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- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- O repeat viewing no contexto do metacinemaPublication . Chinita, FátimaPartindo da explicação daquilo que neste ensaio se entende por “metacinema” e a sua relevância como discurso autoral sobre a sétima arte, aborda-se o fenómeno do visionamento múltiplo de uma mesma obra (aspeto conhecido em inglês como “repeat viewing”). Este fenómeno permite um contato privilegiado entre o meta espetador, propenso a aderir em maior grau aos metafilmes, e o meta realizador, inclinado a construir uma carreira em torno da execução dos mesmos. Em causa está o visionamento e o fabrico de obras, direta ou indiretamente, especializadas no universo cinematográfico. A mediação do dispositivo cinematográfico na projeção em sala ou a apropriação de novas e cada vez mais versáteis tecnologias de captação e reprodução audiovisual permite transformar o vidente cinéfilo num utilizador compulsivo, conferindo ao cinema atualmente uma dimensão háptica que ele não detinha da mesma forma anteriormente. O espetador apropria-se de obras criadas por outrem, atribuindo-lhes uma nova forma e um novo sentido, mas dentro de um contexto cinéfilo. Inversamente, o criador é voluntariamente apropriado pela indústria, permitindo o consumo de si mesmo nas edições em videograma e trabalhando internamente as obras e os seus mecanismos formais e narrativos para geraram maior e mais multiplicadas formas de consumo junto dos espetadores. Assim se fomenta uma jornada que não é do herói, mas sim do vidente. Para concluir, defende-se que a maior acessibilidade fílmica permitida pela disseminação de novas janelas de consumo cinematográfico incrementa o repeat viewing e uma apropriação cada vez maior das obras, mas em contrapartida, pode desencadear a nulidade do discurso metacinematográfico e o esboroar do metacinema como tal.
- Transvase: quando a ficção invade a realidadePublication . Chinita, FátimaABSTRACT: Adopting the concept of metalepsis, as explained by Gérard Genette, I intend to tackle the miscegenation of ontological worlds as practiced in metacinematic films dealing either with the creator or the spectator and made famous with Woody Allen’s film The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985, EUA). Assuming the existence of two adjoining fictional universes, one of them intrafilmically projected onto a screen and the other positioned in front of it so as to create or observe the other, one realizes that, in fact, they both communicate in a more intense way. That is, they both can cross the barrier that separates them and function, literally, as communicating vessels thrusting themselves onto the other side of fiction. The use of this screen passage technique – which I call ‘spilling narrative’ – although it takes place inside the film, at an intradiegetic level, cannot be considered a simple comic effect. In actuality, it is a very serious affair, denoting the authorial intervention as a reflexive practice of écriture by means of a mise en abyme, according to Lucien Dällenbach. Therefore, the fictional spilling over of worlds which totally blends together both sides of the twice artificial universe of the fabula, represents the emotional and intellectual involvement of the creator with his/her creation and of the spectator with the world watched. Both illustrate the desire of fusion inherent in the acts of creation and reception. My approach will be based on Gabriele Salvatores’ Happy Family (2010) and Wojciech Marczewski’s Escape from the ‘Liberty’ Cinema (1990).
- Juggling time concepts: complex metanarrative in Alejandro González Iñárritu’s 21 GramsPublication . Chinita, FátimaABSTRACT - Starting with the explanation of metanarrative as a sort of self-reflexive storytelling (as defended by Kenneth Weaver Hope in his unpublished PhD. thesis), I propose to talk about enunciative practices that stress the telling more than the told. In line with some metaficcional practices applied to cinema, such as the ‘mindfuck’ film (Jonathan Eig, 2003), the ‘psychological puzzle film’ (Elliot Panek, 2003) and the ‘mind-game film’ (Thomas Elsaesser, 2009), I will address the manipulations that a narrative film endures in order to produce a more fruitful and complex experience for the viewer. I will particularly concentrate on the misrepresentation of time as a way to produce a labyrinthine work of fiction where the linear description of events is replaced by a game of time disclosure. The viewer is thus called upon to reconstruct the order of the various situations portrayed in a process that I call ‘temporal mapping’. However, as the viewer attempts to do this, the film, ironically, because of the intricate nature of the plot and the uncertain status of the characters, resists the attempt. There is a sort of teasing taking place between the film and its spectator: an invitation of decoding that is half-denied until the end, where the puzzle is finally solved. I will use three of Alejandro Iñárritu’s films to better convey my point: Amores perros (2000), 21 Grams (2003) and Babel (2006). I will consider Iñárritu’s methods to produce a non-linear storytelling as a way to stress the importance of time and its validity as one of the elements that make up for a metanarrative experience in films. I will focus especially on 21 Grams, which I consider to be a paragon of the labyrinth.
