeks of period of time from egg fertilization until hatching becomes ‘screen-mania’, resulting in a considerable weakening of the pa-tent’s cash resources; in the third stage of this disease, the subject experiences an irresistible want to have to become an actor, director or production manager

5) Arnheim also reported the invention of the close-up, or rather, of the in concept belief of of ‘close-up’. The person from Italy for close-up is ‘primo piano’, which means. Not only ‘foreground’ but also, and without exaggerating, ‘first floor’: the ‘primo piano’ was invented by an old woman called Emilia Close upper in her old home

CONSTRUCTIVISM

Constructivism is basically a theory based on observation and scientific study about how people learn. It says that people construct their own understanding and knowledge of the world, through experiencing things and reflecting on those experiences. When we come across something new, we have to resolve it with our previous ideas and experience, maybe changing what we believe, or maybe discarding the new information as irrelevant. In any case, we are active creators of our own knowledge. Constructivism is a learning theory found in psychology.

There are few guiding principles:-

1.     Learning is an active process in which the learner uses sensory idea and builds meaning out of it.

2.      People learn to learn as they learn: learning consists both of constructing meaning and constructing systems of meaning.

3.     Learning involves language: the language we use influences learning.

4.     One needs knowledge to learn: it is not possible to assimilate new knowledge without having some structure developed from previous knowledge to build on.

Constructivism is the idea that learning doesn’t just happen by traditional methods of teachers standing in front of the class and lecturing. Constructivism is a belief about what "knowing" is and how one "come to know." Constructivists believe in individual interpretations of the reality, i.e. the knower and the known are interactive and inseparable. Constructivism states that learning is an active, contextualized process of constructing knowledge rather than acquiring it. Knowledge is constructed based on personal experiences and hypotheses of the environment. Learners continuously test these hypotheses through social negotiation. Each person has a different interpretation and construction of knowledge process.

NATYASASTRA

The Natyashastra is an ancient Indian essay on the performing arts covering theatre, dance and music. While it primarily deals with stage art, it has come to influence music, dance and literature. It is very important to the history of Indian classical music because it is the only writing which gives such detail about the music and instruments of the period. Argument can be made that the Natyashastra is the foundation of fine arts in India.

Abhinaya is a concept in Indian dance and drama derived from Bharata's NatyaShastra.Bharata describes 15 types of drama ranging from one to ten acts. The principles for stage design are placed down in some detail. Specific chapters deal with aspects such as makeup, costume, acting, directing, etc. A large section deals with meanings allowed by the performance (bhaavas) get particular importance, leading to a broad theory of aesthetics (rasas). Natyashastra is a distinct absence of final evidence that classical Sanskrit dramas regarded the Natyashastra as a narrowscript. In sanskrit dramas suggest to things that seem to match with parts of the Natyashastra, but many Sanskrit dramas also include elements that the Natyashastra forbids.Four kinds of abhinaya (acting) are described – physical (angika), verbal (vaacika), that by costumes and makeup (aahaarya), and the highest mode, by means of internal emotions, expressed through minute movements of the lips, eyebrows, ear, etc. (saattvika).

The Natyashastra has been divided into 36 chapters, sometimes into 37 or 38 due to further bifurcation of a chapter or chapters. The title can be loosely translated as "A compendium of Theatre or A Manual of Dramatic Arts". The background of Natyashastra is framed in a situation where a number of munis approach Bharata to know about the secrets of Natyaveda.

The analysis of body forms and movements also influenced sculpture and the other arts in subsequent centuries. The structures of music outlined in the Natyashastra retain their influence even today.

FOREGROUNDING

Foregrounding is defined as an effect, it’s occur normally, Foregrounding means “to bring it front”. Foregrounding concept was initially started in literature and then adapted in films. Foregrounding is an expression to make people familiarize about the subject. The basic idea in foregrounding is that the clauses which make up a text can be divided into two classes. There are clauses which convey the most central or important ideas in text, those propositions which should be remembered. And there are clauses which, in one way or another, elaborate on the important ideas, adding specificity or contextual information to help in the interpretation of the central ideas. The clauses which convey the most central or important information are called foregrounded clauses, and their propositional content is foreground information. The clauses which elaborate the central propositions are called back grounded clauses, and their propositional content is background information.

