Film and Literature

Many researchers have considered the involvement of Kawabata Yasunari in cinema and the medium's possible influence on his literature. Such approaches, however, tend to assume a definition of the motion pictures as visuality or montage that then influences Kawabata instead of first considering Kawabata's own conception of cinema, his own film theory. By analyzing his writings on film, including his film criticism, short stories involving cinema, and his involvement in the film A Page of Madness, this paper outlines Kawabata's conception of cinema and argues that he developed a portrait of cinema that posed it as a challenge to identity, perception and knowledge itself. Often associated with the female body, the movies became to Kawabata both an object of fascination and a threat, something ultimately to be controlled through literature and the literary subject. What influenced his literature was then perhaps this perception of cinema as posing an epistemic crisis. It is his ambivalence towards this challenge that can serve as a key for elaborating on Kawabata's complicated location within prewar modernism. The publisher Taylor and Francis allows me to post a copy of my own article on my university repository. You can download a copy of the article there:

This essay examines various Russian film adaptations of the short story "The Overcoat" by Nikolai Gogol, as reflective of two important eras of cultural production in Soviet Russia, the 1920s and the post-Thaw 1950s. It compares the film adaptations "The Overcoat: A Film-Play in the Manner of Gogol" and "The Overcoat" from a diachronic perspective and examines the intertextuality within and between the films. Also explored are the implications of the ideas about Gogol's art as parody, irony, or the grotesque for cinematographic language.

The paper looks at the figure of the " geek " in popular culture, and especially in Ernest Cline's novel Ready Player One, also with a view towards the forthcoming adaptation directed by Steven Spielberg. Tracing the contours of the geek imaginary, the paper looks at its inscription in popular culture , political economy, it explores nostalgia as an enabling force, modes of community, sociability and socialization, building toward the unlikely concept of " geektopia. "

A Escrita do Cinema: Ensaios
Org. Clara Rowland e José Bértolo
Lisboa: Documenta
2015

Ensaios de:
Adrian Martin
Amândio Reis
Clara Rowland
Emília Pinto de Almeida
Fernando Guerreiro
Guillaume Bourgois
Hajnal Kiraly
Joana Matos Frias
Joana Moura
José Bértolo
Luís Mendonça
Maria Filomena Molder
Mário Jorge Torres
Pedro Eiras
Rita Benis
Rosa Maria Martelo
Sonia Miceli
Susana Nascimento Duarte
Timothy Corrigan
Tom Conley

This article offers an analysis of Claire Denis’s film Beau travail (1999) as a free adaptation of Herman Melville’s classic Billy Budd. A compa- rative perspective is adopted to identify the specific transformations in the rewriting process, with attention to changes in focalisation and plot, as well as the film’s potential as a queer adaptation of Melvi- lle’s novella. Central to these relationships is the use of bodies, which creates a narrative that challenges both our expectations of a literary adaptation and the gender conventions of the film medium. In this way, the study finds that Beau travail is a benchmark case for defi- ning transformative potential of adaptations.

Johan Huizinga’s concept of the ‘magic circle’ – a space that is separate from the reality of the world outside of a game/play - was applied to digital games by Salen and Zimmerman, and it has since been debated and re-evaluated to this day. The line between the game world and the real world is becoming increasingly permeable, so much so that the definitions of ‘virtual’ and ‘real’ stand to be reconsidered in the context of technological possibilities. This study aims to examine the extent of the magic circle, and how it affects the treatment and perception of agency, control, and morality in games and fiction across three mediums – a science fiction short story named I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream (1967) by Harlan Ellison, a 1995 videogame of the same name, and “USS Callister”, a TV episode about such a
game, from Black Mirror (2017). The short story is about five humans trapped inside a ‘mastercomputer’, tortured to death but never allowed to die. The videogame follows the same storyline but allows for a multitude of subplots and bizarre deviations. The TV episode is about a prodigal coder who designs an immersive gaming experience but in his own
version of it, he creates characters out of his co-workers by collecting their DNA, and by giving them an independent consciousness inside the game, he tortures them without letting them escape or die. How does a dystopic text get adapted into a game that gets adapted onto
screen? This work will show how Ellison’s text itself often becomes like a game, and that game gets written into a screenplay for the episode, becoming text again. Adaptations in new media like videogames and TV episodes get exposed to challenges and representative problems, revealing slippages and inconsistencies across all the works. I will study the variations in the representation of sexuality, women, and female agency across the three primary texts – issues that will contribute to the understanding of agency and control in this context and also to that of gender representation in science fiction and videogames.  An
episode like USS Callister does far more than taking the story of I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream and presenting it on the screen. It contextualises the marginalisation that takes place in the science fiction and videogame scenarios.  It heightens and then subverts the problematic strands of the plot in a grand irony. While both in the story and in the game, the figure behind the torture is a faceless technology called AM, in the episode the torturer has a human face, that of the office nerd – Robert Daly. Ironically, in the end it is the artificial intelligence that he had created, which takes over both his real and virtual existence – he is left stuck in the game, immersed, and defeated by characters who seemingly didn’t even exist without him. There is no way to know what actually happens to Daly next. This ending echoes both Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, where man’s creation takes over the creator, as well as Luigi Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author, where the fate of the Boy hangs in limbo – no one knows if he has actually shot himself or if it’s a pretence, a part of ‘play’. This dissertation argues that the magic circle is ultimately a fickle inter-relationship between the game world and the real world by questioning the limit of agency and control, showing how the game world can exist in literature and on screen as well, not strictly in games.

