Neo Realism Of Pather Panchali Film Studies Essay

Neo Realism Of Pather Panchali Film Studies Essay The Bengali feature film Pather Panchali or Song of The Road in English was directed by Satyajit Ray and released in 1955. It was considered a landmark in the field of Indian as well as world cinema. Although it was director Rays debut effort it went on to win critical and popular acclaim from all around the world. The path breaking movie was also instrumental in winning the Best Human Document award at the Cannes Film Festival of 1956. Satyajit Ray had his first truck with neo-realism as far back as 1949, when Jean Renoir the famous director from France came to Calcutta to make the film The River. The neo-realistic influence that is apparent in most of his movies came from this association with the famed movie maker as also from the neo-realistic propensities of the then prevailing Italian cinema (Ruberto. L, Wilson. E Kristi. M 2007). Ray happened to take the famous director to various potential locations in the Bengal countryside. Later he went to London on official business. During the short time he was in London, Ray saw myriads of movies and seeing the film Bicycle Thieves made so profound an impression on him that he decided to be a movie maker, then and there (Robinson, 2003). Pather Panchali is considered to be neo-realist in its implications. The main reason for describing the movie as neo-realistic was the fact that it was filmed not long after the II World War when neo-realism held sway in most of Europe. What made the critics tack the label of neo-realism to Rays movie? Ray chose mostly natural locations while shooting Pather Panchali. He wanted the backdrop of each shot to speak for itself. Also, he totally refrained from the artificially exaggerated practices and gestures of the popular cinema prevailing in India. The movie is said to have amply demonstrated some affiliations with the traditions narration, representation as well as musical address prevailing in earlier times in an effort to articulate in an Indian identity of the day following independence (Vasudevan, 2000). In an attempt to dissociate himself and his creations from the commercial movies emanating from Bollywood, Satyajit Ray stated, The differences appear to emerge from evaluating the status of the narrative form through which the real would be articulated, through what means of representation, styles of acting, aesthetic strategies the real would be invoked. Here the popular compendium studio shooting, melodramatic, externalized forms for the representation of character psychol ogy, non- or intermittently continuous forms of cutting, diversionary story lines, performance sequences was not acceptable within the emergent artistic canon, for they undermined plausibility and a desirable regime of verisimilitude (Ray, 1976). Pather Panchali possessed all the essential characteristics of neo-realism as proposed by the great Italian movie maker Zabattini. The neo-realistic theory lays down the dictum that the filmmaker should not ever impose his own individual interpretation on the movie that he is making and should always remain a passive observer of the reality that he happens to be creating. It does not matter whether he is depicting misery or prosperity, the movie maker should always uphold the utmost objectivity, by subordinating logic to action at all times. Although, even the staunchest of the neo-realists were utterly unable to attain such total objectivity for the simple reason that the subjective element always had a tendency to creep into any artistic creation, they never stopped from trying to achieve it. The same thing holds true for Satyajit Ray when he made his debut film Pather Panchali. In fact Ray was virtually unable to keep the subjective element out of his movie. But he never made comments on his actions, characters or situations. He never pitches hints at his audience and never tells them just what to think and feel. At the same time he was not at all apprehensive about taking the appropriate stances. This is because he was predisposed not to his characters but to the drama of life itself. He had his own ways to suffuse life on to the screen in order to impart a shimmer of hope to all his characters. Pather Panchali and Bollywood movies : A contrast Bollywood movies are a far cry from the realism and objectivity of Rays movies When comparing and contrasting a Satyajit Ray movie to any Bollywood movie, there is nothing much to compare but there is a lot to contrast. The only factor a movie like Pather Panchali has in common with a Bollywood movie is that both are shot in India and is about life in India. The similarity ends there. While Rays movies are predominantly realistic, there is nothing even remotely realistic about Bollywood films. To make matters worse, Satyajit Rays art films received their due recognition from the cognoscenti and welcomed with open hands within the ambit of world cinema. Evidently, Rays movies were in stark contrast to the populist fare dished out to the masses. This further discouraged any scholarly discussion of Bollywood movies within cinematic and media study circles. Madhava Prasad (2003) a film scholar wonders about the significance of the term Bollywood (2003). It might be that being imitative