Dear all, Some of you may be interested in the following conference organised by postgraduate students as the University of Bath. David Clarke ++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Images at the Threshold: A Postgraduate Film Conference Hosted by the Department of European Studies and Modern Languages University of Bath Thursday 19th April 2007 PROGRAM 09.15 - 09.35 Arrival 09.35 – 10.50 Session 1. Chaired by Wendy Everett (1 WN 3.11) “Go West, comrade: recollection, transposition and populist radicalism in the New Left Westerns of Sergio Sollima” Austin Fisher (Royal Holloway. University of London) In 1966, Italian director Sergio Sollima adapted a treatment by Franco Solinas concerning the oppression of Sardinian peasants into a Western, entitled La resa dei conti (1967). By transposing this political tale to Texas and Mexico, Sollima both escaped censorship by appropriating the popular ‘Spaghetti Western’ tag, and appealed to Latin American sympathies at a time when Third Worldist doctrine was de rigeur amongst Italian militants. That the Western possessed political potentiality was widely recognised, but Sollima’s radical parables are problematic to such generic categorisation, since both here and in his second Western, Faccia a faccia (1967), his primary aim was to appropriate this century-old iconography from another continent to narrate his personal experiences of politicisation during the Fascist period. My paper will explore the temporal and geographical transposition of Sollima’s memories, and ask why it was that this conceit found such currency amongst the Italian student movement of 1967-8, above and beyond his fashionable Third Worldism. I will suggest that the director identified in the myth of the ‘Wild West’ a past charged with signifiers which crystallised and illuminated contemporary politics, brushing history ‘against the grain’ in an analogous agenda to that of the Frankfurt School, whose doctrine had a profound influence upon the emergent New Left counterculture to whom these films appealed. Sollima’s fusion of memory and myth harnessed the energies of recollection to stimulate revolutionary consciousness, and connected with this young, ‘hip’ audience, disillusioned with Italy’s economic miracle and enthralled by the teachings of Marcuse and Benjamin. “Guts and glory: Redenecks, rebellion and the road in modern horror cinema” Eimear Ballard (Warwick University) The proposed paper draws on preliminary work from the author’s PhD which involves the analysis of representation of citizens from the American South, stereotyped in much recent American cinema as ‘rednecks’. In recent years, a spate of horror films have been released which repeat the same pseudo-folkloric storyline: American teenagers (often identified as ‘Yankees’) travel through wilderness backwaters, where they encounter ‘redneck’ killers who bring about their doom. This spate of stylistically and thematically similar films includes Wrong Turn, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, House of 1,000 Corpses (all 2003), 2001 Maniacs and The Devil’s Rejects (both 2005), and The Hills Have Eyes (2006). I wish to examine the recent cinematic representation of the American South as the ultimate marginal space, the modern retelling of the crumbling households of Gothic fiction and the dwelling-place of contemporary America’s greatest nightmare: a disenfranchised, isolated and inbred rural poor thirsting for revenge. Considering the widespread dismantlement of stereotypy in the latter half of the twentieth century, it seems astonishing that the negative image of the ‘redneck’ continues to be propagated in popular cinema. I wish to examine the representation of the ‘redneck’ as a scapegoat for modern America, and the apparent triumph of the ‘Yankee’ teens as a complex image of a positive future for the United States, dwindling in international popularity. The Sound of Exile: Music and Identity on the Road in Exils Helen Thomas (University of Bath) This paper aims to explore the role of music in representing the affective impact of exile in film, focussing on Tony Gatlif’s Exils. Exils is an overtly accented film, explicitly drawing upon multiple musical references and contrasts in order to explore questions of diasporic identity. Music frames Exils, illuminating the different stages of Naïma and Zano’s journey as they retrace their parents’ journey of exile in reverse and gradually come to terms with their own conflicted identities as second generation Pieds Noirs immigrants.In a sense, the music functions as a narrator; the exiles’ story is told through the film’s song lyrics, through the fusion and overlapping of musical genres (from rap to Sufi, via flamenco) and through the integration of music with sound, image and narrative. As the film travels south, the emotional distance between the