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LA 6940 | Film series 整理

  • Writer: M
    M
  • Sep 25, 2020
  • 11 min read

Updated: Jul 25, 2021


UNDERGROUND FILMS
Martin Hogue

Future Cities Planning Film 
Jonathan Rosin

Metropolis/ Fritz Lang (1927) | 2h 33m

This all-time classic is perhaps the prototype of post-apocalyptic films. In the year 2030, the city of Metropolis is divided between wealthy industrialists and poor laborers. The story revolves around the son of the city’s manager, who falls in love with a working-class oracle. She forecasts the arrival of a hero who will save the working class from their terrible circumstance.

Elysium/ Neil Blomkamp (2013) | 1h 49m

86 years after the premiere of Metropolis, the city is still at the center of the class war between the rich and the poor. In this film, the year is 2154, and Earth is “diseased, polluted, and vastly overpopulated.” While the poor live in the ruined cities down on Earth, the rich are living in a giant space station, Elysium, safe and sound. The story revolves around an ex-convict factory worker named Max, who tries to get access to Elysium in order to save his life, and the lives of the ones he loves.

ELYSIUM - Official Trailer (HD) (Links to an external site.)

Mortal Engines/ Christian Rivers (2018) | 2h 8m

Sometime in the 21st century, a global conflict called “The Six Minutes War” wiped out most of humanity, with the survivors regrouping in mobile cities. Those mobile cities roam around of what was once Europe in the pursuit of resources, which, in order to do that, they hunt and absorb other smaller cities. The story is focused on Hester, a fugitive assassin, and Tom, an apprentice historian, and their journey to stop London from acquiring the weapon which destroyed the Earth at the beginning of the 21st

Logan’s Run/ Michael Anderson (1976) | 1h 59m

In the year 2274, humans are living in a city enclosed by giant domes. While a computer takes care of all material needs, people are free to live a hedonistic and care-free lifestyle. There is a catch. In order to avoid overpopulation, all people must be killed at the age of 30

Black Panther/ Ryan Coogler (2018) | 2h 14m

Black Panther tells the story of T’Challa, the prince of the hidden kingdom of Wakanda, as he takes control of the kingdom after his father’s death, and fights a challenger to the throne

Downsizing/ Alexander Payne (2017) | 2h 15m

This science fiction-satirical political drama is based on the idea that in the not so distant future, people can choose to get shrunk to a miniature size, thus helping save the environment and, maybe, more importantly, enlarge their wealth as a byproduct of the process.



Storm Films
Tim Bruce Dehm

There are films where the landscape acts as the passive scenery against which the plot unfolds, and then there are films where the plot is warped around the landscape’s power.  There are perhaps no clearer examples of the latter than the storm film. Storms turn the landscape into an agent of transformation that ushers in new eras for individuals, groups, and even civilizations.

This series explores the role of extreme weather in cinema as well as the role that storms play in our lives as metaphors for change. 

As a rule, all storms are atmospheric: no asteroids, meteors, sunflairs, magnetic pole shifts, earthquakes, or volcanoes allowed.



landscapes of alone
Olivia Campbell Messenger

First, we explore “social distancing”. These two films - a thriller captured through the framework of an apartment window by a viewer stuck indoors and a landscape through the experiences of a character who can return to the social world at any time, but prefers his isolated condition - explore the way the social world is cast in different lights. Next, we explore entrapment from two opposing lenses: as a result of a human condition, where the isolation comes as a result of an attachment to duty, or due to imprisonment, where the isolated lack any knowledge of the world outside their walls. And finally, we explore stranding: the loss of home in one way or another, a venture into an unfamiliar place or a place known and loved that becomes unfamiliar after a major disaster. 

What does a world of isolation, created for film and designed to display a human experience of solitude, look like? How do we see the alone interact with their surroundings? How do the surroundings shape and develop the world into a haven, a prison, or a cage?



