Thursday, February 24, 2011- 3B
The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com
FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILMS
Gauging perspectives on foreign films
Are foreign viewers ing their fingers crossed as they
wait for the Academy's Oscar
more invested in verdicts, which are broadcast to
millions outside the U.S. each
their countries' year.
But will these countries'
nominees? Oscar enthusiasts crowd around
their televisions in support of
By LAUREN CASERTA their respective nominees for
Daily Arts Writer Best Foreign Language Film? Or
have foreign audiences become
This Sunday, Americans will as enraptured with the magic
root for their favorite Academy of American Hollywood as their
Award nominees with the same U.S. counterparts?
enthusiasm given to a favorite The Best Foreign Language
football team, in the hopes that Film category, which was intro-
the Academy will recognize the duced in 1957, consists of
phenomenal attributes of the five nomi-
films they've spent a year antici- nees that
pating, attending and applauding. were
On the other side of the world, pro-
viewers in Greece, Canada, duced in
Mexico, Algeria and Denmark another
will also be keep- country
and include
little or no
English dialogue.
Since the Academy
permits only one film
from each country to be
submitted, the nomina-
tions tend to be heavily asso-
ciated with their countries of
origin.
Often, these small tastes of
international creativity are
taken for granted by American
audiences,who are unfamiliar
with the foreign cultures
and languages repre-
sented in the category's
lineup. However, a clos-
er examination of each
culture's public percep-
tion of film reveals a lot
about the unique aspects
of the submissions we
unceremoniously
group together under
the title "foreign lan-
guage."
LSA senior Lanette Garcia, a
first-generation Mexican-Amer-
ican student, said her interest in
Mexico's nomination, "Biutiful,"
stemmed more from an enthu-
siasm for the fame of the mov-
ie's off-screen makers than its
onscreen stars.
"I wasn't as interested in
seeing the plot as I was in the
people making it," she said. "I
know that two of the movie's
producers, including Guillermo
del Toro, have done some really
great work, so I wanted to watch
it more to see the efforts of the
people behind the scenes."
Garcia also said plots like
that of "Biutiful," which present
profound economic and social
issues to their audiences, are not
uncommon in Latin American
cinema.
"Spanish-language movies
usually involve some sort of social
commentary, more so than in the
United States. I know that this
theme does occur sometimes in
American cinema, but itcomes up
more often in Mexican movies."
The focus on harsh and
unsympathetic thematic mate-
rial is not exclusive to Mexican
cinema. Business sophomore
Andrew Simon said that visiting
his family's native Greece made
him aware of the country's ten-
dency to avoid sugarcoating the
subject matter of its films.
"I've noticed that there never
seems to be a happy ending in
Greek movies, and that they tend
to be much more dramatic and
sad," Simon said. "I think that
the subject matter in most Greek
movies would be considered very
intense for American audiences,
even for our comedies; they tend
to be a lot hornier and use much
less sophisticated humor."
This especially holds true
for Greece's nomination, "Dog-
tooth," which tells the horrifying
story of a father who has refused
to allow his children to make
contact with the outside world
since their births.
Though both Garcia and
Simon had seen some of the Best
Picture nominees from the Unit-
ed States, neither had watched
the movies from the coun-
tries whose cinemas they had
described - a concerning trend
regarding the actual popularity
of these films.
Simon thought this tendency
for mainstream American media
to drown out smaller foreign or
independent films in their coun-
tries of origin could possibly
be held at bay if Greece were to
receive recognition in the form
of an Oscar.
"Winning this award would
be very important for Greece
mainly because their most pop-
ular movies and TV shows are
from the United States," he said.
Nowhere is this trend more
apparent than in Canada. For
Music, Theatre & Dance fresh-
man Nicole Gellman, who has
not seen Canada's nomination,
"Incendies," a win would be an
important distinguishing event
for a country whose media has
been completely hijacked by
American television and movies.
"I've lived in Windsor, Ontar-
io, Canada all my life, and I've
grown up with mainstream Hol-
lywood movies," Gellman said.
