scholarly journals Trembling Meaning: Camera Instability and Gilbert Simondon's Transduction in Czech Archival Film

2021 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 18-41
Author(s):  
Jiří Anger
Keyword(s):  
Film Theory ◽  
Found Footage ◽  
Archival Practice ◽  
Opening Ceremony ◽  
Distribution Of Elements ◽  
Lumiere Brothers ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Prior Intention

Many experimental found footage films base their meanings and effects on an interaction between the figurative content of the image and its material-technological underpinnings. Can this interaction arise accidentally without artistic appropriation? A recently digitised film by the Czech cinema pioneer Jan Kříženecký, Opening Ceremony of the Čech Bridge (1908), presents such an exercise in accidental aesthetics. At one point, the horizontal and vertical trembling of the cinematograph – obtained from the Lumière brothers – translates into a trembling of the figures on the bridge so precisely that the figurative and material spheres appear to cooperate towards a common aesthetic goal. To account for such phenomena, film theory, found footage filmmaking, and archival practice need to join forces with philosophy. More specifically, Gilbert Simondon's notion of transduction, a process based on the intersection of diverse realities within a domain, allows us to conceptualise the paradoxical interaction between the figurative and material dimensions and the unintentional meanings that arise out of it. Transduction enables the distribution of elements between these heterogeneous spheres while maintaining a certain stability within a system. In the case of archival films in which transduction occurs without prior intention or expectation, transduction can be foregrounded and prolonged. The connection between transduction and the “trembling meaning” of Opening Ceremony, understood within the wider context of camera instability in experimental found footage, will uncover the aesthetic potentialities held by the autonomous creativity of film matter and its interferences with the figurative content.

The Rhetoric of Madness in Realist Film Theory

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Temenuga Trifonova
Keyword(s):  
Mental Illness ◽  
Anxiety Disorders ◽  
Film Theory ◽  
Physical Reality ◽  
Affective States ◽  
Psychological Study ◽  
The Past ◽  
Film Reception ◽  
Points Of View ◽  
The Aesthetic

This chapter explores the rhetoric of madness and mental illness informing realist film theories. Hugo Münsterberg, author of the first work of film theory, The Photoplay: A Psychological Study, considered the following several features—reminiscent of the symptomatic language of dissociative identity disorder—essential to cinema: decentralization (the ability to assume alternate points of view), mobility (the ability to invert the past and the present, the real and the virtual), and derealization and disembodiment (characteristic of film reception). Epstein’s revelationist aesthetic and Balázs’s anthropomorphic film theory are both informed by animistic beliefs, translating into the realm of the aesthetic the symptoms of various types of delusional and anxiety disorders characterized by the inability to distinguish the living from the non-living. In Kracauer’s Theory of Film affective states commonly perceived as symptomatic of madness or mental illness—detachment from reality, ennui, melancholy, distraction, and disinterestedness/apathy—are posited as necessary to film’s ‘redemption of physical reality’. This chapter explores these and other formulations, focusing on Kracuer’s Theory of Film.

scholarly journals Life in Movement: A French Impressionist Critical Approach to Terrence Malick's Films

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Johnson
Keyword(s):  
Conceptual Framework ◽  
Film Theory ◽  
Tree Of Life ◽  
Natural Light ◽  
Scholarly Work ◽  
Critical Approach ◽  
Thin Red Line ◽  
Theory And Criticism ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Red Line

<p>Terrence Malick’s films from Badlands (1973) to The Tree of Life (2011) have generally received critical praise, as well as being the focus of detailed scholarly work. By contrast, his more recent films, what Robert Sinnerbrink refers to as the “Weightless trilogy” with To the Wonder (2012), Knight of Cups (2015) and Song to Song (2017), have been widely criticised and have been largely neglected academically. This thesis endeavours to situate the aesthetic features of these three films within a conceptual framework based in French Impressionist film theory and criticism. I will argue the ways in which these three films use natural light, gestures, close-ups, kinetic images and complex editing in relation to Germaine Dulac’s notions of pure cinema and Jean Epstein’s concept of photogénie. Moreover, these ideas can also be applied to films such as Days of Heaven (1978), The Thin Red Line (1998) and The Tree of Life. Thus, it is my contention that despite the significant changes to his filmmaking style evident in the Weightless trilogy, he remains a highly poetic director interested in the interior lives of his characters and the rhythms of life. </p>

Twofoldness in Moving Images

Projections ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
Joerg Fingerhut
Keyword(s):  
Visual Experience ◽  
Film Theory ◽  
Aesthetic Appreciation ◽  
Substantial Role ◽  
Moving Images ◽  
The Aesthetic

When watching a film, we are seeing-in moving images. Film’s visual experience is therefore twofold, encompassing a recognitional (the scene presented, the story told, etc.) and a configurational fold (editing, camera movement, etc.). Although some researchers endorse twofoldness with respect to film, there is also significant resistance and misrepresentations of its very nature. This paper argues that the concept is central to an understanding of the basic apprehension and the aesthetic appreciation of film. It demonstrates how twofoldness could play a more substantial role in a new cognitive film theory and a naturalized aesthetics of film. By discussing recent theories of our motor engagement with cinema it shows how referencing to the interplay of two filmic folds could inform such a theory.

