New Approaches to Cinematic Space [1 ed.] 1138604445, 9781138604445

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New Approaches to Cinematic Space

New Approaches to Cinematic Space aims to discuss the process of creation of cinematic spaces through moving images and the subsequent interpretation of their purpose and meaning. Throughout 17 chapters, this edited collection will attempt to identify and interpret the formal strategies used by different filmmakers to depict real or imaginary places and turn them into abstract, conceptual spaces. The contributors to this volume will specifically focus on a series of systems of representation that go beyond the mere visual reproduction of a given location to construct a network of meanings that ultimately shapes our spatial worldview. Filipa Rosário (PhD Artistic Studies – Cinema Studies, University of ­Lisbon) is a researcher in the Centre for Comparative Studies (UL), where she coordinates the project ‘Cinema and the World – Studies on Space and Cinema’. She is the author of O Trabalho do Actor no Cinema de John Cassavetes (2017). Iván Villarmea Álvarez (PhD History of Art, Universidad de Zaragoza) works as a researcher at the Universidade de Santiago de Compostela. He has published the book Documenting Cityscapes. Urban Change in Contemporary Non-Fiction Film (2015) and co-edited the volume Jugar con la Memoria. El Cine Portugués en el Siglo XXI (2014).

Routledge Advances in Film Studies

54 The Cinematic Eighteenth Century History, Culture, and Adaptation Edited by Srividhya Swaminathan and Steven W. Thomas 55 The Contemporary Femme Fatale Gender, Genre and American Cinema Katherine Farrimond 56 Film Comedy and the American Dream Zach Sands 57 Ecocinema and the City Robin L. Murray and Joseph K. Heumann 58 Collective Trauma and the Psychology of Secrets in Transnational Film Deborah Lynn Porter 59 Melodrama, Self and Nation in Post-War British Popular Film Johanna Laitila 60 Emotion in Animated Films Edited by Meike Uhrig 61 Post-Production and the Invisible Revolution of Filmmaking From the Silent Era to Synchronized Sound George Larkin 62 New Approaches to Cinematic Space Edited by Filipa Rosário and Iván Villarmea Álvarez

For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge​.com

New Approaches to Cinematic Space

Edited by Filipa Rosário and Iván Villarmea Álvarez

This work is funded by Portuguese national funds through FCT – ­Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, I.P., in the scope of the project UID/ELT/ 0509/2013.

First published 2019 by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2019 Taylor & Francis The right of Filipa Rosário and Iván Villarmea Álvarez to be identified as the author of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this title has been requested ISBN: 978-1-138-60444-5 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-429-46849-0 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by codeMantra

Contents

List of Figures and Maps Acknowledgements Introduction: Screen is the Place

xi xiii 1

F ilipa Rosário and I ván V illarmea Á lvarez

Part 1

Urban Spaces

11

1.1 Memoryscapes: Mapping Urban Space through Amateur Film Archives

13

Paolo S imoni

1.2 Social Space, Architecture and the Crisis: Neo-noir Aesthetics in Contemporary Greek Cinema

27

A nna P oupou

Part 2

Architectural Spaces

43

2.1 The Architectural Space Generated by Staircases in Alfred Hitchcock’s Films

45

M ar í a N ovela de A rag ó n

2.2 Stranger than Paradise – Realities of Cinema, Architectural Imageries, Circa 1956 F rancisco F erreira

56

viii Contents Part 3

Genre Spaces

67

3.1 Empire of Catalandia: Science Fiction as the Cinematic Space of the Anthropocene

69

M aurizia N atali

3.2 The Urban and the Domestic: Spaces of American Film Noir

85

S é rgio D ias B ranco

3.3 Film Noir and the Folding of America: A Reading of Out of the Past (1947) and Impact (1949)

97

J effrey C hilds

Part 4

Spectral Spaces

109

4.1 Blinking Spaces in Contemporary Psychogeographical Documentaries

111

I ván V illarmea Á lvarez

4.2 On the ‘Ghosts’ of Piramida: Ruins, Memory and Music

129

J os é D uarte

4.3 Remembering a Fabricated City: Visiting Terezín in Daniel Blaufuks’s As if...

140

S andra C amacho

Part 5

Heterotopic Spaces

153

5.1 On Location: Kiarostami’s Landscapes and Cinematic Value

155

M aria I rene A par í cio

5.2 Mapping Heterotopias in Colombian Documentary Film

166

M aria L una

5.3 Cinematographic Missions to the Portuguese Territory (1917–1918) Paulo C unha

179

Contents  ix Part 6

Phenomenology of Space

191

6.1 The Viewer’s Embodiment into Cinematic Space: Notes on a ‘Space-Image’ Cinema

193

A ntoine G audin

6.2 Towards the Spatial Affectivities of Colour: The Blue Bedroom in Yasujirō Ozu’s An Autumn Afternoon

205

S ander H ö lsgens

6.3 Cinema, Allospaces and the Unfilmable

216

B runo S urace

6.4 Framing Doors, Opening Up Spaces: Cristi Puiu and His Cruel Phenomenology of Space

228

Z solt G yenge

List of Contributors Index

241 247

List of Figures and Maps

1.1.1 Frames taken from various home movies collections (© Home Movies - Archivio Nazionale del Film di Famiglia, Bologna) 15 1.1.2 Frames taken from various home movies collections (© Home Movies - Archivio Nazionale del Film di Famiglia, Bologna) 16 1.1.3 Impressione dei giardini pubblici (Gaetano Carrer, 1949–1950) (© Home Movies - Archivio Nazionale del Film di Famiglia, Bologna) 17 1.1.4 Bologna democratica (Angelo Marzadori, 1951) (© Home Movies - Archivio Nazionale del Film di Famiglia, Bologna) 18 1.1.5 Bologna dei miei tempi (Luciano Osti, 1950s-1960s) (© Home Movies - Archivio Nazionale del Film di Famiglia, Bologna) 19 1.1.6 Cinematic Bologna video installation, 2012 (© Home Movies - Archivio Nazionale del Film di Famiglia, Bologna) 21 1.1.7 Corrado Calanchi Film Collection (1958, 1963, 1970) (© Home Movies - Archivio Nazionale del Film di Famiglia, Bologna). 22 1.1.8 Il tempo nel muro (Mauro Mingardi, 1969) (© Home Movies - Archivio Nazionale del Film di Famiglia, Bologna) 24 2.1.1 The enclosed staircase (© María Novela de Aragón) 47 2.1.2 The platform staircase (© María Novela de Aragón) 49 2.1.3 The linear staircase (© María Novela de Aragón) 51 2.1.4 The open staircase (© María Novela de Aragón) 53 4.1.1 California Company Town, distribution of towns by economic activity (Graph, © Iván Villarmea Álvarez) 116 4.1.2 California Company Town, geographical distribution of towns (Map, © Iván Villarmea Álvarez) 117 4.1.3 California Company Town (Lee Anne Schmitt, 2008) (© Lee Anne Schmitt) 118

xii  List of Figures and Maps 4.1.4 Ruins, geographical distribution of film locations (Map, © Iván Villarmea Álvarez) 120 4.1.5 Ruins (Ruínas, Manuel Mozos, 2009) (© O Som e a Fúria) 121 4.1.6–4.1.9  Toponymy (Toponimia, Jonathan Perel, 2015) (© Jonathan Perel) 125 4.1.10 Toponymy (Toponimia, Jonathan Perel, 2015) (© Jonathan Perel) 126 4.3.1 As If… (Daniel Blaufuks, 2014) (© Daniel Blaufuks) 142 4.3.2 As If… replicating W. G. Sebald’s photograph in page 268 from Austerlitz (2001) (Daniel Blaufuks, 2014) (© Daniel Blaufuks) 146 4.3.3 As If… (Daniel Blaufuks, 2014) (© Daniel Blaufuks) 150 5.2.1 Documentaries on the armed conflict – film locations (Map, © María Luna) 168 5.2.2 Production of Heterotopias (Graph, © María Luna) 169 6.1.1 Gerry (Gus Van Sant, 2002) (Fair Use) 196 6.1.2 Still Life (三峡好人, Jia Zhang-ke, 2006) (Fair Use) 197 6.1.3 Still Life (三峡好人, Jia Zhang-ke, 2006) (Fair Use) 197 6.1.4 Sherlock Jr. (Buster Keaton, 1924) (Fair Use) 198 6.1.5 Sherlock Jr. (Buster Keaton, 1924) (Fair Use) 198 6.1.6 The Searchers (John Ford, 1956) (Fair Use) 199 6.1.7 The Searchers (John Ford, 1956) (Fair Use) 199 6.1.8 Journey to Italy (Viaggio in Italia, Roberto Rossellini, 1954) (Fair Use) 202 6.1.9 Journey to Italy (Viaggio in Italia, Roberto Rossellini, 1954) (Fair Use) 202 6.3.1 Cabiria (Giovanni Pastrone 1914) (Fair Use) 219

Acknowledgements

The origin of this book can be traced back to a scientific event that gathered the enthusiasm and expertise of José Bértolo, Susana ­Mouzinho and Amândio Reis, allowing us to bring together a heterogeneous and captivating group of authors whose engaging work you will become acquainted with in the following pages. We are thankful to our three colleagues for their valuable insights and creative inspirations. We also thank the Centre for Comparative Studies of the University of Lisbon for providing us with the institutional and financial support necessary to edit this volume within the project ‘Cinema and the World – Studies on Space and Cinema’. We are especially grateful to our linguistic reviewer, Michael Baumtrog, who carefully revised every chapter to ensure its stylistic quality, as well as to Sofia Mira Ferreira, Ana Bela Morais and Carlos Garrido, whose kind advice and constant support were crucial in differing moments. We also want to acknowledge the warmth, joy and generosity of those whom we like to call our AIM friends, beginning with Paulo Cunha, Daniel Ribas, Tiago Baptista and Sérgio Dias Branco: they are a quintessential part of the Association of Moving Image Researchers (AIM, Portugal), a thriving Lusophone community of brilliant film scholars who have come to form a family while fulfilling our professional duties. On a personal note, Filipa Rosário wishes to thank Mariana Liz, ­Wiliam Pianco and José Duarte for their much-cherished friendship and precious insights. Above all, she is especially grateful to João Paulo, Vera and Joana, her family, for providing the inspiring and edifying company within which this volume began to take shape and ultimately bloomed. Iván Villarmea Álvarez, meanwhile, wants to express his gratitude to Marta Álvarez for her warm welcome at Université de Franche-Comté (Besançon, France), where part of this volume was edited, as well as to Sofia Sampaio, who lent him an extremely comfortable chair that made the editing work much more pleasant while he was living in Lisbon. Moreover, he also especially acknowledges Teresa, his partner in love and life, who already knows everything about this book before even having read it. Lisbon, Besançon & Santiago de Compostela, 2016–2018

Introduction Screen is the Place Filipa Rosário and Iván Villarmea Álvarez

Cinema is able to capture the intangibility of life: its moods and feelings, its fleeting moments and liminal spaces. In its origins, it combined the objective input of photography – an outcome of technological progress – and the impressionistic drive to crystallise the subjective experience of the world – an inheritance from painting. Since then, we have found and still find an illusion on the screen, a magically arisen reproduction of the world (Cavell, 1979, p. 39) that is phantasmagorical in its ­essence, echoing the origins of painting itself, when the human shadow was ­demarcated by lines for the first time (Stoichita, 1997, p. 7). The ubiquitous and interdependent connection between the absent body and its perennial projection, as well as between the spaces that it originally occupied and those in which it has later been preserved, is also reflected, inscribed and thematised – synthesised – in and by cinema. Such an ability to go beyond our everyday experience is probably one of its main virtues: thanks to cinema, we can see and feel – and sometimes even understand – that which escapes us, whether people or places, ideas or emotions, distant or recent pasts, and especially all those simultaneous presents that have already become past. The screen – any screen: the cinema’s, the television’s, the computer’s, the phone’s, etc. – is just the interface that links our world to any possible world depicted through moving images. Nevertheless, every screen is first and foremost a surface, a bigger or smaller space where any other real or imaginary space unfolds before us. We see the world through screens, but in order to do that, we have to see before the screen itself. The dichotomy between the infinite spaces that screens invite us to explore and the restricted, material space that each individual screen actually occupies establishes a useful distinction between the two types of cinematic spaces that will be discussed throughout this volume: on the one hand, those depicting real places taken from the historical world; on the other hand, those giving rise to imaginary or alternative locations in possible worlds through the slightest nuances of framing, editing, lighting, sound mixing and, more importantly, the very act of perceiving. Moving images bring together spaces of different natures: those inspiring filmmakers to create their works; those that, when manipulated,

2  Filipa Rosário and Iván Villarmea Álvarez allow the profilmic elements to materialise; those offering a glimpse into their creator’s inner world and also those related to a film’s “multiple historicities” (Frow, 1986, pp. 187–188). All these spaces make up a ­palimpsestic map in which the historical world meets multiple variations of possible worlds, inasmuch as cinema, as Jean Renoir explained to Eric Rohmer in the latter’s documentary Louis Lumière (1968), is both “an extraordinary means for representing the life of our times” and “sometimes the opposite: a means of expressing what we have in our imagination”. Moreover, as a technology based on the principle of assembly, cinema also reveals itself as a self-reflexive medium, capable of producing, transmitting and questioning meaning and human thought. The etymological origin of the word ‘cinema’ is related to the Greek term kinema, meaning ‘to move’ or ‘movement’ (Koeck, 2013, p. 5). As a cinematic operative concept, the moving image, in a way, disrupts the monocular perspective inherited from the Quatroccento system and encourages the ‘mobility of the eye’. However, as Stephen Heath states, the mobility is nevertheless difficult: movement of figures ‘in’ film, camera movement, movement from shot to shot; the first gives at once a means of creating perspective (…) and a problem of ‘composition’ (…); the second equally produces problems of composition and, though often motivated in the manuals by some extension of the eye-camera comparison (...), is strictly regulated in the interests of the maintenance of scenographic space (…); the third, again apt to ­receive the comparative motivation (…), effectively indicates the filmic nature of film space, film as constantly the construction of a space. (1981, pp. 31–32) Scholarly literature approaching cinematic space has primarily focused on the examination of (off-)screen space as a threshold that allowed for a chronotopic and narrative space to emerge (Bordwell, Staiger, & Thompson, 1985; Burch, 1981; Heath, 1981). By exploring space-time interactions in relation to the diegesis within moving image dynamics, scholars have linked perspective, framing, sound, découpage and editing to classical Hollywood cinema, whose “institutional mode of representation” (Burch, 1979, pp. 77–96) has set classical cinematic space as a site for spatial continuity and narrative causality (Bordwell et al., 1985, pp. 50–59). According to Antoine Gaudin, cinematic space’s polysemic nature can be addressed from a scenographic and narratological approach. Within this paradigm, the aforementioned works mainly focus on the organisation of the dramatic space – created by the mise en scène together with the off-screen space – or on how the film’s global universe is fragmented and reconstructed by framing, découpage and editing (2015, pp.  13– 24). Gaudin, however, provides four other approaches in his book L’espace cinématographique, the most comprehensive systematisation of

Introduction  3 this subject matter published so far: geodiegetic or geopoetic, historical and modernist, plastic and techno-aesthetic, essentialist and psycho-­ perceptive (2015, pp. 13–52). The geodiegetic or geopoetic approach builds from the articulation between the narrative aesthetics of a terrestrial space and the narrative aesthetics of film movements, periods, filmmakers and genres in order to question the relation between the individual and the contextual. The historical and modernist approach, in turn, brings forward historical time to the framework: space is considered here to be anchored in a specific time period, both concrete and existential, resulting in the construction of symbolic and/or political spaces. Then, the plastic and techno-­aesthetic approach focuses on the spatial composition of the image-­in-itself: lines, surfaces and volumes, as well as formats and reliefs – all of the abstract forms designed to immerge and separate the spectator in and from the screen space. Finally, influenced by both phenomenology and Christian existentialism, the essentialist and psycho-perceptive approach conceptualises cinematic space as a perceptively, cognitively and spiritually built relation between the viewer and the moving image, into which the body is optically and somatically engaged. Gaudin’s work has brilliantly summarised the main lines of research on cinematic space since the spatial turn of the 1970s and 1980s, when social sciences and humanities began to question modernity’s notions of spatial experience from a transdisciplinary perspective. In the last four decades, the concepts of place, territory, nation, city, landscape and distance, among others, have been challenged and re-elaborated according to principles of power, capitalism and neo-liberalism, thus highlighting the subjective experience involved in it: the works of Henri Lefebvre (1974/1991), Jean Baudrillard (1981/1994), Doreen Massey (1984, 1994), Michel Foucault (1986), David Harvey (1989), Edward Soja (1989, 1996) and Fredric Jameson (1991) are remarkable examples of this line of thought. In this framework, cinematic space has been addressed within the discussion on national and transnational cinemas (Carter & Dodds, 2014; Chee & Lim, 2015; Everett & Goodbody, 2005; Konstantarakos, 2000; Silva & Cunha, 2017; Zhang, 2010), and most especially through the study of the relationship between the cinema and the city, which has been booming since the 1990s. Regarding the latter field, Mariana ­Liz has distinguished two main strands according to their theoretical ­approach: one focused on early cinema and the development of modernity that establishes “a link between movie-making and movie-going and new forms of social life, occupation of the public sphere and regimes of seeing, as well as notions of realism and objectivity” (Barber, 2002; Bruno, 2002; Charney & Schwartz, 1995; Conde, 2012; Dimendberg, 2004; Gunning, 1994); the other formed by works on postmodern and post-classical cinema (Aitken & Zonn, 1994; Jameson, 1992), as well as on the world of politics and finance (Liz, Forthcoming; Scott, 2005).

4  Filipa Rosário and Iván Villarmea Álvarez The study of film architecture has also given rise to an extensive bibliography from the 1990s, especially regarding the processes concerning the conception and construction of film sets (Cairns, 2013; Fear, 2000; Lamster, 2013; Neumann, 1996; Schleier, 2009; Tobe, 2017; Toy, 1994). Meanwhile, literature on cinema and landscape also emerged in the same period, despite the fact that nature has been a consolidated moving image trope since early cinema’s travel films (Costa, 2006). This line of ­research has been developed through key works in other disciplines, such as ­philosophy (Assunto, 1973; Berque, 2008/2013; ­Cauquelin, 1989; ­Simmel, 1913/2007), art history (Clark, 1949; ­Gombrich, 1966; Wood, 1993) and cultural geography (Cosgrove, 1998; Mitchell, 2002).  The ­spatial turn gave cinematic landscape a place of its own within ­scholarship – apart from its early interpretation as cinematic rhythm and openness ­(Eisenstein, 1987) – with multidisciplinary readings confirming its palimpsestic essence. A series of works published at the turn of the 20th century have theorised the topic (Lefebvre, 2006; MacDonald, 2001; Mottet,  1999; Natali, 1996; Sitney, 1993), while later volumes and ­essays have related it to other concepts, such as psychology (Melbye, 2010, 2017) and national identity (Harper & Rayner, 2010, 2013), as well as nature and ecocriticism (Pick & Narraway, 2013). The blurring of boundaries between academic disciplines, together with digital databases and GIS development, has recently transformed scholarship on cinematic space by incorporating its material and immaterial histories (Bruno, 2002; Chapman, Glancy, & Harper, 2007; ­Elsaesser, 2016; Huhtamo & Parikka, 2011; Zielinski, 2006), as well as its mapping drive (Conley, 2007; Castro, 2009, 2017; Gunning, 2006). This double take on filmic spatiality exposes the theoretical impulse to address not only cinematic cartography, but also to chart the ­social ­experiences and urban practises the moving image is engaged in. Finally, most recent works approaching this subject specifically reflect this ­tendency (Hallam & Roberts, 2011, 2013; Jacobson, 2015; Koeck, 2013; Roberts, 2012; Penz & Koeck, 2017). “The construction of memory space is a function of the visual arts and of cinema, as well as of architecture, for they all shape the image of our built environment”, Giuliana Bruno states (2008, p. 145). In a way, cinematic space is a landscape in itself, an archive that preserves our cultural memory, whose “most crucial condition is space, but its deepest theme is time” (Solnit, 2002, p. 132). Accordingly, to explain the processes through which filmmakers give rise and meaning to this archive, this volume will attempt to identify and interpret the formal strategies used to depict real and imaginary places, and turn them into abstract, conceptual spaces. Most texts will therefore focus on different systems of representation that go beyond the mere visual reproduction of a given location to construct a network of meanings that ultimately shapes our spatial worldview.

Introduction  5 The book thus consists of 17 essays grouped into six sections: ­‘urban spaces’, ‘architectural spaces’, ‘genre spaces’, ‘spectral spaces’, ­‘heterotopic spaces’ and ‘phenomenology of space’. The idea behind this structure is to begin with real spaces – public, objective spaces; then private, subjective ones – then gradually move to conceptual spaces – whether genre, spectral or mental – and finally, attempt to theorise the very process of the creation of cinematic spaces, understood as a perceptual experience. Each chapter will discuss a limited set of films, some of which will be related to specific genres – from film noir and neo-noir to amateur film and psychogeographical documentaries, with an ecocritical detour through disaster movies – or to the work of well-known filmmakers, such as Alfred Hitchcock, Abbas Kiarostami, Yasujirō Ozu and Cristi Puiu, among others. The choice of case studies lies with each author, of course, but even so there is a pattern: the volume embraces a self-conscious comparative approach between different types of films from different periods, genres and countries in order to reflect on different kinds of cinematic spaces and perceptual experiences. This is the reason why chapters are organised according to their similarities and contrasts, following an internal logic based on spatial issues rather than on other variables. New Approaches to Cinematic Space intends to update certain topics with new case studies, beginning with the representation of urban space in times of change and the architectural dimension of film sets and ­locations, but it also seeks to delve deeper into issues that deserve further discussion, such as the sedimentation of history in spectral spaces, the rise of possible worlds from images themselves and the use of film phenomenology to analyse the gradual unfolding of cinematic spaces. One way or another, all of these spaces appear before the audience through the screen, which must be understood as a heterotopic place that encompasses an infinite variety of potential representations of both the historical world and its parallel universes. From this perspective, this book aims to offer a social, formal and allegorical interpretation of some of the spaces our mind enters through our senses, while our body remains somewhere else in a movie theatre, in a living room, on a plane or wherever films will be screened in the future.

Works Cited Filmography Rohmer, E. (1968). Louis Lumière. Bibliography Aitken, S. C., & Zonn, L. (1994). Place, power, situation, and spectacle: A geography of film. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.

6  Filipa Rosário and Iván Villarmea Álvarez Assunto, R.(1973). Il paesaggio e l’estetica…: Natura e storia. Naples, Italy: Giannini. Barber, S. (2002). Projected cities: Cinema and urban space. London, UK: Reaktion Books. Baudrillard, J. (1994). Simulacra and simulation. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press. (Original work published in 1981). Berque, A. (2013). Thinking through landscape. London, UK & New York, NY: Routledge. (Original work published in 2008). Bordwell, D., Staiger, J., & Thompson, K. (1985). The classical Hollywood ­cinema. Film style and mode of production to 1960. New York, NY: Columbia University Press. Bruno, G. (2002). Atlas of emotion: Journeys in art, architecture, and film. London, UK: Verso. Bruno, G. (2008). Cultural cartography, materiality and the fashioning of emotion. In M. Smith (Ed.), Visual culture studies: Interviews with key thinkers (pp. 144–165). London, UK: Sage Publications. Burch, N. (1979). Film’s institutional mode of representation and the Soviet response. October, 11, 77–96. Burch, N. (1981). Theory of film practice. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Cairns, G. (2013). The architecture of the screen: Essays in cinematographic space. Bristol, UK: Intellect. Carter, S., & Doods, K. (2014). International politics and film. Space, vision, power. New York, NY: Wallflower Press. Castro, T. (2009). Cinema’s mapping impulse: Questioning visual culture. The Cartographic Journal, 46 (1), 9–15. doi:10.1179/000870409X415598 Castro, T. (2017). Cinematic cartographies of urban space and the descriptive spectacle of aerial views (1898–1948). In F. Penz & R. Koeck (Eds.), Cinematic urban geographies (pp. 47–64). New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan. Cauquelin, A. (1989). L’invention du paysage. Paris, France: PUF. Cavell, S. (1979). The world viewed: Reflections on the ontology of film. ­Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Chapman, J., Glancy. M., & Harper, S. (Eds.). (2007). The new film history. Sources, methods, approaches. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan. Charney, L., & Schwartz, V. (1995). Cinema and the invention of modern life. Berkeley, Los Angeles, & London, UK: University of California Press. Chee, L., & Lim, E. (Eds.). (2015). Asian cinema and the use of space. Interdisciplinary perspectives. London, UK &New York, NY: Routledge. Clark, K. (1949). Landscape into art. London, UK: John Murray Publishers. Conde, M. (2012). Consuming visions. Cinema, writing, and modernity in Rio de Janeiro. Charlottesville & London, UK: The University of Virginia Press. Conley, T. (2007). Cartographic cinema. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Cosgrove, D. E. (1998). Social formation and symbolic landscape. Madison & London, UK: University of Wisconsin Press. Costa, A. (2006). Landscape and archive: Trips around the world as early film topic (1896–1914). In M. Lefebvre (Ed.), Landscape and film (pp. 245–266). London, UK & New York, NY: Routledge.

Introduction  7 Dimendberg, E. (2004). Film noir and the spaces of modernity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Eisenstein, S. (1987). Nonindifferent nature. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge ­University Press. Elsaesser, T. (2016). Film history as media archeology. Tracking digital cinema. Amsterdam, Netherlands: Amsterdam University Press. Everett, W., & Goodbody, A. (Eds.). (2005). Revisiting space: Space and place in European cinema. Oxford, UK: Peter Lang. Fear, B. (Ed.). (2000). Architecture + film II. Architectural Design, 70 (1). Foucault, M. (1986, Spring). Of other spaces. Diacritics, 16(1), 22–27. Retrieved October 27, 2018 from www.jstor.org/stable/464648 Frow, J. (1986). Marxism and literary history. Cambridge, MA: Harvard ­University Press. Gaudin, A. (2015). L’espace cinématographique. Esthétique et dramaturgie. Paris, France: Armand Colin. Gombrich, E. H. (1966). Norm and form: Studies in the art of the renaissance. London, UK: Phaidon Press. Gunning, T. (1994). D.W. Griffith and the origins of American narrative film: The early years at biograph. Chicago: University of Illinois Press. Gunning, T. (2006). Modernity and cinema. In M. Pomerance (Ed.), Cinema and modernity. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Hallam, J., & Roberts, L. (2011). Mapping, memory and the city: Archives, ­databases and film historiography. European Journal of Cultural Studies, 14(3), 355–372. doi:10.1177/1367549411399939 Hallam, J., & Roberts, L. (Eds.). (2013). Locating the moving image: New ­approaches to film and place. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Harper, G., & Rayner, J. R. (Eds.). (2010). Cinema and landscape. Bristol, UK & Chicago, IL: Intellect Books. Harper, G., & Rayner, J. R. (Eds.). (2013). Film landscapes: Cinema, environment and visual culture. Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Harvey, D. (1989). The condition of postmodernity. Cambridge, MA & ­Oxford, UK: Basil Blackwell Publishers. Heath, S. (1981). Questions of cinema. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Huhtamo, E., & Parikka, J. (Eds.). (2011). Media archaeology: Approaches, ­applications and implications. Berkeley, Los Angeles & London, UK: University of California Press. Jacobson, B. R. (2015). Studios before the system: Architecture, technology, and the emergence of cinematic space. New York, NY: Columbia University Press. Jameson, F. (1991). Postmodernism, or, the cultural logic of late capitalism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Jameson, F. (1992). The geopolitical aesthetic. Cinema and space in the world system. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Koeck, R. (2013). Cine-scapes: Cinematic spaces in architecture and cities. London, UK & New York, NY: Routledge. Konstantarakos, M. (Ed.). (2000). Spaces in European cinema. Exeter, UK: Intellect.

8  Filipa Rosário and Iván Villarmea Álvarez Lamster, M. (Ed.). (2013). Architecture and film. New York, NY: Princeton Architectural Press. Lefebvre, H. (1991). The production of space. Oxford, UK & Cambridge, MA: Basil Blackwell Publishers. (Original work published in 1974). Lefebvre, M. (Ed.). (2006). Landscape and film. London, UK &New York, NY: Routledge. Liz, M. (Forthcoming). Cinema, city and tourism: Examining contemporary ­Lisbon. Tourist Studies. MacDonald, S. (2001). The garden in the machine. A field guide to independent films about place. Berkeley, Los Angeles, & London, UK: University of California Press. Massey, D.B. (1984). Spatial divisions of labour: Social structures and the geography of production. New York, NY: Methuen. Massey, D.B. (1994). Space, place, and gender. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Melbye, D. (2010). Landscape allegory in cinema – From wilderness to wasteland. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan. Melbye, D. (2017). Psychological landscape films: Narrative and stylistic ­approaches. Aniki, 4(1), 108–132. doi:10.14591/aniki.v4n1.267 Mitchell, W. J. T. (2002). Landscape and power. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Mottet, J. (Ed.). (1999). Les paysages du cinéma. Seyssel, France: Editions Champ Vallon. Natali, M. (1996). L’Image-Paysage. Iconologie et cinéma. Saint-Denis, France: Presses Universitaires de Vincennes. Neumann, D. (1996). Film architecture: Set designs from metropolis to blade runner. Munich, Germany & New York, NY: Prestel Publishing. Penz, F., & Koeck, R. (Eds.). (2017). Cinematic urban geographies. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan. Pick, A., & Narraway, G. (Eds.). (2013). Screening nature: Cinema beyond the human. Oxford, NY: Berghahn Books. Roberts, L. (2012). Film, mobility and urban space: A cinematic geography of Liverpool. Liverpool, UK: Liverpool University Press. Schleier, M. (2009). Skyscraper cinema: Architecture and gender in American film. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Scott, A. J. (2005). On Hollywood: The place, the industry. Oxford, UK: Princeton University Press. Silva, A. N., & Cunha, M. (Eds.). (2017). Space and subjectivity in contemporary Brazilian cinema. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan. Simmel, G. (2007). The philosophy of landscape. Theory, Culture and Society, 24 (7–8), 20–29. doi:10.1177/0263276407084465. (Original work published in 1913). Sitney, P. A. (1993). Landscape in the cinema: The rhythms of the world and the camera. In S. Kemal & I. Gaskell (Eds.), Landscape, natural beauty and the arts (pp. 103–126). Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press. Soja, E. (1989). Postmodern geographies: The reassertion of space in critical social theory. London, UK & New York, NY: Verso. Soja, E. (1996). Thirdspace: Journeys to Los Ángeles and other real-and-­imagined places. Oxford, UK: Basil Blackwell Publishers.

