It will be your
turn soon, eh? Do you want a clean-shaven boy like your sister or a
proper Sikh with a full beard and a turban? It's only our men that
have a big engine and full
MOT, eh? [innuendo
/
double entendre]
Nah, man, the
alternator's gone on the Merc! Just do the
carburetor on the Nissan. I told you not to bother me! It's my
engagement, man! Switch it off.
Of East Indian
origin of the Sikh faith, the Bhamra family have been settled in Great
Britain for several years. They have two daughters, Pinky and
Jessminder. While Pinky is in the process of getting married, Jessminder
is preparing to play football - which is not acceptable to her parents.
But Jessminder knows she is good at the sport, and she does receive
considerable encouragement. Her parents are clearly uncomfortable with
their daughter running around in shorts, chasing a big ball, instead of
being clad in a traditional salwar khameez, and learning to cook East
Indian recipes. Jessminder must now decide what's important for her. To
make matters worse, a football tournament is arranged on the very day of
her sister's marriage. Will Jessminder be able to play, or will her
dreams be shattered?
more ...
Anglo-Asian
director Gurinder Chadha was born in Kenya, her parents lived there
until the political dissension leading to Kenya's independence drove
them to move back to her grandfather's native India. As citizens of
India, which was still considered part of the British Empire at that
time, they settled in Southall, West London in 1951.
Chadha began
her career as a news reporter with BBC Radio, directed several award
winning documentaries for the BBC, and began a fruitful alliance with
the BFI and Channel Four who produced the 30-minute documentary, I'm
English But... (1989). The film followed young English Asians who,
unlike their parents, listen to Acid Bhangra, a mix of Punjabi bhangra
and rap. In 1990, Chadha set up her own production company; Umbi Films.
Her first dramatic film short was the 11-minute Nice Arrangement (1991)
about a British-Asian wedding.
more ...
The German critic Gustav Freytag, in Technigue of the
Drama (1863), introduced an analysis of plot that is known as
Freytag's Pyramid. He described the typical plot of a five-act play
as a pyramidal shape, consisting of a rising action, climax, and
falling action. Although the total pattern that Freytag described
applies only to a limited number of plays, various of his terms are
frequently echoed by critics of prose fiction as well as drama. As
applied to Hamlet, for example, the rising action (a section that
Aristotle had called the complication) begins, after the opening
scene and exposition, with the ghost's telling Hamlet that he has
been murdered by his brother Claudius; it continues with the
developing conflict between Hamlet and Claudius, in which Hamlet,
despite setbacks, succeeds in controlling the course of events. The
rising action reaches the climax of the hero's fortunes with his
proof of the King's guilt by the device of the play within a play
(III.ii.). Then comes the crisis, the reversal or "turning point" of
the fortunes of the protagonist, in his failure to kill the King
while he is at prayer. This inaugurates the falling action; from now
on the antagonist, Claudius, largely controls the course of events,
until the catastrophe, or outcome, which is decided by the death of
the hero, as well as of Claudius, the Queen, and Laertes.
"Catastrophe" is usually applied to tragedy only; a more general
term for this precipitating final scene, which is applied to both
comedy and tragedy, is the denouement (French for "unknotting"): the
action or intrigue ends in success or failure for the protagonist,
the conflicts are settled, the mystery is solved, or the
misunderstanding cleared away. A frequently used alternative term
for the outcome of a plot is the resolution. In many plots the
denouement involves a reversal, or in Aristotle's Greek term,
peripety, in the protagonist's fortunes, whether to the
protagonist's failure or destruction, as in tragedy, or success, as
in comic plots. The reversal frequently depends on a discovery (in
Aristotle's term, anagnorisis). This is the recognition by the
protagonist of something of great importance hitherto unknown to him
or to her: Cesario reveals to the Duke at the end of Shakespeare's
Twelfth Night that he is really Viola; the fact of Iago's lying
treachery dawns upon Othello; Fielding's Joseph Andrews, in his
comic novel by that name (1742), discovers on the evidence of a
birthmark-"as fine a strawberry as ever grew in a garden"-that he is
in reality the son of Mr. and Mrs. Wilson.
(source: Abrams – Glossary of Lit Terms)
Film
Terms: anchor backlighting beat
camera operator caption composition correspondent credits cut
director editor footage insert (shot) motion picture newsreader
(also newscaster) OOV producer scene screenplay sequence shot
soundtrack still (voice) off voice-over camera range medium long
shot full shot medium shot close-up point of view establishing shot
point-of-view shot over-the-shoulder shot reverse-angle shot camera
angles high-angle shot low-angle shot eye-level shot or straight-on
angle camera movement panning shot tilt shot tracking shot zoom
editing cross-cutting or parallel action flashback flash-forward
match cut punctuation cut jump-cut fade-in fade-out dissolve or
cross-fade
update:
04.03.2008
