scholarly journals Stories of Telltale Eyes

2019 ◽  
Vol 19 ◽  
Author(s):  
Borbála László
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
Short Film ◽  
Conventional Film ◽  
Narrative Cinema ◽  
The Spectator ◽  
Dark Room

This paper attempts to rethink the concept of the filmic gaze through a comparative analysis of three films, namely, Krzysztof Kieślowski’s Krótki film o miłości (A Short Filmabout Love, 1988), Ferzan Ozpetek’s La Finestra di Fronte (Facing Windows, 2003), and Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom (2012). ‘Filmic gaze’ here refers not to the production of the filmic/discursive self through suture but to the whole fabric of the film, which is construed as a looking subject. Kaja Silverman’s cinematic suture theory and Descartes’s dark room parable are employed to illustrate how the passivising filmic gaze of classical narrative cinema confines the spectator to the position of the voyeur, who observes rather than creates the scene that pleases her. A Short Film about Love is analysed to demonstrate conventional film-audience dynamics and is then compared with two contemporary auteur films, Facing Windows and Moonrise Kingdom, which, by addressing viewers through the characters’ telltale eyes, keep reconceiving suture as they go along, blurring the boundary between intra-diegetic and extra-diegetic looks, and thus offering spectators a more active and varied spectatorial agency than that of the voyeur.

Introduction

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Kriss Ravetto-Biagioli
Keyword(s):  
Machine Vision ◽  
Feedback Loop ◽  
Interactive Media ◽  
Human Perception ◽  
Narrative Cinema ◽  
The Spectator ◽  
The Aesthetic

The digital uncanny emerges when we confront massive empirical datasets that have the capacity to anticipate practices, responses, experiences, and expressions that previously have been used to distinguish the human from the nonhuman—thinking, empathy, and consciousness. The film Ex-Machina illustrates how the digital uncanny emerges from personalized targeting techniques, but it cannot account for the feelings we get when we interact with computational media. Narrative cinema treats its spectators as subjects that can recognize and identify with characters and situations. While film is immersive, it is not interactive, and cannot directly address the spectator nor install her in a feedback loop. With interactive media, however, spectators are not always addressed as subjects but they remain within the sensory, within the aesthetic element. Interactive artworks bypass a human-centered perspectival mode of viewing, but, at the same time, they do not simply assume machine vision takes over human perception. They simultaneously challenge the idea of a unified subject (whether inhuman, nonhuman or posthuman) as well as notions of singularity or renewed assertions of humanism.

scholarly journals Hap-Tech Narration and the Postphenomenological Film

Philosophies ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 47 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Paul O’Brien
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Technology ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Narrative Cinema ◽  
The Spectator ◽  
The Look ◽  
Haptic Cinema

Within this paper, I explore the look and feel of the subjective point-of-view (POV) shot in narrative cinema and how it presents an awkward and uncomfortable space for the viewer to inhabit. It considers what David Bordwell has called the surrogate body: the concept in which viewers step into the role of an offscreen protagonist. In numerous films, this style invites the spectator to see and feel through the eyes and movement of a particular type of surrogate character, which as I argue, predominantly consists of killers, victims or socially inept characters. The term I give for this particular trait in cinema is hap-tech narration, which is inspired by Laura Marks’ concept of haptic cinema. Unlike Marks’ understanding of haptic which focuses upon sensual beauty, hap-tech narration considers phenomenological uncomfortableness which is considered through Don Ihde’s philosophy of technology. This paper incorporates Ihde’s framework of postphenomenology, which considers how experientiality is changed and filtered through technological devices (which in this analysis will be the technology of the camera and the frame of the screen). Using Ihde’s postphenomenological understanding of human–technology relationships (which this work explores in detail), I consider a range of narrative films that utilise POV camerawork, including: Delmer Daves’ Dark Passage (1947), Michael Powell’s Peeping Tom (1960) and Julian Schnabel’s Le Scaphandre et le Papillon (The Diving Bell and Butterfly, 2007). Each of these titles present events through the subjective gaze of a killer, victim or socially damaged character. This paper offers a rationale as to why this is the case by addressing POV through the philosophy of Ihde, enabling an understanding of hap-tech narration to be unpacked, in which viewers are placed into corrupted and damaged corporeality through the technological power of the camera.

The Lost Thing

2013 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 45-60
Author(s):  
Johanna Tydecks
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
Media Literacy ◽  
Picture Book ◽  
Literacy Skills ◽  
Film Adaptation ◽  
Short Film ◽  
Original Picture ◽  
Special Case ◽  
Existential Issues

The transformation of a picture book into a film is a special case of film adaptation because this process involves inherently intermedial qualities. In media literacy terms, when viewers look at a picture book that has been made into a film, they familiarize themselves with the story's imagery and plot, which makes it easier for them to comprehend the techniques employed by the film to create meaning. The Oscar-winning short film The Lost Thing is exemplary of this, as it narrates the same story as the original picture book, dealing with social as well as existential issues. This comparative analysis focuses on the two di erent narrations of this story with regard to the literacy skills required to comprehend them.