Introduction  9 Solnit, R. (2002). As Eve said to the serpent. On landscape, gender, and art. Athens, Greece: University of Georgia Press. Stoichita, V. (1997). Short history of the shadow. London, UK: Reaktion Books. Tobe, R. (2017). Film, architecture and spatial imagination. London, UK & New York, NY: Routledge. Toy, M. (Ed.). (1994). Architecture & film. Architectural Design, 64 (11/12). Wood, C. S. (1993). Albrecht Altdorfer and the origins of landscape. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Zhang, Y. (2010). Cinema, space, and polylocality in a globalizing China. ­Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Zielinski, S. (2006). Deep time of the media. Toward an archaeology of hearing and seeing by technical means. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Part 1

Urban Spaces

More than half of the Earth’s population currently lives in urban ­areas, so there is no wonder that most films take place in such spaces, whether cities, towns, suburbs or slums, since each neighbourhood can inspire at least as many stories as people living there. Urban space has thus become an outdoor film set in which filmmakers look for realism and authenticity, but also for singular buildings, scenic views and well-known landmarks. The economic dimension of these cinematic cities has led local authorities to create film commissions charged with promoting their city as a film location, in an attempt to attract film shoots to the area and then, if the film is successful, a generous crowd of tourists and investors. New York, Paris, Tokyo, Los Angeles, Mumbai, London, Shanghai, São Paulo, Cairo, Rome… the list of cinematic cities includes any place where someone has recorded some sequence some time – from professional film crews to amateur filmmakers. For more than a century, these people have given rise to a vast archive of urban views that have influenced our understanding of the cityscape almost as much as our own everyday environment. Consequently, when someone talks about a missing neighbourhood or a foreign city, we can picture them through our memories – in case we have been there – or rather through their cinematic doubles, which are usually much more accessible than real places themselves. This book begins with two different ways to represent the ­urban ­experience: that of the residents and that of genre filmmakers. In ­Chapter 1.1, Paolo Simoni discusses amateur moving images of B ­ ologna with the purpose of mapping what he calls ‘the amateur city’, that is, the sum, juxtaposition, stratification, comparison and editing of the gazes of all those inhabitants who have filmed the urban environment at some time. He specifically focuses on the work of five local ­fi lmmakers – ­Corrado Calanchi, Angelo Marzadori, Mauro Mingardi, Luciano Osti and Eros Parmeggiani – who documented Bologna in the post-war years, between the 1950s and 1980s. The close analyses of their respective collections, preserved at Archivio Nazionale del Film di Famiglia, allow Simoni to identify up to three different gazes towards cityscape – the

12  Urban Spaces militant, archivist and transfiguring gazes – whose topographical nature can be used to recall and reconstruct the past in many creative ways. In Chapter 1.2, Anna Poupou explores the role of social and architectural spaces in a series of contemporary Greek art house films that re-­enact the generic conventions of the neo-noir and the thriller in the context of the Great Recession, such as Stratos (Το Μικρό Ψάρι, ­Yannis Economides, 2014) and Wednesday 04.45 (Τετάρτη 04:45, Alexis ­A lexiou, 2015). These films generate a dark iconography of a cityscape in crisis that challenges the stereotypes of the Athenian imagery, while ­simultaneously developing a critical discourse on the effects of neo-­ liberal values and policies on people and places. The neo-noir features allow these films to transcend the Greek national context, providing them with a wider allegorical perspective aimed at an international audience. After all, since we all are trapped in a globalised economic system, what happened in Athens in the early 2010s was also happening to a greater or lesser extent everywhere.

1.1 Memoryscapes Mapping Urban Space through Amateur Film Archives Paolo Simoni In the framework of my research on the representation of cityscapes in amateur cinema, I chose to use the expression ‘amateur city’. With this term, I intend to create a sort of synthesis resulting from the sum, juxtaposition, stratification, comparison and editing of the gazes of the inhabitants who have filmed the urban context for over a century.1 From this perspective, the amateur city that I am looking for can be defined through filtering, selecting and analysing private film heritage as archaeological audiovisual deposits from the analogue era. In this regard, I became especially familiar with small-gauge film materials – 8 mm, Super8, 16 mm, 9.5 mm – evaluated as visual stratigraphy of the last century, particularly from the 1920s to 1980s. From such materials, the representation of cityscapes can be seen and investigated from below, in both a diachronic and synchronic way. Still, the surviving territory of home movies and amateur film production is enormous and has a long way to go to be preserved. The audiovisual sources we can access consist mainly of moving images shot by non-professionals in the private domain for different purposes, previously unpublished and recently digitalised and made available for public use. The film materials I took into account were produced in an urban context by people who basically filmed the same places where they lived, passed through and knew like the back of their hands. As amateurs, they tended to film the objects of their affection. First of all, I should point out that public space has been one of the main settings of family self-representation, and as such, it has often served as the background of home movie making. People in the foreground filmed themselves creating a cinematic memory of their daily experiences, and of civil and religious rites. This category of materials includes portraits of the places that they inhabit or frequent, as well as film reports on public happenings. Cityscapes should then be explored systematically through all of these representations, as well as through the images of filmmakers who would like to portray the city or its specific places with a clearer intention of reporting it on film.

14  Paolo Simoni

The Image of the City If we consider amateur footage shot by inhabitants of a city as their ­recorded gazes reflecting their ways of seeing, feeling and getting a v­ isual perception of the urban space, and if we collect a large amount of amateur film sequences as sources that are exhibiting a common social practice focused on the city environment, then we could simply reaggregate these glimpses as a cinematic geography framed through amateur images. Using a geodatabase to locate the film shots on a digital cartography, it is possible to draw a mental map that represents the use of the camera within any cityscape. This ‘mapping’ applied to archival amateur film material would recall, from a renewed point of view, Kevin Lynch’s classical study on the image of the city, which, according to him, would be determined by its inhabitants’ perception of the urban space, interpreted and read through a set of identifiable physical elements (1960). M ­ ental maps – often distant from the actual urban c­ artography – are derived from the dwellers’ descriptions of the locations of everyday life, collected as primary sources that can then produce a geographic visualisation. Lynch delineates common physical elements and patterns, combinations of which shape the individual’s perception of urban space and formulate urban mental maps. The physical elements are “paths” (streets, walkways, transit lines, canals, railroads), “edges” (boundaries, linear breaks such as shores, railroad cuts, edges of development, walls), “districts” (sections of the city), “nodes” (junctions, mobility hubs) and “landmarks” (buildings, signs, stores, physical elements linked to the urban identity) (Lynch, 1960, pp. 46–48). These five elements are the basis of the concepts of “legibility” – how people understand the l­ayout of a place – and “imageability” – evocation of a strong image in any observer (Lynch, 1960, pp. 9–13), as they facilitate the construction of cognitive maps of the urban environment. Lynch’s theory is a change of perspective in mapping cityscapes and was a stimulus for attempting to reconstruct a cinematic image of the city starting from the gazes of amateur filmmakers: figures moving across the urban space, and in doing so measuring its places with the camera. In short, Lynch’s discourse is crucial in analysing amateur footage, conceiving of a collective gaze made up of many fragments, and employing visual recordings as a reflection of the way people see and live day by day the physical elements of cityscapes.

Amateur Bologna The case study addressed in this essay comes from a survey of the amateur moving images of Bologna, a medium-sized city of fewer than 500,000 inhabitants in Northern Italy. This location was chosen for several reasons, beginning with the availability of a large number of

Memoryscapes  15 private film collections, the archiving, cataloguing and digitisation of which were crucial. The aim of this survey was to map the amateur city, and the ensuing research was based on consulting approximately 150 film collections preserved by Home Movies – Archivio Nazionale del Film di Famiglia. 2 I primarily searched these images for the background and setting of daily life, as well as celebratory moments filmed in public spaces such as squares, parks and streets. Urban spaces easily became the stage for little happenings and rituals, captured by amateur cameras, and in many cases performed and fictionalised for the film device itself and, ultimately, for collecting personal memories (Figure 1.1.1). These spaces are also the setting of political, religious, athletic and playful events filmed by people as personal recordings and testimonies of their being there. Across the various different film materials, I also discovered another perspective: moving images shot by those filming the urban space with a clear intention of capturing the transformations of the cityscape within an independent and non-professional film project. In all the cases, I took into account the figure and the role of the amateur filmmaker – such as the father of the family taking a little camera in his hand or the more technically advanced filmmaker – as “a member of the urban crowd, a participant observer/witness who creates an embodied viewpoint of city life”, as suggested by Julia Hallam (2012, p. 53). In this sense, all the ‘cine-eyes’, all the gazes of the man in the crowd, are useful today as tiles for composing the mosaic of the amateur city. They should make evident and visible how the inhabitants looked at these places and how they lived and self-represented themselves in that urban space. It is just like a patchwork synthesis of visual fragments. Considering Lynch’s paradigm of the image of the city as a map drawn on the collective perception of its citizens, this essay is particularly ­focused on the amateur city of Bologna as filmed by small-gauge filmmakers

Figure 1.1.1  F  rames taken from various home movies collections.

16  Paolo Simoni after the Second World War. Accordingly, the selected corpus begins in the 1950s, a period of a great economic development, during which time the practice of amateur filmmaking – primarily in 8 mm – was increasingly becoming part of social practice up until it reached the borders of another technological age in the early 1980s. Moreover, the decades between 1950 and 1980 also coincide with a period of urban growth in Bologna in which the cityscape was transformed, consumerism increased and there were important changes in the local administration. An overall image of the amateur city resulted from the mapping of amateur film collections: recombined, fragment by fragment, as it was presented in the Cinematic Bologna exhibition (Roberts, 2015). 3 The moving images captured by city residents are usually located in the historic city centre, where the landmarks consist of well-known conspicuous buildings and/or monuments, such as the so-called ‘two towers’ (due torri), Asinelli tower and Garisenda tower, the church of San Petronio and Palazzo d’Accursio, both in the main city square, Piazza Maggiore, or the Fountain of Neptune, another icon of Bologna (Figure 1.1.2). These architectural elements of the cityscape perpetually caught in the gaze of amateur cameras give shape to a specific cinematic geography. Thus, the uplands of the sanctuaries of San Michele in Bosco and San Luca, respectively, mark the visual borders of the south and southwest of the city. On the opposite side, the train station and the central gas station signalled the northern limits of Bologna: they are less visible, but even so, remain present. In the 1950s, the ancient city gates still indicated borders – edges – for filmmakers as physical markers dividing the centre from the outskirts and the ring road boulevard for traffic. In some sequences, the latter appear to be an empty space – seemingly land of nothing – until the explosion of traffic in the early 1960s. After that, the ring road looks like an impassable border of automobiles.

Figure 1.1.2  F  rames taken from various home movies collections.

Memoryscapes  17

Figure 1.1.3  Impressione dei giardini pubblici (Gaetano Carrer, 1949–1950).

Over these decades, the most frequented paths by amateur filmmakers are the main streets that determine Bologna’s historical urban shape: via Rizzoli – via Ugo Bassi and its intersection with via dell’Indipendenza. Some filmmakers were also interested in tram and bus routes, as well as in their nodes: points of departure, arrival and exchange. Particularly crowded – and represented – locations are the football stadium where Bologna FC plays, the racetrack and the main public parks, including Giardini Margherita (Figure 1.1.3) and Montagnola – the latter was traditionally the venue of exhibitions and political happenings, which were later moved to the suburbs, and as a result, less frequently filmed. Other filmmakers represent the district of their residence. Another key piece of the city image was its metamorphosis throughout the 1950s and 1960s, when the filmmakers’ attention was captured by changes in urban planning (e.g. a new ring road that redefined the northern borders of the city), new buildings involving significant architectural work and the transformation of the northern outskirts’ skyline.

A Topographical Cinema: Films as Maps Bologna democratica (1951) by Angelo Marzadori is probably one of the best examples of an amateur film concerned with mapping the urban space. Its images show the post-war renaissance of the city and reflect the engagement of the Municipality led by left-wing parties. Thus, the film displays the gradual refurbishment and maintenance of the streets and developments by facilitating coexistence between pedestrians, bicycles, cars, tramways and buses (Figure 1.1.4); the efficiency of public transport combined with the allotment of people-oriented urban spaces, such as green corners with benches. Marzadori, above all, focuses his

18  Paolo Simoni

Figure 1.1.4 Bologna democratica.

and the viewer’s attention on public transport, showing tram routes – a symbol of a glorious tradition of Bologna’s social development – and buses that are introduced like an authentic innovation of technological and social progress. I would like to draw the attention to the possibility of turning this kind of footage, shot by shot, and even frame by frame, into a device/tool for the topographic visualisation of Bologna’s urban space at the beginning of the 1950s. By using the digitally remediated version of Bologna democratica as a locative media, 58 embodied viewpoints were identified in the geography of the city with the help of old tramway maps and bus routes, as well as by following the paths of the filmmaker shot by shot, via Google Street View. Marzadori seems to want to measure space with the camera in order to demonstrate the capacity of the public transport system to cross the city from east to west and north to south, covering the urban territory. To reinforce his argument, he also filmed some maps of the city. Today, these images have become precious and unique cinematic views that provide different perspectives and perceptions of the urban spaces as they were in the past. The glimpses offered by this film are important pieces for assembling the amateur city: Marzadori’s view of the city is not exhaustive, but it is consistent within the framework of his film project. Nowadays, we could interpret his representation of the urban space as a never-before-seen document of visual archaeology. The  digital version of Bologna democratic can thus be regarded as a keyhole giving access to a time and space that dates back over 65 years, a locative media unforeseen in its extensiveness. Another fundamental topographical filmmaker to trace the cinematic map of the city during the same era is Luciano Osti. From 1953 onwards, for approximately 15 years, Osti filmed Bologna with the explicit aim of collecting moving images related to its ongoing changes. Even if

Memoryscapes  19 Marzadori’s films sometimes show parts of the city centre destroyed by the bombardments of the Second World War, such as gaping holes in the landscape and ancient buildings half-demolished, his view was nevertheless pointed towards the future of Bologna regarding its democratic, political and social advancements. On the contrary, Osti was interested in documenting the shadow line of the reconstruction after the war: the passage from the old to the new cityscape. This is the reason why he took different shots of his places of interest from the same point of view, for example, the corner of a street, time after time, sometimes months or even years later. In Osti’s films, the urban fabric is changing under his cine-eye. He pays particular attention to the area around via Marconi, previously via Roma, not far from the train station, which was one of the major targets of the Allied bombings. During Fascism, via Roma was the location of several architectural interventions later partly destroyed, though a large part of the decayed city centre in its vicinity was not renewed. A series of Osti’s reels on the city’s transformation between 1953 and the mid-1960s are significantly entitled Bologna dei miei tempi: ­Bologna of my time. In these three reels, as well as in other documentary films, Osti included surprising moving images of the period, building an archival corpus that enormously enriches the research on Bologna’s cinematic cityscapes. By using his camera to map the area between via Marconi, via Riva di Reno and via Ugo Bassi, he was able to film the disappearing old water channels before they were covered (since then, the channels flow underground and remain completely hidden, almost forgotten), the construction site of the sports hall, as well as many new residential buildings and roadbeds. Osti also captured buildings that were about to be demolished – like the ‘house’ of the Gioventù italiana del Littorio (GIL) right before the bus station replaced it – possibly because they were the heritage symbols of the past to be eliminated (Figure 1.1.5).

Figure 1.1.5  Bologna dei miei tempi.

20  Paolo Simoni Thus, when viewing Osti’s images, we immediately perceive the ways the face of the city was changing during that crucial period of its history.4 Following Teresa Castro, we may think of the map as a function and not as an object, and of cinema as a tool to map space, which points to an intriguing issue: Discussing the mapping impulse in film […] is therefore not about the (albeit significant or symptomatic) presence of maps in the filmic landscape, but more about the processes that underlie the very conception of images […]. It can be argued that the coupling of eye and instrument that distinguishes cartography’s observation of space is not so distant from the one that determines cinema’s careful coding and scaling of the world. (2010, p. 145) Both Marzadori’s and Osti’s works offer notable examples of mapping impulse in amateur filmmaking. Both filmmakers used 8-mm cameras with the aim of representing the spatial dimensions of the city. Osti even worked on a temporal dimension, periodically returning and filming the same view. They produced films that function as maps, or at least that can be used like maps today. A prime example of mapping impulse can be found in the sequence that Osti filmed from Tramway Number 3 across its route, from one end of the line to the other, in both directions. It was an attempt at capturing the complete view of passing through the urban space. Therefore, each of these topographical films can be read and used as a virtual guide for visiting the places that the filmmakers lived, crossed, represented and somehow transmitted to us.

Orbital Road Film In the spring of 1969, university student Eros Parmeggiani filmed the edges of the cityscape by car. In his 8-mm footage, he travels along ­Bologna’s orbital road, called Tangenziale, which had opened two years before. This road is technically not a real orbital, but a semi-orbital, as it runs from east to west through the north of the city. Parmeggiani made the film with another student, Maria Miniero, his girlfriend, as part of his thesis degree at the faculty of architecture. 5 He argues that the approximately 15-minute-long coloured film was an attempt to read the prominent elements of the landscape, the urban development and the architectural features of the area along the Tangenziale (Figure 1.1.6). From that peculiar view, he then filmed the city centre and the hills, the industrial areas and factories, the agricultural settlements present in the rural area, and historical buildings such as churches and villas, as well as new buildings, especially a skyscraper.

Memoryscapes  21

Figure 1.1.6  Eros Parmeggiani comments its 8-mm sequences (1969). Frame taken from Cinematic Bologna video installation, 2012.

Most of Parmeggiani’s images were taken from a moving car to achieve a visual simulation of travelling: the viewer sees what he saw from the road. After 50 years, the travel he simulated with the camera is not only in space but also in time, crossing an area completely transformed in the meantime. Through this film, we observe that many of the elements that characterise the landscape at the end of the 1960s cannot currently be viewed from the road, such as the Asinelli and Garisenda towers, which are now completely hidden. Curiously, the filmmaker himself said that his inspiration for this footage came precisely from The Image of the City by Kevin Lynch, which reinforces the idea underlying the concept of amateur city (Simoni, 2015). Accordingly, his approach can also be compared to that used by Lynch and other scholars at MIT in The View from the Road (Appleyard, Lynch, & Myer, 1964), a study in which they applied the principles of mental mapping to the analysis of cinematic sequences of landscape views taken while travelling along highways. Parmeggiani’s film is composed of long shots taken from the car along the Tangenziale, intermingled with shots filmed from still camera ­positions, travelling first to the east and then to the west. His aim was to use the camera to locate and identify the northern edges of the city, as the newest borders were traced along the construction of the new road’s axis. Thus, this film is an extremely meaningful visual document, for it reveals the historical setting of the landscape along the Tangenziale, while already disclosing the important effects and transformations of the planned development of the city. The construction of the Tangenziale was an answer for the growing needs and problems of city life, like the dense traffic through the urban centre, that completely changed the form of the city and its borders. In its origin, as can be seen in Parmeggiani’s film, the Tangenziale was planned as a travelling device from where it was possible to see the panorama of Bologna. Nowadays, however, the

22  Paolo Simoni visual experience of driving along this road is completely different due to the new buildings and lateral barriers that obstruct the view. Parmeggiani’s images therefore preserve a city that no longer exists.

Filming the District In addition to filmmakers like Luciano Osti, who used his camera to intentionally document the city’s life and transformations, some home movie collections offer a different take. This is the case of the Calanchi family film collection (Simoni, 2013), which documents a neighbourhood over the course of 30 years. Corrado Calanchi, the father and filmmaker, moved with his family to the San Donato district, a working-­ class area located northeast of the city centre, in the 1950s. This 8-mm film archive constitutes a vivid portrait of that neighbourhood, showing its main transformations as it underwent successive expansions between the 1950s and 1980s (Figure 1.1.7).6 As is usual in home movies, ­Calanchi mainly filmed anniversaries and celebrations, often from the same point of view. Alongside his two children growing up birthday by birthday, we also observe the development of an area that has experienced a major increase since the 1950s. Year after year, decade after decade, the cityscape becomes another protagonist in Calanchi’s films: frames of different ages reveal changein-progress. Take, for example, the view from the window of their apartment on via Vezza. In 1958, we see a factory in the foreground and the city centre with the Asinelli and Garisenda towers sticking out against the distant hills in the background. In 1963, however, part of this cityscape is covered by construction sites, and then in 1970, the residential buildings drastically change the surroundings by completely obscuring the panorama. The view from the San Donato Bridge over the railways serves as another good example, since this place was a usual spot for taking shots of the family’s walks and depicting special events, such as the religious processions of Holy Communion and the Decennale, held every ten years. Between the 1960s and 1980s, we witness the change of

Figure 1.1.7  Frames taken from three different home movies, shot, respectively, in 1958, 1963 and 1970 from the same point of view (Corrado Calanchi Film Collection).

Memoryscapes  23 the cityscape and its subsequent perception: this time, the camera is facing north, towards the periphery, capturing the growth of buildings and, above all, the development of the Fiera District – planned by the ­Japanese architect Kenzo Tange – that gave rise to a new city skyline. The ­Calanchi film collection also depicts another rich testimony of life in a popular neighbourhood: the combination of public and private spaces, its blurred borders. At the time, home movies showed open spaces, streets and courts where the children of the neighbourhood played in groups, passing much of their time without supervision; only sometimes, the affectionate eye of the camera watches them.

Transfigured Landscapes Another fundamental film collection regarding amateur cinema’s take on Bologna cityscape is the work of Mauro Mingardi, a very active filmmaker between the 1960s and 1980s. During that period, Mingardi made around 30 short- and medium-length 8-mm and super8 films, which were presented in several Italian and international festivals, where they won many prizes. Almost all of his fiction films were set in Bologna, most of them in unusual settings of the periphery or neglected parts of the city centre that no one had ever filmed before, like the Manifattura Tabacchi, the big cigarette factory that remained abandoned for a long time before being restored at the end of the 1990s. For this reason, Mingardi’s films have currently become very precious sources for discovering neglected parts of Bologna’s cityscape before their later urban renewal. Apart from turning the real cityscape into a film set, Mingardi also recreated places that belonged to his personal memory, or to the collective memory of the city, in natural settings. This was especially in films that took place during the Belle Époque, wartime and the immediate post-war, when he was a child. He used settings that were only sometimes the original locations of the depicted events. Given that most had been destroyed or had vanished, he reinvented the urban fabric, transfiguring the cityscape in a double sense, that is, by returning to the original places in the present time or finding locations that might somehow ­recall places that no longer existed. Il tempo nel muro (Mauro Mingardi, 1969), for example, was inspired by Edgar Allan Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart (1843), but was set in a working-class environment at the time of cinema’s origins, between factories and channels that, at the beginning of the century, were located in the historic centre of the city. Mingardi found the ‘right’–yet false– film location in another industrial area of Bologna with a similar architecture that spread along the c­ hannel ­Navile, just outside the city (Figure 1.1.8). Thus, we get a double view of the city: the transfigured, reconstructed set of Bologna during the Belle Époque and a unique view of a place not previously filmed.

24  Paolo Simoni

Figure 1.1.8  I l tempo nel muro.

I morti di via Cirene (Mauro Mingardi, 1975), for its part, depicts a series of old stories that occurred just after the war, during the filmmaker’s childhood, in the area where he lived: the street of the title – via Cirene – and its neighbours, right on the other side of the bridge filmed by Calanchi. The film takes the viewer back in time, moving through different parts of the area and recounting stories of violence suspended between chronicle and legend. The main interest of this work partway between documentary, essay and re-enactment is the intensive reflection on the stratification of memory retained by place. The protagonist, a strange alter ego figure of Mingardi, is looking for traces of his memories in the places of his childhood – some will be found and others will not. Once again, while seeing a series of sequences filmed in the mid1970s, we can also glimpse the remains of the previous cityscapes that stood right there.

Conclusion Through the images of amateur filmmakers, it is possible to identify up to three different gazes towards the cityscape: the “militant gaze”, the “archivist gaze” and the “transfiguring gaze” (Simoni, 2018a). The militant gaze is represented here by Angelo Marzadori, who filmed a cityscape full of hope for a better future after the war, exposing his ideology and political and social engagements shot by shot. The archivist gaze, in turn, is defined as a specific strategy of collecting moving images by a ‘man with a movie camera’, like Luciano Osti, who consciously captured the traces of a disappearing city by recording the changes in the cityscape for more than a decade. He aimed to provide documentary evidence rather than offering a nostalgic view of the city. In that sense,

Memoryscapes  25 Osti was the prototype of an archivist: he stored his images and edited them in ‘catalogues’ of streets, damaged buildings, old channels and construction sites. Finally, the transfiguring gaze would be that of Mauro Mingardi, a talented director who filmed his birthplace and other areas of the city through re-enactments of memories of each location. The ­Bologna fictionally recreated by Mingardi is a cine-città, a city shaped by the film device. All these gazes, including Calanchi’s and Parmeggiani’s, are topographical because they tend to map the urban space they are depicting. Nowadays, we can use them to recall and reconstruct the past in many creative ways: as researchers, curators and creators of digital contents and maps, we can develop new visual and narrative paths by rereading the past through assembling archival footage into city symphonies made of poetic film fragments. We can also design installations that give visitors the chance to explore cityscapes of the 20th century from the viewpoint of its inhabitants. We can always incorporate them into more traditional, linear narratives, as documentaries sometimes do, or experiment with more open forms of database cinema (Simoni, 2018b). In our contemporary landscape, we have the opportunity to imagine strategies for studying and using amateur film heritage for urban planning, following the perspective of cinematic urban archaeology, as suggested by François Penz and Andong Lu (2011). One way or another, we should find our own way through the amateur city by editing, publishing and exposing its embodied visual fragments, that is, by exploring the film archive and taking what captures our interest, like digital flâneurs who wander around the city of the past in order to imagine the city of the future.

Notes 1 Some excerpts of this essay update and further develop what I have already published elsewhere (Dusi, Ferretti, & Simoni, 2016; Simoni, 2017, 2018a, 2018b). 2 https://homemovies.it. 3 Bologna, 2012–2013. Clips from Cinematic Bologna video installation: views of the Asinelli tower (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejcKlWCuw4); views of the uplands of San Luca (https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=mgM_tw1SiB8); views of the Giardini Margherita: the lake (https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=7hbl6y4bPGo) and the lions’ cage (https://www.you tube.com/watch?v=dJtfeihy5Dg&t=9s). 4 A short video with glimpses of urban landscapes filmed by Osti and contrasted with today was presented at the meeting Bologna dei miei tempi. Alla scoperta della città inedita filmata in 8mm da Luciano Osti, Archivio Aperto Festival, Urban Center, Bologna 2016: https://youtu.be/7coiXkcTRD0. 5 http://www.cittadegliarchivi.it/pages/getDetail /idI Unit:2/archCode: AV0019. 6 The Calanchi family film collection is accessible at http://www.cittadegliarchivi. it/pages/getTree/sysCodeId:IT-CPA-AV0011-0000001/archCode:AV0011.

26  Paolo Simoni

Works Cited Filmography Calanchi, C. (1954–1990). Archivio audiovisivo di Corrado Calanchi. Carrer, G. (1949–1950). Impressione dei giardini pubblici. Marzadori, A. (1951). Bologna democratica. Mingardi, M. (1969). Il tempo nel muro. Mingardi, M. (1975). I morti di via Cirene. Osti, L. (1950s–1960s). Bologna dei miei tempi. Parmeggiani, E. (1969). Gli insediamenti urbani e agricoli lungo la tangenziale nord di Bologna. Bibliography Appleyard, D., Lynch, K.,& Myer, J.R. (1964). The view of the road, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Castro, T. (2010). Mapping the city through film: From ‘Topophilia’ to ‘Urban Mapscapes’. In R. Koeck & L. Roberts (Eds.), The city and the moving image. Urban projections (pp. 144–155). Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. Dusi, N., Ferretti, I., & Simoni, P. (2016). Play the city. Geografia della “città amatoriale”, teorie, applicazioni e prospettive. Cinergie. Il Cinema e le altri Arti, 10. Retrieved October 27, 2018, from https://cinergie.unibo.it/article/ view/6841 Hallam, J. (2012). Civic visions: Mapping the ‘city’ film 1900–1960. Culture, Theory and Critique, 53(1), 37–58. Lynch, K. (1960). The image of the city, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Penz, F., & Lu, A. (Eds.). (2011). Urban cinematics: Understanding urban phenomena through the moving image. Bristol, UK: Intellect. Roberts, L. (2015). Navigating the ‘archive city’: Digital spatial humanities and archival film practice. Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, 21(1), 100–115. Simoni, P. (2013). Il cinema amatoriale e l’immagine della città. I film 8mm della ­famiglia Calanchi. EReview, 1. Retrieved October 27, 2018, from http://e-review. it/simoni-cinema-amatoriale-immagine-della-citta. doi:10.12977/ereview45 Simoni, P. (2015). Pellicole in transizione: il cinema privato come testo aperto e dispositivo della memoria. Cinergie. Il Cinema e le altri Arti, 8. Retrieved October 27, 2018, from https://cinergie.unibo.it/article/view/6902 Simoni, P. (2017). Alla scoperta della città amatoriale. La mappa di Bologna negli archivi dei film di familia. In C. Jandelli (Ed.), Filmare le arti. Cinema, paesaggio e media digitali (pp. 223–234). Pisa: ETS. ­ rbano. Simoni, P. (2018a). Lost landscapes. Il cinema amatoriale e il paesaggio u Torino: Kaplan. Simoni, P. (2018b). The amateur city: Digital platforms and tools for research and dissemination of films. Representing the Italian urban landscape. The Moving Images, 17(2), 111–117.