protagonists and the music narrows, until the music has become a pure, simultaneous expression of their subjective experience of exile. The tension built up from the very first frame/ beat of the film leads us to seek the catharsis of the film’s musical and emotional dénouement: a Sufi ritual in which Naïma and Zano participate. Shot in a single, ten-minute long take, this key scene transcends the boundary between fiction and documentary, creating a space within the narrative in which to engage directly with what Naficy refers to as “the acousticity of exile.” It could be argued that the effect of the music on the viewer, from a neurological point of view, increases our empathy with the characters’ emotional trajectory, as well as offering a form of release. 10.50 – 11.05 Tea Break 11.05 – 12.00 Session 2. Chaired by Dr. David Gillespie (1 WN 3.11) “Russian Dolls: Russian Puppet Theatre and Early Russian Animated Film” Ulrike Hartmann (University of Bristol) In this paper I shall discuss the overlapping areas between the tradition of Russian puppet theatre and early Russian cinema as representative of modernity in the field of animation. Puppet theatre as an art form is deeply rooted in Russian folk art and mass culture. With their set of stock characters and relatively static plot lines, touring puppet theatres have dominated the cultural experience of the mostly peasant and illiterate Russian masses from the 17th century until about 1900, thus preparing an audience that, at the turn of the century, was confronted with an entirely and radically new art form: cinematography. Cinema soon replaced other forms of touring entertainment and proved immensely popular because of its stunning new technology. I shall explore in this paper how – despite cultural shifts – the motifs, characters and plotlines of traditional puppet theatre were transferred via the means of cinematography into ‘modern’ Russian culture. The development from puppet theatre to animation constituted a transition from three-dimensional tactility to two-dimensional immaterialness. I will discuss the merging and colliding of these art forms, using the films of Wladyslaw Starewicz, Russia’s first animator, as an example. Focussing on The Cameraman’s Revenge (1911), and The Lily of Belgium (1915) I will analyse how he employed stuffed beetles and small animals to appeal to an audience shaped by puppet theatre. Intervention of the prosthetics in Sex is Comedy(2002) Ming-jung Kuo (University of Bath) This paper intends to explore the interface between the human body and artificial prosthesis and with it the collapsing of the symbolic and the literal. My focus will be Catherine Breillat’s film-within-a-film, Sex is Comedy. The inclusion of the prosthetic penis within the film’s diegesis simultaneously makes visible the explicit sex act and disguises the organic real with an inanimate object. This realistic prop is introduced as a means to stand in for the Actor’s physical/performing unreliability at the requirement of an erection during shooting. Initially having difficulty incorporating the prosthetic he labels “vampire,” he subsequently appropriates the symbolic power of this fake penis to turn the tables against the woman in charge, the director Jeanne. In parallel, Jeanne is forced to rely on a crutch for a leg injury sustained; an auxiliary object that puns on her position as a female director struggling for control in a masculine context. Following theoretical discussion of the prosthetic in art, it may be argued that the body long passes as an ‘unmarked canvas’ that is made visible by the addition of the prop. The prosthetic penis and the crutch work metaphorically to unveil the sexed bodies in performance, furthermore, opening a space to mediate the overlapping and blurring of boundaries between the real and the constructed, the subject and the object. 12.00 – 12.10 Break 12.10 – 13.05 Session 3. Chaired by Miss Hilary J. Potter (1 WN 3.11) The Mirror has Two Faces: a Clandestine Resistance versus the Fallen Woman Eylem Atakav (Southampton Solent University) This paper aims to textually analyse one of the most unconventional films of modern Turkish cinema (Masumiyet/ Innocence, Zeki Demirkubuz, 1997) from a feminist point of view, by focusing on the use of silence and violence in the film, in specific; and its representation of women and their experiences in general, whilst arguing that although the film may be regarded as one of the few feminist films in Turkish cinema, it still employs and deploys patriarchal structures. Indeed, the film, on one hand, identifies a feminist intervention to culture, by employing the idea of disassociation of sound and image; and dislodging the female voice from the female image, which may be considered as a method of feminist resistance; on the other hand, reiterates the norms of patriarchy whilst