conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What could be a title for a book about Studies, Senior, Lecturer with the genre: Humor & Entertainment, Movies?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: A title for this book could be 'Introduction to Film Studies'
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: the first three paragraphs for the book
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Introduction to Film Studies
  These disparate details form the bedrock of material changes in the production and reception of Indian popular cinema. Spelling out these details undercuts a series of archaic oppositions that we find steadfastly held in the arena of film studies: between national and international cinemas overlooking alternative routes of film distribution; between Hollywood and other national cinemas casting the latter as bad copies instead of examining them as rejoinders to a hegemonic cinema; between national and regional cinemas, placing Hindi cinema at the helm of the national imaginary and ignoring a simultaneous move towards regional nationalisms; between national and global audiences by not anticipating audiences who also endow Indian popular cinema with meaning that exceeds its own intended horizon of address; between art and commercial cinema, repeating a division between high and low cultures without admitting to a more varied terrain of taste. Naming these mobile processes speaks to a post-colonial condition that according to Stuart Hall marks a 'critical interruption into that whole grand historiographical narrative which, in liberal historiography and Weberian historical sociology, as much as in the dominant traditions of Western Marxism, gave this global dimension a subordinate presence in a story which could essentially be told from within European parameters' (Hall 1996: 250).
  Sholay exemplified the possibility of combining dominant genre principles developed in Hollywood films with conventions particular to Indian cinema. Recasting the linear trajectory of genre films to include several local cinematic conventions, Indian popular films often render the former illegible to the rank outsider. What I am suggesting is that it seems presumptuous to think that when Hollywood genres are appropriated by other national cinemas, we may find straightforward application of dominant genre principles instead of reading how local contexts of production and reception intervene and prevail over genre. The end-product of this encounter between global and local features may, at times, be read as a subaltern response to Hollywood, a strategy forwarded by Paul Smith in his reading of Leone's 'spaghetti westerns', or we can simply read it as a riposte that simultaneously reveals how Hollywood genres are also built around certain national cinematic styles (Smith 1993).
  Besides the direct address, other features of Indian popular cinemas similarly undercut the hermetic universe developed in Hollywood films by interrupting it with song and dance sequences, comedy tracks and multi-plot narratives. Spectacular, and at times excessive, the elaboration of these attractions in this cinema has invited critics to dub them ' **masala movies** ' – a culinary term that seeks to define a medley of narrative strands in popular cinema. Naming the films made in the 1950s and 1960s as the 'feudal family romance', Madhava Prasad (1998) argues that this super-genre asserts its dominance through narrative strategies of annexations whenever new sub-genres emerge. In short, Prasad suggests that instead of discrete genres a megalomaniac genre cannibalises the formation of sub-genres. Ravi Vasudevan (1995), on the other hand, sees popular Hindi film as a discontinuous form that includes attractions such as song and dance sequences and comedic sub-plots. Instead of skipping over these moments that either break the diegetic universe or disrupt the linear trajectory of the narrative, we must simply face the fact that the most persistent narrative form found in Indian popular cinema includes several interruptions bearing a more or less systematic relationship to the narrative. In other words, we should start heeding production details that obsess over how Indian filmmakers expend considerable energy experimenting with the choreography and location of these sequences and, in the process, acknowledge how our viewing pleasure arises from these interruptions and the novel ways in which a popular film strings together these sequences.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: five more paragraphs. Start with the sentence 'This decade of intensive experimentation with film form produced techniques that have subsequently been widely emulated'.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: This decade of intensive experimentation with film form produced techniques that have subsequently been widely emulated. In addition, the theoretical debates formulated by these filmmakers are still relevant today. For these reasons the **Soviet cinema** of the 1920s merits detailed analysis.
  The First World War (1914–18) eventually proved to be disastrous for Tsar Nicholas II, since it consumed vast amounts of money and resources that were sorely needed at home. It was also unpopular with the Russian people as the reasons for fighting were unclear. The peasants and the workers were the worst hit by the impact of the war, either being killed on the front or starving at home as supplies became depleted. The landowning rich were protected by their wealth and were able to continue in their existing lifestyle.
  These conditions provided the catalyst for the Revolution of 25 February 1917 which resulted in the formation of a liberal provisional government led by Alexander Kerensky and later supported by Menshevik and socialist revolutionary factions. This caused Nicholas II to abdicate on 4 March. The provisional government decided to continue the war, and for many (especially V.I. Lenin who was in hiding in Zurich) it appeared that the new government was in effect continuing the policies of the Tsarist order.
  On 25 October 1917 the Bolsheviks, taking advantage of a situation of confusion and competition between the various factions, seized power by storming the Winter Palace.2 The new Bolshevik government agreed to Germany's demands for control of areas of land previously under Russian administration and pulled out of the war. Almost immediately, however, a fierce civil war broke out between the Bolsheviks (known as the Reds) and those still loyal to the Tsarist regime (known as the Whites).3
  By 1920 it was clear that the Bolsheviks had seized ultimate control of the country. The new Soviet government under the leadership of V.I. Lenin was faced with the task of convincing the population of Russia of the evils of the Tsarist regime and the positive points of the new communist one.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: the last five paragraphs
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Phelan, Rev. J.J., 'Motion Pictures as a Phase of Commercialised Amusement in Toledo, Ohio', reprinted in Film History, Vol. 13, No. 3, 2001.
  African American film: genre of, –; history of, –; performance in, –; racism, –; stereotypes, –; whiteness, –
  American film industry: contemporary (1949 – present), –, –, –; Early Cinema (1895–1915), –; origins (1900–1915), –; studio era (1930–1949), –
  Indian cinema: censorship, ; genre and form, –; history of, –; intervals, –; love story genre, –; song and dance sequences, –; Tamil cinema, ; woman's film, –; writings on, –
  Soviet montage cinema: audience response, –; economics of, –; editing, ; experimentation in, ; history of, –, ; ideology, –; key filmmakers, ; vs. realism, –; types of, –