- Mircea Valeriu Deaca had at the Paris III – Sorbonne nouvelle, Institut en Recherches en cinema et audiovisuel a Ph.D... moreMircea Valeriu Deaca had at the Paris III – Sorbonne nouvelle, Institut en Recherches en cinema et audiovisuel a Ph.D with a thesis on the carnival tradition and Federico Fellini’s films. He is currently teaching film theory and contemporary Romanian film analysis at the Doctoral School in Image Studies (CESI) at the Faculty of Letters at the University of Bucharest. He published several books on film: The Carnival and Federico Fellini’s Films (2009), Second Camera (2011), Postfilmic Cinema (2013), The Anatomy of Film. Introduction to the Semio-cognitive Approach of Film Studies (2013). He is writing about cinema since 1983. He is editor of the collective 2015 issue of Images, CESI, dedicated to the cinematography of the romanian director, Cristian Mungiu. He is currently working on a study on cognitive grammar applied to film analysis, Investigations in Cognitive Film Analysis.edit
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The Extended Control Cycle in Ritual Behavior and Narrative Scenarios the paper argues that rituals and symbolic cultural artifacts are external models of the world. the key idea is that human agents do not have direct or unmediated... more
The Extended Control Cycle in Ritual Behavior and Narrative Scenarios the paper argues that rituals and symbolic cultural artifacts are external models of the world. the key idea is that human agents do not have direct or unmediated access to the external world. Humans can sense and act upon intermediary processes such as cultural artifacts and rituals and construct a model of the target external world. in biological terms a Markov blanket mediates sense-making exchanges between the agent organism and the environment. in the cultural niche, humans, via rituals, model themselves modeling the world. in this structure of several nested Markov blankets the individual is included in a larger blanket. Hence, cultural practice offers a model of the world and a model of the self in the world. the cultural practice allows the creation of a cultural body/self for the agent. rituals mediate the relationship between the organism and the world. they also simulate the “incorporation” of the world and the self via the dynamic process of control. By action and sensory perception, the agent includes the external states in its area of control of the blanket. the agent and the cultural practice are coupled in a bi-directional control cycle. the agent controls the ritual and the ritual, once included in the field of control of a new encompassing blanket, changes the structure of the agent which becomes a new entity/self. rituals targeting the individual designate the personal transformation (e.g. birth, transition from child to adult, marriage, and death) and rituals of collective transformation (spring festivals that mark the passage from one year to another) target the evolution of the world in time. rituals formulate (in a descriptive manner) hidden realities and, at the same time (in a performative manner), bring them into existence as external realities that can be described and controlled via what is commonly labeled as magical thinking. rituals, conceived as explanatory models, simultaneously provide evidence for a self nested in a cultural niche and for a conceptualized external environment.
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Research Interests: Computer Vision and Art
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The present paper approaches Facebook as a cultural carnivalesque phenomenon. If we follow Mikhail Bakhtin’s view - it shares a number of defining features: excess, play, derision, ambivalence, multiple „voices” and a clearcut opposition... more
The present paper approaches Facebook as a cultural carnivalesque phenomenon. If we follow Mikhail Bakhtin’s view - it shares a number of defining features: excess, play, derision, ambivalence, multiple „voices” and a clearcut opposition to official Power. This opposition is not the expression of a clear message issued by a single author. It is mainly a reversal of the discourse of the o Other and the expression of freedom of views. As a play of masks Facebook allows its user to adopt an avatar considered to be immune of responsibility : it is what one can call an “public intimate” channel of communication. It is private but nonetheless expressed for a community of users. As a narrative it lacks a single author. Any user is author and lector; actor and audience. It represents a narrative without a closure and has family resemblance to play and performance. As a social mechanism Facebook seeks affiliation as cooperation and competition as domination. A lot of Facebook elicit an emotional approach. Emotion is a construal – action readiness - based on the appraisal of a situation in virtue of current goals and concerns of the individual. A lot of Facebook testimonials display a personal experience that is undisputable “true” (lyrical and ego centred). As such Facebook is a constant conversion mechanism that transforms emotion into reasons for beliefs and an invitation to action readiness – either in the mode of cooperation or participation or in the mode of domination and competition. „I like” is the minimal expression of emotion that creates the gateway to belief conversion and action. Keywords: Facebook, carnival, emotion, conversion, belief, action, narrative
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The paper focuses on the supposed fundamental change in contemporary films. After a short survey of several points of view on the matter I discuss the case of mashup cinema. This genre is based on recycling of cinematic sequences in order... more
The paper focuses on the supposed fundamental change in contemporary films. After a short survey of several points of view on the matter I discuss the case of mashup cinema. This genre is based on recycling of cinematic sequences in order to create new narrative and fictional discourses. Contrary to Dada's rhetoric, mashup cinema is prone to create narratives based on continuity. New semantic constructions are elaborated out of heterogeneous filmic scenes and sequences. Discontinuities, viewed as autonomous sequences, are enjoyed per se. Sequences are further bound by narrative roles, and by abstract and sensorial modifiers such as music, movement, shapes and colors. This characteristic has been, since its birth, an explanatory element of what we call film. Today's mashup cinema tends to become an audiovisual hieroglyphic language available to viewers and users situated at both ends of the spectrum, i.e. producers and addressees. Faced with this democratization of audiovisual use poststructuralist philosophical approaches have a gist of panic, and today's films and shorts are considered to be the epiphenomena announcing an apocalypse. Film analysts like David Bordwell, Roger Odin or Laurent Jullier adopt a more sober stance and study the new shifts in emphasis and the innovative use of new constructional schemas in a manner closer to the filmic text. Cinematic discourse, through the use of prefabricated chunks, cinematic topoi, is evolving towards a language which resembles the medieval literature and carnival where a common cultural thesaurus was available to users in order to create new conceptualizations and reality conceptions.