Naiá e a Lua (2010): lendas indígenas sob os holofotes da narrativa

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pollyanna Rosa Ribeiro ◽  
Keyla Andrea Santiago Oliveira
Keyword(s):  
Short Film ◽  
The Moon ◽  
It Projects ◽  
Award Winning ◽  
The Spectator ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Live Action ◽  
The Voice ◽  
Aesthetic Procedures

This article aims to discuss the composition of narratology in the award-winning Brazilian short film (12 minutes and 45 secunds) Naiá and the Moon (2010) under the direction of Leandro Tadashi. This work is linked to interinstitutional research Art, psychoanalysis and education: aesthetic procedures in cinema and the changes of childhood CEPAE / UFG / PUCGO / UEG / UAB-UNB / UEMS, which seeks to highlight the potentialities of the relations between cinema and education. The proposed film analysis will reveal the narrative functioning of the intersection of two indigenous legends that the short film contains, since it projects for the viewer a story within the story, the passionate narration of the legend of the appearance of the stars (relationship between Jaci and the Indians of tribe) with the ultimate construction of the legend of Vitória-Régia and its origin. Still, the place of childhood, the dreamlike quality of the narrative and the components of the diegetic world will be treated: characters - in this case, the central narrator and the protagonist child, Naiá, gain centrality; the spaces; temporality; the voice of the film; the spectator, narrator and narrative relationship based on the aesthetic devices used - photography, chosen soundtrack, the mix between live-action and animation - that make the film so touching and loaded with a symbolic-cultural charge. Gardies (2008) e Tarkovski (1998) will be fundamental references to support the discussion, alongside authors such as Benjamim (1994) and Adorno (2008).

scholarly journals Dychotomy of the phenomenal and semiotic bodies of the performer in the context of a theater without an actor

2021 ◽  
pp. 317-322
Author(s):  
Iryna Ivashchenko ◽  
Victoriya Strelchuk
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
Research Methodology ◽  
Semantic Content ◽  
Feng Shui ◽  
Cultural Center ◽  
New Horizons ◽  
Puppet Theater ◽  
Stage Performance ◽  
Theater Performances ◽  
The Spectator

modern theatrical art and to reveal the features of the phenomenal and semiotic body of the performer in theater performances without an actor. Research methodology. A synergetic method is applied, due to which the essence of the dichotomy of the phenomenal and semiotic body of the performer and the mechanism of its transformation in the process of transition from traditional theater to the theater without an actor is considered; a systemic method for analyzing the phenomenal and semiotic body of the performer as a manifestation of integrity in the unity of all connections and relationships; the method of comparative analysis, which contributed to the comparison of the ways of perception and understanding by the spectator of the semantic content of the stage performance in the traditional, puppet theater and theater without an actor, etc. Scientific novelty. The problems of theater without an actor are considered in the context of the theory of body dichotomy by B.S. Turner and the model of the alternation of the phenomenal and semiotic body of the performer in the post-dramatic theater E. Fischer-Lichte; the absence of actors as traditional components of the stage production of the play is theoretically substantiated; it was found that, despite the absence of performers, a theater without an actor is a unique phenomenon of modern theatrical art, realized due to the dichotomy of the phenomenal-semiotic nature of the actor's corporeality. Conclusions. The study revealed that the dichotomy of the phenomenal and semiotic body of an actor is a meaningful tool for studying the interpretation of various types of modern theater. Based on the analysis of theater performances without an actor ("Feng Shui in a theater without an actor" B. Bulatovic, A. Mustar and J. Šimenc, Slovenia, Ljubljana, Cultural Center "Španski borci", 2011, etc.) it was found that in the absence of the phenomenal body of the actor in the stage action, scenography and props become the material vehicle of the semiotic body. Destroying traditions and moving away from the "actor - spectator" attitude, depriving the viewer of an actor of a person, theatrical figures strive for contemplation, open new horizons for the theater, which can cause unusual sensations and feelings.

Sounding Decay in the Digital Age

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nessa Johnston
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
Digital Age ◽  
Material Heterogeneity ◽  
Film Image ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Spectator ◽  
Musical Accompaniment ◽  
Silent Era ◽  
Film Sound

Bill Morrison’s Decasia (2012) and Peter Delpeut’s Lyrical Nitrate (1991) are collage works made up of decayed silent-era film fragments. The films approach sound in contrasting ways: Lyrical Nitrate uses old 78 rpm recordings of operatic music as musical accompaniment to its decayed images, whereas Decasia uses a specially commissioned score and exists not only in DVD format but also as an elaborately staged performance piece. This chapter is an investigation of the role of the soundtrack within both films’ repurposing strategy, comparing and contrasting their sonic approaches, using a Chion-esque idea of “audio-vision” in an effort to understand their aesthetic workings. Despite the material heterogeneity of film sound and film image, the spectator takes in the experience as a synthesis. Yet beyond representational strategies the materiality of sounds and images in the pre- and postdigital ages is arguably the subject of exploration unifying this comparative analysis.

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