Film Auteurs

Discusses the concepts of female agency and subjectivities in film and television through cases in the last decade, investigating emerging notions in the field and introducing original research
Focuses on how the politics of gender are mediated, what kind of transformative power film and television narratives poses and how technological developments and new media forms challenge existing perspectives and re-imagine the possible future directions
Offers intercultural and international perspectives on globally distributed film and television content, as well as bringing critically acclaimed non-Western examples into focus

This course will examine the surreal, whimsical, grotesque, and weird films of director Tim Burton. We will come to know his body of work as a series of narrative, visual, and thematic preoccupations that have influenced a variety of film artists. Students can expect to examine a varied body of work from a mix of critical lenses, including class, race, gender, sexuality, and disability.

This article is presented in two halves. The first analyses little known interviews with González Iñárritu before he made his career in feature films that document his practice in radio, advertising and television drama. These interviews focus on his early conception of the relation between art and commerce and his views on the Mexican media scene in the 1990s. The second half of the article analyses the rare primary materials themselves: radio commercials, television idents and, at much greater length, his first feature-length fiction film, an experimental drama made for Televisa in 1995 called Detrás del dinero/Behind the Money. The conclusion argues that even as Iñárritu has more recently distanced himself from broadcasting, his later career as an artistic and commercially successful feature film director embodies a precarious balance between artistic innovation and mass culture and a focus on the audience which he first learned in his early work in advertising, radio and television.

