Film Theory and Practice

Hunter Vaughan interweaves phenomenology and semiotics to analyze cinema's ability to challenge conventional modes of thought. Merging Maurice Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology of perception with Gilles Deleuze's image-philosophy, Vaughan applies a rich theoretical framework to a comparative analysis of Jean-Luc Godard's films, which critique the audio-visual illusion of empirical observation (objectivity), and the cinema of Alain Resnais, in which the sound-image generates innovative portrayals of individual experience (subjectivity). Both filmmakers radically upend conventional film practices and challenge philosophical traditions to alter our understanding of the self, the world, and the relationship between the two. Films discussed in detail include Godard's Vivre sa vie (1962), Contempt (1963), and 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her (1967); and Resnais's Hiroshima, mon amour (1959), Last Year at Marienbad (1961), and The War Is Over (1966). Situating the formative works of these filmmakers within a broader philosophical context, Vaughan pioneers a phenomenological film semiotics linking two disparate methodologies to the mirrored achievements of two seemingly irreconcilable artists.

This chapter examines the meaning-making functions of cinematic sound from the perspective of embodied cognition. Using embodied simulation theory (Gallese, 2005) as a unifying framework, and placing particular emphasis upon the affective aspects of ‘Feeling of Body’ (Wojciehowski & Gallese, 2011), an account of cinematic media emerges which puts into play Mark Johnson’s concept of ‘embodied meaning’ (Johnson, 2007). Central to Johnson’s concept is the assertion that all human meaning, abstract conceptual thinking, and imagination have basis in our sensorimotor interactions with the world. In the context of cinematic media, it suggests the stylistic crafting and patterning of perceptual content not only elicits an affective response but also shapes cognition. Drawing upon examples of cinematic sound design an embodied aesthetics is illustrated.

Der Begriff des Interface kategorisiert die Ausprägungsstufen einer kommunikationsstabilisierenden Schnittstelle als Interaktionsmechanismus, wobei die Interaktion von maschinellen Komponenten (Hardware, Software) sowie die vielfältigen Interaktionen zwischen UserIn und Maschine zur Geltung gebracht werden.

John Sayles is one of America’s most successful independent filmmakers, whose works include Return of the Secaucus Seven (1980), City of Hope (1991), and Lone Star (1996). This article examines Sayles’ portrait of place in Sunshine State (2002), a film set in Plantation Island, Florida, where large-scale corporate development is transforming two communities—one black, the other white—into upscale winter resorts. Sayles’ film probes the place experience of some sixteen vividly drawn characters and illuminates how the same physical place, for different individuals and groups, can evoke a broad spectrum of situations, meanings, and potential futures. One of Sayles’ conclusions is that people cannot escape the place in which they find themselves. They can, however, learn from that place and thereby decide whether and in what ways they will offer that place commitment or not.

Wes Anderson's masterpiece The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004) is a reflexive film about making a documentary within a film. The boundaries between what is 'reality' and what is performed become blurred. The production elements such as production design, cinematography, editing and sound techniques help construct a world where our disbelief is suspended. These production elements assist us in subscribing to this fantastical world. Thus, this essay will serve to analyse how the various production elements work in conjunction with each other to maintain a credible cinematic space. Production design or art direction refers to the look and feel of the film. Working with the other part of the design trinity, the director and cinematographer, they must tell the story visually (Barnwell, 2004: 2). The aesthetic style of The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou oscillates between elaborate and ostentatious to a stripped down form of the bare minimum. This represents reality and the documentary space. The film plays out in two main spaces: the hall where the audience is viewing this documentary and the space of the ship and sea-life. The hall location is vast, with the black and white theme highlighting the formality of the event. The set of some of the different locations are made of wood or a wood finish, such as the office of Oseary Drakoulious which resembles art décor from the 80's. Yet the walls are made of granite which links back to the dual set design: elaborate and the minimalist space. The cityscapes that are included in the film, such as the Greek/Italian landscape Steve and Ned fly over is extremely lavish and communicates the type of place they live on the outskirts of. Cinematographic Style There is once again a dualistic style here: the documentary style and the fictional film style. The documentary style produced by fast stock is grainy; the camera work is handheld and abrupt to deliver the on-the-run feel of being as close to the action as possible. At times, we see the crew members of the documentary holding up boom poles that are in shot. Other times we see the camera men, and at times the camera man disappears and we are aware of an omniscient eye, Wes Anderson's. In this way, the documentary and fictional aspects, through conventions of the film flow into each other such as in the helicopter crash where there is no perceivable camera man, yet the camera humorously falls from the sky into the sea.

