Global Cinema Assessment
4. With close reference to the two films you have studied, explore how either performance or mise-en-scène create meaning. [40] Both City of God and Ida, as films from global cinema, employ performance to create meaning, by forming human connections between the spectator and the characters they follow. In both films, this is integral to bridging the cultural divide between the typically Western arthouse spectator and each film's different worlds, with the favelas in City of God, and post-war Poland in Ida. In both cases, non-professional actors, from the places in question, are employed to bring realism to the film, and to make the films' meanings come from within the people they document, rather than from outside them. In doing so, the spectator becomes a visitor to the film's world, and the meanings within them, as they can find a way into the perspective of characters very different to them. In City of God, many shots spend time developing some of the more violent chara...