CINEJ Cinema Journal

The Possibility of Impossibility: Reading The Watermelon Woman with Derrida and Adorno

Christopher Morris — Tue, 03 Dec 2024 00:00:00 -0500

Hermeneutic criticism of The Watermelon Woman has been unable to reconcile the film’s closing affirmation of identity and possibility with the narrative that precedes it and especially with the acknowledgement that Fae Richards is not real. An approach derived from the commonality Derrida saw between his work and Adorno’s can show how the film narrates the fiction of identity and the possibility of impossibility.

Interactive documentary as a living and embodying experience to represent reality: A practice-based case study

Hsham Aburghif — Tue, 03 Dec 2024 00:00:00 -0500

This article introduces an innovative approach to comprehending the portrayal of reality within interactive documentaries. Drawing upon my filmmaking expertise, I created the interactive documentary Eden Again to examine how this multimedia genre portrays our understanding of a location, cultures, and social bonds by representing the controversial stories of drying the Marshlands of Iraq. This study also aims to enhance audience involvement, influencing contemporary media culture. These insights stem from a practice-based case study and contribute to the ongoing discussion about the representation of reality. The results indicate that users/viewers generally held favourable perceptions and attitudes toward the positive impacts of interactive documentaries, anticipating a positive reflection on this location.

Mary Shelley Biopic (2017): A filmic discourse analysis

Thanya Araujo, Lívia Fernanda Silva — Tue, 03 Dec 2024 00:00:00 -0500

This work analyzes the discourses that compound Mary Shelley biopic (2017), concerning male domination and female resistance. To do so, the specific objectives are: to verify how this domination permeates the main character with a view to publish her work Frankenstein; identify the elements that cross the relation author-character in the biopic; describe these elements into categories within a filmic discourse analysis. The theoretical-methodology contribution is Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), within the dialectical-relational developed by Fairclough (1989; 2001) in conjunction with the filmic analysis. The corpus of the analysis is constituted by 02 long takes. It is used the Bakhtinian categories (2003), which are dialogism, polyphony and alterity, followed by the categories of Fairclough (2001), which are intertextuality and presupposition.

The Ultimately Determinant Role of Economy in Yilmaz Güney's Movies: An Essay From the Perspective of Marxist Theory

Betül Sarı Aksakal — Tue, 03 Dec 2024 00:00:00 -0500

The study examines a different aspect of the films of actor, screenwriter, and director Yılmaz Güney, who brought a new sense of reality to Turkish cinema. Güney's film Umut (The Hope), which he acted and directed in 1970, is a turning point for Yılmaz Güney cinema and Turkish cinema. The breath of Marxism can be felt in almost all of Yılmaz Güney's films after The Hope. In his films, Güney aimed to convey to the audience the fundamental contradictions of Turkish capitalism, the socioeconomic inequalities it created, and the resulting class differences. It can be argued that Güney's films discussed within the scope of the study Umut, 1970 (The Hope), Endişe, 1974 (The Anxiety), Sürü, 1978 (The Herd), Düşman, 1979 (The Enemy) focus on social class differences in the capitalist system by relying on Marxist ideology. Although the reasons for these differences in the movies are associated with factors such as politics, ideology, religion, culture, family, and education, it is thought that the most significant share of the factors that play a role in the formation of social classes is given to the economy. The study started with the problem of proving this claim. The films discussed within the study's scope revealed that the economy is the critical factor determining social class differences.

Confronting Existential Dilemmas: An In-Depth Analysis of Vicky Cristina Barcelona through the Philosophies of Sartre and Camus

Debarath Das — Tue, 03 Dec 2024 00:00:00 -0500

In this paper, the author analyzes Woody Allen's film Vicky Cristina Barcelona through an existential lens, drawing parallels with the philosophies of Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus. The characters Vicky, Cristina, Juan Antonio, and María Elena embody existential dilemmas, exploring themes of individual freedom, choice, and the search for meaning in an indifferent world. The analysis delves into Sartrean concepts of bad faith and radical freedom, contrasting Vicky's societal conformity with Cristina's Camusian pursuit of meaning through experiences. The characters' interactions reflect the unpredictable and absurd nature of human relationships, echoing Camus's exploration of the absurdity of emotions. The non-linear narrative structure aligns with existential themes, emphasizing life's unpredictability, and Barcelona serves as a metaphor for the complexities of existence. Woody Allen's narrative and artistic choices invite viewers to reflect on the intricate interplay of love, desire, and chance encounters in the context of existentialism.

Social Construct of Nollywood Films and Ethnocentrism in Southern Nigeria

Perpetua Ogechi Vitalis, Richard N. Amadi, Dike Harcourt Whyte — Tue, 03 Dec 2024 00:00:00 -0500

In this paper, the study engages the post nationality of Nollywood, which is manifest in its traveling patterns and its transgression of cartographic boundaries to engage diasporic communities around the world. Of particular interest of the study are how Nollywood has emerged as the third biggest film industry in the world, after Hollywood and Bollywood, from its humble Nigerian beginnings and how this post national character has been acquired and sustained.

