Archive for the ‘ Cinema ’ Category

Jim Jarmusch: Only Lovers Left Alive

RZ6A1576.JPG

In his last film, Only Lovers Left Alive (2013), Jim Jarmusch has created a rather interesting and moving experience that seems to start flowing through our veins softly but incisively some time after seeing it, or living it… Vampires are with out a doubt and exquisite territory for todays times, our times, ecstatic for all that is dark and mystical, but withdrawn from all traditional spirituality. Added to this, Jarmusch offers a very interesting review of contemporary culture as well as of the social spirit prevailing in such a subtle way, that it takes time for us to recap, comprehend and incorporate a message that, sometimes without us recognising it, is fixed inside of us.

Continue reading →

2015
06/15
POSTED BY
CATEGORY
Art + Marketing
Cinema
Contemporary Culture
TAGS










Leave a comment

Elles: a movie about culture, morality and the otherness…

We have talked in other posts about the value of understanding a story in different levels, that is, discursive levels that tell a story from different perspectives, at the same time rational and emotional, at the same time organic and raw, at the same time intimate and common to may people. When one moves from one of this stages to another, it is something you can feel in an intuitive way, but sometimes, if things happen over and over as in this case, the experience conforms parts or segments that create a new totality, a new reality.

Continue reading →

2012
09/14
POSTED BY
CATEGORY
Art + Marketing
Cinema
Contemporary Culture
Journalism
Research and Culture
TAGS










Leave a comment

Film discourse and the work of a qualitative researcher (part three)

Discourse structure 4: Broken stories. Here we find stories told from different perspectives or multiple versions of one same event that complement each other to make out a final version. Or it is stories that travel through time with no specific rule or pattern. Movies have many examples of this. They are frequently referred as a non-linear narration. They also include stories told as a jigsaw puzzle or pastiche of multiple elements that allow a construction of the story as one goes on and on uncovering new pieces. Some movie directors can be identified for directing this type of movies, although they do not always do so: Christopher Nolan, Darren Aronofsky, David Lynch, Terry Gilliam, Federico Fellini, Peter Greenaway and David Cronenberg, to mention a few.

Continue reading →

2012
08/16
POSTED BY
CATEGORY
Art + Marketing
Cinema
Contemporary Culture
Qualitative research
Research and Culture
TAGS



























Leave a comment

Film discourse and the work of a qualitative researcher (part two)

Discourse Structure 2: Parallel stories. In Woody Allen’s Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989) two stories are told back-to-back. One is the story of a documentary filmmaker (played by Woody Allen) who has never had commercial success but feels enthusiastic about his new project regarding  the life and work of a Jewish humanistic philosopher that believes humanity has a possibility of achieving a fulfilled life. The other story develops around the life of a successful ophthalmologist who has a beautiful family and is about to receive a life time achievement acknowledgment, but who’s life is being threatened by a mistress who is willing to tell his family about them if he does not marry her as he promised. Both stories are, apparently, non related until the end when the two main characters meet in a party and begin to tell each other their story which results in a twist of fate outcome.

Crimes and Misdemeanors, 1989. Martin Landau (as the ophthalmologist) is capable of seeing reality, and Woody Allen (the documentary filmmaker), one that can see the dreams of people. Their lives hit a crossroad to create a new story.

Continue reading →

2012
08/04
POSTED BY
CATEGORY
Art + Marketing
Cinema
Contemporary Culture
Qualitative research
TAGS















Leave a comment

Film discourse and the work of a qualitative researcher (part one)

I have heard the expression that art precedes science, in particular, social sciences. This idea is supported by the belief that the artist’s sensibility allows him or her to identify the social processes before sciences does, and in doing so, the artist seems to have a real time perception or, we might say, a reality prediction ability, while science has a retroactive perception as it always studies events from the past. It is not my intention to discuss this issue here, I am just trying to point out a general context of this phenomena as an introduction of one of the relations between art and science and how it may aid the qualitative researchers. That is, if we consider this point of view, art expression should be a valuable aid for the social sciences. Additionally, it may encourage qualitative researchers to become more close to art expressions, in this case, cinema. Continue reading →

2012
07/25
POSTED BY
CATEGORY
Art + Marketing
Cinema
Qualitative research
TAGS












Leave a comment

Quote

"Who is still thinking about art when happiness is possible?"
Michel Houellebecq
La Posibilidad de una Isla (The Possibility of an Isle, Anagrama, 2006)
My translation to english