Composing  for  the  Films,  written  by  Theodor  W.  Adorno  and  Hanns  Eisler  in  1947,  seems  to  have  been  consigned  to  a  fate  of  oblivion.  The  reasons  could  be  related  to  the  controversy  about  the  authorship  of  the  work  or  to  the  fact  that  it  contains  condensed  theses  that  some  consider  outdated  or,  again,  to  the  preference  given  to  themes  such  as  dodecaphonic  music,  fetishism  in  music,  jazz  or  pop  music  considered  more  relevant.  On  closer  examination,  however,  this  essay  reveals  a  tendentially  underestimated  importance  that  lies  in  the  fact  that  it  summarizes  the  theses  that  Adorno  elaborates  in  relation  to  mass  music  (pop  music  and  jazz)  and  those  related  to  the  cultural  industry.  It  is  then  interesting,  fifty  years  after  Adorno’s  death,  to  restore  dignity  and  centrality  to Composing  for  the  Films,  also  by  virtue  of  the  attempt,  which  perhaps  elsewhere  does  not  appear  with  equal  sincerity,  to  mediate  between  music  and  technology

In his early days with the Perlmans, Oliver is mocked by the family for
his repeated use of the word “later” as a salutation, and with this word,
and the film’s attention to it, he sets the tone of a projective temporality.
Later there will be AIDS, later there will be Berlusconi, later there will be
hetero marriage. That there is such a looming social, cultural, and legal
apparatus of pathologizing homosexuality in Elio’s immediate future does not, we would argue, invalidate the film’s romantic vision, but forms a crucial part of its historical view.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01614622.2019.1609220

The 2011 film Ang Babae sa Septic Tank (dir. Rivera) was lauded as a parody of Philippine cinema, mocking certain films by imitating conventions that are recognizable in other films of that particular genre. The paper tries to discuss what genres were lampooned by the film by examining the mise en scène of each segment or iteration of the fictional film ‘Walang-Wala’ and trying to link the conventions utilized in the mise en scène to these genres. The essay identifies four particular levels of mise en scène – realism, documentary-drama, musicale, and melodrama – and arranges them on a spectrum of realism. It also briefly discusses conventions that transcend the iterations, such as the star system. The essay draws from Bordwell and Thompson, Bazin, Lao, and Deocampo in order to draw the links between the sequences.

Arthur Kok (red.) Bewegen en bewogen worden Retorisch handelen in taal, beeld en muziek Volgens Aristoteles is de kern van retorica, als de kunst van het overtuigen, dat de ziel erdoor in beweging wordt gebracht. Daarbij gaat het niet alleen om argumentatie (logos) maar ook om waarden (ethos) en gevoel (pathos). De retorica van Aristoteles richt zich op de totale mens, niet slechts op diens talige vermogen. In deze bundel nemen wij daarom niet de taal maar het overtuigend handelen tot uitgangspunt van de retorica. Daarbij kan het ook gaan om beeldend of muzikaal handelen. Dit gegeven is van actueel belang. Het publieke domein is in de afgelopen decennia onherkenbaar veranderd. Met name door de opkomst van nieuwe media is er een andere context ontstaan waarbinnen we onze overtuigingen, wensen en verhalen zijn gaan vormgeven. Een op feiten gebaseerd verhaal volstaat niet meer. Er lijkt sprake van een verschuiving in de richting van het beeld en ook de muziek. Succesvolle series zoals When they see us, talentenshows als The voice of Holland en de verontrustende drillrap richten zich met visuele en auditieve overtuigingsmiddelen tot het publiek. De traditie van de retorica heeft veel te bieden als het erom gaat deze nieuwe fenomenen beter te begrijpen. De bijdragen in deze bundel zijn van Gabriël van den Brink, Emanuel Rutten, Heidi de Mare en Arthur Kok. Zij bespreken de retorica achtereenvolgens vanuit het gezichtspunt van de handeling, de taal, de beeldende kunst en de muziek. • ISBN 978 90 5625 528-2 • Omvang 256 blz. (incl. beeldkatern) • Formaat 12 x 20,5 cm • Uitvoering paperback • NUR 694 • Prijs €19,50 N.B. Deze titel is leverbaar vanaf februari 2021: https://valkhofpers.nl/bewegen