Bollywood cinema needs to be rechristened to emphasize this derivativeness. In another context, Gokulsingh et al states that whereas Hollywood filmmakers strove to conceal the constructed nature of their work so that the realistic narrative was wholly dominant, Indian filmmakers made no attempt to conceal the fact that what was shown on the screen was a creation, an illusion, a fiction. Genre While movies like Pather Panchali comes under the genre of art cinema or parallel cinema, Bollywood movies come under the genre of Masala meaning a mixture of hot spices. The main characteristic of the Masala genre is the song and dance sequences, a critical factor in defining the particular genre. But audiences that invest social realism into cinema find it difficult to accept the genre as they are extraneous constructions of the real (Dudrah, 2002). It might be interesting to note that the term Bollywood does not signify Indian cinema as a whole but is confined to those movies emanating from Mumbai, the erstwhile Bombay (Corliss, 1996). Budget Any film begins with a budget which in turn necessitates financial backing. Another factor that delineates Pather Panchali and Bollywood movies is the matter of budgeting. Pather Panchali was shot with the meager budget of $3000 while Bollywood spends incredible amounts to make musical extravaganzas. Even a single dance scene from a Bollywood movie costs tens of thousands of dollars. Satyajit Ray could not afford even what to a Bollywood producer is an insignificant sum. The government of Rays home state contributed the lions share of the production costs of Pather Panchali. This never happens with Bollywood films. Film distributors around India are standing ready to advance princely amounts of cash to a masala movie emanating from Bolllywood. Monroe Wheeler, the then head of the prestigious Museum of Modern Art was greatly impressed with high levels of quality prevalent in Pather Panchali although what he saw at the time of his visit to Calcutta in 1954 was an incomplete footage. La ter Wheeler asked John Huston, the American movie director who was on a visit to Calcutta to look into the progress Rays debut movie. At Hustons favorable feedback, the Museum of Modern Art provided Ray with additional funds. Still three years had elapsed before the movie went into post-production (Mehta, 1998). Screenplay The screenplay for Pather Panchali was based on the Bengali novel of the same title by the popular novelist Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay. The novel was about the simple lives of people inhabiting the Bengal countryside of the period. Such a theme is generally anathema to Bollywood directors. Again, the scripts of Bollywood movies tend to be involved, complicated and resemble the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle that somehow come together at the very end. In contrast Pather Panchali did not have even a whole script (Robinson, 2003) as it was solely based on Rays notes and drawings. His theme was simple enough with seemingly random sequences of trivial as well as significant sequences pieced together, a practice that is foreign to the mindset of Bollywood movie directors. Rather than dishing out a fare to assist the moviegoers to escape from the harsh realities of life even it is for a few hours as is the case with Bollywood movies, Ray wanted the script à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦to retain some of the ra mbling quality of the novel because that in itself contained a clue to the feel of authenticity: life in a poor Bengali village does ramble (Ray, 1976). Quite unlike a Satyajit Ray movie, a bollywood film is replete with a plot that is extremely melodramatic in its connotations. Most of such movies follow a regular formula with ingredients that is often mindblogging to a serious movie goer. Such formulae is replete with love triangles, family ties, irate parents, corrupt politicians, conniving villains, kidnappers, golden hearted prostitutes, siblings long lost, sudden reversals of fortune, impossible coincidences and what not. Musical score The musical score consisting of Pather Panchali was prepared by the sitar maestro Ravi Shankar who at that time was at the initial stage of his musical development (Lavezzoli 2006). The background score, in the best tradition of Indian classical music, was something that was truly plaintive and exhilarating (Hoberman, 1995). A sound track that was based on the ragas of classical music and did not contain any songs to portray dance sequences was singularly at variance with the inane capers of Bollywood and something that was happening for the first time in the annals of Indian cinema. A Bollywood movie is an epitome of mediocrity with nothing to relate it with life as lived in India. The main emphasis is on musicals consisting of catchy tunes and words accompanied by a series of song-and-dance sequences. Even the theatricl trailers made to promote a movie have their emphasis on song and dance scenes The standard of a movie is based on mainly on the quality of the songs it features. In fact one major factor of movie promotion with Indian commercial movies in general is to release the songs that a movie contains far ahead of its release. A Satyajit Ray movie appeals to the filmgoer for the