1.2 Social Space, Architecture and the Crisis Neo-noir Aesthetics in Contemporary Greek Cinema Anna Poupou Paradoxically, the last decade has been one of the most creative periods for Greek art cinema. Despite the financial and political crises, and the collapse of the system of state subsidies, the cinema that emerged after 2009 was obliged to reinvent itself with innovative ways of production, disturbing representations of a country in crisis and daring modes of narration. The films of the Greek New Wave, made by a young generation of filmmakers, have generated a rich variety of urban images, recording the transformation of the social space and the creation of new architectural and topographical landmarks in this period. The notion of crisis, as the backdrop of the story or the trigger of the plot, can be found directly or indirectly in almost all films of this new wave. However, specific genres such as film noir and the crime film, which were born in historical moments of crisis, seem to be fed and inspired by this conjuncture, by the “rips and tears in the social fabric that can be addressed metaphorically”, which, according to Paul Schrader, a crime film director always looks for (in Hirsch, 1999, p. 2). In this context, some contemporary filmmakers have chosen to re-enact the generic conventions of the neo-noir and the thriller in films that produce hybrid depictions of urban space, combining realism and artificiality while addressing social issues through allegoric or symbolic modes. Despite the variety in terms of style or theme, the films of this generation share many features, such as the use of specific figures of space to comment on the recent history of Greece. We can distinguish three branches stemming out of the Greek New Wave, each one characterised by a dominant recurring figure of space. The most recognisable branch is the one that is called the ‘weird’ wave, expressed by the absurdism, seriality, minimalism and planimetric use of space and motionless camera that can be found in the films of Yorgos Lanthimos, Athina Rachel Tsangari, Elina Psikou and others. The main figure used by these filmmakers is the form of enclosed and isolated spaces – such as houses, ­islands, boats and hotels – with an emphasis on emptiness and silence, the absence of the cityscape and the construction of a social vacuum (Chen, 2017; Papanikolaou, 2014; Poupou, 2017). A second branch is characterised by the aesthetics of social observation in a close manner that aims at

28  Anna Poupou an “immersive” quality (Delorme, 2015, p. 8), originating from the performance and documentary genres. The main spatial figure in the films by Syllas Tzoumerkas, Argyris Papadimitropoulos and Ektoras Lygizos is the street. We often see images of demonstrations, riots and events that transform public spaces into stages, sites of intense participation, ritual and performance, stressing the quality that Henri Lefebvre describes as the performativity of the street (2003, pp. 18–19). The Athenian landmarks appear as stages of conflict (Nikolaidou, 2015, p. 129) and become ‘chronotopes’ in the Bakhtinian sense, “as temporal and spatial indicators fused into one concrete whole”(Bakhtin, 1981, p. 84), as they appear only in times of social unrest within specific narratives. The third branch, which I intend to examine here, includes films that enter into a creative dialogue with the neo-noir and the thriller, producing a dark iconography of the cityscape in crisis, challenging the stereotypes of Athenian imagery while articulating a critical view of Greece’s recent political history. Focusing on loss, decay, unhomeliness, exploitation, blackmail, debt, punishment, revenge and revolt, these films depict the landscape of neo-liberalism and the system of global finance as the space of organised crime and gangster practices. Issues such as unemployment, precarity, xenophobia and the rise of fascism are addressed in these works, regardless of whether they are set in an underworld ­milieu or common everyday environment of the middle class.1 An architectural motif in this group of films is what can be called “the ruins of modernity”(Hell & Schönle, 2010): buildings from the modern era of the 20th century in decay, ruins in their actual or metaphorical sense, expressing a feeling of nostalgia for modernism and industrialisation, for an era of technological progress, optimism, wealth and prosperity. Industrial ­ruins, buildings of public use – such as collective housing ­projects, ­hospitals and prisons – or even places of leisure – amusement parks, hotels, theatres and cinemas – appear on the screen more often after the 2009 crisis, as a re-evaluation of the post-WWII economic boom, the establishment of the social state and the amelioration of the living conditions in both the Western and Eastern developed worlds. By expressing melancholia, irony or nostalgia, the vision of ruins also inevitably leads to a kind of aestheticisation of the decline (Benjamin, 1963, p.  178). ­Ruins from the era of post-war reconstruction and the Athenian modernism from the 1960s, as well as more recent ruins, such as decayed public buildings, deserted leisure spaces and destroyed infrastructure from the 2004 Olympic Games, often appear in the new wave films and introduce the themes of nostalgia, memory and history. My main hypothesis is that generic neo-noir features and the spatial patterns linked to the filmic geography of the neo-noir are used to transcend the direct depiction of the social problems in a narrow national context and give a wider allegorical perspective to these films that can be addressed to an international audience. Before focusing my attention

Social Space, Architecture and the Crisis  29 on the films Stratos (Το Μικρό Ψάρι, Yannis Economidis, 2014) and Wednesday 04.45 (Τετάρτη 04:45, Alexis Alexiou, 2014), two films that construct an elaborate urban geography and make solid references to neo-noir iconography of space, I will discuss the filmic geography in the classic Greek noir of the 1950s and 1960s to establish a relationship from classic noir to neo-noir forms of urban space.

The Athenian Noir: Urban Anxieties and Post-War Modernity The crime film and thriller genres were developed rather late and were not among the most established and dominant genres in Greek film production. However, a small number of popular ‘noirish’ thrillers, police procedural films and crime melodramas appear at the end of the 1950s and 1960s, and form a coherent film cycle that could be considered the Greek version of noir (Dermetzoglou, 2007; Karalis, 2012). 2 A close reading of these films can reveal many of the aesthetic, narrative and thematic features of film noir, while the models can be traced back not only to classic American noir, but also to the French polar of the same period, in the films by Jacques Becker, Henry Georges Clouzot and, a few years later, Jean Pierre Melville. As a belated paradigm of film noir, separated by almost 20 years from the original American films of the 1940s, this production is undoubtedly self-conscious and intertextual, although it still stays within the limits of classical narration. Why does the Greek film noir appear in this period? The answer to this question is found in the transformation of the Athenian urban space. Classic film noir is a product of the modern metropolis: the dense, chaotic and threatening space of the city is a requirement for the ­development of the noir hero and its labyrinthine narration (Naremore, 1998, pp. 287–290; Spicer, 2002, pp. 66–68). After the Second World War and the subsequent civil war that officially ended in 1949, ­Athens – which had none of the above-mentioned noir features – entered a phase of intense reconstruction with massive demolitions of old central districts replaced by modernist buildings and the creation of new residential areas in the centre and the suburbs. A change in the demographics of the capital also occurred, with internal migrations of people from the devastated periphery of the country, who fled to Athens for financial and political reasons. In this period of strong anti-communist persecutions, many people took refuge in Athens as a place of anonymity, in order to hide their activity and ideological identity during the civil war (Poupou, 2007). At the end of this decade, the cityscape, on a social and architectural level, was literally unrecognisable. These rapid and abrupt mutations led to the birth of the ‘Athenian thriller novel’ by the writer and screenwriter Yannis Maris, a kind of narrative that would later be adapted to a film to give rise to the Athenian film noir.

30  Anna Poupou The sentiments of loss, fear and angst caused by modernity occupy a spatial dimension in the Greek version of noir: it is the urban transformation, the trauma caused by the loss of older forms of urbanism and habitat, together with the feelings of awe for the new landmarks and districts and fascination with modern lifestyles – now accessible to larger parts of the population – that lie at the core of the Athenian noir. Contradictory emotions such as fear and anxiety regarding the urban ‘other’, the internal migrant in the process of cultural integration or political dissimulation, as well as reservation and cautiousness from the part of the established bourgeoisie towards the social mobility of rising lower strata that would form the new middle class can also be found in these films. In contrast to classic noir, tensions regarding gender are not central – femme fatales are not really empowered and dangerous, hegemonic masculinities appear more solid than traumatised and under threat – which is not unexpected in the context of a still patriarchal and conservative society. In the Athenian film noir, crime takes place in a middle-class environment, in the wealthy, modern and reconstructed centre of the capital, while traditional historical landmarks of the city are avoided in order to enhance this feeling of disorientation and fear provoked by unrecognisable and unfamiliar spaces. The narration constructs a centripetal space of high-density districts with new modernist buildings, leisure venues, jazz night clubs, theatres and cinemas, while scenes of surveillance take place in the rainy (!) streets of Athens under the neon lights of the nocturnal cityscape. At the same time, one can discern the anxiety that comes from a transition from the centripetal to a centrifugal space, a typical feature of the noir filmic geography that Dimendberg has highlighted (2004), and which is present in these films in the form of non-places (Augé, 1995), such as peripheral newly constructed highways, bridges, parking lots and empty plots without identity that recur especially in the noir of the late 1960s and 1970s. Nevertheless, the trigger for the crime almost always comes from the poor periphery of the country and from the past – from the obscure identities of the occupation and the civil war that cast their shadows on this post-war economic boom, which is symbolised by the reflecting surfaces of the wealthy city centre. The social anxieties and spatial tensions that negotiate the notion of modernity and the urban forms produced by it in ambivalent terms can be found in the heart of the Athenian noir, both in terms of social space and architecture. This trend for noir aesthetics continued in Greek cinema during the 1970s and 1980s, after the decline of the commercial popular cinema and fertilised art cinema. Some of these films could be characterised as retro-noirs or pastiche noir as they stress the self-referentiality to the genre through irony, parody and nostalgia, while others developed distinct styles through hybrid forms between the film noir, the sci-fi, the

Social Space, Architecture and the Crisis  31 social film or the political thriller. 3 This passage from commercial genre cinema to self-referential, post-classical and transgeneric art films also marked the shift from noir to neo-noir aesthetics (Bould, Glitre, & Tuck, 2009; Hirsch, 1999; Keesey, 2010).

Stratos: Centrifugal Spaces and Social Representations I chose to examine two contemporary neo-noir films that propose two totally opposed approaches to dealing with generic references and the representation of the Athenian cityscape. Stratos, by Yannis Economides, is a Mediterranean neo-noir characterised by minimalism, austerity and discreet intertextuality. Contrarily, Wednesday 04:45, by Alexis ­A lexiou, is a post-classical neo-noir characterised by excessive artificiality and generic consciousness, complex narrative strategies and an absurd sense of humour, despite the film’s darkness. Interestingly, even with their differences, at the core of these two films, we can trace a common preoccupation with social issues and an interesting affiliation in the use of architectural and urbanistic elements. Stratos, a coproduction between Greece, Cyprus and Germany, is the fourth feature film by Yannis Economides.4 It premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival and was later distributed by The Match Factory. Previously, this director made a remarkable and disturbing debut with his first feature film Matchbox (Σπιρτόκουτο, Yannis Economides, 2003). At that time, the film had an ambivalent reception from reviewers and distributors, as it was considered too violent and rough, but in the last 15 years, it has gained huge popularity, especially amongst young spectators, and is now considered a classic film of the 2000s and a possible starting point of the Greek New Wave. In fact, regarding its spatial conception, it was the first film of this generation that used the spatial figure of the enclosure – the camera never leaves the family apartment – which was later on developed as one of the most characteristic spatial patterns of this wave. In Stratos, the narration of the film and the construction of the character has reference to the modernist European film noir: the deadpan acting of Vasilis Mourikis, the ceremonial pace of plot, the use of silences and repetitions in speech, the emphasis on masculinity, the sense of a personal moral code of the main hero and the feelings of fatality and betrayal bring to mind films such as The Samurai (Le Samouraï, Jean Pierre Melville, 1967) and Get Carter (Mike Hodges, 1971). In the vein of the Mediterranean neo-noir, which is characterised in both film and literature by a strong hold on realism and observation of the social environment of the southern cityscapes (Broe, 2014, pp. 182–186), Stratos depicts everyday life and spaces with accuracy and naturalism. Filmed in real locations, mostly in natural light in daytime scenes under grey skies, it is closer to the ‘white noir’, neo-noirs set in southern

32  Anna Poupou sun-drenched climates, such as Point Blank (John Boorman, 1967) or Pulp (Mike Hodges, 1972). As many neo-noirs of the 1960s and 1970s that are brightly and uniformly lit (Glitre, 2009, p. 15), the iconography of ‘white noir’ avoids typical features of the classic noir, such as the chiaroscuro, shadows, darkness, reflections or fragmentation of space with recurrent motifs – namely, venetian blinds – and turns to other forms of creating contrast and intensity through colour, composition and the use of modernist architectural patterns and surfaces, beginning with the obsession with glass and concrete in order to signify a “hard, cold and sterile world” (Keesey, 2010, p. 172) and the use of grey and blue naturalistic tones, a palette that can be traced back to Melville’s colour films (Vincendeau, 2009, p. 105). The construction of a cinematic geography is one of the elements of the film that contributes to its naturalistic aesthetics and its social commentaries. The plot is set in an anonymous working-class suburb of Athens: we never see the centre or other areas of the city and never learn the name of this district, which is actually the former Olympic Village. Filmed from a distance, it gives the impression of a collective housing project built in the 1990s, with large empty streets, low population density, sparse buildings, parking lots and empty playgrounds. Ten years after the euphoria and the false prosperity of the 2004 Olympic Games, the infrastructures of the event were transformed into social housing for underprivileged families. Most of the athletic venues or other public buildings remain empty, desolated or destroyed. Economides does not show derelict athletic spaces in ruins; however, the choice of this Olympic Village transformed into a decaying and unwelcoming working-­class district is an ironic reference to a recent, frustrated past. 5 A bench on an empty concrete square with a broken fountain, a dirty pool with green water, destroyed marble and walls with graffiti make up the environment where Stratos usually meets his friends. The loneliness and coldness of this empty concrete cityscape parallel the solitary and inexpressive protagonist while portraying an alienating social environment in decay, not far from the real image of the Athenian suburbs. This isolated suburb is always shot from the ground level, never from a vantage point or aerial view. The only exception is the last scene of the film, which is filmed in a totally vertical shot – possibly with a drone camera – to show the dead body of Stratos in this public square. Infamous cafeterias, canteen trucks, night clubs and diners at the side of the highways complete the fragmented and dispersed cinematic geography that constructs a centrifugal filmic space, a common element in both classic noir and contemporary neo-noir (Dimendberg, 2004; Vincendeau, 2009). The first sequence of Stratos was shot in a bus cemetery, an impressive open space full of old and destroyed public buses and trolleys, another kind of ruin of modernity. These vehicles function as an unexpected sign of the city: thus, the first murder by Stratos takes place inside one of the

Social Space, Architecture and the Crisis  33 yellow Soviet ZiU-9 trolley carriages, which were bought in the 1980s under the government of PASOK (Panhellenic Socialist Movement) and circulated in Athens until their replacement around 2004. The yellow trolley, once an urban landmark and familiar image, and now a nostalgic item, becomes an ironic figure for the decay of the city in recent decades. The next sequence takes place in the Casino at Mount Parnitha. The Mont Parnes Hotel and Casino were inaugurated in 1961 by the Greek National Tourism Organization. This state-owned hotel, with its dynamic ultra-modernist architecture at the top of the mountain, was meant to be the flagship of the tourist industry. For a short period of time, it became the pride of Athenian tourism, a symbol of modernity and Westernisation, an architectural model for Greek hotels (Filippidis, 1984, p. 278) and a usual landmark in the cinema of the 1960s. In the 1990s, after a long period of decay, the hotel closed indefinitely, while the casino was sold to Hyatt Regency in 2003. Nowadays, half of the building is used as a restored casino, while the rest is in a state of ruin. In this sequence, we see Stratos going up to the casino using the funicular: behind the window, we see a glimpse of a panorama of Athenian cityscape in the background. This is the only scene where we see an image of the city as a whole. The director uses these locations from 2004 as a threshold, between the undeveloped and unattained modernity of the 1960s or 1980s and the decayed modernity of 2014. Despite the feeling of alienation, the concept of the ‘neighbourhood’ is present in the narration: everybody knows each other, and in the dialogues, they even mention that some characters went to the same school and grew up together: “This is your neighbourhood, this is where you breathe”, a character says to Stratos. In the end, however, this feeling of belonging turns out to be an illusion for Stratos, as he will end up betrayed by his partners and disappointed by his friends. In many scenes, we see him staring at the window and watching the Makis and Vicky’s apartment in the opposite building. Such scenes reinforce the feeling of the impossibility of a domestic space; the longing for a familiar space that proves to be inaccessible for the male hero is a pattern that we will also find in Wednesday 04.45. Moreover, Stratos is trying to help his friends with practical issues, and he takes care of their neglected child. In many neo-noirs, as early as 1971 in Mike Hodges’s Get Carter, this focus on real or foster paternity and the emphasis on the figure of the child seems to have replaced female characters and the gender focus of the narrative with the motif of the responsibility towards the next generation (Vincendeau, 2009, p. 108). A preoccupation with class identification, manifesting in an ironic confusion between underprivileged people who reject their working-class identity, considering instead that they belong to a middle class, persists as an undercurrent throughout the film.6 When the director was asked in an interview why he presents a marginal environment with lumpen

34  Anna Poupou characters, he disagrees with the characterisation and says that this is not a marginal world, but “a representation of the Greek lower middle class, a little more upwards or downwards, a bit towards the darkness or the light, a little more clean or more dirty…This is Greece, that’s all folks” (Frangoulis, 2014). All of the aforementioned stress the impossibility of the existence of a social space, community, domesticity and class identification: Stratos presents a landscape of decay and isolation that stands as an allegory for the decay of the country. Economides does not depict a state of emergency nor an exceptional situation due to an ephemeral crisis, but shows a vicious cycle of social fractures, job precarity and insecurity, injustice, violence, sexism, immorality and lawlessness, exposing that the crisis has its deep roots in the recent history of Greece.

Wednesday 04:45: The Failure of Athenian Modernism Alexis Alexiou’s first film Tale 52 (Ιστορία 52, 2008), a psychological thriller that participated in many international film festivals, was one of the films that initiated the discussion about the emergence of the new wave. In total contrast with the low-key intensity and minimalism of Tale 52, Wednesday 04:45 plays on exaggeration at all levels, as it draws on the aesthetic and narrative armoury of classic, neo and post-noir. It is characterised by excessive consciousness and intertextuality with references to emblematic American neo-noirs of the 1960s and 1970s, to the distancing techniques and the sense of dark humour and irony found in the films of Quentin Tarantino and David Lynch and to the visual artificiality and aestheticisation of violence found in the Asian ‘extreme’ neo-noir styles of John Woo, Takeshi Kitano and Chan Wook Park (Lee, 2009, p. 119). Intertextual references to the Greek film noir of the 1960s complete the picture, through the use of jazz songs that appeared in popular cinema. The film has a distinct expressionist visual style characterised by nocturnal scenes lit by neon lights – a common feature in contemporary neo-noir (Glitre, 2009) – distortion effects through lighting (flare, artificial colours, contrast between red and green), confusion of focal points and blurred images, unusual angles, fragmentation of space through internal framing and eerie movements of the camera. This imagery is further enhanced by an elaborated soundscape that creates a distinctive “sonic prison” often found in American modernist neonoir (Hanson, 2009; Miklitsch, 2009), with exaggerated isolated sounds that bring to mind Point Blank – the sound of shoes walking a long corridor in the beginning and at the ending of the film is an intentional ­reference – and an engaging soundtrack with popular jazz songs whose lyrics ironically underscore the narration. Classic narrative devices, such as the voiceover and flashback, as well as the narration of the story from the point of view of a protagonist who is already, or is almost dead –e.g.

Social Space, Architecture and the Crisis  35 Double Indemnity (Billy Wilder, 1944), D.O.A. (Rudolph Maté, 1949) and Sunset Boulevard (Billy Wilder, 1950) – reinforce the subjectivity of the main character and impose a reading of the story as a dream or a vision of the dying hero.7 One of the most original features of the film is the uncommon and complex depiction of Athens, with an impressive multiplicity of spaces, locations and landmarks. The film was promoted as a city film, to the extent that maps with the exact filming locations were used in its advertising. The director often stressed in interviews his intention to create an imaginary landscape of a city that plays itself, a city that from the 1960s to today pretends to be something that it is not, just like his hero Stelios, who falsely believed that he belonged to the upper class when he did not, the typical illusion of the nouveau-riche. Alexiou says that his architectural references only show one thing, the failure of Athenian modernism: “as Athens never became a modern western metropolis, in the same way the ambitious dreams of Stelios for a prestigious jazz club were buried under the city’s concrete carcasses” (Chalkou, 2016). One of the strategies of this transformation is the enhanced verticality of the filmic cityscape: Athens is not a vertical city since it does not have skyscrapers and buildings are rarely built higher than six storeys. On the contrary, it is better characterised as featuring horizontal urban sprawl. In this film, however, the use of low and high angles, the tunnels or highway bridges, the panoramic shots from vantage points and mostly the use of a few, bizarre and uncommon high-rise buildings give an elusive impression of verticality that brings to mind American or Asian cityscapes. Verticality accentuates the feeling of a centripetal space: the main character is always on the move, in a radiant itinerary through the city, which finally concludes at the centre of Athens. This longing for a lost centripetal space, a kind of nostalgia for an older form of urbanism that was dominant in the 1960s during the reconstruction of the central districts, as well as the contrast between centrifugal spaces expressed by the recurrent motif of driving on isolated highways, the images of contemporary corporate buildings and the use of peripheral non-spaces intensify a feeling of urban anxiety that is one of the most characteristic features of the Greek classic noir. An unusual example of modernist architecture that appears in Wednesday 04:45 is the St. Georges Mills industrial building, which was constructed in 1929 in the area of the fish market at a pier of Piraeus port, one of the first high-rise buildings in Greece constructed with reinforced concrete (Adamidis, 2014, p. 122). A scene takes place in a derelict tavern outside this building: while in this tavern the TV broadcasts the riots outside the Parliament and the large Christmas Tree in Syntagma Square on fire, the gaze of the camera wanders to the retro posters of the National Tourism Organisation from the 1950s and the T-shirt of the waiter, which features the symbol of the Olympic Games, thereby

36  Anna Poupou producing a rather ironic reference to signs of modernity as a ruin. Some central spaces also appear as ruins: the National Gardens–mentioned as the ‘Royal Gardens’ by an older character, revealing his conservative and possibly royalist ideology – which in the dialogue is characterised as “a dump”, and especially a strange building on Vassilissis Sofias Avenue in downtown Athens. This multistorey construction was built at the end of the 1990s with the purpose of becoming a Village Roadshow multiplex cinema with ten theatres, but the project was never completed and the huge post-industrial building lies unfinished and desolate in one of ­Athens’ most frequented areas. Alexiou sets the final scene of the massacre at its terrace overlooking the Athens Towers, one of the few high-rise modernist buildings of the 1960s. This building, with an interior atrium, corridors and impressive elevators, looks like an imitation of the emblematic Bradbury Building in Los Angeles, which has featured in classic and neo-noirs, from D.O.A. to Blade Runner (Ridley Scott, 1982). In fact, the last scene on the terrace, which unfolds under a heavy artificial rain, brings to mind the finale of Ridley Scot’s neo-noir in a way that interlaces cinematic and architectural references. This ruin of modernity from the 1990s represents nothing more than the condensation of the historical time: after the crisis, all the events, activities and spaces from the pre-Olympic Games period appear as a faraway past. In Wednesday 04.45, the crisis becomes the catalyst that brings all the dysfunctionalities and problems of Greek society to the surface, while direct reference to the 1980s in the dialogue points to the need for a revision of the post-dictatorship era as a source of contemporary problems. In terms of anthropogeography, the film constructs a multicultural and cross-language cityscape: there are main and secondary characters from Albania, Romania, Poland, Congo, Germany and Serbia, while the main hero identifies himself as “possibly Greek”. A concern about racism and social injustice, as well as the representation of the Romanian mafia as a figuration of the international financial credit system, makes the references to the Greek crisis go beyond the national context and suggest the systemic failures of neo-liberalism.8 The passage from a portrayal of an “ordered criminal world, characterised by the nobility of the craft” in the classic film noir towards a multicultural vicious and unscrupulous Eastern European mafia in the neo-noir of the 1990s and 2000s, is, according to Vincendeau, also a characteristic of the French film noir, which stresses the political anxieties of the post-communist era and the landscape of the global economy (2009, p. 106). In the same vein, Lee suggests that contemporary Asian gangster noir explores social issues and questions the relationship between the state and the citizen through the representation of the criminal thug (2009, p. 121). Wednesday 04.45 does not directly show the massive riots of 2010, although images of conflicts, demonstrations and the burning of the Christmas tree outside Parliament do appear as pointers of the crisis on TV screens throughout

Social Space, Architecture and the Crisis  37 the film. References to the crisis also appear in spaces of everyday life: we see collective housing projects from the 1960s in a state of decay, as well as low-cost blocks of flats from the 1970s and 1980s. Alexiou and other filmmakers in this trend explore all the typical features of this once modernist architecture from the recent past: dark apartments with tiny kitchens, mosaic floors, narrow balconies without a view, unwelcoming entrances with under-watered plants and dirty marble stairs. On the walls, we see anti-authoritarian graffiti. A group of primary school kids yell “fuck the police” and throw milk boxes – as if they were Molotov cocktails – at an unfortunate private security officer. An absurd sense of humour comes from street encounters with aggressive Athenians on the verge of a nervous breakdown, as well as from surrealistic details such as the neon sign of a school of Asian martial arts called The Invincible Spartan, likely to appeal to neo-fascists who take comfort in the reference to Greek antiquity. An uncanny indicator of the riots is the thick yellow smog that covers the Athenian streets and gives the cityscape a post-apocalyptic dimension: we hear in the dialogues that this is due to the new Israeli tear gases being used by the police. In combination with the heavy rain that falls throughout most of the scenes, the film depicts a sinister and chemically polluted atmosphere that brings to mind sci-fi movies set in a notso-distant future. Panoramic shots from vantage points avoid emblematic landmarks, such as the Acropolis, and show the Athenian basin as an urban sprawl, that is, as a massive, unreadable, uniform, dense urban area built during the post-war reconstruction, without points of reference and extended without limits towards the suburbs in the years of postmodernity and real estate speculation. Actually, in these shots, the Athenian cityscape as a whole figures as a failed experiment of modernism. As a conclusion, we can note that spatial configurations in post-2009 genre films construct a tight web of recurring motifs that transcend their descriptive and indexical functions and are charged with temporal layers as they combine architectural forms of the past with the here and now of the crisis. Through the uses of space and locations, they call for new readings of the recent social and economic history of the country from the post-war period to today. At the same time, these directors use the generic features of neo-noir to construct artificial and dislocating versions of Athens, expressing wider tensions and anxieties about the landscape of neo-liberalism. Finally, these examples remind us that genre cinema and especially crime genres are not disconnected from social space, since they can combine a historicised gaze with an international scope.

Acknowledgements This study was developed as a part of the European research programme I-Media Cities – Innovative e-Environments for Research on Cities and

38  Anna Poupou the Media, within which the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens and the Greek Film Archive participate. It is the initiative of 17 European film archives, libraries, universities and research institutions to share access to and valorise audiovisual content from their collections for research purposes. I-Media Cities started in 2016 and receives funding from the E.U.’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme. For more information, see https://imediacities.eu/.

Notes 1 Films such as Unfair World (Άδικος Κόσμος, Filippos Tsitos, 2011), Miss Violence (Alexandros Avranas, 2013), Stratos (Το Μικρό Ψάρι, Yannis Economides, 2014), Norway (Νορβηγία, Yannis Veslemes, 2014), Wednesday 04.45 (Τετάρτη 04:45, Alexis Alexiou, 2015) and America Square (Πλατεία Αμερικής, Yannis Sakaridis, 2016) that belong to this branch have all participated in major international film festivals, as have most of the films of the new wave. 2 The most well-known Greek film noirs are The Ogre of Athens (Ο δράκος, Nikos Koundouros, 1956), The Man on the Train (Ο άνθρωπος του τραίνου, Dinos Dimopoulos, 1958), Crime in Kolonaki (Έγκλημα στο Κολωνάκι, Tzanis Aliferis, 1960), Murder Backstage (Έγκλημα στα παρασκήνια, Dinos Katsouridis, 1960), Nightmare (Εφιάλτης, Erikos Andreou, 1962), Kierion (Dimos Theos, 1968) and John the Violent (Iωάννης ο Βίαιος, Tonia Marketaki, 1973), though there are many others. 3 Some of the filmmakers who used generic features in the 1970s and 1980s include Nikos Panayiotopoulos, Nikos Nikolaidis, Dimitris Stavrakas, Nikos Triantafilidis, Stavros Tsiolis, Tasos Psaras, Apostolos Doxiadis and Nikos Grammatikos, among many others. 4 The title in Greek literally means “little fish” (as in the proverb “the big fish eats the little one”). However, it has been distributed worldwide under the title of the main character’s name, Stratos, who is a solitary and introspective middle-aged ex-convict, respected by the milieu of the underworld. He is driven by the will to repay a personal debt to his old protector and friend, for whom he works as a baker by night and as a professional contract killer by day. He is betrayed by his partners in crime, who convince him to finance a spectacular plan, the escape of his protector from prison, only to disappear with Stratos’ money. His only friends are a couple of neighbours, Makis, his sister Vicky and her eight-year-old daughter. Vicky works as a prostitute to repay a loan to the godfather of the local nightclub and sexploitation network. When Stratos learns that Vicky plans to prostitute her daughter to pay back the debt, after an offer made by the mobster, he kills the mobster and his whole family, together with Makis and Vicky, and ensures the safety of the child. The next morning, Stratos is murdered by professional killers in an empty square. 5 Sofia Exarchou has also set her film Park (2016) in the Olympic Village. She uses the decayed athletic venues, such as stadiums, empty pools, administration offices and other buildings, which are literally in a state of ruin as basic locations. 6 Makis is trying to convince Stratos to leave his factory job and return to a more lucrative job at the underworld of the night: “Who are you pretending to be now? A working class hero? A proletarian?” When Stratos says to him that his sister could find a regular job at the same factory he works at in order to stop working as a prostitute, Makis becomes furious and replies

Social Space, Architecture and the Crisis  39 “Vicky working in a factory? And getting the same salary as you do? No way. We want to live with dignity”. 7 Wednesday 04.45 tells the story of Stelios, a wealthy middle-aged owner of a jazz club who lives with his family in a rich suburb of Athens and belongs to a new-rich upper class. However, he owes money to a Romanian money lender, who lent him money from 2004 until the time of the story – winter of 2010 – and who urges him to pay off his debt. He has a short deadline of 32 hours, or else he will lose his jazz club. During this day, we follow the character into a journey through Athens, as he tries to come up with the sum of money he owes. Finally, he admits that it is impossible and accepts that he has to resign his jazz club to the Romanian mobster. At the last moment, just before the signing of the agreement, he blows everything off and the meeting turns into a massacre where everybody dies, including the main character. 8 See also on this topic Fotiou & Fessas (2017).

Works Cited Filmography Alexiou, A. (2008). Tale 52 (Ιστορία 52). Alexiou, A. (2015). Wednesday 04.45 (Τετάρτη 04:45). Aliferis, T. (1960). Crime in Kolonaki (Έγκλημα στο Κολωνάκι). Andreou, E. (1962). Nightmare (Εφιάλτης). Avranas, A. (2013). Miss Violence. Boorman, J. (1967). Point Blank. Dimopoulos, D. (1958). The Man on the Train (Ο άνθρωπος του τραίνου). Economides, Y. (2003). Matchbox (Σπιρτόκουτο). Economides, Y. (2014). Stratos (Το Μικρό Ψάρι). Exarhou, S. (2016). Park. Hodges, M. (1971). Get Carter. Hodges, M. (1972). Pulp. Katsouridis, D. (1960). Murder Backstage (Έγκλημα στα παρασκήνια). Koundouros, N. (1956). The Ogre of Athens (Ο δράκος). Marketaki, T. (1973). John the Violent (Iωάννης ο Βίαιος). Maté, R. (1949). D.O.A. Melville, J.-P. (1967). The Samurai (Le Samouraï). Sakaridis, Y. (2016). America Square (Πλατεία Αμερικής). Scott, R. (1982). Blade Runner. Theos, D. (1968). Kierion (Κιέριον). Tsitos, F. (2011). Unfair World (Άδικος Κόσμος). Veslemes, Y. (2014). Norway (Νορβηγία). Wilder, B. (1944). Double Indemnity. Wilder, B. (1950). Sunset Boulevard. Bibliography Adamidis, L. (2014). Wednesday 04:45. In A. Poupou, E. Sifaki, & A. Nikolaidou (Eds.), Athens: World film locations (pp. 122–123). Bristol, UK & Chicago, IL: Intellect & University of Chicago Press. Augé, M. (1995). Non-places: Introduction to an anthropology of supermodernity. London, UK & New York, NY: Verso Publishing.

