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- 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.
- 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.
- 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 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.
- An immersive theatrical journey through media and time in Sokurov’s “Russian Ark”Publication . Chinita, FátimaUnlike other films by Alexander Sokurov, "Russian Ark" (2002) is more theatrical than pictorial. I contend the film should be interpreted as a metaphorical representation of an immersive theatrical performance of the space-based variety. The film is structured as a walking journey throughout the parts of the State Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg most connected with imperial Russia and its mythical import. Orchestrated as a grandiose spectacle, the film proposes to immerse the viewers in history and art in a celebrated architectural complex, providing the spectators with the impression of “being there”. This is accomplished through two important narrative devices: the external/internal focalization with an unseen contemporary wandering male, whose voice is that of Sokurov himself, and the deliberate mixture of times. Many characters belonging to several different historical periods – from yesterday’s celebrated monarchs to current real-life people ̶ are linked together in the same space in a Genettian metalepsis, also corresponding to the mingling of times in a museological space and to the efabulatory impetus of all fiction per Jean Bessière. The contact with the historical personages amounts to a brush with theatrical scenes in the form of re-enactments, as is the case in immersive performances. The staging of such encounters obeys the logic of the tableau aesthetic in several of its nuances, to which the absence of archival footage further contributes. In short: "Russian Ark" is a film to be experienced, both at a sensuous level and a cognitive one.
- Positioning art cinema: film and cultural value, by Geoff KingPublication . Chinita, FátimaBook review of "Positioning Art Cinema: Film and Cultural Value", by Geoff King (London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 2019, 330 pages).
- Looking for the essay: a journey of rediscoveryPublication . Chinita, FátimaABSTRACT - A meditation on the current state of the essay film.
- Artistic confluences: from media representation to downright fusionPublication . Chinita, FátimaThe mixing of media and the crossing of media borders have become part of the theoretical discourse on cinema and other art forms, whether one is for or against it. No longer just cinema (or never just cinema), no longer cinema above or with the other art forms, now it has become essentially a matter of cinema in-between the other arts.
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