Abstract
Below are some of the opening scenes from Ajami (2009),1 a semi-improvised crime drama set in a neighbourhood within the ancient port city of Jaffa in Israel. Ajami was nominated for an Academy Award in the ‘Best Foreign Film’ category in 2010.
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Notes
Ajami, directed by Scandar Copti and Yaron Shani (2009; New York: Kino, 2010), DVD.
Ajami Press Kit, http://www.kinolorber.com/data/presskit/ajami_pressbook.pdf, accessed 28 April 2012.
Bicycle Thieves, directed by Vittorio de Sica (1948; New York: Criterion, 2007), DVD.
The Exiles, directed by Kent Mackenzie (1961; London: British Film Institute, 2010), DVD.
Kes, directed by Ken Loach (1969; New York: Criterion, 2011), DVD.
Nashville, directed by Robert Altman (1975; Los Angeles: Paramount, 2000), DVD.
Putty Hill, directed by Matthew Porterfield (2006; New York: Cinema Guild, 2011), DVD.
Man Push Cart, directed by Ramin Bahrani (2005; New York: Noruz Films, 2007), DVD.
Dan Heath and Chip Heath, Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Take Hold and Others Come Unstuck (London: Random House, 2007), pp. 204–37.
See Jonathan Gottschall, The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012).
Arthur W. Frank, ‘Enacting Illness Stories’ in Stories and their Limits: Narrative Approaches to Bioethics’, ed. Hilde Lindemann Nelson (London: Routledge, 1997), p. 43.
See Arthur W. Frank, Letting Stories Breathe: A Socio-Narratology (Chicago, Chicago University Press, 2010).
Cesare Zavattini, ‘Some Ideas on the Cinema’ in Vittorio De Sica: Contemporary Perspectives, eds. Stephen Snyder and Howard Curie (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000), p. 224.
See Yvette Biro, Turbulence and Plow in Film: The Rhythmic Design (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008), p. 52.
Linda Aronson, The 21st Century Screenplay: A Comprehensive Guide to Writing Tomorrow’s Films (Crows Nest: Allen & Unwin, 2010), p. 172.
Horace quoted by Walter J. Ong, Orality and Literacy (New York: Routledge, 2002), p. 139.
Ajami, directed by Scandar Copti and Yaron Shani (2009; New York: Kino, 2010), DVD.
Bus 174, directed by Jose Padhila and Felipe Lacerda (2002; Albert Park: Accent, 2004), DVD.
Barry Hines, A Kestrel for a Knave (London: Penguin, 2010).
Julia Hallam, Realism and Popular Cinema (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000), p. 109.
Jacob Leigh, The Cinema of Ken Loach: Art in the Service of the People (London: Wallflower Press, 2002), p. 68.
Bert Cardullo, World Directors in Dialogue: Conversations on Cinema (Plymouth: Scarecrow Press, 2011), p. 241.
Bert Cardullo, Loach and Leigh, Ltd.: The Cinema of Social Conscience (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2010), p. 18.
Adam Blatner, Toundations of Psychodrama: History, Theory and Practice (New York: Springer, 2000), pp. 15–16.
A. Paul Hare and June Hare, J.L. Moreno (London: SAGE, 1996), pp. 13–16.
See Jacob Moreno, ‘Psychodrama and Therapeutic Motion Pictures’, Sociometry 7, no. 2 (1944): pp. 230–44.
J. J. Murphy, ‘No Room for The Fun Stuff: The Question of the Screenplay in American Indie Cinema’, Journal of Screenwriting 1, no. l (2010): p. 181.
J.J. Murphy, The Black Hole of the Camera: The Films of Andy Warhol (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012), p. 6.
Anna Shternshis, Soviet and Kosher Jewish Popular Culture in the Soviet Union 1923–1939 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006), p. 78.
See Gary Dawson, Documentary Theatre in the United States (Westport: Greenwood, 1999), pp. 20–1;
William Stott, Documentary Expression and 1930s America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), pp. 106–9.
Donald Schön, The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action (New York: Basic Books, 1983), p. 132.
Frank Barrett, ‘Coda — Creativity and Improvisation in Jazz and Organizations’, Organization Science 9, no. 5 (1998): pp. 606–7.
David MacDougall, The Corporeal Image: Film, Ethnography and the Senses (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006), p. 50.
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© 2014 Kathryn Millard
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Millard, K. (2014). Improvising Reality. In: Screenwriting in a Digital Era. Palgrave Studies in Screenwriting. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137319104_8
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