40  Anna Poupou Bakhtin, M. (1981). The dialogic imagination. Austin: Texas University Press. Benjamin, W. (2009). The origin of German tragic drama. London, UK & New York, NY: Verso Publishing. Bould, M., Glitre, K. and Tuck, G. (2009) (Eds.), Neo-Noir. London, UK & New York, NY: Wallflower Press. Broe, D. (2014). Class, crime and international film noir. Globalizing Americas dark art. London, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. Chalkou, M. (2016). Η νύχτα, η πόλη και η πτώση: Συνέντευξη με τον Αλέξη Αλεξίου [The Night, the City and the Downfall: Interview with Alexis Alexiou]. Filmicon Blog. Retrieved November 5, 2018, from http://filmicon journal.com/blog/post/49/h-nyxta-h-polikai-h-ptosi Chen, Y. (2017). Σιωπή και εγκλεισμός: τυχαίοι χώροι στον σύγχρονο ελληνικό κινηματογράφο. Παραδείση Μ. & Νικολαϊδου Α. (επιμ.). Από τον πρώιμο στον σύγχρονο ελληνικό κινηματογράφο. Ζητήματα μεθοδολογίας, θεωρίας, ιστορίας. [Silence and enclosure. Any-space-whatever in contemporary Greek cinema. In M. Paradeisi & A. Nikolaidou (Eds.), From early to contemporary Greek cinema: Issues of methodology, history and theory] (pp. 302–321). Athens, Greece: Gutenberg. Delorme, S. (2015, June). L’ogre cannois. Cahiers du Cinéma, 712, 8. Dermetzoglou, A. (2007). In a dark passage: Film noir in Greek cinema. Thessaloniki, Greece: Thessaloniki International Film Festival. Dimendberg, E. (2004). Film noir and the spaces of modernity. Cambridge, MA & London, UK: Harvard University Press. Filippidis, D. (1984). Νεοελληνική αρχιτεκτονική [Modern Greek architecture]. Athens, Greece: Melissa. Fotiou, M., Fessas, N. (2017). Greek neo-noir. Reflecting a narrative of crisis, Filmicon. Journal of Greek Film Studies, 4, Retrieved November 5, 2018, from http://filmiconjournal.com/journal/article/page/55/2017/4/6 Frangoulis, E. (2014). Yannis Economides talks about Stratos. Freecinema.gr. Retrieved November 5, 2018, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0 GtTDcHZ5bA Glitre, K. (2009). Under the neon rainbow: Colour and neo-noir. In M. Bould, K. Glitre, & G. Tuck (Eds.), Neo-noir (pp. 11–27). London, UK & New York, NY: Wallflower Press. Hanson, H. (2009). Paranoia and nostalgia: Sonic motifs and songs in neo-noir. In M. Bould, K. Glitre, & G. Tuck (Eds.), Neo-noir (pp. 44–60). London, UK & New York, NY: Wallflower Press. Hell, J., & Schonle, A. (Eds.). (2010). Ruins of modernity. Durham, UK: Duke University Press. Hirsch, F. (1999). Detours and lost highways. A map of neo-noir. New York, NY: Limelight Editions. Karalis, V. (2012). A history of Greek cinema. London, UK: Bloomsbury. Keesey, D. (2010). Neo-noir: Contemporary film noir from Chinatown to the dark knight. Essex, UK: Kamera Books. Lee, H. (2009). The shadow of outlaws in Asian noir: Hiroshima, Hong Kong and Seoul. In M. Bould, K. Glitre, & G. Tuck (Eds.), Neo-noir (pp. 118–151). London, UK & New York, NY: Wallflower Press. Lefebvre, H. (2003). The urban revolution. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Social Space, Architecture and the Crisis  41 Miklitsch, R. (2009). Audio-noir: Audiovisuality in neo-modernist noir. In M. Bould, K. Glitre, & G. Tuck (Eds.), Neo-noir (pp. 28–43). London, UK & New York, NY: Wallflower Press. Naremore, J. (1998). More than night: Film noir in its contexts. ­B erkeley  & ­California: University of California Press. Nikolaidou, A. (2015). Cinematic Athens 1993–2013. From the city in transition to the city in crisis. In A. Brenas & T. El-Khoury (Dir.), La Ville méditerranéenne au cinéma (pp. 111–125). Paris, France: Orizons. Papanikolaou, D. (2014). Athens is burning. In A. Poupou, E. Sifaki, & A. ­Nikolaidou (Eds.), Athens: World film locations (pp. 28–29). Bristol, UK & Chicago, IL: Intellect & University of Chicago Press. Poupou, A. (2007). Représenter la Reconstruction. Le paysage urbain dans les films grecs de la période 1950–1974. Thèse de Doctorat, Université de la ­Sorbonne Nouvelle – Paris 3. Poupou, A. (2017). Το νέο κύμα του ελληνικού κινηματογράφου: Η περίπτωση του Φίλιππου Τσίτου. Παραδείση Μ. &ΝικολαϊδουΑ. (επιμ.). Από τον πρώιμο στον σύγχρονο ελληνικό κινηματογράφο. Ζητήματα μεθοδολογίας, θεωρίας, ιστορίας. [The new wave of Greek cinema: The case of Filippos Tsitos. In M. Paradeisi & A. Nikolaidou (Eds.), From early to contemporary Greek cinema: Issues of methodology, history and theory] (pp. 283–301). Athens, Greece: Gutenberg. Spicer, A. (2002). Film noir. London, UK & New York, NY: Routledge. Vincendeau, G. (2009). The new lower depths: Paris in French neo-noir cinema. In M. Bould, K. Glitre, & G. Tuck (Eds.), Neo-noir (pp. 103–117). London, UK & New York, NY: Wallflower Press.

Part 2

Architectural Spaces

The cinematic space generated by the camera, which will be further ­discussed in the last part of this volume, is conditioned by the material space built for the camera. Before filming begins, every studio set, as well as many exterior locations are constructed by the art department: streets, houses, rooms; real and fictional places, historic buildings and sci-fi ­settings – in short, any fragmentary structure captured and given purpose by the camera work. Some filmmakers ask their production ­designers for a specific architectural space, while others have to adapt their mise en scène to real locations or pre-existing sets. Either way, film sets and locations are built or selected according to a given architectural sensitivity in order to re-enact or reflect a specific historical time and, most especially, to create and convey a wide range of moods, feelings and viewpoints. So, set design and art direction rely on materiality to fulfil a dramatic and narrative purpose. This section, therefore, will examine the formal processes through which certain architectural elements are imbued with an emotional and conceptual meaning within different cinematic universes of the mid-20th century, from Alfred Hitchcock’s disturbing stairs to the futuristic domestic imagery of the 1950s. Chapter 2.1 establishes a useful typology for identifying and interpreting the architectural space created by staircases in Hitchcock’s films. In this essay, María Novela de Aragón distinguishes up to four different types of this seemingly meaningless everyday element: the enclosed staircase, the platform staircase, the linear staircase and the open staircase. Their variations in shape, size and arrangement give rise to different cinematic spaces, each one provided with a set of specific features carefully chosen to suggest a particular emotion. Accordingly, beyond the symbolic or narrative use of stairs in well-known titles such as Rebecca (Alfred Hitchcock, 1940), Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958) or Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960), Novela de Aragón draws the attention to their architectural nature and their ability to organise space, which ultimately guides the viewer’s gaze and conditions its perception of the film. Most staircases analysed in Chapter 2.1 belong to the domestic realm, the main topic of the next chapter: ‘Stranger than Paradise – Realities of Cinema, Architectural Imageries, circa 1956’. This is the year that

44 Architectural Spaces the three case studies discussed by Francisco Ferreira were introduced to the public – Richard Hamilton’s collage entitled, Just What Is It That Makes Today´s Homes So Different, So Appealing?, Alison and Peter Smithson’s House of the Future and Fred M. Wilcox’s film Forbidden Planet. This coincidence leads Ferreira to interpret the futuristic architectural typologies used in these works, such as the isolated capsule or the enclosed garden, as a symptom of and a reflection on post-war anxieties. The resulting architectural cinematic spaces can thus be regarded as material and expressive elements linked to the overlapping and contradictory cultural discourses of a specific historical period, in which the desire to escape to nature clashes with the tendency to isolation.

2.1 The Architectural Space Generated by Staircases in Alfred Hitchcock’s Films María Novela de Aragón

Filmmakers in all genres have incorporated stairs into their films to confer different feelings and emotions, beginning with Alfred Hitchcock. The presence of stairs in his films is a subject that has already been extensively discussed from a narrative perspective, as well as for its symbolic use. However, are all stairs in Hitchcock’s films the same? Did he care to establish differences between different types to achieve different effects? This essay intends to answer these and other questions, focusing on the space generated by stairs as an architectural element in some of Hitchcock’s best-known works. Canadian scholar Dan Babineau discussed the use of stairs in cinema in his master’s thesis, in which he included a specific chapter devoted to Alfred Hitchcock (2003, pp. 121–159). In that text, he suggests that daily architectural elements must fulfil certain conditions to be imbued with symbolism and narrative weight: basically, their presence must be recurrent and associated with key moments in the narrative. The shape of the stairs and their position within the frame are also particularly ­important. Thus, after a detailed analysis, it is possible to distinguish four categories representing different types of stairs in Hitchcock’s films. To discuss their location within the composition, the space they ­generate and whether or not they serve their purpose, two examples will be ­provided in each of the following sections. The first category, identified as ‘the enclosed staircase’, will be exemplified with the films Blackmail (1929) and Vertigo (1958), in which there is a staircase encased in a well-defined space that Hitchcock uses to convey a similar vertigo effect. The second category is ‘the platform staircase’, which appears in films such as Rebecca (1940) or Suspicion (1941). In these settings, stairways are an intrinsic part of the composition and do not present close and well-defined physical limits, but rather allow a fluidity and visual connection between the different spaces in which the action takes place, in addition to serving as a platform to control what happens in them. Other kinds of more common stairs should not be overlooked. In this regard, the third category addresses ‘the linear staircase’: simple and single-stranded, it is present both in the Newton’s house in Shadow of a Doubt (1943) and in the interior

46  María Novela de Aragón of the Bates mansion, where Detective Arbogast would meet his death in Psycho (1960). Finally, the fourth category offers a sharp contrast to the previous ones, since it focuses on ‘the open staircase’, an element characterised by lacking immediate physical limits that also appears in Rebecca and Psycho. The study of this typology aims to draw attention to the different spaces that an architectural element as versatile as stairs is able to generate, as well as to reflect on the purposes they can specifically serve in a film.

The Enclosed Staircase Vertigo: The Impossible Ascent Vertigo, in Hitchcock’s homonymous film, is not only a physical condition, but a metaphor for Scottie’s passionate love for Madeleine. The spiral, according to Spanish architects José Manuel García Roig and Carlos Martí Aris, is the geometric shape that best describes the rarefied mental climate in which the characters move (2008, pp. 67–73). This form appears recurrently in the film, beginning with the bell tower stairs of the mission San Juan Bautista in San Francisco, where the most exciting sequence takes place (Figure 2.1.1). There, Scottie, a retired police officer, tries to overcome his vertigo in order to climb to the top of the tower and prevent Madeleine from being thrown into the void. However, he will not be able to beat his fear of heights and will see the woman’s body fall through a window. The original tower staircase was smaller and less impressive than the one shown in the film. As Steven Jacobs explains in The Wrong House: The Architecture of Alfred Hitchcock, the British filmmaker preferred to shoot in the studio whenever possible: “known for his use of meaningful objects and with symbolic load, Hitchcock also favoured the use of sets because they interpret and punctuate the narrative” (2007, p. 21). In this way, by building a higher version in the studio, he was able to better control the possibilities offered by this enclosed staircase and thus reinforce the sensation of claustrophobia and its sought effect: vertigo. The resulting space is a four-section staircase that forms a helicoid. Since it has to comprise the entire height of the belfry, it requires considerable time to be climbed. Even if the character would have not suffered from dizziness, his ascent would always be prolonged and unfriendly. However, the stretches between the landing strips are short enough –six steps– to allow for an ascent with a slight cadence. The helical arrangement of the sections gives the impression of an interminable route, which is also emphasised through a dolly zoom effect, with which Hitchcock got the ladder to look even longer, thus increasing the audience’s sensation of vertigo. The space of the staircase is therefore limited in its perimeter by the four vertical planes of the walls and the horizontal planes of the roof

Staircases in Hitchcock’s Films  47

Figure 2.1.1  T  he enclosed staircase (© María Novela de Aragón).

and floor. In addition, as it occupies the entire volume of the narrow bell tower, the feeling of claustrophobia also increases. This enclosed and narrow space, along with the morphology of a staircase that closes on itself, favours the decisive action that triggers a vertigo attack in anyone who suffers from this condition: the invitation to lean over the railing and look into the stairwell. In doing so, Scottie is paralysed. The viewer, thanks to the compensated zoom, shares his panic. Blackmail: The Continuous Descent Hitchcock already used an enclosed staircase 30 years before Vertigo, in Blackmail. In this film, Alice, a cheerful and carefree girl, is convinced by an artist to visit his studio on the top floor of a London house. To get up there, they use a staircase that is only shown twice in the film:

48  María Novela de Aragón when they climb up together, their ascent is followed by a lateral shot of the ladder that further emphasises its slope; and when Alice goes down quickly and stealthily after murdering the artist – who intended to abuse her – the falling sensation is extraordinarily intense. As in Vertigo, this is also a helicoidal staircase, but it only consists of two sections per floor. It presents, however, a singularity that is not marked in Vertigo: a railing with a continuous handrail that leads the viewer’s gaze to slide directly to the end of the stairs. Moreover, the steps of the ladder are longer than those of Vertigo – ten steps can be counted – and serve two purposes. On the one hand, the morphology of these stairs causes the ascent of the characters to the studio to be slow, since they have to take several steps between each section. This painful ascent seems to suggest that it would have been better not to climb the stairs. On the other hand, the urge to look towards the stairwell is repeated: that way, Alice makes sure that there is no one in sight before embarking on her quick descent. The high-angle shot showing the escape staircase causes a slight sensation of vertigo while accompanying Alice’s rapid descent. The visual field generated by these stairs is similar to that of Vertigo: a space defined by four vertical planes and two horizontal planes. However, as the geometric shape of the stairwell is not a square but a rectangle, the impression is that this space is larger than the staircase of Vertigo; so, it loses some strength and drama. Still, since these ladders are only shown in this sequence – they will not appear again, not even when the detectives are looking for evidence at the crime scene – there is no doubt that Hitchcock used them to generate tension and cause anguish.

The Platform Staircase Suspicion: The Eternal Vigilance The main character in Suspicion, the young Lina McLaid law, a member of a wealthy family, is seduced by the irresistible – and seemingly ­formal– Johnnie Aysgarth, who will convince her to marry him. Upon their marriage, they move into an enormous Neo-Georgian house, which is presumably situated in Wickstead, England. This architectural style is characterised by a careful and representative front, while the rest of the building is simpler and even rustic (Jacobs, 2007, p. 198). This setting seems to fit perfectly with the game of appearances at the heart of the plot: Lina, who is tremendously in love, begins to suspect that Johnnie might be planning to murder her to get her money. Hitchcock always tries to offer an establishing shot to locate the viewer within the setting. “Surprisingly, in Suspicion, the spectator’s first view of the house is not a general outline of the exterior”, Jacobs has written, “but a view of the curved central staircase” (2007, p. 200) (Figure 2.1.2).

Staircases in Hitchcock’s Films  49

Figure 2.1.2  T he platform staircase (© María Novela de Aragón).

This decision clearly points out that the staircase will play a particularly relevant role in the film, especially in the sequence in which Lina waits in the bedroom while Johnnie slowly climbs the long staircase with a glass of milk that she fears may be poisoned: as Johnnie approaches the camera, the glass of milk stops being an everyday object and becomes a potential threat. This transformation takes place precisely on the staircase, which works here as a transitional space between two symbolic levels, as Dennis Zirnite has explained: “the ground floor, the realm of everyday life, where everything seems to be good; and the top floor, the territory of evil and macabre” (1986, pp. 2–21). The interest of the staircase goes beyond its symbolism inasmuch as Hitchcock turns it into a spatial reference to guide the audience within the plot. Its long and curved structure descends directly into the lobby, creating a large space that organises the rest of the spaces in the house. In fact, since the stairs are completely open to the lobby – they are barely separated by a simple railing – the limits of this space are quite diffused: it seems that the lobby and the stairs form a whole, in a sort of fluid and indefinite space. From there, the audience can easily perceive and understand the distribution of the different settings in which the action takes

50  María Novela de Aragón place. On the ground floor, the hall leads directly to the living room, the dining room and the studio. On the top floor, the stairs end on a small platform that provides access to the two bedrooms. This central position conveys an impression of control over the space of fiction, given that all the places in which the story will unfold can be observed from different points of the staircase. Hitchcock will use this type of staircase with a similar spatial function in later films, such as Spellbound (1945) or ­Notorious (1946). It should be noted that a similar spatial structure appeared at the beginning of the film in the McLaidlaw House, Lina’s parents’ mansion, when she left without permission to marry Johnnie. In that sequence, instead of being curved, the staircase is formed by two sections perpendicular to each other. This shape gives a more solid appearance and consequently reduces the fluidity of space and the sense of control, which might have helped Lina leave without being seen. Rebecca: The Terrible Descent When we talk about Rebecca, we talk about Manderley, Maxim de ­Winter’s impressive mansion – almost a castle – of the purest V ­ ictorian style. “In a sense the picture is the story of a house”, Hitchcock c­ onfessed to Truffaut in their long and well-known interview; “the house was one of the three characters of the picture” (1966, p. 131). Its ­irregular and complex floor plan generates a spatially confusing building (­Jacobs, 2007, pp.  176–193). Unlike what happened in the Aysgarth House, Manderley’s scale and character prevent us from understanding it in its entirety from a single space. Nevertheless, the viewer can get a pretty good idea of the general distribution of the spaces in which the action takes place when the large lobby that houses the lordly staircase appears. The mansion is organised from the entrance hall. The stairs, again, preside over this space. This time, however, the stairway is formed by a first single section in line with the axis of the entrance, which is divided into two other sections after the first landing, each one leading to a wing of the house. The effect achieved by these stairs is similar to that of Suspicion: by opening to a large space – the lobby – and being limited to one side only by a railing – and not by an opaque and continuous vertical plane – they give the impression that it is a unique space where everything flows and stays connected. Again, this type of stair case serves to control the entire space, but also to be controlled, an undesired effect that will be the bane of the new Mrs. de Winter. Deceived by the wicked housekeeper, she will go down to a party wearing the dress of the late Rebecca, the first Mrs. de Winter, believing that this outfit will make her husband happy. The audience knows of the deception and is aware that the effect achieved will be just the opposite. To increase the agony, the camera follows the heroine in her slow descent down the stairs through that open, unobstructed, fluid

Staircases in Hitchcock’s Films  51 space in which she is unprotected, knowing that everyone can see her as she descends. Under these circumstances, the viewer cannot but feel a blend of pity and helplessness towards the character, since it is obvious that, once on the stairs, there is no way to hide.

The Linear Staircase Shadow of a Doubt: Confrontation on the Stairs Linear staircases are quite common in single-family dwellings, especially in British and North American suburbs. In Shadow of a Doubt, the Newton family home is a medium-sized house located in Santa Rosa, California, that is intended to reflect the American middle-class lifestyle. Charlie, a bored teenager who looks for something to spark her life, lives there. Uncle Charlie’s arrival seems to liven things up, but it also brings a serious problem: he turns out to be a murderer of wealthy widows. The staircase is right in front of the entrance door. Its long section connects, once again, the ordinary world of the ground level with the sphere of the evil in the upper level (Zirnite, 1986, pp. 2–21). Unlike the platform staircase, and although the space of these staircases is not strictly defined by a continuous vertical plane on one of its sides, the linear ladder no longer pours into a large lobby, but into a much smaller space: a narrow space in one of its directions and elongated in the other, that is, a clearly linear space that can only be traversed in one direction, thereby reinforcing the idea of transition between levels (Figure 2.1.3). Furthermore, it

Figure 2.1.3  T he linear staircase (© María Novela de Aragón).

52  María Novela de Aragón also enhances the notion of confrontation between ­opposing elements, ­ ncle ­Charlie, at the top of the as can be seen in the sequence in which U staircase, looks at young Charlie, at its foot, on the threshold of the house, framed by the doorway. Their exchange of glances makes clear that the uncle knows that his niece has discovered his crime, and that there will be no way to convince her otherwise. The tension between the characters is favoured by the narrow and linear space that separates them. There is no escape. Psycho: How to Be on the Villain’s Side The Bates mansion also has a long, linear and single-section staircase that goes up from the small entrance hall on the ground level, to the rooms where Norman and – supposedly – his mother sleep on the upper level. When the camera ascends the stairs, showing the ground level from the first floor, the space generated conveys an overwhelming feeling, as if the person climbing the stairs was trapped. This is precisely what ­Detective Arbogast’s facial expression suggests when he ventures upstairs with the intention of unravelling the mystery of Marion’s disappearance. Arbogast begins his ascent with some doubts, and when he arrives at the top, he is surprised by a female figure that stabs him ­mercilessly. Hitchcock filmed this specific moment from a high-angle shot, followed by a close-up of Arbogast’s wounded face from the point of view of the aggressor as he falls down the stairs. Through these framing and editing choices, Hitchcock is able to introduce an elaborate ­cornering feeling into a unidirectional space. There is also another linear staircase placed on the same vertical axis that descends from the main level to the basement, where Norman devotes himself to his peculiar hobby: taxidermy. Descending this staircase is also a frightening experience, in which the fear of an unknown threat is reinforced by the feeling of claustrophobia induced by the marked vertical limits and the horizontal plane of the ceiling. Down there, the space is, at the least, ominous and suffocating.

The Open Staircase Psycho: The Ascent to the Macabre Psycho also includes a prime example of an open staircase, a type of space that is not limited by any plane beyond the frame itself: the large, stone stairs connecting the modest roadside motel with the sinister Bates mansion (Figure 2.1.4). They are divided into two sections, separated by a generous landing: thus, if the way up to the mansion begins with a certain apprehension, the landing invites one to stop and think twice before

Staircases in Hitchcock’s Films  53

Figure 2.1.4  T  he open staircase (© María Novela de Aragón).

resuming the ascent. To complicate things even more, the stretches are quite long – ten or twelve steps – with a high slope that slows down the ascent, making it terribly unfriendly. In this way, the seemingly harmless stairs acquire a remarkable symbolism: they become an appendage of the house, a terrifying entrance and a long and inclined path towards evil. The only character that crosses them quickly is Norman, the real cause of the terror that emanates from the mansion. If these stairs were shorter, they would lose their slenderness and ­appear more solid. This architectural nuance, along with the fact that the house is never shown from a great distance, is the reason why the open space around the staircase seems strangely oppressive. Other stairs with a lower slope would make the setting look more horizontal, in contrast to the verticality of the mansion on the hill. Moreover, although the staircase space is not clearly limited by any facing or railing, it continues to be somehow conditioned by the path marked by the steps. One way or another, there are always limits in space: once on these stairs, no one can get out of them. Rebecca: The Descent to the Unknown Another example of an open staircase appears in Rebecca: the one that descends from the garden of Manderley to the beach, where the key to discovering what happened to the first Mrs. de Winter is hidden. This

54  María Novela de Aragón time, the stairs run from the house to the seashore, from the surface to the underneath layer and from the conscious to the unconscious level. They are almost the opposite of those appearing in Psycho: in this case, the horizontality of the mansion will be offset by the verticality of the stairs going down to the beach. Nevertheless, their useful space is also restricted: despite the lack of well-defined limits, they force anyone who uses them to follow their path due to the high slope of the terrain, just like a linear staircase. Since there is no other boundary than that of the camera frame, the viewer experiences a feeling of restlessness and lack of shelter: something unexpected awaits down there.

Conclusions This brief tour through some of the best-known staircases in Alfred Hitchcock’s films has sought to analyse the types of spaces they generate and the feelings they produce. Already in Blackmail, Hichtcock plays with the claustrophobic space of an enclosed staircase. In ­Vertigo, this space lengthens and narrows with a specific camera effect that ­enhances and conveys an unbearable sensation of vertigo. On the contrary, the platform staircases located in the entrance hall of the mansions in ­Gothic-romance films, such as Suspicion or Rebecca, give rise to a wide panoptic space from which it is possible to see and control any action that takes place in the house. The linear staircase, in turn, is used by Hitchcock to create limited and unidirectional spaces that favour the opposition of ideas and characters, as happens in Shadow of a Doubt and Psycho, as well as spaces from which the characters, once they have entered, cannot escape. Finally, the diffuse space generated by the open staircase allows the British filmmaker to alter the viewer’s perception and thus convey a wide variety of feelings, ranging from sorrow – ­Psycho – to helplessness – Rebecca. Every staircase is therefore much more than a mere setting in Hitchcock’s films: it is a symbol, a mood, a clue, a warning, a stage and, in short, a carefully crafted architectural space where anything can happen.

Works Cited Filmography Hitchcock, A. (1929). Blackmail. Hitchcock, A. (1940). Rebecca. Hitchcock, A. (1941). Suspicion. Hitchcock, A. (1943). Shadow of a Doubt. Hitchcock, A. (1945). Spellbound. Hitchcock, A. (1946). Notorious. Hitchcock, A. (1958). Vertigo. Hitchcock, A. (1960). Psycho.

Staircases in Hitchcock’s Films  55 Bibliography Babineau, D. (2003). Stairs in cinema: A formal and thematic investigation (Master’s Thesis in Cinematographic Studies). Montreal, QC: University of Concordia. García Roig, M., & Martí Aris, C. (2008). La arquitectura del cine. Estudios sobre Dreyer, Hitchcock, Ford y Ozu. Barcelona, Spain: FundaciónCaja de Arquitectos. Jacobs, S. (2007). The wrong house: The architecture of Alfred Hitchcock. ­Rotterdam, Netherlands: 010 Publishers. Truffaut, F. (1966). Hitchcock/Truffaut. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster. Zirnite, D. (1986, Spring). Hitchcock, on the level: The heights of spatial ­tension. Film Criticism, 10(3), 2–21.

