Biopics Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

A review of an Italian film about the life and work of the Spanish painter Goya.

(Undergraduate course monograph/Trabalho de Conclusão de Curso). Since the publishing of Mandela’s autobiography in 1994, many films have portrayed the South African leader, such as Goodbye, Bafana (August 2007) and Invictus (Eastwood... more

(Undergraduate course monograph/Trabalho de Conclusão de Curso). Since the publishing of Mandela’s autobiography in 1994, many films have portrayed the South African leader, such as Goodbye, Bafana (August 2007) and Invictus (Eastwood 2009). But they focused on specific periods of Mandela’s life and no attempt had yet been made to represent his entire life. In 2013, however, the movie Mandela: long walk to freedom was released, just as the real Mandela was about to die. The movie, directed by Justin Chadwick, is an adaptation of the 500­ page autobiography and, hence, attempts to represent several decades in two and a half hours. The process of adapting Mandela’s autobiography to a movie script lasted sixteen years and was conducted by screenwriter William Nicholson. In this study, I analyze the adaptation of Mandela's autobiography to the movie Mandela: long walk to freedom, focusing on the inherent sense of subjectivity of autobiographies and on how a biographical fictional movie can create the sensory experience of confiding, of having privileged access to the main character’s psyche.

Questa tesi di triennale ripercorre brevemente la ricca storia del genere biografico nel mondo del cinema. In un secondo capitolo vengono analizzati alcuni film di tre paesi diversi (Nord america, Francia e Italia) in un contesto... more

Questa tesi di triennale ripercorre brevemente la ricca storia del genere biografico nel mondo del cinema. In un secondo capitolo vengono analizzati alcuni film di tre paesi diversi (Nord america, Francia e Italia) in un contesto contemporaneo. Infine viene analizzato il genere biopic nel fenomeno di grandissimo successo di quest'ultimi anni: la serie televisiva. Verrà esposto in particolare il caso di Narcos prodotto da Netflix.

A review and analysis of a biopic film about the American action painter Jackson Pollock.

Study of the ways in which the film does and does not refer to a real-life murderer, Harry Powers, active in the diegetic period. The article is excerpted from Biopics de Tueurs/Killer Biopics, ed. Barnier,Bolter, Fontanel, Le Corff, 2014.

As one of the most well-established representations of monarchy through modern media, the genre of the royal biopic is dominated by its objective to portray a historically truthful picture of monarchy while simultaneously giving private... more

As one of the most well-established representations of monarchy through modern media, the genre of the royal biopic is dominated by its objective to portray a historically truthful picture of monarchy while simultaneously giving private insights into the life of the sovereign and their immediate environment. In order to achieve this goal, contemporary royal biopics undertake a combined approach of placing fictional depictions of private events and conversations against a setting which is dominated by the historic events of the past. The present thesis aims to analyse this genre-specific approach by proposing the concept of fictional intimacy, which argues for fictional employments within the narrative of a biopic to foster the creation of a companionate relationship between the narrative and the audience. This proposed conceptual framework is subsequently applied to the Netflix original television series The Crown, which covers the life and reign of British monarch Queen Elizabeth II and has been praised to have revolutionised its genre by re-negotiating its pre-established conventions. The aim of this thesis is to contribute to the current academic discourse by successfully defining one of the genre’s most essential cinematic strategies through the proposal of a conceptual framework which strives to be applicable to past as well as future royal biopics.

This article examines how the Brothers Grimm are fictionalized in German and Anglo-American media. While some representations revere and romanticize the iconic brothers for preserving the fairy-tale tradition, other depictions challenge... more

This article examines how the Brothers Grimm are fictionalized in German and Anglo-American media. While some representations revere and romanticize the iconic brothers for preserving the fairy-tale tradition, other depictions challenge the conventional understanding of their work and cultural contribution. In these demythologizing depictions, the Grimms appear ambiguous and even demonic. In recent representations, however, the Grimms—and their heirs—have been recast in positive roles that are both problematic and revealing. The persistent resurrection of the Grimms and the diverse roles they have been asked to play offer insight into the search for cultural myths, meaning, and identity.