aesethetic sense it imparts. To see Pather Panchali was to have what MSN Carta defined as a cerebral experience (MSN Encarta).To understand such films the audience should have a sound notion of what a true movie should be as also expect them to be of a high standard. But it is not at all so in the case of Bollywood movies. Plagiarism in Bollywood Movies Bollywood script writers and music composers have a tendency to plagiarize from western sources and from Bengali and Malayalam movies of India which are of a comparatively high standard. Plot lines, ideas, tunes as well as riffs are fair game for Bollywood (Ayres Oldenburg, 2005). In the past Bollywood could get away with impunity as the movies were largely unknown to non-Indian viewers with the result that none had the faintest notion that ones materials was beeing plagiarized (Dudrah, 2002). Well known Bollywood Director Vikram Bhatt put it succinctly when he remarked Financially, I would be more secure knowing that a particular piece of work has already done well at the box office. Copying is endemic everywhere in India. Our TV shows are adaptations of American programmes. We want their films, their cars, their planes, their diet cokes and also their attitude. The American way of life is creeping into our culture. and also If you hide the source, youre a genius. Theres no such th ing as originality in the creative sphere. However some copyright violations were indeed resulted in litigation. For instance the Bollywood movies Zinda in 2005 and Partner in 2007 were taken to court for having plagiarized from the Hollywood movies Oldboy and Hitch respectively. Accolades Another point to note is that Rays films remains an important part of world cinema and he has received more accolade than any other Indian moviemaker. Noted critic Basil Wright made this comment after viewing Pather Panchali for the first time: I have never forgotten the private projection room at the British Film Institute during which I experienced the shock of recognition and excitement when, unexpectedly, one is suddenly exposed to a new and incontrovertible work of art (Chapman, 2003). For instance the noted film critic Constantine Santas opined that Ray developed a distinctive style of film-making (Santas, 2002). Moti Gokulsing and Wimal Dissanayake stated that the basis of Rays works is comprised of strong humanism and visual lyricism (Gokulsing Dissanayake, 2004). Roy had the singular honor of establishing himself as an auteur of cinema with his very first movie (Santas 2002). In contrast no Bollywood film has ever won an international award, won any critical claim or even special mention from anywhere in the world except in those pulp magazines singing paeans to the movie moguls of Bollywood and their mediocre creations; this in spite of the fact that Bollywood churns out more movies per annum than any other country in the world. Although Bollywood movies are immensely popular with India and Indians living abroad, many South Asians eye them with derision labeling them as maudlin and unrealistic. To quote Edward Johnsons aside as he was commenting on the film posters of Bollywood movies, Indian cinema has a reputation in the West founded more on myth than reality. Art directors such as Satyajit Ray are given fulsome praise whilst the majority of commercial cinema receives nothing but ridicule and the entire industry is pilloried as specious drossà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦(Johnson, 1987:2). Even scholarship in India which, at times, was dismissive of popular films as Technicolor fantasies catering to the masses. To them Bollywood movies were characterized by dance and music, melodramatic content, lavish production procedures and over emphasis on spectacles and stars. And this is why Bollywood films have attained box-office success and raving audiences within India as also globally and not because of aesthetic excellence or on any grounds of merit. . The evolution of Bollywood Cinema with its constant interruptions of dance and song sequences is cited as a critical feature distinguishing it from other cinemas (Gopalan 2002); it is often also cited as an impediment to serious cinema as well Bollywood apologists complain that their movies are evaluated in the glum shadow of European cinematic forms, epistemologies and aesthetics and that in the confines of these rubrics Bollywood movies become poor imitations of art, exhibiting a total lack of realism of any sort and so remain shallow spectacles of fanatastic settings and music. Conclusion In the latter half of the 20th century filmmakers as well as screen writers of a serious mien became frustrated with the then prevailing musical movies. They wanted to reverse this trend and take the Indian movie to a higher and saner realm. They wanted to develop an altogether new genre of movies that portrayed reality from an aesthetic perspective (Roy, 2008) and not mediocre escapist fare. The pioneering efforts of Satyajit Roy gave birth to a number of highly aesthetic and unforgettable movies from avant garde directors like Mrinal Sen, Adoor Gopalakrishnan, Shyam Benegal and Girish Kasaravalli. And while it lasted no good thing lasts for long it was a real relief from the artifice universally distributed from the gaudy sets of Bollywood.

