Eric T. Olson has argued that those who hold that two material objects can exactly coincide at a moment of time, with one of these objects constituting the other, face an insuperable difficulty in accounting for the alleged differences between the objects, such as their being of different kinds and possessing different persistence-conditions. The differences, he suggests, are inexplicable, given that the objects in question are composed of the same particles related in precisely the same way. In response, I show (...) that the differences are not at all inexplicable once it is recognized that the conditions for a persisting object to be composed by certain particles at a moment of time must involve facts concerning other moments of time, and that the relevant facts are different for persisting objects of different kinds. Philosophers who neglect this sort of constraint on composition principles may be said to be victims of the 'cinematographic fallacy'. (shrink)

According to John Brough, we can use Husserl’s theory of image consciousness to explain the conflict between the actor and the character in cinematographic depictions in terms of an empirical conflict between the “image object” and the “physical thing.” I disagree with him and I shall show that the conflict between the actor and the character can only be explained in terms of a non-empirical conflict between two “image subjects.” The empirical conflict that concerns the subject is between how the (...) actor or the character appears in image consciousness and how it appears or would appear in perception, that is, between the “image subject” and the “subject as it appears in perception.”. (shrink)

In Conversations with Cinematographers, David Ellis has assembled interviews with some of the most influential and highly regarded cameramen of the last half century and more.

El presente artículo busca problematizar el modo en que la recepción local del cine programado en la televisión chilena, entre 1965 y 1978, permite replicar y prolongar, en el desfase y la anacronía, un ciclo de imaginario histórico más extenso, determinado internamente por el proyecto desarrollista e ilustrado del Estado educador, y externamente por una representación residual de los regímenes heroicos modernos y, en general, de las imágenes de occidentalidad, integrada por formatos secundarios como la serie, el ensayo histórico y (...) la historieta. Nos proponemos analizar y comprender las diversas y ricas implicancias de esta “repetición”, en los planos de la estética y de la reelaboración simbólica de la representación del mundo. The following article seeks to address the issue of the way local reception of the broadcasting of films in Chilean television, between 1965 and 1978, allows us to replicate and endure, the delay and anachronism of a broader historical imaginary cycle, determined, internally, by the development and illustrated project of an educational State; externally, by a residual representation of the modern heroic regimes, and in general, by the images of westernness, composed by secondary formats, such as TV series, the historical essay and cartoons. We propose to analyse and account for the diverse and nurturing implications of this ‘replication’, in the fields of aesthetics and the symbolic rewriting of the world´s representation. (shrink)

ArgumentThis paper arrives at a normative position regarding the relevance of Henri Bergson's philosophy to historical enquiry. It does so via experimental historical analysis of the adaptation of cinematographic devices to physiological investigation. Bergson's philosophy accorded well with a mode of physiological psychology in which claims relating to mental and physiological existence interacted. Notably however, cinematograph-centered experimentation by British physiologists including Charles Scott Sherrington, as well as German-trained psychologists such as Hugo Münsterberg and Max Wertheimer, contributed to a cordoning-off of (...) psychological from physiological questioning during the early twentieth century. Bergson invested in a mode of intellectual practice in which psychological claims had direct relevance to the interpretation of physiological nature. The in-part cinematograph-inspired breakdown of this mode had significance for subsequent interpretations of his philosophy. It is suggested that this experimental particularization of Bergson's contentions indicates that any adaptation of his thought for historical enquiry must be disciplinarily specific. (shrink)

When writing about cinema does Deleuze have a conception of cinema spectatorship? In New Philosophy for New Media, Mark Hansen argues that Deleuze does have a conception of cinema spectatorship but that the subjectivity central to that spectatorship is weak and impoverished. This article argues against Hansen's reductive interpretation of Deleuze. In doing so, it relies on the three syntheses of time developed in Difference and Repetition alongside an elaboration of Deleuze's notion of a ‘cinematographic Cogito’. In this way, the (...) article offers a way of understanding the processes of cinema spectatorship from a Deleuzian perspective. (shrink)

Journal Name: Cognitive Linguistics Issue: Ahead of print.

Explores the encounter between Emmanuel Levinas' ethical thought and aesthetic realisms of the body.

Jean Painlevé’s films blend aesthetic concerns and scientific realism operating a micro-turn within the broader cinematographic turn that occurred in the sciences in the 20th century. By engaging with his films on the octopus, an animal studied to illuminate human consciousness and firmly grounded in the popular imagina-tion through literature and the arts, this article demonstrates how Painlevé em-braced a politics of life organised around the concept of a missed encounter be-tween life forms.