The concept of foregrounding has been made use of most in textual analysis. It is a useful tool to describe particular characteristics of the text, or to explain its specific poetic effects on the reader. And it may fruitfully be employed to establish a link between purely linguistic description and the functioning literary texts in a culture at large.
Foregrounding has also been a useful concept in the study of visual arts and spectators' responses. In general the term is refers to drawing spectators' attention to some element in the film by means of unusual filmic devices. Examples would be fixed positioning of the camera, and the deformation of familiar objects through filters, mirrors, and extreme close-ups.
It will be apprehended that foregrounding devices may - because of their very use - lose their defamiliarizing potential, and thus stand in need of constant replacement. In this way history can be viewed as a continuous wavelike replacement and renewal of the devices and processes by which foregrounding operates.

Foregrounding theory was developed to understand responses to both literature and film, experimental research concentrated only on reader response, till now.

KABUKI

The word kabuki is a Chinese word meaning ka (songs), bu (dance) and ki (skills). It has also derived from the classical Japanese verb kabuki means “to incline.” The moves and action in the kabuki plays are influenced by the Buddhist notions. The kabuki performances are off beat, flamboyant costumes, elaborate makeup and exaggerated body movements.

In kabuki various kinds movements are brought together to show it Neutral. Kabuki as an art form never represents the rasa theory. Facial expression in kabuki is neutral and all ways have ha straight face. Expressions are only through hands and gestures. Kabuki is defined by the motions and not by facial expression. Synchronization plays an important role in performing kabuki. Kabuki plays don’t entertain the audience, it represent a pure art form for the art loving audience.

Kabuki is a highly stylized performing art. It combines of acting, dancing, and music. It has extraordinary use of color and sound. In kabuki actors strikes an exaggerated expressive pose. Kabuki shows the external representations of a character’s feeling. Spectacular and flamboyant, joyful and tearful, kabuki gives the audience the pleasure of a trip to another world. One fundamental theme in Kabuki Theater is the conflict between humanity and the feudalistic system.Kabuki benefitted from its new respectability, some would argue that once it was regarded as a National Treasure, kabuki lost its original identity and dynamic ties to the common people. In the refined theater of contemporary kabuki, the critical subversive spirit that was so central to its origins has been compromised.

RASA

Poetry without rasa is a copying of poetry. The attractiveness of poetry is because of the energies. To be able to taste rasa, the object that is forced had a taste of should have taste worthiness. However, in the case of poetry and drama this taste is to be had a taste of with the help of the ears and the eyes.

When these organs taste the energies they create sensations of feeling happy and sorrow that reach the mind and if the mind is functioning well then emotions such as feeling happy, sorrow, and so on are awakened.

The stronger the sensations the stronger the emotions and these are reflected on the human body parts. When the emotions reach a peak then exclamations come out of without knowing and other organs of the body also react to these emotions at the same time. The incident or event described by the poet becomes the living experience of the person listening to the poetry. It is believed that Bharata’s Natyashastra is the first work that discusses the form of Rasa process.

Rasa has been an important have an effect on on the cinema of India. The rasa method of performance is one of the fundamental features that recognize a difference between Indian cinema from that of the from the west world. In the rasa method, empathetic "emotions are conveyed by the performer and therefore felt by the the group most likely to be interested," in contrast to the from the west Stanislavski method where the actor must become "a living, breathing embodiment of a quality" rather than "simply conveying emotion." The rasa manner of presentation is clearly revealed to be in letter Cinema and internationally-acclaimed parallel from Bengal films directed by Satyaji Ray

Elements of Rasa

Name of rasa	Clarification	Rasa depends on colour
Sṛinagara (शृङ्गारं)	Love, Attractiveness	light green
Hasya (हास्यं)	Laughter, Mirth, Comedy	White
Raudra (रौद्रं)	Fury	Red
Karuṇya (कारुण्यं)	Compassion, Tragedy	Grey
Bibhatsa (बीभत्सं)	Disgust, Aversion	blue
Bhayanaka (भयानकं)	Horror, Terror	black
Vira (वीरं)	Heroic mood	yellowish
Adbhuta (अद्भुतं)	Wonder, Amazement	yellow

THE SPECTATORSHIP

Spectatorship means that how a viewer is involved, implicated and engaged in the viewing experience of the film. The spectator will never view that how a viewer respond to the film statistically and scientifically.

