1.
Pierre Batcheff
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Pierre Batcheff was a French actor of Russian descent. He was a high-profile cast during the 1920s and early 1930s and among his films was Un Chien Andalou, directed by Luis Buñuel. From 1930 until his death, was married to French film editor Denise Batcheff, originally born in Harbin, he grew up in Saint Petersburg, until his family emigrated to Geneva, Switzerland. In 1921, Batcheff moved to Paris where he first worked as a theatre actor, from 1923 on, he had his first appearances in movies and by the mid-1920s, he had a become a high-profile actor. The King of Paris Feu Mathias Pascal Education of a Prince Napoléon Two Timid Souls Un Chien Andalou Island of Love Illusions The King of Paris The Rebel Baroud Powrie, Phil & Rebillard, pierre Batcheff and stardom in 1920s French cinema
2.
Simone Mareuil
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Simone Mareuil was a French actress best known for appearing in the surrealist film Un Chien Andalou. Born Marie Louise Simone Vacher in Périgueux, Dordogne, she appeared in a number of films and she was the second wife of actor Philippe Hersent. After World War II, she returned to Périgueux, where she fell into a deep depression and she committed suicide by self-immolation — dousing herself in gasoline and burning herself to death in a public square. Simone Mareuil at the Internet Movie Database Simone Mareuil at Find a Grave
3.
Richard Wagner
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Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, theatre director, polemicist, and conductor who is primarily known for his operas. Unlike most opera composers, Wagner wrote both the libretto and the music for each of his stage works and he described this vision in a series of essays published between 1849 and 1852. Wagner realised these ideas most fully in the first half of the four-opera cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen and his advances in musical language, such as extreme chromaticism and quickly shifting tonal centres, greatly influenced the development of classical music. His Tristan und Isolde is sometimes described as marking the start of modern music, Wagner had his own opera house built, the Bayreuth Festspielhaus, which embodied many novel design features. The Ring and Parsifal were premiered here and his most important stage works continue to be performed at the annual Bayreuth Festival, until his final years, Wagners life was characterised by political exile, turbulent love affairs, poverty and repeated flight from his creditors. His controversial writings on music, drama and politics have attracted extensive comment, notably, since the late 20th century, where they express antisemitic sentiments. The effect of his ideas can be traced in many of the arts throughout the 20th century, his influence spread beyond composition into conducting, philosophy, literature, Richard Wagner was born to an ethnic German family in Leipzig, where his family lived at No. 3, the Brühl in the Jewish quarter and he was baptized at St. Thomas Church. He was the child of Carl Friedrich Wagner, who was a clerk in the Leipzig police service, and his wife, Johanna Rosine. Wagners father Carl died of typhus six months after Richards birth, afterwards his mother Johanna lived with Carls friend, the actor and playwright Ludwig Geyer. In August 1814 Johanna and Geyer probably married—although no documentation of this has found in the Leipzig church registers. She and her family moved to Geyers residence in Dresden, until he was fourteen, Wagner was known as Wilhelm Richard Geyer. He almost certainly thought that Geyer was his biological father, Geyers love of the theatre came to be shared by his stepson, and Wagner took part in his performances. In his autobiography Mein Leben Wagner recalled once playing the part of an angel, in late 1820, Wagner was enrolled at Pastor Wetzels school at Possendorf, near Dresden, where he received some piano instruction from his Latin teacher. He struggled to play a scale at the keyboard and preferred playing theatre overtures by ear. Following Geyers death in 1821, Richard was sent to the Kreuzschule, at the age of nine he was hugely impressed by the Gothic elements of Carl Maria von Webers opera Der Freischütz, which he saw Weber conduct. At this period Wagner entertained ambitions as a playwright and his first creative effort, listed in the Wagner-Werk-Verzeichnis as WWV1, was a tragedy called Leubald. Begun when he was in school in 1826, the play was influenced by Shakespeare
4.
Silent film
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A silent film is a film with no synchronized recorded sound, especially with no spoken dialogue. The silent film era lasted from 1895 to 1936, in silent films for entertainment, the dialogue is transmitted through muted gestures, mime and title cards which contain a written indication of the plot or key dialogue. During silent films, a pianist, theatre organist, or, in large cities, pianists and organists would either play from sheet music or improvise, an orchestra would play from sheet music. The term silent film is therefore a retronym—that is, a term created to distinguish something retroactively, the early films with sound, starting with The Jazz Singer in 1927, were referred to as talkies, sound films, or talking pictures. A September 2013 report by the United States Library of Congress announced that a total of 70% of American silent feature films are believed to be completely lost, the earliest precursors of film began with image projection through the use of a device known as the magic lantern. This utilized a glass lens, a shutter and a persistent light source, such as a powerful lantern and these slides were originally hand-painted, but still photographs were used later on after the technological advent of photography in the nineteenth century. The invention of a practical photography apparatus preceded cinema by only fifty years, the next significant step towards film creation was the development of an understanding of image movement. Simulations of movement date as far back as to 1828 and only four years after Paul Roget discovered the phenomenon he called Persistence of Vision. This experience was further demonstrated through Rogets introduction of the thaumatrope, the first projected primary proto-movie was made by Eadweard Muybridge between 1877 and 1880. Muybridge set up a row of cameras along a racetrack and timed image exposures to capture the many stages of a horses gallop, the oldest surviving film was created by Louis Le Prince in 1888. It was a film of people walking in Oakwood streets garden. Edison also made a business of selling Kinetograph and Kinetoscope equipment, due to Edisons lack of securing an international patent on his film inventions, similar devices were invented around the world. The Lumière brothers, for example, created the Cinématographe in France, the Cinématographe proved to be a more portable and practical device than both of Edisons as it combined a camera, film processor and projector in one unit. In contrast to Edisons peepshow-style kinetoscope, which one person could watch through a viewer. Their first film, Sortie de lusine Lumière de Lyon, shot in 1894, is considered the first true motion picture, the invention of celluloid film, which was strong and flexible, greatly facilitated the making of motion pictures. This film was 35 mm wide and pulled using four sprocket holes and this doomed the cinematograph, which could only use film with just one sprocket hole. From the very beginnings of film production, the art of motion pictures grew into maturity in the silent era. Silent filmmakers pioneered the art form to the extent that virtually every style, the silent era was also pioneering era from a technical point of view
5.
Surrealist cinema
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Surrealist cinema is a modernist approach to film theory, criticism, and production with origins in Paris in the 1920s. The movement used shocking, irrational, or absurd imagery and Freudian dream symbolism to challenge the traditional function of art to represent reality. Other films include Un Chien Andalou and LAge dOr by Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí, Buñuel went on to many more films. In his 2006 book Surrealism and Cinema, Michael Richardson argues that surrealist works cannot be defined by style or form, many critics fail to recognize the distinctive qualities that make up the surrealist attitude. The problem is that goes against the very essence of surrealism. It is not a thing but a relation between things and therefore needs to be treated as a whole, Surrealists are not concerned with conjuring up some magic world that can be defined as surreal. Their interest is almost exclusively in exploring the conjunctions, the points of contact, Surrealism is always about departures rather than arrivals. Rather than an aesthetic, Richardson defines surrealism as a shifting point of magnetism around which the collective activity of the surrealists revolves. Surrealism draws upon irrational imagery and the subconscious mind, Surrealists should not, however, be mistaken as whimsical or incapable of logical thought, rather, most Surrealists promote themselves as revolutionaries. Surrealism was the first literary and artistic movement to become associated with cinema, though it has also been a movement largely neglected by film critics. Highly influenced by Freudian psychology, surrealism sought to bring the mind to visual life. Balanced between symbolism and realism, surrealist cinema commentated on themes of life, death, modernity, politics, religion, the foundations of the movement began in France and coincided with the birth of motion pictures. France served as the birthplace of surrealist cinema because of a combination of easy access to film equipment, film financing. The Surrealists who participated in the movement were among the first generation to have grown up with film as a part of daily life. According to Breton, he and Vaché ignored movie titles and times, preferring to drop in at any given moment, when they grew bored, they left and visited the next theater. Bretons movie-going habits supplied him with a stream of images with no constructed order about them and he could juxtapose the images of one film with those of another, and from the experience craft his own interpretation. Referring to his experiences with Vaché, he remarked, I think what we most in it. Breton believed that film could help one abstract himself from real life whenever he felt like it, serials, which often contained cliffhanger effects and hints of other worldliness, were attractive to early Surrealists
6.
Short film
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A short film, is a cinema format, denoting any film not long enough to be considered a feature film. The term featurette originally applied to a longer than a short subject. The increasingly rare term short subject means approximately the same thing and it is an industry term which carries more of an assumption that the film is shown as part of a presentation along with a feature film. Short is an abbreviation for either term, Short films are often screened at local, national, or international film festivals and made by independent filmmakers for non profit, either with a low budget or no budget at all. They are usually funded by grants, non profit organizations. Short films are used by filmmakers to gain experience or prove their talent in order to gain funding for future films from private investors, entertainment companies. Longer and shorter films coexisted with similar popularity throughout the days of film. However, comedy films were produced in large numbers compared to lengthy features such as D. W. Griffiths The Birth of a Nation. By the 1920s, a ticket purchased a varied program including a feature and several supporting works from such as second feature, short comedy, 5–10 minute cartoon, travelogue. Short comedies were popular, and typically came in a serial or series. Even though there was no set release schedule, these series could be considered somewhat like a modern TV sitcom – lower in status than feature films. Animated cartoons came principally as short subjects, in the 1930s, the distribution system changed in many countries owing to the Great Depression. Instead of the cinema owner assembling a program of their own choice, the studios sold a package centered on a main and supporting feature, with the rise of the double feature, two reel shorts went into decline as a commercial category. Hal Roach, for example, moved Laurel and Hardy full-time into feature films after 1935, by the mid-1950s, with the rise of television, the commercial live-action short was virtually dead, The Three Stooges being the last major series of 2-reelers, ending in 1959. Short films had become a medium for student, independent and specialty work, cartoon shorts had a longer life, due in part to the implementation of lower-cost limited animation techniques, but also declined in this period. Warner Bros. one of the most prolific of the golden era, the Pink Panther was the last regular theatrical cartoon short series, having begun in 1964 and ended in 1980. By the 1960s, the market for animated shorts had largely shifted to television, a few animated shorts continue within mainstream commercial distribution. For instance, Pixar has screened a short along with each of its feature films during its theatrical run since 1995
7.