Writer's​ ​ statement In​ ​ this​ ​ assignment,​ ​ my​ ​ objective​ ​ was​ ​ to​ ​ accurately​ ​ portray​ ​ the​ ​ views​ ​ that​ ​ Peter​ ​ Wollen expresses​ ​ in​ ​ his​ ​ article,​ ​ in​ ​ my​ ​ own​ ​ words.​ ​ It​ ​ was​ ​ important​ ​ to​ ​ me​ ​ to​ ​ read​ ​ the​ ​ article​ ​ and​ ​ have my​ ​ summary​ ​ go​ ​ hand​ ​ in​ ​ hand​ ​ with​ ​ the​ ​ progression​ ​ of​ ​ his​ ​ piece.​ ​ I​ ​ wanted​ ​ to​ ​ make​ ​ sure​ ​ that​ ​ I had​ ​ summarized​ ​ the​ ​ central​ ​ points​ ​ and​ ​ themes​ ​ included​ ​ in​ ​ his​ ​ paragraphs,​ ​ but​ ​ successfully​ ​ be able​ ​ to​ ​ reproduce​ ​ those​ ​ same​ ​ ideas​ ​ with​ ​ my​ ​ own​ ​ voice. There​ ​ were​ ​ times​ ​ where​ ​ the​ ​ language​ ​ seemed​ ​ complex​ ​ and​ ​ not​ ​ even​ ​ looking​ ​ it​ ​ up​ ​ would​ ​ help, but​ ​ I​ ​ was​ ​ surprised,​ ​ how​ ​ on​ ​ my​ ​ second​ ​ read,​ ​ how​ ​ much​ ​ I​ ​ was​ ​ just​ ​ able​ ​ to​ ​ understand​ ​ and continue​ ​ reading​ ​ with.​ ​ Sometimes​ ​ there​ ​ were​ ​ phrases​ ​ used​ ​ that​ ​ really​ ​ confused​ ​ that​ ​ I​ ​ just​ ​ had to​ ​ move​ ​ on​ ​ from​ ​ with​ ​ my​ ​ own​ ​ interpretation​ ​ (e.g.​ ​ " consigned​ ​ to​ ​ oblivion ").​ ​ Wollen​ ​ wasn't​ ​ as hard​ ​ to​ ​ understand​ ​ as​ ​ I​ ​ was​ ​ expecting​ ​ from​ ​ someone​ ​ discussing​ ​ auteur​ ​ theory.​ ​ While​ ​ trying to​ ​ rethink​ ​ things​ ​ he​ ​ had​ ​ written,​ ​ into​ ​ my​ ​ own​ ​ words,​ ​ I​ ​ didn't​ ​ find​ ​ too​ ​ much​ ​ difficulty. Wollen's​ ​ style​ ​ was​ ​ sophisticated​ ​ yet​ ​ concise,​ ​ this​ ​ really​ ​ helped​ ​ in​ ​ being​ ​ able​ ​ to​ ​ work​ ​ at​ ​ a faster​ ​ pace. I​ ​ feel​ ​ as​ ​ if​ ​ I​ ​ succeeded​ ​ in​ ​ representing​ ​ Wollen's​ ​ views​ ​ in​ ​ a​ ​ shorter,​ ​ concise​ ​ essay​ ​ that includes​ ​ all​ ​ of​ ​ his​ ​ key​ ​ points.​ ​ There​ ​ were​ ​ areas​ ​ that​ ​ I​ ​ did​ ​ skip​ ​ over,​ ​ as​ ​ I​ ​ felt​ ​ he​ ​ was​ ​ dwelling on​ ​ one​ ​ point​ ​ too​ ​ long.​ ​ On​ ​ my​ ​ third​ ​ read,​ ​ I​ ​ underlined​ ​ the​ ​ key​ ​ points​ ​ in​ ​ my​ ​ opinion,​ ​ and​ ​ that allowed​ ​ for​ ​ me​ ​ to​ ​ travel​ ​ through​ ​ to​ ​ article​ ​ easier,​ ​ knowing​ ​ when​ ​ I​ ​ could​ ​ probably​ ​ move​ ​ on​ ​ to the​ ​ next​ ​ point​ ​ was​ ​ a​ ​ good​ ​ help. My​ ​ first​ ​ draft​ ​ was​ ​ too​ ​ focused​ ​ on​ ​ earlier​ ​ themes​ ​ in​ ​ the​ ​ article,​ ​ which​ ​ led​ ​ me​ ​ to​ ​ rush​ ​ the​ ​ latter key​ ​ points​ ​ which​ ​ turned​ ​ out​ ​ to​ ​ be​ ​ more​ ​ important,​ ​ in​ ​ my​ ​ opinion.​ ​ The​ ​ second​ ​ read​ ​ of​ ​ the article​ ​ was​ ​ beneficial​ ​ for​ ​ the​ ​ understanding​ ​ of​ ​ the​ ​ ideas,​ ​ but​ ​ the​ ​ third​ ​ read​ ​ was​ ​ much​ ​ more focused​ ​ and​ ​ objective​ ​ in​ ​ regards​ ​ to​ ​ planning​ ​ out​ ​ my​ ​ essay.​ ​ The​ ​ second​ ​ draft​ ​ only​ ​ had​ ​ to​ ​ be restructured​ ​ a​ ​ little​ ​ bit​ ​ before​ ​ becoming​ ​ the​ ​ final​ ​ draft.​ ​ Watching​ ​ a​ ​ few​ ​ videos​ ​ on​ ​ auteur theory​ ​ greatly​ ​ helped​ ​ me​ ​ in​ ​ this​ ​ assignment.​ ​ They​ ​ boosted​ ​ and​ ​ refreshed​ ​ my​ ​ memory​ ​ on​ ​ the theory​ ​ before​ ​ diving​ ​ straight​ ​ into​ ​ a​ ​ complex​ ​ review​ ​ of​ ​ the​ ​ theory.​ ​ Prior​ ​ to​ ​ this​ ​ I​ ​ didn't​ ​ even like​ ​ the​ ​ theory​ ​ that​ ​ much,​ ​ but​ ​ watching​ ​ the​ ​ videos​ ​ then​ ​ going​ ​ into​ ​ this,​ ​ made​ ​ me​ ​ actually think​ ​ about​ ​ auteur​ ​ theory​ ​ differently,​ ​ then​ ​ I​ ​ found​ ​ myself​ ​ being​ ​ more​ ​ enthusiastic​ ​ about completing​ ​ the​ ​ essay.​ ​ Something​ ​ I​ ​ wanted​ ​ to​ ​ focus​ ​ on​ ​ was​ ​ structuring​ ​ my​ ​ summary​ ​ in​ ​ the same​ ​ style​ ​ as​ ​ Wollen.​ ​ I​ ​ felt​ ​ it​ ​ to​ ​ b​ ​ the​ ​ best​ ​ way​ ​ to​ ​ summarize,​ ​ by​ ​ using​ ​ the​ ​ same​ ​ structure.​ ​ I definitely​ ​ didn't​ ​ want​ ​ to​ ​ copy​ ​ his​ ​ daunting,​ ​ long​ ​ paragraphs,​ ​ but​ ​ overall​ ​ in​ ​ the​ ​ same​ ​ format. The​ ​ best​ ​ thing​ ​ I​ ​ had​ ​ for​ ​ this​ ​ was​ ​ definitely​ ​ the​ ​ thesaurus,​ ​ nothing​ ​ helped​ ​ more.​ ​ It​ ​ was extremely​ ​ helpful​ ​ to​ ​ have​ ​ a​ ​ book​ ​ or​ ​ website,​ ​ full​ ​ of​ ​ synonyms,​ ​ it​ ​ really​ ​ sped​ ​ everything​ ​ up. Not​ ​ only​ ​ was​ ​ it​ ​ handy​ ​ using​ ​ it​ ​ for​ ​ the​ ​ assignment​ ​ but​ ​ it​ ​ really​ ​ boosts​ ​ your​ ​ own​ ​ personal knowledge​ ​ of​ ​ vocabulary,​ ​ and​ ​ helps​ ​ you​ ​ differentiate​ ​ more.