Harvard case essay

Treasury bonds with the same maturity. The deference between selling TIPS and buying T-bonds will cover the Inflation risk losses thus effectively eliminates Inflation risk In the portfolio. The Harvard's Policy Portfolio Includes much of the university endowment, pension assets, working capital, and portfolio contains 1 1 wide asset classes, Including domestic equity, foreign equity, private equity, domestic bonds, foreign bonds, emerging markets, real estate, commodities, absolute return, high yield, and cash.This portfolio was determined by the board of the corporation for the long-run allocation, however, the manager can make short-run adjustment within the limits from the guideline. The reason that HAMS focus on real returns is HAMS want to exclude the influence of inflation and determine the return rate more precisely. As the formula nominal return = real return + inflation rate shows, choosing real return instead of nominal return can reveal the real purchasing power of the in vestment, thus help the manager to conduct more efficiently to prevent the evasion of the investment.As we can see from Exhibit land Exhibit 2, domestic and foreign equity constitute the biggest part of the portfolio, and these two asset classes have high real returns as well as latterly larger standard deviations. And we know that equity premium indicates the difference between the expected return on the market portfolio of common stocks and the risk-free interest rate, and higher risk often indicates higher equity premium.Based on Ham's assumption that the real growth rate of annual spending is 3% after inflation, and that gifts to the endowment are same as the historical average rate (1%), HIM has to maintain a real between 6% and 7% of the total investment In order achieve its preservation goal. Thus HIM has to invest a large portion in US and reign equity with higher premium, resulting in a short of cash. Yes, From inception in 1 997, TIPS had offered a real yield that ranged f rom. 2% to 4. 25%.

Term Paper Proposal Example

A term paper is a regular assignment for students to research a specific topic of interest. The purpose of the term paper proposal is to outline the structure of the future term paper, providing the key elements that will support the research. The main feature of the term paper proposal is the necessity to constrict the overall area of interest to a very detailed or specific topic. The writer should have the defined intention for discovering the topic, basing the decision on the opportunity of making a change, improving the condition of the matter or advancing scholarly knowledge regarding the issue. To write a term paper proposal one should select the most significant parts of the paper and put them together in a unified outline. Further, it is necessary to provide a short description of each section and tie the content to the chosen topic. Title: Impact of the Reverse Discrimination on the Societal Well-being in the US. Objectives: To examine the issue of the reverse discrimination in the United States; To analyze the impact of the reverse discrimination on the societal well-being; To provide the solutions on the possible means of conquering the issue. Research Question: Does reverse discrimination pose an issue for compliance, feeling of belonging, and inclusiveness in the society? Thesis Statement: Reverse discrimination has become a major social issue in the United States by influencing negatively the majority of people in terms of their freedom and opportunities, deteriorating the social well-being of the nation, forcing people to feel emotionally weak and alienated from the society. In the process of fighting discrimination against minorities, the nation has reached an unprecedented level of injustice and immorality towards the majority. There is a burning need to look for the new ways of renovating the social clay in order to maintain the society safe and comfortable for all people involved. Methodology: The majority of information will be taken from scholarly databases, such as Google scholar, JSTOR, Ebscohost, and others. However, this will not be only a scholarly discussion but rather a research, which provides the empirical evidence to the topic addressed. In order to attain such goal, the range of practices will be involved, including quantitative analysis though the survey of the chosen sample of people in the particular town in the United States. The amount of literature on the topic is vast to present a valid and credible term paper on the topic of the reverse discrimination in the United States. Outline: Introduction. Theoretical background on the concept of the reverse discrimination. The reverse discrimination as a negative social phenomenon in the United States: 3.1. The history of the reverse discrimination at the workplace; 3.2. The legislative base that outlines the reasons for the existence of the reverse discrimination in the US; 3.3. The impact of the reverse discrimination on the social inclusiveness. The recommendations to solve the issue of the reverse discrimination: 4.1. The international experience of tackling the issue; 4.2. The update of the social policies to solve the reverse discrimination problem across the country. Conclusion.