The author of the work raises the issue of the phenomenon of nomadism in the context of the work of the French director Alain Resnais. The object of the research is the early works of the director, such films as "Last year in Marienbad", "Hiroshima, my love", "I love you, I love". The purpose of the work is to answer the question of how nomadic strategies allow the author to create non-linear narrative structures, oscillating characters and flickering characters in his (...) films, and how understanding these strategies can help viewers and researchers in the act of deciphering works. The author also analyzes a number of phenomena related to nomadism, such as the rhizome, the body without organs, deterritorialization, escape, flicker. The novelty of the research lies in the application of nomadic strategies to the cinema of Alain Resnais. This approach makes it possible to use the current philosophical and art history prism to study narrative structures, intraframe space and characters. The author argues that Rene's cinematography can be viewed through a position of resistance to forms of power - suppression and control - which manifests itself in the violation of traditional forms of narration and the creation of split characters. To study the mentioned aspects of Rene's work, the author resorts to the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. The author also explains the position of the modern viewer and describes the strategies of looking, which can lead to a state of pleasure from interacting with nomadic works. (shrink)

The assimilation of the architectural sign to the linguistic one, is the way that allow us to analyze the architectural element of the city, according to the symbolic and conventional way, but giving to the architectural sign an iconic value that we could read through reconstruction of city in films. It is possible if we consider city as artwork seen according to the definition of Lynch. There is a temporal and special dimension, the urban dimension, which would otherwise not be (...) ‘visible’ to the naked eye or perceivable with hearing. City as an artwork can be read for more reasons, through the cinema in the translation of an architectural semiotics that finds a double correspondence of Urbs and Civitas, in the real building of the city and in its re-construction. In this contest, some Italian movies of Rossellini, De Sica, Antonioni, for example, beyond the traditional interpretations, can give us indications about the moments and ‘points’ of collapse that we can find in ‘signs’ and ‘singular points’. It’s in these points that we found the signs of evolution, breakdown and collapse of relationship between Urbs and Civitas. (shrink)

Despite traditionally having been studied within the field of Musicology, the analysis of music in film should be approached as an aesthetic study of the relationship between «image» and «music» which is central to the cinematographic framework. From this interdisciplinary perspective numerous theoretical and methodological issues emerge. The aim of this article is to investigate, using both a synchronic and diachronic focus, some of the key issues arising from this joint music-image approach, in an attempt to develop a theoretical framework (...) for a joint aesthetic of music and image: a study of «cinematographic expression» that brings together the visual and the sound dimensions and which we call the «musicalised image», a neologism of our own creation. (shrink)

The cinematographic successes of Craig Brewer’s Black Snake Moan and Lars Von Trier's Manderlay are contingent upon the palpability of tension and attraction created by their respective, many racial and sexual relations, thus both films aggressively bring them to the fore by excessively rehearsing old stereotypes and taboos, and inverting the expected agents therein, to reveal their persistent, still-relevant power. Both films similarly test our convictions and squeamishness, but do so from entirely different moral stances. Brewer explores how an act (...) of charity and humanitarian openness can save lives, literally and spiritually. Von Trier explores how similar acts of openness can smother appreciation of the other and reenact the worst oppression. The former tells a persuasive story with wide appeal, while the latter tells a story that will make even the most desensitized viewers cringe. Using these pictures as paradigms, is either approach better for bringing prejudice into the light for thought and film? (shrink)

The cinematographic work of Raul Ruiz, filmmaker, writer, playwright and stage designer, chilean exiled in France since the late 70's and deceased in 2011, at first sight not appear as a political work. Usually classified with the labels of "neosurrealistic" or "fantasy film", his work, since not refer to a specific and identifiable reality from the positivist sociology standpoint, will have not most interest to analyze and think what the political "emergency" of our times requires. However, from a philosophical analysis (...) of what the political demise implies for the thinking of the community, of the event and the History, analysis that mark the question of spectrality as the key for the understanding what was then occurs, this work - which dilutes all limit between the real and the unreal - appear as one of the most important of our time. (shrink)

This article examines cinematographic observational studies of infants conducted by a loosely connected group of female psychologists and physicians in the USA from the 1930s to the 1960s. Largely forgotten today, these practitioners realized detailed and carefully planned research projects about infant behavior in a variety of settings—from the laboratory to the well-baby clinic. Although their studies were in conversation with better-known works, such as John Bowlby's research on attachment and René Spitz's films on institutionalized infants, they differed in a (...) close examination of individual characteristics of babies and a critical attitude toward contemporary notions of ‘pathological mothering’. In closely following the work of several researchers, including but not limited to pediatrician Margaret Fries (1898–1987), the clinical psychologist Sibylle Escalona (1915–96) and her team members—child psychiatrist Mary Leitch (1914–?) and avant-garde photographer Ellen Auerbach (1906–2004)—and psychologist Anneliese Korner (1918–2010), I argue that their cinematographic works shed a more nuanced light on the landscape of infant research and child psychiatry in the mid 20th century, and open a way for alternative readings of gender, psychoanalysis, and scientific observation at that time. (shrink)