Studio des Ursulines
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The Studio des Ursulines is a cinema in the 5th arrondissement of Paris, at No.10, Rue des Ursulines. It is one of the oldest cinemas in Paris to have kept its facade and founders vision, to offer a venue for art and experimental cinema. Gilles Renouard of Paris Cinéphile describes it as an experience for its nostalgic associations. In 1925, actors Armand Tallier and Laurence Myrga choose the small rue des Ursulines to establish a cinema to specialize in avant-garde films, thus, the first avant-garde cinema in France was born, a precursor to the now established system of Art et Essai. The cinema opened January 21,1926, films by André Breton, Man Ray, Fernand Léger, René Clair and Robert Desnos were shown. In 1958 it showed work by Satyajit Ray, Andrzej Wajda, Ingmar Bergman and it is one of two cinemas in central Paris whose facades have not been significantly altered. In 1928, it premiered the first film of Germaine Dulac, taken from a story by Antonin Artaud, The Seashell, the film was heckled by the surrealists André Breton and Louis Aragon, leading to a fight that stopped the screening. Tallier did not call the police and the film screened took place few weeks later, Tallier became associated in the 1950s with the creation of the Art et Essai, movement with the birth of l’AFCAE in 1955. Since March 2003, the majority of the daytime programming is aimed at the Art & Essai’ public. In the evening animation and cinéclub, screenings dominate, one of the last scenes of François Truffaut’s Jules et Jim takes place at the Studio des Ursulines, where the three main characters meet by chance. The end of the film Chantrapas and a scene in Après mai were shot there, Studio des Ursulines Armand Talllier et le studio des Ursulines A. F. C. A. E publié en 1963
8.
Plot (narrative)
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Plot refers to the sequence of events inside a story which affect other events through the principle of cause and effect. The causal events of a plot can be thought of as a series of sentences linked by, Plots can vary from simple structures such as in a traditional ballad to complex interwoven structures sometimes referred to as an imbroglio. The term plot can serve as a verb and refer to a planning future actions in the story. In the narrative sense, the highlights the important points which have important consequences within the story. The term is similar in meaning to the term storyline, english novelist E. M. Forster described plot as the cause-and-effect relationship between events in a story. According to Forster, The king died, and then the queen died, is a story, while The king died, as a result, according to Dibell, the plot can be described numerically as 1→3 while the story can be described as 1→2→3. A story orders events from beginning to end in a time sequence, teri Shaffer Yamada agrees that a plot does not include memorable scenes within a story which do not relate directly to other events but only major events that move the action in a narrative. Another example of a scene which is not part of the plot occurs in the 1980 film The Empire Strikes Back. A fabula is the events in the world, whereas a syuzhet is a perspective of those events. Formalist followers eventually translated the fabula/syuzhet to the concept of story/plot and this definition is usually used in narratology, in parallel with Forsters definition. The fabula is what happened in chronological order, in contrast, the syuzhet means a unique sequence of discourse that was sorted out by the author. That is, the syuzhet can consist of picking up the events in non-chronological order, for example, fabula is <a1, a2, a3, a4, a5, …, an>, syuzhet is <a5, a1. He also believed that the events of the plot must causally relate to one another as being necessary or probable. Of the utmost importance is the ability to arouse emotion in the psyche of the audience. Acts are connected by two points or turning points, with the first turning point connecting Act I to Act II. The conception of the structure has been attributed to American screenwriter Syd Field who described plot structure in this tripartite way for film analysis. In his Poetics, Aristotle considered plot the most important element of drama—more important than character, for example. A plot must have, Aristotle says, a beginning, a middle, and an end, of the utmost importance to Aristotle is the plots ability to arouse emotion in the psyche of the audience
9.
Dream analysis
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Dream interpretation is the process of assigning meaning to dreams. In modern times, various schools of psychology and neurobiology have offered theories about the meaning, most people currently appear to interpret dream content according to the Freudian theory of dreams in countries, as found by a study conducted in the United States, India, and South Korea. People appear to believe dreams are particularly meaningful, they assign more meaning to dreams than to similar waking thoughts, however, people do not attribute equal importance to all dreams. People appear to use motivated reasoning when interpreting their dreams and they are more likely to view dreams confirming their waking beliefs and desires to be more meaningful than dreams that contradict their waking beliefs and desires. One of the earliest written examples of dream interpretation comes from the Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh, Gilgamesh dreamt that an axe fell from the sky. The people gathered around it in admiration and worship, Gilgamesh threw the axe in front of his mother and then he embraced it like a wife. His mother, Ninsun, interpreted the dream and she said that someone powerful would soon appear. Gilgamesh would struggle with him and try to overpower him, eventually they would become close friends and accomplish great things. She added, That you embraced him like a wife means he will never forsake you, while this example shows the tendency to see dreams as mantic, Ninsuns interpretation anticipates a contemporary approach. The axe, phallic and aggressive, symbolizes a male who will start as aggressive, to embrace an axe is to transform aggression into affection and camaraderie. Later, a compendium of omens, the Dream Book or Iškar Zaqīqu was assembled. In ancient Egypt, priests acted as dream interpreters, hieroglyphics depicting dreams and their interpretations are evident. Dreams have been held in considerable importance through history by most cultures, the ancient Greeks constructed temples they called Asclepieions, where sick people were sent to be cured. It was believed that cures would be effected through divine grace by incubating dreams within the confines of the temple, Dreams were also considered prophetic or omens of particular significance. Artemidorus of Daldis, who lived in the 2nd century AD, although Artemidorus believed that dreams can predict the future, he presaged many contemporary approaches to dreams. He thought that the meaning of an image could involve puns. For example, Alexander, while waging war against the Tyrians, Artemidorus reports that this dream was interpreted as follows, satyr = sa tyros, predicting that Alexander would be triumphant. Freud acknowledged this example of Artemidorus when he proposed that dreams be interpreted like a rebus, in medieval Islamic psychology, certain hadiths indicate that dreams consist of three parts, and early Muslim scholars recognized three kinds of dreams, false, patho-genetic, and true
10.
Sigmund Freud
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Sigmund Freud was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for treating psychopathology through dialogue between a patient and a psychoanalyst. Freud was born to Galician Jewish parents in the Moravian town of Freiberg and he qualified as a doctor of medicine in 1881 at the University of Vienna. Upon completing his habilitation in 1885, he was appointed a docent in neuropathology, Freud lived and worked in Vienna, having set up his clinical practice there in 1886. In 1938 Freud left Austria to escape the Nazis and he died in exile in the United Kingdom in 1939. In creating psychoanalysis, Freud developed therapeutic techniques such as the use of free association and discovered transference, Freuds redefinition of sexuality to include its infantile forms led him to formulate the Oedipus complex as the central tenet of psychoanalytical theory. His analysis of dreams as wish-fulfillments provided him with models for the analysis of symptom formation. On this basis Freud elaborated his theory of the unconscious and went on to develop a model of psychic structure comprising id, in his later work Freud developed a wide-ranging interpretation and critique of religion and culture. Though in overall decline as a diagnostic and clinical practice, psychoanalysis remains influential within psychology, psychiatry, and psychotherapy, nonetheless, Freuds work has suffused contemporary Western thought and popular culture. In the words of W. H. Audens 1940 poetic tribute, by the time of Freuds death, Freud was born to Jewish parents in the Moravian town of Freiberg, in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the first of eight children. Both of his parents were from Galicia, in modern-day Ukraine and his father, Jakob Freud, a wool merchant, had two sons, Emanuel and Philipp, by his first marriage. Jakobs family were Hasidic Jews, and although Jakob himself had moved away from the tradition and he and Freuds mother, Amalia Nathansohn, who was 20 years younger and his third wife, were married by Rabbi Isaac Noah Mannheimer on 29 July 1855. They were struggling financially and living in a room, in a locksmiths house at Schlossergasse 117 when their son Sigmund was born. He was born with a caul, which his mother saw as an omen for the boys future. In 1859, the Freud family left Freiberg, Freuds half brothers emigrated to Manchester, England, parting him from the inseparable playmate of his early childhood, Emanuels son, John. Jakob Freud took his wife and two children firstly to Leipzig and then in 1860 to Vienna where four sisters and a brother were born, Rosa, Marie, Adolfine, Paula, in 1865, the nine-year-old Freud entered the Leopoldstädter Kommunal-Realgymnasium, a prominent high school. He proved an outstanding pupil and graduated from the Matura in 1873 with honors and he loved literature and was proficient in German, French, Italian, Spanish, English, Hebrew, Latin and Greek. Freud entered the University of Vienna at age 17, in 1876, Freud spent four weeks at Clauss zoological research station in Trieste, dissecting hundreds of eels in an inconclusive search for their male reproductive organs. He graduated with an MD in 1881, in 1882, Freud began his medical career at the Vienna General Hospital
11.