Studies of genre and authorship seem beset by infighting and competition as critics try to find an absolute truth of theory with some advocating a unified approach. In this essay I attempt to show how John Carpenter's The Thing pulls these two fields together.

Co-rapporteur avec Joëlle Farchy et Caroline Rainette, La place et le rôle économique des droits d’auteur et des droits voisins dans la filière cinématographique, DEPS du Ministère de la culture, 2006, 240 pages, https://fr2.slideshare.net/SebastienPoulain/la-place-et-le-rle-conomique-des-droits-dauteur-et-des-droits-voisins-dans-la-filire-cinmatographique

Ingmar Bergman was an internationally respected Swedish film and theatre director and writer whose diverse and complex works continue to captivate audiences worldwide. His films have been considered art and he a poet whilst the themes and emotions present in his cinema have relevance and profundity to anyone questioning the human condition. His works have influenced many other directors including Stanley Kubrick, Andrei Tarkovsky and Krzysztof Kieslowski and his films have inspired much respectful imitation and homage from, amongst numerous others, the works of Woody Allen. As an admirer of film art and an aspirant to be involved in the production of cinema I believe it will prove valuable for me to understand the techniques and themes of Bergman’s work and it is for that reason I am pursuing this project. As this is a research lead essay, it is my intention to provide evidence that supports the idea that Ingmar Bergman was a major creative influence on his filmography and that he channelled his personal experiences into the screen imagery he produced. I intend to first establish the personality of Bergman and then offer evidence of how the themes and imagery of his films reflect his individuality thus establishing him as an auteur (author) or artist of cinema.

Research of the world of cinema often deals with the manner in which movies replicate the social balance of power, creating a symbolic order based on an essentially masculine world-view that puts the man at its center. The price women pay for this phallocentric approach-their persistent objectification in cinema, and the very small number of female screenwriters and directors-has become a much-discussed topic in contemporary research. However, the question of the price paid in the male artistic creation process has yet to receive the attention it deserves.
This qualitative study addresses the lacuna in contemporary research, with reference to three metafictional films that focus on male directors for whom cinema is the pivotal center of their being: the Israeli film Peaches and Cream directed by Gur Bentwich (2019); the Spanish film Pain and Glory, director Pedro Almodóvar (2019); and Bob Fosse’s All That Jazz (USA, 1979). They all are viewed as having an affinity with the ancient Greek comparison of male creativity with female procreativity, which is still reflected in contemporary studies.
The films paint a picture of the male creative process shadowed by a sense of danger and loss of self. All three expose the feelings of anxiety inherent in film directors’ work, and the possible resultant breakdown, not only in an emotional sense but in a real, potentially fatal physical or medical sense as well. In all three movies, the director conceives of his ability to restore his sense of inner wholeness and male identity in a manner that contradicts the conventional balance of power, while customary power-relations are revealed as another road to loss of identity and sense of self. Each of the films ties the director’s ability to renew his sense of personal wholeness to developing a relationship with his surroundings, facilitated by audience appreciation, critical praise, or empathy from those close to him – all of which reinforce his feeling of belonging and significance. Without these aspects, the ‘absolute artist,’ whose life revolves around his art, is shown to be at death’s door, whether symbolically or in reality.

