Alphaville: Journal of Film and Screen Media

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The ISEA 2011 Istanbul International Symposium on Electronic Art, Sabaci Center, Istanbul, 14-21 September
(Film Studies, University College Cork, 2011) Nelson, Jodi
Issue editors’ note
(Film Studies, University College Cork, 2011) Keating, Abigail; Murphy, Jill; Power, Aidan
The Society of Cinema and Media Studies Annual Conference 2011: Media Citizenship, New Orleans, USA, March 10-13
(Film Studies, University College Cork, 2011) Mellamphy, Deborah
Face to face with the Muslim “other”: European cinematic responses to Al-Qaeda
(Film Studies, University College Cork, 2011) Caoduro, Elena
The bombings on March 11, 2004 in Madrid and on July 7, 2005 in London brought terror to the heart of Europe and amplified the feelings of fear, disbelief and suspicion developed as a consequence of 9/11 trauma. This article departs from Hollywood discourses on international terrorism to investigate how European cinema reflected upon these tragedies. Focusing on the films Fremder Freund (The Friend, Elmar Fischer, 2003)and London River (Rachid Bouchareb, 2009), it outlines the peculiarities of European cinema in dealing with international terrorism and thus analyses the representation of Islamic fundamentalism and more generally, Muslim communities. The films stimulate the public debate about contemporary society and the role of British and German institutions in developing “home-grown” terrorists. The article argues that these films avoid any explicit attempts of commemorating and memorialising these tragic events, but they contextualise the attacks engaging with issues of multiculturalism rather than commenting on the problem of international crime and terrorism.
Ideas of sex: discourses on sexuality in Liliana Cavani's 'The Night Porter' and Cesare Canevari's 'The Gestapo’s Last Orgy'
(Film Studies, University College Cork, 2011) Impey, Nick
Both The Night Porter (Cavani) and The Gestapo’s Last Orgy (Canevari) are often referred to as exploitation. Exploitation cinema’s focus on empty excess is in line with the exaggeration/superficiality of “Camp”. Despite Susan Sontag’s separation of “Camp” elements and homosexual-Camp elements, subsequent commentators have argued that Camp is an exclusively gay critique of the artificial nature of the “performance” of hetero-normative gender roles. My article looks at the ways in which lesbian filmmaker Liliana Cavani discusses queer sexuality through a Camp play on gender roles, and how this same discourse is “developed” in Canevari’s virtual remake. German/Italian fascist ideology’s preoccupation with the perfected male body and Hitler’s original acceptance of homosexuality contributed to the presence of a lingering (masculine) homoeroticism in Nazi iconography. Holocaust history of Nazi domination enhanced this masculine image. Accordingly, the two filmmakers use a binary of male (masculine) Nazi dominator and female submissive prisoner, which is possessing of a heterosexual quality made fragile by the history of fascist sexual ambiguity. Essentially, my paper argues that the films’ disruption of the traditional images of Nazi aggressor/innocent victim through the protagonists’ depicted collaboration corresponds with the filmmakers’ blurring of masculine/feminine roles in their individual statements about queer sexuality.
Making nothing happen: the transition from reactive nihilism to affirmation in Jim Jarmusch’s Broken Flowers (2005)
(Film Studies, University College Cork, 2011) Backman Rogers, Anna
This article draws from Gilles Deleuze’s interpretation of the Nietzschean concept of “the eternal return” in order to read Jim Jarmusch’s film Broken Flowers as being not merely a study in duration, apathy and reactive nihilism, but also a film which, through its formal repetitive structure, also offers pathways to transformation and affirmation. As such, I argue that the central protagonist, Don Johnston undergoes a subtle yet crucial change in the course of the film from a state of ressentiment to affirmation and becoming. I also characterise the film as an absurdist quest or road movie.