Biography of Henri Rousseau, Self-Taught Post-Impressionist

Henri Rousseau (May 21, 1844 – September 2, 1910) was a French painter in the post-impressionist era. He started painting late in life and was roundly mocked in his own time, but was later recognized as a genius and became an influence on later avant-garde artists. Fast Facts: Henri Rousseau Full Name:  Henri Julien Fà ©lix RousseauOccupation: Artist; tax/toll collectorBorn: May 21, 1844 in Laval, FranceDied: September 2, 1910 in Paris, FranceKnown For: Almost entirely self-taught and rarely praised in his lifetime, Rousseaus naive style of painting inspired many future artists and has come to be widely respected in more contemporary times.Spouses:  Clà ©mence Boitard  (m. 1869–1888), Josephine Noury  (m. 1898–1910)Children: Julia Rousseau (only daughter that survived infancy) Working Class Origins Henri Julien Fà ©lix Rousseau was born in Laval, the capital of the Mayenne region of France. His father was a tinsmith, and he had to work alongside his father from the time he was a young boy. As a youth, he attended the local Laval High School, where he was mediocre in some subjects but excelled in creative disciplines such as music and drawing, even winning awards. Eventually, his father went into debt and the family was forced to give up their house; at this time, Rousseau began boarding at the school full-time. After high school, Rousseau attempted to start a career in law. He worked for a lawyer and began his studies, but when he was involved in an incident of perjury, he had to abandon that career path. Instead, he enlisted in the army, serving four years from 1863 to 1867. In 1868, his father died, leaving Rousseau to support his widowed mother. He left the army, moved to Paris, and instead took up a government post, working as a toll and tax collector. Rousseau was known as Le Douanier (the Customs Officer) after his place of work. Essentially self-taught, Rousseaus naive primitive style of painting was widely ridiculed during his lifetime although he later came to be seen as an artist of considerable significance. Print Collector  /  Getty Images That same year, Rousseau married his first wife, Clà ©mence Boitard. She was his landlord’s daughter and, being only fifteen years old, was nine years his junior. The couple had six children together, but only one survived, their daughter Julia Rousseau (born 1876). A few years into their marriage, in 1871, Rousseau took on a new post, collecting taxes on goods coming into Paris (a specific tax called the octroi). Early Exhibits Starting in 1886, Rousseau began exhibiting artwork in the Salon des Indà ©pendants, a Paris salon founded in 1884 that counted Georges Seurat among its founders. The salon was formed as a response to the rigidity of the government-sponsored Salon, which focused heavily on traditionalism and was less than welcoming to artistic innovations. This was a perfect fit for Rousseau, although his work was not displayed in places of prominence within the exhibitions. Rousseau was almost entirely self-taught, although he admitted to having received some â€Å"advice† from Fà ©lix Auguste Clà ©ment and Jean-Là ©on Gà ©rà ´me, a pair of painters from the Academic style. For the most part, though, his artwork came all from his own self-training. He painted nature scenes, as well as developing a particular take on the portrait landscape, in which he would paint a particular scene, then place a person in the foreground. His style lacked some of the polished technique of other artists of the time, leading to him being labeled as a â€Å"naà ¯ve† painter and often disdained by critics. Painting by Henri Rousseau. Surprise, 1891. Buyenlarge  /  Getty Images In 1888, Rousseau’s wife Clà ©mence died, and he spent the next ten years single. His art slowly began to grow a following, and in 1891, Tiger in a Tropical Storm (Surprised!) was exhibited and earned his first major review