Vitreous body
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The vitreous body is the clear gel that fills the space between the lens and the retina of the eyeball of humans and other vertebrates. It is often referred to as the vitreous humour or simply the vitreous, the vitreous humour is a transparent, colorless, gelatinous mass that fills the space in the eye between the lens and the retina. Produced by cells in the portion of the ciliary body, the vitreous humour is derived from embryonic mesenchyme cells. The vitreous humour is in contact with the retina and helps to keep it in place by pressing it against the choroid. It does not adhere to the retina, except at the optic disc and the ora serrata, at the Wieger-band. It is not connected at the macula, the area of the retina which provides finer detail, unlike the fluid in the frontal parts of the eye which is continuously replenished, the gel in the vitreous chamber is stagnant. Therefore, if blood, cells or other byproducts of inflammation get into the vitreous, if the vitreous pulls away from the retina, it is known as a vitreous detachment. As the human body ages, the vitreous often liquefies and may collapse and this is more likely to occur, and occurs much earlier, in eyes that are nearsighted. It can also occur after injuries to the eye or inflammation in the eye, the collagen fibres of the vitreous are held apart by electrical charges. With aging, these tend to reduce, and the fibres may clump together. Similarly, the gel may liquefy, a known as synaeresis, allowing cells. These allow floaters which are perceived in the field as spots or fibrous strands. Floaters are generally harmless, but the onset of recurring floaters may signify a posterior vitreous detachment or other diseases of the eye. After death, the vitreous resists putrifaction longer than body fluids. The vitreous potassium concentration rises so predictably within the hours, days and weeks after death and its composition is similar to that of the cornea, but the vitreous contains very few cells. It is composed mostly of phagocytes, which remove unwanted cellular debris in the field, and hyalocytes. The vitreous humour contains no blood vessels, and 98–99% of its volume is water, in addition to water, the vitreous consists of salts, sugars, vitrosin, a network of collagen type II fibrils with glycosaminoglycan, hyaluronan, opticin, and a wide array of proteins. Despite having little solid matter, the fluid is substantial enough to fill the eye, the lens, on the other hand, is tightly packed with cells
12.
Nun
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A nun is a member of a religious community of women, typically one living under vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. The term nun is applicable to Catholics, Orthodox Christians, Anglicans, Lutherans, Jains, Buddhists, Taoists, Hindus, Mother Teresas Missionaries of Charity, lives an active vocation of both prayer and service, often to the needy, ill, poor, and uneducated. All Buddhist traditions have nuns, although their status is different among Buddhist countries, fully ordained Buddhist nuns have more Patimokkha rules than the monks. The important vows are the same, however, as with monks, there is quite a lot of variation in nuns dress and social conventions between Buddhist cultures in Asia. Chinese nuns possess the full ordination, Tibetan nuns do not. In Thailand, a country never had a tradition of fully ordained nuns. However, some of them have played an important role in dhamma-practitioners community. There are in Thai Forest Tradition foremost nuns such as Mae Ji Kaew Sianglam, the founder of the Nunnery of Baan Huai Saai, who is believed by some to be enlightened as well as Upāsikā Kee Nanayon. At the beginning of the 21st century, some Buddhist women in Thailand have started to introduce the bhikkhuni sangha in their country as well, dhammananda Bhikkhuni, formerly the successful academic scholar Dr. Chatsumarn Kabilsingh, established a controversial monastery for the training of Buddhist nuns in Thailand. The relatively active roles of Taiwanese nuns were noted by some studies, researcher Charles Brewer Jones estimates that from 1952 to 1999, when the Buddhist Association of the ROC organized public ordination, female applicants have outnumbered males by about three to one. He adds, All my informants in the areas of Taipei and Sanhsia considered nuns at least as respectable as monks, in contrast, however, Shiu-kuen Tsung found in Taipei county that female clergy were viewed with some suspicion by society. She reports that while outsiders did not necessarily regard their vocation as unworthy of respect, wei-yi Cheng studied Luminary order in southern Taiwan. Based on studies of Luminary order, Cheng concluded that the order in Taiwan was still young and gave nuns more rooms of development. Gelongma ordination requires the presence of ten fully ordained people keeping exactly the same vows, because ten nuns are required to ordain a new one, the effort to establish the Dharmaguptaka bhikkhu tradition has taken a long time. It is permissible for a Tibetan nun to receive ordination from another living tradition. Based on this, Western nuns ordained in Tibetan tradition, like Thubten Chodron, the ordination of monks and nuns in Tibetan Buddhism distinguishes three stages, rabjung-ma, getshül-ma and gelong-ma. The clothes of the nuns in Tibet are basically the same as those of monks, hokke-ji in 747 was established by the consort of the Emperor. It took charge of provincial convents, performed ceremonies for the protection of the state, aristocratic Japanese women often became Buddhist nuns in the premodern period
13.
Johannes Vermeer
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Johannes, Jan or Johan Vermeer was a Dutch painter who specialized in domestic interior scenes of middle-class life. Vermeer was a successful provincial genre painter in his lifetime. He evidently was not wealthy, leaving his wife and children in debt at his death, Vermeer worked slowly and with great care, and frequently used very expensive pigments. He is particularly renowned for his treatment and use of light in his work. Vermeer painted mostly domestic interior scenes and he was recognized during his lifetime in Delft and The Hague, but his modest celebrity gave way to obscurity after his death. He was barely mentioned in Arnold Houbrakens major source book on 17th-century Dutch painting, since that time, Vermeers reputation has grown, and he is now acknowledged as one of the greatest painters of the Dutch Golden Age. Relatively little was known about Vermeers life until recently and he seems to have been devoted exclusively to his art, living out his life in the city of Delft. Until the 19th century, the sources of information were some registers, a few official documents. John Michael Montias added details on the family from the city archives of Delft in his Artists and Artisans in Delft, Johannes Vermeer was baptized in the Reformed Church on 31 October 1632. His father Reijnier Janszoon was a worker of silk or caffa. As an apprentice in Amsterdam, Reijnier lived on fashionable Sint Antoniesbreestraat, in 1615, he married Digna Baltus. The couple moved to Delft and had a daughter named Geertruy who was baptized in 1620, in 1625, Reijnier was involved in a fight with a soldier named Willem van Bylandt who died from his wounds five months later. Around this time, Reijnier began dealing in paintings, in 1631, he leased an inn, which he called The Flying Fox. In 1635, he lived on Voldersgracht 25 or 26, in 1641, he bought a larger inn on the market square, named after the Flemish town Mechelen. The acquisition of the inn constituted a financial burden. When Vermeers father died in October 1652, Vermeer took over the operation of the art business. In April 1653, Johannes Reijniersz Vermeer married a Catholic girl, the blessing took place in the quiet nearby village of Schipluiden. Vermeers new mother-in-law Maria Thins was significantly wealthier than he, according to art historian Walter Liedtke, Vermeers conversion seems to have been made with conviction
14.
The Lacemaker (Vermeer)
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The Lacemaker is a painting by the Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer, completed around 1669–1670 and held in the Louvre, Paris. The work shows a woman dressed in a yellow shawl. At 24.5 cm x 21 cm, the work is the smallest of Vermeers paintings, the canvas used was cut from the same bolt as that used for A Young Woman Seated at the Virginals, and both paintings seem to have had identical dimensions originally. The girl is set against a wall, probably because the artist sought to eliminate any external distractions from the central image. As with his The Astronomer and The Geographer, it is obvious that the artist undertook careful study before he executed the work, the art of lacemaking is portrayed closely and accurately. Vermeer probably used a camera obscura while composing the work, many optical effects typical of photography can be seen, by rendering areas of the canvas as out-of-focus, Vermeer is able to suggest depth of field in a manner unusual of Dutch Baroque painting of the era. In The Lacemaker, the artist presents in a manner the various elements which compose the girls face and body. The girls hands, the curls of her hair and the T-cross which form her eyes, in addition, the red and white of the lace is shown as spilling from the sewing cushion with physical properties suggesting a near liquid form. The blurring of these threads contrasts sharply with the precision of the lace she is working on. Vermeers painting is compared to a 1662 canvas of the same name by the Dutch portrait. However, Vermeers work is different in tone. In the earlier work, both the girls shoes and the mussel shells near her feet have sexual connotations, in addition, the discarded shoes in Netschers painting are unlikely to be the girls own, hinting again at a sexual overtone. According to the art historian Lawrence Gowing, The achievement of Vermeers maturity is complete and it is not open to extension, no universal style is discovered. We have never the sense of abundance that the jewels of his century gives us. There is only one Lacemaker, we cannot imagine another and it is a complete and single definition. New York, Konecky & Konecky,1992, ISBN 0-8387-5538-0 Huerta, Robert D. Vermeer and Plato, Painting the Ideal. ISBN 0-8387-5606-9 Wheelock, Arthur K. Vermeer, The Complete Works, new York, Harry N. Abrams,1997. ISBN 0-8109-2751-9 Liedtke, Walter A. Vermeer and the Delft School
15.
