Heneral Luna Film Viewing ( Requirement)

For this coming Saturday class, 19 September 2015, we will watch Heneral Luna (2015) at SM City Davao (Ecoland). The schedules of the film showing for Ateneo de Davao Univesity are the following:

19 September 2015 (Saturday)
9-11am: First Year Students
1-3pm: Second Year Students
4-6pm: 3rd-4th Year Students

For our class, we are scheduled at 4pm-6pm film viewing slot. Please be at the cinema floor before the scheduled viewing. As what I understood, Cinema 1 to 6 during those block time shows are open for us. Just bring your school identification cards. SM Cinemas are giving 50% discount for the tickets. I will be there at Cinema 1 at 4pm, see you!

Kindly read this Study Guide for your film review: http://henerallunathemovie.com/files/Heneral-Luna-Study-Guide.pdf

Synopsis

Joven (Arron Villaflor), a young journalist interviews General Antonio Luna (John Arcilla) as he prepares for battle. The newly formed cabinet of President Emilio Aguinaldo (Mon Confiado) is divided on the issue of American presence in Manila. Felipe Buencamino (Nonie Buencamino) and Pedro Paterno (Leo Martinez) harbor pro-American sentiments while Apolinario Mabini (Epy Quizon) and General Luna take a militant stand and advocate nothing less than independence. General Luna urges the cabinet to authorize a pre-emptive strike on the Americans while their land forces have not yet arrived. President Aguinaldo tells the cabinet that there is nothing to worry about because the Americans promised him that their sole purpose in going to the Philippines is to help the revolutionaries win freedom from their Spanish overlords. As politics divide the Filipino leaders, the Americans take Intramuros after a mock battle with the Spaniards.

General Luna and his trusted comrades – General Jose Alejandrino (Alvin Anson), Colonel Francisco “Paco” Roman (Joem Bascon), Captain Eduardo Rusca (Archie Alemania), Captain Jose Bernal (Alex Medina), and Colonel Manuel Bernal (Art Acuña) embark on an arduous campaign against the wellequipped, well-trained and more experienced American troops that are terrorizing the local population.

Despite the disadvantages, General Luna rallies his troops to fight in the trenches in defense of freedom. American military officials recognize General Luna as a most worthy adversary. In the middle of an intense battle, General Luna asks for reinforcements from the Kawit Brigade but Captain Pedro Janolino (Ketchup Eusebio) refuses to obey because the order did not come from President Aguinaldo. Angered by the stubbornness of the Kawit soldiers, General Luna reprimands Captain Janolino and humiliates him in front of them. Luna declares his infamous Article One, which states that all men who refuse to follow orders shall be shot without the benefit of a trial in a military court. Captain Pedro Janolino and General Tomas Mascardo (Lorenz Martinez) approaches President Aguinaldo to complain about General Luna’s brusqueness. This complaint notwithstanding, Apolinario Mabini counsels President Aguinaldo to support General Luna’s war plan that involves digging trenches in strategic locations and drawing the American forces to the North.

In the midst of war, the cabinet members continue to argue on the official stand of the government. General Luna flares up as Felipe Buencamino discusses the autonomy proposal of the Americans. He orders the arrest of pro-autonomy cabinet members. President Aguinaldo is torn: he is aware that politicians and businessmen want to get rid of the fiery general but the execution of the Bonifacio brothers still bothers him. General Luna’s campaign is undermined by cabinet members who are willing to strike a deal with the Americans, officials who receive orders only from President Aguinaldo, and the general lack of discipline of soldiers. General Mascardo blatantly opposes General Luna’s order for reinforcements. While the two generals clash, the American forces continue to advance steadily as the other Filipino generals like Gregorio del Pilar (Paulo Avelino) lose strength.