While many strategy games (both real-time- and turn-based-) use a fictionalized Earth history as a backdrop for their ludic elements, few seek to faithfully represent the progression of music history via the use of pre-existing music. Soren Johnson’s Civilization IV stands alone as it presents a thorough retelling of music history, with representative works from the Medieval, Renaissance, Baroque, Classical, Romantic, and Modern Eras, including works by Josquin, Palestrina, Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Dvořák, and American minimalist composer, John Adams. The game’s lead designer and AI programmer, Soren Johnson, personally selected each track included in the underscoring playlists. Drawing heavily upon new interviews with the game designers, this paper explores Soren Johnson’s personal representation of music history, analyzing in particular his use of John Sheppard’s Media Vita, Saint-Säens’s Cello Concerto No.1,  Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade, and the works of John Adams. I also discuss the implications of Johnson’s personalized version of history and argue that we can identify him with auteur film directors. The paper also addresses the potential for Civilization IV to educate its players in genres they may have been unfamiliar with, helping them contextualize and appreciate previously unfamiliar musics.

What I want to suggest is that the aesthetics of dead time in Japón, emblematically developed through the extensive long takes and pans, is an anti-theatrical attempt to assert the film’s status as a measured artistic construction. Japón seeks to overcome its theatricality by asserting that this time be understood as autonomous rather than as indivisible from the viewer and his or her experience. That is, Reygadas’s aesthetics wishes to create an “instantaneous mode of unity” that makes time meaningful in the movie. In sum, the narrative with a clear beginning, middle and end, along with the use of non-professional actors, montage, and especially the long takes and pans, all aim at creating a sense of time that will be understood
within the limits of the frame.

With the filmmaker’s untimely death in 2013, scholars will now begin to unpack exactly what Aleksei Balabanov achieved with his “cinema about cinema.” Watching Balabanov’s films as a singular postmodern text is important in understanding the entire trajectory of this cinematic narrative. In the films of Balabanov his frequent reflexivity goes beyond a critical consciousness of the lack of ultimate truths and, arguably, is more than ironic self-commentary. These intermedial self-references had become an anticipated characteristic of Balabanov’s films. In fact, Balabanov seemed to be acutely aware of the binary opposition between the sacred and the profane – especially in his later films. Over the course of more than a dozen feature films, Balabanov articulated a position that the technology of modernity refracted a neo-reality, one which further alienated people from the sacred. Russia’s degeneration was rooted in the materialist and political propaganda of the profane. The harmful messages transported by the television and the cinema enhanced the moral vacuity and bestiality of a Godless society – one which was vulnerable to the promises of miracle, mystery and authority by Russian authoritarianism. Balabanov’s “cinema about cinema” was a constant reminder that the simulacra of Russian reality was, in fact, a mediated visual text for interpretation; providing a social and political critique of post-Soviet society.

This article sets forth that Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive (2011) exhibits a ‘complex transformation’ of an American film genre by foregrounding features associated with art cinema and, more specifically, European and auteur film-making. We argue that the film’s appeal derives precisely from an intelligent and cine-literate deployment of the tensions in this dichotomy of European/American film-making. As such, Drive is a film that foregrounds or reveals its own construction in a number of ways, but its appeal lies in the fact that it does not prevent intense emotional engagement on the part of the viewer. It is neither a cold exercise in mere style nor a simple copy of an earlier formula, but rather a film that manages to marry a number of narrative and stylistic features in such a way that the film itself, arguably, is not easy to categorize.