"Canadian movies and television
shows are few and far between. I
honestly don't think that I could
name a Canadian movie off the
top of my head; I'm certain that
I've seen more foreign films from
France or Spain than I have from
Canada."
For Gellman, Canadian influ-
ences in cinema are limited to
the actors and actresses with
whom Americans are already
familiar.
"I know Canadian actors
well," she said. "We have Jim
From "Dogtooth," Greece's foreign language nomination; according to lasiness
sophomore Andrew Simon, Greek movies are more intense than American films.
Carrey and Kiefer Sutherland
and many other amazing actors,
but I don't differentiate between
Canadian and American films.
I'm sure that it's because our
media has become so American-
ized."
Nominations like "Incendies"
emphasize the obscurity of the
guidelines by which countries
choose their Oscar film nomina-
tions. Though its director and
producers are Canadian, its plot
centers around two Lebanese
siblings returning to the Middle
East in search of the truth about
their mother's role in the Leba-
nese Civil War.
Do countries select the movies
that are most popular, or do they
focus on the ratings they have
received? Should a nomination
be a celebration of the culture
and people of its home coun-
try, or an outstanding presenta-
tion highlighting the skills of its
directors and producers?
With the swelling popularity
of American blockbuster movies
made possible by Hollywood's
extravagant budgets, the dispar-
ity in foreign cinema between
supporters and viewers becomes
starkly apparent. Despite the
fact that foreign producers and
directors , receive strong gen-
eral encouragement for their
efforts to expand the influence of
non-American cinema, the fact
remains that the films they cre-
ate acquire more moral support
than actual audience traffic.
While some hope, exists
that this trend can be reversed
through international exposure
from awards like the Oscars,
moviegoers' actions suggest that
seeing competitive cultural rel-
evance in foreign films requires a
fundamental shift in the public's
perception of modern media -
something thata press boost and
a golden statuette alone can't
provide.
ANIMATION
Coloring in the lines on the animated shorts
By DAVID TAO
Daily Film Editor
* The lights dim as we open on
the face of a cartoon man wear-
ing an eyepatch and a fiendish
grin. As a distorted industrial
soundtrack hums in the back-
ground, he shifts the patch to
cover his good eye, revealing
a jet black orb that suddenly
morphs into an eyeball. Sud-
denly, he begins drooling a lime
green acid - it sinks past the
bottom of the frame only to reap-
pear oozing from the top of the
screen, splashing onto his head
and slowly dissolving him.
The clip's director, Music,
Theatre & Dance senior Sam
Zettell, slouches nonchalantly as
the video ends. The faces in the
audience are tinted with a mix-
ture of incredulity and awe at the
clip's complexity and eccentric-
ity.
Somebody chimes in humor-
ously: "I think you never cease
to be incredibly weird, and I'm
assuming you're going to take
that as a compliment."
Students and
professionals
alike draw their
own reality.
Zettell grins as the class
bursts into laughter.
This is SAC 406: Computer
Animation II, and these students
are presenting their projects in
rotoscoping, one of many anima-
tion techniques they learn over
the course of the semester. It's
a labor-intensive process - one
that involves tracing individual
live-action frames and play-
ing them together to simulate
movement - and is a precursor
to the course's three- to five-
minute final project. Due to the
more time-consuming nature of
animation, the clips are short,
averaging between 15 and 20 sec-
onds, and have low frame rates
that give some of them a choppy,
almost stop-motion feel.
To their professor, Chris
McNamara, these students' proj-
ects exemplify the creative berth
animation gives artists. Though
the source material many stu-
dents chose was similar, varying
approaches lent each project an
unpredictable and unique sense
of personality.
"There's this initial thought:
'Well, it's all going to look the
same,"' McNamara said. "Every-
body - the way they hold their
pen, the way they use their
mouse, the way they approach
what to include and what to
exclude - I think it's where the
personality and the style of the
individual artist come out in
ways that you can't anticipate."
The diversity of the projects
is impressive. In addition to
Zettell's avant-garde experi-
ment, there are tributes to the
Swing Era, featuring roto-
scoped versions of Fred Astaire
and Ginger Rogers dancing to
Sinatra. There's a cartoon mini-
skateboard that flips along the
cereal bowl it's superimposed
against. There's even an ani-
mated version of Tom Goss, the
University researcher often seen
playing harmonica outside Shap-
iro Undergraduate Library.