The subject of the study is the figurative and symbolic reflection and transformation of the dynamic reality of life in the cinematic space of modern culture. The purpose of the work is to identify and substantiate trends in the development of cinematographic cultural texts based on the figurative and symbolic representation of the phenomenon of success in the existential space of human existence. The scientific novelty of the work is represented by the evidence base of the study, which determines the (...) figurative correspondence of the philosophical and sociological representation of cinematic texts to the phenomenon of success as a value-symbolic aspect of personal activity. Based on the analysis of cinema screen products created at the turn of the XX-XXI centuries and devoted to the characterization of the image of a subject whose existential level of being is characterized in the symbols of success/ failure, several trends in the development of cinematic culture can be identified. Firstly, the characteristic of the "sunset" of the previously dominant ideological trend of symbolization of the actual phenomenology of success. Secondly, the stage of axiological instability and ambivalence in the evaluation of the symbols of success, unevenly implemented in the scenario and staging part. And, thirdly, the formation and consolidation of new cinematic paradigms through the constant convergence of private symbols of success, manifested in different ways both in reality and on the cinema screen, and accompanied by constant attempts at their non-contextual universalization. (shrink)

Film emotions are genuine emotions whose formation and development is affected by conflictive factors. Whereas their arousal, similar to that of real-life emotions, is disproportionately strengthened by the cinematographic medium, their subsequent course is both weakened and interrupted. Their objects, which I view as members of our personal emotional world (not in terms of their supposed fictionality, as often assumed), are also proper intentional objects of emotions: our fear is about the shark on the screen, our pity about the main (...) character. This view allows also for an explanation of two of film emotions’ neglected features: (a) the viewer's emotional attachment and empathy toward film objects and (b) the long-lasting emotional impact films can have on viewers. (shrink)

With the recent advent of systems biology, developmental biology is taking a new turn. Attempts to create a ‘digital embryo’ are prominent among systems approaches. At the heart of these systems-based endeavours, variously described as ‘in vivoimaging’, ‘live imaging’ or ‘in totorepresentation’, are visualization techniques that allow researchers to image whole, live embryos at cellular resolution over time. Ultimately, the aim of the visualizations is to build a computer model of embryogenesis. This article examines the role of such visualization techniques (...) in the building of a computational model, focusing, in particular, on the cinematographic character of these representations. It asks how the animated representation of development may change the biological understanding of embryogenesis. By situating the animations of the digital embryo within the iconography of developmental biology, it brings to light the inextricably entwined, yet shifting, borders between the animated, the living and the computational. (shrink)

Science in film, and usual equivalents such asscience on filmorscience on screen, refer to the cinematographic representation, staging, and enactment of actors, information, and processes involved in any aspect or dimension of science and its history. Of course, boundaries are blurry, and films shot as research tools or documentation also display science on screen. Nonetheless, they generally count asscientific film, andscience inandon filmorscreentend to designate productions whose purpose is entertainment and education. Moreover, these two purposes are often combined, and inherently (...) concern empirical, methodological, and conceptual challenges associated withpopularization,science communication, and thepublic understanding of science. It is in these areas that the notion of thedeficit modelemerged to designate a point of view and a mode of understanding, as well as a set of practical and theoretical problems about the relationship between science and the public. (shrink)

This article examines the milestones in the development of cinematography as a phenomenon in Bashkortostan. The author traces the path from the emergence of very first films to the present state of local film production in the republic. Research methodology leans on the methods of systematization and analysis of scientific literature, written and cinematographic sources, historical-typological, interpretation of written and cinematographic material. The peculiarities of the establishment and development of Bashkir cinematography are revealed. The theoretical importance of this article lies (...) in systematization of knowledge and description of the ethnocultural characteristics of the development of cinematography in the context of Bashkir cultural field. Cultural tradition as an example that is being reflexively used by people within the framework of a particular culture for solution of life tasks underlies the national cinematography. The models of lifestyle and perception of the world in a given cultural era are realized in the national cinematographic works and represent cultural paradigm of the nation. The author notes the ethnic peculiarities of the development of the phenomenon of cinematography in the region. Prevalence of the elements of traditional national culture in the films determines the peculiar nature of Bashkir cinematography and impacts the ethnocultural identity of the recipient. The scientific novelty lies in revealing the historiographical and culturological aspects of Bashkir cinematographic works, as well as outlining its role in modern art culture. The study was conducted on the basis of semiotic and interpretational methods of art history analysis. (shrink)

The visual arts have managed to make the zombie an essential figure in popular culture. The cinematographic medium has contributed to building with him an imaginary of disaster against the backdrop of a pandemic. We will show the adequacy of the zombie with a collective imagination for which the world to come is inscribed under the sign of zombie collapse.