Sadomasochism
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Sadomasochism is the giving or receiving pleasure from acts involving the receipt or infliction of pain or humiliation. Practitioners of sadomasochism may seek sexual gratification from their acts, while the terms sadist and masochist refer respectively to one who enjoys giving or receiving pain, practitioners of sadomasochism may switch between activity and passivity. The abbreviation S&M is often used for sadomasochism, although practitioners themselves normally remove the ampersand, Sadomasochism is not considered a clinical paraphilia unless such practices lead to clinically significant distress or impairment for a diagnosis. Similarly, sexual sadism within the context of mutual consent, generally known under the heading BDSM, is distinguished from acts of sexual violence or aggression. The term sadomasochism is used in a variety of different ways and it can refer to cruel individuals or those who brought misfortunes onto themselves and psychiatrists define it as pathological. The two words incorporated into this compound, sadism and masochism, were derived from the names of two authors. The term Sadism has its origin in the name of the Marquis de Sade, who not only practiced sexual sadism, Masochism is named after Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, who wrote novels expressing his masochistic fantasies. These terms were first selected to identifying human behavioural phenomena and for the classification of psychological illnesses or deviant behaviour, the German psychiatrist Richard von Krafft-Ebing introduced the terms Sadism and Masochism into medical terminology in his work Neue Forschungen auf dem Gebiet der Psychopathia sexualis in 1890. In 1905, Sigmund Freud described sadism and masochism in his Drei Abhandlungen zur Sexualtheorie as stemming from aberrant psychological development from early childhood and he also laid the groundwork for the widely accepted medical perspective on the subject in the following decades. This led to the first compound usage of the terminology in Sado-Masochism by the Viennese Psychoanalyst Isidor Isaak Sadger in his work Über den sado-masochistischen Komplex in 1913, however, the term BDSM also includes, B&D, D/s, and S&M. The terms bondage and discipline usually refer to the use of physical or psychological restraint or punishment. Both terms were introduced to the field by German psychiatrist Richard von Krafft-Ebing in his 1886 compilation of case studies Psychopathia Sexualis. Pain and physical violence are not essential in Krafft-Ebings conception, and this observation is commonly verified in both literature and practice, many sadists and masochists define themselves as switchable—capable of taking pleasure in either role. However it has also argued that the concurrence of sadism and masochism in Freuds model should not be taken for granted. Freud introduced the terms primary and secondary masochism and this complete rejection is related to the death drive in Freuds psychoanalysis. In a secondary masochism, by contrast, the masochist experiences a less serious, more feigned rejection, secondary masochism, in other words, is the relatively casual version, more akin to a charade, and most commentators are quick to point out its contrivedness. In Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World, René Girard attempts to resuscitate and reinterpret Freuds distinction of primary and secondary masochism, both Krafft-Ebing and Freud assumed that sadism in men resulted from the distortion of the aggressive component of the male sexual instinct. Masochism in men, however, was seen as a more significant aberration, Freud doubted that masochism in men was ever a primary tendency, and speculated that it may exist only as a transformation of sadism
16.
Donkey
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The donkey or ass is a domesticated member of the horse family, Equidae. The wild ancestor of the donkey is the African wild ass, the donkey has been used as a working animal for at least 5000 years. There are more than 40 million donkeys in the world, mostly in underdeveloped countries, working donkeys are often associated with those living at or below subsistence levels. Small numbers of donkeys are kept for breeding or as pets in developed countries, a male donkey or ass is called a jack, a female a jenny or jennet, a young donkey is a foal. Jack donkeys are used to mate with female horses to produce mules. Asses were first domesticated around 3000 BC, probably in Egypt or Mesopotamia and they continue to fill important roles in many places today. While domesticated species are increasing in numbers, the African wild ass is an endangered species, as beasts of burden and companions, asses and donkeys have worked together with humans for millennia. Traditionally, the name for the donkey is Equus asinus asinus based on the principle of priority used for scientific names of animals. This means that the scientific name for the donkey is Equus africanus asinus when it is considered a subspecies. At one time, the ass was the more common term for the donkey. The first recorded use of donkey was in either 1784 or 1785, while the word ass has cognates in most other Indo-European languages, donkey is an etymologically obscure word for which no credible cognate has been identified. From the 18th century, donkey gradually replaced ass, and jenny replaced she-ass, by the end of the 17th century, changes in pronunciation of both ass and arse had caused them to become homophones. Donkeys vary considerably in size, depending on breed and management, the height at the withers ranges from 7.3 to 15.3 hands, and the weight from 80 to 480 kg. Working donkeys in the poorest countries have an expectancy of 12 to 15 years, in more prosperous countries. Donkeys are adapted to desert lands. Unlike wild and feral horses, wild donkeys in dry areas are solitary, each adult donkey establishes a home range, breeding over a large area may be dominated by one jack. Donkeys have large ears, which may pick up more distant sounds, donkeys can defend themselves by biting, striking with the front hooves or kicking with the hind legs. A jenny is normally pregnant for about 12 months, though the period varies from 11 to 14 months
17.
Ten Commandments
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The Ten Commandments, also known as the Decalogue, are a set of biblical principles relating to ethics and worship, which play a fundamental role in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Different religious groups follow different traditions for interpreting and numbering them, the Ten Commandments are listed twice in the Hebrew Bible, first at Exodus 20, 1–17, and then at Deuteronomy 5, 6–21. Both versions state that God inscribed them on two tablets, which he gave to Moses on Mount Sinai. Modern scholarship has found likely influences in Hittite and Mesopotamian laws and treaties, but is divided over exactly when the Ten Commandments were written and who wrote them. In biblical Hebrew, the Ten Commandments are called עשרת הדברים and in Rabbinical Hebrew עשרת הדברות, the Tyndale and Coverdale English translations used ten verses. The Geneva Bible used tenne commandements, which was followed by the Bishops Bible, Most major English versions use commandments. The stone tablets, as opposed to the commandments inscribed on them, are called לוחות הברית, Luchot HaBrit, the biblical narrative of the revelation at Sinai begins in Exodus 19 after the arrival of the children of Israel at Mount Sinai. The people were afraid to hear more and moved afar off, and Moses responded with Fear not. And the LORD said unto Moses, Come up to me into the mount, and be there, and I will give thee tablets of stone, and a law, and commandments which I have written, that thou mayest teach them. 13 And Moses rose up, and his minister Joshua, the mount was covered by the cloud for six days, and on the seventh day Moses went into the midst of the cloud and was in the mount forty days and forty nights. The passages in Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5 contain more than ten imperative statements, different religious traditions divide the seventeen verses of Exodus 20, 1–17 and their parallels at Deuteronomy 5, 4–21 into ten commandments or sayings in different ways, shown in the table below. Some suggest that the ten is a choice to aid memorization rather than a matter of theology. Traditions, LXX, Septuagint, generally followed by Orthodox Christians, P, Philo, same as the Septuagint, but with the prohibitions on killing and adultery reversed. S, Samaritan Pentateuch, with an additional commandment about Mount Gerizim as 10th, T, Jewish Talmud, makes the prologue the first saying or matter and combines the prohibition on worshiping deities other than Yahweh with the prohibition on idolatry. C, Catechism of the Catholic Church, largely follows Augustine, R, Reformed Christians follow John Calvins Institutes of the Christian Religion, which follows the Septuagint, this system is also used in the Anglican Book of Common Prayer. All scripture quotes above are from the King James Version, click on verses at top of columns for other versions. The Ten Commandments are written with room for varying interpretation, reflecting their role as a summary of fundamental principles and they are not as explicit or detailed as rules or many other biblical laws and commandments, because they provide guiding principles that apply universally, across changing circumstances. They do not specify punishments for their violation and their precise import must be worked out in each separate situation
18.
Cocktail shaker
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A cocktail shaker is a device used to mix beverages by shaking. When ice is put in the shaker this allows for a cooling of the drink before serving. A shaken cocktail is made by putting the ingredients in the cocktail shaker. Then it is shaken vigorously for around 5 to 10 seconds, depending upon the mixability of the ingredients and desired temperature. There are at least three varieties of cocktail shakers, The Boston Shaker, A two-piece shaker consisting of a 28 oz metal bottom, the mixing container and bottom are inserted into each other for shaking or used separately for stirring or muddling. A separate strainer, such as a Hawthorne or Julep strainer, are required for this type shaker if crushed ice is used, without such a strainer, some bartenders may instead strain by narrowly separating the two pieces after shaking and pouring the drink through the resulting gap. The market offers now 18 oz or 20 oz container versions too, the unit is the imperial fluid ounce that is about 28,4 ml, so the bottom is about 795 ml and the 16 oz container is about 454 ml. Beginning in the late 1870s and early 1880s, versions of the Boston Shaker appeared with the bottom piece containing integral strainer mechanisms. The Cobbler Shaker, A three-piece cocktail shaker that has tapers at the top and ends with a built-in strainer, the cap can often be used as a measure for spirits or other liquids. The French Shaker, A two-piece shaker consisting of a metal bottom, a strainer is always required for this type of shaker, barring the separation method mentioned above. The cocktail shaker can be traced to 7000 BCE in prehispanic Mexico and South America, in 1520, Cortés wrote to King Charles V of Spain of a drink made from cacao, served to Montezuma with much reverence, frothy and foaming from a golden cylinder. Egyptians as long ago as 3500 BCE added spices to their fermented grain concoctions before serving to them more palatable. Cocktail shaker skills and drink rituals became as important in the Jazz Age lifestyle as knowing the latest dance step and it was after prohibition however, that cocktail shakers really reached their zenith of popularity. They appeared in movies, and were associated with the lives of movie stars. Cocktail shakers became de rigueur symbols of sophistication and symbols of the good life, in 1941, the era of the cocktail shaker faltered seriously, as the United States entered World War II and all non-essential uses of metal were redirected towards the war effort. The same companies and equipment formerly used to manufacture cocktail shakers were used to make artillery shells, in the early 1950s cocktail shakers enjoyed a brief resurgence as soldiers familiar with them returned and became part of the housing boom featuring rec rooms with bars. By the mid-1860s, the use of a pair of tumblers to mix drinks was common practice, the patent history involves improvements on this practice, Shaken, not stirred Mixed drink Bergman, Andrew Were In The Money. An Idosyncratic Social History of The American Twenties NY G. P, putnams Sons Visakay, Stephen Vintage Bar Ware KY Collector Books,1997 Wilson, Pilgrim, Tashjian The Machine Age In America 1918 –1941 Brooklyn Museum, Abrams, NY,1986 Khachadovrian, Simon
19.
