3rd Week; ALPHAVILLE

In week 3 we watched the film Alphaville. The film was created in 1965, the language was French, it was viewed in black and white and had no special effects. The film was set in the future, on another planet. The super computer Alpha 60 is what controls this world, and when tough guy Lemmy Caution is sent on a mission to Alphaville he is approached with many obscure things. The computer didn’t like emotion, this demonstrated that in the future technology will have a great hold on us. In 1965 this filmed would have amazed people, seeing a step into the possible future. Today technology has come along way and our films are much more advanced, we can see the differences instantly. However, society still views films that are similar in the fact that we enjoy watching futuristic films because it creates an imagination of what our world could be like in the future.

Readings for the week involved a few articles, one of which was about the French new wave. French new wave was an artistic movement that had influence on film especially between 1958 and 1964. They were normally low budget films, with natural lighting, shooting on location, direct sound recording and more. In the 1950’s this was all very groundbreaking.

During the tute we had a discussion about the film Alphaville. The class shared their thoughts about the film, people said; it was funny, it jumped straight into the story without creating complete understanding of what is happening, leaving the viewer to make their own sense of it. Throughout the rest of the tute the class added and viewed peoples blogs. We were then taught how to make our blogs private if we wanted that as an option.