Close+Reading

Our tutorial for 23rd May 2011 will be a debate based on this meme -' TV is better than the movies '. You will be debating the affirmative or the negative. Prepare for both based on the information below and your own research. Firstly, check out this blog post - which got me thinking about the topic in the first place and this one which argues a similar point. BUT on the other hand, there is some discussion about how TV is in a decline. Less people actually own a TV than they used to. Some people argue that: "film is a cannibal of visual tropes" - read this and see if you agree. Here's a great site about tropes and their use in film and tv There's lots of good arguments for film over tv too. The experience of sitting in the cinema watching a film is undeniably different than TV - could it be described as better? Think on these quotes: //"The cinema is truth 24 times a second."// **Jean-Luc Godard** **"**//For me cinema is not a slice of life but a piece of cake.//**" Alfred Hitchcock** //"Film spectators are quiet vampires"// **Jim Morrison** A great map of the 250 best films (with genre links)



2010 stuff below: (BUT still relevant to you 2011 students!).

An excerpt from the blog of the creators of This Way of Life. DISCUSS!

[|Why We Make Documentaries]
Please take a moment to read this inspiring speech from the opening of the ânûû-rû âboro festival:

"Those who trumpet the merits of the free market would have us believe that globalisation is the only path to prosperity.

That we have no choice and that the economy, services and culture should bend to market rules and that we should kneel before the new all-powerful God of merchandise.

Images have become a marketable product and a formidable weapon. We are submerged in images from morning until night, more and more of them, moving quicker and quicker.

To go fast, you have to be brief, to be brief, you have to be simple. But can our world and its peoples' realities be packaged into simplistic television approaches formatted for maximum audience ratings?

Documentaries are clearly a lifeline in the general stifling of critical thought by the totalitarian market. Where sensationalist society organises a simplified mock portrayal of reality, the documentary approach is an attempt to grasp and question a complex world.

The documentary appraises reality more than reflecting it. Therein lies the philosophy of the ânûû-rû âboro festival, which in its fourth year continues to believe in alternative unalienated documentaries, articulating the true message of the world's peoples outside the prism of dominant thinking which as we all know- is that of the dominant class." Paul Néaoutyine Président de la Province Nord, New Caledonia