In Moving Environments: Affect, Emotion, Ecology, and Film, international scholars investigate how films portray human emotional relationships with the more-than-human world and how such films act upon their viewers’ emotions. Emotion and affect are the basic mechanisms that connect us to our environment, shape our knowledge, and motivate our actions. Contributors explore how film represents and shapes human emotion in relation to different environments and what role time, place, and genre play in these affective processes. Individual essays resituate well-researched environmental films such as An Inconvenient Truth and March of the Penguins by paying close attention to their emotionalizing strategies, and bring to our attention the affective qualities of films that have so far received little attention from ecocritics, such as Stan Brakhage’s Dog Star Man.

The collection opens a new discursive space at the disciplinary intersection of film studies, affect studies, cognitive approaches to film emotion, and a growing body of ecocritical scholarship. It will be of interest not only to scholars and students working in the field of ecocriticism and the environmental humanities, but for everyone with an interest in our emotional responses to film.

Throughout Kore-eda Hirokazu’s films, a series of themes related to death, memory or the assumption of loss are repeated are repeated, often in relation to a paternal figure. From Dare mo shiranai (No Body Knows, 2004), through Hana yori mo naho (Hana, 2006), Aruitemo aruitemo (Still Walking, 2008), Kiseki (I Wish, 2011), Soshite chichi ni naru (LIke Father, Like Son, 2013), Umimachi Diary (Our Little Sister, 2015), until his last premiered film Umi yorimo mada fukaku (After the Storm, 2016), we find an absent father that causes a series of dramatic daily hecatombs in the life of their families. Kore-eda is often compared to the classic filmmaker Ozu Yasujiro for his sober staging, a mythomania often fed by Kore-eda himself; but beyond this tutor sense, where is the symbolic father of his master’s films? In this paper, I will analyze some representative scenes of symbolic violence that this absence causes in children.


Resumen
A lo largo de la filmografía del cineasta japonés Kore-eda Hirokazu se repiten una serie de temas relacionados con la muerte, la memoria o la asunción de la pérdida, a menudo en relación a una figura paterna. Desde Dare mo shiranai (Nadie sabe, 2004), pasando por Hana yori mo naho (Hana, 2006), Aruitemo aruitemo (Caminando, 2008), Kiseki (Milagro, 2011), Soshite chichi ni naru (De tal padre, tal hijo, 2013), Umi yori mo mada fukakuaka (Nuestra hermana pequeña, 2015), hasta su último film estrenado Umi yorimo mada fukaku (Después de la tormenta, 2016), nos encontramos con un padre ausente que provoca toda una serie de dramáticas hecatombes cotidianas en la vida de sus familiares. Kore-eda suele ser comparado con el cineasta clásico Ozu Yasujiro por su puesta en escena sobria, una mitomanía alimentada a menudo por el propio Kore-eda; pero más allá de este sentido tutor ¿dónde ha quedado el padre simbólico de los filmes de su maestro? En este análisis voy a deletrear algunas escenas representativas de violencia simbólica que esta ausencia provoca en el niño.

Análisis textual del universo Tim Burton. Escenas Fantasmáticas.

Análisis de varias escenas de la filmografía de Tim Burton acompañadas de
datos clave sobre el autor y sus influencias para el análisis de éstas.

Trabajo de Finde Grado para la consecución del Grado en Comunicación Audiovisual calificado con Matrícula de Honor.

