Our Speaker: Fabiola Tenorio Nuñez

Presentation title:

Revisiting Bizet's Carmen: Storytelling in animation (Screening)

Bio:

Fabiola Tenorio is a Mexican animator and filmmaker studying Character Animation at Central Saint Martins. Her work utilises mixed media techniques with strong narrative sensibilities to tell the stories of ordinary people’s lives whilst still exploring the greater social issues prevalent in her country.

Abstract:

Inspired by the machismo behaviours demonstrated by the leading men in Bizet’s Carmen, this film aims to draw attention to the everyday acts of violence towards women that too often goes unnoticed within a machismo dominated culture. tells the story of a mother living on the US Mexican border who refuses to be dominated by the machismo culture that surrounds her, highlights the violence and human rights abuses against thousands of women around the world.

This film uses the mixed media techniques stop motion animation and drawn animation to bring the Bizet’s classic story into a modern Mexican setting. These issues were common in the initial text the nineteenth century opera and they are sadly still present now.

2nd year MA Character Animation students at Central Saint Martin’s have been working in groups over the Autumn term to create original short fiction animation films in response to operas in ENO’s current season - Carmen, Madam Butterfly and Rusalka.

This course module run in collaboration with English National Opera aims to expose students to opera as an art form, as stimulus for their own creative work and to reveal career opportunities in the industry. It encourages students to consider music as a vital part of dramatic storytelling and provides them with the experience of working to a brief provided by an external client.

Our Speaker: René Idrovo Zambrano

Presentation title:

Alfonso Cuarón and the Immersive Cinematic Apparatus in the Times of Progressivism

Bio:

René Idrovo is an emergent filmmaker and scholar. He is a lecturer in sound related subjects at Universidad UTE, Ecuador; and a Ph.D. Researcher in Film and Television at University of York, UK. His research studies the impact of sound technology in the generation of new audio-visual aesthetics, focusing on the relations that exist between realism, the sonic space, and the immersive experience in cinema. Moreover, his thesis explores the ways in which the cinematic apparatus can transport the spectator into the narrative world, and what may be the ideological effects of such transportation. René's work has been published in journals in the U.K., Europe, and Latin America. As part of the Ecuadorian National Scholarship Programme, he has been selected among a large number of applicants to become one of the leaders that shall academically and practically contribute to the development of his country’s film and television.

Abstract:

Alfonso Cuarón’s audio-visual aesthetics are exemplar for its extreme exploitation of present-day’s cinematic apparatus. His unorthodox utilisation of long takes and his three-dimensional sound design approach, which I refer to as immersive point-of-audition, aim to transport the spectator into the world of the story. According to transportation theory (Green and Brock, 2000; Green, Brook and Kaufman, 2004; Green and Clark, 2013), the process of transportation has a direct connection with belief change, a premise that I relate with the concept of ideology. This work constitutes, therefore, a reassessment of Jean-Louis Baudry’s apparatus theory, which in the 1970s looked for the effects that the cinematic apparatus has for the maintenance of capitalism as the dominant ideology. Through an ideological analysis of the films under investigation, I argue that the ideology of Alfonso Cuarón fits within progressivism, a political ideology in favour of social reform. Moreover, this presentation aims to show how progressivism is becoming the dominant ideology in today’s mainstream cinema.

Our Speaker: Tracy Mathewson

Presentation title:

Weapons of Mass Disruption: reclaiming political force in modern conspiracy films (and other narratives)

Bio:

TRACY MATHEWSON is an award-winning writer/director with an MA in Screenwriting from City University London. Recent projects include filming a portrait-painting robot and creating films in isolation with artists she has never met. She is currently undertaking her PhD in Film by Creative Practice at the University of York.

www.tracym.com

Abstract:

Mainstream conspiracy film, where it once was a record of triumph against corruption and abuse of power or a call to arms against rising public fears, is now drowned out by a conspiracy culture of paranoia, “post-truth”, and partisan hostility which has infiltrated our politics, entertainment, and public spheres. Exhausted after decades of self-centered privatisation and enfeebled by growing disillusionment with its traditional pillars of justice, the conspiracy genre is at risk of losing the political force it once possessed. I present a structured examination of three core elements (The Behemoth, Mechanisms for Justice, and The Protagonist) and posit that the lack of political force observed in mainstream conspiracy films since the early 2000s is largely due to a disconnect where (1) modern behemothic presences have yet to be addressed, (2) altruistic motivations of protagonists no longer align with modern cynicism, and (3) that traditional mechanisms for justice are still being applied when they have proven impotent or compromised in real life. I contextualise and update these three elements within our current conspiracy culture, examine their representation in modern conspiracy films, and identify new approaches for the genre to remain relevant in the 21st century.