Word: givens
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...fact, the government has undertaken such an ambitious investment and development program that, given their failure to achieve marked increases in labor productivity, a labor shortage has actually been created. To help relieve it, during the harvest season people who normally work at, say, office jobs or in factories, go out to the fields in the voluntary labor program...
...Given this critique, Cubans reject the capitalist system of production as a way to organize society. They base their strategy--their vision of the role of work in the "good society" --upon several beliefs. The first is that under the right conditions work is a creative function, and that man cannot fulfil himself as a creative social being unless he participates in the productive process. The second is that, in a system where production is motivated by social need, men can find work intrinsically enjoyable...
...world doesn't provide set-shots-they must adapt their techniques to the situations). Hence synchronous recording and close-shooting, most often with telephoto or zoom lenses. Direct cinema is therefore a simpler and more intimate style of exposing contradiction. The implicit contradictions in an intrinsically ironic situation are given free to play to reveal themselves without benefit of reconstruction by the film-maker...
...only a one-joke film, salesman, like so much of direct cinema, is a one-short film. Now while we have no right, given the style and the technical different relationships, there is no excuse for spending half of our viewing time in close-medium one0short, mainly contemplating Paul Brennan's dejected visage. The best documentary camera work (Ricky Leacock, sometimes) is distinguished by its description of the whole in the detail, the capturing on hands in Leacock's Mothers day, for instance). Salsman, despite almost mythic possibilities (an existence trapped in motels with their cleaning women; ion rented cars...
...salesman; it is a Bible salesman. The choice is not that arbitrary. The world of commerce has sucked up religious life; Christ's passion is another pitch in American's long sales talk. The contradictions of salesman lie in the sinister meaning the history of capitalism has given to Luck 2:49. Christ, having been reprimanded by his parents for I must be about my Father's business?" A Catholic priest, spiritual consultant to Brennan's employer (each Bible salesman begin his talk wit "I'm from the church"), exhorts God to grant these good men "an abundant harvest...