2.2 Stranger than Paradise – Realities of Cinema, Architectural Imageries, Circa 1956 Francisco Ferreira

In the aftermath of the Second World War, the proposals and thoughts on architecture would once again move towards a hopeful – although careful – insight over the modern imagery. Still sustained by ideals of systematisation, standardisation, rationalisation and progress, such proposals and thoughts would, nevertheless, also correspond to a critique of modernist orthodoxy, to the exaltation of the subjective, to an idea of conflict and, consequently, to an architectural configuration of such feelings. The rise of a subject who not only recognises but also allocates to the conception of space a communication meaning – rather than a formal one – would become a major influence on the way designers interpret the built environment, thus leading to the fragmentation of a macro perception and to a repositioning of the principles and purposes of architectural intervention. This, in turn, would lead to a reduction of scale, which would naturally emphasise the importance of individual space and of one’s habitat, but such a reduction would also bare the idea of a globalised way of life, thoroughly connected, extensible and infrastructured. Modernism always progressed in the exact proportion to which it configured itself as a movement of crisis. In this sense, we may assume that to be modern is always to promote a fractured path, while holding hope that the fracture will eventually become a home and that it may be circumscribed, not only theoretically, but also ­historiographically – i.e. temporally. After the ‘first machine age’, modern architecture found itself at crossroads: from the debris of two world wars, the modernist horizon would reappear as composed by disparate fragments, which would simultaneously encompass symbolical views of the vernacular, emotional bets on the present and hedonistic wishes for the future. This means that what distances the first modern age from the one that succeeds the Second World War is that within the latter, modernism acknowledges and surrenders itself to an external temporal condition, no longer imposing itself, in a positivistic way, as time itself. Such an acknowledgement would bring to the fore the realisation that reality is built upon discontinuities, thus transforming the modernist imagery into an interspersed ideology, now closer to the circumstance of the

Realities of Cinema, Architectural Imageries  57 intimate, individual desire. This would lead to a repositioning of the modern towards the making of reality, from an inward, autonomous and abstract-based condition, to one of openness and interaction with the idea of circumstance, sustained in an operative critique of everyday life. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, the artistic and architectural avant-gardes would thus engage on a reassessment of their creative processes. They did so by incorporating an idea of daily life charged with epistemological relevance and nourished by fewer scholarly cultural references – more popular, above all more ‘pop’ – and an ambiguous political context, swaying between a post-war fading optimism, the growing scepticism resulting from the nuclear escalade and a fascination towards the imageries created by the increasing research and news on space travel. This reassessment would inevitably address the act of inhabiting  – ­understood now as an experience instead of a destiny – through formulations of its configurations and its territorial and cultural positioning, in a process of rediscovery of its new ethos. The future was being intensely imagined from a present tainted by the idea of permanent change and mobility together with a sense of wonder brought up by the promises of new technologies, mainly as a means for the globalisation of the human condition. Architectural principles would inevitably feel the effects of these ­assumptions, particularly those that traditionally characterised domestic space, which, from here on, would come to incorporate in its ­formulation ­– traditionally, a formulation of intimacy – a deduction of the act of inhabiting as both a creative and critical process. Such a formulation ­ rovocation – would thus engage in a generic inquiry – more often into a p ­rejecting the condition of being a mere response or specific proposition, as happened within the first age of modernism. This meant that form, no longer unscathed in following function, would become in itself a procedural figure, transforming the process of its conception and design into a system of thought and, above all, into an instrument for an ­exchange between the architectural act, technology and the characterisation of territory. This is why the domestic building would grow closer to the body – as a multifunctional complex structure – not just an object of ­mediation between man and environment anymore, but rather an ­artificial extension for the manipulation of said environment. This environmental and global awareness would overcome the character of contemporary domestic space with a reinforcement of its introspection, leading its architectural pathos into a paradox. We may find this paradox perfectly encapsulated in 1956, through proposals such as The House of the Future, created for The Daily Mail’s Ideal Home Exhibition by architects Alison and Peter Smithson, as well as Richard Hamilton’s ‘This is Tomorrow’ exhibition collage entitled, Just What Is It That Makes Today’s Homes So Different, So Appealing? or Fred Wilcox’s film Forbidden Planet. In all these cultural productions, there

58  Francisco Ferreira is a kind of predicament for a ‘civilisational’ reassertion, in which the architecture of the home and its narratives seem to play an important and relevant part. In fact, in these proposals, the conceptions of the ‘house’ seem to concentrate its main efforts towards the transformation of intimate space into a sort of enclosed total environment, an existential enclave of Edenic qualities, to be located anywhere or nowhere. Just What Is It That Makes Today’s Homes So Different, So Appealing? In Richard Hamilton’s collage title for Group Two’s poster at the ‘This is Tomorrow’ exhibition, the question ‘Just What Is It That Makes Today’s Homes So Different So Appealing?’ may be understood, if read rhetorically, as both a statement and a proposal. It can be read as a statement in that it immediately declares that, in fact, ‘today’s homes’ are already different and appealing. It can be read as a proposal because the image appears to be presenting a kind of atmosphere, which is understood to effectively make a home ‘different’ and ‘appealing’. So, there is a twofold significance to Hamilton’s collage: it seems to recognise ‘today’s homes’ as already different and appealing (in which it becomes a kind of portrait), while at the same time, it also synthesises and reveals what may produce such an effect (in which it projects a new image of what a ‘home’ could, effectively, become). Although produced to be included in the exhibition’s catalogue, it was not part of the exhibit (Robbins, 1990, p. 69) and was subsequently used as a poster. Its creation, which only took a single morning, followed a guide list of ‘things’ that Hamilton wanted to represent: “Man, Woman, Humanity, History, Food, Newspaper, Cinema, TV, Telephone, Comics (picture information), Words (textual information), Tape recording (aural information), Cars, Domestic Appliances, Space” (Stonard, 2007, p. 613). 1 It is worth noting that Hamilton explained a specific purpose for the comics, words and tape recording, respectively, highlighting the issues of pictorial, textual and aural perception. In this sense, such items/ issues are included in the image conception, so as to produce an emphasis on the sensorial quality of the space depicted. And although constructed over a perspectival representation of a common living room – an advertisement image for the Armstrong Royal Floors taken from a June 1955 issue of the Ladies’ Home Journal was the basis for Just what is it…? (Stonard, 2007, p. 615) – Hamilton’s collage may better be read as a flat image in which an ambiguous figure and ground play establishes a feeling of simultaneity, rather than sequence. From the point of view of optical projection, Just what is it…? holds several inaccuracies, leading us to understand in it not an intention to objectively represent space, but a will to subjectively conceive it. This means that the scene depicted in Just what is it…? is not primarily

Realities of Cinema, Architectural Imageries  59 defined through geometry, but through the interplay of two major situations, which Hamilton patched alongside or over each other. Although we are led to understand the collage as a domestic scene with a twist of pop indulgence thrown at it, a particularly striking result is the juxtaposition of such a scene together with a glimpse of an aerial view of planet Earth that occupies the upper space of the image where before a ceiling composed of painted wooden beams existed. Although occupying the major part of the image, the staging of the domestic scene is clearly on par with the density and subsequent presence of the planet. The portion, taken from A Hundred Mile High Portrait of Earth – from a double-page feature published in Life magazine on 5 September 1955 (Stonard, 2007, pp. 615–616) – is actually turned upside down from its original orientation, thus assuming a relative position towards the image of the room. In this sense, it does not work as an image patched onto the ceiling surface, but as an independent figure, one that actually places the domestic scene within a cosmic scale. The room thus holds a dimensional flexibility, which, together with the presence of the hovering planet above it, establishes an extensible but inclusive spatial bias. The narrow black – or negative – space which mediates the image of the planet with that of the interior of the room is but a portion of a continuous background that, while holding both objects, is consequently determined by their presence and contour. Both room and planet are figures that share an equivalent importance and presence within the composition and are as complementary to each other as they are improbable in the way as such a complementarity is depicted. Just what is it…? is an image representing the overlapping status of the universal and the particular through a simultaneous interplay of the senses: the extension and depth of cosmic space resonate inside the room scene and articulate with its domestic atmosphere. Just what is it…? may then be thought of as a spatial phenomenal ‘construction’, one that dislocates the geographical context of the original image, in that the domestic interior becomes the interior of a space capsule either in orbit or departing from Earth. In doing so, it is simultaneously evoking the idea of a new civilisational beginning, represented through the relaxed and proud pose of the two naked figures who, as original Man and Woman – Richard Hamilton referred to these characters as Adam and Eve (Stonard, 2007, p. 618) – inhabit this new environment as if it contained the whole of humanity’s cultural and historical futures.

House of the Future Commissioned to be a part of the ‘60 Years On’ section of the Daily Mail Jubilee Display, which was an integral part of the Daily Mail Ideal Home Exhibition, the House of the Future, designed by architects

60  Francisco Ferreira Alison and Peter Smithson, projected a mere 25 years into the future, for, as was stated by its authors, “this period is likely to produce as many revolutionary changes as the past one hundred years” (Alison & Peter Smithson quoted in Colomina, 2007, pp. 215–216). Similar to the artefacts on the accompanying displays focusing on the space programme, the House of the Future presented itself, first and foremost, as an image to be consumed: not being a real prototype for the modern house but a fictional realisation of an imagery deeply influenced by both the space age cultural context and the anguished atmosphere evolving around the nuclear threat, this house – displayed as a human scale model – would enunciate itself as a territory. Not only did it establish a limit, preventing any immediate or literal connection with its surroundings, it actually built itself as an autonomous compact and enclosed object. It was, in this sense, a domestic space conceived as a last resort for survival, overlapping an act of appropriation with one of defence. As a way to metaphorically charge such a strange architectural ­apparatus, the Smithsons gave specific instructions to the exhibition organisers to include on the inside of the house, “a book, to lie open at a space man plate, on one of the chairs, and a snap of someone on MARS to be placed in a silver frame in a compartment on the dressing room” (Colomina, 2007, p. 214). Adding to these references, the Smithsons also requested an underwater film, like The Silent World (Le monde du silence, Jacques-Yves Cousteau & Louis Malle, 1956), to “be shown on the back projection TV, to run longer than it would take a person to complete a circuit of the house” (Alison & Peter Smithson quoted in ­Colomina, 2007, p. 228). In this way, the H.O.F. also “becomes a submarine, moving underwater with the TV built into the wall as a porthole, and the gasket joints running across every surface preventing any leaks” (­Colomina, 2007, p. 228). Although having been described by the Smithsons as being “designed to build up into a dense mass” (Alison & Peter Smithson, 1994, p. 115), the H.O.F., Colomina states, “was likewise a science-­fiction vehicle. Even what was playing on TV ­reinforced the sense of a moving space cut out from the terrestrial world” (2007, p. 214). In the issue of 12 March 1956, the Daily Mail newspaper presented a description of the House of the Future, as told by two special visitors, the siblings Barbara and Hugh Clift, who were just nine and seven years old, respectively. Beginning the article – written by Patricia Keighran, to whom presumably the siblings had described their views on the house – a title read: “The Clift children see a house of magic which will welcome them as grown-ups” (1956, p. 3). There are two images accompanying the article: the first shows a mid-close documentary portrait of the Clift children, holding hands, standing on top of the elevator living room table and looking up to the camera as they themselves explain

Realities of Cinema, Architectural Imageries  61 [w]ell we went into the living-room of the House of the Future and it was weird, and we felt a bit lost, especially when someone said we were standing on the table. The table turned out to be great fun. It comes out of the floor when you need it. (Keighran, 1956, p. 3) The second image is much more elaborate: while the upper point of view is maintained, a wider view of the living room is depicted – one that shows a glimpse of an interior garden – with a couple of make believe inhabitants – apparently called Anne and Peter. Juxtaposed to the picture, a series of comic-like labels identifies every item in view, including the fact that the characters are wearing all nylon clothes. The labels mainly describe the gadgetry quality of the objects: among others, there is a “trolley with warmed compartment and infrared griller”, “air-­conditioning controls and a loud-speaking telephone which records message” or a “sunken self-rising bath” (Keighran, 1956, p. 3). Similar to Hamilton’s home of today, the House of the Future was depicted as a contained environment full of objects. Accompanying the Daily Mail article on the Clifts’ visit, an exclamation that we may attribute to either the children or the inhabitants themselves mediates the two pictures and states the fantastic allure of the space: “Look! We’re in Wonderland” (Keighran, 1956, p. 3). The paradoxical glamour emanating from the staged interior of this house thus becomes a re-enactment of a beginning, a new beginning. For, as if it were a theatrical production, actors were hired, clothes ­designed and scenes choreographed, so that those visiting the house – a visit limited to a peripheral elevated path – could have a glimpse of the daily atmosphere and experience of such an environment, an atmosphere that was further enhanced with the presence of the enigmatic interior garden, created by the architects as a direct evocation of the biblical Eden. Peter Smithson addresses a 1,400 German painting entitled The Garden of Paradise as one of the “conscious cribs” of the House of the Future (Colomina, 2000, p. 24). This conscious use of such imagery, as stated by Smithson, thus puts upon this house – pragmatically designed to be a technological standardised device – a specific significance and purpose, as it becomes a means of reconstructing a very particular mythological moment, transformed into a spatial experience, which aims at preceding any sort of technological knowledge or existential anxiety. Forbidden Planet Forbidden Planet, a 1956 film directed by Fred Wilcox and produced by MGM, delved into the idea of space travel and the discovery of new civilisations and technological capabilities. It did so in a way in which technology was to be seen, in its most fundamental reason of being, as

62  Francisco Ferreira a human, natural factor. Presented as a big production by the studios, Forbidden Planet adapted William Shakespeare’s The Tempest (1611) and aimed at overcoming the success of previous science fiction films. The film starts with the arrival of a search party from Earth to planet Altair IV, attempting to find out what happened to a previous scientific exploration group who had mysteriously disappeared. In a scan previous to their descent upon the estranged planet, Lieutenant Jerry Farman ­declares: “I may be missing some kind of individual structure, but there are no cities, ports, roads, bridges, damns… there is no sign of civilisation!” In fact, Lieutenant Jerry Farman was missing the presence of a house: the home of Morbius, a scientist from the previous group, and Altaira, his native-born daughter. Shaped like a flying saucer – which, interestingly, is also the shape of the Earth’s spaceship, a choice of design that we believe acknowledges the alien condition of the human species in the planet – the house of Dr.  Morbius and Altaira is the only built structure on the planet. The ‘residence’, 2 although located in a desolated, wild and sterile landscape, is paradoxically surrounded by an unexpected and luxurious ­garden. Unlike the House of the Future, it is the garden that encloses the ­domestic territory, thus isolating it from the menacing exterior scenery. Nevertheless, and almost as wishing to go against this close and rather kind landscape, the interior of the house is carved into a rock, producing a rather austere and cavernous feeling. During the first part of the film, while the premises of the plot are unfolding, we are lead to observe the characters’ interactions with the house: space is continuous between its interior and the garden, its foundational and original character reinforced with the presence of wild animals (such as dears, a tiger and a monkey), hanging out peacefully with each other, but also with the house inhabitants, especially with Dr. Morbius’ daughter Altaira, whose appalling innocence subliminally emphasises the will to create a pure and domesticated territory. Akin to the Smithsons’ House of the Future, but also to Hamilton’s Today House, Altair IV’s residence is not only ‘different’ or ‘appealing’ because of its form and technological infrastructure, but mainly for its qualities as a mechanism for survival, defined as an idealised total environment. As with the House of the Future, Morbius and Altaira’s house is conceived as a safe place in an imaginary world, a docile place encased within a dreadful atmosphere originating in the demise of the remaining members of the scientific campaign at the hands of a strange “planetary force, a terrible, incomprehensible and dark force”, as put by Dr. Morbius himself. To prevent further attacks from such a force, which we are allowed to observe as the film progresses in its destructive manifestations towards any sort of matter, Dr. Morbius demonstrates a defensive system to his visitors, which, from a single movement of the hand over

Realities of Cinema, Architectural Imageries  63 a photovoltaic cell, allows the house to become completely and quickly enclosed, thus literally becoming an armoured fortress. Stationed nearby, the Earth’s ship commanded by skipper J. J. ­Adams adopts a similar defensive attitude: a perimeter is set around it, along which an electrical fence reinforces the ship’s sealed surface. Here, as in the House of the Future, “the latest technologies are used to ­establish a sense of security” (Colomina, 2007, p. 228). In fact, e­ nding the first e­ ncounter between the Earth’s spaceship crew members and Dr. ­Morbius, the latter insists on warning commander Adams about the perils of staying on the planet. To reinforce his point, he reveals the place where the dead crew members of his own party are buried: a graveyard, well within the house’s visual range, is sighted by both, establishing an ­uncanny transition between the garden and the wild landscape surrounding it. The Eden-like setting, then, while representing a place of quietude and purity, still exists within an area of impending disaster and holds the memory of death. Throughout the film, we end up learning that Altair IV has a nuclear core with an almost unlimited power that feeds a fully functional technological centre, once pertaining to an incredibly advanced civilisation, the Krell. Such spaces are, in turn, connected to the house by bunkered underground corridors. Such a power, we will also learn, is the same that, upon contact with the mind, unleashes its darkest fears as ghostly electrical monsters that attack anything it subconsciously feels as representing a menace. Thus, the domestic armoured house of Altair IV – half-spaceship, half-cave – becomes both a territory of defence and the womb of a subliminal anxiety on gaining control over the unknown. The film ends with Morbius unable to resist the uncontrolled fury of his own mind, which turned out to be the unconscious origin of the ‘planetary force’, a consequence of his previous interactions with the Krell’s technology – one “capable of harnessing the collective power of thought, sending it anywhere in the universe they chose in any shape or form they wished” (Hollings, 2008, p. 177). Marvelling at such an achievement, Dr. Ostrow, one of the Earth’s visiting crew members to the planet, wonders: “a civilisation without instrumentality!” As a cinematic device, the house of Dr. Morbius and Altaira is treated rather bluntly, just on par with the rest of the film’s décor. Entirely shot on set, the house – together with its bunkered huge underground – and Earth’s spaceship are the only structures to stand out from the painted backgrounds. Their main purpose is, nevertheless, not one of constructing believable settings in which to contextualise the narrative, but to present themselves as a substantial part of such narrative. In this sense, the film does not substantially try to be credible with the places it presents in the sense that we, as spectators, should actually feel as watching a story set on another planet, but unfolds as if we were watching the unravelling

64  Francisco Ferreira of a play, in which the sets become characters in their own right, as a discourse transformed into topoi. Apart from some other minor scenes, the film sets its main action between the place where Earth’s spaceship landed – its presence always central to each scene – and Dr. Morbius and Altaira’s house, where the story actually comes into being: it is through the interaction of the characters themselves, and with this strange domestic environment, that the pace of the film gains momentum. The ulterior spaces underneath the house lead both characters and viewers to discover the underground world of the Krell, which, contrary to the flattened feel of the rest of the film, becomes a space with depth and scale. The camera hovers over it in the sequence of its revelation as a whole, making quite difficult to identify the presence of the characters that explore it. In doing so, the film amplifies the fundamentals of representation and the architectural ability to create powerful and operative images. Such images, which are more than mere bi-dimensional illustrations, appear to us as simulacra, as something that does not exist outside the realm of their own representation, thus configuring themselves as an actual experience. Similar to the enactment that was held at the House of the Future – one that was not only a performance for the exhibition, but a fundamental part of the fictional narrative contained in the concept and imagery of the house, and thus of architecture – the set design structures in Forbidden Planet – within the scope and ‘reality’ of their being as film, thus as cinema – become a means to establish space (place) and time (sequence) not as frame, but as subjects of an ever going path onto the discovery and representation of the unknown.

Stranger than Paradise In Modern Architecture’s first machine age conceptions, interior space established a direct connection with its surroundings. In its more radical realisations, the curtain wall enclosure aimed at positioning ‘Man’, always and continuously, within a broader physical and visual context. In Toward an Architecture, Le Corbusier would state that “the outside is always an inside” (2007, p. 224), thus establishing a structural liaison between the exterior and the interior that framed a sort of inversion between more canonical definitions of place and architecture. Writing from a point of view that enhances the power of vision over any other of Man’s senses, Le Corbusier’s statement – prior to any other ­proposition – implies the exterior as matter for the interior, thus reinforcing the ­character of the site as an operative instrument for the organisation of any ­architectural intervention. The examples discussed earlier, conceived within a context of ­revision of the early modern architectural assumptions and in a moment of cultural and social reactions to the war’s devastation, together with

Realities of Cinema, Architectural Imageries  65 a growing insecurity towards the nuclear menace, seem to cut away from some of the most established modernist considerations, transforming the space of the interior into an absolute environment. The built-in TV showing underwater landscapes in the Smithson’s House of the Future is, in this sense, the equivalent to both the upper view and the presence of planet Earth in Hamilton’s Today House collage, and to the surrounding desert of Dr. Morbius and Altaira’s residence in Forbidden Planet. Each one of these images, to which each one of the architectural structures opposes, determines a connection based on a confrontation with each one of the inner spaces. Consequently, from the point of view that conceives each one of these places, to be inside means to inhabit a subjective desire for the exterior that, at the same time, is feared. In this sense, each one of these houses may be interpreted not only as a projection in time, but above all as a sort of spatial interjection. They are exquisite domestic environments that – “Look! We’re in Wonderland” – ­encapsulate paradoxical and strange dimensions, scales and existential routines: they act as small breaches in the space-time continuum, abnormal and fragmented architectural and cultural events that, nevertheless, are able to encapsulate the whole of the cosmos.

Notes 1 According to Stonard, The list is reprinted in R. Hamilton: Collected Works (1953–1982), London, 1982, p. 24. There is no copy of this list in ­Hamilton’s archive. 2 As it is called by Robbie, the Robot, the house’s all-in-one butler, maid and appliance, who would make a curious but enthusiastic appearance on the ‘This is Tomorrow’ exhibition.

Works Cited Filmography Cousteau, J.-Y., & Malle, L. (1956). The Silent World (Le monde du silence). Wilcox, F. M. (1956). Forbidden Planet. Bibliography Colomina, B. (2000). Friends of the future: A conversation with Peter Smithson. October, Vol. 94, (pp. 3–30). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Colomina, B. (2007). Domesticity at War. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Hamilton, R. (1982). Collected works (1953–1982). London, UK: Thames and Hudson Ltd. Hollings, K. (2008). Welcome to Mars: Fantasies of science in the American Century 1947–1959. London, UK: Strange Attractor Press. Keighran, P. (1956, March 12). The Clift children see a house of magic which will welcome them as grown-ups. Daily Mail, p. 3.

66  Francisco Ferreira Le Corbusier. (2007). Toward an Architecture. Los Angeles, CA: Getty ­Research Institute. Robbins, D. (Ed.). (1990). The Independent Group: Postwar Britain and the Aesthetics of Plenty. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Smithson, A., & Smithson, P. (1994). Changing the art of inhabitation. London, UK: Artemis. Stonard, J.-P. (2007). Pop in the age of boom: Richard Hamilton’s “Just What Is It That Makes Today’s Homes So Different, So Appealing?” The Burlington Magazine, 149(CXLIX), 607–620.

Part 3

Genre Spaces

Film genre is an autonomous system of text categorisation: the process of genre specification is developed throughout the film’s life cycle as an industrially created business product, that is, throughout its production, marketing and consumption stages, the latter comprising all reception practices. This formulaic systematisation is the result of processes of standardisation and product differentiation implemented by the studio system and perpetuated by the industry at large. Hence, genre films are coded, predetermined, informed by the social–historical contexts of each film’s production period and designed according to audience expectations. Nonetheless, a film’s intertextual and intermedial nature resists generic conventions, which, in turn, operates, more or less concurrently, towards the author’s worldview. Despite building on repetition and norm, by reworking and transforming them, genre films’ discourses are able to critically address contemporaneity. Conventions bring forward the familiar while adding variance of cultural, social, political and conceptual relevancies to that mainstream discourse. Under these circumstances, a genre approach to cinematic space allows one to map normative, prescriptive territories within an already systematised, even if controversial, film corpus. By inference, it pinpoints the marginal, excluded spaces of a macro diegetic universe, enabling one to identify the hegemonic powers’ agency, as well as the tensions and conflicts it generates. The three chapters included in this part expose environmental, social and cultural discourses, the first of which is encoded in contemporary sci-fi – specifically, American disaster films – the other two in classic film noir. ‘Empire of Catalandia: Science Fiction as the Cinematic Space of the Anthropocene’ (Chapter 3.1), ‘The Urban and the Domestic: Spaces of American Film Noir’ (Chapter 3.2) and ‘Film Noir and the Folding of America: A Reading of Out of the Past (1947) and Impact (1949)’ (Chapter 3.3) examine dystopian, nightmarish landscape and cityscape experiences upon which human fears, anxieties and neurosis are projected. Spaces are, in these essays, structural elements understood as part of a critical cultural discourse operating within two genres whose visual style works as a world-creating force. Consequently, space is handled and examined as tangible territories where characters interact, as

68  Genre Spaces well as the outcome of their spatial practices: space, in this sense, is regarded as a social construct. In that way, the three chapters proceed to decode these genre films’ diegetic space, taking into consideration the capitalist, historical moment in which they have been produced. In Chapter 3.1, Maurizia Natali acknowledges Sci-Fi’s drive to interpret contemporary history by stating that American disaster films provide an allegory of the capitalist Anthropocene, in which the idea of the end of the world is projected in dystopian futures. The term Anthropocene, coined by Nobel Prize chemist Paul Crutzen in 2002, describes the ongoing geological age in which the whole of life on Earth depends on the human footprint’s catastrophic impact. Natali argues that American Sci-Fi cinema is the best interpreter of the Anthropocene’s ecological situation. Its dystopian societies, climate disasters, alien attacks and extraterrestrial lines of flight transfigure political contradictions in what she calls ‘Catalandia’, the land of catastrophes. With extraterrestrial paradises and apocalyptic wars, Roland Emmerich, James Cameron and other filmmakers seem to stage the capitalist Anthropocene, first as a r­ uinous Polemo(s)cene, and then as a spectacular Cinema(s)cene, as ­Natali puts it. In Chapter 3.2, Sérgio Dias Branco explores the urban and domestic spaces at the core of film noir. The American territorial expansion and the shift from the centripetal forms of small cities to the centrifugal growth of megacities between the 1940s and 1950s converted this national territory into a space of connected dispersion. The historical context of this genre is here considered largely as the real as well as the imaginary universe in which their characters live. By discussing Double Indemnity (1944) and Gilda (1946), among other classic noirs, Branco develops an archaeology of the genre understood as an account of American spatial culture and, simultaneously, an imagination of it. What emerges is a sociology of this cinema through the linking of various times and places with the darkness and restlessness of a nightmare – from the urban spread to the home space. Finally, in Chapter 3.3, Jeffrey Childs presents the ways in which the noir’s dominant spaces are articulated with other spaces, leading each to project a particular representation of America, bound up with a dialectic of anonymity and visibility. This tension enables the movement between classic noir’s spatial dimensions, such as the city and the small town. Starting with Gilles Deleuze’s concept of the fold, Childs reflects on film noir’s doubling of America as a symbolic space through a comparative analysis of Jacques Tourneur’s Out of the Past (1947) and Arthur ­Lubin’s Impact (1949). The uncanny similarities between these two films suggest an overdetermined convergence (and divergence) of the genre’s relationship to its other space, its ‘other’ America. Though referenced repeatedly in noir, this other America is, in the films of Tourneur and Lubin, projected in specific and overlapping forms, thus providing an occasion for an analysis of this space in (and out of) film noir.

3.1 Empire of Catalandia Science Fiction as the Cinematic Space of the Anthropocene Maurizia Natali A dystopian world has been in the making for decades in the American Science Fiction (SF) cinema, with catastrophic films that uncannily parallel the crises and the troubles of the planet. In this essay, I will call this world the Empire of Catalandia. It is not the first time that SF translates, and even interprets, contemporary history, particularly that of the US: we could come back to the age of Cold War and the nuclear anxiety interpreted by SF nightmares and monsters. Recently, events such as the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York, US ‘shock and awe’ wars for oil, the 2008 financial crisis or the growing climate emergency have induced cultural and political analysts to use terms commonly employed for SF dystopias, such as trauma, shock, apocalyptic changes, post-humanity and looming extinction. After the Obama years, the unexpected election of Donald Trump embodied a new suspenseful, dangerous era. The moody tweeter, climate change denier, anti-immigrant sympathiser of white supremacists and world tyrants, promoter of dirt energy (and other plights), soon declared his intention to ‘make America great again’, an ambiguous formula that could translate into a risky ­imitation of those SF fictional dystopias. On this political background, SF enduring success is not just a story of spectacular attractions and digital special effects. The Hollywood genre is once more the US’s unhappy consciousness, updating its allegorical fictions about the manifest destiny of the Empire within the new global crises. Recent SF films stage environmental disasters and extinction scenarios – deluges, hurricanes, volcanoes – or daring interplanetary adventures far from terrestrial cities in ruins, waste lands, solitary survivors and wild fighters. Just think of the beasts and zombies back in New York in I Am Legend (Francis Lawrence, 2007), or the same city transformed in ruinous canyons in Oblivion (Joseph Kosinski, 2013), or the ravaged Earth of Children of Men (Alfonso Cuarón, 2006) and The Road (John Hillcoat, 2009), or the geo-engineered climate crisis in Geostorm (Dean Devlin, 2017), but recall also the solitary woman astronaut among spaceships detritus in Gravity (Alfonso Cuarón, 2013), or the experimental traveller on Mars in The Martian (Ridley Scott, 2015), and the women’s wild bunch in the neoprimitive Mad Max: Fury Road (George Miller, 2015), or the young Katniss versus the dictatorship in Hunger Games (Gary Ross, 2012),

70  Maurizia Natali the four women exploring the monstrous zone in Annihilation (Alex ­ arland, 2018) and, of course, Wonder Woman (Patty Jenkins, 2017) G back and forth from the First World War to today, and many others. No longer considered as an alienating diversion for anxious masses, SF insists with its prophetic, apocalyptic worldview and war ­scenarios, which influences minds and feelings worldwide as an ideological weapon of mass “destruction and reconstruction” (Klein, 2007, p.  482). Like the pervasive pesticide DDT that Rachel Carson (1994), the mother of modern environmentalism, denounced in 1962, SF catastrophic sublime has ‘leaked’ into the global culture of our post-­ecological planet. However, SF is not the only mediatic power to speak a doomsday’s language. Most daily news broadcasts or publications are about “information, crisis, catastrophe”, terms Mary Ann Doane (2001) has used to define our hyper-mediated age. Our screens offer daily images of wars, terrorists or gun-users’ attacks, as well as refugee crises, p ­ overty, ecological disasters or accelerating climate change effects. In such a panorama, SF offers more global alien attacks and extraterrestrial frontiers. Thinking of SF anthropological role in staging fictional disasters, we are reminded of Walter Benjamin and his Angel of History, who contemplates the ruins of the centuries: “Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe” (Benjamin, 1968, p. 257). During the 20th century, this Angel had the eyes of cinema, a cinema that both recorded and reinvented the ruins of our history. And if Benjamin’s Angel, blown away by the winds of that tragic history, is turned towards the past and cannot see the future, SF cinematic accumulation of ruins both speaks of what may come and interprets our suspenseful present. ­Despite – or perhaps because of – its simplistic plots and ideological commonplaces, SF “critical or uncritical” dystopias (Tanner Mirrlees, 2015, p. 10) ­represent and allegorise the catastrophic biopolitical s­ cenarios of our age, recently renamed the Anthropocene.

New Machines in the Garden: SF Shocks Economy In the last lines of The Machine in the Garden, Leo Marx wrote: “The machine’s sudden entrance into the garden presents a problem that ultimately belongs not to art but to politics” (1964, p. 365). He was describing how in 19th-century landscape painting, a puffing train suddenly traverses the quiet New England vistas or goes to the West, bringing settlers to the Frontier and genocides to the Natives. In our century, SF “war machines” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1986) have invaded the global ­mediascape with movies, videogames, websites, fan clubs, toys, etc., and, more than before, we need to interpret SF’s biopolitics and ecology of space and time. While catastrophic images – real or fictitious – ­permeate our mental environment, we must ask: what space can we maintain in

Empire of Catalandia  71 our minds for such interpretations? The mutations in human attention, memory and ultimately freedom have been imputed to communication technologies, economic crises and wars, but the contemporary sea change is especially related to the increasingly invasive moving images flowing 24/7 from billions of computer and television screens. In such a ­hyper-mediated oikos, the SF genre is the dream – and nightmare – ­factory at work in what Bruno Latour has called “the world wide lab” of our present planet (Latour 2003a). In the 1930s, for modern director Sergei Eisenstein, film montage was meant to provoke a new dialectical thinking, and the strongest political emotions for revolutionary masses (1998). Similarly, for ­Walter ­B enjamin, film was the new art of the shock for distracted viewers (1968). More recently, the postmodernist Gilles Deleuze (1989) ­described cinema as made of cognitive shocks, sensorial intensities and mental ­automatisms, all making us feel and think the world in ­cinematic ways (1989). ­Jonathan Beller has argued that our “attention economy” is ­promoted by the capitalist “cinematic mode of production” ­recreating conscious and unconscious minds (2006). Thus, as infinite micro-­ecological events, moving images deeply reconfigure our oikos: we cannot even imagine what our local-global environment may become without the ‘supplement’ of cinema. SF’s catastrophic Empire of Catalandia becomes the emotional screen of futuristic projections and prophetic ­visions. We so often proclaim, ‘This is like Science Fiction!’ In this age, SF has ­become the ­allegorical language of our terrestrial history. While audience consume apocalyptic narratives, environmental critics and political militants need to treat SF as an anthropological tool. In the 1950s and 1960s, during the Cold War, communist paranoia, nuclear war anxiety and technocratic scenarios, our ecological footprint was growing exponentially, preparing the pick of our climate crisis. In those decades, the Empire of Catalandia produced films with ugly aliens and monsters, post-atomic landscapes and sinister mutations. When Stanley Kubrick made Doctor Strangelove (1964), a film about nuclear madness, and his transhumanist 2001, A Space Odyssey (1968), he transformed SF into the art for/of the Anthropocene. From the 1970s to today, during the postmodern reshaping of world economies, governances and technocultures, SF has given us star wars, terminators and replicants, and new dystopias like Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (1982) and the Wachowski’s The Matrix (1999), but also more extensive alien attacks and waste lands, new scientists, presidents and astronauts. These super- and post-human fantasies renew the popular function of SF as an ideological interface between imagination and science, nature and technology, life and death, real politics and deep history, ancient mythology and pop culture. Besides, who can deny the ambiguous pleasures and shock and awe these sublime catastrophes and transhumanist heroes give to (many of) us?