Die Filmbiographie ist eines der ältesten und vielschichtigsten Filmgenres überhaupt. Von Abel Gances Napoleon über die US-Biopics der Dreißigerjahre bis zu Oliver Stones umstrittenen Präsidentenfilmen JFK und Nixon reicht der Fächer der... more

Die Filmbiographie ist eines der ältesten und vielschichtigsten Filmgenres überhaupt. Von Abel Gances Napoleon über die US-Biopics der Dreißigerjahre bis zu Oliver Stones umstrittenen Präsidentenfilmen JFK und Nixon reicht der Fächer der bekannten Beispiele dieser Filmgattung, die immer wieder zu leidenschaftlichen Kontroversen über Geschichte und ihre Darstellung im Kino Anlass gab.
Mit "Rolle des Lebens" legt Henry McKean Taylor die erste umfassende Aufarbeitung des Genres aus theoretischer Sicht vor. Er behandelt die kulturhistorischen Hintergründe und gesellschaftlichen Implikationen der Filmbiographie und analysiert aus erzähltheoretischer Perspektive zahlreiche Beispiele, wobei er sich im Unterschied zu Studien aus dem angelsächsischen Raum nicht auf Filme des Hollywood-Kinos beschränkt, sondern auch europäische und sowjetische Werke berücksichtigt: Neue Deutsche Filme wie Jutta Brückners "Kolossale Liebe", Francesco Rosis "Mafia-Biographie", Lucky Luciano oder auch Sergej P aradshanows "Sajat Nowa".

Reviews of three films about the life and work of the Dutch painter Vermeer.

Working beyond mainstream practice, Derek Jarman creates films that are unusually musical. Caravaggio, a biography of the artist, is a case in point. Jarman’s collaboration with composer Simon Fischer Turner from the start of the... more

Working beyond mainstream practice, Derek Jarman creates films that are unusually musical. Caravaggio, a biography of the artist, is a case in point. Jarman’s collaboration with composer Simon Fischer Turner from the start of the filmmaking process enables music to assume a structural role, a procedure that turns common music-image interaction
on its head in two ways. First, rather than strive for the audio-visual fusion common to many mainstream films, music and image are here uxtaposed. Second, as music becomes audible, the film’s illusion of realism is destroyed. This article explores how Jarman’s challenge to conventional filmmaking procedure can expose the fragility of reception history by comparing visual, literary, and musical versions of Caravaggio’s
biography.

The aim of this introduction is to provide a context for the articles that follow in this cluster on Women’s Lives on Screen. Starting with some reflections on how biopics can matter to audiences, I propose the use of ‘mattering’ as a... more

The aim of this introduction is to provide a context for the articles that follow in this cluster on Women’s Lives on Screen. Starting with some reflections on how biopics can matter to audiences, I propose the use of ‘mattering’ as a concept for the study of women’s biopics which helps consider their objectification of women as biographical ‘material’ on screen in tandem with their emancipatory refiguring of women as biographical subjects that are made to matter. The introduction also offers a brief overview of biopic studies as they relate to the subject of women’s lives on screen. It ends by sketching the breadth of topics covered in this cluster with a summary of the eleven articles.

Conocido especialmente por su papel del Doctor Theo Stefanidis en la serie de TV británica Los Durrell en Corfú, este polifacético actor visitó también las pantallas de nuestros cines encarnando al joven Saulo de Pablo, el apóstol de... more

Conocido especialmente por su papel del Doctor Theo Stefanidis en la serie de TV británica Los Durrell en Corfú, este polifacético actor visitó también las pantallas de nuestros cines encarnando al joven Saulo de Pablo, el apóstol de Cristo (2018, Andrew Hyatt), junto a Jim Caviezel y James Faulkner, encadenado a las galeras del último Ben Hur (2016, Timur Bekmambetov) y como el asistente de Tiziano en El Greco (2007). Inmerso en el rodaje de varias series televisivas griegas nos contesta desde Atenas a las cuestiones que le deseamos plantear sobre el Cine y la Historia.

Las películas El joven Winston (Young Winston, R. Attenborough, 1972) y El instante más oscuro (Darkest Hour, J. Wright, 2017) se estrenan en dos momentos críticos en Europa y el Reino Unido, vinculados a la revolución del 68 en el primer... more

Las películas El joven Winston (Young Winston, R. Attenborough, 1972) y El instante más oscuro (Darkest Hour, J. Wright, 2017) se estrenan en dos momentos críticos en Europa y el Reino Unido, vinculados a la revolución del 68 en el primer caso, y al declive político y socioeconómico del mundo occidental, en el segundo. Ambos filmes imprimen una representación positiva de Winston Churchill como líder político. En este artículo se pone en relación al personaje y las cualidades concretas que se subrayan de él con la crisis que acontece en el momento del estreno de cada película. Asimismo se vinculan estos biopics con el momento que atraviesa en cada caso el “sueño europeo”: su apogeo y su declive. El análisis concluye que la imagen de Churchill se recorta en cada filme de acuerdo con el patrón de liderazgo más deseado en cada momento histórico.

