Tereza Barta
Tereza Barta has worked on more than 25 documentaries, a feature film and several television productions. For 12 years she was a writer and a director at the Romanian National Film Board in Bucharest. In 1989 she became a political refugee in Austria where she produced the documentary Through Her Own Eyes. Her first Canadian documentary Our Home Is Here (1994) received the highest TV award in Canada – Gemini. Her films have been screened at festivals in Bilbao (Spain), Leipzig and Oberhausen (Germany), Bucharest (Romania), Montreal (Canada), Chicago (USA). Since 1996 she is an Associate Professor at York University, Toronto, Canada.
Using Metaphors and Allegories in Film Education
In the communist countries, because of the oppressive and censoring political regime, the artistic expression whether in film, literature or theatre developed a metaphorical language in order to express a truth which was put behind the bars of the party doctrines. This special way of conveying and receiving a brave and daring aesthetic message, has elevated both artists and audience, and reinforced the Shakespearean principle that the fundamental concept of any art is to suggest (and not simply show).
In my presentation I will explore the way Eastern European cinematic grammar played impacted modern Western filmic culture and I will impart my pedagogical method of helping the students communicate cinematically while avoiding the elucidation facilitated by dialogue and/or narration. Showing a variety of films where the significant gesture (Tony Erdmann), or the significant action (Andrei Tarkovsky, Krzysztof Kieslowski, Bela Tarr, Miklos Janco, Emir Kustirica), or the use of silent reactions shots (Milos Forman) exist and asking students to decode the subtext themselves, thus demonstrating to them that audiences are capable of understanding aesthetic subtlety, is one of these methods. Giving them a set of visual assignments where they are not allowed to use dialog, is another one.