72  Maurizia Natali SF’s biopolitical matter is as urgent to interpret today as it was in 1963, when Susan Sontag wrote her seminal essay ‘The Imagination of Disaster’, in which she stated that SF is an “aesthetic of destruction” with “primitive gratifications”, which catastrophic modern history makes more credible (1966, p. 44). In SF, she writes, war, science and technology appear as “the great unifier” encompassing the “unremitting banality and inconceivable terror” (Sontag, 1966, p.  47) of our “age of extremity” (Sontag, 1966, p. 42). And SF happy endings make normal what is “psychologically unbearable”, inculcating a “strange apathy” towards what “is too close to our reality” to be believed (Sontag, 1966, p. 42). Since the 1960s, new catastrophes and epochal crises have augmented the uncanny attraction of the SF repertoire. Recently, the environmental and climate crises have become the protagonist of new dystopias. Writing about SF films on climate change and planetary disasters, E. Ann Kaplan argues that these fictions cathartically address the anxious feelings of viewers who, used to alarming news, can compare fictional doomsdays with what they know or fear (2016). Like Sontag, Kaplan argues that SF still reworks collective states of mind by fully exploiting the century-old collective power of moving images.

Empire of Catalandia, from Anthropocene to Cinemacene The Empire of Catalandia is the Land of Eco-Catastrophes, the Archive of Traumatic Waste Lands, the Atlas of Sublime Apocalypses, a fictional universe that allegorises but also interprets what scientists and philosophers now discuss under the term ‘Anthropocene’, the geological age of anthropogenic climate change and collateral Earth-sized plights. In 2000, the Noble-Prize-winning chemist Paul J. Crutzen – who previously studied the ozone effect, global warming and the nuclear ­winter – ­proposed the new term Anthropocene to define our geological age, which for him ended the previous Holocene two centuries ago. On Crutzen’s account, during the past two centuries, the global, irreversible effects of human economy and consumerist society have become a macro-­geological agent, starting with James Watt’s invention of the steam engine in 1784 and the first industrial revolution in the UK. Some scientists propose pushing the Anthropocene further back, to the beginning of agriculture, c. 8000 years ago, while others have proposed advancing it to the 1940s and 1950s, the nuclear age (Bonneuil, 2015). After the damages of the industrial revolution, other catastrophic events followed, such as the ongoing use of fossil fuels, the invention of plastic and chemical pesticides, deadly nuclear experiments and the ­accumulation of huge amount of trash – all contributing to animal extinctions, ocean, Earth and air pollution, melting glaciers and poles, new illnesses, etc. ­Moreover, other terms have been proposed for the Anthropocene. Jason W. Moore promotes the term

Empire of Catalandia  73 Capitalocene and argues that the climate crisis reveals the deadly – and doomed – capitalist relationship to “the web of life” (2015). T. J. Demos adds colonialism, imperialism and globalisation to define the Capitalocene (2015). Donna Haraway argues that Capitalocene’s violence against nature is a continuation of patriarchal domination, since ecocide goes always with genocide (2015). But why it is important to include SF in this debate? As the Anthropocene was building up steam over the past two centuries, in the cultural sphere, new media (photography, cinema, television, web, etc.), new means of transport (train, car, plane, etc.) and new weapons (chemical, nuclear, etc.) were also reshaping the human relationship to the oikos. Now, as the Anthropocene enters its seemingly most dangerous phase, cinema too, perhaps the most powerful interpreter of modernity, has entered the theoretical debate on the new age. For example, Selmin Kara uses the term “Anthropocenema” as the “becoming-cinematic of the Anthropocene imaginary” (2016). She quotes films like The Tree of Life (Terrence Malick, 2011), Melancholia (Lars von Trier, 2011) and Gravity (Alfonso Cuarón, 2013), concerning feelings of extinction, death and loss, and also revealing cinema’s anxiety for its own finitude within the digital revolution. In similar terms, in his article ‘Anthropo{mise en s} cene’, the political theorist McKenzie Wark argues that Cinema is “the art of Anthropocene, even more than about it”. For him, SF always deals with “geopolitical reality”, and we should listen to “what cinema has to say about ground” rather than figure, environment rather than action (2014). Before cinema, the term ‘ground’, as used in ‘foreground’ and ‘background’, was central in the history of landscape art, which movies remediated and enhanced. Now that flows of images on screen build the terrestrial ‘ground’ of the Anthropocene daily, we could also call this age the ‘Cinemacene’. From the Italian Renaissance to the 19th century, artists practised art as the mirror of nature, but after the birth of photography and cinema, films took the place of all previous arts as a new fragmented mirror of nature and history. Billions of pictures and moving images now reflect and reformat our oikos, revealing and interpreting its anthropogenic mutations. They also record the effects of new c­ atastrophic wars and war machines against entire populations and c­ ountries, for which the Anthropocene could also be called a “Polemocene”, the age of war (Gemenne, 2015; Latour, 2015). In the Cinemacene age, SF makes attractions out of the capitalist accumulation of violence, but it also makes the Polemocene visible and interpretable. Since their invention, movies have been a chemical pharmakon – the Greek word for both poison and remedy as Jacques Derrida pointed out (1981), a powerful drug offering the collective viewers the illusion of being winning gamers in apocalyptic scenarios. McKenzie Wark writes that “our permanent legacy will not be architectural, but chemical, (…) from radioactive

74  Maurizia Natali waste to atmospheric carbon” (2012, p. 40). Thus, my chemical formula Capitalo-Polemo-Cinemacene recaps our age within which SF dares to represent what makes people sick, poor, unconscious or desperate.

Roland Emmerich, Independence Days after Tomorrow I would now like to introduce the films that inspired my considerations of SF and the Anthropocene. Let us first recall that the cinematic experience has often been compared to dreaming. For Freud, the façade of dreams protects the dreamer from traumatic meanings by transforming them into bizarre plots and visual effects (1976). In SF too, the narrative façade reworks traumatic unconscious truths about the real world of cinematic dreamers. Surreal situations, apocalyptic landscapes, global disasters, wars with millions of victims and mega cities reduced to rubble all tell us the masked truth about our age, while providing a space to appreciate these ruinous vistas and yet feel safe. In SF, collective fears and political dilemmas become alien enemies who envy our way of life but will be defeated, or catastrophic events we do not believe will happen in reality: our heroes will escape the apocalypses, and the Earth will be a better planet. The ancient cathartic formula works well, until, like in dream analysis, we start to interpret those allegorical disasters as the nightmares of the real Anthropocene: its wars, its ruins, its environmental extinctions and its technological hubris. Writing on apocalyptic video games, Will Partin ironically evokes Emmerich’s movies: In English, the word ‘apocalypse’ (…) has three non-exclusive meanings. The first and most common is simply the end of the world, whether by divine punishment or whatever transpires in movies directed by Roland Emmerich. The second is any form of calamity, representational or real, man-made or no, that resembles the end of the world, like the 2010 Haitian earthquake, Chernobyl, or the movies directed by Roland Emmerich themselves. The third is what the Greeks intended apocalypse to mean: the revelation of knowledge through profound disruption, which is why the final book of the New Testament is called ‘Revelations’ (…) In other words, the apocalypse either is the end, looks like the end, or helps us understand the end. (2016) At the end of the first Independence Day (Roland Emmerich, 1996), after the last epic battle against the aliens, the horizon behind the winners is occupied by the burning wreckage of the huge alien spaceship. As we are told that our ‘independence’ is rescued, no word is given to the catastrophic background, a metonymy of world-sized collateral ­disasters. The winners care little about that background, pointing to the

Empire of Catalandia  75 unsustainable nature of post-human wars at least since the nuclear age. What counts is that it is always “a battle we can win”, that “we will not vanish” and that we will “remind them that Earth is not for taking” – I quoted from the Independence Day of 1996 and 2015. Thus, not to worry, rebuilding our cherished world order will again be the job of the capitalism of “destruction and reconstruction” (Klein, 2006, p. 482). In this sense, Independence Day is the perfect example of the destructive-­ reconstructive-techno-enthusiast hubris of the Polemocene. In 2004, Emmerich made The Day after Tomorrow, another blockbuster, this time about the acceleration of climate change disasters. We see the climatologist Jack Hall realises that the world is quickly ­approaching a new ice age: it is no longer a question of decades, but suddenly only a few days. Soon, we see several tornados tear apart Los Angeles, horrific hurricanes in the Northern United States and New York first flooded by exceptional rain and then frozen by extremely low temperatures – with the Statue of Liberty spectacularly exposed to this climate apocalypse. The audience experiences this Hollywood endeavour as an example of the usual ‘catastrophic sublime’, but here there is also an ironic bonus for liberal viewers when, not the Yankees, but the Mexicans menace to seal the border against American refugees. It must also be mentioned that a number of climatologists appreciated the film, arguing that extreme climate events already happen on Earth, although not yet in that number and accelerated way. For them, Emmerich simply exaggerated the approaching future caused by the irresponsible energy and economic choices made over two centuries of Anthropocene.

Avatar, an Eco-Matriarchal Allegory In the flamboyant Avatar (2009), the Canadian director James Cameron made viewers love to hate the Imperialist Military-Scientific Apparatus, which in the year 2154 brings destruction to Pandora, a faraway E ­ den-like planet inhabited by beautiful blue natives, the Na’vi. Fully ­integrated as ‘good savages’ in their jungle-like, cityless environment, their bodies condensate the features of North and South Americans, Africans and Indians, combined with feline eyes, tails and animal agility. Hybrid human–­animal creatures have been protagonists in poetry, philosophy, religion and fairy tales from Aesop, Ovid, Shakespeare and the Grimm brothers to Disney and beyond, but also in Darwin’s theory of ­evolution, Deleuze notion of “becoming animal” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, pp.  232–309) and Donna Haraway’s human – animal kinship (2015). Moreover, Avatar offers a rare ecofeminist and matriarchal vision of nature, gender power and even the afterlife. Eiwa, the Female Spiritual Entity linked to the gigantic Home Tree, is the sacred goddess at the centre of the symbiotic relationship that the Na’vi have with the environment and the marvellous flying monsters to whom they connect via

76  Maurizia Natali their tails in interspecies, non-violent ways. In a word, Avatar’s paradise is an ecofeminist, ecological and ethnic utopia open to interpretations and political appropriations. From an aesthetic point of view, I define the sophisticated style of Avatar’s creatures as neo-Mannerist (Natali, 2012). The elongated Na’vi have the elegant proportions and beauty we find in Mannerist bodies of late Renaissance art, while the fabulous animals of Pandora recall the grotesque monsters of that age. Beyond the Hindu culture and its blue deities (a source the film title also suggests), and as anachronistic as it may sound, the 3D digital creatures Cameron modelled on real actors have something of Michelangelo’s and Pontormo’ superhumans in their DNA. Thus, Avatar’s fantastic faunas recall Mannerist devils and dragons, human–animal portraits by Arcimboldo or Bosch’s hybrid creatures, while Pandora’s landscape, as in Mannerist composite views, combines vastly separated country’s features, like China’s mountains with Amazonian forests. More importantly, the Na’vi look like their historical ancestors, the feathered natives we find on the first maps of the New World. In fact, Cameron’s aesthetic, and the Avatar’s story itself, suggest the most uncanny link to the Mannerist age, as the attack against the Paradise of Pandora links back to the bloody conquest of the Americas as New Eden, and to the imperialist politics that intensified during the Mannerist decades and beyond. Renaissance, Mannerism and the Baroque aesthetics are parallel to the dawn of Europe’s Capital Imperialism, now considered the first phase of the Anthropocene. But in Avatar, the war to dig up the ‘unobtanium’ (ironically sounding as ‘un-obtainable’) also allegorises more recent blood-for-oil wars and eco-genocides. Cameron himself was aware of contemporary neo-­ imperialist enterprises and geopolitical wars. He declared that “certainly [Avatar] is about imperialism”: The way human history has always worked is that people with more military or technological might tend to supplant or destroy people who are weaker, usually for their resources (…). We’re in a century right now in which we’re going to start fighting more and more over less and less. The population ain’t slowin’ down, oil will be ­depleted – we don’t have a great Plan B for energy in this country right now, notwithstanding Obama’s attempts to get people to ­focus on alternative energy. We’ve had eight years of the oil lobbyists ­running the country. (Ordoña, 2009) Avatar was indeed instantly interpreted, and loved, as a courageous, ­although naïve, fantasy about Imperialist Wars versus Utopian ­Nature & ­ fghanistan Natives. In 2009, global militants against US wars in A and Iraq saw the film as emblematic of resource wars and geopolitical

Empire of Catalandia  77 destructions. And when Jake, the hero, quits the spy role the Science-­ Military Complex has asked him to play, and becomes a ‘newborn immigrant’ in Pandora, audiences felt happy, like they did when in Dances with Wolves (1990), Kevin Costner embraces his new life as Native, and speaks only his new language to his fellow Yankees. The term ­A nthropocene was not yet diffused, but the film certainly appeared as a manifesto against its disasters. Inspired by common environmentalist notions, Avatar promotes what Timothy Morton calls deep interconnectedness between all forms of life on a given planet (2010). The indigenous Na’vi, harmoniously connecting with other creatures, embody an ecological happiness that global audiences have a reason to envy, to the point that some felt a kind of post-Avatar ‘nostalgia’ for Pandora and its inhabitants. Moreover, what the Scientists and Soldiers are able to do to the symbolic Home Tree in half an hour condenses what the ­Capitalo-Polemocene has done, and still does, to life on Earth, to ­humans, animals, plants and landscapes into a digital nightmare, although this planetary destruction has taken place not in minutes but during centuries of Imperialist politics. In term of gender, we can compare Avatar and other of Cameron’s films, like Terminator (1984), Abyss (1989) and Titanic (1997), to ­Emmerich’s films, namely Independence Day, The Day after Tomorrow, 2012 (2009) or White House Down (2013). In Emmerich’s, mostly male protagonists – US presidents, soldiers, scientists, fathers – face apocalyptic times by ultimately reinforcing the family or the country’s patriotic unity. On the contrary, in Cameron’s, female characters are often the courageous, rebellious protagonists. In Avatar, the heroine Neytiri, fully integrated within her people and environment, is smart, wise, ironic and more mature than Jake. The absolute evils are the macho soldier and the evil scientist, while the biologist Augustine and the female soldier sacrifice themselves to oppose their masculine deadly power. Contrary to the misogynistic Greek myth that the name Pandora ­recalls, the planet figures an eco-matriarchal utopia, which Cameron exposes to the viewers’ admiration and then brings to a traumatic defeat that well represents the violence of the Patriarchal Polemocene. In its simple terms, this narrative formula – matriarchal utopia defeated by patriarchal–imperialist war – condensates what has been happening on Earth for centuries. And in this way, Avatar also recalls the modern ecofeminist vision of authors like SF writer Ursula Le Guin (1969), feminist Francoise d’Eaubonne (1974), science historian Carolyn Merchant (1980), militant Vandana Shiva (1993), epistemologist Donna Haraway (2015) and others who argue that ecocide and genocide, along with the destruction of nature and oppression of women, are always historically related. At the end of Avatar, after the destruction of the Home Tree, viewers may wonder what future the planet and the Na’vi have. Will these natives be obliged, as real refugees, to migrate on other lands?

78  Maurizia Natali Terrestrials did so in WALL·E (Andrew Stanton, 2008), while in 2012 (Roland Emmerich, 2009), after the deluge, only chosen people are rescued on biblical arks. The Na’vi will probably remain on Pandora, and re-establish their tsaheylu connection (Dunn, 2014) with their “tough new planet”, as the ecologist Bill McKibben defines the present Earth, a planet out of its environmental balance, no longer the one we counted on for thousands of years (2010).

Apocalyptic Sublime, Ruins in SF In his book Little Metaphysic of the Tsunamis (2005), the French philosopher Jean-Pierre Dupuy analyses how modern catastrophes, such as nuclear wars and climate change, reveal our tragic lack of consciousness about the implications of technoscience changing life on Earth forever and a troubling blindness facing extinction as a possible event. In this age of blind unconsciousness, it is the Empire of Catalandia that collectively elaborates what is humanly bearable. Atmospheric events like those in The Day after Tomorrow, as well as huge volcanic eruptions, biblical deluges, horrific wars, form the ‘neo-sublime rhetoric’ of SF fantasy. For Scott Bukattman, this cinematic sublime not only exhibits the power of Hollywood, but also its anxiety about the extinction of cinema (2000). Although, for now, the Empire of Catalandia still entertains us with this cathartic sublime, which indeed ‘sublimates’ the afflicted powers and traumas of the Anthropocene. However, are cathartic feelings still possible at the movies, even in fugitive, low versions? Are digital catastrophes really capable of suggesting philosophical emotions? Or do they inspire an ethically inferior pathos? Elena Woolley has argued that instead of healthy emotions, SF disasters incite “disavowal”, an “overlooking”, “dissociative attitude” and an “aloof and panoptic position” (2015, pp. 26–36). For Fredric Jameson, the postmodern sublime produces a frenzied “kind of euphoria”, the most frequent effect, and ­affect, of mass culture (1991, p. 16). For Scott Bukattman, the “artificial infinite” of SF can only provoke pseudo-sublime feelings (2000). Similarly, John P. Wharton writes that audiences experiment only “echoes” of the sublime theorised by philosophers, and this lower kind of sublime happens to viewers only if they compare fictions to imaginable realities (2013, p. 139). Finally, Will Partin observes that the representation of cataclysms builds the public’s expectations for real disasters because “we know, deep down, that apocalypse awaits us on every scale” (2016). Such pragmatic interpretations of the sublime, shocks and ruins recall a long tradition. For 18th-century philosophers, like Burke or Kant, the sublime was the highest possible aesthetic experience of Nature. For ­Romantic poets and painters, sublime landscapes with ruins were a grand topic for meditation on empires’ destinies, human frailty and modernity. Freud thought that our psyche was built upon emotional ruins,

Empire of Catalandia  79 the archaeological strata of the Unconscious (1962). Walter ­B enjamin compared ruins in reality to the fragmentary nature of allegorical thought as expressed in poetry, dramatic theatre and art (1977). More recently, Andreas Huyssen has argued that the necessity and nostalgia of ruins define modernity itself, even when its ideology of progress denies both its ruinous past and the catastrophic present (2006). Now, while the Empire of Catalandia accumulates the shocking landscapes and ruinous horizons of Anthropo-Polemo-Cinemacene, we imagine future civilisations trying to understand who we were by analysing these cinematic visions as the spectacular prehistory of a precarious future. Maybe, cinema too, the creative child of the Anthropocene, has been an ecological catastrophe, not only for its industrial eco-footprint, but because movies have genetically modified our centuries-long imagination of the Earth and have distributed industrial pharmakon for our planetary eco-sickness, giving us cheap but suspenseful surrogates of the Natural Sublime. And, while world leaders still play with the Globe like ­Chaplin in The Great Dictator (1940), SF insists in figuring for the common people the Earth’s dystopian future. American Cinema is an ideological weapon, but at least SF movies try to figure for all audiences what the ­Anthropocene’s debates reserve for academics and scientists. With its neo-­ sublime rhetoric, Catalandia is telling us some truth about a planet we are ­ orldviews losing more rapidly than we believe. And with its spurious w and diffused influence on speculations about the future, SF has become a cultural and global “hyper-object”, a term Timothy Morton uses to define the largely disseminated presence of global warming effects in our everyday life (2013). Interestingly, the same author wondered “what if capitalism relied on fantasies of apocalypse in order to keep reproducing and reinventing itself?” (Morton, 2010, pp. 7–8). Similarly, Jameson wrote that “it is easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism”, but “we can now (…) imagine the end of c­ apitalism by way of imagining the end of the world” (2003, p. 76). The political and anthropological role of SF in the Anthropocene resides, I think, between these two quotes that synthesise the debate on this phoenix-like genre, many times reborn from the capitalist imagination of the End. However, again, what about viewers? The 9/11 attacks on New York (a “hyperobject” for scale and consequences) were considered as a mediatic victory for the terrorists, or scandalously perceived as a total work of art (Retort Collective, 2005) addressed to SF viewers of disaster movies. But Rachel Somerstein observes that no matter how many real ­disasters the global media show, “we can’t remember what we haven’t seen” in reality, and we suffer from a collective amnesia produced by the flow of news (2013). But it is precisely this amnesia that apocalyptic SF addresses by replacing the traumatic reality we (want to) forget with fictional catastrophes. SF is the ambiguous pharmakon for our (un)conscious denial of the present.

80  Maurizia Natali

Feeling Terrestrials SF films adopt a twofold ideological strategy. First, they shock a­ udiences, showing sudden devastating events and collateral disasters. Second, they convince viewers that glorious victories and happy endings are still possible for the survivors, and that life will go on as ever in those d ­ estroyed landscapes and ruined cities, as though our civilisations were too advanced to fail, or to fall, and wars, technologies and extreme measures were the unique solutions for apocalyptic evils. In fact, these fictions imply that our strong societies will always rebuild themselves better than before, while our Earth will infinitely take care of survivors… Unless those civilisations wish to leave the planet in ruins and travel to new ‘final frontiers’, which for transhumanist thinkers would be victory over death itself (More & Vita-More, 2013). If many cannot yet agree with this naïve superhuman fantasy, SF films often manage to include both this optimistic techno-hubris and what Freud called Todestrieb, the death instinct of our civilisation in the same film. Wondering what we become after our progress-obsessed modernity, Bruno Latour writes: “Why not [to become] ‘terrestrial’, ‘mortal’, ‘anthropological’, ‘ordinary’?” (2003b, p. 35). This becoming terrestrial evokes a kind of anthropological faith SF films may inspire. In our uncertain times, could catastrophic movies teach us how to unite and feel like ordinary terrestrials, rather than American, Christian, White, Black, etc.? By feeling ‘Earthian’, we could better rethink our global history, capitalism, patriarchy, war, peace and the future, and become responsible for the planet. Sometimes, SF films expressed and inspired these kinds of political feelings. For example, The Day after Tomorrow gave voice to the concern of the American people regarding the climate crisis, and inspired An Inconvenient Truth (Davis Guggenheim, 2006), Al Gore’s multi-prized documentary first in its kind. As Avatar’s fans became environmentalist overnight, South American and Palestinian militants endorsed the film as symbolic of the fight for their land against imperialism. The latter saw the war of Pandora as their nachba, the violent Israeli occupation of their territories in 1948. However, should SF movies make people feel terrestrial, this effect would be just the premise of many urgent actions for justice, equality, peace and for the planet, so far the only one we can inhabit.

Conclusion: The Curious Alien A few questions are left to be resumed: can SF makes us aware of the tragic risks the Capitalocene accumulates? Can Catalandia alert us to really happening or looming dystopias? Can digital annihilations teach us about the scale of real wars and disasters? Or is SF still offering a reactionary sublime, a pre-emptive rhetoric not even troubling our

Empire of Catalandia  81 (dis)belief? Are these costly war games just making people more used to the Polemocene? Maybe these philosophical and ethical questions are too serious for predictable Hollywood blockbusters, but the ongoing fatal attraction of these films justifies why we should regularly reformulate them. While film critics can use irony, detachment or political scepticism, global ­audiences consume SF movies with the frenzied euphoria Jameson mentioned. Some viewers may even reach a “planetary dysphoria”, a term Emily Apter uses to describe the Stimmung of the Anthropocene, that malaise of philosophers, writers, environmentalists about the extinction of life on Earth (2013). But whether we feel ‘euphoric or dysphoric’, SF is the most effective art capable of inviting us to interpret collective fears, global plights and technological hubris. Finally, I wish to evoke an imaginary Curious Alien overlooking this planet from an extraterrestrial point of view, a super-spectator able to review the whole Empire of Catalandia in few seconds. This Alien wonders: “Why do humans love filmed catastrophes? Why do they care much less about their real Earth under attack, not by us, Aliens, but by their own anthropo-cynical powers?” This Alien could be a Na’vi from Pandora, or just a future human, like those Crutzen, inventor of the term Anthropocene, has figured: Imagine our descendants in the year 2200 or 2500. They might liken us to aliens who have treated the Earth as if it were a mere stopover for refuelling, or even worse, characterize us as barbarians who would ransack their own home. (…) Remember, in this new era, nature is us. (2011) With its allegorical ruins, simulacra of our age, the Empire of Catalandia is essential for our political analysis and aesthetic reflection about the Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Polemocene and Cinemacene. Either we wait for a ‘better Anthropocene’ or for the Apocalypse, but we still have the ironic option to take seriously what SF nightmarish disasters are telling us.

Works Cited Filmography Cameron, J. (1984). Terminator. Cameron, J. (1989). Abyss. Cameron, J. (1997). Titanic. Cameron, J. (2009). Avatar. Cuarón, A. (2006). Children of Men. Cuarón, A. (2013). Gravity.

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3.2 The Urban and the Domestic Spaces of American Film Noir Sérgio Dias Branco

Urban and domestic spaces are at the core of the American film noir developed in the 1940s and 1950s. The connection between such spaces and noir cannot simply be considered as motivational – an association between city and crime – or protective – a separation between home and violence – but as part of the American spatial culture of the time, as well as an imagination of it. This essay will thus discuss the urban and domestic dimensions in several classical noirs by addressing four major interconnected topics or scales: territory, city, surroundings and homes. What emerges is a sociology of this genre through the linking of various times and places with the darkness and restlessness of a nightmare. American noir was produced in a period of US history governed by fear. The wounds left by the Great Depression were fresh and communism was seen as a permanent menace. As David Reid and Jayne L. Walker put it, “[t]he classic phase of film noir – from 1944 to 1950 – ­coincided with a period in which the United States had gained a ‘­preponderance of power’ in the world” (1993, p. 88) and its rulers were determined to secure it. These films were interested in the uneasiness that arose from this situation and in how this feeling was experienced within space during a particular historical period. Moreover, “[i]nvoking the past while anxiously imagining the future, films noir reveal multiple spatialities, no less than multiple temporalities” (Dimendberg, 2004, p. 10). This genre combines the everyday and the imaginary, lives and dreams, ­interpreting the city as much as envisioning it. Quoting Stephen D ­ avid Ross, we can say that cities and films “are sites at which human ­being realizes itself, in the inexhaustible ways in which such realization is ­possible” (1991, p. 30). Spaces in American noir are not mere backgrounds, but structural elements with cultural implications. Different artistic ideas and forms conflate in these films. In tracing these antecedents, Jon Tuska identifies Greek tragedy in literature and German Expressionism in cinema as influences. Like them, noir responded to cultural needs and had social consequences, attacking “the very basis for smugness and optimism which had infested the ideologies of so many American films prior to its advent” (1984, p. 239). Tuska supports this statement with a brief

86  Sérgio Dias Branco examination of the effects of women’s liberation from traditional roles depicted in the films. From this perspective, there is no wonder that the cultural needs and social consequences of these films depend largely on their capacity to place human drama in both the urban and the domestic realms.

Territory and Dispersion The noir territory is a multiple overlapping images of US history that began with the development and aggregation of seized populated areas and occupied unpopulated areas. This merger produced a centrifugal space, decentralised through growth schemes, interstate highways, traffic planning and mass media communication. It is a territory that can perhaps only be made tangible through the force of speed. E ­ dward­ Dimendberg evokes the opening of Double Indemnity (Billy Wilder, 1944) as an example of a scene that connects speed with urgency and disorder: the fast appearance of a car crossing the almost silent and empty city streets at night (2004, p. 172). The rapid mobility and “increased movement of characters between different locations” (­Dimendberg, 2004, p. 210) seen in many of these films are connected with territorial expansion. Although noir films are not simply crime pictures, both were profoundly altered by the shift from the centripetal forms of small cities to the centrifugal growth of megacities between the 1940s and 1950s: traditional neighbourhoods, familiar landmarks, and pedestrian pavements were replaced by a connected dispersion. These films portrayed this transition, providing an account of the tension between the residual American culture and urbanism of the 1920s and 1930s and its gradual erasure by the technological innovations and social changes that followed. At the same time, it also showed the dissolution of the new forms of the 1940s and 1950s in the 1960s, since the early stages of the simulacra and spectacles of contemporary postmodern culture are clearly visible in retrospect (Dimendberg, 2004, p. 3). Touch of Evil (Orson Welles, 1958), a late noir that reflects upon the genre in a postmodern fashion, demonstrates the conscience of the border and its relation to1950s’ criminality. Frontiers have often been a structural element in the process of defining the US as a country and organised territory. Neighbourly community and anonymous individuality were often seen as opposites in the age of the spreading city, a striking product of the modern industry. Nevertheless, noir is too heterogeneous to be reduced to a single way of representing this urban tension and, as Frank Krutnik notes, although it “locates the modern city as a threat to the ‘American community’, it refuses to sanction the small town as a redemptive alternative” (1997, p. 88). In a similar way, Double Indemnity

The Urban and the Domestic  87 reveals the deterioration of communal and familial values, but refuses “simply to condemn its transgressors” (Krutnik, 1997, p. 94). There was a tension between the old and the new, or the rural and the urban, in the expansive territory. Emanuel Levy recalls that noir stylistic elements were employed to provide a different vision of the rural world. He writes that “[a] darker, more ambiguous, portraiture of small towns marked the films of the 1940s – despite the fact that the country was at war” (1991, p. 256). The fictional countryside space of The Postman Rings Twice (Tay Garnett, 1946), for instance, is an isolated and lonely place near the road. The town appears only as a nebulous landscape for encounters. Although Levy does not articulate such a conclusion, it is clear that this way of portraying the rural world made it similar to an urban setting within the bounds of the noir imagery. Until the late 1950s, when the small town/big city dichotomy became less prevalent, small towns tended to be portrayed favourably (Levy, 1991, p. 252). In Out of the Past (Jacques Tourneur, 1947), the small town is presented as pure and the big city as corrupt; the first cleanses the criminals, while the second depraves the chaste. Small towns had “communal pride and concern for moral virtues – marked by a moral centre, or collective conscience, which was often demonstrated in lengthy trial sequences” (Levy, 1991, p. 256). Dimendberg demonstrates how Hollywood crime pictures were profoundly altered by the shift from “centripetal” forms to “centrifugal” ­urban growth. The technology and society that emerged from the Second World War slowly gave rise to the simulacra and spectacles of postmodern culture, causing a shift in American culture and urbanism (­Dimendberg, 2004, p. 3). The dispersion and connection in the territory were part of a process that included the growth of cities into immense structures, at odds with human scale.