Death's-head hawkmoth
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The name deaths-head hawkmoth refers to any one of the three moth species of the genus Acherontia. The former species is primarily in Europe, the latter two are Asian, most uses of the common name refer to the European species. These moths are easily distinguishable by the vaguely human skull-shaped pattern of markings on the thorax, all three species are fairly similar in size, coloration, and life cycle. These moths have several unusual features, all three species have the ability to emit a loud squeak if irritated. The sound is produced by expelling air from the pharynx, often accompanied by flashing of the brightly colored abdomen in a attempt to deter predators. All three species are commonly observed raiding beehives of different species of honey bee for honey, A. atropos only attacks colonies of the well-known Western honey bee and they can move about in hives without being disturbed because they mimic the scent of the bees. Eggs are laid singly under old leaves of a host plant and are green or grey-blue, none of the three species is restricted to a single family of host plant, hosts are typically of the families Solanaceae, Verbenaceae, Oleaceae, Bignoniaceae, and others. The larvae are stout, reaching 120–130 mm, with a prominent tail horn, all three species have three larval color forms, typically, green, brown, and yellow. Larvae do not move much, and will click their mandibles or even bite if threatened, when mature, they burrow underground and excavate a small chamber where they pupate. The moths sharp, mouse-like squeaking intensify the effect and they are also mentioned in Chapter 21 of Bram Stokers Dracula, where Dracula has been sending moths for Renfield to consume. Though rarer, it is occasionally sighted in the country to this day. Edgar Allan Poes short story The Sphinx describes an encounter with a deaths-headed sphinx moth, describing it as the genus Sphinx. The moth plays a role in the 2015 Taiwanese horror film The Tag-Along. The species names atropos, lachesis and styx are all from Greek myth, in addition the genus name Acherontia is derived from Acheron, a river of Greek myth that was said to be a branch of the river Styx. A. atropos detailed information A. styx styx detailed information A. lachesis detailed information 12 Facts About Deaths Head Hawkmoth
20.
Jean Epstein
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Jean Epstein was a French filmmaker, film theorist, literary critic, and novelist. He is often associated with French Impressionist Cinema and the concept of photogénie, Epstein was born in Warsaw, Kingdom of Poland to a French-Jewish father and Polish mother. After his father died in 1908, the relocated to Switzerland. While in Lyon, Epstein served as a secretary and translator for Auguste Lumière, Epstein started directing his own films in 1922 with Pasteur, followed by LAuberge rouge and Coeur fidèle. Film director Luis Buñuel worked as an assistant director to Epstein on Mauprat, Epsteins criticism appeared in the early modernist journal LEsprit Nouveau. He wrote the scenario in a single night, the later scenes of the film are relatively conventional in the techniques employed and depend more upon situation and action than upon photography and processing of the images. In the 1920s, Epsteins works would display influences from German Expressionism, Epstein also made several documentaries about Brittany. These include Finis Terræ filmed in Ouessant, Mor vran filmed in Sein, LOr des mers filmed in Hoëdic, chanson dArmor is known as the first Breton-speaking film in history. His two novels also take place in Breton isles, LOr des mers in Ouessant and Les Recteurs et la sirène in Sein. In August 2005, his films The Three-Sided Mirror and Le Tempestaire were restored and re-released on the DVD collection Avant-Garde, Epstein died in 1953 from a cerebral hemorrhage. La Poésie daujourdhui, un nouvel état dintelligence, Écrits sur le cinéma, 1921-1953, édition chronologique en deux volumes. La chute de la maison Usher, LAvant scène du cinéma, Avant-Garde, Experimental Cinema of the 1920s and 1930s This article draws in part on the fr, Jean Epstein article in the French-language Wikipedia, which was accessed in the version of April 6,2010. Vincent Guigueno, Jean Epstein, cinéaste des îles, prosper Hillairet, Cœur fidèle de Jean Epstein. Sarah Keller and Jason N. Paul, eds, Jean Epstein, Critical Essays and New Translations. Stuart Liebman, Jean Epstein’s Early Film Theory, 1920-1922, phD Dissertation, New York University,1980. Trond Lundemo, Jean Epstein, intelligensen hos en maskin, christophe Wall-Romana, Jean Epstein, Corporeal Cinema and Film Philosophy. Nicole Brenez, Ralph Eue, Bonjour Cinéma und andere Schriften zum Kino, filmmuseumSynemaPublikationen, Vienna 2008, ISBN 978-3-901644-25-2 Jean Epstein at the Internet Movie Database Jean Epstein at Allmovie Le Cinéma du diable
21.
Symbol
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A symbol is a mark, sign, or word that indicates, signifies, or is understood as representing an idea, object, or relationship. Symbols allow people to go beyond what is known or seen by creating linkages between otherwise very different concepts and experiences, all communication is achieved through the use of symbols. Symbols take the form of words, sounds, gestures, ideas or visual images and are used to other ideas. For example, a red octagon may be a symbol for STOP, on a map, a blue line might represent a river. Alphabetic letters may be symbols for sounds, personal names are symbols representing individuals. A red rose may symbolize love and compassion, the variable x, in a mathematical equation, may symbolize the position of a particle in space. In cartography, a collection of symbols forms a legend for a map The word derives from the Greek symbolon meaning token or watchword. It is an amalgam of syn- together + bole a throwing, a casting, the sense evolution in Greek is from throwing things together to contrasting to comparing to token used in comparisons to determine if something is genuine. The meaning something which stands for something else was first recorded in 1590, later, expanding on what he means by this definition Campbell says, a symbol, like everything else, shows a double aspect. We must distinguish, therefore between the sense and the meaning of the symbol. The term meaning can only to the first two but these, today, are in the charge of science – which is the province as we have said, not of symbols. The ineffable, the unknowable, can be only sensed. Heinrich Zimmer gives an overview of the nature, and perennial relevance. Concepts and words are symbols, just as visions, rituals, through all of these a transcendent reality is mirrored. They are so many metaphors reflecting and implying something which, though thus variously expressed, is ineffable, though thus rendered multiform, Symbols hold the mind to truth but are not themselves the truth, hence it is delusory to borrow them. Each civilisation, every age, must bring forth its own, in the book Signs and Symbols, it is stated that A symbol. Is a visual image or sign representing an idea -- a deeper indicator of a universal truth, Symbols are a means of complex communication that often can have multiple levels of meaning. This separates symbols from signs, as signs have only one meaning, human cultures use symbols to express specific ideologies and social structures and to represent aspects of their specific culture
22.
Le Havre
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Le Havre is an urban French commune and city in the Seine-Maritime department in the Normandy region of northwestern France. It is situated on the bank of the estuary of the river Seine on the Channel southwest of the Pays de Caux. Modern Le Havre remains deeply influenced by its employment and maritime traditions and its port is the second largest in France, after that of Marseille, for total traffic, and the largest French container port. The name Le Havre means the harbour or the port and its inhabitants are known as Havrais or Havraises. Administratively the commune is located in the Normandy region and, with Dieppe, is one of the two sub-prefectures of the Seine-Maritime department, Le Havre is the capital of the canton and since 1974 has been the see of the diocese of Le Havre. Le Havre is the most populous commune of Upper Normandy, although the population of the greater Le Havre conurbation is smaller than that of Rouen. It is also the second largest subprefecture in France, the city and port were founded by the King Francis I of France in 1517. Economic development in the Early modern period was hampered by wars, conflicts with the English, epidemics. It was from the end of the 18th century that Le Havre started growing, after the 1944 bombings the firm of Auguste Perret began to rebuild the city in concrete. Changes in years 1990–2000 were numerous, the right won the municipal elections and committed the city to the path of reconversion, seeking to develop the service sector and new industries. The Port 2000 project increased the capacity to compete with ports of northern Europe, transformed the southern districts of the city. In 2005 UNESCO inscribed the city of Le Havre as a World Heritage Site. The André Malraux Modern Art Museum is the second of France for the number of impressionist paintings, the city has been awarded two flowers by the National Council of Towns and Villages in Bloom in the Competition of cities and villages in Bloom. Le Havre is a major French city located some 50 kilometres west of Rouen on the shore of the English Channel, numerous roads link to Le Havre with the main access roads being the A29 autoroute from Amiens and the A13 autoroute from Paris linking to the A131 autoroute. Administratively, Le Havre is a commune in the Haute-Normandie region in the west of the department of Seine-Maritime, the urban area of Le Havre corresponds roughly to the territory of the Agglomeration community of Le Havre which includes 17 communes and 250,000 people. It occupies the tip of the natural region of Pays de Caux where it is the largest city. Le Havre is sandwiched between the coast of the Channel from south-west to north-west and the estuary of the Seine to the south, Le Havre belongs to the MLG community Paris Basin which was formed in the Mesozoic period. The Paris Basin consists of sedimentary rocks, the commune of Le Havre consists of two areas separated by a natural cliff edge, one part in the lower part of the town to the south including the harbour, the city centre and the suburbs
23.
