Perception Perception: Obtaining knowledge of facts through senses Interpretation Interpretation: Explaining and representing facts Reality is the totality of what is, as opposed to what seems to be.

As long as a film has a purpose and captures the essence of that purpose effectively, then it is safe to call it representation of reality. Siegfried Kracauer

Realism has been an extremely useful concept for asking questions about: the nature of cinematographic images, the relation of film to reality, the credibility of images, and the role cinema plays in the organization and understanding of the world.

Bazin’s dichotomy of filmed image Realists: Directors who put the faith in reality Imagist: Directors who put the faith in image

In film history, realism has designated two distinct modes of filmmaking and two approaches to the cinematographic image. In the first instance, cinematic realism refers to the verisimilitude of a film to the believability of its characters and events. This realism is most evident in the classical Hollywood cinema. The second instance of cinematic realism takes as its starting point the camera’s mechanical reproduction of reality, and often ends up challenging the rules of Hollywood movie making.

One model for the rules for realism in movies comes to us from Aristotle’s Poetics. In the Poetics, Aristotle staked the success of dramatic representation on what he called the play’s probability (eikos). For Aristotle, dramatic action was a form of rhetoric, and the role of the playwright was to persuade the audience of the sense of reality, or verisimilitude, of the dramatic work.

For events, to be believable they must meet three criteria: 1) they must be logically justified, what today we call this motivation; 2) they must conform to the rules of genre; and 3) they must have, as Aristotle famously said, a beginning, middle, and end.

For narrative causality to seem real, it must be ushered in by a series of technical elements that maintain the film’s continuity. The historical accuracy of wardrobe has long been a key to the realism of Hollywood’s period pieces. Extra-diegetic music plays an important role in narrative causality by announcing onscreen action and smoothing over gaps in the narration Irises, fades, and dissolves serve to mark the passage of time and maintain narrative flow.

Match-on-action editing, Shot/reverse-shot, The 180 degree rules, and synchronized sound serve to create the illusion of spatial continuity.

‘‘The American position is the antithesis of our own.” “While we are interested in the reality around us... reality in American films is unnaturally filtered.’’ Cesare Zavattini

Realism brings to the screen individuals and situations often marginalized by mainstream cinema and society. This is what has been called the ‘‘social extension’’ of realism, its intention to represent not just people of rank but also the spectators’ ‘‘equals’’.

Realism makes visible unseen groups, and makes audible unheard voices. In this sense, realism has been considered a fundamentally political art form. If cinema participates in the construction of what a society knows and says about itself, realist films make visible individuals and situations previously left unseen. Like the avantgarde, realism invents new configurations of the visible and new forms of representing the real.

It is for this reason that a proponent of cinematic realism such as Bazin could tie realism to techniques such as the long take, depth of focus, and panchromatic film. These techniques provide viewers with new ways of seeing the world. So too with the use of non-professional actors.

Italian Neo-Realism Neorealist films quite consciously set themselves in opposition to more mainstream cinema, a tendency metaphorically expressed in the scene in The Bicycle Thieves when Antonio never quite manages to do his job of putting up Rita Hayworth publicity posters. It is not just the glamour of Hollywood that Italian neorealism defied. This movement also challenged the laws of verisimilitude that dominated commercial cinema.

Social Realist Cinema In the years following World War I, it was widely felt that the key to a national cinema lay in 'realism and restraint'. Such a view reflected the tastes of a mainly south-eastern middle-class audience. Meanwhile, working-class audiences, it was said, favoured Hollywood genre movies. So realism carried patrician connotations of education and high seriousness. These social and aesthetic distinctions have become running themes in a cinema for which social realism is now associated with the arthouse auteur, while 'entertainment' plays at the multiplex.

British Social Realism aka Kitchensink Drama The realist tendency, while international in scope, develops within national cinematic contexts. Certainly this is the case with the British New Wave and social realist cinema. British realism, which harkens back to the documentary movement of the 1930s, has flourished from the 1950s to the present in films as varied as Room at the Top (Jack Clayton, 1958), Poor Cow (Ken Loach, 1967) and Career Girls (Mike Leigh, 1997).

Magic Realism One set of order supersedes the other. Where one reality collides with the everday Defined as where reality and fantasy have no boundaries

Dogme’ 95 A film-making movement begun in 1995 by Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg, in which the story, acting and themes of a film are favored over the extensive use of special effects or technology.

Dogme’ 95 Films must follow a specific set of rules in order to qualify for Dogme 95 status. All filming must be done on-location. Props and sets are not allowed, if a particular prop is necessary for the story, the location chosen must come equipped with this prop. The sound must not be produced separately from the images, and vice versa. Only diegetic music is permitted. The camera must be hand-held and not mounted. The film must be in colour, and special lighting is not permitted, save for a single lamp attached to the camera if absolutely necessary. Optical work and filters cannot be used.

Dogme’95 The film cannot contain any superficial action (such as murders or use of weapons). The film must take place "here and now". The film must not be a B-movie. The film format must be Academy 35 mm. The director must be uncredited.