Transnationality and transitionality: Sandra Kogut’s The Hungarian Passport (2001)
(Film Studies, University College Cork, 2011) Pinazza, Natália
This article examines Sandra Kogut’s The Hungarian Passport (2001) in the light of recent theoretical debates on diasporic and postcolonial filmmaking. It focuses on how Kogut’s displacement—both as the granddaughter of Jewish refugees and a foreigner in France—permeates the structure of the documentary in terms of narrative, visual style, subject matter and theme. In the process, the article addresses questions of transnational cinema in a postcolonial and diasporic context by exploring how the film’s transnational representations interrogate the validity of both national cinema and cultural identity as fixed concepts in contemporary Europe.
Mihailova, M. (2011) Animating Space: From Mickey To WALL-E, by J.P. Telotte
(Film Studies, University College Cork, 2011) Mihailova, Mihaela
The “Biographical Narrative in Film and Television” Postgraduate Seminar Series, University of Southampton, May and June 2010
(Film Studies, University College Cork, 2011) Kearley, Victoria
Tim Burton: The Monster and the Crowd: A Post-Jungian Perspective, by Helena Bassil-Morozow
(Film Studies, University College Cork, 2011) Mellamphy, Deborah
Paris, borders and the concept of Europe in Paris, je t’aime and Code Unknown
(Film Studies, University College Cork, 2011) Silvey, Vivien
Michael Haneke’s Code Unknown and the multi-director Paris, je t’aime belong (the latter at least in part) to a recently emerged cinematic form described as the network form, which represents changing spaces and plural perspectives in multicultural societies. Reflecting Rosalind Galt’s concept of “anti-anti-Eurocentrism”, they represent discursive and referential spaces of Parisian society. Through a comparative analysis of how they frame space with regard to borders and transnational relationships, it becomes apparent that some of the approaches these films take to representing Europe are problematic. In contrast, others encapsulate key concerns surrounding the constantly changing relationships between Europe and its others. While Code Unknown challenges discourses of identity, home and belonging, Paris, je t'aime tends to reinstate and validate divisive social hierarchies despite its appearances of pluralism.
Cinema/history: Philippe Garrel, Bernardo Bertolucci and May 1968
(Film Studies, University College Cork, 2011) Leonard, Michael
This article compares the engagement with the history of May 1968 in Philippe Garrel’s Les Amants réguliers/Regular Lovers (2005)and Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Dreamers (2004). Through a close study of both films, it demonstrates how Garrel finds a more nuanced and transformative aesthetic than Bertolucci in representing this defining moment in modern French culture and politics. The films share a number of aspects; most notably, they draw upon the history of cinema itself in recalling this period, an approach that can be related to Godard’s project in Histoire(s) du Cinéma (1988-1998). However, their differing approaches to cinematographic citation (metonymic in the case of Bertolucci, and metaphoric in the case of Garrel) have significant implications for the temporal dynamics of each film. The article argues that Bertolucci’s method is intrinsically conservative—reactionary, even—implying an historical linearity that reinforces the “pastness” of May, its significance as a piece of “heritage” rather than part of an ongoing historical process, or dialectic. Garrel’s practice of citation, by contrast, generates a more radical, heterochronous form that constitutes a testimony to May 1968 by evoking its continued presence. In the course of its discussion, the article also reflects on the relationship between Les Amants réguliers and the nouvelle vague, exploring in particular the relations between this film and Jacques Rivette’s Paris nous appartient (1961).
Film 4 Frightfest, 2010
(Film Studies, University College Cork, 2011) Mellamphy, Deborah
Scrutinising the rainbow: fantastic space in The Wizard of Oz
(Film Studies, University College Cork, 2011) Sergeant, Alexander
The Wizard of Oz is not only an iconic film but an iconic fantasy film. An unwillingness to describe it as such within film studies points to a long history of the fantasy genre’s critical neglect. Dissecting the intrinsically cinematic apparatus of space, this article will seek to demonstrate how The Wizard of Oz functions as a fantasy film. Specifically, it will scrutinise how the film attempts to elicit a positive and reassuring encounter with a sense of the magical that seems tied to the genre’s unique aesthetic pleasures. As the film demarcates a mimetic sense of reality, Kansas, from another magical space wherein the fantasy elements of the narrative takes place, Oz, its sense of space hesitates between a sense of the real and the unreal in a manner similar to that originally described in Tzvetan Todorov’s The Fantastic. The Wizard of Oz would seem to operate a similarly fantastic sense of space, constructing a relationship between the two realms that oscillates between the virtues of both as it celebrates the values of the homely and the otherworldly, the familiar and the new in order that it might mitigate its potential traumas and showcase its joys.