Though he has worked almost exclusively in collaborative mediums like radio and film, Orson Welles has always tended to think of himself as an individual author. "Any production in any medium is a one-man production," he said to me. On the question of sharing creative responsibility for the works that bear his name, he is deeply ambivalent. His insistence on multiple billings for himself is legendary. As I can well testify, the very mention of the term collaboration at a wrong (...) moment can be enough to send him into a rage. The controversy over who scripted Citizen Kane initiated by Pauline Kael hurt him very deeply. That the wound still festers to this day is evident in the rancor with which he speaks of former associates like John Houseman. Yet in quieter moments he will fully concede how indispensable his principal collaborators have been to him and will openly discuss the nature and extent of their contributions. He is especially full of praise for cinematographers with whom he has worked over the years, such as Gregg Toland, Russell Metty, and, more recently, Gary Graver. On Citizen Kane, he singles out four individuals whom he thinks deserve special recognition: writer Herman Mankiewicz, art director Perry Ferguson, composer Bernard Herrmann, and Toland. Of these, he says, Toland's contribution to the film was the greatest, second in importance only to his own. In this essay I deal with the history and nature of Welles' collaboration with Toland on Citizen Kane—what brought them together, their working relationship, and the characteristics and rationale of the visual plan they created for the film. As we shall see, Toland brought a largely pre-conceived visual plan to Citizen Kanewhich he had been working out in his previous films. Welles accepted Toland's plan so readily because he recognized how dramatically appropriate it was to the story material. Toland's cinematography for Citizen Kane also left a major legacy to Hollywood films of the 1940s.Robert L. Carringer, is associate professor of English and cinema studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. This essay is excerpted from his book in progress, The Road through Xanadu. His most recent contribution to Critical Inquiry was "The Scripts of Citizen Kane". (shrink)

Résumé Tout semble exclure le « corps amoureux » de l’univers froid et désincarné du cinéaste Robert Bresson (1901-1999). Une analyse attentive révèle toutefois la présence dans son œuvre d’une érotique singulière. Grâce au contrôle absolu de ses acteurs, qu’il appelle ses « modèles », le réalisateur invente un corps amoureux « cinématographiquement parlant ». Ses personnages, avec leur phrasé neutre et automatique, nouent en effet une relation fusionnelle avec la caméra : se donnerait ainsi à entendre, grâce à une (...) esthétique attentive à ses caractéristiques intimes, la voix de cette miraculeuse machine que reste le cinématographe. (shrink)

El filósofo norteamericano S. Cavell ha estudiado los vínculos entre el cine clásico hollywoodense y el perfeccionismo moral emersoniano. Se ofrece una exposición tanto de los presupuestos que este pensador asume en su análisis del fenómeno cinematográfico como del perfeccionismo moral que reivindica, encuadrándolos en el contexto teórico que les da sentido y sugiriendo algunas vías de crítica. The north American Philosopher S. Cavell has studied the connections between classical cinema from Hollywood and Emersonian moral perfectionism. This article presents both (...) the presuppositions assumed by Cavell throughout his analysis of the cinematographic phenomenon and the moral perfectionism he vindicates, providing a theoretical context which gives them sense and suggests some ways of critical discussion. (shrink)

The present essay seeks to analyze the reflections on cinematographic art proposed by Jean-Luc Nancy, referring in particular to his L’Évidence du film. Abbas Kiarostami (2001) as well as to other studies where the author reconsiders the concepts of image and gaze. The specifity of films lies in “evidence”, which is a way to affirm the finite character of existence-presence. Cinema addresses the world without any form of realism. It is reality itself to open out to the image. What results (...) is a possible gaze which is no longer on representation and nor can it be a representative gaze. This gaze does not look at any object; the very act of seeing can be seen through it. (shrink)