City and Anxiety The noir city is the new American city. Frank Krutnik calls it “the distinctive imagining of the cultural and psychic topographies of the mid-century American big-city” (1997, p. 100), even though he also observes that not all noir films were interested in this subject. Following thinkers like Walter Benjamin, James Hay remarks that modern cities are “palimpsests, comprised of remnants from earlier landscapes, always susceptible to erasure or brought into different relations with emerging structures – social relations redefined spatially as habitat” (1997, p.  226). This also applies to American cities despite their youth. Like Hay, Dimendberg believes that film has the capacity to project the past and to record its changes: “[t]hreading the city as expression of some underlying myth, theme, or vision has tended to stifle the study of spatiality

88  Sérgio Dias Branco in film noir as a historical content as significant as its more commonly studied formal and narrative features” (2004, p. 9). Prior buildings and structures, as well as multiple layers of time, are only glimpsed in these films. The space modernised by industrialisation had become more abstract as the urban renewals erased the memory of lost cities, which is why Dimendberg understands noir as fostering the ability to remember. For him, Killer’s Kiss (Stanley Kubrick, 1955) “exemplifies the proclivity of the centripetal film noir to wrest fragments of the past – a building, a style, a corner of the city – from obscurity and to facilitate awareness of the city’s existence in time” (2004, p. 148). Stanley Kubrick’s film is exemplary in the way it recovers and revisits deactivated and abandoned industrial areas and storage facilities in New York. If the city is a mirror of a particular human society, it does not have a stable and definitive order. The limits of its form can be unintelligible, but as Christopher Prendergast points out, it always has some kind of ­order (1991, p. 195). This undetermined extent originates fragmented ­experiences. Accordingly, Dimendberg asserts that noir narratives ­reflected the “fragmented spaces and times of the late-modern world” (2004, p. 6). In Kiss Me Deadly (Robert Aldrich, 1955), the ­fragmentation of ­experience is constructed over various references and partial ­images. The film ends on a beach, far from the city, yet still haunted by it, as an ­organism that escapes human control. Prendergast returns to one of the major noir precedents to examine this topic: the detective novel. In this genre, the investigation is “a specific form of knowledge of the u ­ rban itself, ­predicated on the belief that an increasingly heterogeneous and intractable urban reality can be successfully monitored and mastered” (1991, p. 179). The modernity that Walter Benjamin saw in Paris, as Charles Baudelaire described it, could be seen, for example, in New York in a new guise. Christopher Prendergast summarises the German philosopher’s thought, writing that the city is an increasingly uncertain and unpredictable perpetual field is a crucial determinant in the emergence of an art geared to an entirely new set of rhythms, an art based on the principles of surprise and ‘shock,’ disruption and displacement of any assumption of a coherent ‘centre’ to experience. (1991, p. 181) This experience is similar to the noir effects and traits acknowledged by Raymond Borde and Étienne Chaumeton: the spectators’ disorientation and sense of malaise with unmotivated action, the moral ambivalence and cynicism of characters and the representation of cruelty and suffering (2002, pp. 5–13). These characteristics reflect the changing reality of the city. Dimendberg’s political discussion of The Naked City (Jules

The Urban and the Domestic  89 Dassin, 1948), for instance, tracks the relation between the aerial military surveillance and the initial shots of that post-war film: “[u]nlike earlier cinematic and literary depictions, for which the appeal of the aerial perspectives over Manhattan was largely picturesque, these postwar representations appear inextricably bound up with social planning and control” (2004, p. 47). A city grows and is kept alive based on the relations and connections it creates and recreates, a configuration and reconfiguration that exceed the strict geographic confinements. This provides the narrative scheme for the portrait of New York in The ­Naked City, drawing attention to a culture of isolation in which the news changes citizens’ perceptions. The press and other mass media have the ability “to remake the social world according to the logic of the image constitutes a key facet of the future-directed quality that Sartre attributed to seriality” (Dimendberg, 2004, p. 82). Since the urban environment results from a collective effort that shapes shifting social relations, we can say that any representation of it is political, showing contradictions and disputes. Pickup on South Street (Samuel Fuller, 1953) dives into the opacity of New York City, which can easily hide in everyday life what is seen as evil, in order to visualise the unsettling and ever-present communist threat. As a popular genre, noir affirmed “that capitalism is not a fair game […], whilst its true aim is to protect the privileges certain members of society enjoy over others” (MacCannel, 1993, p. 283). For Levy, the hierarchy becomes clear, as the proletarian and the sub-proletarian areas of American cities are represented as a kind of space where characters are tested, a space of intellectual machismo, functioning for the left much as the African jungle functioned for the right as the habitat for the white hero of a certain type. (1991, p. 279) Social problems like racial conflict, poverty, crime, violence, homelessness and unemployment were often used as aesthetically dramatic subjects, even if they were not necessarily accompanied by a politically conscious approach. In this sense, it is worth following Jon Lewis’s thought about the dramatisation of urban social life detected by Lewis Mumford with its continuous trade between spectating and acting, connecting the aesthetic and social experiences of an urban habitat with that of a dream or a film (1991, p. 241). For him, such thought is associated with concepts defined by Christian Metz and Guy Debord. The first thinker saw spectatorship as a complex process of identification and imagination, and therefore of the construction of identity and new images and ideas (Metz, 1986). The second understood the scenic organisation of the city as a strategy for domination. That is, the city corresponds to our desires just to control us more powerfully and efficiently

90  Sérgio Dias Branco (Debord, 1999). Levy  mentions that the city seems more menacing in these films because it is usually shown at night: “Booming with activity and energy during the day, the City’s streets are shown to be empty and deserted at night” (1991, p. 253). Perceiving the city and watching a film are experiences in which the subjective is highlighted. In the words of ­MacCannell, the noir city is a difficult and tiring “space of survival, [it is] not as a place of childhood roots, nor as an idealized place where we once lived and left, nor as a place to which we desire to return” (1993, p. 280). Or as ­K rutnik puts it: “the noir city is a realm in which all that seamed solid melts into the shadows, and where the traumas and disjunctions experienced by individuals hint at the broader crisis of cultural self-figuration engendered by urban America” (1997, p. 99). Such comments could have been written with a film like Murder, My Sweet (Edward Dmytryk, 1944) in mind, with its induced visions and distorted reality, presenting life in Los Angeles as a hallucinatory experience. Krutnik claims that these films present the “vitality of the noir city as well as its appalling corruption, of its enticements as well as its horrors” (1997, p. 84). Moreover, as Dimendberg contends, the city “seldom appears re-familiarized or re-enchanted, a space of genuinely enhanced freedom and possibility” (2004, p. 13). The city depicted and explored by noir is made up of contrasts and ambiguities, but it is also a very structured system of alienation and exploitation, a sort of icon of human failure and anxiety that promised an even darker future. “Just as the city-mystery registered the dreaded rise of the metropolis, film noir registered its decline, accomplishing a demonization and an estrangement from its landscape in advance of its actual ‘abandonment’” (1993, p. 68), wrote Reid and Walker pointing towards the deep reshaping of urban life sponsored by the Housing Act of 1949. Noir films chronicle the changes in the life of the metropolis and of their inhabitants in the context of their surroundings.

Surroundings and Solitude There are several surroundings within which the characters of these films circulate, live and die. As exemplified by The Asphalt Jungle (John ­Huston, 1950), they are often what Emanuel Levy calls “typical settings” and “low-life locales”, “shabby offices of private eyes, sleazy ­salons, ­sinister cocktail lounges, third-rate hotels” (1991, p. 253). In a case like The Big Sleep (Howard Hawks, 1946), the milieu extends to suburban areas that “have not been deemed newsworthy – despite the fact that over one-third of the population resides in them” (Levy, 1991, p. 256). We have already seen that the modern city demands a new subjectivity. Ron Lapsley contends that this phenomenon allows the city to reveal intensely individual processes of appropriation (1997, p. 192). Nostalgia for a lost city is precisely a modality of such processes and it is clearly

The Urban and the Domestic  91 exemplified when Dimendberg confesses that to watch films, noir is a way to relive “an experience of space and time, an ‘image of the city’” (2004, p. 7). The urban theorist Kevin Lynch perceived the “image of the city” as the sense that human beings can make of a city and its parts (1960). Urban places are remembered through signals and links, certain detached forms that can be drawn schematically. This is in tune with the way in which these films can be seen as “a social memory bank that provides a means for the film spectator to remember disappearing urban forms” (Dimendberg, 2004, p. 10). Krutnik regards the emptiness of noir streets as an image of the public space overwhelmed by private traumas. He acknowledges that this was “vital to the atmosphere of the Hollywood’s dark city were intensified by the practice of studio filming; even during the post-war vogue for location shooting, the display of ‘authentic’ city spaces in urban crime thrillers tended to be combined with the chiaroscuro styling of noir studio productions” (Krutnik, 1997, pp. 91–92). Crossfire (Edward Dmytryk, 1947) presents this pattern, for it builds thematic and formal relations between interior and exterior, confinement and liberty, private and public, within the bounds of military institutions, throughout the investigation of an anti-Semitic hate crime. Joan Copjec analyses Double Indemnity to explain that the market where Phylis and Fred meet is a public space that becomes private through cinematic means, in particular through the use of the male protagonist’s voice-over (1993, pp. 190–191). As Billy Wilder’s film shows, on the one hand, noir can be an examination of the horror of solitude through the fear of social contact and otherness, which is particularly evident in the character of the detective, who usually does not belong and seems to be constantly nowhere. Krutnik observes that “[t]he impact of the American private-eye as a culturally iconized fantasy male derives from his role as a perpetually liminal self who can move freely among the diverse social worlds thrown up by the city, while existing on their margins” (1997, p. 90). On the other hand, noir continually exposes privacy. From their literary origins, detective fictions often explored the idea that locked rooms could and would be penetrated. Copjec reads this possibility of intrusion in a Lacanian fashion – the real always intrudes in the symbolic (1993, p. 177) – but we can examine how the transference between the symbolic of reality and the reality of the symbolic is staged in Laura (Otto Preminger, 1944). Laura, who has apparently been killed, and the large painted portrait of her both capture ­Detective Mark MacPherson’s attention. They compel him to intrude into her apartment and her life, dream about her and disrupt the narrative that has been told about her death. The detective’s efforts, even the police’s actions, produce no deep changes in the city, which is why Dean MacCanell concludes that noir “came to function less as criticism of capitalism and the paternal

92  Sérgio Dias Branco metaphor and more as an inoculation against them” (1993, p. 283). By aligning with an anti-hero, viewers accepted capitalism while imagining themselves to be opposed to it, because everything is irrevocably set against him from the start, despite his struggle, and in some cases, ­determination. These films can be seen as records of the city’s resistance to human transformation, as if the urban environment had a life of its own that decisively affects the life of its inhabitants. Yet, regardless of their destructive and nasty nature, these are the characters’ surroundings and they cannot escape from this environment. Krutnik claims that “instead of dealing directly with the social forces that have made the modern city so ‘unlivable’, film noir fixates upon the psychic manifestations of such disease” (1997, p. 89). A symptom of this fixation is the refusal of domestication that brings the private detective and the femme fatale closer in their quest for sites and moments to experience and to share their loneliness. Yet, refusing to be domesticated is not the same as rejecting a domestic space, a home.

Homes and Peril The noir home is frequently a strange private space, violated by the uncertainty of public space – and, as we have seen, the inverse is also true. Richard Dyer claims that common spaces are more usual in these films than domestic ones (1977, p. 19). The filmed homes typically belong to villains and are, therefore, paired with the eccentricity of rooms and objects “iconographically expressed […] in the style of luxury quite different from the cozy normality of the ‘ordinary family home’” (1977, p. 19). The home, like community, becomes a ghostly presence, a slight trace or vestige of a safe place endangered and undermined by modern America (Krutnik, 1997, p. 88). In a sense, domestic spaces are almost absent from noir, if we understand them as households and places of flourishing, that contrast with the overwhelming presence of urban spaces. For phenomenologist philosopher Gaston Bachelard, the concept of home as a shelter is profoundly rooted in the human unconscious (1964, p. 12). The American home is a porous secluded space for the family as well as a place in which class perceptions and social divisions are ­negotiated (Thompson, 1998). The importance of a safe and comfortable spot increases when life in public places is aggressive and human beings feel exposed to this hostility. Yet, as Dyer points out, the noir leading character lacks this realm of security and comfort and when “such an atmosphere is evoked at all, it serves to sharpen the depiction of the noir world by being under threat from the latter (Kiss of Death [Henry Hathaway, 1947]) or actually destroyed by it (The Big Heat [Fritz Lang, 1953])” (1977, p. 19). It is the home as a stable dwelling, whether actual or illusory, that is destroyed time and time again in noir. Bachelard

The Urban and the Domestic  93 defines this dwelling as a body constituted by two images: verticality and centrality. In the first image, a house is seen as a vertical being and “[i]t rises upward” (1964, p. 17), like the one in Gilda (Charles Vidor, 1946) with its vast staircase, first seen when gambler Johnny Farrell walks into Ballin Mundson’s mansion and then has to direct his eyes towards the top of the stairs where the millionaire appears. In the second image, a house is a kind of concentrated being and “[i]t appeals to our consciousness of centrality”(1964, p. 17), as the one in The Big Heat, where everything is near and shared by Detective Sergeant Dave ­Bannion and his wife, when they clean the dishes and tidy up after a family dinner. These vertical and central images make up an order that is often infected by crushing power – Gilda – or destroyed by sudden violence – The Big Heat – and ­ atters within such infection and destruction emerge as strong subject m these films. Bachelard idealistically explains that the house “gives us, concretely, a variation of the metaphysically summarized situation of man in the world” (1964, p. 28), being that intimacy and immensity are associated in it. Indoors, we are “no longer aware of the storms of the outside universe” (1964, p. 27); radio and television are the outside elements allowed inside. Outside/inside form a division. Television entered the American domestic environment in the mid-1950s. According to Dimendberg, this shattered the opposition inside/outside “by bringing sometimes chaotic and violent images of the external world into the average living room” (1994, p. 243). Noir anticipated this situation by assuming it as a usual premise: homes are represented as detached elements, rarely part of something resembling a neighbourhood.

Conclusions The purpose of this excursion into American film noir was to study its different spaces in a systematic manner. It has highlighted the Americanness of these films, but it is worth mentioning that the US and noir are both of mixed origin. In Italy and Mexico, for instance, “noir, like the popular cinema in general, has a potential for hybridity or ‘crossing over’ – a potential enhanced by noir’s tendency to create styles out of the mixed racial or national identities in the metropolis” (Naremore, 1998, p. 224). American film noir was also the fruit of the European sensibilities of emigrant filmmakers, such as Fritz Lang, Billy Wilder, Robert Siodmak and Otto Preminger (Reid & Walker, 1993, p. 67). Much of the artistic uniqueness and cultural resonance of noir has to do with its spatial dimension, whether more urban or more domestic, not just chronicling aspects of the territory and the city as well as of characters’ surroundings and homes, but providing new visions of them. Neale contends that noir never existed as a single phenomenon: “[t]hat is why no one has been able to define it”, he writes, “and why the

94  Sérgio Dias Branco contours of the larger noir canon in particular are so imprecise” (2000, pp. 173–174). Perhaps the difficulty of defining it extends to what it portrays. Despite the differences among all these films, they have internal similarities inasmuch as they all depict features and changes in urban and domestic America in the 1940s and 1950s. Nevertheless, the correspondence between noir and reality was never simply synchronous or linear. James Sanders points out that noir was habitually more interested “on the seedier side of city life: cheap rooming houses, drab launch counters, and anonymous side streets” (2001, p. 391), zones that, in a way, were invented by noir itself. Lower-middle-class streets, hardly ever overcrowded, replaced the clear social concerns about density and congestion present in the 1930s’ tenement films. Be that as it may, a menacing enclosure was still present for “noir streets tended to be strangely empty of people: it was the implicit feeling of confinement in their built-up and closed-down vistas that seemed so suffocating” (Sanders, 2001, pp. 391–392). Noir social spaces were fields for negotiating unbalances. As MacCannell makes clear, they were “inclusive in ways that correspond to an earlier theoretical ideal of society as promoted in classical sociological texts. Society contained, or made place for, all its members from the highest-born to the lowest, from infancy until death and beyond, for the criminal, the infirm and the insane” (1993, p. 288). For Hay, film criticism, so close to literary criticism, often forgets the historical and social relations that contextualise the works (1997, p. 214). This contextualisation enriches the understanding of aesthetic elements in noir films. As Hay writes, the work to be done around noir and its places is an “impulse toward a kind of spatial materialism of the site, the concrete location where film is practiced, always in relation to other sites” (1997, p. 213). This relation should not be confused with an attempt to convey the ‘realness’ of the spaces represented. Pickup on South Street, for instance, was actually shot in Los Angeles, not in New York City. Nevertheless, it captures the paranoia that characterised the everyday of the bustling Big Apple. In fact, the films that created the specific ambience recognised as noir were mostly shot in studio, not on location. It is worth quoting Sanders’ summary regarding these aspects: In retrospect, it is obvious that noir films were capturing not so much the existing urban reality of the early postwar era as an emerging attitude about the city – an incipient claustrophobia felt by many city dwellers as the suburbs began to beckon. Beneath it, too, was a new fear of urban density itself, understandable enough in the aftermath of the strategic bombing campaigns intended to devastate the urban industrial centers of Europe and Japan, culminating in the atomic destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Planning was already under way for a network of federal “defense highway” (later known as the Interstate Highway System) that would help quickly disperse the

The Urban and the Domestic  95 nation’s population to low-density areas, thus offering a less inviting target to potential aggressors. Public agencies and private lenders, meanwhile, were busy skewing their mortgage and housing policies away from anything resembling traditional urban settings in favor of suburban-style communities that not only offered a high degree of social homogeneity but, to put it bluntly, simply didn’t have all those dark old buildings and streets. (2001, p. 392) The spatial relations recorded and instigated by noir remain to be ­ nveiled in all of their complexity. The territory is dispersed and lacks u unity between rural and urban areas. The city is a root of anxiety, where rational actions are confounded with irrational actions. Surroundings stress the characters’ solitude and shift ambiguously between private and public spaces. Homes are haunted by human peril with shattered boundaries where inside and outside become volatile. Studying this aspect of ­A merican film noir reminds scholars that “[b]y refusing sharp distinctions between figure and ground, content and context, the analysis of spatial relations in the film noir cycle may help redefine it” (Dimendberg, 2004, p. 7) and emphasises the fact that cinema is an expressive manifestation of spatial culture.

Works Cited Filmography Aldrich, R. (1955). Kiss Me Deadly. Dassin, J. (1948). The Naked City. Dmytryk, E. (1944). Murder, My Sweet. Dmytryk, E. (1947). Crossfire. Fuller, S. (1953). Pickup on South Street. Garnett, T. (1946). The Postman Always Rings Twice. Hathaway, H. (1947). Kiss of Death. Hawks, H. (1946). The Big Sleep. Huston, J. (1950). The Asphalt Jungle. Kubrick. S. (1955). Killer’s Kiss. Lang, F. (1953). The Big Heat. Preminger, O. (1944). Laura. Tourneur, J. (1947). Out of the Past. Vidor, Ch. (1946). Gilda. Welles, O. (1958). Touch of Evil. Wilder, B. (1944). Double Indemnity. Bibliography Bachelard, G. (1964). The poetics of space. Boston, MA: Beacon Press. Borde, R., & Chaumeton, É. (2002). A panorama of American film noir: ­1941–1953. San Francisco, CA: City Lights Books.

96  Sérgio Dias Branco Copjec, J. (1993). The phenomenal nonphenomenal: Private space in film noir. In J. Copjec (Ed.), Shades of noir: A reader (pp. 167–198). London, UK: Verso. Debord, G. (1999). The society of the spectacle. New York, NY: Zone Books. Dimendberg, E. (2004). Film noir and the spaces of modernity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Dyer, R. (1977). Homosexuality and film noir. Jump Cut, 16, 18–21. Hay, J. (1997). Piecing together what remains of the cinematic city. In D. B. Clarke (Ed.), The cinematic city (pp. 209–229). London, UK & New York, NY: Routledge. Krutnik, F. (1997). Something more than night: Tales of the Noir City. In D. B. Clarke (Ed.), The cinematic city (pp. 83–109). London, UK & New York, NY: Routledge. Lapsley, R. (1997). Mainly in cities and at night. In D. B. Clarke (Ed.), The cinematic city (pp. 186–208). London, UK& New York, NY: Routledge. Levy, E. (1991). Small-town America in film: The decline and fall of community. New York, NY: Continuum. Lewis, J. (1991). City/cinema/dream. In M. A. Caws (Ed.), City images: Perspectives from literature, philosophy, and film (pp. 240–256). New York, NY: Gordon and Breach. Lynch, K. (1960). The image of the city. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. MacCannel, D. (1993). Democracy’s turn: On homeless noir. In J. Copjec (Ed.), Shades of noir: A reader (pp. 279–297). London, UK: Verso. Metz, C. (1986). The imaginary signifier: Psychoanalysis and the cinema. Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. Naremore, J. (1998). More than night: Film noir in its contexts. Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press. Neale, S. (2000). Genre and Hollywood. London, UK & New York, NY: Routledge. Prendergast, C. (1991). Framing the city: Two Parisian windows. In M. A. Caws (Ed.), City images: Perspectives from literature, philosophy, and film (pp. 179–195). New York, NY: Gordon and Breach. Reid, D., & Walker, J. L. (1993). Strange pursuit: Cornell Woolrich and the abandoned city of the forties. In J. Copjec (Ed.), Shades of noir: A reader (pp. 57–96). London, UK: Verso. Ross, S. D. (1991). Discourse, polis, finiteness, perfection. In M. A. Caws (Ed.), City images: Perspectives from literature, philosophy, and film (pp. 24–30). New York, NY: Gordon and Breach. Sanders, J. (2001). Celluloid skyline: New York and the movies. New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf. Thompson, E. M. (Ed.). (1998). The American home: Material culture, domestic space, and family life. Winterthur, DE: Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum. Tuska, J. (1984). Dark cinema: American film noir in cultural perspective. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.

3.3 Film Noir and the Folding of America A Reading of Out of the Past (1947) and Impact (1949) Jeffrey Childs1 It is conspicuously difficult to address the nature and meaning of the spaces of film noir without somehow first grappling with the question of the nature of film noir itself. Mark T. Conrad has laid out, in an economic form, the spectrum of interpretations this constellation of films has been subject to, ranging from a categorical affirmation of generic status (Damico, 1996; Hirsch, 1981) to cycle (Borde & Chaumeton, 1955), affinity by motif and tone (Durgnat, 1996) and/or style (Schrader, 1996), “transgeneric phenomenon” (Palmer, 1994), and finally to an identification of the phenomenon by a rejection of traditional narrative patterns (Telotte, 1989) or as a “discursive construction” (Naremore, 1998) (Conrad, 2006, pp. 9–14). In my view, all of these readings offer key focalisations of the phenomenon in question, and, particular argumentative differences notwithstanding, diverge mainly in terms of where each proposes its own particular cross section of noir. Certainly, when it comes to a consideration of noir spaces, generic and stylistic approaches have much to offer. This is in large part because the genrefication of noir occurred predominantly in media res, as studios discovered the economic advantages of homogenising and stylising motion picture ­production – particularly with the emergence of low-budget productions, or B movies, which many noir films were. This process is certainly one of the factors behind film noir’s intimate relationship to the huis-clos tradition in the theatre: The relations that film noir holds with theatre are important and multifarious when viewed from a theoretical standpoint. The genre develops a ‘cinema of cruelty’ defined by spational and economic confinement, social and temporal immobilities, and excruciating physical closures to which it subjects the human body. (Conley, 1987, p. 347) This undoubtedly offers a crucial insight into the psychovisual aesthetics of noir, but an overemphasis on certain constrictive stylistic ­elements – aspects of setting (night-time urban scenes) and décor (enclosed spaces, high-contrast lighting, etc.), for instance – tends to obscure noir’s

98  Jeffrey Childs relationship to its other spaces: those that stand in apparent conceptual opposition to its dominant ones, determining – from the outside, as it were – the symbolic meaning and dramatic resonance of its high-­ contrast enclosures. An insistence on stylised interiors can conceal the ways in which noir preserves the huis-clos tradition of the theatre while simultaneously transposing it to the natural landscape. This occurs perhaps most noticeably in films such as High Sierra (Raoul Walsh, 1941), Out of the Past (Jacques Tourneur, 1947) and On Dangerous Ground (Nicholas Ray, 1951). A remarkable instance from Tourneur’s film of a natural huis clos can be found in the film’s opening credits, in which the names ‘­Robert Mitchum’ and ‘Jane Greer’ appear framed/trapped by the imposing mountain landscape that visually limits their vertical and lateral mobilities. In parallel with this naturalisation of the huis clos, however, there emerges in film noir, and in films closely related to noir iconographic and narrative patterns, a desire to imagine and project an ‘other’ space and its representational values. To the extent that film noir offers us a vision of America, and especially an ‘alternate vision’ of America, it is plausible to ask whether this alternate vision is not somehow already inscribed in its relationship to space. In light of this concern, I will here examine two films of the noir period – Jacques Tourneur’s classic noir Out of the Past and Arthur Lubin’s peripheral noir Impact (1949) – in an attempt to grasp the ways in which the dominant spaces of the genre, style or mode are articulated with its other spaces, leading each to project a particular representation of America. The logic governing the representation of the signifier ‘America’ in film noir is determined by four complex and intertwined strands: (1)  the site of representation itself, which we can designate by the metonym ‘Hollywood’ and which must be folded out of sight to preserve the illusion of the signifier’s integrity; (2) the designation of a place removed from the process of representation, such that it can ‘stand in for’ the signifier ‘America’, confirming the latter’s existence as an ideal space by offering itself as a microcosmic embodiment of that ideal (small-town America); (3) a space ‘outside’ that of America, which stands to the latter as its delimitation and conceptual opposite (frequently Mexico); and (4)  a dialectic of anonymity and visibility that motivates – and frustrates – the transition between these different spaces or sites, marking each site and condition as an object of desire. These strands are not exclusive to film noir, of course, although the third and fourth are more comprehensively and systematically ­explored in this genre than in any other. Small-town America, as the answer to Hollywood’s search for a formal representative of America, can be found in many different films of this period, ranging in style from It’s a Wonderful Life (Frank Capra, 1946) to The Wizard of Oz (Victor Fleming et al., 1939).

Film Noir and the Folding of America  99 As we shall see with respect to Out of the Past and Impact, however, a tendency to validate this representational sleight of hand, crucial in many ways to the success of melodrama in this period, is not equally shared by film noir. Two brief examples will help demonstrate the logic by which the representation of America, in film noir, is bound up with a dialectic of anonymity and visibility. In Quicksand (Irving Pichel, 1950), Vera Novak is a materially ambitious young woman who has fled to the West Coast from the anonymity of the West Virginia steel town in which she was raised, soon becoming the source of Dan Brady’s spiralling debt, as the latter caters for her unquenchable desire for forms of conspicuous consumption. In Shadow of a Doubt (Alfred Hitchcock, 1943), Uncle Charlie flees to the fictional town of Santa Rosa, California, to hide from the law, as he is suspected of being the ‘Merry Widow Murderer’, insisting while there that he not be photographed – that is, that he not become an object of representation. Santa Rosa is a microcosm of ­A merica at large but, by reproducing America in a miniature form, it effectively folds itself away from that of which it is a part. This is why Uncle Charlie hopes to get lost in its folds and also why the detectives who come looking for him can plausibly claim that they are conducting a national census and wish to interview ‘representative American families’. Meanwhile, young Charlie idolises her uncle precisely because he does not belong to the space of Santa Rosa, where, in her words, “[w]e eat and sleep and that’s about all”. For a more sustained reflection on the unfolding of these matters, we will turn to the films of Lubin and Tourneur. Released just two years apart, Out of the Past and Impact are striking in both their similarities and differences, and it is precisely this uncanny resemblance-in-difference that makes an analysis of their representational logic, in the terms described earlier, particularly instructive. Out of the Past begins in Bridgeport, California, where Jeff Bailey/Markham (Robert Mitchum) owns and operates a local service station. As his past catches up with him, Jeff (and the viewer) is led, through flashbacks, to some of film noir’s more iconic locales – Acapulco, Mexico and San Francisco – before returning to Bridgeport for the film’s conclusion. As Nicholas Christopher noted, Out of the Past is one of the few classic noirs to place its typical urban spaces between geographical brackets: In fact, among these films, Out of the Past is an oddity in that much of its narrative is constructed of non-urban flashbacks (Mexico, the desert, the small town) that frame the dense, purely urban sequence which is the film’s crucible. (1997, p. 4) In Impact, Walt Williams (Brian Donlevy) is a rags-to-riches businessman based in San Francisco. When he leaves on a business trip to set up new factories in Denver, his wife Irene (Helen Walker) arranges for

100  Jeffrey Childs her lover, Jim Torrance – disguised as her cousin – to ride with him, the plan being to murder Williams along the way and make it look like an accident. The plan goes awry: Torrance is interrupted before he is able to kill Williams and so dumps his unconscious body in a roadside ditch before speeding off in Williams’s car, only to die seconds later in a head-on collision with a truck. When Williams regains consciousness, realising that he has been betrayed by his wife, he takes refuge in the town of Larkspur, Idaho – really Larkspur, California – where he finds work as a mechanic at a service station owned by Marsha Peters (Ella Raines). The developing relationship with Marsha, and with the townspeople of Larkspur in general, leads Walt back to San Francisco to clear up the circumstances of his reported death. Both films reveal an elliptical structure, whose focal points are the noir city (San Francisco) and small-town America (Bridgeport and Larkspur), with the latter point exemplifying the invisibility and anonymity of life outside the metropolis. The dialectic of recognition/anonymity is recurrent in film noir, and it is articulated here with the urban/rural divide that appears to represent an essential fold in the fabric of America. Furthermore, both protagonists are defined in this space of small-town America by their profession as mechanics: that is, they are sufficiently familiar with the machinery of mobility to enable it for others while, by the very terms of their trade, remaining immobile themselves. Though I cannot fully develop the implications of this point here, I wish to suggest that it is the baroque concept of the fold, as developed by Gilles Deleuze (1993), that best describes the way these two films – and film noir in general – translate the dots of an abstract map into extensive and conceptually meaningful surfaces and then fold them into contact with each other. As Deleuze notes relative to Mallarmé, and as we shall also see in our reading of Impact, the newspaper is one of the mediating figures through which disparate events and spaces are folded into one another: [T]he fold of the newspaper, dust or mist, inanity, is a fold of circumstance that must have its new mode of correspondence with the book, the fold of the Event, the unity that creates being, a multiplicity that makes for inclusion, a collectivity having become consistent. (1993, p. 31) In film noir, the automobile represents yet another figure by which this is achieved, bringing distinct spaces into contact with one another by allowing the spatio-temporal dimension between them to be folded away. In this sense, the function of the automobile corresponds to that performed by the cinematic apparatus itself, with the former standing as the visual surrogate of the latter within the genre. The inseparability of space and time in film noir can be seen in the intricate connection