Auteur yönetmen kavramı, 1950’li yıllar da Cahiers du Cinema Dergisi yazarları tarafından gündeme getirilmiştir. Derginin bünyesinde Bazin, Truffaut, Godard gibi ünlü sinema yazarları bulunmaktaydı.
Kişiselliğini filme aktarabilmiş, kendi öyküsünü yaratabilen, filmleri arasında temasal bütünlükler oluşturabilmiş, özgünlük ve yaratıcılığı ile üst seviyeye çıkmış ve filme kendi damgasını vurabilmiş yönetmenler, auteur olarak değerlendirilir.
Auteur eleştirmen, filmin sanatsal niteliklerinden ziyade, yönetmenin kişiselliği bağlamında filmlerini inceler. Yönetmenin kişisel üslubuna ulaşmayı ve deşifre etmeyi amaçlar.
Çağan Irmak, filmleri arasında temasal bütünlük oluşturabilmiş, kendi öyküsünü yaratabilen bir yönetmendir. Özgünlük ve yaratıcılığı üst seviyededir. Sinemanın teknik olanaklarıyla, kendi öykü anlatım tarzını oluşturabilmiş birisidir. Bu nedenle Çağan Irmak, Türk Sineması’nın auteur yönetmenlerindendir.

Auteur theory was introduced by the writers of Cahiers du Cinema magazine in the 1950s. Famous film critics such as Bazin, Truffaut and Godard were among the writers of the magazine.
The directors who can reflect their personal creative visions, write their own stories, establish thematic integrity between their films, leave their mark on the film and have high level of authenticity and creativity are appreciated as auteurs.
The auteur critic analyzes the film within the context of the director’s personal view rather than the artistic quality of the film. He/she aims to reach and decipher the personal style of the director.
Çağan Irmak was able to establish thematic integrity between his films and create his stories as a director. He has a high level of authenticity and creativity. He has paved his own way of storytelling with the technical facilities of filmmaking. For this reason, Çağan Irmak is one of the auters of Turkish cinema.

The images of the mothers in the films of Lino Brocka – a veritable auteur who used film as his medium in expressing his insights through his works from 1970 to 1991 – gravitate towards two clusters of images: 1) the mothers who struggle within the confines of their role; and 2) the mothers who question their role and affirm themselves as persons.

Brocka’s films from 1970 to 1982 generally belong to the first cluster where the following images are identified: 1) the “ideal” mother; 2) mother as victim; and 3) the controlling matriarch. Brocka’s films from 1984 to 1991 generally belong to the second cluster where the following images are fleshed out: 1) mother as transgressor of patriarchy; and 2) mother as aggressor of patriarchy.

Gutierrez, Jose III. 2009. "Images of the Mother in Lino Brocka Films: 1970-1991." Plaridel: A Journal of Philippine Communication, Media, and Society 6 (2): 107-26.

The tendency to eschew a coherent narrative has been very common especially since the 1990s and a certain approach to narration has become observable within postmodern cinema: the viewer is denied access to the truth and realities concerning dramatic structure and characters, either during part of the narrative, or throughout the entire movie. For instance, Stuart Mitchell (1999) points out that in David Lynch's Lost Highway, as Lynch himself points out, the dream/dreaminess is neither a fantasy nor a delusion but something intrinsic to the character, thus what we watch is essentially the story of the main character and it is realistic according to his logic. Analysing the David Lynch's Lost Highway (1997), Mulholland Drive (2001) and Twin Peaks: The Return (2017), this article will discuss how any attempt by the viewer to achieve the truth and to distinguish reality from fantasy may be fruitless and how the filmic or fictional reality may result undistinguishably from so-called material reality. I argue that the viewer moves and stumbles with the gaze of the camera which reveals that the reality is something constructed, and that the objective reality of an external gaze doesn't exist.

