Short Films
Virginity by Pier Paolo Pasolini - Air hostess meets a man on the plane then they end up in the same hotel together and she receives a lot of unwanted attention as he likes how innocent/pure she seem - somewhat religious connotations. He becomes her stalker and won't leave her alone so she ends up using her sexuality to repulse him. The film lasts approx 40 mins which enables the audience to gather some background information on the characters. We learn that the air hostess is engaged and documents her travels with her camera to send to her fiance and we learn that the stalker is an unstable man who is looking for a motherly figure. We have a much deeper understanding of the characters which is unusual for a short film. However, the film follows the typical narrative of short films in which there is an equilibrium, a problem, the problem is resolved and then a new equilibrium.
La Ricotta by Pier Paolo Pasolini - Similarly to Virginity, the film has religious references but they are much more apparent. A man plays an extra in a film about the passion for Christ, all day while on set he tries to find time to eat lunch but different problems prevent this: he gives a starving woman his food, a dog eats his food etc. Themes of hierarchy throughout as he is of working class but the producers and directors are wealthy. We don't know much about any of the characters, the film just shows his struggle to find food and symbolizes different religious elements e.g starvation and self-sacrifice. He is ignored because he is unimportant and left out in the sun, he is mocked and teased in the way that Jesus was and ultimately he dies so they recognize his life. The character is used to show these different references.
Swimmer by Lynne Ramsay - The film documents a journey through Britain as it aims to give a real feel for the diversity of the landscape and people of Britain. The swimmer is used as a tool to show the journey, not an actual character. Use music and dialogue from other British films - showcasing British culture. Open-ended short film as he sinks below water. Rather than the narrative of equilibrium, problem then solution, the film is structured as a journey.
High Maintenance by Phillip Van - Follows the convention of a plot twist, the characters aren't explored in depth as the film focuses on theme. There is the theme of high maintenance relationships as people expect everything they want to be given to them instead of working together for it and the modern throwaway nature of relationships. There is the theme of technology as the twists reveal that the characters are robots.
The Gunfighter - This short film is a postmodern whimsy, playing with the genre conventions of the western and the comical conceit of a narrator who can not only be heard by the performers but who instigates action rather than merely commenting upon it. The structure of The Gunfighter begins with the eponymous gunfighter’s classic entrance into a Wild West saloon. There are literally a few seconds of establishment with a dusty street scene before he enters the saloon, eyes hidden by the brim of his Stetson. The film is absolutely inflected by the western. The mise-en-scene, music, colour and lighting codes all pay homage to the classic western iconography: grizzled dusty gunfighters; card-playing townsfolk; trigger-happy cowboys; bounty hunters; feisty saloon girls; and tough-talking barmen. The main effect of this film is comedic. It plays with the convention of a voice-over that can be heard by the entire cast – ‘the voice of God’. It repeats generic clichés and the cast begin to argue but eventually end up following the voice. The voice reveals aspects of the cast’s behaviour and thinking, it therefore humiliates and enrages them.
Racial representation is dealt with in a more progressive way through the device of the black barman but even his role becomes defined through a perceived aberrant sexuality, as it is revealed he sleeps with white women. The shootout acts as a satisfying and inevitable end to the narrative and again is a homage to the many westerns of the past and present, which are concluded in a blaze of smoke and bullets. The film plays with the conventional representations of stock characters in a stock situation through the cinematic device of a mischievous narrator. Genre conventions are mocked when Sally comments on the usually non-diegetic ominous music score, suggesting that something bad is about to happen. Despite its postmodern irony and genre-revisionism, the film does contain some problematic representations such as characters feeling and being shamed for their same-sex attraction in defiance of the normative gender roles expected of them.
Connect - Theme of magic realism. Woman on the bus imagines different scenarios with different passengers. For example, one person stands up and shoots another. Then all of the passengers begin dancing.
Elephant - Death in the streets, homes, parks and factories of Belfast. Alan Clarke's drama - without character or narrative and shot in documentary style - is a shockingly frank depiction of the futility of sectarian murder.
Essentially a compilation of eighteen murders on the streets of Belfast, without explanatory narrative or characterisation and shot in a cold, dispassionate documentary style, the film succinctly captures the horror of sectarian killing.
The lack of narrative removes any scope for justification of the killings on religious, political or any other grounds and the matter-of-factness of Clarke's approach debases the often-heroic portrayal - by all sides - of the individuals involved in sectarian murder. Moreover, Clarke's use of a Steadicam to follow the killers before and during the murders casts the viewer as at best a willing voyeur, at worst an accomplice. After each killing, the camera dwells on the bodies slumped on floors or draped over desks for longer than is comfortable, forcing the viewer to confront the brutality of their deaths.
Filmed on location in Belfast and produced by future director Danny Boyle, Elephant was one of only two of the more than fifty dramas that Clarke directed which he is also credited with writing.
La Ricotta by Pier Paolo Pasolini - Similarly to Virginity, the film has religious references but they are much more apparent. A man plays an extra in a film about the passion for Christ, all day while on set he tries to find time to eat lunch but different problems prevent this: he gives a starving woman his food, a dog eats his food etc. Themes of hierarchy throughout as he is of working class but the producers and directors are wealthy. We don't know much about any of the characters, the film just shows his struggle to find food and symbolizes different religious elements e.g starvation and self-sacrifice. He is ignored because he is unimportant and left out in the sun, he is mocked and teased in the way that Jesus was and ultimately he dies so they recognize his life. The character is used to show these different references.