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In the framework of predictive coding, as explained by Giovanni Pezzulo in his article Why do you fear the bogeyman? An embodied predictive coding model of perceptual inference (2014), humans construct instances of emotions by a double... more
In the framework of predictive coding, as explained by Giovanni Pezzulo in his article Why do you fear the bogeyman? An embodied predictive coding model of perceptual inference (2014), humans construct instances of emotions by a double arrow of explanation of stimuli. Top-down cognitive models explain in a predictive fashion the emotional value of stimuli. At the same time, feelings and emotions depend on the perception of internal changes in the body. When confronted with uncertain auditory and visual information, a multimodal internal state assigns more weight to interoceptive information (rather than auditory and visual information) like visceral and autonomic states as hunger or thirst (motivational conditions). In short, an emotional mood can constrain the construction of a particular instance of emotion. This observation suggests that the dynamics of generative processes of Bayesian inference contain a mechanism of bidirectional link between perceptual and cognitive inference ...
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Preliminary 2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick, 1968) and Interstellar (Christopher Nolan, 2014) exhibit a family resemblance. Both films are constructed as instances of SF film genre. Categorizing a film sequence as a token of SF... more
Preliminary 2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick, 1968) and Interstellar (Christopher Nolan, 2014) exhibit a family resemblance. Both films are constructed as instances of SF film genre. Categorizing a film sequence as a token of SF concept is the result of a bidirectional mechanism. First the viewer will categorize elements of the setting that evoke the SF diegesis. The winner categorizing element propagates and categorizes the ensemble in bottom up manner. It categorizes the ensemble as a token of SF. Categorical inferences are activated and expand the scope of expected knowledge associated with a concept. Secondarily the evoked concept categorizes the instance in a top down manner. Other elements in the compound conceptualization are tuned and warped to be instances of the top down categorizing concept. 1 Once a viewer compares them he will construct a common pattern – a conceptual prototype – and will distinguish differences between both instances. The comparison act has a direction of categorization between the standard and the target of the comparison. Depending on the choice of the standard the viewer will construct an ad-hoc concept that will serve as the prototype (a type) used in order to apprehend the target (a token). Alternating the direction of categorization (AàB or BàA) means that at each comparison a different type (C and C*) will have two token instances. In time the viewer will construct a common concept out of the summary features extracted from both instances (C/C* ß D). Apprehending each instance is an act of making meaning, of conceptualizing. Each instance is a particular and unique combinatory mix of common bits and pieces that are represented schematically in the concept constructed and bits and pieces that are instances of other categorizing types. The prototype is the combination of both elements aggregated in an abstract common compound. The viewer will have conceptual access to the common template – a schematic representation of both prototypes –, to the prototypes, and finally he can keep in memory the two distinct instances. In order to apprehend the specificity of a particular cinematographic instance – a film – viewers will record the individual construal, i.e. the cinematographic work (camera work, shot scale and duration, dominant chromatic toning, movement and sound design). Constructing a particular conceptualization fuses expressive channel and content channel. The viewer keeps in memory a schematic representation of the conceptualization, a scarce representation or a summary of the conceptualization.
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The theatre of Jay Scheib blends theatrical and filmic features, allowing for a theoretical investigation of the manner in which two different media coexist on the same expressive support. How can two distinct media like film and theatre... more
The theatre of Jay Scheib blends theatrical and filmic features, allowing for a theoretical investigation of the manner in which two different media coexist on the same expressive support. How can two distinct media like film and theatre fuse and, at the same time, be apprehended as separate artistic means in a single artifact? The present article uses a theoretical interpretive metaphor that rests on an application of the mechanisms of relationship between two physical systems issued from the quantum mechanical view of reality. From this perspective, the two afore-mentioned media are in an entangled state. Media is understood as “potential materials or forms for future practices,” or “automatisms” (
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In Cognitive Grammar, the concept of reference point (R) designates the conception of one entity invoked in order to establish "mental contact" with another. The reference point access is a manner of mental scanning of a series of... more
In Cognitive Grammar, the concept of reference point (R) designates the conception of one entity invoked in order to establish "mental contact" with another. The reference point access is a manner of mental scanning of a series of discrete elements in order to find a final element embedded in this chain. In film, we can dissociate between perceptual reference point (pRP) and conceptual reference point (cRP). The pRP can be perceptually present in long takes that, after the editing cut, focus on a metonymic element of a scene in order to track to another section of the scene. The paper analyses several pRP and cRP constructions in film sequences and conceptual phenomena involving metonymy. Diegetic metonymy is compared to symbolic metonymy, which ultimately leads to metaphoric construals. We can also establish metonymic categories used as pivots between semantic domains and metonymies that profile unbounded qualities similar to mass nouns.
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The paper offers an overview on the cinematographic work of Radu Jude. An established director with fourteen films in his portfolio, Jude explores a variety of genres such as classical melodrama (“Alexandra”, 2006), comedy (“The Happiest... more
The paper offers an overview on the cinematographic work of Radu
Jude. An established director with fourteen films in his portfolio, Jude explores a variety of genres such as classical melodrama (“Alexandra”, 2006), comedy (“The Happiest Girl in the World”, 2009), parodical intertextual essay (“A Film for Friends” 2011), historical western (“Aferim!”, 2015), documentary (“The Dead Nation”, 2017). The paper explores the idea that, despite the diversity of cinematic approaches, Jude maintains a personal and coherent view and discourse on the
fictional world he depicts. This worldview can be metaphorically rendered as the “death of the author”. Radu Jude’s movies perform or rather take as working principle the decay of the concept of author as a unifying stylistic feature. But, at the same time, this concept is a critical post factum construct that modifies and corrupts the object it is supposed to describe and explain.