In the Hollywood metafilm, from the Studio System period to the present day, only a few film directors have been tackled on screen. Also, whereas the biopic of Hollywood stars is usually simply a " rags to riches " tale and/or vice-versa,... more

In the Hollywood metafilm, from the Studio System period to the present day, only a few film directors have been tackled on screen. Also, whereas the biopic of Hollywood stars is usually simply a " rags to riches " tale and/or vice-versa, the film director biopic is foremost the evidence of an authorial discourse, although presented with some sentiment. In other words, what moves some filmmakers (especially directors) to approach the life and art of their famous peers is a wish to reflect on the nature of their common medium and on the quality of their own output. This article focuses on two films: " Chaplin " (1992, directed by Richard Attenborough) and " Ed Wood " (1994, directed by Tim Burton). From very early in his cinematic career, Charlie Chaplin was as famous as he was infamous, whereas Ed Wood was never famous and barely infamous. Still, the best and the worst film directors are portrayed in a style not entirely dissimilar to one another in their respective biopics, and in compliance with the rules advocated by Aristotle for tragedy in the " Poetics. " These two films manage to portray, from beginning to end, the essence of the charismatic celebrities they depict. With that aim, they de-mythicize both the men and the medium they worked for, but only in order to re-mythicize the directors and cinema in a new splendour.

Esta investigación aborda la primera película realizada sobre Santa Teresa de Jesús. Fue producida por Juan Vilá Vilamala y dirigida por Francisco Beringola, estrenándose en la ciudad de Ávila el 1 de junio de 1926. Rodada en tierras de... more

Esta investigación aborda la primera película realizada sobre Santa Teresa de Jesús. Fue producida por Juan Vilá Vilamala y dirigida por Francisco Beringola, estrenándose en la ciudad de Ávila el 1 de junio de 1926. Rodada en tierras de Ávila, Salamanca y Toledo, 'Escenas de la vida de Santa Teresa' contó con la participación de jóvenes actores madrileños que acabarían inspirando a Eduardo Marquina su obra 'Sin horca ni cuchillo' (1929). Solamente se han conservado trece minutos procedentes del Archivo de TVE.

CUNHA, A.; INDRUSIAK, E. Serguei no México: Greenaway e a Representação Pós-Moderna do Artista Queer. Ilha do Desterro, v.70, p.221-232, 2017. In his film Eisenstein in Guanajuato (2016), British director Peter Greenaway pays homage to... more

CUNHA, A.; INDRUSIAK, E. Serguei no México: Greenaway e a Representação Pós-Moderna do Artista Queer. Ilha do Desterro, v.70, p.221-232, 2017.
In his film Eisenstein in Guanajuato (2016), British director Peter Greenaway pays homage to Soviet filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein, a pioneer who helped to create the language of film. The biopic focuses on Eisenstein's stay in Mexico. The film is also a meditation on Greenaway's own aesthetic choices. Throughout his career, Greenaway has made extensive use of intermedia, expanding the vocabulary of " ideogrammic montage " , a theory of film editing first proposed by Eisenstein himself. The biopic, as a genre, became over time a platform that allows for the domestication of the figure of the artist or author and for the representation of the creative process as a purging act of the creative body. Greenaway subverts expectations regarding the biopic genre by shunning realism when representing the artist and by associating a queer identity and Eisenstein's body to the artist's processes of sensorial exploration and aesthetic development.

