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Mockumentaries
A mockumentary (a blend of ''mock'' and ''documentary''), fake documentary or docu-comedy is a type of film or television show depicting fictional events but presented as a documentary. These productions are often used to analyze or comment on current events and issues by using a fictional setting, or to parody the documentary form itself. While mockumentaries are usually comedic, pseudo-documentaries are their dramatic equivalents. However, pseudo-documentary should not be confused with docudrama, a fictional genre in which dramatic techniques are combined with documentary elements to depict real events. Also, docudrama is different from docufiction, a genre in which documentaries are contaminated with fictional elements. Mockumentaries are often presented as historical documentaries, with B roll and talking heads discussing past events, or as ''cinéma vérité'' pieces following people as they go through various events. Examples emerged during the 1950s when archival film foot ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Spaghetti Tree
The spaghetti-tree hoax was a three-minute hoax report broadcast on April Fools' Day 1957 by the BBC current-affairs programme ''Panorama'', purportedly showing a family in southern Switzerland harvesting spaghetti from the family "spaghetti tree". At the time spaghetti was relatively unknown in the UK, so many British people were unaware that it is made from wheat flour and water; a number of viewers afterwards contacted the BBC for advice on growing their own spaghetti trees. Decades later, CNN called this broadcast "the biggest hoax that any reputable news establishment ever pulled". Broadcast The news report was produced as an April Fools' Day joke in 1957, and presented a family in the canton of Ticino in southern Switzerland gathering a bumper spaghetti harvest after a mild winter and "virtual disappearance of the spaghetti weevil". Footage of a traditional "Harvest Festival" was aired along with a discussion of the breeding necessary to develop a strain to produce the pe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Blend Word
In linguistics, a blend (sometimes called blend word, lexical blend, portmanteau or portmanteau word) is a word formed from parts of two or more other words. At least one of these parts is not a morph (the realization of a morpheme) but instead a mere ''splinter'', a fragment that is normally meaningless. In the words of Valerie Adams: In words such as ''motel, boatel'' and ''Lorry-Tel'', ''hotel'' is represented by various shorter substitutes – ''otel, tel'' or ''el'' – which I shall call splinters. Words containing splinters I shall call blends.Adams attributes the term ''splinter'' to J. M. Berman, "Contribution on blending," ''Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik'' 9 (1961), 278–281. Classification Blends of two or more words may be classified from each of three viewpoints: morphotactic, morphonological, and morphosemantic.Elisa Mattiello, "Blends." Chap. 4 (pp. 111–140) of ''Extra-grammatical Morphology in English: Abbreviations, Blends, Red ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Luis Buñuel
Luis Buñuel Portolés (; 22 February 1900 – 29 July 1983) was a Spanish-Mexican filmmaker who worked in France, Mexico, and Spain. He has been widely considered by many film critics, historians, and directors to be one of the greatest and most influential filmmakers of all time. When Buñuel died at age 83, his obituary in ''The New York Times'' called him "an iconoclast, moralist, and revolutionary who was a leader of avant-garde surrealism in his youth and a dominant international movie director half a century later". His first picture, ''Un Chien Andalou''—made in the silent era—is still viewed regularly throughout the world and retains its power to shock the viewer, and his last film, ''That Obscure Object of Desire''—made 48 years later—won him Best Director awards from the National Board of Review and the National Society of Film Critics. Writer Octavio Paz called Buñuel's work "the marriage of the film image to the poetic image, creating a new reality...scan ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Take The Money And Run
''Take the Money and Run'' is a 1969 American mockumentary comedy film directed by Woody Allen. Allen co-wrote the screenplay with Mickey Rose and stars alongside Janet Margolin. The film chronicles the life of Virgil Starkwell, an inept bank robber. Filmed in San Francisco and San Quentin State Prison, ''Take the Money and Run'' received Golden Laurel nominations for Male Comedy Performance (Woody Allen) and Male New Face (Woody Allen), and a Writers Guild of America Award nomination for Best Comedy Written Directly for the Screen (Woody Allen, Mickey Rose). Plot Virgil Starkwell's (Woody Allen) story is told in documentary style, using fake stock footage and 'interviews' with people who knew him. He begins a life of crime at a young age. As a child, Virgil is a frequent target of bullies, who take his glasses and stamp on them on the floor. As an adult, Virgil is clumsy and socially awkward, and both police and judges discipline him by stamping on Virgil's glasses. Virgil f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pat Paulsen For President
Patrick Layton Paulsen (July 6, 1927 – April 25, 1997) was an American comedian and satirist notable for his roles on several of the Smothers Brothers television shows, and for his satirical campaigns for President of the United States between 1968 and 1996. Early life and education Paulsen was born July 6, 1927, in South Bend, Washington, a small fishing town in Pacific County. He was the son of Beulah Inez (née Fadden) and Norman Inge Paulsen, a Norwegian immigrant who worked for the Coast Guard. The family moved to California when he was 10, where he graduated from Tamalpais High School in Mill Valley in May 1945. Paulsen joined the Marine Corps after high school, when World War II was still being waged, but it ended before he was shipped overseas. However, he did experience overseas duty, including guarding captured Japanese soldiers during their repatriation. He returned home after the war and worked as a posting clerk, a truck driver, a hod carrier, a Fuller Brush sales ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
David Holzman's Diary
''David Holzman's Diary'' is a 1967 American mockumentary, or work of metacinema, directed by James McBride and starring L. M. Kit Carson. A feature-length film made on a tiny budget over several days, it is a work of experimental fiction presented as an autobiographical documentary. "A self-portrait by a fictional character in a real place—New York's Upper West Side," the film comments on the title character's personality and life as well as on documentary filmmaking and the medium of cinema more generally. In 1991, ''David Holzman's Diary'' was included in the annual selection of 25 motion pictures added to the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress, being deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" and recommended for preservation. Synopsis L. M. Kit Carson plays David, a young white man living alone in his modest studio apartment on Manhattan's West 71st Street during July 1967. The film begins without the conventional opening credits or mus ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