For students like Zettell, this
is the appeal of animation. This
is a medium that can take fantas-
tical concepts - like the living
playthings of "Toy Story 3" and
the ferocious, cat-like beasts of
"How to Train Your Dragon" -
and bring them to painstaking,
heartwarming life. The ability
to create one's own fantastical
world, free of the logic and pre-
dictability of live action, holds
plenty of allure.
"The possibilities are much
more limitless," Zettell said. "To
make really highly fictionalized
stories in film, you gotta have a
butt-ton of CGI, and it doesn't
always look as good."
Despite its boundless creative
potential, animation is relative-
ly new to the University. It was
first offered in the late '90s as a
night school program that used
primitive technology. Since
then, the program has moved to
a brand-new classroom in North
Quad, designed to balance stu-
dents' access to technology
with professors' constructive
criticism. Desks along the walls
feature rows of state-of-the-art
iMacs, each running the latest
version of cutting-edge soft-
ware like Adobe Photoshop and
Adobe After Effects. Students
split their time between these
platforms and the discussions,
critiques and presentations that
happen around the long wooden
table at the room's center.
"This room was really
designed for a course like
this," McNa-
mara said.
"As much 3
I want my
students to
have access
to the com-
puters, I
want to havea t
lot of face time E
as well."'
This'
principle of
seminar-likek
input allows
McNamara
to vary they
pace of his teach-
ing and give plenty of
valuable feedback. In
SAC 406's advisory ,
prerequisite, SAC 306:
Computer Animation
I, McNamara builds Y
slowly from the ground
up, constructing a solid
technological founda-
tion and allowing stu-
dents from unrelated
majors to get their feet
wet and explore. Zettell,
for example, is not a SAC
major and started ani-
mation knowing almost
nothing.
"I never knew how to
use Photoshop," Zettell
said. "(SAC 306) starts
with bare basics."
A semester-and-a-half later,
Zettell and his peers are their,
own one-person production com-
panies. They create their own
storyboards, score their own
soundtracks, execute their own
images and put the pieces togeth-
er into the unique final products
that flash across the screen. It's
this intense level of cre-
ative control and the
opportunity to make
work. The animated features
vying for Oscar gold this Sunday
are massive collaborative efforts
- "Toy Story 3," for example,
has more than 60 people cred-
ited under the animation depart-
ment. Instead, the course shares
more with the creative process
behind animated shorts. These
projects trade financial resourc-
es for more time and artistic
flexibility and can be just as poi-
gnant and critically acclaimed as
their big-screen counterparts.
A prominent example of this
phenomenon is this year's "Let's
Pollute!" The brainchild of for-
mer Pixar animator Geefwee
Boedoe, the short was directed
and animated almost entirely by
Boedoe himself over more than
three years. It's now nominated
for an Oscar. Another exam-
ple is "Wallace and Gromit," a
stop-motion franchise with its
roots in the short-film format.
Written, directed and animated
almost entirely by Nick Park, the
original short film, "A Grand Day
Out with Wallace and Gromit,"
was also nominated for an Oscar
in 1991 and became a blockbust-
er franchise. For the students
of SAC 406, starting small and
starting alone may be their key
to future success too.
some-
Sthing
specifi-
cally
tailored
to a
deeply
personal
vision
that attracts stu-
dents.
"A lot of stu-
dents come to
it in the hopes
of not having
to do crew-
based work,"
McNamara
said. "(The stu-
dents) tend to
work individu-
ally, sometimes
in small groups,
and they basi-
cally take charge
of everything."
This system
isn't exactly
how major ani-
mated studios
-E o~IKu-
TO THE OPERETTA THAT LAMPOONS THE MILITARY
HILARIOUS
0_THURSDAY 8 PM SHOW ONLY
AT THE DOOR, LYDIA MENDELSSOHN THR.
with student IrD.
Presented by The Comic Opera Guild