repeating, thus mythologizing the subordination of women in film as well as in Turkish culture; in other words, it depicts women’s suppression as the systematic denial of their subjectivity both through silence and violence. Overall, the paper attempts to overview the conditions of possibility and impossibility of a feminist discourse in Turkish cinema in specific, and a patriarchal culture in general, by a close textual analysis of Innocence. ‘Deep Thrust’ : Gender-bending on the path to Justice Philippa Thomas I will focus on the transgressive viewing pleasures of the actions of female protagonists in Asian Chambara (Japan) and Wu Xia Pian (Hong Kong/China) movies. Pleasure subjectively viewed from the perspective of a female, white, British student of performance studies growing up surrounded with the images of Hollywood. Informed by Bakhtin, Kristeva and Foucault, and drawing on the interpretation of transgression as an act which widens the borders of an art form, rather than an act which makes the form’s very existence impossible, this exploration takes as its foundation notions of radical pleasure in identifying both with the paths of violence taken in these films, and the characters that take this course of action. I will suggest that there are possibilities for vicarious play of skill, power and sex within the transgressive utopia of these violent films, and suggest that this ‘Bermuda Triangle’ of concrete meanings is where the power of these films lies. The Colonial fantasy of ‘porcelain kitten’ is considered, as is the status of female-to-male transvestites and the complex and much maligned ‘camp’ worshipping, Western ‘fanboy’ gaze. I will also examine the device of female protagonists using ‘womanly’ fragility as a trap, literally exploding sexual and cultural stereotype with their skill. Far from claiming a hard-line feminist/ transgressive standpoint for these films, the speaker proposes that the meticulous and rhythmically edited ‘violence’ is inherently liberating to a sympathetic viewer, operating on a level of kinetic empathy. 13.15 – 14.15 Lunch 14.20 – 15.35 Session 4. Chaired by Dr. Axel Goodbody (1 E 3.6) Ghosts in Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Les Diaboliques (1955) Alanna Donaldson (University of Kent) In Les Diaboliques, the suggestion that Michel has returned as a ghost culminates in his ghostly appearance at a window in the school photograph. The image is dismissed by Monsieur Raymond as merely a trick of the camera, ‘a kind of shot-silk effect - the reflection of a cloud that looks like our headmaster’. Later in the film, another trick of the camera, this time the film camera, momentarily renders Nicole ghostly, when a shot of her in a corridor is slowly cross-faded with an identically-framed shot of the empty corridor. But it is Christina’s ghost, and how it can be understood as a trick of the camera, a trick of cinema, that is the subject of my paper. Despite the fact that the ghost of Michel was only ever a fiction concocted by the lovers, the ghostliness of those earlier scenes lingers on in the final scene, when a schoolboy announces he has seen Christina’s ghost. It is as though, at this late stage in events, the film is no longer able to distinguish between the lovers’ plot and its own, and this strange scene is in the overlapping space between the two. My paper takes up James Monaco’s argument that ‘the screen image is vested with an immutable aura of validity’ in order to discuss the problematic nature of the plot twist, in Les Diaboliques and elsewhere, which seeks to invalidate all that has come before it. Fragmenting Reality: The Tangible Imaginary and Chrono-Form in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind David Shaerf (University of Exeter) The proposed paper will explore the fragmentation of what I am referring to as ‘chrono-form’: the relationship between the chronological events within a story and the projection line of the sequence of events within the film as shown to the spectator. While non-linear storytelling techniques have been perceptible for many years within the European Art Film tradition and also apparent in American independent film, experimentation with chrono-formatic fragmentation in mainstream American cinema is still, in essence, in its early stages. One such example of this appearing in contemporary American cinema is Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Gondry, 2004), where screenwriter Charlie Kaufman actively plays upon and subverts linear narrative time and space in order to inflict a sense of disorientation upon spectators; a conscious effort on behalf of the scriptwriter to challenge and confront the conventions of Bordwell’s Classical narrative Cinema. Kaufman’s script, moreover, plays on what I refer to in this paper as the ‘tangible imaginary’; the world within the mind of the protagonist