Jude. An established director with fourteen films in his portfolio, Jude explores a variety of genres such as classical melodrama (“Alexandra”, 2006), comedy (“The Happiest Girl in the World”, 2009), parodical intertextual essay (“A Film for Friends” 2011), historical western (“Aferim!”, 2015), documentary (“The Dead Nation”, 2017). The paper explores the idea that, despite the diversity of cinematic approaches, Jude maintains a personal and coherent view and discourse on the
fictional world he depicts. This worldview can be metaphorically rendered as the “death of the author”. Radu Jude’s movies perform or rather take as working principle the decay of the concept of author as a unifying stylistic feature. But, at the same time, this concept is a critical post factum construct that modifies and corrupts the object it is supposed to describe and explain.
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The paper offers a review of how film "speaks" and "thinks" with the help of kitchen scenery about a particular social reality and culture and, on a symbolic level in a more symbolic vein, about the human condition. Michael Haneke's... more
The paper offers a review of how film "speaks" and "thinks" with the help of kitchen scenery about a particular social reality and culture and, on a symbolic level in a more symbolic vein, about the human condition. Michael Haneke's influence is perceptible in Cristi Puiu's films: Moartea Domnului Lăzărescu/The Death of Mr Lăzărescu (2005), and Aurora (2010). The characters' POV and the camera's POV mirror each other. Both frame and fragment the victim's body in a violent manner. The cinematographic camera operates on reality violence such as it cannot be apprehended in a global and synthetic manner but only as a heap of bits and pieces to be explored from a psychic distance. The psychic stance of the character is mirrored in the camera perspective that transposes the viewer in the mental state of the psychopath character, Viorel from Aurora. The character acquires self-identity by an act of violence or by "consuming" the other. Incorporating the other eliminates the external reference-frame that serves as a comparison element necessary for the assertion of the difference of the self. As a result the ego is condemned to contemplate the horror of his own existential condition-that is lacking a well-defined social self.
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The present paper argues for the application of a series of notions from the Cognitive Grammar, and Dynamic systems theory to film analysis. Seeing a perceptual object, attending a visual target and constructing an image are dynamic... more
The present paper argues for the application of a series of notions from the Cognitive Grammar, and Dynamic systems theory to film analysis. Seeing a perceptual object, attending a visual target and constructing an image are dynamic conceptualizations. Between the expressive channel and the content channel of the conceptualization a circular loop is engaged. Expressive perceptual cues are causes and effects of content conceptualizations. Cinematic viewer can attend to the object depicted by an image or can focus on the features of the image as artifact. The viewer applies the attentional schema (similar to the body schema) in order to apprehend the viewing action underlying image conception. This distinction is further enriched by the type of constituent construal: modifier or complement construction (or "process internal modifier"). The viewer can focus his attention to the objective properties of the conceptual target attended-how things are-(the referent of the image or the image) or the appearance of the target-how things look like-, i.e. qualia as appearances consciously experienced. Four main types of image understanding construals are described.
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The focus of the present study is the Control Cycle (CC), a seldom discussed cognitive model that is yet to be applied in film theory. The CC is grounded in bodily experience and is related to image-schematic thinking. The CC is based... more
The focus of the present study is the Control Cycle (CC), a seldom discussed cognitive model that is yet to be applied in film theory. The CC is grounded in bodily experience and is related to image-schematic thinking. The CC is based upon the Tension Cycle, consisting of four successive stages: an initial stage of relaxation; next a stage of increasing tension followed up by a force-dynamic event which releases the built-up pressure; and finally, resulting from the event, another stage of relaxation. The proposal of this article is that the CC takes a wide array of manifestations in biological cycles, brain processes, epistemic and cognitive phenomena, vision, culture, linguistic predication and semantic constructions. Cinematic conceptualizations are no exceptions. Editing constructions, camera movement, conceptual metaphor and metonymy, emotion mechanics, narrative interest and narrative absorption instantiate the phases of the Control Cycle.
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De la apariția cinematografului o întrebare revine constant: ce este filmul? Pentru spectatorii de film este de natura evidenței că, aflați în fața unui artefact audiovizual, percep, înțeleg și trăiesc stări emoționale. Pentru cei care... more
De la apariția cinematografului o întrebare revine constant: ce este filmul? Pentru spectatorii de film este de natura evidenței că, aflați în fața unui artefact audiovizual, percep, înțeleg și trăiesc stări emoționale. Pentru cei care încearcă să se aplece mai în detaliu asupra fenomenului cinematografic apare însă o problemă legată de modul în care un obiect „material” atât de sărac ca structură, suportul expresiv – adică sunetele și petele de lumină proiectate pe o suprafață reflectorizantă - generează un conținut atât de bogat perceptual, cognitiv și emoțional. Este astfel filmul definit de natura expresiei sau de natura conținutului reprezentat?
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Cognitive approaches to cinema comprise several proposals concerning the segmentation of the understanding of the flux of audiovisual stimuli in several conceptual domains. In this paper, we would like to develop a proposal for a... more
Cognitive approaches to cinema comprise several proposals concerning the segmentation of the understanding of the flux of audiovisual stimuli in several conceptual domains. In this paper, we would like to develop a proposal for a cinematographic analysis inspired by the conceptual framework of cognitive linguistic approaches and neurosciences studies. The viewer / film critic can identify and delineate patterns describable as neurological processes or as phenomenological instantiations manifested in various conceptualization domains that can be isolated from other domains. The conceptualizations are determined by top-down schemas in various semantic domains, and by bottom-up cues on screen of semantic purport. The cinematic expressive structures that are formed with the help of cues allow the spectator to recognize and correct conceptual patterns within alternative conceptual domains. Cinematic expressions – diegetic mise-en-scene, frame composition, shot structure, and editing and stylistic patterns– are instantiations of construal, alternative manners of representing aspects of conceptual content. To the extent that a set of cues is predominately biased towards one domain or another, the viewer will categorize the conceptual content into one or more domains. The claim is that domains are like attractors that warp in a dynamic manner conceptual content towards a domain or another, and, as a consequence will warp and modulate other domains. Cues are not static clues, but represent procedural algorithms that the viewer puts into action in order to gain access to conceptual content. The domains analyzed are the prefigurative, the figurative, the diegetic, the symbolic, the narrative, the conceptualizer, the affective, and the discursive. Describing various bounded conceptual regions of conceptual content sustained by cinematic experience is a description of the brains' projection of an interior living film staged in a " Cartesian theatre " devoid of a secondary conscious homunculus.