Two terms which invokes spectatorship is Semiotics and psychoanalysis, it tells us in which ways a film functions as a system of language. It is based on the understanding of the larger structures or systems works and in which ways a viewer engage with the real world. Many of the film theorist says that these structure are in escapable, while viewing the film the viewer have no control over their minds and are subjective to the processes Film theorists saw many parallels lines are drawn between the pleasurable experience of watching a film in a darkened theater and psychoanalytic discussions of unconscious states of minds

The spectator’s process of experience the film is similar of the development of the childhood days. The process of viewing a film is like building or recreating the imaginary and symbolic worlds. Psychoanalytic theories of spectatorship make several assumptions that raise doubts about its ability to serve as a suitable model for understanding film viewing. The spectator is always rendered a passive subject of the film text, subject to its meaning system. This suggests that film spectators do not have control over the ways in which they view films and the meaning they take from them—that, in fact, every spectator receives the same meaning from a film.

Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho is the example for spectatorship. In the film Hitchcock has shown a version of obsession of love and hate. Throughout the film he plays with our emotions as directly as he can. It shows one form of human emotions or the capacity of feelings and modulation of love and hate for humans

Do Bigha Zamin

Do bigha Zamin in 1953 film was directed by Bimal Roy. He was inspired by Italian neo- realistic cinema. The film is based on socialist theme. The film became landmark in Parallel cinema of India.

Do bigha Zamin is a sad film. The film becomes more hurtful with the realization of the hard life of farmers during 1950s till date the scenario has not changed.   The film is not a figment of imagination of the director in order to create an ultimate tragedy. The film is high on melodrama but considering that it is an Indian film that can be easily discounted. Bimal Roy was influenced by Vittorio De Sica’s The Bicycle Thief and hence Do Bigha Zamin has many similarities with sica’s apic. The director has his heart and view at the right place even though it is melodramatic,overly tragic and influenced, the films looks totally genuine and convincing. There are scenes like Shambhu crying helplessly at his fields or the famous rickshaw race sequence touch and sadden the viewer by the magnitude of their own humaneness. Bimal Roy integrated songs into the narrative which in the eyes of purists went against the stylisation and escapist nature of what neo realism was trying to oppose.

Do Bigha Zamin is closer to the work of De Sica then it is to many other neo realism films, especially when you compare the humanist depiction of the relationship between Father/Sambhu and Son/Kanhaiya.

The eye pleasing screenplay by the legendary director Hrishikesh Mukherjee, who also edited film, handles many social themes with ease. The issue of migration among the rural and urban not only becomes an integral part of the narration, but also serves as an eye opener for the hundreds of villagers who abandon farming in the dream of making it big in the city. Brutal reality how lands are scathed, drained and made lifeless in the name of industrialization and development is also critiqued.   

RHETORIC KEEPING FILM INTO PERSPECTIVE

“The goddam movies. They can ruin you. I’m not kidding.”

– J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye (136)

The earlier movie theorists or director never imagined the medium of film as it flickered and lively before them, one could barely expect classical rhetoricians as a skilled way of arts imagination.

In earlier period they lacked technology and many forms of expression, but they lived in the same set of senses as we do. Rhetorical analysis of the movies is called textual analysis. Rhetorical analysis is an encounter between the film and the spectator, and the surrounding conditions around them. Rhetorical cannot be implied in the film text, as it comes from the moment of spectatorship. Rhetorical is belief to be an Art Machine. Through a rhetoric medium a filmmaker can convey his messages with power and clarity.