General Luna is advised by the women in his life to take care. Isabel (Mylene Dizon) loves him but knows that their responsibilities in the war are more important than their feelings. Doña Laureana Luna y Novicio (Bing Pimentel), his mother, remind him of better days and warns her son about the alleged plot on his life. General Luna is summoned by telegram to the President’s headquarters in Cabanatuan, Nueva Ecija. He discovers upon arrival that President Aguinaldo had already left. Only Felipe Buencamino is in the office and they exchange heated words. When General Luna investigates a single shot fired outside, he encounters soldiers from the Kawit Brigade who attack him. General Luna suffered more than thirty wounds and was valiant until his bloody end (http://henerallunathemovie.com/).

The Gaze and History of the Discovery of Cinema

The Gaze and History of the Discovery of Cinema

The Gaze

The following are assigned articles for the next meeting. I will conduct oral recitations in the next classes based on the these articles:

(1) Movie Pleasure and the Spectator's Experience: Toward a Cognitive Approach (Click to download)
Some of the topics here were already discussed previously, this will be part of the midterm examinations.

(2) Notes on "The Gaze" by Daniel Chandler (Click to download)
You must read also the original text "The Gaze" written by Laura Mulvey, she is a British feminist film theorist. You can look for the Ms. Mulvey's article here.

• What is "the gaze" exactly?  -- describes the act of looking; began as the study of the objectification of women in visual texts.
• How does it impact women in particular?
• What are some of the issues involved in discussing "the gaze"?
• the objectification of women-- seen as objects
• the commonality of female nudity -- display implies subordination
• internalization of the gaze, changes women's perceptions of themselves and makes them think of themselves as objects
• shift to objectification as a source of pleasure (for both the looker and the looked-at)
• men as the dominant group have been the looker (the subjects; women the objects)
• ties back to another aspect of the feminist critique of Freud-- the degree to which Freudian theory is based on visual dynamics

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Outline of Laura Mulvey's Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema

I. INTRODUCTION

a) A Political Use of Psychoanalysis

• Film reflects the language of patriarchy by being bound up in the same story of sexual difference that all patriarchy is founded on.  In film women is seen as Other, as an object not a subject.  In a way she represents the unconscious of the male because she is always the object he is looking at and never is able to speak for herself.

• Phallocentrism -- a world view which sees the penis (symbolic and otherwise) as the defining center of meaning.  In other words-- there is a central, stable meaning to things; that meaning is defined largely by men who associate their power to name and define and control reality with their masculinity.

• Symbolic Order -- the realm of meaning controlled by the Law of the Father  (in Lacan's theorizing): the language of patriarchy.  As opposed  (by Kristeva) to the Imaginary -- the primal language of connection associated with pre-Oedipal bonding with the mother.

b) Destruction of Pleasure as a Radical Weapon

• Hollywood film reflects the dominant ideology of their culture.  We get our pleasure from films from this presentation of the erotic.  If we learn to make films which do not encode these ideologies, a lot of people will lose their pleasure in looking at film.

• Mise-en-scene means staging an action. It is historically to do with directing plays, and became later to do with film to express how the material in the frame is directed.

II. PLEASURE IN LOOKING/ FASCINATION WITH THE HUMAN FORM

• a) Film satisfies this primal pleasure we all get from looking at other people. 

            scopophilia - - the pleasure we get from looking, in seeing other people as objects. We get a sense of power from being able to do this.  With John Berger she believes the one who looks has the power. 

Voyeuristic scopophilia -- 

• b) Narcissistic scopophilia is looking at other people as seeing them as surrogates for yourself.  We also identify with people in movies.   So there is a tension here between the sense of power we get from observing others as separate from ourselves and the pleasure we get in imagining that we are the people we are looking at. 

           the mirror stage: 

• c) tension between these impulses-- to see others as separate and to identify with them

 III. WOMAN AS IMAGE, MAN AS BEARER OF THE LOOK

a) Split between male, active gaze which looks and female passivity which is looked upon. Women are always on display in film.  Seen as objects of sexual desire; this is transformed into exhibitionism.  Visual presence of female tends to stop the story line to dwell on the image. 

diegesis -- "In a narrative film, the world of the film's story. The diegesis includes events that are presumed to have occurred and actions and spaces not shown onscreen. "