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In Cristian Mungiu " s După Dealuri (Beyond the Hills, 2012), two graphic compositions serve as templates for the setting (mise en scène) and the cinematographic framing. The first one is provided by the Orthodox icon of the Holy Virgin... more
In Cristian Mungiu " s După Dealuri (Beyond the Hills, 2012), two graphic compositions serve as templates for the setting (mise en scène) and the cinematographic framing. The first one is provided by the Orthodox icon of the Holy Virgin and Child with St. Joseph, which orchestrates a ternary structure with the Infant Jesus in the middle, between motherly and fatherly figures. A different version of this composition is a close-up portrait of Christ, gazing straight forward, as if looking in the eyes of the viewers. The characters in the film are framed in order to highlight this master template. On a symbolic level, the paradigm of a mundane world which inscribes itself in this mould in order to acquire coherence and explain the unknown represents the foundation of the masterplan. The feminine character, Voichiţa, succumbs to this logic. In contrast, the second character, Alina, is associated with another type of representation, namely the blurred composition of abstract painting. Symbolically, she is affected by the disturbance of Desire, as well as the latter " s irrational, unconscious logic. The film stages the impossibility of reconciling these two different frames of reference. In other words, we can argue that a bidimensional graphic layout (planimetric) is isomorphic to the diegetic structure (the recessive composition of human posture and the hierarchical position of characters inscribed in a correspondent mental frame of reference or conception of reality).
Keywords: the " Holy Family " , Christ, abstract painting, the blot, the stain
Keywords: the " Holy Family " , Christ, abstract painting, the blot, the stain
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Filmele dadaiste pun în operă o destructurare perceptuală a experienței sensibile și conștiente integrate, o destructurare carnavalescă a unor obiecte și acțiuni, o destructurare a contextului de interpretare al artefactului film. Acest... more
Filmele dadaiste pun în operă o destructurare perceptuală a experienței sensibile și conștiente integrate, o destructurare carnavalescă a unor obiecte și acțiuni, o destructurare a contextului de interpretare al artefactului film. Acest procedeu stilistic îi permite artefactului film să fie mai disponibil unui spectru mai larg de interpretări și categorizări. La nivel simbolic acest program estetic reprezintă o formă de doliu, de mecanism posttraumatic, destinat a reduce profilactic conștiința la elementele sale primare pentru a permite o nouă resetare a mecanismului psihic, adică a produce o formă de terapie destinată unei noi „geneze”. Avangarda, prin deconstrucția cogniției „naturale” ale unei „realități” aduce în conștiință faptul că tehnologia (retorica) aparatului cinematografic manipulează realitatea conferindu-i un aspect cursiv, natural și fluid și totodată indică faptul că realitatea are un fundament indeterminat. Dacă pentru carnavalescul ori derivatul său baroc tradițional artificiul / artificialitatea discursului și lumii relevau un sens ascuns și o construcție semantică aparținând unui „creator” (de exemplu sub forma unui deus pictor) pentru avangardă realitatea este un artefact / artificiu lipsit de reperul unui agent volițional care să confere un scop acestei construcții numite realitatea.
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Cognitive approaches to cinema comprise several proposals concerning the segmentation of the understanding of the flux of audiovisual stimuli in several conceptual domains. In this paper, we would like to develop a proposal for a... more
Cognitive approaches to cinema comprise several proposals concerning the segmentation of the understanding of the flux of audiovisual stimuli in several conceptual domains. In this paper, we would like to develop a proposal for a cinematographic analysis inspired by the conceptual framework of cognitive linguistic approaches and neurosciences studies. The viewer / film critic can identify and delineate patterns describable as neurological processes or as phenomenological instantiations manifested in various conceptualization domains that can be isolated from other domains. The conceptualizations are determined by top-down schemas in various semantic domains, and by bottom-up cues on screen of semantic purport. The cinematic expressive structures that are formed with the help of cues allow the spectator to recognize and correct conceptual patterns within alternative conceptual domains. Cinematic expressions – diegetic mise-en-scene, frame composition, shot structure, and editing and stylistic patterns– are instantiations of construal, alternative manners of representing aspects of conceptual content. To the extent that a set of cues is predominately biased towards one domain or another, the viewer will categorize the conceptual content into one or more domains. The claim is that domains are like attractors that warp in a dynamic manner conceptual content towards a domain or another, and, as a consequence will warp and modulate other domains. Cues are not static clues, but represent procedural algorithms that the viewer puts into action in order to gain access to conceptual content. The domains analyzed are the prefigurative, the figurative, the diegetic, the symbolic, the narrative, the conceptualizer, the affective, and the discursive. Describing various bounded conceptual regions of conceptual content sustained by cinematic experience is a description of the brains' projection of an interior living film staged in a " Cartesian theatre " devoid of a secondary conscious homunculus. An overview of proposals for cinematic conceptual domains Cognitive approaches to cinema comprise several proposals concerning the dividing of the flow of audiovisual stimuli in several conceptual domains. The description and analysis of the audiovisual discourse invariably touches on some of those domains. Let us mention some of the recent approaches: 1. The Danish theoretician, Torben Grodal (1997: 57; 279), distinguishes between several neural processes that the cinemagoer undergoes, e.g. intense experience (the viewer's focus is oriented towards perceptual non-figurative processes), saturated experience (the focus is aimed at a figurative associative deaca@dnt.ro
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The paper investigates some features of the science fiction film genre, as seen from a cognitive perspective. Starting from the theoretical framework of Lawrence Barsalou, we consider the concept of SF film to be a radial category that... more
The paper investigates some features of the science fiction film genre, as seen from a cognitive perspective. Starting from the theoretical framework of Lawrence Barsalou, we consider the concept of SF film to be a radial category that encompasses a wide array of particular instantiations clustered around several generic clusters. The definition of the genre is encyclopedic, and thus it does not require a sufficient and necessary set of distinctive features. During film experience, the audience will categorize visual elements composing the diegetic setting in a bottom up fashion. These elements are functional bundles and form a repertoire. They evoke a representation that includes properties, relations, rules, behavior of objects, agents, settings and a wide variety of internal states such as interoceptions and mentalizing. This representation is a background situated conceptualization. This background situation is apprehended in a top down manner as an instantiation of the SF abstract concept, a whole situation category. The overall conception is a familiar landscape that has a more schematic and abstract description, a descriptive system, and comprises a collection of different situated conceptualizations. Conceptually, SF is understood as a thought experiment based on the 'what if' speech act scenario performed by an explicit / implicit narrator. The conceptual description of the counterfactual proposition contains a comparison between an actual situation (the natural world conception) and an alien one (the proposed new situation or event).