‘There are no new stories … We see them on the screen or on the stage reflected through the personalities of men and women whom we have learned to love and respect.’ So wrote Lillian Gish in an unpublished work on the role of stars in early cinema. While most know Gish as a silent film star, and some know her as an autobiographer and lecturer on the history of early cinema, very few regard her as a film theorist. In this paper, I analyze the theoretical dimension of Gish’s manuscripts, essays, and lecture notes, many of which are unpublished and held in the New York Public Library’s Lillian Gish Papers. In asserting the role of the actor or star as filmic author, Gish speaks directly to abstract questions of art, authorship, and cinema as a ‘universal language.’ Gish’s work engages with the work of such early film theorists Vachel Lindsay, Hugo Munsterberg, and Rudolf Arnheim, as well as that of contemporary scholars of stardom and performance studies. I will conclude my argument by reading the 1927 film The Wind as the culmination of Gish’s philosophies of acting on screen.

This course aims to introduce the students to the art, craft and technique of filmmaking. Students are expected to learn basic principles of filmic design, four foundational elements of film style (mise-en-scene, cinematography, editing, sound), tools of camera and editing and be able to visualize a basic story idea.

Henri-George Clouzot’s The Mystery of Picasso (1956) and Lars von Trier’s and Jørgen Leth’s The Five Obstructions (2003) are celebrated experimental documentaries on the creative process in the visual arts and cinema made (or co-made) by renowned narrative film auteurs. Ludic exercises in on-and off-screen cinematic co-creation, together they foreground creativity and its constraints; artistic style and authorship; and filmmaking as simultaneously a means of personal expression and a collaborative enterprise. The main concerns of this article, both films are also marked by an overlapping self-reflexivity, intermediality, and formal hybridity, rooted in their innovative incorporation – or “nesting” – of pre-existing and in-progress art works (films, paintings, drawings). Focused on multiple forms of reflexivity and a distinctly process-based incorporation of works-within-the-work, juxtaposition of the films sheds new light on these dynamics generally, as well as on the styles and careers of Clouzot and Picasso, Leth and von Trier.

Mit o Medeji jedan je od temeljnih narativa putem kojeg se u društvu legitimizira društveno uspostavljenog identiteta, uglavnim ženskog. Upravo zbog toga se lik medeje, antičke čedomorke, pokazao kao neiscrpan izvor različitih tumačenja o poziciji žene /supruge/majke unutar društva.

'Eraserhead' (1977), directed by David Lynch, has intrigued and interested film critics for decades. A cinematic puzzle, David Lynch successfully creates a surreal and dystopian world through Eraserhead. With its twisted plotline and ambiguous subject matter, very few cinema enthusiasts have successfully maneuvered through the movie's diegesis. Lynch, who is largely considered the best postmodern filmmaker of all time, manages to create a reel enigma through 'Eraserhead'. This paper makes a dedicated attempt at deconstructing the movie using the auteur and psychoanalytical film theories. It also finds out the ingrained themes used by Lynch in designing the nightmarish and hallucinatory world of 'Eraserhead'. In doing so, the paper critically dissects all the cinematic elements used by the auteur. There is also an ingrained objective to highlight the psyche of the director in making this cinematic quagmire.

Le choix de traiter de Marina, la production cinématographique de Stijn Coninx sortie en 2013, se justifie par la réponse aux critères implicitement imposés par le cours de Multilingual Communication: Film and Television in the Euregio. Mettant majoritairement en scène le Limbourg flamand et ayant été tourné dans de multiples villes et villages wallons et flamands, Marina est un film qui traite d’une eurorégion. En effet, parmi les cinq entités regroupées dans l’Euregio, Marina traverse les paysages de deux d’entre eux, à savoir les Provinces de Liège et du Limbourg. De plus, de par ses dialogues en italien, en néerlandais et en français et ses paroles de chanson en anglais, Marina est un film qui fait intervenir différentes langues et qui met l’accent sur l’aspect multilingue de l’Euregio.

Présenté comme un film retraçant l’arrivée et l’installation de la communauté italienne en Belgique après la Seconde Guerre mondiale, la mise en scène du personnage réel de Rocco Granata, célèbre musicien et accordéoniste italien, permet de s’interroger sur les identités culturelles construites par la production audiovisuelle.
À ces fins, après avoir défini les genres cinématographiques auxquels appartient Marina, nous nous attèlerons à mettre en évidence les stéréotypes socioculturels et clichés véhiculés par le film.