SOUTH OF THE BORDER
 Caroline Molly Marin

The concise image of the Bad Hombre is a political tool used to rile and further certain agendas. This image is an amalgam of what Hollywood has been presenting since the early 1900s. The aim of this series is to dial in on Mexico, the bullseye of this politicized stereotype, and begin to understand the place (its history, variety, cultures, landscapes, etc) from the source, rather than through an Americanized lens. The only movie on this list that is not strictly Mexican (#1 Que Viva Mexico!) provides a very wide ranging history of the country, and helps contextualize Mexican cinema within the global reaches of the genre.




The Black Landscape series
Juwan Tyriq McIntyre

Throughout this course I noticed all the films we watched had little to no black people involved and we have seen nothing about urban environments(besides Killer of Sheep).  As a response to the lack of black movies I wanted to propose a list of movies revolving around black people and urban environments without blaxploitation. Blaxploitation is a style of film which poorly depicts black life with catchphrases, silly outfits, sex, violence, glorification of crime, drugs, and other gimmicky things, exaggerations. I want to avoid and even counter blaxploitation. The aim of this film series is to point viewers, especially non black viewers, to a different side of black film and representation in landscape. The criteria for this film series are black protagonist/cast, no gimmicks, accurate depictions of their environments (urban landscape), addressing real issues in the black community, how stereotypes are handled. Hopefully by the end of this series people could see the multi sided polygon that is black life in its entirety.

Juice (1992 Ernest R. Dickerson) Juice Trailer (Links to an external site.)

Several Friends (1969 Charles Burnett) Several Friends Trailer (Links to an external site.)

Dilemma (1962 Henning Carlsen) Dilemma Trailer (Links to an external site.)

Bless Their Little Hearts (1983 Charles Burnett) Bless Their Little Hearts Trailer (Links to an external site.)

Boyz n the Hood (1991 John Singleton) Boyz n the Hood Trailer



Theater into Film
Lela Graham Robinson

The proposed film series draws upon films which bring elements of theater, in particular the use of the stage, set and visual production into film. The topic relies upon films depicting the integration of theater and film, as a way to explore and analyze landscape, how landscapes are represented and translated, and insights which can be drawn from this comparison. The films chosen embed the visual production of theater into film, taking an interest in the actual semblance and construction of the integration, the metaphors this creates and how this rendering may contribute to themes both in the world of film and of landscape. Analyzing theater into film may offer an unusual or unique perspective from which to view and consider landscape, representation, and its translation.



Landscape as a metaphor unfolding character’s inner world
Jinyi Yang

Scenery shots in the film are important clues and symbols to reveal subjective feelings and help transit the plot’s sequence. The temporality and complexity of landscape are sometimes analogous to people's inner alienation, uncertainty, and other delicate feelings in the modern context. It will be interesting to see how the visual scenery is used as the projection of the character’s inner world in different expression logic and shooting techniques.

Within this series, we will go through Knife in the Water, At Land, Last Year at Marienbad, Stranger Than Paradise, La Notte, Persona, Meshes of the Afternoon, Stranger Than Paradise in chronological order to explore how the director organize their unique symbolic filming methods to tell the story, and how they use landscape to express complex literary content and the enigmatic and intricate feelings hidden in the characters.




Inner Landscapes film series
Cook Shaw

This list explores spatial conditions of the mind. It is a journey of the unconscious, the subconscious, the sublime and the surreal, each depicting a new and deeper representation of what psychological landscapes can be.

Starting with Akira Kurosawa’s Dreams, we are introduced to the idea of a mental landscape through a direct visualization of the director’s dreams – and nightmares.

Dreams Trailer - Akira Kurosawa (Links to an external site.)

We then dive deeper, exploring the self and its environment as a landscape of cultural and personal relationships in Vito Acconci’s The Red Tapes.

Red Tapes Trailer (Links to an external site.)

The series reaches a perceived bottom of the mind in the form of Bill Viola’s Eternal Return where a slow diver crosses a threshold.

As a finale, we enter the fantasy-reality world of Pipilotti Rist for Sip My Ocean and Ever Is All Over and are reminded of the fantasy-like start to the series.




Walking Through Film – Walking Through Landscape
Allan Phillip Greller

For humans, walking is arguably the most basic and primal way to navigate the physical landscape. Though filmmakers have long been interested in the act of walking and produced many iconic examples (see below) few films use walking as a driving force of their narratives. 



