Loading...
64 results
Search Results
Now showing 1 - 10 of 64
- Metacinema as authorial enunciation: a taxonomy of hybrid filmsPublication . Chinita, FátimaABSTRACT - Metacinema is a cinephilic enterprise: whereas some film directors, bound by their urge for expression, seek to make their authorial discourse on such matters manifest; some compulsive film viewers aim to become film directors themselves. Both gladly engage with authorial enunciation, which evinces the technical and aesthetic work and choices undertaken by the film directors together with their “cinevision,” i.e., their worldview and artistic philosophy made explicit as the films’ on message(s) (or “discourse”). Taking metacinema as a practice situated in between reflexive cinema and cinema about cinema, this article defines it as simultaneously revealing the technique, including the apparatus that enables it, and the authorial discourse that voices the director’s position on his or her art. In order to better explain the four simultaneous conditions of metacinema in my own conception of it, an empirical taxonomy of hybrid films— one of the categories in a larger taxonomy I devised elsewhere—is drawn here. Thus the tautological expression of “self-reflexive metacinema,” as a deliberate thematization of this reflection, is expounded, with ample and varied examples, over a threefold enunciative taxonomy composed of three subcategories focusing on, respectively, the production stage, entailing the creative work of the filmmakers; the reception stage, illustrating the emotional and physiological response of the viewers; and a well-balanced comingling of these two stages. Through this categorization, it will become obvious that metafilms are the essence of metacinema, because in them the artists look foremost for the materiality of expression whereby they find themselves.
- O fio de Ariadne: as narrativas labirínticas de Christopher NolanPublication . Chinita, FátimaO cérebro humano possui a capacidade de efabular e utiliza-a na sua fértil vida psíquica, tanto a dormir (em sonhos), como acordado (em fantasias); quer de modo saudável e catártico, quer de modo patológico e compulsivo. Como nem todos os seres humanos são artistas, muitas destas “criações” efabulatórias não são partilhadas nem logram aumentar o espólio cultural das nações. No entanto, alguns dos efabuladores espraiam a sua verve criativa em produções que partilham com outrem. Deste modo a efabulação natural chega à arte, de que o cinema é uma via possível. As obras cinematográficas de narrativa assumidamente não linear constituem-se como um desafio de reconstrução para o vidente, apelando à sua capacidade de descodificação de um mistério subjacente ao enredo (o ato de storytelling) mais do que à(s) história(s) narrada(s). Inicia-se assim uma interação entre autor e recetor, sendo justamente nesse relacionamento que reside a fruição da obra. Com fortes bases metanarrativas, em que o objetivo discursivo dos filmes enquanto arte reside na exposição das técnicas de construção, com o intuito de realçar o anti ilusionismo e toda a dimensão falsificante da narrativa que Gilles Deleuze (1985), em grande parte, atribui à manipulação do tempo, este artigo propõe fazer o mapeamento temporal do filme Following, de Christopher Nolan (1998, UK). Assim se pretende enaltecer a estratégia de ambiguidade adotada, ao mesmo tempo que se descobre, por trás de uma aparente dimensão aleatória, uma sólida arquitetura de construção que convida o espetador a tomar parte num jogo narrativo.
- Artistic symbiosis: Orson Welles’s Othello (1951) as cinematic operaPublication . Chinita, FátimaEarly film theorist Ricciotto Canudo equated cinema with music because of the Seventh Art’s inherent plasticity; in the 21st century, plasticity extends to the soundtrack. In this article, I explore the fusion of cinema with the musical genre of opera. By considering that film is a performative medium, beyond the actors’ agency, I confirm music’s importance in it as part of the structure and style of opera. Unlike Franco Zeffirelli’s adaptation of Verdi’s opera Otello, Orson Welles’s adaptation of William Shakespeare’s play conforms to Jacques Aumont’s concept of “operatic film” in that it engenders a coexistence of the verbal and the non-verbal, balancing drama and music with a performative intention. However, this film is so musicalized and operatically rendered, especially through its soundtrack, that it exceeds Aumont’s intention and becomes what I call a “cinematic opera”: a film that is operatic in its artificial and ritualistic nature as well as in its well-woven soundtrack of music, sound effects and voice working together in a common musicalized pattern.
- Fascinating museological audiences, or the cinematic appealPublication . Chinita, FátimaThis review of Elisa Mandelli’s book The Museum as a Cinematic Space: The Display of Moving Images in Exhibitions (2019) explains how, according to the author, several viewing dispositifs, understood as a rather flexible assemblage of elements, are increasingly being used in museums to combine education with entertainment. Thus, museums are becoming “cinematic spaces” with an ideological perspective. Mandelli’s approach to the projection technologies of moving images in museological venues is not only chronological but also phenomenological. A three-way interest is recognizable in the alignment of chapters, encompassing the educational value of the dispositifs, their artistic nature, and the experiential factor. As the book provides an interesting overview of two fields that usually are not taken together and contains an assortment of case studies described in detail, it should make a good addition to the fields of Museum and Film Studies.
