Marxist Film Theory

কামার আহমাদ সাইমন পরিচালিত ‘শুনতে কি পাও!’ (২০১২) চলচ্চিত্রটিকে নির্মাণশৈলী, বিষয়বস্তু, ভাষারীতি ও বাস্তবতার উপস্থাপনের পরিপ্রেক্ষিত থেকে মার্কসবাদী সমালোচনামূলক সাহিত্যতত্ত্বের নিরিখে ব্যাখ্যা করাই এই গবেষণার উদ্দেশ্য। মুক্তির পর থেকেই চলচ্চিত্রটি নির্মাণশৈলী ও বিষয়বস্তুর কারণে আলোচিত। রাখী ও সৌমেন এর দাম্পত্য আখ্যানের সাথে আইলাতে বিধ্বস্ত জনজীবন চিত্রিত হয় চলচ্চিত্রটিতে। দূর্যোগগ্রস্ত মানুষের পুনরুত্থানের প্রয়াস ও নিম্নবর্গীয় যাপনের উপস্থাপন চলচ্চিত্র আখ্যানের কেন্দ্রবিন্দু। চলচ্চিত্রের ভাষাগত ধ্রপদী আয়োজন নির্ভর নির্মাণ কাঠামো এবং পুঁজিবাদী সাজসজ্জা পূজা নির্ভর নির্মাণশৈলী থেকে বেরিয়ে সাইমনের নতুন বাস্তবতাড়িত প্রকৃত যাপনকে চিত্রায়িত করার যে প্রয়াস তা চলচ্চিত্রটিতে উপস্থাপিত প্রান্তিক নিম্নবর্গের মানুষকে দেয় এক নতুন স্বর। আর এই প্রান্তিক গ্রামীণ মানুষের ভেতরকার যাতনার মধ্য দিয়ে আন্তর্জাতিক রাজনীতি ও নব্য-সাম্রাজ্যবাদী আচরণও উঠে এসেছে প্রতীকীভাবে। গবেষণাকর্মটি গুনগতভাবে দেখতে চায় ‘শুনতে কি পাও!’ চলচ্চিত্রটিতে মার্কসবাদী সমালোচনামূলক সাহিত্যতত্ত্বের নানা উপাদান কীভাবে মিশে আছে। গবেষণাকর্মটি ‘শুনতে কি পাও!’ চলচ্চিত্র, কামার আহমাদ সাইমনের সাক্ষাৎকার এবং নানাবিধ মার্কসবাদী রচনাকে ভিত্তি করে লিখিত।

Fig. 1. Rossellini’s Paisà (1946) goes where “transient life manifests itself most conspicuously”. The viewer is made to wander through Naples in a fiction. Its mimesis enables the GI to describe to Pasquale the skyscrapers of New York, while sitting on a pile of rubble. Their seemingly erratic trajectory confronts the viewer with the real city. The wandering ceases when faced with a crowd of displaced people actually living in the caves of Mergellina who become fleeting screen presences in the Naples episode’s shocking denouement.

In 1945 Roberto Rossellini’s Neo-realist Rome, Open City set in motion an approach to cinema and its representation of real life – and by extension real spaces – that was to have international significance in film theory and practice. However, the re-use of the real spaces of the city, and elsewhere, as film sets in Neo-realist film offered (and offers) more than an influential aesthetic and set of cinematic theories. Through Neo-realism, it can be argued that we gain access to a cinematic relational and multidimensional space that is not made from built sets, but by filming the built environment. On the one hand, this space allows us to “notice” the contradictions around us in our cities and, by extension, the societies that have produced those cities, while on the other, allows us to see the spatial practices operative in the production and maintenance of those contradictions. In setting out a template for understanding the spatial practices of Neo-realism through the work of Henr...

https://dergipark.org.tr/tr/pub/sinecine
2023 Güz Autumn 14 (2)
Sinema Araştırmaları Dergisi  Journal of Film Studies
Danışma Kurulu | Advisory Board 
Sinecine FIAF (The International Federation of Film Archives) International Index to Film Periodicals tarafından taranmaktadır.
Sinecine is indexed in the FIAF (Fédération Internationale des Archives du Film) International Index to Film Periodicals.
Sinecine TÜBİTAK ULAKBİM TR DİZİN Sosyal ve Beşeri Bilimler Veri Tabanı (SBVT) tarafından indekslenmektedir.