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The paper focuses on the supposed fundamental change in contemporary films. After a short survey of several points of view on the matter I discuss the case of mashup cinema. This genre is based on recycling of cinematic sequences in order... more
The paper focuses on the supposed fundamental change in contemporary films. After a short survey of several points of view on the matter I discuss the case of mashup cinema. This genre is based on recycling of cinematic sequences in order to create new narrative and fictional discourses. Contrary to Dada's rhetoric, mashup cinema is prone to create narratives based on continuity. New semantic constructions are elaborated out of heterogeneous filmic scenes and sequences. Discontinuities, viewed as autonomous sequences, are enjoyed per se. Sequences are further bound by narrative roles, and by abstract and sensorial modifiers such as music, movement, shapes and colors. This characteristic has been, since its birth, an explanatory element of what we call film. Today's mashup cinema tends to become an audiovisual hieroglyphic language available to viewers and users situated at both ends of the spectrum, i.e. producers and addressees. Faced with this democratization of audiovisual use poststructuralist philosophical approaches have a gist of panic, and today's films and shorts are considered to be the epiphenomena announcing an apocalypse. Film analysts like David Bordwell, Roger Odin or Laurent Jullier adopt a more sober stance and study the new shifts in emphasis and the innovative use of new constructional schemas in a manner closer to the filmic text. Cinematic discourse, through the use of prefabricated chunks, cinematic topoi, is evolving towards a language which resembles the medieval literature and carnival where a common cultural thesaurus was available to users in order to create new conceptualizations and reality conceptions.
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Cultura. 12 (556). 29 decembrie 2016 http://revistacultura.ro/nou/2016/12/sumar-nr-12/ Contextul Sieranevada (Cristi Puiu, 2016) reia și reconfigurează motivele prezente în filmele anterioare ale regizorului. În peisajul postapocaliptic... more
Cultura. 12 (556). 29 decembrie 2016 http://revistacultura.ro/nou/2016/12/sumar-nr-12/ Contextul Sieranevada (Cristi Puiu, 2016) reia și reconfigurează motivele prezente în filmele anterioare ale regizorului. În peisajul postapocaliptic al orașului acoperit de grafitti, gropi de șantier, agresiunea necontenită sonoră și umană Lary, însoțit de soția sa emancipată, Laura, se îndreaptă spre apartamentul mamei unde va avea loc praznicul oferit în memoria tatălui defunct. Intrarea în ficțiune e realizată în plină acțiune – cold open-, dar suntem confruntați cu o acțiune minoră, lipsită de importanță: un bărbat în stradă se întâlnește cu soția și caută să-și gareze automobilul în traficul aglomerat. Lipsa de emfază dată acțiunii și intrării în film este un indice al unei perspective simbolice. Personajul este un " oarecare " sau un " oricine ". Aparentul realism observațional se convertește încă de la primele imagini în vocația alegorică. Cuplul Lary / Laura e prezent în film în automobil în două scene ce reiau figura metafilmului – a filmului care face referință la filmul ca media. Protagoniștii sunt înscriși în dispozitivul cinematografic: o sală de cinema aflată în fața unui ecran-fereastră. Pe de o parte scena, metaforic, reprezintă peisajul urban abandonat din exterior (lipsit de uman, dar aglomerat de clădiri abandonate) și, pe de altă parte, profilează protagoniștii din spate într-un dialog al trupurilor contorsionate cu priviri peste umăr și, cu ajutorul oglinzii retrovizoare, captivi unui ancadrament ce fragmentează corpul și-l izolează de un exterior dezolant. Cu alte cuvinte tropul cinematografic al dialogului în automobil distorsionează trupul și-l fragmentează cu ajutorul unui cadru în cadru. Exteriorul este ambivalent atât locul dezolării cât și orizontul speranței (Laura caută călătoriile în spații exotice însă lipsite de familiaritate și însemnătate).
