Forrest Gump: comic representations of the recent American past

Mestrado em Línguas, Literaturas e Culturas - Estudos InglesesO presente trabalho propõe-se pesquisar a abordagem histórica das décadas de 50, 60 e 70 nas comédias americanas contemporâneas. Deste modo espero destacar os acontecimentos da história americana no passado recente que se prestaram a uma abordagem cinematográfica e foram retratados em comédias. As reacções a esses filmes permitem ainda reflectir sobre os valores culturais transmitidos nos filmes de comédia. Esta dissertação também aborda as características e funções da comédia enquanto género cinematográfico. Na fundamentação teórica também são abordadas algumas questões ligadas à adaptação cinematográfica. A vertente prática da dissertação centra-se no filme Forrest Gump, explorando a sua relevância histórica, e a adaptação ao cinema. ABSTRACT: This dissertation is intended to research historical approaches to the fifties, sixties and seventies in contemporary comedy films. Doing so, I expect to cast some light on recent American events that have proved to be cinematic and likely to be explored in a comic perspective. Viewers´ response to these films is also to be analysed so as to reflect on the cultural values rendered in comedy forms. Moreover, this dissertation includes some thought on the narrative and generic features of comedy as a film genre. The theoretical section also covers some issues raised by film adaptation. The practical research section focuses on the film Forrest Gump, exploring both its historical significance, and the precise nature of this adaptation

Ecomedia: Key Issues

Ecomedia: Key Issues is a comprehensive textbook introducing the burgeoning field of ecomedia studies to provide an overview of the interface between environmental issues and the media globally. Linking the world of media production, distribution, and consumption to environmental understandings, the book addresses ecological meanings encoded in media texts, the environmental impacts of media production, and the relationships between media and cultural perceptions of the environment. [From the publisher]https://cupola.gettysburg.edu/books/1084/thumbnail.jp

Sci-fEAST: Science fiction genre in Polish and Czechoslovakian cinema

This article is based on research done as part of Sci-fEAST: the Science Fiction Genre in Central and Eastern Europe project initiated by the students of Charles University in Prague and continued also by the academic staff of the University of Łódź since September 2012. The goal of the project was to create a comprehensive database of science fiction films specific for particular national cinemas and so far all of the Czech and Polish full-length feature films have been collected. It is planned that the Hungarians and Slovaks will join the project as well, adding to the database both works of Hungarian cinema and films made after the Dissolution of Czechoslovakia. The http://www. sci-feast.eu webpage, also available in English, is being gradually updated as new TV-productions as well as short-feature films are added. The latter, especially in the case of Polish cinema, constitute a significant part of all the works of the genre. This freely accessible database provides descriptions of the films together with technical data and a short synopsis of the plot, but its intended purpose is to be a discussion platform (of thought exchange) between the particular universities and scholar communities.This book was financially supported by the National Programme for the Development of Humanities: project “Cinema: Intercultural Perspective. Western-European Cinema in Poland, Polish Cinema in Western Europe. Mutual Perception of Film Cultures (1918–1939)”

Literary translation and cultural memory

This article intends to investigate the relationship between literary translation and cultural memory, using a twentieth century film version of one of Shakespeare’s plays as a case study in inter-semiotic translation. The common perception of translation is often confined to its use as a language learning tool or as a means of information transfer between languages. The wider academic concept embraces not only inter-lingual translation, but both intra-lingual activity or rewording in the same language and inter-semiotic translation defined by Roman Jacobson as “the interpretation of verbal signs by means of signs of nonverbal sign systems” (Jakobson, 1959: 114)

“Beloved Be the Ones Who Sit Down”: Aesthetics and Political Affect in Roy Andersson’s “Living” Trilogy

Roy Andersson’s unique surrealist style and the affect it gives rise to, situated somewhere between deep existential dread and the most absurdist humor, are intimately connected to his staging of action in stacked layers of meaning in deep focus, immobile long takes. A formal reading of his films then gives us a greater understanding of the connection between affect and film style.But the tableau which all but evacuates time in Andersson is not only a stylistic choice: this challenge to traditional structures and temporalities is the formal manifestation of his anachronistic conception of history. I argue that cinematic time is here closely tied to historical time: a view of history as layered, instantaneous and made up of incongruous juxtapositions as commentary on a failure of historicism as central to the development of a national Swedish identity marked by passivity, anti-intellectualism, and a lack of historical conscience

‘Women’s tales’: postfeminist adventures into consumerville

This article examines the project ‘Women’s Tales’, an on-going series of short films that fashion designer Miuccia Prada commissioned from international female directors, among them Lucrecia Martel, Ava DuVernay and Agnès Varda. By situating this endeavour in relation to female agency, authorial expressivity, and consumerism, it is argued that the project conforms to postfeminist media culture for its celebration of feminine bonds, make-over strategies and the use of luxury as a tool for pleasure and empowerment. As a series of fashion films at the interstices of different systems: advertisement and art, film and online media, experimental and mainstream practices, ‘Women’s Tales’ occasionally contain some critical potential, but struggle to challenge existing fashion paradigms. This article questions the postfeminist ethos that the project espouses, claiming that through its in-between, interstitial status, ‘Women’s Tales’ destabilise representational conventions without really disrupting fashions’ foundation

Eileen Chang and cinema

The death of Eileen Chang on September 8, 1995 in Los Angeles made headlines in all the Chinese newspapers. In the Chinese-speaking areas of Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Mainland China, a veritable cult of mystique has been built around her by both public media and the large number of her fans (who called themselves Chang-mi or Chang-fans”). However, in the last twenty-three years of her life Chang lived quietly and incognito in Los Angeles, shunning all social contact and escaping publicity by constantly changing her residences in numerous hotels, motels, and small apartment houses until her death in an obscure apartment building in the Westwood section of Los Angeles. This “mystery” of her last years adds only more glamour to her legend: she was like a retired movie star past her prime, like Greta Garbo