This study launched a dialectical materialist critique of the long cinematic duration of Lav Diaz’s cinema. His films after Batang West Side (2001) took on the long durational style with running lengths ranging from four (4) hours to eleven (11) hours each film. In the existing literature, no study had thoroughly engaged with Diaz’s long cinematic duration, one that could relate the smallest element of his cinema i.e., his shot length to the biggest organizational structure of time existing today i.e. neoliberalism. This study used the dialectical materialist framework developed by Marx, Lenin, and Mao to comprehensively analyze and unpack the internal contradictions of long cinematic duration in three levels: consciousness, self-consciousness, and reason. The first level, consciousness, engaged with the form and style of long cinematic duration. The second level, self-consciousness, overcoming the aesthetic limit of the first level, problematized the critical reception and the politics of contending recognitions of long cinematic duration. The third level elevated the inquiry to economic reason, by rationalizing long cinematic duration within the general economic sphere. In conclusion, the study presented the open image as a sublated and revolutionary reformulation of long cinematic duration constituting a guide to action and future practices in cinema.

A tale of gradual descent into madness, of deadening monotony of corporate slog, and of the ultimate realisation of self-Imtiaz Ali directorial Tamasha poignantly holds a mirror up to the snuffing out of creativity and passion by pressures of the capitalist rat race for success. When analysed through a Marxist lens, the film offers a commentary on alienation of labour. The protagonist's dullness and disconnectedness to his productive activity as a corporate worker, portrayed in a capitalist setting in binary opposition to his spontaneity and spark while on vacation thousands of miles away in Corsica, conveys the theme of working class alienation and its specificity to capitalism in the film. Employing the framework of Marxism thus, this paper examines the story and mise en scène of Tamasha to reveal three aspects of labour estrangement in it-estrangement from the act of production, estrangement from the species being and estrangement from fellow men. This is followed by a reading of the protagonist's ultimate rediscovery of self as representative of the overcoming of alienation.

Bu çalışmada, 1990’lı yıllarda popüler olan, ancak daha sonraki süreçte derin bir sessizliğe bürünen İslami sinemanın, günümüzde nasıl bir üslup arayışı içinde olduğu
tartışılacaktır. Bu üslup arayışının neleri içerdiğini, neleri dışarıda bıraktığını anlamayı ve
günümüzde üretilen İslami filmlerin yeni bir döneme girmesinde etkili olan değişimlerin
izini sürmeyi amaçlayan bu yazı, Nilüfer Göle’nin “Batı-dışı modernlik” kavramı temelinde ilerleyecektir. Bu bağlamda, hem modernlik ve geleneksellik sınırında bir
üslup arayışını örneklemeleri, hem de uzun bir aradan sonra İslami filmleri yeniden
görünür kılmaları nedeniyle, 2005 yapımı iki film, Anne ya da Leyla (Mesut Uçakan) ve
The İmam (İsmail Güneş) incelenecektir. Önceki dönemin İslami anlatılarından farklı
olarak, bu anlatılardaki yeni üslup arayışlarını anlamak önemlidir. Çünkü sözü edilen
filmler, günümüzde İslami sinemayı “akım” olarak değerlendirmeyi sorunlu kılar ve yeni
yaklaşımların geliştirilmesi gerektiğini gösterir.
Anahtar Sözcükler: İslami sinema, İslami filmler, modernlik, Batı-dışı modernlik,
geleneksellik, üslup arayışı

The purpose of this paper is to explore the theme of class conflict, as proposed by Marxism, in Bong Joon-ho's award-winning film Parasite. Marxism states that the capitalist society is divided into two parts: the Bourgeoisie (i.e., ruling class) and the Proletariat (i.e., working class). This specific division, as claimed by Marx, creates a state of perpetual conflict in a capitalist society where the interests of these two classes are always at odds with each other. Joon-Ho's work addresses the topic of class conflict by creating an explicit socioeconomic divide between the two families, the Parks who represent the Bourgeoisie, and the Kims who represent the Proletariat. This paper explains the main themes of Marxism and then uses them to decipher Joon-Ho's masterpiece. However, this paper goes beyond the obvious storyline of Bong Joon-ho's work and focuses on how he employs various elements of cinematography, such as set design, space and lighting to accentuate the class difference between the two families.

Fig. 1. Rossellini’s Paisà (1946) goes where “transient life manifests itself most conspicuously”. The viewer is made to wander through Naples in a fiction. Its mimesis enables the GI to describe to Pasquale the skyscrapers of New York, while sitting on a pile of rubble. Their seemingly erratic trajectory confronts the viewer with the real city. The wandering ceases when faced with a crowd of displaced people actually living in the caves of Mergellina who become fleeting screen presences in the Naples episode’s shocking denouement.