Paris
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Paris is the capital and most populous city of France. It has an area of 105 square kilometres and a population of 2,229,621 in 2013 within its administrative limits, the agglomeration has grown well beyond the citys administrative limits. By the 17th century, Paris was one of Europes major centres of finance, commerce, fashion, science, and the arts, and it retains that position still today. The aire urbaine de Paris, a measure of area, spans most of the Île-de-France region and has a population of 12,405,426. It is therefore the second largest metropolitan area in the European Union after London, the Metropole of Grand Paris was created in 2016, combining the commune and its nearest suburbs into a single area for economic and environmental co-operation. Grand Paris covers 814 square kilometres and has a population of 7 million persons, the Paris Region had a GDP of €624 billion in 2012, accounting for 30.0 percent of the GDP of France and ranking it as one of the wealthiest regions in Europe. The city is also a rail, highway, and air-transport hub served by two international airports, Paris-Charles de Gaulle and Paris-Orly. Opened in 1900, the subway system, the Paris Métro. It is the second busiest metro system in Europe after Moscow Metro, notably, Paris Gare du Nord is the busiest railway station in the world outside of Japan, with 262 millions passengers in 2015. In 2015, Paris received 22.2 million visitors, making it one of the top tourist destinations. The association football club Paris Saint-Germain and the rugby union club Stade Français are based in Paris, the 80, 000-seat Stade de France, built for the 1998 FIFA World Cup, is located just north of Paris in the neighbouring commune of Saint-Denis. Paris hosts the annual French Open Grand Slam tennis tournament on the red clay of Roland Garros, Paris hosted the 1900 and 1924 Summer Olympics and is bidding to host the 2024 Summer Olympics. The name Paris is derived from its inhabitants, the Celtic Parisii tribe. Thus, though written the same, the name is not related to the Paris of Greek mythology. In the 1860s, the boulevards and streets of Paris were illuminated by 56,000 gas lamps, since the late 19th century, Paris has also been known as Panam in French slang. Inhabitants are known in English as Parisians and in French as Parisiens and they are also pejoratively called Parigots. The Parisii, a sub-tribe of the Celtic Senones, inhabited the Paris area from around the middle of the 3rd century BC. One of the areas major north-south trade routes crossed the Seine on the île de la Cité, this place of land and water trade routes gradually became a town
24.
Billancourt Studios
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Billancourt Studios was a film studio in Paris which operated between 1922 and 1992. It was one of the leading French studios and it was founded in the silent era by Henri Diamant-Berger. During the Second World War the studio was used by Continental Films, behind the Screen, Inside European Production Cultures
25.
Special effect
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Special effects are illusions or visual tricks used in the film, television, theatre, video game, and simulator industries to simulate the imagined events in a story or virtual world. Special effects are divided into the categories of optical effects. Mechanical effects are usually accomplished during the live-action shooting and this includes the use of mechanized props, scenery, scale models, animatronics, pyrotechnics and atmospheric effects, creating physical wind, rain, fog, snow, clouds, etc. Making a car appear to drive by itself and blowing up a building are examples of mechanical effects, mechanical effects are often incorporated into set design and makeup. For example, a set may be built with doors or walls to enhance a fight scene. An optical effect might be used to place actors or sets against a different background, since the 1990s, computer generated imagery has come to the forefront of special effects technologies. It gives filmmakers greater control, and allows many effects to be accomplished safely and convincingly and—as technology improves—at lower costs. As a result, many optical and mechanical effects techniques have been superseded by CGI, in 1857, Oscar Rejlander created the worlds first special effects movie by combining different sections of 30 negatives into a single image. In 1895, Alfred Clark created what is accepted as the first-ever motion picture special effect. While filming a reenactment of the beheading of Mary, Queen of Scots, as the executioner brought the axe above his head, Clark stopped the camera, had all of the actors freeze, and had the person playing Mary step off the set. He placed a Mary dummy in the place, restarted filming. Techniques like these would dominate the production of special effects for a century and it wasnt only the first use of trickery in cinema, it was also the first type of photographic trickery only possible in a motion picture, i. e. the stop trick. Georges Méliès accidentally discovered the same stop trick, according to Méliès, his camera jammed while filming a street scene in Paris. When he screened the film, he found that the trick had caused a truck to turn into a hearse, pedestrians to change direction. Because of his ability to manipulate and transform reality with the cinematograph. From 1910 to 1920, the innovations in special effects were the improvements on the matte shot by Norman Dawn. With the original matte shot, pieces of cardboard were placed to block the exposure of the film, Dawn combined this technique with the glass shot. Rather than using cardboard to block certain areas of the film exposure, from the partially exposed film, a single frame is then projected onto an easel, where the matte is then drawn
26.
Moviola
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A Moviola is a device that allows a film editor to view a film while editing. It was the first machine for motion picture editing when it was invented by Iwan Serrurier in 1924, the Moviola company is still in existence and is located in Hollywood where part of the facility is located on one of the original Moviola factory floors. Iwan Serruriers original 1917 concept for the Moviola was as a movie projector to be sold to the general public. The name was derived from the name Victrola since Serrurier thought his invention would do for home movie viewing what the Victrola did for home music listening, however, since the machine cost $600 in 1920, very few sold. An editor at Douglas Fairbanks Studios suggested that Iwan should adapt the device for use by film editors, Serrurier did this and the Moviola as an editing device was born in 1924 with the first Moviola being sold to Douglas Fairbanks himself. Ninety four years later, a copy of the original receipt still resides at Moviola. Many studios quickly adopted the Moviola including Universal Studios, Warner Brothers, Charles Chaplin Studios, Buster Keaton Productions, Mary Pickford, Mack Sennett, and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The advent of sound, 65mm and 70mm film, and the need for portable editing equipment during World War II greatly expanded the market for Moviolas products, Iwan Serruriers son, Mark Serrurier, took over his fathers company in 1946. In 1966, Mark sold Moviola Co. to Magnasync Corporation of North Hollywood for $3 million, combining the names, the new name was Magnasync/Moviola Corp. President L. S. Wayman instantly ordered a tripling of production, Wayman retired in 1981, and Moviola Co. was sold to J&R Film Co. Inc. in 1984. The Moviola allowed editors to study individual shots in their cutting rooms, the vertically oriented Moviolas were the standard for film editing in the United States until the 1970s, when horizontal flatbed editor systems became more common. Nevertheless, a few very high-profile filmmakers continue to prefer the Moviola, one such editor is Michael Kahn, who received an Academy Award nomination for Best Film Editing in 2005 for his work on Steven Spielbergs Munich, which he edited with a Moviola. Kahn eventually convinced Spielberg to use Avid for all his current film work, beginning with The Adventures of Tintin in 2011, Mark Serrurier accepted an Academy Award of Merit for himself and his father for the Moviola in 1979. To MARK SERRURIER for the development of the Moviola from the 1924 invention of his father, Iwan Serrurier. There is a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for Mark Serrurier because of the Moviolas contribution to Motion Pictures, flatbed editor Steenbeck Moviola. com – What is the Moviola story. City-net. com INDUSTRY MOURNS ENTREPRENEUR MARK SERRURIER, by Denise Abbott Biography of Mark Serrurier who took over the company from his father Iwan in 1945
27.
Tout-Paris
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Le Tout-Paris is a French expression referring to the fashionable and affluent elite of the city, who frequent fashionable events and places, and establish trends in upper-class culture. It is equivalent to the jet set elsewhere, the expression tout-Paris was used in the 17th century to refer to high society among the aristocratic inhabitants of the city of Paris. Voltaire and Jean le Rond DAlembert also used the expression in their correspondence, the current use of the expression tout-Paris dates from the Belle Epoque era of 19th century Paris. A group made up of writers, politicians, bankers and prominent artists, this community lived in fashionable neighbourhoods, went to the theatre, and attended receptions at embassies. It also embodied a certain idea of Parisians good taste, setting trends with its pastimes, such as horse racing, the activities of Tout-Paris were noted in the mass media. Josselin de Rohan, Mme Madeleine Lemaire, M. Marcel Proust et M. Reynaldo Hahn, during the Belle Époque, Tout-Paris became a sort of club with its own rules. In 1901 the Annuaire du Tout Paris appeared, counting writer Marcel Proust among its most devoted readers, created in 1903, the Bottin mondain in fact presented only a list of Parisian personalities. Their attendance is covered at events such as concerts, galas, premiers, art gallery vernissages, with global travel and fashion, it is often used interchangeably with the global jet set of trendsetters. Belle Epoque Culture of Paris Fame in the 20th century Jet set Paris Match Françoise Giroud, Françoise Giroud vous présente le Tout-Paris, Gallimard,1952
28.