with serious praise from fellow artist Felix Vallotton. In 1893, Rousseau moved to a studio in the art-centric neighborhood of Montparnasse, where he would live for the rest of his life. Ongoing Career in Paris Rousseau formally retired from his government job in 1893, ahead of his fiftieth birthday, and devoted himself to his artistic pursuits. One of Rousseau’s most famous works, The Sleeping Gypsy, was first seen in 1897. The following year, Rousseau remarried, a decade after losing his first wife. His new wife, Josephine Noury, was, like him, on her second marriage—her first husband had died. The couple had no children, and Josephine died only four years later, in 1892. Painting by Henri Rousseau. Sleeping Gypsy, 1897.   Buyenlarge / Getty Images In 1905, Rousseau returned to his earlier themes with another large-scale jungle painting. This one, titled The Hungry Lion Throws Itself on the Antelope, was exhibited once again at the Salon des Indà ©pendants. It was placed near works by a group of younger artists who were leaning more and more avant-garde; one of the future stars whose work was shown near Rousseau’s was Henri Matisse. In retrospect, the grouping was considered the first showing of Fauvism. The group, â€Å"the Fauves,† may have even gotten the inspiration for their name from his painting: the name â€Å"les fauves† is French for â€Å"the wild beasts.† Rousseau’s reputation continued to climb within the artistic community, although he never quite made it to the uppermost echelons. In 1907, however, he received a commission from Berthe, Comtesse de Delauney—the mother of fellow artist Robert Delauney—to paint a work that ended up being The Snake Charmer. His inspirations for the jungle scenes were not, contrary to rumors, from seeing Mexico during his time in the army; he never went to Mexico. The Snake Charmer, 1907. Artist: Rousseau.   Heritage Images / Getty Images In 1908, Pablo Picasso discovered one of Rousseau’s paintings being sold on the street. He was struck by the painting and immediately went to find and meet Rousseau. Delighted with the artist and the art, Picasso proceeded to throw a half-serious, half-parody banquet in Rousseau’s honor, called Le Banquet Rousseau. The evening featured many of the prominent figures in the creative community of the time, not for a glittering celebration, but more of a meeting of the creative minds with one another in celebration of their art. In hindsight, it was considered one of the most significant social events of its time. Declining Health and Legacy Rousseau’s final painting, The Dream, was exhibited in 1910 by the Salon des Indà ©pendants. That month, he suffered from an abscess on his leg, but ignored the inflammation until it became too far gone. He was not admitted to the hospital until August, and by then, his leg had become gangrenous. After having surgery for his leg, he developed a blood clot and died from it on September 2, 1910. The Dream (1910). Museum of Modern Art, New York. Fine Art  /  Getty Images Despite being criticized during his life, Rousseau’s style was hugely influential on the next generation of avant-garde artists, such as Picasso, Fernand Leger, Max Beckmann, and the whole surrealist movement. Poets Wallace Stevens and Sylvia Plath also drew inspiration from Rousseau’s paintings, as did songwriter Joni Mitchell. In perhaps the most unexpected connection: one of Rousseau’s paintings inspired the visual world of the animated film Madagascar. His work continues to be displayed to this day, where it is studied and admired much more than it ever was during his own life. Sources â€Å"Henri Rousseau.† Biography, 12 April 2019, https://www.biography.com/artist/henri-rousseau.â€Å"Henri Rousseau.† Guggenheim, https://www.guggenheim.org/artwork/artist/henri-rousseau.Vallier, Dora. â€Å"Henri Rousseau: French Painter.† Encyclopaedia Britannica, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Henri-Rousseau.