Fairy tales in faraway places

Film is now available on Netflix. Presentation of the holocaust: A topic that has been covered extensively in the media. It’s a typical example in the late twentieth century in Western culture for the dangerous of bigotry, nationalism and bureaucracy. ·        De-contextualized images of the holocaust to transform the Jewish narrative into a universal moral paradigm that is applied to all the atrocities that happen afterwards in Europe. Post memory by the second generation and the way it was expressed in the art form- Holocaust was the representation of all evil in the world and some critics argue that it has become decontextualized because there is no historical reference to what it truly means as it was mainly aimed at the third generation to show that they should not follow the same path. The well-used images of barbarism (the gaunt faces behind the barbed wire, vacant stare of the tortured) have begun to lose their meaning because they are alw...

Memory and Obligation:  The Joke’ was filmed in 1969 during a time of political liberalization in Czechoslovakia which allowed it to look much more candidly at political topics that had been otherwise been censored or suppressed by the Soviet Union within the style of the Czech New Wave Cinema which gave them more freedom to express themselves. The term memory can be applied to both the collective and the individual memory and there is a direct contrast to the two in the film. Individual memory is used to describe the personal events that an individual has experienced with their span of years alive whereas the collective memory in basic terms refers to a shared pool of memories, knowledge and information from one social group that is significantly associated with the group’s identity. Memory is not to be confused with history because they have different aims and characteristics- the aim of history is to provide a cohesive and accurate depiction of the past events and that is...

Discuss the film in the context of propaganda and the construction of official memory in WWII in the Soviet Union: The film was released in 1959 as part of a cultural exchange with the United States. It focuses on the emotional trauma caused by the war behind the frontlines among the normal civilians rather than on the heroic deeds of the soldiers in battle. Cinema was not just for entertainment but it was seen as the ‘highest form of art’ by Lenin himself who recognised the propaganda value of the film to influence the masses when many were illiterate. Propaganda was used in a ‘totalitarian regime’ to control the people but there was more freedom. There was a movement away from socialist realism and the dogmatic socialism under Stalin due to the cultural thaw under Khruschev and as such the directors were given more artistic freedom to show what they wanted. The director has made a film that contains anti-war messages but at the same time doesn’t focus on the horror of the ...

Essay received positive feedback.  A traditional melodrama usually affirms domestic values which focuses on the individual, social stability and the maintenance of the status quo. [1] In contrast, a revolutionary melodrama was influenced by the Mexican revolution during 1910-1920. It represented societies desire for change and the creation of a new social and political Mexico. [2] The film Flor Silvestre was released in 1943 during the period of Mexico’s ‘Golden Age’ of cinema when the government gave the industry investment for their films. This helped to consolidate the subgenre of a revolutionary melodrama while at the same time promoting the image of a positive and unified Mexico which extolled the benefits of the revolution [3] .     These two genres enshrine a ‘paradox [4] ’ because they offer contradicting opinions, leading one to question which genre, if anyone, is more applicable to the film. Flor silvestre was set in a small town in Jalisco which is...