Pablo Picasso
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Pablo Ruiz y Picasso, also known as Pablo Picasso, was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, stage designer, poet and playwright who spent most of his adult life in France. Picasso demonstrated extraordinary artistic talent in his years, painting in a naturalistic manner through his childhood. During the first decade of the 20th century, his style changed as he experimented with different theories, techniques, Picassos work is often categorized into periods. Much of Picassos work of the late 1910s and early 1920s is in a neoclassical style and his later work often combines elements of his earlier styles. Ruiz y Picasso were included for his father and mother, respectively, born in the city of Málaga in the Andalusian region of Spain, he was the first child of Don José Ruiz y Blasco and María Picasso y López. His mother was of one quarter Italian descent, from the territory of Genoa, though baptized a Catholic, Picasso would later on become an atheist. Picassos family was of middle-class background and his father was a painter who specialized in naturalistic depictions of birds and other game. For most of his life Ruiz was a professor of art at the School of Crafts, Picasso showed a passion and a skill for drawing from an early age. According to his mother, his first words were piz, piz, a shortening of lápiz, from the age of seven, Picasso received formal artistic training from his father in figure drawing and oil painting. Ruiz was an academic artist and instructor, who believed that proper training required disciplined copying of the masters. His son became preoccupied with art to the detriment of his classwork, the family moved to A Coruña in 1891, where his father became a professor at the School of Fine Arts. On one occasion, the father found his son painting over his sketch of a pigeon. In 1895, Picasso was traumatized when his sister, Conchita. After her death, the moved to Barcelona, where Ruiz took a position at its School of Fine Arts. Picasso thrived in the city, regarding it in times of sadness or nostalgia as his true home, Ruiz persuaded the officials at the academy to allow his son to take an entrance exam for the advanced class. This process often took students a month, but Picasso completed it in a week, the student lacked discipline but made friendships that would affect him in later life. His father rented a room for him close to home so he could work alone, yet he checked up on him numerous times a day. Picassos father and uncle decided to send the young artist to Madrids Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, at age 16, Picasso set off for the first time on his own, but he disliked formal instruction and stopped attending classes soon after enrolment
29.
Le Corbusier
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Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, known as Le Corbusier, was a Swiss-French architect, designer, painter, urban planner, writer, and one of the pioneers of what is now called modern architecture. He was born in Switzerland and became a French citizen in 1930 and his career spanned five decades, he constructed buildings in Europe, Japan, India, and North and South America. Le Corbusier prepared the plan for the city of Chandigarh in India. On July 17,2016, seventeen projects by Le Corbusier in seven countries were inscribed in the list of UNESCO World Heritage sites as an Outstanding Contribution to the Modern Movement and it was an industrial town, devoted to the manufacture of watches. His father was an artisan who enameled boxes and watches, while his mother gave piano lessons and his elder brother Albert was an amateur violinist. He attended a kindergarten that used Fröbelian methods, like his contemporaries Frank Lloyd Wright and Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier did not have formal academic training as an architect. He was attracted to the arts and at the age of fifteen he entered the municipal art school in La-Chaux-de-Fonds which taught the applied arts connected with watchmaking. Three years later he attended the course of decoration, founded by the painter Charles LEplattenier. Le Corbusier wrote later that LEplattenier had made him a man of the woods and his father took him frequently into the mountains around the town. He wrote later, we were constantly on mountaintops, we grew accustomed to a vast horizon and his architecture teacher in the Art School was the architect René Chapallaz, who had a large influence on Le Corbusiers earliest house designs. However, he reported later that it was the art teacher LEplattenier who made him choose architecture, I had a horror of architecture and architects, he wrote. I was sixteen, I accepted the verdict and I obeyed. Le Corbusier began teaching himself by going to the library to read about architecture and philosophy, by visiting museums, by sketching buildings, located on the forested hillside near Chaux-de-fonds. It was a chalet with a steep roof in the local alpine style. The success of this led to his construction of two similar houses, the Villas Jacquemet and Stotzer, in the same area. In Florence, he visited the Florence Charterhouse in Galluzzo, which made an impression on him. I would have liked to live in one of what they called their cells and it was the solution for a unique kind of workers housing, or rather for a terrestrial paradise. In 1911, he traveled again for five months, this time he journeyed to the Balkans and visited Serbia, Bulgaria, Turkey, Greece, as well as Pompeii and Rome. Filling nearly 80 sketchbooks with renderings of what he saw—including many sketches of the Parthenon and he spoke of what he saw during this trip in many of his books, and it was the subject of his last book, Le Voyage dOrient
30.
Jean Cocteau
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Jean Maurice Eugène Clément Cocteau was a French writer, designer, playwright, artist and filmmaker. Cocteau is best known for his novel Les Enfants Terribles, and the films Blood of a Poet, Les Parents Terribles, Beauty and the Beast and Orpheus. Cocteau was born in Maisons-Laffitte, Yvelines, a town near Paris, to Georges Cocteau and his wife, Eugénie Lecomte and his father was a lawyer and amateur painter who committed suicide when Cocteau was nine. From 1900–1904, Cocteau attended the Lycée Condorcet where he met and he published his first volume of poems, Aladdins Lamp, at nineteen. Cocteau soon became known in Bohemian artistic circles as The Frivolous Prince, edith Wharton described him as a man to whom every great line of poetry was a sunrise, every sunset the foundation of the Heavenly City. In his early twenties, Cocteau became associated with the writers Marcel Proust, André Gide, in 1912, he collaborated with Léon Bakst on Le Dieu bleu for the Ballets Russes, the principal dancers being Tamara Karsavina and Vaslav Nijinsky. During World War I Cocteau served in the Red Cross as an ambulance driver and this was the period in which he met the poet Guillaume Apollinaire, artists Pablo Picasso and Amedeo Modigliani, and numerous other writers and artists with whom he later collaborated. Russian impresario Sergei Diaghilev persuaded Cocteau to write a scenario for a ballet and it was produced by Diaghilev, with sets by Picasso, the libretto by Apollinaire and the music by Erik Satie. The piece was expanded into a full opera, with music by Satie, Francis Poulenc. If it had not been for Apollinaire in uniform, wrote Cocteau, with his skull shaved, the scar on his temple and he denied being a Surrealist or being in any way attached to the movement. Cocteau wrote the libretto for Igor Stravinskys opera-oratorio Oedipus rex, which had its performance in the Théâtre Sarah Bernhardt in Paris on 30 May 1927. An important exponent of avant-garde art, Cocteau had great influence on the work of others, in the early twenties, he and other members of Les six frequented a wildly popular bar named Le Boeuf sur le Toit, a name that Cocteau himself had a hand in picking. The popularity was due in no small measure to the presence of Cocteau, in 1918 he met the French poet Raymond Radiguet. They collaborated extensively, socialized, and undertook many journeys and vacations together, Cocteau also got Radiguet exempted from military service. Some contemporaries and later commentators thought there might have been a component to their friendship. Cocteau himself was aware of this perception, and worked earnestly to dispel the notion that their relationship was sexual in nature, there is disagreement over Cocteaus reaction to Radiguets sudden death in 1923, with some claiming that it left him stunned, despondent and prey to opium addiction. Opponents of that point out that he did not attend the funeral. Cocteau himself much later characterised his reaction as one of stupor and his opium addiction at the time, Cocteau said, was only coincidental, due to a chance meeting with Louis Laloy, the administrator of the Monte Carlo Opera
31.
Georges Auric
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Georges Auric was a French composer, born in Lodève, Hérault. He was considered one of Les Six, a group of artists associated with Jean Cocteau. Before he turned 20 he had orchestrated and written music for several ballets. He also had a career as a film composer. Georges Auric began his career at a young age, performing a piano recital at the Société Musicale Indépendante at the age of 2. Several songs that he had written were then performed in the year by Société Nationale de Musique. Along with his early successes professionally, Auric studied music at the Paris Conservatoire, as well as composition with Vincent dIndy at the Schola Cantorum de Paris and Albert Roussel. Having gained recognition as a child prodigy both in composition and piano performance, he became a protégé of Erik Satie during the following decade. During the 1910s and 20s, he was a significant contributor of avant-garde music in Paris and was influenced by Cocteau. Aurics early compositions were marked by a reaction against the musical establishment, because of this and his association with Cocteau and Satie, Auric was grouped into Les Six by music critic Henri Collet, and was friends with the artist Jean Hugo. His participation led to writing settings of poetry and other texts as songs, along with the other five composers, he contributed a piece to LAlbum des Six. In 1921, Cocteau asked him to write the music for his ballet and he found himself short of time, so he asked his fellow composers of Les Six to contribute some music. During this time, he wrote his one-act opera Sous le masque and it was also in 1927 that he contributed the Rondeau for the childrens ballet LÉventail de Jeanne, a collaboration between ten French composers. In 1952 he participated in yet another collaboration, the set of orchestral variations La Guirlande de Campra, Aurics later development as a populist composer was prefigured by many of the techniques and ideals of Les Six, especially the use of popular music and situations. Music of the circus or the hall played a significant role in the music of Les Six. However, Les Six soon drew apart, with Auric and others taking different approaches to their art, following his early successes as an avant-garde composer, Auric went through a transitional period during the 1930s. He began writing for film in 1930 and composed the music for A Nous, la Liberté. in 1931, the film itself was criticized for supposed communist or anarchist themes, but there was general approval of Aurics score for the film. While he was beginning a career as a film composer, his music went through a period of stagnation
32.
Georges Sadoul
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Georges Sadoul was a French journalist and cinema writer. Once a surrealist, he became a communist in 1932 and he was a journalist of the Lettres Françaises. He is the author of lHistoire générale du cinéma, a work on world cinema. He produced an important work on the filmmaker Georges Méliès and he was trained at the Sorbonne and the IDHEC, a French cinema school. He is known for writing encyclopedias of film and filmmakers, many of which have translated into English. He died in Paris at the age of sixty three, linvention du cinéma, Denoël,1946 Histoire générale du cinéma. Les pionniers du cinéma, Denoël, 1950-1975 Histoire générale du cinéma, le cinéma devient un art - Lavant-guerre, Denoël, 1950-1975 Histoire générale du cinéma. Le cinéma devient un art - La première guerre mondiale, Denoël, lArt muet - Laprès-guerre en Europe, Denoël, 1950-1975 Histoire générale du cinéma. LArt muet - Hollywood - La fin du muet, Denoël, lépoque contemporaine - 1/Le cinéma pendant la guerre, Denoël,1946, rééd
33.
