René Clair

Dancefilm: Choreography and the Moving Image is a rich exploration of the choreographic in cinema.  It traces the history of the dancefilm form from some of its earliest manifestations in the silent film era, through the historic avant-garde, musicals and music videos to contemporary experimental short dancefilms. In so doing it also traverses some of the most significant collaborations between dancers, choreographers, and filmmakers.  Bringing film theory and dance theory into dialogue, the book argues that the combination of dance and film produces cine-choreographic practices that are specific to the dancefilm form. As whole, the book thus presents new models of cinematic movement that are historically informed and interdisciplinary in nature.  An extensive companion website provide key video illustrations and links to online resources.

Bu çalışmada, Fransız besteci Erik Satie'nin politik, sanatsal, estetik duruşu bütünsel olarak ele alınarak eserlerindeki avangard yaklaşım ve tekniklerin 20. yüzyıl müziği üzerindeki etkileri araştırılmıştır. Çalışmanın ilk bölümünde 20. yüzyıl avangard düşüncesinin arka planı Paris özelinde incelenerek radikal avangard hareketlerin doğuşu ve kuramsal karşılıkları araştırılmıştır. Satie'nin yakın ilişkide olması ve eserlerini dönemin önemli radikal avangard sanatçılarıyla birlikte oluşturması sebebiyle Dada ve Sürrealizm hareketleri detaylı olarak irdelenmiştir. İkinci bölümde sosyal, politik ve ekonomik anlamda Satie'nin hayatını şekillendiren önemli olaylar -bu perspektifin dışında kalacak detaylar dahil edilmeyerek- kronolojik yaklaşımla anlatılmıştır. Bestecinin eserleri; hayatı, politik ve estetik koşullar doğrultusunda üç ana başlık altında kategorize edilmiştir. Çalışmada üç döneme ayrılan eserler kronolojik olarak ele alınmış olsa da inceleme sonucunda ortaya çıktığı gibi, Satie'nin besteciliği geleneksel sanat anlayışındaki ilerlemeci yaklaşımın aksine döngüseldir. Besteci ilk dönemlerinden itibaren -ilk bakışta aksi görülecek olsa da- üretme edimi yaklaşımında oldukça tutarlı olmuş, yeni biçimler geliştirdiğinde önceki biçim ve anlatım tekniklerine her zaman geri dönmüş, yeni eserleriyle iç içe kullanmıştır. Son olarak bu bölümde 1915-1925 yılları arasındaki Satie'nin dahil olduğu kolektif üretime dayalı avangard sanat eserleri incelenmiştir. Satie'nin eserlerindeki 20. Yüzyıl sanatı ve müziğini etkileyen yenilikçi unsurlar ayrı bir başlıkta tek tek yazılmamış, ikinci bölümle birlikte yaşamı ve eserleriyle diyalektik olarak ortaya konmuştur.

Jan Svankmajer’s cinematic animation of puppets and use of life-sized puppets renders a situation where animated objects have a dominant function that is separate from their pragmatic function. This plurality of function constitutes dynamic characteristics for the object whereby the object has an ambivalent status at the semiotic level – the object can also be a subject. Cinematic animation and cinema specific properties and techniques such as editing, framing or superimposition foreground this plurality of an object’s function by altering its spatiotemporal context and allowing it to be liberated from its recognition as a prop of the mise-en-scene. The Faust tradition foregrounds the plurality of function for the object most near and dear to us – our bodies – when Faust challenges the supernatural world into manipulating the body’s natural relationship with the course of time. Svankmajer’s Lesson Faust (1994) adeptly negotiates the complexities of a discourse on the dramatic and semiological process of objects becoming subjects (and vice-versa) while foregrounding the ambivalence surrounding such ‘transformations’. Cinematic animation (technological), puppets (material) and the Faust tradition (narrative) can each be demonstrated as modes of presentation which actively endow objects with dominant functions separate from their pragmatic function thus creating ambivalence for the object at the semiotic level.

Awangarda w kinie pozostaje na obrzeżach sztuki filmowej. Inaczej niż w malarstwie, w którym „szybko stała się mainstreamem oraz gdzie nowatorskość i nowe formy wyrazu stały się nieodzownymi elementami struktury instytucjonalnej, kino pozostaje popularną sztuką komercyjną z publicznością masową”.

L'impatto della poetica surrealista sul cinema d'avanguardia si traduce in un rivoluzionario sguardo sulla realtà. "L'occhio selvaggio" di Bréton ispira artisti e registi che collaborano col proposito di sovvertire la mentalità borghese, i cui risultati sono sintetizzabili in una sostanziale identificazione tra arte e vita.

*Senior Yr Undergrad* A Nous is a film rife with political satire and irony that is both self-reflexive of the medium by which it is produced and the socio-economic system that fostered its birth and growth. The film enunciates the national through Hayward’s cartography and presents the concept of “revolution” as a necessary undertaking and continuous evolution toward human progress as well as Clair urging revolution to be recognized as an ideologically “sound” endeavor pinned down to national myth with a reliance on fraternity to achieve equality and thus liberty. Based in this revolutionary humanitarian message underlying Clair’s work, the film achieves an enunciation of the national as well as enunciating the international - a borderless world visually and audibly hailed as utopian in the final sequence of A Nous La Liberte.

Deleuze is often considered an anti-phenomenologist. He even writes disparagingly of phenomenology’s ‘paltry’ lived-body, which we find in Merleau-Ponty’s thinking. Nonetheless, Deleuze still generated an original theory of phenomena. So rather than determining whether Deleuze was a phenomenologist or an anti-phenomenologist, we might instead attempt to formulate what a Deleuzean phenomenology would be. For Merleau-Ponty, phenomena are possible on account of three levels of harmonic integration: among the parts of the phenomenal world, among our body parts functioning in sensation, and between our body and the world enveloping us. All these overlappings bind us into the flesh of the world. Yet, a Deleuzean phenomenology would be based on precisely the opposite principles: the phenomenal world consists of incompatible differences shockingly forced upon us, all while our body functions disjunctively within itself and with our surroundings. Deleuze characterizes this sort of incohesion by referring us to the Dadaist machinery of Rube Goldberg and Buster Keaton. By showing how these principles allow for an alternate interpretation of Merleau-Ponty’s Gestaltist illustrations, we will consider the possibility that not only is a Deleuzean phenomenology possible, it may also be a superior means to account for the phenomenality of phenomena.

From the fleetingly captured street scenes of the city symphony, to the meticulously reconstructed studio city of musical comedies; from the propagandistic Popular Front documentaries about construction workers, to poetic realism’s bittersweet portraits of populist neighborhoods: Social Architecture explores the construction, representation and experience of spaces and places in documentary and realist films of the French 1930s. In this book, Margaret C. Flinn tracks the relation between the emergent techniques of French sound cinema and its thematic, social and political preoccupations through analysis of discourse in contemporary press, theoretical texts and through readings of films themselves. New light is shed on works of canonical directors such as Renoir, Clair, Vigo and Duvivier by their consideration in relationship to little known documentary films of the era. Flinn argues that film has a readable architecture—a configuration of narrative and representations that informs, explains, and creates social identities, while reflecting upon the position of individuals within their societies.