Masochistic Performance of Scheherazade: A Multimodal Analysis of Prince Charming

Attiya Zafar, Nadia Anwar — Tue, 03 Dec 2024 00:00:00 -0500

This study attempts to highlight the embedded masochist aesthetics supporting the masochistic patterns in a Pakistani short film Prince Charming (2021), directed by Sheheryar Munawar Siddiqui, a Pakistani actor, film producer, director and television host. The focus remains on female protagonist, Scheherazade’s performative masochistic proclivities in an unsatisfactory marital relationship. This research takes Freud’s notion of repetitive compulsion as its referential point that triggers masochism and identifies Scheherazade’s urges and desires. Though masochism is about gaining the pleasure while bearing the pain, in the case of the film the pain is self-inflicted in the form of silence, inexpressibility, self-talks and romantic void between Scheherazade and her husband Akbar. This research offers a stand point to comprehend the subliminal threads of visual masochism which are apparently hidden in the film but are the prospective hooks to elaborate the psychological suffering of the character. The research propagates the idea that masochist aesthetics are nevertheless the stepping stone for pointing out the masochist self of Scheherazade, well exhibited through her performance.

Calcutta Through Different Lenses: Revisiting India in Jean Renoir’s The River and Satyajit Ray’s The Apu Trilogy

Ayush Chakraborty — Tue, 03 Dec 2024 00:00:00 -0500

The Orientalist discourse has fostered a version of the East that, for ages, have seamlessly permeated into the various attempts of the West to portray the ‘Orient’. One such attempt is Jean Renoir’s “authentic” portrayal of India for a by-and-large Hollywood audience, The River (1951) shot entirely in Calcutta. Inspired by Renoir, Satyajit Ray presented his version of Calcutta through The Apu Trilogy (1955-’59) which was in stark contrast to Renoir’s portrayal of the city. This paper seeks to explore how Renoir and Ray portray two different Indias – one smeared with a colonial perspective while the other breaks out of the West-imposed binaries to offer something more tangible – and how these marked differences are reflected through their respective filmmaking processes.

Il Cinema Modernissimo – Where every film is an underground film

Herbert F. Mintz II — Tue, 03 Dec 2024 00:00:00 -0500

This is a first for CINEJ Cinema Journal for reviewing a film exhibition avenue. In 2022, during a visit to Bologna, Italy, to study the Italian language, the author learned that the City is both a center and a network of domestic and international film culture due to the efforts of La Fondazione Cineteca di Bologna, founded in 1962.

Green Border: Cinematic Storytelling as History of the Present

Dikmen Yakalı, Zahide Erdogan — Tue, 03 Dec 2024 00:00:00 -0500

This article analyzes Agnieszka Holland’s film Green Border, which addresses the migrant crisis at the Belarus-Poland border, exploring how Foucault’s concept of “history of the present” applies to migration cinema. We argue that Green Border functions as a cinematic intervention that challenges audience perceptions of power structures and their resistance. The study also establishes criteria for analyzing films as “history of the present,” focusing on characteristics such as the immediate relevance of depicted events, the documentation of social issues, the film’s influence on public perception, and a multifaceted narrative construction. Ultimately, the framework shows how cinema reflects and shapes social, political, and cultural realities in real time.

Finding Leadership in Media Education

Banu Baybars, Murat Akser — Tue, 03 Dec 2024 00:00:00 -0500

This article is an exploration of leadership in media education and some of its identifying features. As lecturers in media studies and production, our teaching philosophy weaves through these themes: active learning (Budhai 2021), learning by doing (Schank et al 2013), peer and self-assessment (Iglesias Pérez, Vidal-Puga, and Pino Juste 2022) and constructive alignment (Loughlin, Lygo-Baker and Lindberg-Sand 2021).

Fiction Movies as a Means of Culinary Heritage’s Safeguarding and Research Referencing: Cases of Couscous Illustration in Tunisian Cinema

Faten Ridene — Mon, 16 Dec 2024 00:00:00 -0500

Couscous is a staple dish that became recognized and registered as an immaterial cultural heritage by UNESCO, simultaneously for Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, and Mauritania (UNESCO, Knowledge, know-how and practices pertaining to the production and consumption of couscous, 2020). It represents a mixture of love, heritage, and innovation, which links identity, originality, and modernization. The dish is eligible for two of the five broad domains in which intangible cultural heritage is manifested: social practices, rituals, and festive events. Once a fiction film represents this gastronomic heritage, it reflects the filmmaker's culture and identity during its international distribution. This study aims to compare the couscous dish’s illustrations in Tunisian fiction films such as Halfaouine, Under the Rain of Autumn, and The Secret of the Grain; to prove how fiction movies be considered as an identity card for any filmmaker’s homeland by reflecting the culinary cultural heritage of their homeland, or even a tourism promotion for his nation; and most of all to evince that a fiction movie could become a reference for researchers, in tandem with scientific articles and books.