Marie-Laure de Noailles
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She and her husband financed Rays film Les Mystères du Château de Dé, Poulencs Aubade, Buñuel and Dalís film LÂge dOr, and Cocteaus The Blood of a Poet. One of her 3x-great-grandfathers was the Marquis de Sade, and her grandmother, Laure de Sade, Countess de Chevigné. Her nephew, Philippe Lannes de Montebello, was the director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City and her stepfather was the French playwright Francis de Croisset, and her former sister-in-law, Jacqueline de Croisset, became the third wife of actor Yul Brynner. In 1923, after a romance with the artist Jean Cocteau, Marie-Laure Bischoffsheim married Charles. He was a son of François Joseph Eugène Napoléon de Noailles and his older brother was the 6th Duc de Mouchy, father of Philippe François Armand Marie de Noailles, himself a cadet of the French ducal house of Noailles. Marie-Laure de Noailles and her husband moved to the fabled hôtel particulier at 11 Place des États-Unis in Paris and its interiors, which were redecorated in the 1920s by French minimalist designer Jean-Michel Frank, vanished in the 1980s, due to a subsequent owners redecoration and remodeling. In 1936, she acquired Wolfgang Paalen´s object Chaise envahie de Lierre in André Breton´s Galerie Gradiva, today the interiors have been renovated by Philippe Starck and house the Musée Baccarat and the headquarters of Baccarat, the crystal company. In the 1920s, the Noailles built the Villa Noailles near Hyères and she had an affair with the young Igor Markevitch. In the 1950s she had an affair with the surrealist painter Óscar Domínguez. Duke of Noailles Marie-Laure de Noailles at the Internet Movie Database An Online Gotha, Noailles showing the Noailles family genealogy
34.
L'Age d'Or
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The screenplay is by Salvador Dalí and Buñuel. LAge dOr was one of the first sound films made in France, along with Prix de Beauté, the mans penchant for committing social taboos, like making love in the mud during a religious ceremony and slapping her mother, seems to excite the woman. He stumbles away from the father and daughter kiss to her bedroom where he throws a tree, a bishop, a plow, the bishops staff. Afterwards, a scream is heard, and only the Duc re-emerges. The concluding image is a crucifix festooned with the scalps of women, to the accompaniment of jovial music, LAge dOr included actors who were famous artists, such as Max Ernst and Josep Llorens Artigas. Upon receiving a cinematic exhibition permit from the Board of Censors, LAge dOr had its premiere presentation at Studio 28, Paris, on 29 November 1930. Later, on 3 December 1930, the popular success of the film provoked attacks by the right-wing Ligue des Patriotes, whose angry viewers took umbrage at the story told by Buñuel. The reactionary French Patriots interrupted the screening by throwing ink at the cinema screen and they then went to the lobby and destroyed art works by Dalí, Joan Miró, Man Ray, Yves Tanguy, and others. On 10 December 1930, the Prefect of Police of Paris, Jean Chiappe, a contemporary right-wing Spanish newspaper published a condemnation of the film and of Buñuel and Dalí, which described the content of the film as “. the most repulsive corruption of our age. The new poison which Judaism, Masonry, and rabid, revolutionary sectarianism want to use in order to corrupt the people”, forty-nine years later, from 1–15 November 1979, the film had its legal U. S. premiere at the Roxie Cinema in San Francisco. Film critic Ado Kyrou said that the five vignettes of the tale of LAge dOr correspond to the five sections of the tail of the scorpion, today, LAge dOr is widely regarded as one of the key works of surrealist cinema. In the British Film Institutes 2012 Sight & Sound polls,15 critics, ed Gonzalez of Slant analyzed the films sound design in relation to his argument that Buñuels overriding message is the ability of love to conquer all sorts of moral restraints. Rotten Tomatoes reports a rating of 8. 8/10 among 25 critics. The aggregation site They Shoot Pictures, Dont They has since found LAge dOr to be the 120th most acclaimed film ever made, LAge dOr at the Internet Movie Database LAge dOr at AllMovie LAge dOr at Rotten Tomatoes
35.
Paris Police Prefecture
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It is headed by the Prefect of Police. It is also in charge of emergency services, such as the Paris Fire Brigade, the Prefecture of Police also has limited security duties in the wider Île-de-France région. The prefecture is a building located in the Place Louis Lépine on the Île de la Cité. This building was built as a barracks for the Garde républicaine from 1863 to 1867 and was occupied by the Prefecture in 1871, as it is the capital of France, with government assemblies and offices and foreign embassies, Paris poses special issues of security and public order. Consequently, the government has been responsible for providing law enforcement. Disbanded at the start of the French Revolution in 1789, it was replaced by the current Prefecture of Police created by Napoléon I on February 17,1800. This means that Paris does not have its own police municipale, in Parisian slang, the police are sometimes known as the archers, a very old slang term in reference to the archers of the long-defunct Royal Watch. The jurisdiction of the Prefecture of Police was initially the Seine département and its jurisdiction also included the communes of Saint-Cloud, Sèvres, Meudon, and Enghien-les-Bains, which were located in the Seine-et-Oise département. These four communes were added in the 19th century to the jurisdiction of the Prefecture of Police in order to ensure protection of the imperial/royal residences located there. This territory made up of four départements is larger than the pre-1968 Seine département, the Prefecture of Police also has limited jurisdiction over the whole Île-de-France région for the coordination of law enforcement. As such, he coordinates the work of the departmental préfets of Île-de-France, the Prefect of Police can issue arrêtés defining rules pertaining to his field of competency. For instance, the rules of operation and security of Paris public parks are issued as joint arrêtés from the Mayor of Paris, the current Prefect of Police is Bernard Boucault. Until 1977, Paris had indeed no mayor and the police was essentially in the hands of the préfet de police. However, the powers of the mayor of Paris were increased at the expense of those of the Préfet de Police in 2002, notably for traffic and parking decisions. There is also a prefect of Paris, prefect for the region, whose services handle some tasks not devoted to the Police Prefect. Place Louis Lépine,1 rue de Lutèce,75004 Paris Tel,0154735373,0153715371,0140797979, the Prefecture of Police is divided into three sub-prefectures headed by prefects due to their importance. With four Administrative Directorates, General Police-Administrative police duties Medico-Legal Institute Traffic, Transport, veterinary Service Human Resources - Personnel, budget, equipment and police labor disputes. The office vanished at the start of the French Revolution and police was vested in the hands of the Paris Commune, reorganized by Napoléon Bonaparte in 1800, the Paris Police has been headed by the préfet de police since that time
36.
Self-immolation
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Self-immolation is an act of killing oneself as a sacrifice. Self-immolation is often used as a form of protest or for the purposes of martyrdom and it has centuries-long traditions in some cultures, while in modern times it has become a type of radical political protest. The English word immolation originally meant killing a victim, sacrifice and came to figuratively mean destruction. Its etymology was from Latin immolare to sprinkle with sacrificial meal, Self-immolation setting oneself on fire, especially as a form of protest was first recorded in Lady Morgans France. This term is derived from the Japanese word bonzō for a priest or monk, certain warrior cultures, such as those of the Charans and Rajputs, also practiced self-immolation. In the Sibi Jataka, King Śibi, or Shibi, was renowned for unselfishness, and the gods Śakra and Vishvakarman tested him by transforming into a hawk, the dove fell on the kings lap while trying to escape the hawk, and sought refuge. Rather than surrender the dove, Śibi offered his own flesh equivalent in weight to the dove, and the hawk agreed. They had rigged the balance scale, and King Śibi continued cutting off his flesh until half his body was gone, when the gods revealed themselves, restored his body, the Bodhisattva Medicine King chapter of the Lotus Sutra was associated with auto-cremation. The Lotus Sutra describes the Bodhisattva Sarvarupasamdarsana drinking scented oils, wrapping his body in an oil-soaked cloth, and burning himself as an offering to the Buddha. His body flamed for 1,200 years, he was reincarnated, burned off his forearms for 72,000 years, which enabled many to achieve enlightenment, Self-immolation has a long history in Chinese Buddhism. The relevant terms are, wangshen Chinese, 亡身 lose the body or Chinese, 忘身 forget the body, yishen Chinese, 遺身 abandon the body, james A. Benn explains the semantic range of Chinese Buddhist self-immolation. The monk Fayu 法羽 carried out the earliest recorded Chinese self-immolation and he first informed the illegitimate prince Yao Xu 姚緒—brother of Yao Chang who founded the non-Chinese Qiang state Later Qin —that he intended to burn himself alive. Yao tried to dissuade Fayu, but he publicly swallowed incense chips, wrapped his body in oiled cloth, the religious and lay witnesses were described as being full of grief and admiration. Following Fayus example, many Buddhist monks and nuns have used self-immolation for political purposes, for example, Daoxuans Xu Gaoseng Zhuan records five monastics who self-immolated on the Zhongnan Mountains in response to the 574–577 persecution of Buddhism by Emperor Wu of Northern Zhou. While self-immolation practices in China were based upon Indian Buddhist traditions, burning off fingers was a kind of gradual self-immolation, often in commemoration of relics or textual recitations. The Tang Dynasty monk Wuran 無染 had a vision in which Manjusri told him to support the Buddhist community on Mount Wutai. After organizing meals for one million monks, Wuran burned off a finger in sacrifice, xichen 息塵 became a favorite of Emperor Gaozu of Later Jin for practicing finger burning to memorialize sutra recitions. Buddhist mummies refers to monks and nuns who practiced self-mummification through extreme self-mortification, for instance, spontaneous human combustion was a rare form of self-immolation that Buddhists associated with samādhi consciously leaving ones body at the time of enlightenment