Machine generated contents note: Part I -- Doctors -- Dr. Joseph Messer -- Dr. Sharon Sandell -- ER -- Dr. John Barrett -- Marc and Noreen Levison, a paramedic and a nurse -- Lloyd (Pete) Haywood, a former gangbanger -- Claire Hellstern, a nurse -- Ed Reardon, a paramedic -- Law and Order -- Robert Soreghan, a homicide detective -- Delbert Lee Tibbs, a former death-row inmate -- War -- Dr. Frank Raila -- Haskell Wexler, a cinematographer -- Tammy Snider, (...) a Hiroshima survivor (hibakusha) -- Mothers and Sons -- V.I.M. (Victor Israel Marquez), a Vietnam vet -- Angelina Rossi, his mother -- Guadalupe Reyes, a mother -- God's Shepherds -- Rev. Willie T. Barrow -- Father Leonard Dubi -- Rabbi Robert Marx -- Pastor Tom Kok -- Rev. Ed Townley -- The Stranger -- Rick Rundle, a city sanitation worker -- Part II -- Seeing Things -- Randy Buescher, an associate architect -- Chaz Ebert, a lawyer -- Antoinette Korotko-Hatch, a church worker -- Karen Thompson, a student -- Dimitri Mihalas, an astronomer and physicist -- A View from the Bridge -- Hank Oettinger, a retired printer -- Ira Glass, a radio journalist -- Kid Pharaoh, a retired "collector" -- Quinn Brisben, a retired teacher -- Kurt Vonnegut, a writer -- The Boomer -- Bruce Bendinger, an advertising executive and writer -- Part III -- Fathers and Sons -- Doc Watson, a folksinger -- Vernon Jarrett, a journalist -- Country Women -- Peggy Terry, a retired mountain woman -- Bessie Jones, a Georgia Sea Island Singer (1972) -- Rosalie Sorrels, a traveling folksinger -- The Plague I -- Tico Valle, a young man -- Lori Cannon, "curator" of the Open Hand Society -- Brian Matthews, an ex-bartender, writer for a gay weekly -- Jewell Jenkins, a hospital aide -- Justin Hayford, a journalist, musician -- Matta Kelly, a case manager -- The Old Guy -- Jim Hapgood -- The Plague II -- Nancy Lanoue -- Out There -- Dr. Gary Slutkin -- Day of the Dead -- Carlos Cortez, a painter and poet -- Vine Deloria, a writer and teacher -- Helen Sclair, a cemetery familiar -- The Other Son -- Steve Young, a father -- Maurine Young, a mother -- The Job -- William Herdegen, an undertaker -- Rory Moina, a hospice nurse -- The End and the Beginning -- Mamie Mobley, a mother -- Dr. Marvin Jackson, a son -- Epilogue -- Kathy Fagan and Linda Gagnon, mothers. (shrink)

In The Future of the Image (2007) Jacques Rancière states that the end of images is behind us. He argues for an aesthetics of the image that acknowledges the continuing power of images as educating documentations of traces of history, as directly affecting interruptions, and as open-to-combining signs of the visible and the sayable ad infinitum. But does Rancière's claim also concern the future of cinema? His cinematic references, in a Deleuzian sense, are mostly to modern time-images. Is the future (...) of film indeed a form of the time-image, or has the ‘heart’ of cinema moved beyond this image-type? This paper proposes to look at a third category of cinematographic images, based in the third synthesis of time as developed by Deleuze in Difference and Repetition. This filmic image, that could be called the neuro-image, is connected to the impure regime of images typical for the database logic of the digital age. By comparing Alain Resnais's Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959) to the television seriesFlashForward (2009), I will analyse the temporal operations of the image of the time-image to these images of a new regime of images, the image of and from the future.1. (shrink)

This issue ofScience in Contextis dedicated to the question of whether there was a “cinematographic turn” in the sciences around the beginning of the twentieth century. In 1895, the Lumière brothers presented their projection apparatus to the Parisian public for the first time. In 1897, the Scottish medical doctor John McIntyre filmed the movement of a frog's leg; in Vienna, in 1898, Ludwig Braun made film recordings of the contractions of a living dog's heart (cf. Cartwright 1992); in 1904, Lucien (...) Bull filmed in slow motion a bullet entering a soap bubble. In 1907 and 1908, respectively, Max Seddig and Victor Henri recorded Brownian motion with the help of a cinematograph (Curtis 2005). In 1909, the Swiss Julius Ries was one of the first to film fertilization and cell division in sea urchins (Ries 1909). In that same year in Paris, Louise Chevroton and Frédéric Vlès used a film camera to observe cell division in the same object (Chevroton and Vlès 1909). As early as 1898, the Parisian surgeon Eugène-Louis Doyen began filming several of his operations, among them the spectacular separation of the Siamese twins Doodica and Radica (Bonah and Laukötter 2009). And in England, the scientist and zoologist Francis Martin Duncan produced an array of popular-scientific films for Charles Urban: “The unseen world: A series of microscopic studies” was presented to the public in the Alhambra Theatre in London for the first time in 1903 (see Gaycken in this issue). (shrink)

In addressing the fundamental issues of Merleau-Ponty’s last ontology, for which Being is an expressive movement, this paper focuses on Merleau-Ponty’s reflections on painting, sculpture and, mainly, cinema. Two reasons justify such a choice. The first one is that Merleau-Ponty’s reflections on films as artistic objects are starting to become better known, while an exclusive privilege has been too long given to his texts on painting, sculpture and literature. An enrichment of our reading of his aesthetics and ontology is thus (...) made possible. The second reason is that, although it is true that Merleau-Ponty’s general aesthetic doctrine introduces us to the question of movement, of its meaning and its ontological status as “expression,” it is even more true that, in the framework of this general aesthetic doctrine, his analyses of the mode of expression of cinematographic images become especially significant. (shrink)