Why are so many women in film showgirls, strippers, etc. 

b) Gender split carries over into narrative of film--men carry the story, make things happen, while woman remains the icon.

c1) Problems with woman as icon: 

    c1a) voyeurism -- sadistic desire to punish woman for her lack 

    c1b) fetishistic scopophilia -- builds up beauty of woman in order to compensate for anxiety 

C2) Examples: Sternberg's Dietrich films show fetishism.  Hitchcock--

SUMMARY
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The following will be asked during the oral recitation in the next class/ sessions. Please read the article “Notes on the Gaze” by Daniel Chandler.

a.     Why does viewing a recorded image have a voyeuristic dimension?

b.    What is the difference between a gaze and a look?

c.     Why does a gaze of indirect address represent an offer?

d.    Why does a gaze of direct address represent a demand?

e.     Why do glamour photographers enhance their photographs by dilating the pupil of their models?

f.     Why is it common for male models to look off or up?

g.     Why do actors in conventional narrative film gaze very rarely directly at the camera?

h.     Why is peripheral gaze more common to Asians?

i.      Why is an expert presented in a profile or in an interview rather than in a direct gaze?

j.     What is the intention of seeing the back of a depicted person?

k.     Why does a frontal portrait have been associated with the working class?

l.      In Michael Watson’s study what group of people chose to stand closest together? What group stood farthest apart from each other?

m.   Why is BCU seldom used for important figures? – BCUs may emphasize interviewee’s tension, guilt, may suggest lying?

n.     Why does the camera turn the depicted person into an object, thus distancing viewer and viewed?

o.     What is photographic seeing? Why is it a “controlling gaze”?

p.    Why is it the voyeuristic mode of gazing more intense for the cinema spectator than television viewer?

q.    What constitutes the suspension of disbelief? – Identification of the viewer with the camera: my eyes are the camera.

r.     Why does the film spectator re-enact the “mirror image” of Jacques Lacan? Why does a camera become a tool of self-reflection and surveillance?

See my Class Lecture on "The Gaze" here.

Continue browsing through the following articles:

• The History of the Discovery of Cinematography
• Film History by Decade

Materials for the Film to be viewed today

Materials for the Film Viewing Today (1 August 2015)

There will be no lecture today, we will postpone to the next meetings
the oral recitation and discussion since the film we will watch will be 3.25 hour long.

1. Supplemental Materials for Schindler's List

Oskar Schindler (1908 — 1974) was an ethnic German born in the village of Zwittau in Sudetenland, a portion of Czechoslovakia with many German inhabitants. He was known in the village by the name "Gauner," which meant swindler or sharper. A Jewish woman who lived in the town and whose life Schindler later saved, said, "As a Zwittau citizen I never would have considered him capable of all these wonderful deeds." 

Oskar Schindler was a member of the Nazi party. He arrived in Cracow, Poland, just after the collapse of the Polish Army and at the beginning of the German occupation. His first effort, as shown in the film, was to capitalize on the misfortune of the Jews who had recently been forbidden to engage in business. As an added inducement for them to "invest" in his new business, Schindler offered to employ the investors or their relatives in his factory. For years, relations between Schindler and his Jewish workers were circumspect. But as the lot of the Jews in Poland worsened, the workers at Schindler's factory noticed that they were somehow protected. Word of this spread through the Jewish community. 

2. Schindler's List Essay Questions

Children are used throughout the film to indicate family loyalty, despite horrific circumstances. During the liquidation of the ghetto, there are many children/parent pairs featured. One father tries to stop a soldier from shooting his son as he runs away, giving up his own life. Children are also used to symbolize the hopelessness of the Jews' situation. A notable example of this is the little girl in the red coat. Despite her efforts to resist and hide, and despite the red coat that identifies her as special, she ends up dead and piled up with the other victims, nameless and unimportant.

3. Schindler's List: Student Discussion Questions

What is the central theme of Schindler's List? This is a complex question with no "right" answer. The film will speak to each student differently. But the search for the central theme will provide students with a framework to gain useful insights and analytical skills.