- The power of the frame upon the viewer: multiple perspective seduction in Peter Greenaway's The tulse luper suitcases trilogyPublication . Chinita, FátimaIn The Tulse Luper Suitcases trilogy – Part 1 – The Moab Story (2003); Part 2 – From Vaux to the Sea (2004); Part 3 – From Sark to Finish (2004) – Peter Greenaway plays with the tension between three- and two-dimensionality. His digital cinema, which superimposes several layers of images and sounds, uses the frame as both instrument and theme of a meta-cinematic discourse on media and the way they interrelate. Drawing especially from painting and theatre, Greenaway rejects the Renaissance monocular perspective in favour of a haptic visuality that alternates between depth and flatness, between singleframed tableaux and multi-framed composite images. The result is a hybrid, a sort of “imploded” narrative, as disruptive as it is engaging. Although dismissing the traditional Western visual paradigm in general and the classical analytical montage in particular, Greenaway nevertheless bases his practice on some of the most renowned aspects of the continuity editing style, if only to undermine them. This critically revamped editing is aesthetically and cognitively seductive, acting upon the viewers’ fetishistic attraction for the medium as well as their affects and senses.
- Redefining melodrama: Saving private Ryan as male weepiePublication . Chinita, FátimaSpielberg’s dramatic films usually engage in an aesthetic of excess that is redolent of melodrama in general, the ultimate goal of which is to bring the audience to tears. Following Steve Neale’s rationale in “Melodrama and Tears (1986), I argue that Saving Private Ryan, the ultimate war movie, is a “male weepie,” a variety of melodrama destined to make audiences cry, but starring a male protagonist instead of a woman. I focus on the generic hybridity of the film, reconciling Jeanine Basinger’s paradigm of the combat movie, with the emotion and sentiment the film contains and how this affects the viewer’s reception of it. In other words, it is a question of coordinating the conflict between good and evil, from a family-based and symbolically mothering perspective, with the hyperbolic dimension and the breath-taking action of combat-riddled films. From a cognitive perspective, it could be said that this article strives to approach the “rules of engagement,” not of the enemy but of the audience.
- Dores de crescimento: melodrama e identidade queer em O Rapaz dos Cabelos Verdes (1948) e Chá e Simpatia (1956)Publication . Chinita, Fátima"O Rapaz dos Cabelos Verdes" (The Boy with Green Hair, Joseph Losey, 1948) e "Chá e Simpatia" (Tea and Sympathy, Vincente Minnelli, 1956) podem ser considerados melodramas de uma categoria que designo como “filmes de crescimento”. Ao contrário de outros melodramas protagonizados por personagens jovens, neste caso o cerne fílmico não reside na família nuclear mas sim na sociedade que os rodeia e os considera “diferentes”. Ambos os filmes são melodramas de virilidade, mas não incidem sobre um momento de crise esperada (como nos "male weepies"); concentram-se, pelo contrário, num processo de vida e num impasse individual relacionado com a identidade específica. Adoptando o conceito clínico de “idade do armário” como ponto de partida, este ensaio defende uma leitura queer de ambos os filmes, baseada na possibilidade de uma diferença transgenérica (e não apenas masculina). Afinal como sustenta, Kathryn Bond Stockton: “Every child is queer”. O estatuto de herói-vítima e a castração simbólica de ambos os protagonistas, na sua busca identitária, conjuga-se bem com o espaço de indefinição e irrealidade que é o melodrama. Nestes dois filmes é o próprio enredo que enfatiza essa relação. A alteridade dos dois jovens encontra eco nos espectadores, despertando sentimentos de ternura e emoção, bem como a lembrança do seu próprio passado queer.
- Re-defining poetry through motion: a book reviewPublication . Chinita, FátimaABSTRACT - Book review of Sarah Tremlett's book The Poetics of Poetry Film: Film Poetry, Videopoetry, Lyric Voice, Reflection (Bristol and Chicago: Intellect, 2021).
- A ficção do amor na ciência das históriasPublication . Fátima ChinitaAnálise da curta-metragem Lemúria (2009), escrita e realizada por José Ratinho, no âmbito do Mestrado em Cinema, da Universidade da Beira Interior. In UBI Cinema: 2007-2017, livro comemorativo dos dez anos de cursos em Cinema naquela instituição de ensino.
- A tale of sound and fury signifying everything: Argentine tango dance films as complex self-reflexive creationPublication . Chinita, FátimaABSTRACT - This article equates the multidimensional artistic form of Argentine tango (dance, music and song) with the innately hybrid form of film. It compares Argentine tango culture to the height of French cinephilia in the 1950s Paris, France, arguing that they are both passionate, erotic and nostalgic ways of life. In Carlos Saura’s Tango (1998) and Sally Potter’s The Tango Lesson (1997), the intertwining of the related skills of tango practice and filmmaking are an audio-visual treat for the senses and a cognitive challenge for the mind. Their self-reflexivity promotes excess and the result is a highly expressive and complex form. They evince a cross-fertilization of reality and fiction, of art and life, typical of a perfect mise en abyme as described by Christian Metz. These films are also art musicals, although they depart from the Hollywood musical conventions. Yet, one cannot speak in their case of intermedia reflexivity, according to Petr Szczepanik’s definition, because both of them retain their qualities in a symbiotic relationship of likeness that highlights their mutual aura.