Dans un second temps, l’accent sera mis sur le multilinguisme à travers l’étude de conversations multilingues intéressantes entre néerlandophones et italophones. Ce chapitre tentera de démontrer que la langue néerlandaise constitue un vecteur d’intégration pour la famille Granata.

Dans un troisième temps, les principaux paysages et décors présents dans Marina seront analysés. Leur traitement nous permettra ainsi de nous interroger non seulement sur les messages implicites que contiennent ces paysages et décors, mais aussi sur l’image de l’autre qu’ils transmettent. Une fois l’analyse effectuée, nous dresserons un parallélisme entre le rêve de Rocco et le rêve italo-américain.

Enfin, avant de conclure, nous nous poserons la question de savoir si l’immigration italienne en Belgique est synonyme de réussite ou d’échec. En d’autres termes, nous nous interrogerons sur l’intégration de la communauté italienne en Belgique.

En este artículo se relacionan algunos de los temas
que suelen movilizarse en el mejor anime
contemporáneo —como los multiversos y los
décadrage temporales— con una teoría del cine
relacionada, a su vez, con los hologramas y el
inconsciente del espectador. Para ello, se analizan
algunas secuencias claves de una película ejemplar
en este sentido: Your Name (Kimi no na wa) de
Shinkai Makoto (2016).

What do we mean by the slippery term 'animation' when discussing moving image culture? Is it a technique? – A style? – An interdisciplinary artistic medium? An art form that enables us to see and experience a 'world' that has little relation to our own lived experience of the world around us? Animated 'Worlds' is an edited anthology of papers originally presented at the eponymous conference held in 2003 at Farnham Castle, England. The conference encouraged speculation about these and other questions that address animation's increasing pervasiveness in contemporary culture. The authors' often interdisciplinary approaches range from film spectatorship, close film analysis, phenomenology and cognitive theory to philosophy, performance, literary theory and digital aesthetics and reveal the astonishing variety of 'worlds' animation confronts us with.

Phronetic organizational research is an approach to the study of management and organizations focusing on ethics and power. It is based on a contemporary interpretation of the Aristotelian concept phronesis, usually as ‘prudence’. Phronesis is the ability to think and act in relation to values, to deliberate about ‘things that are good or bad for humans’ in the words of Aristotle (1976:1140a24–b12). Phronetic organizational research effectively provides answers to the following four value-rational questions, for specific problematics in management and organization studies: 1. Where are we going with this specific management problematic? 2. Who gains and who loses, and by which mechanisms of power? 3. Is this development desirable? 4. What, if anything, should we do about it?

If mediatization has surprisingly revealed the secret life of inert matter and the 'face of things' , the flipside of this has been the petrification of living organisms, an invasion of stone bodies in a state of suspended animation. Within a contemporary imaginary pervaded by new forms of animism, the paradigm of death looms large in many areas of artistic experimentation, pushing the modern body towards mineral modes of being which revive ancient myths of flesh-made-stone and the issue of the monument. Scholars in media, visual culture and the arts propose studies of bodies of stone, from actors simulating statues to the transmutation of the filmic body into a fossil; from the real treatment of the cadaver as a mineral living object to the rediscovery of materials such as wax; from the quest for a 'thermal' equivalence between stone and flesh to the transformation of the biomedical body into a living monument.

The narrative perspective of a movie provides not only the focus of the narrative information given to the audience, but also size the mediated spatial impressions. The view through the lens
of the camera puts the viewers right into the action. The textual method of the continuous Point-of-View Shot and the numerous Reaction-Shots that are used in CLOVERFIELD (USA 2008, Matt Reeves) turn into the restricted point of view of the audience. So the closenes of the viewer to the characters is imposed by the movie. To see what the character sees can make a remarkable difference in experiencing the movie: the POV Shot supports the role-taking as a partly process of empathy, the movement of the camera becomes a somatic aspect of the emotional and intentional expressive behaviour of the characters. So the diegetic trauma becomes the visual trauma of the viewer. The camera acts of violence against the viewer and underlines the representation of violence within the movie picture.
The affective responses of the audience are central in CLOVERFIELD the dimension of the affect must be understood as dimension of response on which processes of somatic empathy
take effect. The main focus of this essay is therefore in the somatic response of the viewer and what we call somatic decoding. The somatic decoding of the cinematic code as mode of understanding the film is parallel to the decoding of cinematic violence issues. The method of POV Shots represents not only a look at the violence, but also allows the audience a high degree of participation because of the violent view of the camera: The violence in (and on) the cinematic image  becomes the violence on the viewer.