This article discusses Paolo Sorrentino’s cinematic style through an analysis of four representative films of his filmography: L’uomo in più (One Man Up) (2001), Il divo (2008), La grande bellezza (The Great Beauty) (2013) and The Young Pope (2016). Via analytic attention to the form of the shot, its aesthetic modalities and the effects of such presentation on-screen, I demonstrate how Sorrentino’s formal excess appears temporally and spatially. Temporal excess refers to extended manipulations of cinematic time, such as the use of slow motion, and modifications of diegetic time, such as flashbacks. Spatial excess refers to expansions of space, created by zooming in or out of spaces, and repetitions of spaces. Finally, I propose the subgenre of ‘excessive cinema’ to provide a set of terminologies relating to formal excess that well reflects the stylistic form and aesthetic of Sorrentino’s directorial style.

This thesis is dedicated to the cinema art of Kira Muratova with the focus on the theme of grotesque. Kira Muratova shot films of different genres; mixing styles, creating a new reality of cinema, mixing audio-visualization of people with animals, classical literature with slang, including photography and pornography, installation, performance, opera and ballet. Due to this fact, her films provide rich objects of research in Visual Culture Studies. This study is concerned with the audio-visual effects, images and scenes connected to the theme of grotesque in the auteur cinema of Kira Muratova.

Deliberately departing from the possible socio-historical context, the author of the project presents intertextuality of Muratova's film.This thesis includes a detailed analysis of images and shots of several films with a focus on grotesque and along with general description of the director’s main devices. It searches for meanings, denotations and connotations in the films’ images as the essential elements of the films. In addition to an overview of the whole art of director and auteur features, the project deals in more details with two recent films by Muratova— Two in One (2006) and Melody for a Street Organ (2009). Both films are examples of post-modern cinema, and represent ironically, controversially, abruptly, painfully, but truthfully, many important cultural and philosophical issues and essences: arts, man and his place in the world, his relation to other living beings. Semiotics, auteur theory, other theories of film studies, linguistics and psychoanalysis in their postmodern appearances have been applied to the analysis of Kira Muratova's film.

Yoav Tirosh, "Tearing a Text Apart – Audience Participation and Authorial Intent in Ljósvetninga saga and Tommy Wiseau’s The Room", in Unwanted. Neglected Approaches, Characters, and Texts in Old Norse-Icelandic Saga Studies, edited by Andreas Schmidt and Daniela Hahn, 206-242. Münchner Nordistische Studien 50. Munich 2021.

Rossellini, Resnais, Pasolini, Ivens, Marker, Antonioni, Malle. C’è stata una stagione – orientativamente tra gli anni Cinquanta e i Settanta – in cui alcuni grandi cineasti europei hanno compiuto viaggi in Asia per realizzare film, documentari, inchieste, spinti chi da curiosità intellettuale, chi da militanza politica, chi da contingenze di lavoro. Le loro opere hanno spesso fatto parlare di sé: alcune sono state considerate imprescindibili (India di Rossellini), altre hanno causato incidenti diplomatici (Chung kuo - Cina di Antonioni), alcune hanno «inventato» nuove forme di racconto (Lettre de Sibérie di Marker), altre ancora offerto sguardi inediti su avvenimenti capitali del Novecento (Hiroshima mon amour di Resnais). Orient (to) Express è il primo libro che considera questi film come un fenomeno frutto di un’unica temperie culturale, terrain d’entente grazie al quale riconsiderare alcune questioni teoriche che hanno attraversato la storia del cinema. Prima di tutto il concetto d’autore, poi le adiacenze tra moderno e postmoderno, il carattere visibile e fotogenico delle immagini e ancora l’orientalismo come pratica politica e come genere. La stessa esperienza del viaggio appare cruciale in questa ricerca per la sua dimensione pragmatica e archetipica e perché espone i registi a malintesi e incomprensioni, slanci e insicurezze, rendendo i loro film degli oggetti controversi, complessi, talvolta rabberciati, assolutamente da studiare.