as a tangible space, a place where the characters have the ability to change the linearity of the film in direct contrast to that of the conventional use of the flashback in classical filmmaking. In breaking from this conventional model, Kaufman permits a development of narrative form creating a world wherein the deus ex machina principle, rather than seen as being contrived, is an entirely plausible convention. With the inspection of these two counter-classical devices as used in mainstream Hollywood product, I will conclude this paper by showing how they have re-defined the notions of temporal structural parameters within the American mainstream. Speaking for Her: Almodóvar's Critique of Film Anna Sloan (University of Warwick) This paper contends that it is a primary aim of Pedro Almodóvar's Talk to Her to expose film's subversion of the boundaries between objective and subjective. Through a study of Benigno's role in the authorship of the very film in which he is a character, it will argue that Almodóvar implicates the filmmaker in this subversion. Almodóvar shows the filmmaker to be a solipsist: one who constructs the inner lives of others from his own delusional fantasies. Because all fictional characters spring from the filmmaker's mind—as well as because of the camera, and the conventions of the medium—it appears unproblematic and effortless in film to traverse the boundaries separating minds from each other, to go inside the heads of other people, to speak their thoughts for them. But, Almodóvar implies, to do so is a violation of the agency and privacy inherent to personhood. The objective narration of a film intrudes upon the subjective voices of its own characters—and thus all film characters are exploited, violated, even raped. 15.35 – 15.50 Tea Break 15.50 – 16.45 Session 5. Chaired by Dr. David Clarke (1 E 3.6) Halos, Heavens, and Light at the End… James Callow (University of Bath) This paper proposes a short genealogy of cinema’s relationship between violence and the sunset, death and the final image. From the genre-defining frame of the Western, via its revisionist re-application, to its contemporary addendum to high-school shootings the final image of sun and sky presents a liminal coda to a messianic historiography in American cinema. Always existing as a threshold beyond the conclusion of ‘plot’, it presents a supplemental image, both loaded and emptied, that suspends any visible revelation. Via three films, Shane (1953), Dead Man (1995), and Elephant (2003), this paper contemplates the inference of Thomastic ‘halos’, Benjaminian historiography of catastrophe and Derrida’s dialogue with Jan Patocka’s Heretical Essays to suggest an American parallel to Patocka’s European destiny through a evolving final frame of meaning, non-meaning and searching. City of Angels: Towards a Cinema of Mourning... Richard Armstrong (University of Cambridge) The 1990s saw the collapse of Communism, the end of Thatcherism, the loss of Hong Kong, the end of stability in eastern Europe, the death of Lady Di, the ’Death of Cinema’. How did films come to terms with these endings? After Life, City of Angels, Festen all explore bereavement. All are visually experimental, and all appeared in 1998. Why did three films from very different places all appearing in the same year all take death and transcendence as their themes? Pushing at the boundaries between interiority and the world, realism and trickery, these films negotiated the reconciliation of life and loss. All involved experimental attitudes towards acting. The plots of all three films invite comparisons with allegory. In 2003 American film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum wrote of “the simultaneous appearance of the same apparent tastes, styles and/or themes in separate parts of the world, without any signs of these common and synchronous traits having influenced one another - all of which suggest a common global experience….” Mortality is a perennial topic in cinema, but why did so many 1990s films treat this topic? Indeed, one of the biggest box office hits of its or any year - Titanic - revolved around mourning. Films about grief are ritual spaces where audiences work through feelings once processed in church or at wakes. My work focuses on the strategies and devices with which filmmakers have articulated grief-stricken interiority. I shall trace these devices back to a subgenre which I term the mourning film. 17.15 – 17.45 Talk ‘Intellect’ (3 W. 3.9) 17.45 – 18.30 Wine and nibbles (3 W. 3.9) For further details, see http://www.bath.ac.uk/esml/conferences/film/index.htm * * Film-Philosophy Email Discussion Salon. After hitting 'reply' please always delete the text of the message you are replying to. To leave, send the message: leave film-philosophy to: [log in to unmask] For help email: [log in to unmask], not the salon. **