Swimmer by Lynne Ramsay - The film documents a journey through Britain as it aims to give a real feel for the diversity of the landscape and people of Britain. The swimmer is used as a tool to show the journey, not an actual character. Use music and dialogue from other British films - showcasing British culture. Open-ended short film as he sinks below water. Rather than the narrative of equilibrium, problem then solution, the film is structured as a journey.
High Maintenance by Phillip Van - Follows the convention of a plot twist, the characters aren't explored in depth as the film focuses on theme. There is the theme of high maintenance relationships as people expect everything they want to be given to them instead of working together for it and the modern throwaway nature of relationships. There is the theme of technology as the twists reveal that the characters are robots.
The Gunfighter - This short film is a postmodern whimsy, playing with the genre conventions of the western and the comical conceit of a narrator who can not only be heard by the performers but who instigates action rather than merely commenting upon it. The structure of The Gunfighter begins with the eponymous gunfighter’s classic entrance into a Wild West saloon. There are literally a few seconds of establishment with a dusty street scene before he enters the saloon, eyes hidden by the brim of his Stetson. The film is absolutely inflected by the western. The mise-en-scene, music, colour and lighting codes all pay homage to the classic western iconography: grizzled dusty gunfighters; card-playing townsfolk; trigger-happy cowboys; bounty hunters; feisty saloon girls; and tough-talking barmen. The main effect of this film is comedic. It plays with the convention of a voice-over that can be heard by the entire cast – ‘the voice of God’. It repeats generic clichés and the cast begin to argue but eventually end up following the voice. The voice reveals aspects of the cast’s behaviour and thinking, it therefore humiliates and enrages them.
Racial representation is dealt with in a more progressive way through the device of the black barman but even his role becomes defined through a perceived aberrant sexuality, as it is revealed he sleeps with white women. The shootout acts as a satisfying and inevitable end to the narrative and again is a homage to the many westerns of the past and present, which are concluded in a blaze of smoke and bullets. The film plays with the conventional representations of stock characters in a stock situation through the cinematic device of a mischievous narrator. Genre conventions are mocked when Sally comments on the usually non-diegetic ominous music score, suggesting that something bad is about to happen. Despite its postmodern irony and genre-revisionism, the film does contain some problematic representations such as characters feeling and being shamed for their same-sex attraction in defiance of the normative gender roles expected of them.
Connect - Theme of magic realism. Woman on the bus imagines different scenarios with different passengers. For example, one person stands up and shoots another. Then all of the passengers begin dancing.
Elephant - Death in the streets, homes, parks and factories of Belfast. Alan Clarke's drama - without character or narrative and shot in documentary style - is a shockingly frank depiction of the futility of sectarian murder.
Essentially a compilation of eighteen murders on the streets of Belfast, without explanatory narrative or characterisation and shot in a cold, dispassionate documentary style, the film succinctly captures the horror of sectarian killing.
The lack of narrative removes any scope for justification of the killings on religious, political or any other grounds and the matter-of-factness of Clarke's approach debases the often-heroic portrayal - by all sides - of the individuals involved in sectarian murder. Moreover, Clarke's use of a Steadicam to follow the killers before and during the murders casts the viewer as at best a willing voyeur, at worst an accomplice. After each killing, the camera dwells on the bodies slumped on floors or draped over desks for longer than is comfortable, forcing the viewer to confront the brutality of their deaths.
Filmed on location in Belfast and produced by future director Danny Boyle, Elephant was one of only two of the more than fifty dramas that Clarke directed which he is also credited with writing.
The killings are covered predominantly with wide-angle lenses on a Steadicam. This gives the shooters a purposeful, inexorable force, and as superior field of vision, as they carry out their task.
Clarke’s tracking shots are heat-seekers, zeroing in on a target with no meandering, accident or deflection. And there is no connection between them, no sense of a conspiracy being rooted out, or a ring being smashed, just a string of squalid slayings.
You want to scour people’s faces for signs of remorse, conflict, fear or other emotional nuances, but these attempts will always be frustrated, either because figures have their backs to the camera, or because their faces are sternly illegible.
Alan Clarke is arguably one of Britain’s greatest film makers and his probing examinations of British working class male identity provide some of the most telling political statements about the effects of Thatcher’s conservative agenda upon society. Though I am still not sure whether or not social realism is a style, genre or movement makes it difficult to categorise the work of Alan Clarke. Yet realism is an aesthetic that has become associated with many of his films and many of his most powerful sequences brilliantly utilise the Steadicam. Such a technique characterises ‘Elephant’ as the camera tracks, glides and stalks the executioners as they exit out of cars and walk down empty corridors to reach the oblivious victims.
That title comes from Bernard McLaverty’s description of “the Troubles” (itself an evasive, palliative descriptor) as “the elephant in the living room”, the enormous issue that people get used to and stop acknowledging.
39 minutes. 18 killings. 3 lines of dialogue. Alan Clarke’s Elephant is shark-simple in its relentless depiction of sectarian assassinations in Northern Ireland. It’s Bresson with guns, as a monotonous procession of shootings takes place with rhythmic repetition. A few shots establish a location into which a man will walk. He seeks out another man and shoots him. Then leaves. He doesn’t flee the scene: the drama of the murders produces no changes of pace or fluctuations of facial expression. We linger on a sullen corpse for a few seconds, then the process repeats again with a different shooter and a different victim.
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