Rhetoric, on the other hand, exists for no other reason than to make specific changes in knowledge or behavior

Through the view of rhetoric, the filmmaker begins with an image, select the medium to transfer that to the audience. To feel or imagine the image build by the filmmaker properly.

Eisenstein agreed with this view but also felt the image to be something which develops almost spontaneously out of the representations which the artist is manipulating

DHVANI / THE SOUND

Dhvani Theory is the most important poetic theories of ancient India. Dhvani Theory is basically a semantic theory. Anandavardhana was the chief exponent of the Dhvani Theory, all the same Abhinava Gupta had made significant contributions to it.

Dhvani has three aspects, 'abhidha' which consists in the according to the letter meaning of the expression, 'laksana' which consists in the on the outside characteristic of the expression which are indicating of something deeper, and 'vyanjana' which means what is suggestiveDhvani is so termed because it sounds, rings, or reverbrates because it is sphota. The idea of one thing indicating something otherwise which it is not is the distinguishing character of dhvani. In a by means of words expression 'abhidha' and 'lak~na' form the nature of the condition and 'vyanjakn' or 'dhvani' is of nature of contents. To put it in a different way for the gramarians sounds are the subjects that lead to knowledge

A sound evokes picture, picture does not elicit a sound. Sound is a mechanical wave that is continuously changing of pressure sent through a solid, liquid, or gas, composed of frequencies within the range of hearing. Sound also travels through plasma. A sound the result is a sound recorded and presented to make a specific storytelling or creative point without the use of two sided discussion or music. The term frequently refers to a process applied to a recording, without necessarily referring to the recording itself.

Robert Bresson was one of the very few filmmakers from the past consistently paying close attention to sound. “For much traditional cinema this neglect [of the discussion of natural sound or noises in film theory] is proportional to the superficial presence of noises in the films themselves…The exceptions quoted as an authority in classical cinema are always the same of oneself, so rare, that they only prove the rule.

It happens to be surrounding area conditions sound, diegetic or non-diegetic music, commentary, explosions and so on. To ground us in such explorations we will adopt of the present time only terms to help us along the way: the in the mind only and the objective, the centripetal and the centrifugal.

MONTAGE

Montage is several photographs combined to form a composite illustration are an approach to understanding and creating cinema that relies heavily on editing. Although Soviet filmmakers in the 1920s did not agree about how exactly to view several photographs combined to form a composite illustration, Sergei Eisenstein marked a note of agreement in "A The art or practice of arriving at the truth by the exchange of logical argument Approach to movie Form" when he took note of that several photographs combined to form a composite illustration is "the nerve of cinema", and that "to determine the nature of several photographs combined to form a composite illustration is to solve the specific problem of cinema"

Eisenstein's view that "montage is an idea that emerges from the a crash of independent thoughts" in regard to which "each done in sequence element is understood to be not next to the other, but on top of the other" has become most widely agreed to. This style of editing offers discontinuity in graphic qualities, violations of the 180 degree rule, and the creation of not possible relation in spaces matches. It is not concerned with the representation of a able to be understood relation in spaces or only around for a short while continuity as is found in the classical Tinsel town continuity system. It draws attention to only around for a short while ellipses because alterations between shots are obviously ... sorry we have a 160 character a restriction for translations

He argued that "Montage is conflict" where new ideas, come out of from the crash of the several photographs combined to form a composite illustration progression and where the new emerging ideas are not inborn in any of the pictures of the edited connected line of. A new perception explodes into individual. His understanding of several photographs combined to form a composite illustration, therefore, illustrates Marxist The art or practice of arriving at the truth by the exchange of logical argument

Eisenstein describes five methods of montage namely

Metric

Editing follows a specific number of frames, cutting to the next shot no matter what is happening within the image.

Rhythmic

Includes cutting based on continuity, creating visual continuity from edit to edit.

Tonal

A tonal montage uses the emotional meaning of the shots e.g. a sleeping baby would emote calmness and relaxation.

Overtonal

A combination of all three above to synthesize its effect on audience

Intellectual

Is an alternative system to continuity editing.