A Hard Day's Night (film)
''A Hard Day's Night'' is a 1964 musical comedy film directed by Richard Lester and starring the English rock band the Beatles—John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr—during the height of Beatlemania. It was written by Alun Owen and originally released by United Artists. The film portrays 36 hours in the lives of the group as they prepare for a television performance. The film was a financial and critical success and was nominated for two Academy Awards including Best Original Screenplay. Forty years after its release, ''Time'' magazine rated it as one of the 100 all-time great films. In 1997, British critic Leslie Halliwell described it as a "comic fantasia with music; an enormous commercial success with the director trying every cinematic gag in the book" and awarded it a full four stars. The film is credited as being one of the most influential of all musical films, inspiring numerous spy films, the Monkees' television show and pop music videos, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Connection (1961 Film)
''The Connection'' is a 1961 found footage feature film directed by the American experimental filmmaker Shirley Clarke. The film was Clarke's first feature; she had made several short films over the previous decade. Jack Gelber wrote the screenplay, adapting his play of the same name. The film was the subject of significant court cases regarding censorship. It is the first known movie shot in the found footage format and beginning with a found footage title card. Plot A title card announces that the film is a result of found footage assembled by cameraman J.J. Burden (Roscoe Lee Browne) working for the acclaimed documentary filmmaker Jim Dunn ( William Redfield), who has disappeared. Leach (Warren Finnerty) a heroin addict, introduces the audience to his apartment where other heroin addicts, a mix of current and former jazz musicians, are waiting for Cowboy ( Carl Lee), their drug connection, to appear. As the men grow increasingly nervous, waiting for their fix, some of them st ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Punishment Park
''Punishment Park'' is a 1971 American pseudo-documentary drama film written and directed by Peter Watkins. The setting is of a British and West German film crew following National Guard soldiers and police as they pursue members of a counterculture group across a desert. Plot The film takes place in 1970. The Vietnam War is escalating and United States President Richard Nixon has just decided on a "secret" bombing campaign in Cambodia. Faced with a growing anti-war movement, President Nixon decrees a state of emergency based on the McCarran Internal Security Act of 1950, which authorizes federal authorities, without reference to Congress, to detain persons judged to be a "risk to internal security". Members from the anti-war movement, Civil Rights Movement, feminist movement, conscientious objectors, and Communist Party, mostly university students, are arrested and face an emergency tribunal made up of community members. With state and federal jails at their top capacity, the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dystopia
A dystopia (from Ancient Greek δυσ- "bad, hard" and τόπος "place"; alternatively cacotopiaCacotopia (from κακός ''kakos'' "bad") was the term used by Jeremy Bentham in his 1818 Plan of Parliamentary Reform (Works, vol. 3, p. 493). or simply anti-utopia) is a speculated community or society that is undesirable or frightening. It is often treated as an Opposite (semantics), antonym of ''utopia'', a term that was coined by Sir Thomas More and figures as the title of his best known work, published in 1516, which created a blueprint for an ideal society with minimal crime, violence and poverty. The relationship between utopia and dystopia is in actuality not one simple opposition, as many utopian elements and components are found in dystopias as well, and ''vice versa''. Dystopias are often characterized by rampant fear or distress , tyrannical governments, environmental disaster, or other characteristics associated with a cataclysmic decline in society. Distinct th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Privilege (film)
''Privilege'' is a 1967 British comedy-drama music science fiction film directed by Peter Watkins and produced by John Heyman. Johnny Speight wrote the story, and Norman Bogner wrote the script. Some of it was filmed on location in Birmingham, England, partly at Birmingham City F.C.'s St Andrew's stadium and at Birmingham Town Hall. Plot The story is presented as a narrated documentary, set in a near-future 1970s England, and concerning a disillusioned pop singer, Steven Shorter ( Paul Jones), who is the most loved celebrity in the country. His stage show involves him appearing on stage in a jail cell with handcuffs, beaten by police, to the horror and sympathy of the audience. It is described that the two main parties of England have formed a coalition government and encourage the success of Shorter to placate the masses and divert them from political activity. Shorter is consistently monitored and manipulated by handlers consisting of manager Martin Crossley (Jeremy Child) ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The War Game
''The War Game'' is a 1966 British pseudo-documentary film that depicts a nuclear war and its aftermath. Written, directed and produced by Peter Watkins for the BBC, it caused dismay within the BBC and also within government, and was subsequently withdrawn before the provisional screening date of 6 October 1965. The corporation said that "the effect of the film has been judged by the BBC to be too horrifying for the medium of broadcasting. It will, however, be shown to invited audiences..." The film eventually premiered at the National Film Theatre in London, on 13 April 1966, where it ran until 3 May. It was then shown abroad at several film festivals, including the Venice one where it won the Special Prize. It also won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature in 1967. The film was eventually televised in Great Britain on 31 July 1985, during the week before the fortieth anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing, the day before a repeat screening of '' Threads''. Synopsis Th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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