A tutti noi è capitato e capita di considerare l'autore come criterio di scelta e di valutazione, come una garanzia di qualità e di corrispondenza ai nostri gusti cinematografici. Tutto questo ci appare naturale, parte integrante del modo con cui andiamo a vedere un film. Tuttavia, se volgessimo
lo sguardo alla storia del cinema, alla critica e al dibattito teorico troveremmo ben presto indizi significativi pronti a indicarci quanto di costruito, di culturalmente determinato ci sia dietro la nozione di autore e quanto essa stessa sia suscettibile di analisi storica, critica e teorica.
È quanto il volume si propone di fare, ricostruendo un percorso tutt'altro che lineare in un secolo di cinema. Soffermandosi su alcuni snodi che ne hanno segnato la definizione e le modificazioni, analizzandone alcuni casi esemplari (Ford, Hitchcock, Leone), l'autore cinematografico viene indagato per mostrarne lo statuto mutevole, contraddittorio e alle volte paradossale. Il libro fa dunque scoprire come alla fine, nel panorama contemporaneo, questo alter ego, che dietro le immagini ha accompagnato la nostra esperienza di spettatori cinematografici, forse ha irrimediabilmente perso il suo ruolo e la sua posizione.

Holy Motors has been ascribed with multiple interpretations. Speculation about the meaning behind the film has emerged since its debut at the Cannes film festival, 2012. These revolve around the baffling storyline and the context technology holds in, not just cinema but, contemporary society. By shifting from genre to genre, Carax purposefully tries to confuse his audience: the French director protects his film from distinct definition with what appears to be a lack of narrative and, instead, creates a highly allegorical and illusory film. This seemingly irrelevant sequence is what makes the film so captivating and has scholars trying to dissect its illusive meaning.
The film won twenty-eight awards and gained sixty-seven nominations. Protagonist, and long-time collaborator of the director, Denis Lavant won four awards for ‘Best Actor’. At the Chicago International Film Festival, he won the award ‘for breathing life into a character who is alternately tragic, hilarious, shocking, profound, hideous, beautiful, wise - but always human - and, quite simply, unlike anything we've ever seen before’. The film can be interpreted in many different ways, but these facts cannot be repudiated. So, how did the tarnished director thwart early criticism with this ‘Island of Cinema’?
The inquisitive viewer might find Holy Motors leaves them questioning existence and the future of technology as machines are replaced just as much as people. In addition, the art of cinema is enveloped in this illustration of cinematography. Whether it provokes philosophical contemplation or not, the film is an extension of the cinematic universe, according to Carax. In essence, this dissertation seeks to broaden, as well as provide sufficient evidence to support, interpretation.

This paper applies a statistical style analysis on one of Theo Angelopoulos's most prominent stylistic features, camerawork, in his acclaimed film Eternity and a Day (1998). Then, it contextualizes the results in order to trace Angelopoulos's cultural background and his limits as filmmaker. At the end, through the statistics it is revealed the signature style of Angelopoulos, that is a 'real' complicated space and a concrete piece of time, lasting minutes, with no effects and no editing, which is depicted by a moving camera in a constant process of forming an artificial 'stage' for contemplation. This paper is a contribution to how Angelopoulos further developed film auteurism and the political cinematic modernism of his generation.

This research opens up a critical discussion regarding the representation of violence through spiritualism and realism in Kim Ki-duk’s movies. It will project the similarities as well as the dissimilarities between Kim Ki-duk and Martin Scorsese based on spirituality in correspondence to the use of realism in a cinematic style. This sheds a light on the significances of portraying their cultural and political ideologies. Kim Ki-duk’s effort is to portray spiritualism and realism; Kim Ki-duk does this by depicting Christianity along with Confucianism, Buddhism, and the practice of silence, in addition to his adaptation of minimalistic style to portray violence. As a result, this research will conclude that Kim Ki- duk is a unique consequential illustrator of South Korea by translating realism in a symbolic manner, which will prove him an auteur.

A Tale of Two Trilogies offers in-depth and wide-ranging analysis of the (then) two Star Wars trilogies in order to determine the validity of competing conceptions of film authorship. To wit: Can films be said to be the brainchild of a single overriding author (i.e., auteur theory), or are films more properly products of the time and place in which they are made (not to mention the larger teams/ensembles that contribute significantly and substantially to their conception, creation, and dissemination).

