Transmettre aux aveugles le comique d’une production multimédia. Étude d’un cas

In this paper the author demonstrates the limits of audio description in the transfer of the humorous effects of a film comedy which constitute the “semantic dominant” of this kind of production. The analysis is illustrated by examples from Philippe de Chauveron’s film, À bras ouverts (2017). In this form of intersemiotic translation, the lack of certain visual data can block the possibility of understanding the comic by blind or visually impaired people. The author tries to propose some solutions to this problem in the form of creative audio description.

When the World Laughs. Film Comedy East and West – William V. Costanzo

While film genres have risen or declined along with the times and its trends, according to Aldredge (2019), comedy has remained steady in high popularity through all the years since 1910, which is practically to say throughout the whole history of cinema as an industry. Furthermore, it can be said that comedy stands as the second genre in the number of films produced. Furthermore, it can be said that comedy stands as the second genre in number of films produced when considering only a single genre tagging. However, [...]

Queer Laughter in the Archives of Silent Film Comedy

This chapter looks and listens for queer traces of lesbian sexuality in the archives of American silent film comedies, from 1894 to 1919. Like sexuality, laughter is arousing, ambiguous, and often difficult to understand out of context. Focusing on A Florida Enchantment (1914) and Phil-for-Short (1919), as well as several very early slapstick film comedies, the chapter pursues queer laughter as a historiographic method. It argues that potential queer subtexts emerge in tense conflict with their juxtaposition to offensive representations of blackface minstrelsy, patriarchal sexism, and capitalist class ideology. At once amusing and disturbing in their sexuality effects, these films provoke new intersectional strategies in queer critical reading.

Socialist Embarrassment

Viktor Tregubovich’s first movie, A Hot July, nearly wrecked his career at the outset, because it was a de-Stalinizing project begun mere months before the deposition of Khrushchev. Released after extensive production delays, the film had been reduced to mere tatters of the original endeavor. But Tregubovich rehabilitated himself with his gentle and offbeat movie about a tank battalion in combat, War Is War, and a series of remarkably diverse projects followed. Go If You’re Going provoked surprise at Lenfilm because it was a film comedy, and thus, his colleagues believed, a departure from Tregubovich’s established style. The laughter it provoked was decidedly uncomfortable, a point remarked (without enthusiasm) in studio discussions. Released after a significant delay, it became the subject of critical comment in a 1979 article by the deputy chairman of Goskino, Boris Pavlenok. Go If You’re Going is perhaps the nearest Lenfilm movie to the socialist “new wave” traditions of directors such as Jan Němec, a tribute to a filmmaking style that had resurfaced after nearly a decade in the cold.