ArgumentIn 1895 when the Lumière brothers unveiled their cinematographic camera, many scientists were elated. Scientists hoped that the machine would fulfill a desire that had driven research for nearly half a century: that of capturing the world in its own image. But their elation was surprisingly short-lived, and many researchers quickly distanced themselves from the new medium. The cinematographic camera was soon split into two machines, one for recording and one for projecting, enabling it to further escape from the laboratory. (...) The philosopher Henri Bergson joined scientists, such as Etienne-Jules Marey, who found problems with the new cinematographic order. Those who had worked to make the dream come true found that their efforts had been subverted. This essay focuses on the desire to build a cinematographic camera, with the purpose of elucidating how dreams and reality mix in the development of science and technology. It is about desired machines and their often unexpected results. The interplay between what “is” (the technical), what “ought” (the ethical), and what “could” be (the fantastical) drives scientific research. (shrink)

The subject of the study is Bernardo Bertolucci's film "The Last Emperor", in particular, the coloristic of the film and the psychology of the image of the main character, which is largely revealed through the color palette and individual artistic details. The object of research is the language of cinematography, cinematographic artistic techniques. Despite the sometimes shocking images and plots, Bertolucci's films were highly appreciated by the international community and domestic film critics due to their artistic solution and topical issues (...) affecting the problems of class struggle and anti-fascist themes. The author of the article examines the image of the main character of the film, Aisingero Pu Yi, the last emperor of China and Manchukuo. The film is based on real historical events taking place in the first half of the 20th century, so the dramatic collisions of the character are not perceived by the viewer as some kind of abstract problem. Against the backdrop of the complex historical changes that China has faced, many questions of the formation and self-determination of the individual are being raised. The image of Emperor Pu Yi is revealed gradually through a comparison of two storylines and the color scheme of the film, since it is the color palette that helps to subtly and meaningfully convey the psychological content of the character. The main research methods are analytical and comparative-historical. The composition of the film and the dynamics of the change in the color palette of individual episodes are analyzed, which makes it possible to trace the evolution of the image. The author comes to the conclusion that it was the coloristic solution of the film that allowed the creators to convey the national color and historical atmosphere of China of a certain historical period and show a vivid image of the protagonist on the screen. (shrink)

Analysing film. Distinguishing the filmic contribution to meaning -- Examples of filmic "textual organisation" -- Redrawing boundaries -- Organisation of the book -- Semiotics and documents. Semiotics and its relations to film -- The nature of discourse semantics -- The film as cinematographic document -- A combined view: filmic documents for filmic discourse -- Constructing the semiotic mode of film. Semiotic multimodality -- The internal organisation of semiotic strata -- Composing and combining semiotic modes -- Materiality and "epistemological commitment" -- (...) Christian Metz and the grande syntagmatique of the image track. The original model -- Two examples of analysis with the grande syntagmatique -- Revisions and rebuttals -- Foundations for analysis: filmic units. The basic units of film: preliminaries -- Audiovisual iconic representations -- Perception, perceptual realism and reliable measurement -- Multiplicity: from perception to discourse -- Filmic units revisited: discourse-motivated definitions -- The paradigmatic organisation of film. Beyond Metz: towards a grande paradigmatique -- Capturing discourse dependency structures in film -- The paradigmatic dimensions of projection, taxis and plane -- Two examples of paradigmatic analysis -- Summary and conclusions. (shrink)

ResumoNeste artigo, são analisados filme e roteiro de Bacurau (2019), dirigido por Kléber Mendonça Filho e Juliano Dornelles. Compreende-se a obra sob a perspectiva da ficção weird pela conjunção entre os elementos de futuridade da narrativa e os conflitos sociais do interior do Brasil, circunscritos a uma realidade histórica. Misturando gêneros cinematográficos em um filme que vai do cangaço ao gore, Bacurau nos coloca frente a uma distopia sobre a proliferação de tecnologias de vigilância e controle e, sobretudo, sobre a (...) proliferação de sistemas políticos de morte.Palavras-chave: Bacurau. Ficção weird. Aceleracionismo. Desterritorialidade. Necropolítica. Estudos decoloniais. AbstractIn this article I analyze the film and the script of Bacurau (2019), directed by Kléber Mendonça Filho and Juliano Dornelles. The work is understood from the perspective of weird fiction for the conjunction between the elements of futurity of the narrative and the social conflicts of Brazil’s countryside, anchored in a historical reality. Mixing cinematographic genres in a film that goes from Cangaço Cinema to Gore, Bacurau confronts us with a dystopia about the proliferation of surveillance and control technologies and, specially, about the proliferation of political systems of death.Keywords: Bacurau. Weird Fiction. Accelerationism. Deterritorialization. Necropolitics. Decolonial Studies. (shrink)