Public memory scholars contend that depictions of a figure can never be definitive, but the “biopic” genre of film complicates this. Biopics may be an audience’s only exposure to a figure, lending them great significance in determining... more

Public memory scholars contend that depictions of a figure can never be definitive, but the “biopic” genre of film complicates this. Biopics may be an audience’s only exposure to a figure, lending them great significance in determining how culture remembers the individuals portrayed. This phenom- enon is explored through the biopic The End of the Tour, memorializing writer David Foster Wallace. The way that the film advances a specific reading of Wallace’s life has implications for the ways that popular culture informs the perpetuation of certain public memories. That Wallace’s story has been complicated by the #MeToo movement further implicates popular media in the formation of public memory. This article demonstrates how biopics embody the functions and form of epideictic rhetoric, and addresses issues of how epideictic power is accrued in media such as biopics in the contemporary neoliberal era. Wallace and The End of the Tour offer a unique opportunity to examine such issues due to fluctuations in his public reputation across the span of his life and death. Recognizing the consequences of mediated, neoliberal epideictic raises possibilities for future explorations of the relation between power and memory today.

Review of a biopic film about the life and work of the British painter Francis Bacon.

Review and analysis of a film about an American inventor, car designer and entrepreneur.

Secondo Aristotele, la domanda essenziale che ogni persona si pone, e che quindi apre alla vita morale, è la domanda su quale sia la vita buona, la vita degna di essere vissuta. Si comprende quindi come la riflessione autobiografica sulla... more

Secondo Aristotele, la domanda essenziale che ogni persona si pone, e che quindi apre alla vita morale, è la domanda su quale sia la vita buona, la vita degna di essere vissuta. Si comprende quindi come la riflessione autobiografica sulla vita e il racconto della/e vita/e altrui sia da secoli uno dei generi principe della narrazione. Come afferma Francesco Arlanch nel suo lucidissimo saggio, «la vita degli altri è un argomento di conversazione che raramente lascia indifferenti [...]. Ogni conversazione sulla vita degli altri riguarda anche, implicitamente, la nostra personale felicità».
Nel fascicolo collettaneo che qui presentiamo, abbiamo raccolto il frutto di riflessioni nate autonomamente in contesti diversi, ma collegate dalla vicinanza di un gruppo informale di ricerca che lavora nell’ambito del Dipartimento di Scienze della Comunicazione e dello Spettacolo e che da alcuni anni si sta focalizzando sulle dinamiche di costruzione narrativa dei testi rivolti a un pubblico vasto, sia che si tratti di testi letterari sia di testi audiovisivi per la televisione o il cinema.

Review of a film about Picasso and one of his lovers.

in ALPHAVILLE Issue 7 (2014).

in booklet for Ken Russell: The Great Composers, Blu-Ray/DVD Boxed Set, BFI, 2016

A survey and critique of movies and documentaries about the Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh.

Theatralia 17.2 (2014): 50-59.

"Powerpoint accompanying the paper Understanding Biography as a Network of Lexia. On "Becoming Jane" and "Miss Austen Regrets", presented at the seminar New Takes On the Biopic. The concept of biography is conventionally understood in... more

The movies The Social Network (David Fincher, 2010) and Steve Jobs (Danny Boyle, 2015) are biographies of two outstanding figures in the digital revolution: the young multimillionaire Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook co-founder and CEO, and the... more

The movies The Social Network (David Fincher, 2010) and Steve Jobs (Danny Boyle, 2015) are biographies of two outstanding figures in the digital revolution: the young multimillionaire Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook co-founder and CEO, and the famous co-founder and executive chairman of Apple, Steve Jobs. Written by the renowned screenwriter Aaron Sorkin, what these two movies have in common is that they present different orders or layers of meaning, allowing us to see beyond the life of the protagonists in the interpretation. Sorkin, in both stories, delves deeply into the psychological characteristics of the geniuses. In addition, in both cases, he creates a dramatic character, which can be identified with archetypes and familiar figures from western narrative, the tragic hero and the narcissist. But additionally, he shows these characters as icons of our times and through them presents a reflection on nowadays and the impact the digital revolution has had in the last few decades.

