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Screenwriting, 1905-1930B Uncoupling Movies from Paintings & Photographs

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  • ItemOpen Access
    Carl Mayer's Complaint: Documentary Cutting and the Ethical Limits of Formalism
    (1968) Cameron, Evan Wm.
    In 1926, Carl Mayer, the most distinguished of German screenwriters, withdrew from the production of BERLIN: SYMPHONY OF A GREAT CITY, a film that he had conceived and initiated. He did so because Walter Ruttmann, the person assigned by the studio to direct and edit the film, was destroying the integrity of the objects and events seen within it through his techniques of continuity cutting. Within this lecture I describe Ruttmann's techniques and Mayer's objection to them, for the latter's insistence that filmmakers respect the integrity of the objects and events encountered by means of movies has profound implications for the ethical making of them and therewith the making of artefacts within other arts as well.
  • ItemOpen Access
    Growing Things: the Rural Patience of Robert Flaherty
    (1970) Cameron, Evan Wm.
    As Robert Flaherty was making his first documentary with synchronous sound (MAN OF ARAN, released 1934), he discovered that he had never learned to cut smoothly between shots. He had become the most renowned maker of documentary films in the world without having acquired the most rudimentary skills of film editing. Why not? Indeed, how was it possible? Within this essay I address those questions, suggesting that the answers can tell us much about the distinctive nature, scope and limits of Flaherty's achievement and therewith much about filmmaking itself.
  • ItemOpen Access
    Sternberg's Maxims, Dietrich's Face: Distinguishing Cinematographical from Photographical Lighting
    (1976) Cameron, Evan Wm.
    How does cinematographical lighting differ from photographical lighting? Josef Sternberg amplified the answer when lighting the face of Marlene Dietrich within the six movies that he made with her between 1929 and 1935. By registering in historical context what he did, we can learn much of how differently we see things by means of movies versus photographs.