TOEFL Test Centers in South Dakota, USA

EDU February 16, 2019

South Dakota Area Codes

Short for SD, South Dakota was admitted to United States on 11/02/1889. The capital city is Pierre. With an area of 199,731 km², South Dakota has a population of 865.454. The population density is 4.33 people per km².

U.S. Films

On October 6, 1927, the premiere of the first motion picture in which the audience heard the actors took place in the main cinema of the film studio in New York. It was the film “The Jazz Singer”, the release of which actually proclaimed the beginning of the era of sound cinema.

In 1929, The Jazz Singer was awarded a special Oscar for “creating the first sound picture that revolutionized the industry.”

And pretty soon, in 1935, the first color film was released – “Becky Sharp”.

It is believed that with the release of The Jazz Singer, the “Golden Age” of Hollywood began. In the next thirty years, until the end of the fifties, thousands of films were released. The genres of the main genres of films (westerns, comedies, melodramas, musicals, thrillers, etc.) were clearly defined, a system for the production of films was formed, and the concept of “movie star” appeared.

Most of the pictures were taken by major film companies. In those years, the “studio” system was generally accepted, in which directors, actors, screenwriters and other film production workers were associated with contracts with a particular film studio. You could find out which studio shot a particular film by looking at the cast of the picture. Under the studio system in Hollywood, the producer of a picture had more weight than its director. The artistic value of the film meant much less than the profit it brought.

At the same time, such masters of cinema as Clark Gable, Greta Garbo, Walt Disney, Alfred Hitchcock and many others became famous during the Golden Age of Hollywood.

In 1937, Walt Disney released his famous cartoon “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs”, which became the highest grossing film of its time and showed that animation had a great future.

In 1939, the film was shot, which is considered the most successful (in the commercial sense) picture of American cinema – Gone with the Wind.

In 1941, Citizen Kane, shot by Orson Welles, was released, and today many film critics call it the best film of all time.

By the beginning of the sixties, the established “studio” system of film production began to falter. There were several reasons, including antitrust laws in the United States and the advent of television.

The sixties and seventies of the XX century are known in the history of American cinema as the “New Hollywood”. This period is characterized by a departure from the established standards in cinema, a strong influence of European cinema, and numerous artistic experiments.

During these decades, such famous names as Steven Spielberg, Francis Coppola, George Lucas, Martin Scorsese, Roman Polanski and others were heard for the first time.

In the seventies, the concept of a blockbuster appeared – a film with a big budget and big box office. Among the first blockbusters in Hollywood called “Jaws” and “Star Wars”.

Modern American cinema is primarily spectacular films with a budget of tens and hundreds of millions of dollars. To a large extent, the success of the film at the box office depends on the “stars” who starred in it – famous actors who fell in love with the audience.

Nevertheless, there is also “independent cinema” in the USA. As a rule, these are low-budget films made by little-known directors. “Independent films” are not as bound by the need to bring maximum profit to the creators as blockbusters, and therefore you can often see this or that creative experimentation in them.

Often world-class stars come out of “independent” cinema, for example, the debut film of the famous Quentin Tarantino was the film “Reservoir Dogs”, which is now called a classic of independent cinema.