Kinesthetic Empathy in Sergei Eisenstein’s Film Theory

2020 ◽  
pp. 175-235
Author(s):  
Ana Hedberg Olenina
Keyword(s):  
William James ◽  
Film Theory ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Psychological Theories ◽  
Political Implications ◽  
Soviet Psychology ◽  
Kinesthetic Empathy ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
The 19Th Century ◽  
The Brain

Chapter 4 explores Sergei Eisenstein’s theory of the audience’s corporeal empathy, evoked by actors’ movements and graphical, nonhuman “gestures”—that is, “movements” implied by the structure of the shot composition, editing, and other formal devices. In scrutinizing Eisenstein’s theory that spectatorship is, fundamentally, an enactive experience, this chapter traces the roots of his ideas and evaluates the aesthetic and political implications of his position. First, I analyze the filmmaker’s engagement with psychological theories of William James, William Carpenter, Vladimir Bekhterev, Alexander Luria, and Lev Vygotsky, as well as the 19th-century German theorists of empathy (Einfühlung). Special attention is devoted to one of Eisenstein’s major sources: Vladimir Bekhterev’s Collective Reflexology (1921), a seminal work of early Soviet psychology, which discussed nonverbal communication in crowds and argued that the processing of visual sensations by the brain instantaneously impacts motor networks. I argue that although Eisenstein’s model of spectatorship appears manipulative, it is also potentially emancipatory. Embracing the utopian spirit of the avant-garde, he was willing to subject himself and his audience to radical experimentation aimed at testing the sensory properties of cinema and demystifying the mass production of emotions.

The Aesthetic of Isolation in Film Theory: Hugo Munsterberg

1980 ◽  
Vol 38 (4) ◽  
pp. 473
Author(s):  
Jerome Stolnitz ◽  
Donald L. Fredericksen
Keyword(s):  
Film Theory ◽  
The Aesthetic

The Possibilities of Theatrical Montage (Successive and Simultaneous)

1995 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 77-86
Author(s):  
Zdeněk Hořinek
Keyword(s):  
Film Theory ◽  
Sergei Eisenstein ◽  
New Meanings ◽  
The Aesthetic

The aesthetic concept of montage finds its origins in film and film theory. Montage, as understood by Sergei Eisenstein, is not only a mechanical linking at random, a “sticking together” of pictures from scenes and shots. The basis of montage is dramatic and dialectical; among the elements of the montage chain there are contradictory relationships, and from these new meanings develop what the separate elements do not contain. “Any two pieces, put side by side, are inevitably linked together and form a new idea, which arises from this comparison as a new quality.” The inception of new meanings through a mere connection of parts arises from the perception of a montage of parts as one unit, even though the connection was only arbitrary.

scholarly journals Deep Truth and the Mythic Veil: Werner Herzog's New Mythology in Land of Silence and Darkness

2018 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-59 ◽  
Author(s):  
André Fischer
Keyword(s):  
Film Theory ◽  
Visual Studies ◽  
Visual Language ◽  
Main Argument ◽  
Original Image ◽  
Aesthetic Practice ◽  
Truth Claims ◽  
The Aesthetic

This article begins with Werner Herzog's programmatic statements on new images and deep truth and connects it to ideas of Nietzschean aesthetics, mainly the Apollonian image and the Dionysian horror. My main argument is that Herzog contributes to the literary and aesthetic tradition of new mythology within the medium of film by developing a distinct visual language that tries to express non-rational truth claims. In a first step I explore how Nietzschean aesthetics influenced the debates about the mythic image and total cinema in classic film theory and visual studies. More importantly I show how the desire to create new mythic images not only influenced Herzog's discourse on film, but his actual aesthetic practice. In my analysis of his 1971 documentary Land of Silence and Darkness (Land des Schweigens und der Dunkelheit) I show how the dynamic between Apollonian veil and Dionysian Urbild (original image) is effective in the construction of what Herzog calls “deep truth”. This article attempts to shift the focus away from the fact-fiction debate surrounding most of Herzog's documentaries and to concentrate instead on framing Herzog's claims of non-rational truth theoretically and locating his work in the aesthetic tradition of new mythology.

A Thousand Suns: Traversing the Archive and Transforming Documentary in Mati Diop's Mille Soleils

2016 ◽  
Vol 70 (1) ◽  
pp. 85-95
Author(s):  
James S. Williams
Keyword(s):  
Original Form ◽  
Specific Context ◽  
African Cinema ◽  
Found Footage ◽  
Political Implications ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Documentary Fiction ◽  
The Rich ◽  
New Vision ◽  
The Aesthetic

This article explores the aesthetic and political implications of the 2013 experimental short Mille Soleils (A Thousand Suns) by the Franco-Senegalese director Mati Diop. Placing it within the specific context of Djibril Diop Mambety's legendary 1973 feature, Touki Bouki, which it references directly, the article reveals how Diop (Mambety's niece) crafts an urgent, sensuous, and highly original form of documentary fiction that draws on, and extends, the historical impurity of African documentary. By plugging into the rich intertextual imaginary of cinema and engaging poetically with notions of found footage and the everyday (including that of Touki-Bouki's main actor, Magaye Niang, still living in Dakar forty years later), Mille Soleils, as Williams argues, produces an inclusive wide frame open simultaneously to the personal and historical, social and political. In the process, it both projects a new vision of documentary form and reconceives the very nature of the archive in African cinema.

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