Bu çalışma, 1960 ve 1980 darbelerinin Türkiye’deki toplumsal yaşamı ve ülke sinemasını nasıl etkilediğini iki filmin kıyaslanması üzerinden ele almaktadır. Çalışma ile amaçlanan, 1960 ve 1980 darbelerini takip eden süreçte ülkede yaşanan gelişmelerin, Karanlıkta Uyananlar ve Faize Hücum filmlerine içerik olarak nasıl katkı sağladıklarını ortaya koymaktır. 1960 darbesinin ardından, 1961 yılında düzenlenen ve yürürlüğe giren
anayasayla tanınan insani haklar ve özgürlüklerin alanı daha önce görülmemiş ölçüde genişletilmiştir. Örneğin, işçilere toplu sözleşme ve grev hakkı tanınmış, ortaya koydukları tüm emekleri devlet güvencesi altına alınmıştır. Karanlıkta Uyananlar filminin konusu da anayasal etkilenimin bir sonucu olarak ortaya çıkmıştır. Filmde, işçilerin anayasal olarak daha önce sahip olmadıkları mevcut haklarını tanıma ve bilinçlenme süreçlerine yer verilmektedir. 1980 darbesi ise 1960 darbesinden tamamen farklı koşulların ve sınırlandırmaların doğmasına yol açacak girişimlerin başlangıcını oluşturmuştur. Darbeyi takiben yürürlüğe giren 1982 Anayasası, 1961 Anayasası’nın verdiği haklara ve özgürlük ortamına sınırlandırmalar getirmiş ve toplum yaşamında yoğun bir baskı düzeni kurulmuştur. Oluşturulan baskı düzeninde, ekonomik ve toplumsal haklarının çoğundan mahrum kalan ve gerektiğinde haklarını arayamayan bireyler ise gün geçtikçe yalnızlaşmış ve ağır bir bunalıma sürüklenmeye başlamışlardır. Söz konusu durum, Faize Hücum filminde kendisine yer bulmuş, bireysel ve toplumsal konum Kâmil Bey özelinde ele alınmıştır. Filmde, 1980 darbesinden sonra ülkede ortaya çıkan istikrarsız ekonomik ortamın, insanları nasıl bir çıkmazın içine sürüklediği anlatılmaktadır. Her iki film de betimsel analiz yöntemi kullanılarak hermeneutik yaklaşımla incelenmiştir.

In 1945 Roberto Rossellini’s Neo-realist Rome, Open City set in motion an approach to cinema and its representation of real life – and by extension real spaces – that was to have international significance in film theory and practice. However, the re-use of the real spaces of the city, and elsewhere, as film sets in Neo-realist film offered (and offers) more than an influential aesthetic and set of cinematic theories. Through Neo-realism, it can be argued that we gain access to a cinematic relational and multidimensional space that is not made from built sets, but by filming the built environment. On the one hand, this space allows us to “notice” the contradictions around us in our cities and, by extension, the societies that have produced those cities, while on the other, allows us to see the spatial practices operative in the production and maintenance of those contradictions. In setting out a template for understanding the spatial practices of Neo-realism through the work of Henr...

This article considers The Dark Knight Rises (Christopher Nolan, 2012) in order to argue through Fredric Jameson that postmodern aspects of a text are capable of obfuscating, if not altogether obliterating, any Marxist polemics. The first portion engages with Jameson's The Political Unconscious, particularly his emphasis on class struggle and identification of ideologemes which manifest in the text. The subsequent section considers The Dark Knight Rises as a postmodern text through Jameson's concepts of pastiche and nostalgia. Moreover, The Dark Knight Rises is contextualized within the recent spate of class-oriented cinema. Collectively, the goal is to identify a trend within such films of establishing a correlation between capitalism and inequality, ideologemes and postmodernism. The final result is an increasingly impressive group of genre-spanning films which address contemporary inequality in its multifarious forms, but which treat these issues more so as narrative devices than tenable critiques of the sites of oppression.

