Documentary: Cinema Europe







Cinema Europe: The Other Hollywood
Article in Wikipedia

The first three episodes of this 1996 six-part documentary about the birth of cinema and the development of European cinema up to the time of the surge of the Nazis. This wonderful ducumentary is presented in the blog Videos with Bibi.

Episode 1: Where It All Began, Episode 2: Art's Promised Land, Episode 3: The Unchained camera

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5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I love european cinema, but Hoollywood is hollywood :)

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Martin Klasch said...

Who could argue with that? But to clarify I would replace "but" with "and" ;)

Anonymous said...

Europeans can make exelent movies but Hollywood knows how to sell it.
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Anonymous said...

When movie is produced with governmant money,usualy is made for political purpose.
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Martin Klasch said...

Anonymous 1 & 2: "Hollywood knows how to sell it". Sure. Noone does it better. Selling that is. I'm not saying this with any sarcasm. In Hollywood making movies is like making software in Silicon Valley - it's an industry. It just happens to involve elements of artistry which makes us sometimes disregard the fact that a movie production first and foremost is a business enterprise. Isn't it a bit sad though, that as soon as it is announced that a great movie like the German: Lives of Others gets an Oscar "Hollywood" announces it'll do a remake.

About government funds and movies, I don't agree with that in general but I guess it varies from country to country. Also, what is a "political purpose" might vary from political propaganda to just wanting to uphold domestic movie production. The latter, I don't consider to be a bad thing if you don't want only Hollywood productions on the cinema repertoar. I don't. Smaller countries with a language of their own naturally has a hard time competing with movies made in English and a with large promotion budget which only Hollywood affords. Also the "political purpose" could be a policy of culture saying movies can be art and worth giving a helping hand. But, sure government funding of art can be discussed and disputed.

I'm not a Hollywood hater. However most movies from there are crap. Many do make money. Sometimes a lot of money. It's business. The big sadness of this is not on Hollywood but the audience. But I guess it's a bit like people getting hooked on Big Macs. They crave more made from the same recipe. More of the same crap, if you will. They don't want any surprises and it must be easily chewed. God forbid subtitles. Pre-chewed. Same recipe film after film. Talk about successful recipes!

To finally finish these ramblings: hardly every European movie is great. Far from it. One reason is Europeans copy the Hollywood recipes ;-) Not all Hollywood movies are total crap either...

Check out the documentary if you haven't already!