The anxiety attached to gift giving is worth considering. The Christian commemoration of Christmas is about celebrating God’s ultimate gift, his only son. Such an exceptional gift reaches its destiny in the crucifixion of Jesus: a sacrifice that can never be acquitted. The extraordinary nature of this gift, which ends in death, is resonant of a debt economy. Capitalism is sustained through a debt economy of profits and arrears that spin endlessly in keeping the many beholden and the few prosperous.

The Left-Handed Woman is probably one of Peter Handke’s best known novellas, translated into more than a dozen of languages. Two years after being published in 1978, it was made into a film that Handke adapted and directed. The film was nominated for the "Golden Palm Award" at the Cannes Film Festival and has won several prestigious prizes

Edward Albee's The Zoo Story is about the interaction between its two main characters Peter and Jerry dramatizing the former's disillusionment in the hands of the latter; Jerry's speech and action aim at shattering Peter's obsession with material things, his easy justification for stability, and his reluctance to understand the alienation at the core of his life. Jerry's success in changing Peter comes at the cost of his life; however, there are interesting techniques deployed by him in order to convert Peter from an incommunicative person to someone who finally understands the value of human connection. Concentration on the conflicts between the two characters, detecting the causes of their alienation, and finally analyzing the techniques that Jerry employs to convert Peter, are the main issues discussed in this study with the hope to enlighten the hidden corners and revealing the implied meanings of a play which is quite rich in its symbolic suggestiveness.

The article aims at charting the position of Edward Morgan Forster and his works in contemporary English language culture. It presents various forms of adaptations of or responses to the works of Forster, concentrating on those which have been created since the writer's death in 1970. The discussed material consists of approximately one hundred instances of various works of art related in a number of ways to Forster's oeuvre and biography: adaptations, works inspired by Forster's oeuvre or biography, and, finally, works which enter into a dialogue with Forster and his views. Radio plays, operas, plays, movies, musicals, comic books, concept albums, etc. have been included as well. The paper also touches upon Forster's reception among scholars and in political journalism. The paper is supplemented with lists of various adaptations. The two files are draft with links to sources and the official published text.

Critique themes in the novel and style. Cross examine against a memoir/short story /film /by any other female writer (Afghani, Syrian, Mexican e.g., etc. etc.). What changes does Westover's main protagonist display in terms of marginalization, ID crisis, migration, and women education

RESUMEN: La película de animación digital Shrek (2001), dirigida por Andrew Adamson y Vicky Jenson, supuso toda una innovación en la industria de la animación cinematográfica. El hecho de recurrir a la estructura típica de los cuentos de hadas para subvertirlos y desmontar toda una serie de tópicos generando una visión paródica de todo este universo es, sin duda, la clave de su éxito. Sin embargo, la principal subversión la encontramos en quien se acaba erigiendo como el héroe de la película: Shrek, un ogro ermitaño que se define a sí mismo como monstruo porque es lo que la sociedad le ha hecho creer. No obstante, la realidad es bien distinta, porque el ogro vive pacíficamente en su ciénaga sin hacer daño a nadie y solo hace uso del papel de monstruo que le han otorgado para divertirse y defenderse de los intrusos. Este personaje se ve empujado a asumir el papel más opuesto a su naturaleza: el de caballero-príncipe que ha de emprender una misión para rescatar a una princesa. A raíz de este cometido, el supuesto monstruo irá asumiendo progresivamente su nuevo rol como héroe, hasta el punto de triunfar allí donde ningún príncipe lo ha conseguido.

ABSTRACT:
The digital animation film Shrek (2001), directed by Andrew Adamson and Vicky Jenson was very innovative in the industry of animation. There is no doubt that its success is due to the fact that the plot revolves around the typical fairytale structure in order to subvert and take apart a whole series of clichés generating a parodic vision of this universe. Nevertheless, the main subversion is found in the character who ends up being the hero of the movie: Shrek, a hermit ogre who defines himself as monster because it is what society thinks of him. But the truth is quite the contrary because the ogre lives peacefully in his swamp without hurting anyone and just makes use of his role of monster for having fun and defending himself from intruders. This character is forced to take over the most opposite role against his nature: the role of knight-prince who has to undertake a mission in order to rescue a princess. As a result, the supposed monster will be assuming his new role as hero progressively, to the point of achieving success where no prince has.