The fictive archive: Kurdish filmmaking in Turkey
(Film Studies, University College Cork, 2011) Çiçek, Özgür
In this paper, I consider the potentials and theoretical interpretations of Kurdish Cinema produced in Turkey. I evaluate the dynamics of the emergence of a state-less Kurdish cinema, which produces films in spite of the existence of Turkish National cinema and an oppressive Turkish national identity. Using Hayden White’s formulations on narrative and history and Gilles Deleuze’s theories on minority filmmaking and the time-image, I argue that the conception of time in Kurdish Cinema exceeds the time of the narrative and carries an archival potential for the unrepresented history of Kurdish life in Turkey.
Revisiting the past as a means of validation: bridging the myth of the Resistance and the satire of the Economic Miracle in two comedies "Italian style"
(Film Studies, University College Cork, 2011) Boitani, Giacomo
Many commedia all’italiana filmmakers have acknowledged the neorealist mode of production as a source of inspiration for their practice of pursuing social criticism in realistic and satirical comedies between 1958 and 1977. The detractors of the genre, however, have accused the commedia filmmakers of “diluting” the neorealist engagement to a simple description of the habits of Italians during the Economic Miracle, a description which threatened to encourage, through the casting of popular stars, the cynical attitude it sought to satirise. In this article, I shall discuss how two commedia all’italiana directors, namely Dino Risi and Ettore Scola, produced two significant commedie, respectively Una vita difficile (1961) and C’eravamo tanto amati (1974), which bridged the Resistance setting, associated with neorealism,and the Economic Miracle setting of most commedie all’italiana in order to reaffirm their neorealist roots, thus revisiting the past as a response to the critical underestimation from which their cinematic practice suffered.
Space and time in film: issue editors' note
(Film Studies, University College Cork, 2011) Hurley, Marian; Mellamphy, Deborah; Moriarty, Jill
Screening Strangers: Migration and Diaspora in Contemporary European Cinema, by Yosefa Loshitzky
(Film Studies, University College Cork, 2011) Power, Aidan
Personal time in alternative and time travel narrative: the cases of Groundhog Day, Twelve Monkeys and 2001: A Space Odyssey
(Film Studies, University College Cork, 2011) Pezzotta, Elisa
In alternative and time travel narratives, our everyday conception of time is often challenged. Similarly, in counterfactual history, various parallel realities exist. In time travel narrative, it is possible to travel in the past or in the future. In all of these cases, there are clues that help viewers to comprehend new ideas of time and, in some cases, the construction of the story time is not sufficient to comprehend the story. In order to solve some of the main logical paradoxes, personal time needs to be considered and discussed. In alternative narrative, the clues are often to be found in the plot and story time, as well as in the mise-en-scène. In some examples of counterfactual history, for example Groundhog Day, and in some time travel narratives, the spectator has to reconstruct the time traveller’s personal time through story and plot time and mise-en-scène, as in Twelve Monkeys, or they have to deduce story time from personal time and mise-en-scène, as is the case in 2001: A Space Odyssey. The relationships between plot, story and personal time can be visualized through graphics which can also help us to draw conclusions about A-series and B-series.
Cinema, Memory, Modernity: The Representations of Memory from the Art Film to Transnational Cinema, by Russel J.A. Kilbourn
(Film Studies, University College Cork, 2011) Ryan, Colm

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