Stórbrotið, töfrandi og átakamikið líf kóngafólks er vinsælt efni í sjónvarpi og kvikmyndum. Sem dæmi má nefna þættina The Crown sem Netflix framleiðir og hafa slegið í gegn svo um munar, en þeir fjalla um fyrstu áratugi Elísabetar II í... more

Stórbrotið, töfrandi og átakamikið líf kóngafólks er vinsælt efni í sjónvarpi og kvikmyndum. Sem dæmi má nefna þættina The Crown sem Netflix framleiðir og hafa slegið í gegn svo um munar, en þeir fjalla um fyrstu áratugi Elísabetar II í embætti Bretlandsdrottningar. Líf drottninga frá ýmsum tímabilum Bretlandssögunnar, hvort sem þær eru lífs eða liðnar, virðist heilla áhorfendur svo mjög að því sem næst endalaus markaður virðist vera fyrir framleiðslu sjónvarpsþátta og kvikmynda um þetta efni. Að auki hafa á netinu sprottið upp heilu aðdáendaklúbbarnir sem virðast taka hlutverk sitt mjög alvarlega og berjast með kjafti og klóm fyrir málstað drottninga sem létust fyrir jafnvel hundruðum ára.
Hér verður farið um víðan völl og fjallað um merkar breskar drottningar frá mismunandi tímaskeiðum og hvernig ævi þeirra, persónuleika og áhrifum í samfélagi og sögu er miðlað í sjónvarpi og kvikmyndum á tuttugustu og fyrstu öldinni. Leitast er við að greina áhrif þeirra á dægurmenningu í tengslum við aðdáendaklúbba internetsins og samfélagsmiðlanna. Sérstök áhersla er lögð á umfjöllun um Elísabetu fyrstu, móður hennar Önnu Boleyn og Maríu Stúart Skotadrottningu, en kvikmyndir og þættir um Viktoríu og Elísabetu II verða einnig til umfjöllunar að einhverju leiti.

Resumen: Representada tanto o más que el resto de los mandatarios norteamericanos de todas las épocas, la figura del presidente Ulysses S. Grant no ha contado hasta el momento con un amplio predicamento en los estudios de cine, pese a... more

Defining the biographical character as the protagonist in biographical films, a subgenre of the historical fiction film, this paper seeks to elaborate generically specific problems of characterization and narration in the biopic. While... more

Defining the biographical character as the protagonist in biographical films, a subgenre of the historical fiction film, this paper seeks to elaborate generically specific problems of characterization and narration in the biopic. While being presented fictionally, the genre nonetheless has some, sometimes considerable, pretensions to historical truth (the life of a historical person, using authentic names) and is thus hybrid, forced to accommodate the fictional with the nonfictional, and thereby often producing stylistic tensions. One can observe, for instance, an aesthetic tendency somewhat reminiscent of, or related to, documentaries whose mode of reference differs fundamentally from that of fiction. Biographical characterization and figural presentation may also be flatter, emotionally removed and hence more objective than in the standard feature film. While referring to and drawing on the complex debate surrounding Young Mr Lincoln (1939), notably the collective 1970 text by Cahiers du Cinema, Ford's film is used here to exemplify typical generic traits and procedures which may be found in numerous biopics. To this end, a number of other films are also included in the discussion, presented within a framework comprising formal analysis and concepts deriving from film and literary theory, genre studies, narratology and speech act theory.

in JOURNAL OF BRITISH CINEMA AND TELEVISION 7.1 (2010): 173-175

Working beyond mainstream practice, Derek Jarman creates films that are unusually musical. Caravaggio, a biography of the artist, is a case in point. Jarman's collaboration with composer Simon Fischer Turner from the start of the... more

Working beyond mainstream practice, Derek Jarman creates films that are unusually musical. Caravaggio, a biography of the artist, is a case in point. Jarman's collaboration with composer Simon Fischer Turner from the start of the filmmaking process enables music to ...

El género cinematográfico llamado biopic ha demostrado su capacidad para performar el modo de autoconocernos. Más que esto, los biopics devienen en una manera de ordenar los eventos que cobran sentido mediante la ayuda de cadenas... more

El género cinematográfico llamado biopic ha demostrado su capacidad para performar el modo de autoconocernos. Más que esto, los biopics devienen en una manera de ordenar los eventos que cobran sentido mediante la ayuda de cadenas causales. Sin embargo, siempre existe la duda de si todo lo que nos contamos forma parte de nuestra ilusión sobre lo que somos. A pesar de esta duda escéptica, esto no es un obstáculo para impedir las capacidades performativas del género y para recrear el self. El modo en que damos orden y una estructura a nuestros eventos o procesos mediante cadenas causales son, en sí mismas, una manera de recrearnos.
Milos Forman ha demostrado mediante películas como Man on the Moon que el cine puede ser una doble exploración sobre el self –el de alguien concreto –y la forma en la que le damos una estructura a la narración cinematográfica.