In 2013 the volume of Dominique Nasta, Professor at the Department of Arts, Faculty of Philosophy and Letters of Université Libre in Brussels, contributes to a new essentially improvement. Dominique Nasta’s Contemporary Romanian Cinema.... more
In 2013 the volume of Dominique Nasta, Professor at the Department of Arts, Faculty of Philosophy and Letters of Université Libre in Brussels, contributes to a new essentially improvement. Dominique Nasta’s Contemporary Romanian Cinema. The History of an Unexpected Miracle, was published at the end of 2013 at Wallflower in partnership with the prestigious American Publishing House at Columbia University. Firstly, the publication has the merit of illustrating and presenting valuable information about the history of the Romanian Film and Romanian highly ranked filmmakers to readers interested in film – students, journalists, and basically any spectator -, as well as to specialists: the ones that teach and study films in the American academic environment. Dominique Nastas’s volume addresses the Western audience of little information regarding the Romanian film. It also works on correcting a series of errors and biased interpretations that are present in dictionaries and studies on the Romanian film history.
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Recenzie la antologia de texte critice editată de Janelle Blankenship și Tobias Nagl, profesori la Universitatea Western Ontario, European Cinemas: Small Cinemas in Transition (Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag, 2015) se concentrează asupra... more
Recenzie la antologia de texte critice editată de Janelle Blankenship și Tobias Nagl, profesori la Universitatea Western Ontario, European Cinemas: Small Cinemas in Transition (Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag, 2015) se concentrează asupra problemelor pe care le întâlnesc cinematografiile mici în urma integrării europeene și a globalizării.
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Din analiza peisajului în film se pot desprinde mai multe categorii de punere în scenă. Prezentul studiu explorează, dintr-o perspectivă cognitivă, câteva poziții ale decorului lumii naturale în film. O primă axă ordonează un continuum ce... more
Din analiza peisajului în film se pot desprinde mai multe categorii de punere în scenă. Prezentul studiu explorează, dintr-o perspectivă cognitivă, câteva poziții ale decorului lumii naturale în film. O primă axă ordonează un continuum ce pornește de la tipurile de peisaj ce manifestă un grad ridicat de artificialitate, sunt percepute ca abstracte, și ajung la polul opus la peisajele transparente, absorbite în diegeză și integrate în narațiune. O serie de locații sunt percepute ca spectaculare și dobândesc o pregnanță în sine față de alte componente ale filmului. Ele sunt denunțate spectatorului ca artificiale fie pentru a focaliza spectatorul asupra caracterului autonom al artificiului, al spectacolului și asupra calităților sale modal plastice, fie pentru a orienta interpretarea către lecturi metaforice, alegorice și fabulizante. O secundă categorie este formată din peisajele subiectiv lirice care sunt interpretate în funcție de o relație cu o subiectivitate. Subiectivitatea este relaționată ca internă, proximală, spațiului reprezentat fie ca o poziționare a subiectivității unui personaj ori a spectatorului față de peisajul conceput distal. O stare mentală este cartografiată pe structura peisajului reprezentat. O a treia categorie decurge din lirismul unor peisaje care nu conțin întipărite un patern de subiectivitate, ci îi provoacă spectatorului o stare afectivă. Acestea țin de ceea ce se poate numi peisajul liric asociativ. Acest tip de peisaj creează emoții și stări sufletești pe fundalul cărora se poate dezvolta în prim plan o narațiune cu personaje. Acest tip de peisaj nu reprezintă sau descrie concret emoții, ci generează stări afective spectatorului. A patra categorie reunește peisajele diegetice în care peisajul utilizat și figurat în film devine o marcă a unui gen de film: de exemplu,westernul, SF-ul, film noir, filmul neorealist, road movie. Peisajul se înscrie într-o relație de verosimilitudine cu convenția de gen și susține motivațiile și scopurile narative ale personajelor.
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Particularul stil Antonionian trimite la o tradiție artistică italiană renascentistă ce ține de mistica iubirii neoplatonice și de poetica amestecului de transparență și opacitate, de claritate și ambiguitate. Antonioni și Fellini – în... more
Particularul stil Antonionian trimite la o tradiție artistică italiană renascentistă ce ține de mistica iubirii neoplatonice și de poetica amestecului de transparență și opacitate, de claritate și ambiguitate. Antonioni și Fellini – în același an, 1960 – pun în scenă drama arhaic-mitologică jucată între masculinul rătăcitor profan și femininul insondabil sacru. Unul în tușa stilului ludic-grotesc celălalt în zona discursului serios-dramatic. Divorțul modernist al lui Antonioni nu este atât de scandalos ci mai degrabă se înscrie în continuitatea dialogului cu o tradiție. Privită din alt unghi diferența de suprafață dintre grotescul carnavalesc fellinian și spleenul „rafinat” modernist al lui Antonioni ascunde o identitate alegorică de adâncime între cei doi regizori pentru care sacrul reprezentat ca Venus se poate ipostazia deopotrivă în „celest” și/sau vulgar.
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Œuvre de Federico Fellini représente une reprise étendue de la rhétorique et des motifs du carnaval. Elle s’apparente ainsi à l’œuvre de François Rabelais. Le carnaval, la « deuxième vie » du peuple, prend en dérision toute forme... more
Œuvre de Federico Fellini représente une reprise étendue de la rhétorique et des motifs du carnaval. Elle s’apparente ainsi à l’œuvre de François Rabelais. Le carnaval, la « deuxième vie » du peuple, prend en dérision toute forme d’institution ou d’idéologie dominante à une quelconque période historique. La leçon de Fellini est qu’il est toujours d’actualité de ne pas se laisser berner par le chant des sirènes politiques. Tout discours qui se légitime au nom de l’autre ou qui se légitime tout court est un pouvoir.