. The purpose of this article is to analyze the specifics of the mythologizing of time in the historical period dramas "Downton Abbey" and "The Crown" in the context of the transition from the postmodern paradigm to a new metamodern sensibility. The article summarizes the experience of domestic and foreign studies of the metamodern tendencies of the modern TV series and analyzes the theoretical issues of the mythological temporality of TV series production. On the basis of the theoretical concept of (...) retrotopia by Z. Bauman, the concept of layers of cinematic temporality by N.E. Marievskaya and the critical discourse analysis of S. Jäger, the features of the mythologization of horizontal, vertical time, as well as the biographical time of characters in selected period dramas have been analyzed. The scientific novelty of the article lies in the problematization and analysis of the discursive environment of the deployment of the temporal mythology of the modern period drama. The modern historical period drama demonstrates the specifics of turning to retrotopia, as it seeks to represent the current problems of the present through an imaginary past. In the case of the “Downton Abbey”, this happens through the harmonization in the viewer's mind of nostalgia for an imaginary English aristocratic past and an unstable future. In the case of the “The Crown”, the presentation of the private life of the British royal family against the backdrop of historical events contributes to the formation of a more multidimensional image of the present and responds to the demands of the mass audience in the emotional representation of historical events. The result of this representation is a kind of mythology of time, which arises between the cultural demand for retrotopia and the development of modern technologies for the production of cinematographic products, which makes it possible to fully realize the intention of modern metamodernist discourse to achieve a “new sensibility”. This allows us to consider the modern historical period drama not only as a "commercial project", but also as a tool for the development of historical culture, an instrument of cultural orientation in social space and time. (shrink)

In introducing his argument - which resumes and develops the philosophical analysis of the phenomenon of globalisation advanced in his book Westward Passage (forthcoming from Verso, London-New York) - Giacomo Marramao takes the film Babel, by the Mexican director Alejandro Gonzáles Iñárritu, as the point of departure for his discussion: the film depicts the globalised world as a complex space at once interdependent and differentiated in character, constituted like a mosaic, composed of a multiplicity of "asynchronic" ways and forms of (...) life which are brought together by the manifold flux of events that traverse them. This cinematographic depiction perfectly captures the disconcerting bi-logic of globalisation: the logic through which the mix of the global market and of digital technologies operating in "real time" generates an increasing diaspora of identities. The Babel of our contemporary world thereby reveals itself as a kind of planetary extension of the world of Kakania described by Robert Musil: a cacophonous compendium of proliferating and mutually untranslatable languages. In order to conceptualise, and produce a suitably fluid and dynamic account, of this new "world picture," we must not only dissolve the spurious dilemma between universalism and relativism, but move beyond the current impasse encouraged by a normative political philosophy which tends to reify "cultural identities" and "struggles for recognition" by treating these as givens rather than as problems. The philosophical approach pursued in the following discussion attempts to liberate the concept of "the universal" - despite the etymology of the word - from the logic of the reductio ad unum, and apply it instead to the realm of multiplicity and difference. Developing a double phenomenology of the increasingly homogenising phenomenon of the market on the one hand and of the internally conflicted pandemic of identitarian and communitarian approaches on the other, the author indicates a variety of universalising tendencies whose potential can only fully be evaluated in the context of a new theory and practice of translation. Marramao's proposal for a universalism of difference is predicated on the failure of the two principal models of "democratic" inclusion that have previously been attempted in the West: the republican or assimilationist model (that of a Republique founded upon what could be called a universalism of indifference) and the "strong" multiculturalism model (the so-called Londonistan model that derives from a mosaic of differences that also provides fertile ground for the growth of fundamentalist ideas). But to advance beyond the antagonistic complicity generated by this dilemma calls for a re-enchantment of the political: the only way in which we may be able to read the prognostic signs of our present. (shrink)

In this article, precariousness is understood as an intrinsic characteristic of a vast set of images ‐ being them pictorial, sculptural, photographic, cinematographic, digital or other. These images acquire their specific value, most of the time, precisely as a function of this attribute. Precariousness is, in this case, not an insufficiency or a weakness, but a power, understood in different areas, from aesthetics to ontology. This article is divided into two parts: the first one explores, in various ways, the ephemerality‐eternity (...) polarity based on precariousness; the second one allows us to know the plural manifestations of the precariousness of the image in multiple forms of expression by identifying a range of arts and media nuclei. Invoking the contribution of different authors, from ancient to contemporary times, the article ends as it begins: it highlights the intrinsic precariousness of both forms of artistic creation and the modes of academic thinking. (shrink)