A film adaption of the Odyssey, ‘O Brother, Where Art Thou?’ (2000) attempts to display the bathing rituals that are described in Homer’s poem. The film presents the mundane rituals of the maids in Homer’s Nausicaa chapter as a highly erotised image; we see a vision of wet, attractive women – the Sirens, bathing in the river, singing in seductive union as they caress their perfectly formed bodies. It is their vocal unison of sultry, feminine tones that work alongside their womanly figures to seduce the male protagonists, creating a feeling of mutual pleasure and female sensuality. In terms of modern sexuality, the idea of females engaging in a mutually pleasurable activity is complementary to male arousal. Although these women are not technically engaging  in anything overtly sexual, their sultry actions hazes the men into a fantasy experience, a place where their senses are heightened as they take in the mere physical beauty and soft, low toned vocals of these women, all at the same time. It is then that they are interrupted by sexually hungry men, who do not hesitate, through their body language and facial expressions, to conceal their sexual desire for these women; as they are led by the Sirens into to act. There is a sexual demand - an expectancy about these men that contrasts so heavily from Odysseus, who despite his sexual arousal does not allow himself to appear desperate and consumed by their sex appeal.

and Keywords China in the 1980s China is memorable on many fronts. Among them are the breakout of the new Chinese films (the Fifth Generation) and the surge of avant-garde art movement. While a bold experimental impulse fuels both, how are these two kinds of visual media related? Tracing the trajectory of the evolving media of film and other visual arts, the essay outlines discernible patterns therein. Painting became the model for film in the initial phase, prompted by the post-Mao impulse to break out of the monologic narrative; then, sometime in the mid-1980s, film became the model for avant-gardist art making. While one medium's appropriation of formal properties from other media is nothing new, it is demonstrated that the distinct cultural dynamics of the 1980s drove re-mediation. Milestone works-such as the film Big Parade (1986) and Xu Bing's installations-are shown to resonate with each other in unexpected ways.

Abstract: My paper seeks to explore how Adoor Gopalakrishnan’s Vidheyan complicates our perception of power and our understanding of class subjugation apropos internal migration and regional identity in the Kerala-Karnataka border of feudal Dakshina Kannada.  In Vidheyan, what occurs when desire for home disturbs and challenges class order is an instance of the paradox of the master-slave relationship, a confrontation between freedom and domination as delineated by G.W. F. Hegel’s dialectic of the Lord and Bondsman.

Rabindranath Tagore and Satyajit Ray are two high-flying names in the sky of art, culture and literature. They have glorified Bengal as well as India in the sphere of whole universe. Tagore wrote many legendary novels which were later taken as the scripts of Indian films. Such an epoch making novel of Tagore was Nostonirh (The Broken Nest) which was transformed into a film in the hand of renowned director, Satyajit Ray. Ray not only took the story, he also mixed the plot with his imagination. This compilation leads the novel to become almost a similar famous film in Bengali, 'Charulata'. My article will try to highlight this artistic approach of Ray along with his adoption of the novel.

Reunión de trabajos sobre un periodo poco revisado y razonado de la historiografía fílmica latinoamericana, que abarca de finales del siglo XIX hasta las tres primeras décadas del XX. Se examina la naturaleza cosmopolita de los filmes que llegaron de Europa y los Estados Unidos a Latinoamérica; se analiza cómo el cine documental articuló los mitos y exaltó a los personajes históricos; se explora el séptimo arte en los contextos de circulación y exhibición, y se estudia la asimilación de los cambios económicos, sociales y culturales dentro del discurso fílmico, sin dejar de lado la importancia del papel de los críticos de cine, realizadores y actores en esta etapa fundacional del cine latinoamericano.

Human condition and human nature are indispensable in the span of human life. Whatever the man experiences or feels, is recognized as emotional expression and those expressions are either objective as they are mostly similar to other’s feelings or the expressions are subjective because they elicit personal impressions regarding good or bad situations in life.  Therefore emotions are universally found in human beings and they are perpetually built. During configuration, the freedom of choice, desire, knowledge, aim, quest, decision, ethics, sense of human dignity are the components that establish relationship between human emotion and human rights. Unless these subjectivities are for unselfish purpose in life, they do not help in emancipation personally or universally. Mostly in material/ capitalistic world such notion of humanism is misunderstood because men/women ascribe their desires, values and emotions to their actions and achievements as per their likes or dislikes, which personally benefit to them but not to all. It is then logically a doctrine of actions that stimulates human to do non-human actions. The personal subjectivity may be biased although it does then provide freedom of self-reliance and self-dignity to one but to the other it may be disappointing. Thus ‘it is not then universe of transcendent goals; it is not the universe of human subjectivity’ (Sartre 49).