This article explores the anticlimatic suspense sequence, a phrase used to describe the use of mise-en-scene to build suspense and tease the killer, within a recent cycle of slasher film remakes. Despite the ubiquity of these scenes in the horror genre, there has been little attention paid to them. There function as a formulaic device used to tease the climax and provide suspenseful interludes between exposition renders them analytically unattractive. However, these scenes often answer some of the most basic questions one can ask of the horror genre: What is used to frighten the audience? How is the audience frightened? Why are certain elements or objects of a film’s mise-en-scene used in these scenes? How these scenes then inform questions of horror pleasure is obvious but what is more apropos to this study is the question of how these scenes supplement the ideology of the films. Under this interpretation, the seemingly apolitical nature of the sequences as a result of their formulaic necessity is complicated by analyzing these sequences and their mise-en-scene as ideologically constructed. I argue the anticlimactic suspense sequences serve one of two purposes: they supplement the film’s narrative to create a cohesive ideology or they provide an ideology to the inchoate or ambiguous horror text. As such, these sequences are essential to analyzing the horror genre and the goal is to illuminate the ideological vitality of such an analysis. Furthermore, the article refines existing methods for conducting class analysis and expands the role of mise-en-scene.

Kumar Shahani's Maya Darpan is lauded as one of the finest experiments in colour in post-Independent Indian cinema. Under the tutelage of the finest Marxists - the filmmaker Ritwik Ghatak and the Historian D.D. Kosambi, he spent his years in Pune. He assisted Robert Bresson and years later studied Gwalior Khayal gayaki under Gwalior gharana vocalists; Neela Bhagwat and Jal Balaporia. Shahani's work stretches beyond the norms of his completed work and his exploration of the Epic form in cinema. This paper is an introduction to Kumar Shahani and through Maya Darpan, proposes a close link between the selection of parallel line movements it draws on.

The interaction between “art” and “society” has always been a fruitful source of inquiry for scholars and critics. It is a complex and multidimensional subject requiring an interdisciplinary approach in the context of cultural studies, literary theory, sociology and political science. The relationships between “art” and “society” can be multiple and the word “society” can encompass an infinite number of cultural, political and economic elements... It is possible to talk about the direct influence of socio-political powers on art such as “censure” or “manipulation for propaganda purposes” as well as the more subtle sociological and political determinants on art coming from this general rubrique of  “society”. This work will be primarily concerned with those “subtle sociological and political determinants” which create the favorable conditions for “classical realism” as a “film wave” to emerge in particular societies. As for the present study, post-war Italian society in the context of “neo-realism” in cinema (1945-52)  and  Turkey’s  “social realist” movement (1960-65) in the aftermath of the coup will be considered as major examples.

Karanlıkta Uyananlar, Ertem Göreç ve Lütfi Akad gibi isimlerin bireysel olarak içinde bulundukları sendikal faaliyetlerin ve 60’ların ilk yarısında yaşanan coşkulu dönüşümün enerjisiyle ortaya çıkar. Filmdeki karakterlerin çiziliş şekli ve farkındalık süreçleri, dönemin konjonktürüyle de bağlantılıdır. Filmi esas büyüten ise, filmin bireysel hikâyelerle sınırlı kalmaması; bireysel dönüşümleri arka plandaki detaylarıyla ve tüm çelişkileriyle ortaya koymasından kaynaklanır.

Metal fırtınayı dindirmek artık kolay değil. Yıkılmaz denen kaleleri yıkan metal işçisinin öncü gücü Renaultçular başladıkları işi bitirmeye kararlılar. Belki sendeleyecekler ama düşmeyecekler. Türkiye emek hareketininse bu mücadeleyi tıpkı 1963’te Kavel’i sahiplendiği gibi sahiplenmesi gerekiyor. Bu bir işyerinin meselesi değil, bu 12 Eylül düzeniyle bir hesaplaşma...

The problem of  cinema’s relationship to national identity is a complex one.  On the one hand, film history  has traditionally been written as the histories of various national cinemas (French cinema, Iranian cinema, etc.), and indeed the national origin of a film continues to be a major classification device for film festivals.  On the other hand, certain national cinemas–particularly Hollywood, and more recently “Bollywood,” the prolific Indian film industry centered in Bombay–reach global audiences and in many nations reach a larger audience than the indigenous national film output.  Thus, the extent to which any national cinema can be said to “reflect” or to express a particular national culture is complicated by uneven exchanges in the global flow of images.

What can politically engaged aesthetic productions from the former Soviet Union tell us about socialism? As recently as ten years ago, popular audiences and scholars alike might have answered this question by invoking the dissidents who fled the Eastern Bloc during the Cold War. Throughout the twentieth century, dissidents provided popular and critical “Western” discourses with vivid tales of both the treachery of leftist utopianism and the courage of individual resistance. Today, the outdated imperialist ideologies that undergird this approach have become readily apparent, while a vital strand of post-socialist leftism has surfaced once more across the former Second World.

