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Glossary
Historical Terms
Barracks: Housing for military personnel .
Bolshevik revolution (1917-1923): A violent revolution which abolished the Russian monarchy and led to the rise of Marxism.
Containment: A US policy meant to counteract the expansion of communism enacted by the Soviet Union.
Eastern Bloc (aka the Communist Bloc, the Socialist Bloc, the Soviet Block): Communist states in Eastern and Central Europe during the cold war.
Industrial revolution: The transition from an agrarian economy (farming based) to an industrial/manufacturing based economy (note: this refers to the American industrial revolution or the Second Industrial Revolution).
Stalinism: The method of rule of the Communist Party and state leader Joseph Stalin, which is often associated with terror and totalitarianism.
The cult of personality: The idolization of a specific political figure in order to strengthen legitimacy and unite citizens as a collective whole.
The Front (The Western Front): The main theatre of the first World War. It stretched for more than 400 miles through France and Belgium from the Swiss border to the North Sea.
The Third Reich: The official name for the Nazi regime.
Western Bloc (aka the Free Bloc, the Capitalist Bloc, and the American Bloc): Countries that allied with the United States’ anti-communist ideologies.
Filmic Terms
180-degree rule: A guideline for continuity editing that states that characters must maintain the same left/right relationship to one another and their surroundings.
Blocking: An actor's movement in relation to the camera.
Dialogue: Two or more characters speaking to each other directly ie. a conversation.
Diegetic sound: Sound with a visible source that exists within the internal world of the film
Escapist cinema: Mass produced films that are intended to distract and numb the senses from whatever may be going on in the outside world.
German Expressionist movement (1919-1931): A style of filmmaking established in Germany that rejected realism and used visual distortion to portray the fears and desires of the German people.
Kinetograph: The first motion picture camera, invented by Thomas Edison in 1890.
Kinetoscope: The first motion picture film projector, invented by Thomas Edison and William Dickinson.
Nickelodeon: An early type of motion picture theatre, first established in Pittsburgh in 1905 by Harry Davis. It’s name refers to the five cent admission fee.
Point-of-view shot: A type of camera angle that depicts what a character sees in first person.
Propaganda: The manipulated dissemination of information in order to influence public opinion.
Raw-stock: Film that has not been exposed or processed.
Shot/reverse-shot: A continuity editing technique that involves a shot of character A looking at character B cut with a separate shot of character B looking at character A (typically used during dialogue).
Talkie: A film with a synchronized soundtrack of speech and diegetic sound.
The Nickelodeon Era: A period of high film production from 1904-1912 as a result of the popularity of Nickelodeon theatres.
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