- O cinema como ferramenta andragógica para a terceira idade: o Projeto CINAGEPublication . Chinita, Fátima; Janicas, BárbaraThe demographics of the early 21st century in Europe point to a notorious ageing of the population of most countries. Consequently, elderly people tend to be considered a social burden for the national healthcare and social security systems and their desire to participate actively in the civic and cultural activities of their countries is ignored. The first response to demographic ageing should therefore be a change in mentalities, which is what the area of gerontology is all about. It was in this context that the European Project CINAGE - European Cinema for Active Ageing was created. It is a transnational project, promoted by Portugal, and partnered by UK, Italy and Slovenia, oriented for the creation of a cinema course for elders and directly supported by filmic tools, within an andragogical self-reflexive approach. The modules of this course will be created on the basis of European cinematic examples and the input of focus groups consisting of experts in andragogy, active ageing, cinema and elders. In the end, twelve short films will be produced by senior members of the CINAGE course. We aim to present the project CINAGE in all its characteristics and thus reveal a way in which cinema can positively contribute to a more active ageing and the maintenance of mental health in later stages of life. It is relevant to consider what films Europe has been lately producing on this subject. We will use some of them to explain and corroborate our point of view and the project itself.
- Sergei Eisenstein as seen by Peter Greenaway: a dialectic representation of an (anti-)great film directorPublication . Chinita, FátimaABSTRACT - Peter Greenaway’s recent biopic of the great Russian film director and master of montage Sergei M. Eisenstein, Eisenstein in Guanajuato, forms an important addition to filmic life writing. Greenaway ‘writes’ Eisenstein on screen through the film director’s actions as documented across an array of sources—including Eisenstein’s own autobiography—but he also reveals Eisenstein’s inner thoughts and feelings, using Eisenstein’s own voice (that is, his theories and film practice). Rather than portraying the Russian director at work, Greenaway opted to present Eisenstein’s directorial film philosophy, attempting to capture the essence of being ‘Eisenstein’. The film focuses on fourteen crucial months in the director’s life: the period he spent in Mexico, from where he was banished without completing what could have been his directorial masterpiece, the film Que Viva Mexico! Greenaway is laudatory of Eisenstein’s importance for the history of cinema, whilst depicting him in carnivalesque and corporeally grotesque terms. Thus, Greenaway simultaneously portrays Eisenstein as a great man and an anti-hero, in truly dialectical form. These apparently contradictory images of the cinematic master, functioning as thesis and antithesis, build up into something larger: a synthetic Eisenstein. The result is a larger-than-life, entirely ecstatic Eisenstein and an ode to his synaesthetic and dialectical approach to life and cinema. In doing this, however, Greenaway doubles his subject’s ‘voice’ with his own and also ‘writes’ himself through Sergei Eisenstein’s theory and practice.
- Tapping into the senses: corporeality and immanence in “The Piano Tuner of EarthQuakes” (Quay Brothers, 2005)Publication . Chinita, FátimaIn "The Piano Tuner of EarthQuakes" (2006), the Quay Brothers' second feature, the sensual form and the meta-artistic content are truly interweaved, and the siblings' staple animated materials become part of the theme itself. Using Michel Serres's argument in "Les cinq sens" (2014), I address the relationship between the Quays intermedial animation and the way the art forms of music, painting, theatre and sculpture are used to captivate the film viewer's sensorium in the same way that some of the characters are fascinated by the evil Droz, a scientist and failed composer who manipulates machines and people alike, among them Felisberto, a meek piano tuner with the ability to stir the natural elements. I posit that the entire film is an allegory of animation. The Quay’s haptic construction of a three-dimensional world which they control artistically is replicated in the film in Droz's and Felisberto's activities vis-à-vis Malvina van Stille, an abducted opera diva who is kept in a suspended animation state (just like a marionette) and several hydraulic automata, some of them made up of an uncanny assortment of body parts. The artificial life of these creatures is contrasted with their physical reality as beings that exist in the world. Firstly, via Serres's sensorial strategy to transform a body into a conscious entity (i.e., endowed with a soul), an embodiment I call 'Corpo-Reality'. Secondly, by resorting to Deleuze and Guattari's theory of the body without organs (BwO) in its advocacy of 'hard' nature and the rejection of a rigid assortment of body parts (either biological or social). However, just as in the story things are not what they seem, so the film itself can be a 'crystal-image' (per Gilles Deleuze), offering itself to the senses of the spectator.