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L’œuvre cinématographique de Federico Fellini est une étendue machine à citations. A première vue, et les qualificatifs dont abonde la bibliographie felliniène en témoignent, ses films ne vont pas de pair avec l’intertextualité. Mais un... more
L’œuvre cinématographique de Federico Fellini est une étendue machine à citations. A première vue, et les qualificatifs dont abonde la bibliographie felliniène en témoignent, ses films ne vont pas de pair avec l’intertextualité. Mais un regard plus profond sera surpris par la présence en nombre des citations. A titre d’hypothèse de travail on estime que l’ensemble des films du cinéaste italien est constitué à partir du rapport établi entre l’intertexualité externe et interne. Parmi les nombreux éléments cités ou repris se trouve le motif des Trois Grâces.
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Fellini ’s film is an allegory in the sense of being a textual space of reinscription of a chain of figures, quotations that re write the idea of the continuous displacement of the content of an absent originary figure : i.e. the... more
Fellini ’s film is an allegory in the sense of being a textual space of reinscription of a chain of figures, quotations that re write the idea of the continuous displacement of the content of an absent originary figure : i.e. the re-writing, the figural actualisation that substitutes this absence : the cinematographic text.
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The theatre of Jay Scheib blends theatrical and filmic features in manner that asks for a theoretical investigation of the manner in which two different media coexist on the same expressive support. How can two distinct media like film... more
The theatre of Jay Scheib blends theatrical and filmic features in manner that asks for a theoretical investigation of the manner in which two different media coexist on the same expressive support. How can two distinct media like film and thetre fuse and, at the same time, be apprehended as different. The article uses an application of the mechanisms of relationship between two physical systems issued from the “quantum mechanical view of reality”. The two media are in an entangled state that blends both possibilities. Media is understood as “potential materials or forms for future practices”. Under a mode of conceptualizing the ensemble the static difference is unfolded in time in a dynamic conceptualization. Dynamic conceptualization will disturb or “tune” the apprehension of one of the media considered a ground or subordinate system. The blending of the two media presupposes a local conceptualization unfolding dynamically, and an entangled one manifested nonlocal. Difference between film and theatre is also to be seen as a difference in the cognitive model which posits a detached display / a screen and a spectator / observer. In theater the body of the observer is in the theatrical detached display side and in film the body is conceptualized to be separated from the display. The notion of “threshold” introduced by Dudley Andrew translates this shift of attention from one side to the other of the display.
Keywords: theatre, film, media, entanglement, automatism, conceptualization, category
Keywords: theatre, film, media, entanglement, automatism, conceptualization, category
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We analyzed several scenes from movies made by: Lucian Pintilie, Cristi Puiu, Mircea Daneliuc, Cristian Mungiu, Nemescu, Radu Jude, Calin Netzer, and others. Quite often the movies of the Romanian New Wave invite the audience to operate a... more
We analyzed several scenes from movies made by: Lucian Pintilie, Cristi Puiu, Mircea Daneliuc, Cristian Mungiu, Nemescu, Radu Jude, Calin Netzer, and others. Quite often the movies of the Romanian New Wave invite the audience to operate a “mind reading” starting from a minimal set of emotional and cognitive cues to the character’s inner life and feelings. Lack of explicit explanation will further invite the audience to reflect on higher and more abstract levels of reasons: psychological or social. Lack or elliptic expression is therefore a stylistic teaser designed to encourage the audience to construct social allegories and cultural considerations; to reflect on the personality’s moral reasons and social causes that represent the existential background. It’s an invitation to reflect on a world and the “meaning of life” in a social context or background. One could say that this feature is a kind of “social realism” which ironically blossomed after the fall of communism.
Keywords: mise en scene, setting, narrative, kitchen, Romanian cinema, dialogue
Keywords: mise en scene, setting, narrative, kitchen, Romanian cinema, dialogue
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The present paper approaches Facebook as a cultural carnivalesque phenomenon. If we follow Mikhail Bakhtin’s view - it shares a number of defining features: excess, play, derision, ambivalence, multiple „voices” and a clearcut opposition... more
The present paper approaches Facebook as a cultural carnivalesque phenomenon. If we follow Mikhail Bakhtin’s view - it shares a number of defining features: excess, play, derision, ambivalence, multiple „voices” and a clearcut opposition to official Power. This opposition is not the expression of a clear message issued by a single author. It is mainly a reversal of the discourse of the o Other and the expression of freedom of views. As a play of masks Facebook allows its user to adopt an avatar considered to be immune of responsibility : it is what one can call an “public intimate” channel of communication. It is private but nonetheless expressed for a community of users. As a narrative it lacks a single author. Any user is author and lector; actor and audience. It represents a narrative without a closure and has family resemblance to play and performance.
As a social mechanism Facebook seeks affiliation as cooperation and competition as domination. A lot of Facebook elicit an emotional approach. Emotion is a construal – action readiness - based on the appraisal of a situation in virtue of current goals and concerns of the individual. A lot of Facebook testimonials display a personal experience that is undisputable “true” (lyrical and ego centred). As such Facebook is a constant conversion mechanism that transforms emotion into reasons for beliefs and an invitation to action readiness – either in the mode of cooperation or participation or in the mode of domination and competition. „I like” is the minimal expression of emotion that creates the gateway to belief conversion and action.
Keywords: Facebook, carnival, emotion, conversion, belief, action, narrative
As a social mechanism Facebook seeks affiliation as cooperation and competition as domination. A lot of Facebook elicit an emotional approach. Emotion is a construal – action readiness - based on the appraisal of a situation in virtue of current goals and concerns of the individual. A lot of Facebook testimonials display a personal experience that is undisputable “true” (lyrical and ego centred). As such Facebook is a constant conversion mechanism that transforms emotion into reasons for beliefs and an invitation to action readiness – either in the mode of cooperation or participation or in the mode of domination and competition. „I like” is the minimal expression of emotion that creates the gateway to belief conversion and action.