Neste ensaio abordaremos dois documentários recentes dos diretores brasileiros João Salles (Santiago) e Eduardo Coutinho (Jogo de Cena). Para analisá-los, buscamos desenvolver análise, com inspiração de metodologia fenomenológica, colocando ênfase na relação entre o sujeito que sustenta a câmera na tomada e o mundo que a ele se oferece, abrindo-se pelo seu corpo (sujeito-da-câmera) ao espectador. Denominamos de encenação essa relação entre o mundo (com pessoas agindo e coisas) e o sujeito que encarna a máquina câmera. A mise-en-scène designa o modo pelo qual a encenação é disposta na tomada, levando-se em conta os diversos aspectos materiais que compõe a cena e sua futura disposição narrativa (em planos). Olhando para história do documentário podemos notar duas variantes estruturais na ação das pessoas para o sujeito-da-câmera. Chamamos de encenação-construída, a ação ou expressão, preparada, de modo anterior, pelo sujeito-da-câmera. Chamamos de encenação-direta a ação para a câmera solta no mundo, ocorrendo sem uma flexibilização direta pelo sujeito-da-câmera. No caso de um primeiro plano de encenação direta, a indeterminação da ação é a própria fisionomia, conformando-se em afeto ou afecção. Em Jogo de Cena estão dispostas diversas modalidades de encenação que interagem entre si articulando-se em um corte desconstrutivo. Em Santiago duas modalidades históricas do encenar contrapõe-se, num movimento animado pela má-consciência.

Philosophical discussions of film are divided in their treatment of the subject rhythm in film editing. Analytic philosophers tend to avoid discussion of it, while continental philosophers give it expansive consideration. This chapter aims to bridge these two traditions by analytically articulating what rhythm is, how it is shaped, and what it is for, while still respecting that it is, in both a film editor’s and an audience’s experience, a felt phenomenon. In order to do this, consideration is given both to the first-hand perspective of experienced editors and the articulations of philosophers. This synthesis of practice and theory reveals how an understanding of the editor’s embodied cognitions, affective responses, and expert actions in shaping rhythm can shed light on rhythm’s effect on audiences. The article finds that rhythm in film editing is time, energy, and movement shaped by timing, pacing, and trajectory phrasing for the purpose of creating cycles of tension and release.

There is a hierarchy of sound and image in films but that is not a natural one. There are moments in the history of cinema when a rupture occurs in the process and sound affects us more than visual. The lack of discussion on film sound is alarming with respect to that. This paper interrogates the conditions of such an absence and the complexities of such a denial, which in itself might be an unspeakable rule. In more ways than one, such denials create the absence of a theoretical framework and linguistic tools that would render the articulation of film sound possible. This paper argues that this is not merely a case of negligence or lack of research material, but there is a pattern to such denial.

Rituparno Ghosh was one of the rare film makers in India who recognized the power of silence both as a text and a narrative. Gosh made conscious efforts to communicate the music of silence in many of his films. These sincere attempts knitted the complex human desires, passions and emotions in his film. This chapter investigates the power of silence in the films of Rituparno Gosh. Here silence is not only a filmic apparatus, but also a major emotional element in his films, particularly in the portrayal of human relationship.

Resumen: TRABAJO DE FIN DE GRADO DE CRISTINA MARTÍNEZ GARÍN. Análisis textual fílmico en el que se analizan dos de las obras del director griego Yorgos Lanthimos, destacado por la creación de mundos distópicos, en los que la represión sexual y la tiranía encuentran su lugar provocado por un miedo imperante en la sociedad que obliga a los individuos a actuar de manera atípica.