Reflections on Time & Cinema: The Suspended Memories of Kiarostami, Alea, & Oshima
Public Deposited- Last Modified
- February 26, 2019
- Creator
-
Penabella, Miguel
- Affiliation: College of Arts and Sciences, Department of English and Comparative Literature, Comparative Literature Program
- Abstract
- When talking about global art cinema, much discussion revolves around the question and merit of its cinematic style. In particular, the topic of temporality arises when examining shot length and stylized editing patterns in new wave films of the 1960s, and even later towards the turn of the millennium. Representatives of films foregrounding themes related to temporality include the films The Wind Will Carry Us (Abbas Kiarostami, 1999), Memories of Underdevelopment (Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, 1968), and Death by Hanging (Nagisa Oshima, 1968). These films reflect a certain politicized temporality, one in which contemplative open-endedness or distanciation techniques can engage the viewer on critical levels, especially along political and social lines. Style and temporality for these filmmakers is tied to politics and history. Kiarostami, Alea, and Oshima take concerted efforts to incorporate filmmaking strategies like long takes or tracking shots in political commentaries that reflect their historical and cultural contexts. These directors are particularly invested in looking back at the past as a means to examine their contemporary political situations. The films I examine with close scene analysis link temporality and politics by centralizing protagonists caught within troubling pasts, idle presents, and uncertain futures; narrativizing these characters’ preoccupation with time and history within cultural contexts; calling attention to the passage of time and history via formal techniques; and reformulating cinematic spectatorship to better appreciate the underlying political commentary essential to these texts. The issue at stake is how cinema can and has been employed as a tool that articulates the experience of time and history for global contexts, as well as its consequent effects on narrative, national identity, and spectatorship.
- Date of publication
- spring 2015
- Keyword
- DOI
- Resource type
- Rights statement
- In Copyright
- Note
- Funding: None
- Advisor
- Warner, Rick
- Degree
- Bachelor of Arts
- Honors level
- Highest Honors
- Degree granting institution
- University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
- Extent
- 82
Relations
- Parents:
This work has no parents.