WINTER  FILMS
Yanni Yang

Landscape as the interface between human and nature, condense the aesthetic wisdom and diverse culture. In the cinematography aspect, nature is going through the senses and interact with all the movie characters. Winter is the last season in four seasons, which has a significant visual effect in the films and is involved with different meanings in different aspects. This series explores how winter plays a role in cinema, works as a strategy to create an authentic atmosphere, and providing the metaphors for the story development. Additionally, there are three Japanese based films and three north American based films. So, comparing the winter culture in the east and west is another core topic to explore. In the winter, what are people doing in the east and west? Do they have the same lifestyle? When does the winter work as a film strategy, how different cultures use them to present the atmosphere, what the different meanings between them, or do they have any similar emotion to be described in the films?



THESE FILMS SHOULD BE PLAYED LOUD!
The Rockumentary and America’s Middle-Landscape
Jacob Samuel Geitner

As America was absorbed in the sixties, filmmakers employed the rockumentary to preserve the peace-and-love sensibility embraced by the decade’s major rock festivals: Monterey, Woodstock, and Altamont. Although, the films under discussion once sought to entertain a community that either embraced or rejected America’s countercultural notions, this series treats them as interpretations of major shaping events in the counterculture rise and decline. While these films posit a more obvious relationship to America’s cultural and political landscapes, the world complexes fashioned by these rockumentaries become all the more relevant to the literal representation of landscape; especially when considering the counterculture’s emphasis on spatial and psychological freedoms. Whether they documented music that functioned as commentary on the culture, or depicted culture that critiqued the music, these films acknowledge that the music’s background can no longer be dismissed as an irrelevant landscape,  in an aesthetic or sociocultural sense of the word. 


Representation of Landscape Dualities in Film
Elijah Isaiah Ball

 Character, plot, and setting. These are the basic elements that construct a movie narrative.  But what happens when a character is situated in a new environment? This film series explores the representation of landscape dualities focusing not only on shifting landscapes but also the role it has on character and plot development. Additionally covered is a view of how a shift in a  story setting has the ability to morph a character persona and identity both figuratively and literally. With this in mind, the contrasting environment enables a discussion of other themes such as an outcast's sense of belonging in a new place and character engagement within controlled and uncontrolled landscapes with allusions to the concept of the hortus conclusus and wilderness.  The Witch (Robert Eggers, 2015) 1 hr 33m (Links to an external site.) The Light House (Robert Eggers, 2019) 1 hr 50m (Links to an external site.) The Wild Boys (Betrand Mandico, 2017) 1 hr 50m (Links to an external site.) Midsommar (Ari Aster, 2019) 2 hr 18m (Links to an external site.) 


Landscape as Art In The Name of The Time
Tingyue Tan

The six avant-garde films in the series integrate different landscape typologies through different cinematic techniques. They engage the audience to participate in diverse landscape within a fragment of time recorded in bunches of rolling films. The overall theme is simple. Each individual, including all the living creatures, on this planet are associated with the moments they capture in the films. Even though the elements in the films seems to be ordinary, it is our responsibility to acknowledge that we, human being as a whole, are consistently involved in the environment and experience the process of nature creation. The series is intended to provide a artistic lens for audience to re-evaluable the essence of landscape.

Shifted Horizon by Seoungho Cho, 2009, 6:09 min, color, sound, Soundtrack: Stephen Vitiello. Special Thanks: Jongho Choi.

Shifted Horizon - Seoungho Cho (Links to an external site.) Fog Line by Larry Gottheim, 1970, 11 min., 16mm, color, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FmnpiaQGTD8&t=3s (Links to an external site.) Ten Skies by James Benning, 2004, 101 min., 16mm, color, sound

Ten Skies (James Benning) - 2004 (Links to an external site.) Walden by Jonas Mekas, 1968, 177 min., 16mm, color, sound

Jonas Mekas,'WALDEN' aka 'Diaries, Notes and Sketches' (1969) (Links to an external site.) Ancient of Days by Bill Viola, 1979-1981. 12:21 min. Video (color, sound). Bill Viola - Ancient Of Days (1979) (Links to an external site.) Foreign Sky by Soni Kum, 2005, Color, B&W, 70 min.

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