El cine constituye una poderosa herramienta cultural que opera de múltiples maneras en el rescate de memorias, así como en la reparación colectiva y conceptualización interdisciplinaria de ...experiencias traumáticas en comunidades devastadas por sistemáticas violaciones a sus derechos fundamentales. Hace perceptibles las prolongaciones de silenciadas o legitimadas violencias políticas tanto en el individuo como en el tejido social trastornado por perturbadoras marcas que desbaratan la existencia y la convivencia. Las expresiones cinematográficas no hacen referencia al ayer únicamente, sino que, sobre todo, cuestionan las pautas convencionales empleadas para articular pasado, presente y futuro a fin de explorar horizontes posibles. Como detonadoras de memoria y generadoras de conciencia, robustecen diferentes modi memorandi que tratan el pasado violento demasiado activo aún.
With reference to recent neurological research into Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) using new imaging technologies and models of implicit and explicit memory systems developed from this ...research, The Performance of Trauma in Moving Image Art examines the capacity of an artist's cinema of experimental and avant-garde film to perform and communicate traumatic experience. De Bruyn analyses key films from the 1940s to the present that perform aspects of overwhelming experience through their approach, structure, content and perceptual impact, mapping a trajectory from analogue to contemporary digital moving image practice. He argues for the inclusion of Peter Gidal's 1970s conception of 'materialist film' into the genre of 'trauma cinema' through its capacity to articulate un-locatability and perceptually perform dis-orientation and a flashback effect, all further identified here as key characteristics of digital moving image practice. The discussion explores the following questions. Can 'materialist film' model traumatic memory and perform the traumatic flashback? Does the capacity to articulate trauma's un-speakability and invisibility give this practice a renewed relevance in digital media's preoccupation with surface and the impact of information overload? De Bruyn's phenomenological 'traumatic' reading of materialist film steps beyond Gidal's original anti-illusionist rationale to incorporate critiques effectively mounted against it by the founders of a '70s feminist psychoanalytic counter-cinema. This contemporary re-reading further re-evaluates the Minimalist turn in painting and sculpture after the Second World War, arguing that this development is not essentialist or visionary but makes visible the implicit mechanisms of denial and erasure at the core of traumatic remembering. For de Bruyn, the initial traumatic impact of
industrialization on the body's perceptual apparatus, traceable through the advent of cinema and train travel, is communicated by such moving image art. The development of digital technology marks a new cycle of such perceptual re-balancing for which materialist film is uniquely positioned and which it critically addresses.
This article seeks to point out a phenomenon in Israeli cinema: a return to the story of the binding of Isaac the akedah in its biblical version. Against the background of the traditional casting of ...the akedah myth in Israeli art, where the miracle of Isaac's rescue is replaced by his death, and the ram is missing from the picture, recently Israeli documentary films have appeared that deal with combat stress reaction, which shapes the story of the akedah in a way that is faithful to the biblical story. They reinstate within the plot the story of Isaac's replacement by a ram and describe life after Isaac saw the knife raised over him, where the traumatic memory of the past upsets the routine of the present. At the same time, the films are informed by the Israeli art tradition, with one film adopting the hegemonic view of Abraham, who raises the knife, while the other adopts the critical view of Sarah, the mother, who identifies with the victim.
Trauma Culture Kaplan, E. Ann
2005, 20050711, 2005-07-11
eBook
It may be said that every trauma is two traumas or ten thousand-depending on the number of people involved. How one experiences and reacts to an event is unique and depends largely on one's direct or ...indirect positioning, personal psychic history, and individual memories. But equally important to the experience of trauma are the broader political and cultural contexts within which a catastrophe takes place and how it is "managed" by institutional forces, including the media.In Trauma Culture, E. Ann Kaplan explores the relationship between the impact of trauma on individuals and on entire cultures and nations. Arguing that humans possess a compelling need to draw meaning from personal experience and to communicate what happens to others, she examines the artistic, literary, and cinematic forms that are often used to bridge the individual and collective experience. A number of case studies, including Sigmund Freud's Moses and Monotheism, Marguerite Duras' La Douleur, Sarah Kofman's Rue Ordener, Rue Labat, Alfred Hitchcock's Spellbound, and Tracey Moffatt's Night Cries, reveal how empathy can be fostered without the sensationalistic element that typifies the media.From World War II to 9/11, this passionate study eloquently navigates the contentious debates surrounding trauma theory and persuasively advocates the responsible sharing and translating of catastrophe.
Taiwan is in danger of becoming the last isle, losing its sovereignty and identity. The Last Isle opens from where Taiwan film scholarship leaves off—the 1980s Taiwan New Cinema, focusing on ...relatively unknown contemporary films that are “unglobalizable,” such as Cape No. 7, Island Etude, Din Tao, and Seven Days in Heaven. It explores Taiwan films’ inextricability with trauma theory, the irony of loving and mourning Taiwan, multilingualism, local beliefs, and theatrical practices, including Ang Lee’s “white” films. The second half of the book analyzes Taiwan’s popular culture in Western-style food and drink, conditions over living and dying, and English education, concluding with the source of Taiwan’s anxiety—China. This book distinguishes itself from Taiwan scholarship in its stylistic crazy quilt of the scholarly interwoven with the personal, evidenced right from the outset in the poetic title “The Last Isle,” coupled with the “dissertating” subtitle. This approach intertwines the helix of reason and affect, scholarship and emotion. The Last Isle accomplishes a look at globalization from the bottom up, from a global Taiwan whose very existence is in doubt.
Climate Trauma Kaplan, E. Ann
2015, 20151204, 2015-12-04
eBook
Each month brings new scientific findings that demonstrate the ways in which human activities, from resource extraction to carbon emissions, are doing unprecedented, perhaps irreparable damage to our ...world. As we hear these climate change reports and their predictions for the future of Earth, many of us feel a sickening sense ofdéjà vu, as though we have already seen the sad outcome to this story.Drawing from recent scholarship that analyzes climate change as a form of "slow violence" that humans are inflicting on the environment,Climate Traumatheorizes that such violence is accompanied by its own psychological condition, what its author terms "Pretraumatic Stress Disorder." Examining a variety of films that imagine a dystopian future, renowned media scholar E. Ann Kaplan considers how the increasing ubiquity of these works has exacerbated our sense of impending dread. But she also explores ways these films might help us productively engage with our anxieties, giving us a seemingly prophetic glimpse of the terrifying future selves we might still work to avoid becoming.Examining dystopian classics likeSoylent Greenalongside more recent examples likeThe Book of Eli,Climate Traumaalso stretches the limits of the genre to include features such asBlindness,The Happening,Take Shelter, and a number of documentaries on climate change. These eclectic texts allow Kaplan to outline the typical blind-spots of the genre, which rarely depicts climate catastrophe from the vantage point of women or minorities. Lucidly synthesizing cutting-edge research in media studies, psychoanalytic theory, and environmental science,Climate Traumaprovides us with the tools we need to extract something useful from our nightmares of a catastrophic future.
Shell Shock Cinema explores how the classical German cinema of the Weimar Republic was haunted by the horrors of World War I and the trauma of Germany's humiliating defeat. In this exciting new book, ...Anton Kaes argues that masterworks such as The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Nosferatu, The Nibelungen, and Metropolis, even though they do not depict battle scenes or soldiers in combat, engaged the war and registered its tragic aftermath. These films reveal a wounded nation in post-traumatic shock, reeling from a devastating defeat that it never officially acknowledged, let alone accepted.