Distinctive for its pungent and oftentimes rotten odor, the thorny fruit of durian (Durio spp.) is considered a delicacy throughout Asia. Despite its burgeoning global recognition, durian remains a fruit of contradiction—desirable to some yet repulsive to others. Although regarded commonly as immobile, mute, and insentient, plants such as durian communicate within their own bodies, between the same and different species, and between themselves and other life forms. As individuals and collectives, plants develop modes of language—or phytodialects—that are specific to (...) certain contexts. Focused on vegetal semiosis or sign processes, a phytosemiotic lens views plants as dynamic and expressive subjects positioned within lifeworlds. Absent from phytosemiotic theory, however, are the cultural sign processes that take place within and between plants—what I call cultural phytosemiotics. The framework I propose calls attention to the interlinked biological, ecological, and cultural dimensions of signification between plants and non-plants. From a phytosemiotic standpoint, this article examines historical, cinematographic, and literary narratives of durian. Reflecting the fruit’s divisive sensory effects, historical accounts of Durio by Niccolò de’ Conti, Jan Huyghen van Linschoten, Georg Eberhard Rumphius, and William Marsden alternate between praise and disdain. Moreover, films such as Fruit Chan’s Durian Durian (2000) and Anthony Chen’s Wet Season (2019) narrativize the polarities that similarly figure into historical depictions of the species. Literary narratives, including the poems “Durians” (2005) by Hsien Min Toh and “Hurling a Durian” (2013) by Sally Wen Mao, investigate the language of durian’s olfactory and gustatory sensations. Along a continuum between adoration to revulsion, durian embodies the otherness of vegetal being. In an era of rampant biodiversity loss, learning to embrace botanical difference should be a human imperative. (shrink)

The aim of the paper is a critical evaluation of Mikhail Bakhtin’s carnival laughter’s theory, and along the analysis of Walter Benjamin’s notion of laughter, and its relation to modernity. While Bakhtin concentrates his attention on a few medieval festivities, this paper focuses on the “feast of fools” (festa stultorum) as a metaphor for carnival laughter. For Bakhtin, clown, joker, etc. represents Medieval and Renaissance carnival spirit, while an animated Mickey Mouse, alongside with Charlie Chaplin’s movie character, appears in Benjamin’s (...) texts as a figure of modernity. Carnival laughter can be cruel, and it was cruel indeed, participated in violence during the festivities. The same cruelty Benjamin had found in a few fairy tales collected by the Brother Grimm. How cruelty and laughter are connected? The lack of common experiences in modernity was the reason why Bakhtin wanted to find a counterbalance to modern atomistic bourgeois society, and laughter could have given it. According to Bakhtin, the spirit of carnival as a collective laughter gradually dried up and in the 16th century it has self-transformed into a novel and became a genre of grotesque realism. For Benjamin, only epic, architecture and cinematograph are able to create the collective experience. (shrink)

The advent of the cinema radically altered our comprehension of time, space, and reality. With his experience as a pioneering avant-garde filmmaker, Jean Epstein uses the universes created by the cinematograph to deconstruct our understanding of how time and space, reality and unreality, continuity and discontinuity, determinism and randomness function both inside and outside the cinema. Time, he says, should be regarded as the first, not the fourth, dimension—and the cinematograph allows us, for the first time, to manipulate it in (...) directions and speeds of our choosing. The theoretical work of Jean Epstein greatly influenced later generations of cinema philosophers, notably Gilles Deleuze and Jacques Rancière, but the bulk of his work remains unpublished. _The Intelligence of a Machine_, his first major title published in English, is one of the earliest philosophies of cinema. (shrink)

This series of images forms part of the ongoing project Soft Ground, Hard Light, which speculates on a multiscalar spatial ontology of photography emanating from the Arditurri silver mine complex in the Basque Country. Evoking the mountainous massif around Arditurri where silver ore and galena have been extracted since Roman presence in the area, the depicted topographies are, in fact, data transcriptions from atomic force microscopy (AFM) probing the analogue film stock of an early 1930s experiment in 3D cinema, Cine (...) en Relieve, by the Basque cinematographer Teófilo Mingueza. In contrast to optical or electron microscopy, AFM uses a scanning probe to physically touch the specimen, recording its surface undulations at the atomic scale of a nanometre, or a billionth of a metre. As a haptic operation based on direct contact between instrument and sample, between apparatus and referent, AFM is literally a contact print, a ‘blind’ scan that senses not the visual content of the recorded image but ‘feels’ its underlying material substrate of silver nanoparticles within the 35 mm film emulsion. The resulting image assemblies visualize a topography resulting from the intra-action between the silver nanoparticles and the scanning probe as much as its transcription through the particular parameters afforded by the AFM analysis software. Hard Light, Soft Ground was initiated during an artist’s residency at Tabakalera Centre for Contemporary Culture, Donostia-San Sebastián, and is currently in production as part of the wider research project Esper Syndrome: Archaeotopologies of the Image at the Royal College of Art, funded by the AHRC through the London Arts & Humanities Partnership. With additional thanks to the Basque Film Archive and Gustavo Ariel Schwartz at the Materials Physics Centre, Donostia-San Sebastián. (shrink)