The emerging Russian filmmakers I discuss in this article offer visions of radical politics and aesthetics that learn and diverge from the state socialism that shaped their parents’ and grandparents’ generations. Russia offers a stage for intellectual and artistic upheavals exceptional both for the political traditions they juxtapose, and for the foregrounded awareness of the ambivalent legacies of these traditions. Tackling a range of contentious subjects from sexuality to police brutality, these films met with controversy in Russia while securing the reputation of their directors on the international festival circuit. I examine three recent films—Svetlana Baskova’s For Marx… (2012), Angelina Nikonova’s Twilight Portrait (2011), and Lyubov Lvova and Sergei Taramayev’s Winter Journey (2013)—all by female directors or co-directors, and all seeking to imagine and image social alterity after state socialism.

Italian cinematography is not a culturally and politically neutral means of artistic
communication. A web of historical, political and sociocultural instances, as well
as the technical features characterizing cinematography itself, configured the production
of national visual narratives and their fruition in the Italian movie theaters
as the two generative poles of a constantly reiterated ritualistic process. This form of
social drama aims at a strategic construction of a collective Italian historical memory.
Italian films are very much a means of cultural production. Their structural ownership
by the state is organic to the hegemonic reification of a politically driven feeling
of Italian national identity.

ÖZET Bu çalışmada 1960'lı yıllarda Türk sinemasında ortaya çıkan toplumsal gerçekçilik kavramından bahsedilmektedir. Bu dönemde dünyadaki gelişmelere paralel olarak Türkiye'de de kapitalizmin sömürüsüne karşı birtakım gelişmeler yaşanmış, sanayileşirken aynı zamanda sömürülen toplumda işçiler ve gençler haklarını aramaya başlamışlardır. Bu hak arayışı veya başkaldırı Türk sinemasına da konu olmuş ve bu dönemde toplumsal gerçekçilik anlayışı içinde filmler çekilmiştir. Ayrıca bu dönemde, özellikle 1961 Anayasası'ndan sonra göç, gecekondulaşma, sendikalaşma, grev, kadın hakları konularına ilişkin filmler de çekilmiştir. Bu çalışmada bu filmlerden özgün örnekler olan 'Gecelerin Ötesi', 'Karanlıkta Uyananlar' ve 'Bir Yudum Sevgi' filmleri konu edilmektedir.

The myth of Metro Manila as the Promised Land is no stranger to being depicted in the celluloid. No less than Lino Brocka and Ishmael Bernal have explored the city’s urban landscape in their effort to articulate the ills and evils of the “City of Man” in the age of Marcos. In modern mainstream cinema, however, the neoliberal myth of Manila is continually perpetuated as the product of economic progress and globalization. Two recent films, however, deal with the modern issues of Manila, articulating problems that are particularly salient in contemporary Filipino society. Erik Matti’s On the Job and Sean
Ellis’s Metro Manila – both released in 2013 – are set with the city as an integral part of the narrative. In each of their capacities, they narrate the political economy of Metro Manila, communicating the modern maladies that plague the city, and destabilizing the established notions of the city. In this process of dissent and protest, both films serve to disentangle the myth of Metro Manila as a place where power is diffused, and where dreams are fulfilled.

This paper examines the representation of the working class in Ertem Göreç's film Karanlıkta Uyananlar (1964), assessing how the general characteristics of the working class and vvorkers are described, as well as the forms and tools of the struggle of these vvorkers. The analysis takes a Marxist approach, focusing on the phenomena of class and class struggle, the process of class struggle, the worker and the forms of vvorkers' struggles. The film Karanlıkta Uyananlar, concerned with the economic problems of vvorkers and the struggle of the vvorking class, bases itself in the historical and social structure of the society and positions itself in favour of collective approaches to action and social mobility in contrast to individualistic ones. İn both its subject matter and its treatment of the vvorking classes, this film was a first in Turkish cinema. Keyvvords: Karanlıkta Uyananlar, working-class, Turkish cinema, class struggle.

This was supposed to be an open issue. However, as the essays poured in and the responses to the important work done in 8.1 grew, the issue galvanized around a few, key, central ideas. Graham and Joe write presciently, on the eve  of the election, NOT after it: It is our wager that even though the forms of race, racism, and empire have changed considerably since he was at the height of his powers - as evidenced perhaps most starkly by the ascendancy of Kenyan-descended, African American, Barack Obama, during the recent U.S. Presidential race - Richard Wright's writings remain invaluable; even with their obvious limitations, they continue to yield insight, inspiration, and even injunction for those of us seeking to understand and to change the world in 2008.