I propose that the Original Trilogy and the Prequel Trilogy – conceived, developed, produced, and distributed over three decades – are too aesthetically, narratively, and thematically incongruent to function as parts of a coherent whole. The two trilogies should, therefore, be decoupled and evaluated as separate texts. Perpetuating the precept of a preexisting, all-encompassing blueprint – with Lucas as omniscient architect – obfuscates a more accurate (and interesting) engagement with these films as products of the discrete time and place contexts in which they were created, and as multiauthored by collaborators participating in and informing the protracted and painstaking process of their development and production. Consequently, how do different multi-/pan-generational audience formations extrapolate, infer, and map meaning from the results? As the only extant film series curated by the selfsame artist/overlord within/across disparate epochs, the Star Wars trilogies represent a unique opportunity to evaluate a “single” “self-contained” film text diachronically, and ascertain the impact of the divergent cultural contexts in which it was created.

Resumen

Gaspar Noé, uno de los realizadores más controvertidos del panorama cinematográfico actual, a quien Paul B. Preciado incluye en la llamada "nouvelle vague post-porno", cuestiona el modelo establecido de representación del sexo en el cine construyendo imágenes que bordean la pornografía. En su polémico filme Love (2015), rodado en 3D, el director francoargentino recurre a la estética formal y narrativa del lenguaje cinematográfico para filmar de forma creativa y libre de prejuicios una sexualidad abierta y transgresora que huye de las convenciones del discurso pornográfico tradicional y hegemónico, optando por una mirada autoral.

Palabras clave: Gaspar Noé, Love, postpornografía, Nuevo Extremismo Francés, Cinéma du Corps


Abstract

Gaspar Noé, one of the most controversial directors in the current film industry, whom Paul B. Preciado includes in the so-called “post-porn nouvelle vague”, questions the dominant mode of sex representation in film by constructing images verging on pornography. In his provocative 3D film Love (2015), the French-Argentinian filmmaker makes use of the formal and narrative aesthetics of film language to innovatively shoot a transgressive sexuality that discards the visual conventions of traditional and hegemonic porn films in favour of an auteur-driven gaze.

Keywords: Gaspar Noé, Love, post-pornography, New French Extremity, Cinéma du Corps

Everybody knows that Vertigo is one of Alfred Hitchcock’s cinematic masterpieces. However, only a few scholars have discussed the hidden correspondences between that film and the Surrealist poetics. The following text moves away from the gender interpretations omnipresent in the film’s bibliography since Laura Mulvey’s “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”. Instead, it will explore its visual elements, especially those associated with the art direction and the cinematography as well, in order to achieve a clear correspondence with the Surrealist "pensée en images", and with the concepts of “shock” and “optical unconscious” enunciated by Walter Benjamin in his seminal work “The Work of Art in the Age of Its Techonological Reproducibility”. The last section of this paper is dedicated to the analysis of locations and set design in the movie, whose combination of architectural milestones in San Francisco and banal locations are the visual realization of the Surrealist “marvelous in the everyday”.
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Nadie duda que Vértigo es una de las obras maestras en la producción de Alfred Hitchcock. Sin embargo, pocos autores se han detenido en analizar las correspondencias latentes entre dicha película y las poéticas surrealistas. El siguiente artículo se aleja de las interpretaciones de género omnipresentes en la bibliografía desde el artículo de Laura Mulvey “Placer visual y cine narrativo”, para indagar en los aspectos visuales del filme, especialmente en aquellos relacionados con la cinematografía y la dirección artística, a fin de establecer una clara correspondencia con el concepto de pensée en images postulado por el surrealismo visual y literario, así como en los conceptos de shock e inconsciente óptico formulados por Walter Benjamin en su obra fundacional “La obra de arte en la época de su reproductibilidad técnica”. Las localizaciones y el diseño de decorados conforman la última parte del siguiente análisis interpretativo, en el que se combinan la naturaleza de algunos de ellos como hitos urbanos y la banalidad de otros espacios para materializar lo “maravilloso cotidiano” surrealista.