Keywords: Facebook, carnival, emotion, conversion, belief, action, narrative
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Preliminary 2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick, 1968) and Interstellar (Christopher Nolan, 2014) exhibit a family resemblance. Both films are constructed as instances of SF film genre. Categorizing a film sequence as a token of SF... more
Preliminary 2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick, 1968) and Interstellar (Christopher Nolan, 2014) exhibit a family resemblance. Both films are constructed as instances of SF film genre. Categorizing a film sequence as a token of SF concept is the result of a bidirectional mechanism. First the viewer will categorize elements of the setting that evoke the SF diegesis. The winner categorizing element propagates and categorizes the ensemble in bottom up manner. It categorizes the ensemble as a token of SF. Categorical inferences are activated and expand the scope of expected knowledge associated with a concept. Secondarily the evoked concept categorizes the instance in a top down manner. Other elements in the compound conceptualization are tuned and warped to be instances of the top down categorizing concept. 1 Once a viewer compares them he will construct a common pattern – a conceptual prototype – and will distinguish differences between both instances. The comparison act has a direction of categorization between the standard and the target of the comparison. Depending on the choice of the standard the viewer will construct an ad-hoc concept that will serve as the prototype (a type) used in order to apprehend the target (a token). Alternating the direction of categorization (AàB or BàA) means that at each comparison a different type (C and C*) will have two token instances. In time the viewer will construct a common concept out of the summary features extracted from both instances (C/C* ß D). Apprehending each instance is an act of making meaning, of conceptualizing. Each instance is a particular and unique combinatory mix of common bits and pieces that are represented schematically in the concept constructed and bits and pieces that are instances of other categorizing types. The prototype is the combination of both elements aggregated in an abstract common compound. The viewer will have conceptual access to the common template – a schematic representation of both prototypes –, to the prototypes, and finally he can keep in memory the two distinct instances. In order to apprehend the specificity of a particular cinematographic instance – a film – viewers will record the individual construal, i.e. the cinematographic work (camera work, shot scale and duration, dominant chromatic toning, movement and sound design). Constructing a particular conceptualization fuses expressive channel and content channel. The viewer keeps in memory a schematic representation of the conceptualization, a scarce representation or a summary of the conceptualization.
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Michael Haneke's film, The Seventh Continent (1989) is a clear case of a meta-film that contains a bididrectional metaphoric construal. The analysis is based on Lakoff and Johnson's Conceptual Metaphor Theory (1980) in which a metaphor is... more
Michael Haneke's film, The Seventh Continent (1989) is a clear case of a meta-film that contains a bididrectional metaphoric construal. The analysis is based on Lakoff and Johnson's Conceptual Metaphor Theory (1980) in which a metaphor is construed out of the mapping of semantic correspondences from a source to a target conceptual domain. The film combines two metaphors. In one a diegesis (the life of an Austrian family) is the source for the understanding of the concept of film. The film* is the resulting conceptual blend that boroughs elements from both the source and the target. In its turn this blend is the new source for conceptualizing the target conceptual domain of the human condition. The secondary metaphor is LIFE IS A FILM*. The human condition is a cinematic condition; it exhibits the features of the cinematic artifact and of the cinematic image. In this case it appears that there are two metaphors, each with a different mapping: FILM IS LIFE and LIFE IS A FILM. The filmic discourse is a performative conceptual act. The claim is that Haneke proposes us a film in which semantic oppositions are constructed and systematically cancelled. When the film is apprehended from a logical point of view it is an impossibilia, i.e. an auto-referential conceptualization exhibiting incompleteness or inconsistency. The cinematic viewer is not aware of the internal contradictions since he is immersed in a dynamic mental scanning of the meaning trajectories between descriptive systems that are locally comprehensible.
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The present paper argues for the application of a series of notions from the Cognitive Grammar advocated by Ronald W. Langacker to film analysis. Cinematic conceptualizations are constructed in a scaffolding manner. The constructions... more
The present paper argues for the application of a series of notions from the Cognitive Grammar advocated by Ronald W. Langacker to film analysis. Cinematic conceptualizations are constructed in a scaffolding manner. The constructions contain bindings between schematic subcomponents (elaboration site, i.e. e-site) and more fined grained elaborations (instantiations). The e-sites are ad-hoc goal derived categories or abstract summaries of conceptual content that is further elaborated in cinematic discourse unfolding. The schematic element and its instantiation have a conceptual commonality (one is schematic and the other an elaboration of an inherent conceptual content) and exhibit similar connections with external elements, i.e. play analogous roles in processual (head – complement) and non-processual (head – modifier) groupings. Specifically character movement and camera movement can be described with this conceptual apparatus.
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The aim of the present study is theoretical. The question set up for examination is whether there is a cognitive model that underpins human sense-making in the context of film experience. The conceptual resources provided by Cognitive... more
The aim of the present study is theoretical. The question set up for examination is whether there is a cognitive model that underpins human sense-making in the context of film experience. The conceptual resources provided by Cognitive grammar (as elaborated by Ronald W. Langacker), the recent developments of the neuroscience of emotions (as advocated by Lawrence Barsalou, Lisa Feldman Barrett, and Giovanna Colombetti), the theory of attention advocated by Michael S. A. Graziano, and several suggestions from the embodied-enactive approach (in the works of Evan Thompson and Maxine Johnson-Smith) seemed particularly useful coordinates for this research composed of analytical reflections. The study focuses on the cognitive model based on the action of control, understood as an explanatory instrument for creating meaning, and follows up with the possible applications in the domain of film analysis. The work is the result of collaborative research spurred by theoretical advances and hypotheses from neuroscience, neurolinguistics, and film theory and analysis. On the account developed here, the structure of the control cycle cognitive model is regarded as central to sense-making.