Film Noir and the Folding of America  101 between hiding and being forgotten. When holed up in Acapulco, Kathie and Jeff reflect on their chances of escaping the reach of Whit Sterling: “You don’t know Whit”, Kathie says, “He won’t forget”, to which Jeff replies, “Everybody forgets”. But the truth is that everybody forgets ­except Whit. When he finally lays eyes on Jeff again, years later in Lake Tahoe, Whit says: “Same guy – time-proof, weather-proof”. Whit is ­apparently referring to Jeff, but he could equally be describing himself; for Whit is a character for whom there is only space. In this respect, Whit embodies the globalising impulse, or Cartesian extension: the idea that everything can be mapped and that there are no borders or boundaries between entities. 2 But the space of film noir obeys the baroque “‘law of curvilinearity’, the law of folds or changes of direction” (Deleuze, 1993, p. 12), and Kathie – the film’s femme fatale – is the best expression of this curvilinearity, for she is not knowable as a surface of connectable dots, but rather only under certain conditions of lighting, as a play of the simultaneous forces of concealment and unconcealment. Of film noir’s two kindred genres – melodrama and the police ­procedural – only the latter is directly involved in the articulated polarities of escape/hiding and mobility/entrapment, the interrelation of which is perhaps best expressed in Joseph H. Lewis’s Gun Crazy (1950). What should be stressed is that film noir, with its emphasis on invisibility and avoidance, and the police procedural, which emphasises discovery and detection, are not antagonistic genres but participate equally in the geographic mapping of a symbolic space – America – folded in on itself. Nor is it clear that the creases formed by folding this space along national boundaries – as in the Mexico of Out of the Past or the Argentina of Gilda (Charles Vidor, 1946), for instance – do not inevitably entail further internal folds of this same symbolic space. Such, indeed, would seem to be suggested by the reproduction and extension of interpersonal dynamics (Johnny/Gilda, Jeff/Kathie), the microcosmic nature of these ‘external’ territories (whether Buenos Aires, Acapulco, or later, the fictional town of Los Robles in Touch of Evil, Orson Welles, 1958) and the permeability of such border-folds to figures of detection (Whit Sterling, Captain Hank Quinlan or the German cartel and Argentine police of Gilda). In this sense, film noir should be regarded as a cinematic progeny of the anonymous freedom the Spanish historian José Antonio Maravall locates at the heart of the picaresque tradition: Now, in a change of view that was genuinely scandalous to the traditional mind, freedom was found rather in the anonymous individuals of the people, in the individuals who, remote from where the decisions of sovereignty took place, guided their steps with greater independence, moved at will in that part of the exterior world that belonged to them individually. (1986, p. 172)

102  Jeffrey Childs And it is this anonymous freedom, in a later stage of capitalist development, that can be seen to underlie what Fredric Jameson regards as “[t]he denotative aspects of the raw material of the detective story as genre – ­relationship to the history of the city; emergence of a surveillance society and the role of surveillance in a market system in full transformation; relationship between public and private police, etc.” (2016, p. 39). The point is that in film noir, as in the picaresque novel and the detective story, the discovery of the shadowy spaces created by the folds of a particular social order – spaces produced by the condition of anonymity or some form of interdiction (legal or social) – renders possible, and even necessary, the new type of social mapping these forms offer. In film noir, in particular, a tension between a public sphere of fame or notoriety and the private spheres of wealth and anonymity is frequently embodied by the newspaper, which folds these spheres into each other just as it threatens the places of anonymity, perhaps better understood as places of de-articulation from the vast social grid – bars, nightclubs, small towns – with recognition and, ultimately, incorporation. Thus, in Impact, Walt Williams discovers his own particular form of ­anonymity – death – by means of the newspaper, just as the anonymity he enjoys in Larkspur, under the fake name ‘Bill Walker’, is brought to an end by the discovery of the press clippings he has saved of the Walt Williams murder investigation. Despite the rather uncanny similarities between Out of the Past and Impact, we should note that as ellipses, these films are mirror opposites: the former ends in Bridgeport, while the latter reaches its conclusion in San Francisco. As we shall see, this difference is more than merely formal. Furthermore, and perhaps more significantly, the relationship of each film to the stylistic and narrative conventions of film noir determines a substantially different treatment of urban and small-town spaces, as well as of the space that serves to mediate or frame them. In fact, this difference could not be starker, and can be expressed as the difference between the suppression of this mediating space (Impact) versus its active exploration (Out of the Past). Nothing could be more expressive in this regard than the brilliant opening sequence of the latter film, which articulates the credits with landscape imagery to create a kind of natural allegory of the film itself. The key here is not that nature anchors the plot of the film, but rather, in a quintessentially Baroque gesture, that it is immediately drawn into the film and subsumed within its allegorical structure. Nature frames and mediates the film’s spaces, but its allegorical function prevents these spaces from becoming fully naturalised. Such a use of nature resembles David Melbye’s description of the psychological allegorising of the cinematic landscape: One of my purposes here is to clarify a rational means of determining a dividing line between those films featuring landscape as

Film Noir and the Folding of America  103 visceral spectacle and those exploiting visceral aspects of landscape, in order to engage a subjective narrative mode, or, more precisely, a psychological allegory of inner human experience. (2017, p. 109) Thus, as noted above, the opening sequence moves from a shot of the name/signs ‘Robert Mitchum’ and ‘Jane Greer’ trapped in a natural ­enclosure, to an image of verticality – the mountain – and finally to the open plain, the openness of which represents the illusion of an inhabitable freedom operative at various key moments in the film. A slow pan right reveals a road sign that shows this space to be one of passage, associated by proximity with the town of Bridgeport, whose name immediately gains an added significance. A car enters our field of vision from the left-hand side of the screen, directing the camera – and the viewer’s attention – towards the town, which is framed by an ‘abridged’ sign of its name. From the film’s initial frames, we are brought into a world dominated by the play of signs. The car that leads into Bridgeport is driven by Joe Stefanos (Paul Valentine), Whit Sterling’s main henchman and the person whose accidental passage through the town sets Jeff on a collision course with his past. While waiting at the local diner for Jeff to return to town, Stefanos tells Marney, the owner, that he is an old friend of Jeff who happened to notice the sign above the service station. “It’s a small world”, says Marney, to which Joe replies, “or a big sign”. Joe’s story, we come to learn, is a lie. He does not know Jeff by the last name ‘Bailey’ that hangs above the station, but by the last name ‘Markham’, which the sign conceals. The greater irony of the exchange between Marney and Joe, however, is the apparently unintended suggestion that the world itself is but “a big sign” – a suggestion the film’s opening sequence prepares us to entertain. If Bridgeport is a sign that, in true noir fashion, indicates to the protagonist of Out of the Past that he must consign himself to his fate, the town of Larkspur, as it appears in Impact, is presented to us as a sign under erasure – that is, as a sign meaning ‘real America’ that signals a rupture with the genre of film noir. An initial portrayal of America not opposed to the representational values of noir is presented when Walt Williams comes to his senses at the bottom of the ravine in which Jim Torrance has left him. He climbs out to find a Bekins moving van displaying a map of the continental United States and the words “nation-wide moving and storage” on its side. When Williams reaches the road, we can read the firm’s slogan over his shoulder: “on the run since ‘91”. As mentioned, the idea of an America whose expansiveness and new-found mobility allow one to fold oneself into an anonymous existence is central to the noir, as is the moment of realisation that events have brought about a crease in one’s existence. The newspaper here functions not only

104  Jeffrey Childs as the device through which this recognition occurs, but also later in the film allows us to grasp film noir, again through this crease, as the antithesis to the narrative of the American dream: Walt Williams, assumed dead, reads about his own life under the title “The Saga of an American Success Story”. Impact, however, does not stay within the conventions of noir. Instead, it enlists other genres – the police procedural, melodrama and even, to a certain extent, the comedy of remarriage – in proposing a solution to the problematic nature of film noir. This generic turn within the film occurs precisely when the fate of Williams’s supposed widow – the femme fatale Irene Williams (Helen Walker) – falls under police surveillance and, almost simultaneous with this, when Walter Williams himself stumbles into Larkspur. Several features of this passage are worth noting: the police station provides its officers with what suggests a panoptical view of San Francisco, presenting in almost caricatural fashion a key ideological meaning of the police procedural; the pan right of the camera as Lieutenant Quincy prepares to leave Captain Callahan’s office leads to a dissolve featuring the blankness of Idaho as it appears on a map of the continental US; and Walt William’s entry into Larkspur is marked by the absence of any transitional space: the dissolve from the map insert of the US leads directly to a sign that reads “Welcome to Larkspur, population 4,501”, 3 before the camera pans down to reveal a dishevelled Williams purveying the idyllic small town that lies before him. ­Unlike Bridgeport, California in Out of the Past, which is an actual town, Larkspur, Idaho is a forgery, its exteriors shot in the town of Larkspur, California. It is important to note that no special claims are made about the representational value of Bridgeport, while Larkspur is required to stand in for a set of values opposed to the ambiguous world of film noir, such requirements including both a clear demarcation from the state of California and the anonymity – or blankness – of Idaho. The idealisation of the small town, in contradistinction to the urban spaces of noir, corresponds with a turning away of noir towards a new set of generic conventions, equally – and perhaps quintessentially  – ­expressed in the relationship that materialises between Walt Williams and Martha Peters (Ella Raines). Walt first comes across Martha at the service station she owns and operates, initially mistaking her – dressed in overalls and bent over a car engine – for a boy. Martha has taken over the station after her husband was killed in the Second World War, and it is part of the film’s generic reimagining of noir that its post-WWII inversion of sexual roles should be treated as a problem to be solved by the reaffirmation of their traditional asymmetry. Thus, though Martha is now a mechanic, she is not a very good one, and quickly yields her position to the more skilled Walt, a displacement that corresponds with her increasing feminisation, visually cued by the gradual shift from overalls to slacks to dresses, as well as the masculinising of Walt himself. In its noir

Film Noir and the Folding of America  105 stage, the film repeatedly exhibits the emasculation of Walt, particularly at the hands of his wife, Irene, whose pet name for him is ‘softy’. Martha thus stands in stark opposition to the femme fatale Irene Williams and the world of noir in general, which is here represented not as a complex aesthetic vision, but rather as a set of loosely associated values – and formal operations – as exemplified by the shift to ‘noir’ lighting that marks the appearance of Irene for her second interview with Lieutenant Quincy. It is fair to say that Impact projects film noir as a problem of the sexes – that is, of masculine women and feminine men – and responds to this ‘problem’ by returning Martha and Walt to their traditional sexual roles and associated values. In generic terms, this might be described as resolving the sexual ambiguities and tensions of film noir by a return to melodrama.4 Thus, to salvage the social recognition required by the melodramatic form, Martha convinces Walt to return to San Francisco and resume his identity – quite literally to remove the shadow hanging over him, as visually rendered during their conversation in Walt’s room. Though complications ensue, Martha’s dedication to Walt and Lieutenant Quincy’s astute detective work allow Walt to clear his name and be reinstated as the COO of his firm. Ironically, both Martha and Walt turn their backs on Larkspur, as Martha agrees to travel with Walt to Denver, where he will oversee the opening of his firm’s new factories. This is, in fact, a double irony, since it is the loss of manpower to new factories that threatens the economic existence of Larkspur and that forced Martha to ‘man’ her own service station. The idealised town of Larkspur turns out to be not so ideal, its presence in the film a mere narrative relay by means of which the femme fatale of film noir is shown to be the source of noir’s moral ambiguities and, when viewed through the lens of melodrama, a simple error of casting. In Out of the Past, the nature of Bridgeport and the desirability of substitution – to say nothing of the essence of the femme fatale ­herself – turn out to be much more difficult to determine. For one thing, the conversation between Jeff and Ann at the beginning of the film reveals Jeff’s idealised space to be not the town of Bridgeport, but rather the mountains surrounding it, where he dreams of building a home. But Bridgeport, the mountains, fishing and even Ann herself turn out to be forms of escape from the consequences and feelings of a past that is still very much present to Jeff. Nicholas Christopher aptly describes how Ann can be seen as a perfect embodiment of film noir’s tepid substitutes for its femme fatales: As vivid and exciting as the femme fatale can be in film noir, her antithesis, the nurturing, supposedly redeeming woman is usually unrelievedly pallid and passive – to the point of repulsing us, as well as the hero. She is most often the girl back home, or the faithful,

106  Jeffrey Childs long-suffering wife, or the steady fellow worker at the office, or the platonic friend futilely in love with the hero. […] Ann, the smalltown fiancée Jeff Bailey leaves behind for Kathie in Out of the Past, is the perfect example of this type. Antiseptic, static, sexually repressed, socially rather dull, she lives with her parents and works as a schoolteacher; she wants to marry and have kids and never leave her hometown. Should we be surprised that when reunited with Kathie, who is freewheeling, worldly, intellectually (if criminally) active, dangerous, and highly sexed, Jeff finds it so easy to fall back under her spell? (1997, pp. 198–199) It seems to me that Christopher oversells Ann’s insipidness here, for the narrative tension the film generates requires Jeff – and the viewer – to invest in the qualities and possibilities she embodies. Nevertheless, this passage allows us to grasp how, in noir, the female antithesis to the femme fatale does not represent an obvious solution to the male protagonist’s ambivalence or to the social and sexual complexities of film noir in general. The play of substitution and doubles – we should not forget the aptly named Meta Carson as yet a third significant female presence in the film – the partiality of lighting and the limitations of vision are means by which moral and cognitive complexities are folded back into the filmic text. Thus, although both Impact and Out of the Past elaborate on the conventions of film noir, we must conclude that the latter offers us a far more compelling artistic vision and thus represents a more accomplished film. The narrative resolution of this film provides a poignant glimpse of this distance, as the viewer is forced to look through Bridgeport at the mediating space – neither town nor city – that frames it. After Jeff Bailey and Kathie Moffat (Jane Greer) are killed at a police roadblock – Jeff by Kathie (who realises that he has informed the authorities of their attempt to escape) and Kathie by the police – the action returns to Bridgeport where we find Ann, the young woman with whom Jeff had hoped to begin a new life in Bridgeport, leaving the police station. She is approached by Jim, her long-time suitor and thus romantic alternative to Jeff, who offers her a ride, and we immediately ascertain the symbolic import of this offer. Reluctant, Ann crosses the street and asks Jeff’s assistant, a deaf mute, if Jeff had intended to run away with Kathie. ­Realising what is at stake in her question, The Kid nods, freeing Ann from her connection to Jeff. As Ann returns to Jim and the waiting car, The Kid gestures towards the sign “Jeff Bailey” that hangs above the station, acknowledging a shared commitment to the idea that a lie can serve one better than the truth. In truth, however, The Kid’s nod does not operate within a strict ­opposition of truth to falsehood, but as a frame that Ann chooses to

Film Noir and the Folding of America  107 use in determining the nature of her relationship with Jeff – that is, in grasping it as a transition (or bridge) to Jim and their apparent future life together in Bridgeport. This life is apparent because, not being ideal, it must reconcile itself with the world of appearance. The car that Jim and Ann leave in – but are they leaving or remaining? – adopts an uncertain trajectory with respect to the town: are they heading into town or out of town and into the landscape that surrounds it? The greatness of this final sequence lies in the fact that it reveals the meaning of leaving and remaining to be, in effect, the same. Both require Ann and Jim to occupy a transitional space that they will call home. Unlike the ideal (but unrealisable) space that Ann and Jeff dream of in the mountains, or the ideal – but instrumental and thus disposable – town of Larkspur, Bridgeport is true to its name and true, as well, to an underlying vision of film noir that does not perish with its protagonist.

Notes 1 The research for this chapter was made possible by a grant from the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia and by a visiting scholarship offered by the Department of Visual and Environmental Studies at Harvard University. 2 “For [Descartes], the material world can be can be mapped out form the axis of the thinking subject, in rectilinear fashion, and can be divided into discrete units. The resulting geography resembles the order and process of the quincunx, a two-dimensional system of gridding and squaring that places a center (the ego) at the intersection of the diagonals of a surrounding square. When the self moves into space, it transforms one of the corners of the square or rectangle of its periphery into the site of a new center, around which new extremities are established, and so forth, until space is conquered” (Conley, 1993, p. xvii). 3 It must be added that the sign is being amended as Williams enters the town, a painter standing on a ladder changing the population number to 4501. Again, we are very close to the realm of parody, as this brief visual vignette registers both the responsiveness and the inclusiveness of the idealised small town. 4 Obviously, complexities abound as well within the genre of melodrama. But insofar as melodrama seeks to resolve social tensions by identifying them within – or projecting them onto – the family structure, however conventionally or unconventionally this might be taken, then the description of the generic relay identified earlier is, I believe, a valid one.

Works Cited Filmography Capra, F. (1946). It’s a Wonderful Life. Fleming, V., Cukor, G., LeRoy, M., Taurog, N., & Vidor, K. (1939). The Wizard of Oz. Hitchcock, A. (1943). Shadow of a Doubt. Lewis, J. H. (1950). Gun Crazy.

108  Jeffrey Childs Lubin, A. (1949). Impact. Pichel, I. (1950). Quicksand. Ray, N. (1951). On Dangerous Ground. Tourneur, J. (1947). Out of the Past. Vidor, C. (1946). Gilda. Walsh, R. (1941). High Sierra. Welles, O. (1958). Touch of Evil. Bibliography Borde, R., & Chaumeton, E. (1955). Panorama du film noir americain (1941–1953). Paris, France: Les Éditions de Minuit. Christopher, N. (1997). Somewhere in the night: Film noir and the American city. New York, NY: The Free Press. Conley, T. (1987). Stages of film noir. Theatre Journal, 39(3), 347–363. Conley, T. (1993). Translator’s forward: A plea for Leibniz. In G. Deleuze (Ed.), The fold: Leibniz and the baroque (pp ix–xx). . Minneapolis & London, UK: University of Minnesota Press. Conrad, M. T. (2006). Nietzsche and the meaning and definition of noir. In M. T. Conrad (Ed.), The philosophy of film noir (pp. 7–22). Lexington: ­University of Press of Kentucky. Damico, J. (1996). Film noir: A modest proposal. In A. Silver & J. Ursini (Eds.), Film noir reader (pp. 95–105). New York, NY: Limelight. Deleuze, G. (1993). The fold: Leibniz and the baroque. Minneapolis & London, UK: University of Minnesota Press. Durgnat, R. (1996). Paint it black: The family tree of the film noir. In A. Silver & J. Ursini (Eds.), Film noir reader (pp. 37–51). New York, NY: Limelight. Hirsch, F. (1981). The dark side of the screen: Film noir. New York, NY: Da Capo. Jameson, F. (2016). Raymond chandler: The detections of totality. London, UK & New York, NY: Verso. Maravall, J. A. (1986). Culture of the baroque: Analysis of a historical structure. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Melbye, D. (2017). Psychological landscape films: Narrative and stylistic ­approaches. Aniki. Portuguese Journal of the Moving Image, 4(1), 108–132. doi:10.14591/aniki.v4n1.267 Naremore, J. (1998). More than night: Film noir in its contexts. Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press. Palmer, R. B. (1994). Hollywood’s dark cinema: The American film noir. New York, NY: Twayne. Schrader, P. (1996). Notes on film noir. In A. Silver & J. Ursini (Eds.), Film noir reader (pp. 53–63). New York, NY: Limelight. Telotte, J. P. (1989). Voices in the dark: The narrative patterns of film noir. ­Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

Part 4

Spectral Spaces

Cinema, an illusion, has always operated within a spectral dimension: it crystallises intangible bodies and spaces for eternity. Even when it is not addressing phantasmagoria as subject matter, which the moving image has done since its early days, it pictures spaces full of traces of the past: historic sites, old buildings, ancient and modern ruins, antique and vintage items, and even the absence of missing landscapes and constructions we still remember. Just look around you: every place, every object has a story. Space is thus a palimpsest of several superimposed temporalities: the past is part of our everyday environment, inasmuch as the present is made of the slow and steady accumulation of remnants that have survived the passage of time. The permanence of the past in the present, however, does not necessarily mean that we are trapped in the past, since everything can always be changed, transformed, adapted, reused or destroyed, for better or worse, beginning with space itself. When we want to remember or reproduce the past, we tend to lean on memory and imagination. This mental process also works in reverse: there are certain symbolic places and objects that inevitably awaken the memories – and spectres – of a specific time. Nevertheless, some memories are enhanced while others are inhibited. This is because not all epochs and events have the same importance within the historical discourse. To explain the way historical memory can be staged, questioned and even revived on the screen, the next three chapters will discuss the mise en scène strategies of a series of contemporary non-fiction films on what we call ‘spectral spaces’, that is, places where multiple temporalities are juxtaposed, such as former concentration camps or abandoned company towns. Chapter 4.1 introduces the concept of ‘blinking spaces’, a particular type of cinematic space in which past and present incarnations of a film location are simultaneously depicted. Its author, Iván Villarmea Álvarez, addresses different techniques to create them – the visual palimpsest, the archaeological gaze, the use of spectral soundscapes and the practice of cinematic cartography – through the close analysis of four recent psychogeographical documentaries that show abandoned places as both lived spaces and historical locations: The Empty Centre (Die Leere Mitte, Hito

110  Spectral Spaces Steyerl, 1998), California Company Town (Lee Anne Schmitt, 2008), Ruins (Ruínas, Manuel Mozos, 2009) and Toponymy (­Toponimia, ­Jonathan Perel, 2015). In these films, blinking spaces combine at least three different temporalities – the recalled past, the time of the filming and the time of viewing, which can extend indefinitely into the future – all of them exposing the logic of historical becoming through the ­different ways of using and giving meaning to a specific space over time. The next chapter delves into another blinking space: Piramida, an abandoned mining town of the former Soviet Union portrayed in the musical documentary The Ghost of Piramida (Andreas Koefebe, 2012). This film records the Danish band Efterklang’s journey to this place in search of inspiration for its conceptual album Piramida (2012). José Duarte, the author of this chapter, highlights the ability of these two interrelated works – album and documentary – to create an alternative geography in which multiple time layers and cultural meanings come together: Soviet utopia, nostalgic landscape, post-apocalyptic site, modern ghost town and even adventure tourism destination. According to Duarte, both album and documentary summon a wide variety of ghosts by exploring the sounds and images of a place that, despite having been abandoned at the end of the 20th century, still flows in time. Certain locations, however, are forced to cope with the burden of an ominous past. Terezín, for example, is still haunted by its previous ­avatar – Theresienstadt, a Nazi concentration camp – to the point that ­Sandra Camacho wonders, in Chapter 4.3, if this Czech town will someday be able to get rid of its ghosts. Her close analysis of As if… (Daniel Blaufuks, 2014) – a travelogue that combines contemporary recordings of Terezín with excerpts of previous television and cinematic representations of Theresienstadt – allows her to reflect on the processes of ­construction of collective memory through fictional materials that give rise to what Alison Landsberg has called ‘prosthetic memory’. Thus, as time goes by, new representations of certain periods, places and events prevent us from forgetting what we can no longer remember as ­individuals, keeping the past alive through its material, spectral remains.

4.1 Blinking Spaces in Contemporary Psychogeographical Documentaries Iván Villarmea Álvarez Time flies. Space remains, although it does not always remain the same; actually, it constantly changes. The same spot can give rise to different places, depending on what happens there over time. Some places preserve traces of their past, while others strive to erase them, but even so they are always open to historical interpretation: their meaning is conditioned by multiple layers of their past, which are usually intermingled. Even the most transformative and self-confident present is destined to become a past shortly after its heyday. Wherever we look, we see remnants of the past, susceptible to be regarded as time stamps inscribed in space. How to represent the coexistence of different times at the same location? Comic book artist Richard McGuire found a simple and brilliant method in Here, a six-page comic strip originally published in the magazine Raw in 1989, that was later expanded into a 300-page graphic novel in 2014. All of the panels in the comic strip, as well as all the double pages in the graphic novel, show the same spot through the same frame – the corner of a living room in a house, an abstract and everyday space where anything can happen – but each one focuses on a different scene with different characters at a different time, in both the past and the future. The composition varies from one panel (or double page) to another because McGuire subdivides each one into multiple panels to explicitly represent the infinite accumulation of times and events within the same space: the fictional space of the corner of a living room and the real space of a panel in a comic strip or a double page in a graphic novel. McGuire works with still images – basically, drawings of frozen scenes in time – in which he can control everything. His cumulative collage of superimposed panels is certainly a good method for representing the temporal layering of space in a comic book and could be adapted to other media. What about cinema? How do moving images convey this idea? Similar to McGuire in Here, the first step is to create a “blinking space”, that is, “a particular type of cinematic space in which the past and present incarnations of a film location are simultaneously depicted”, as I have written elsewhere (Villarmea Álvarez, 2016, pp. 33–34). Filmmakers usually choose locations that present significant traces of the past in order to represent them through visual strategies that highlight their temporal depth in an attempt to capture the location’s genius loci,

112  Iván Villarmea Álvarez a concept whose current meaning has been summarised by Merlin Coverley as follows: “[the] spirit of place, through which landscape, whether urban or rural, can be imbued with a sense of the histories of previous inhabitants and the events that have been played out against them” (2010, p. 33). Accordingly, what emerges from this kind of spaces is not only a portrait of a historic site, but an invitation to recall or to imagine what the place was like decades or centuries ago, and especially what happened to the people that lived there. Thus, by combining several temporalities at once, blinking spaces offer a glimpse into the past without leaving the present. There are some films more appropriate than others for exploring the temporal depth of such spaces. Without going any further, there is a long tradition within non-fiction film of psychogeographical documentaries specifically interested in the history of certain places and the emotions and feelings that they can convey to both their usual residents and occasional visitors. Many of these works adopt a contemplative attitude towards their respective blinking spaces to allow the audience to experience them for a few seconds, minutes or even hours, depending on the film’s running time. The most remarkable example of a psychogeographical documentary is probably Shoah (Claude Lanzmann, 1985), which carefully explains the ruthless logic and logistics of Jewish Holocaust through a series of selected testimonies and extensive views of the death camps filmed in the late 1970s. Claude Lanzmann’s decision to show these places in the present, without using any archival material, reinforces its timeless perception, inasmuch as every viewer must envision what happened there from the scarce vestiges that still remained in place. This contemplative strategy, which I have termed “psychogeographical landscaping”, consists in depicting a given place as both “a historical location and a lived space” through a gaze that somehow emphasises the existing links between “the current look of landscape” and “its former incarnations, whether the buildings or structures that formerly stood in the same spot, or the events that took place right there years or centuries ago” (Villarmea Álvarez, 2015, pp. 40–41). There are many different techniques to create blinking spaces in psychogeographical documentaries, such as the visual palimpsest, the archaeological gaze, the use of spectral soundscapes or the practice of cinematic cartography, to name but a few possibilities. The aim of this chapter is therefore to discuss the internal working of these systems of representation through the close analysis of four works from different countries that share the same will to delve into the temporal omniscience of blinking spaces.

The Empty Centre: The Visual Palimpsest German essay film The Empty Centre (Die leere Mitte, Hito Steyerl, 1998) reflects on the changes of the Berlin cityscape in the 1990s, after the fall of the Wall. Its title refers to the ‘death strip’, the area where the

Blinking Spaces  113 Wall stood, a ‘no man’s land’ located right in the former political centre of the city. There, visual artist Hito Steyerl filmed the redevelopment of symbolic places and landmarks in which several layers of historical meaning overlap one another. Postdamer Platz, for example, recalls the Weimar Republic, the Third Reich, the Cold War and the near future, four periods, respectively, associated with the Haus Vaterland,1 the New Reich Chancellery, the Wall and the Daimler complex. All of these constructions, with the sole exception of the last one, have currently disappeared, which suggests that the urban surface of Berlin has become a palimpsest where “borders and boundaries shift constantly”, as Steyerl says in the commentary. This idea led the filmmaker to develop the main formal strategy of the film, the visual palimpsest, a technique consisting in combining two images taken from the same camera position through a slow dissolve in which the first image – filmed in 1990, when the Wall still stood – fades out, while the second one – filmed in 1997, when the Wall had already been demolished – simultaneously fades in. As the frame remains the same, both images overlap for a few seconds before revealing the most evident changes in the cityscape, beginning with the replacement of the wall woodpeckers by construction workers. There writing of a dozen shots throughout the footage gives rise to a visual metaphor for the interregnum between the fall of the Wall and German reunification, a short period during which the communist and capitalist systems coexisted for a few months. The real winner of the Cold War was transnational capital, which took advantage of the disintegration of the Soviet bloc to enter new markets. At the beginning of the 1990s, when Steyerl began to work on this film, Berlin was becoming a testing ground for the internationalisation of land markets due to the systematic privatisation of public properties in East Berlin. There, urban developers attempted to delete the architectural traces of both the Third Reich and the German Democratic ­Republic by choosing the Prussian architecture of the early 19th century as an aesthetic model, a tradition that had determined the form and image of the city until the Second World War. Consequently, the former death strip was redeveloped as a series of city tableaux in which, according to Marie-Christine Boyer, “the reiteration and recycling of already-known symbolic codes and historic forms (…) contain a schema or program that generates a narrative pattern, a kind of memory device that draws associations and establishes relations between images and places, resemblances and meaning” (1992, p. 188). The resulting cityscape, however, was partly a fake because it hid those episodes that the new urban owners preferred not to remember. In fact, city tableaux are actually built to forget rather than to remember, as Manuel Delgado has stated: Major monumentalisation policies usually pursue a clear goal: to superimpose institutionally appropriate symbolic productions to

114  Iván Villarmea Álvarez those that real life continuously generates by filling urban space with countless memories. These monumentalisation policies are actually of and for a fib memory, a great makeup operation in which memory becomes a parody based on replica and simulacrum, an evocation of non-existent spaces that contrasts with the proliferation of de-memorised spaces, a massive loss of meaning on behalf of a reified and fraudulent pseudo-memory. Overall, such policies of memory undertaken by the authorities are usually policies of and for oblivion. (2007, p. 106) In the particular case of Berlin, the local government strived to restore the old urban fabric, but its renewal was ultimately determined by private interests (Muñoz, 2010, pp. 113–124). In view of this policy, Steyerl gives voice to the people opposed to the sale of the death strip to large corporations, beginning with a group of squatters who claimed the right to decide what was going to be built there. The most meaningful part of this interview is when the filmmaker asks them “How do you think Berlin will look in nine years, in 1999?” to which the squatters immediately answer, “You won’t find us here”. After this sentence, the image of the squatter camp is replaced by a shot of the same spot in 1997, when it had become a construction site, thereby suggesting that public opinion was not taken into account for reshaping the area. In this sense, the title of the film can be interpreted in both literal and metaphorical terms, whether referring to the impact of the death strip on the urban fabric or to the lack of public participation in the city’s affairs. The centre of ­Berlin, therefore, would no longer be a civic space in which citizens could express their political will, but a source of income for local authorities and transnational companies. The Empty Centre not only shows the evolution of Berlin’s cityscape from 1990 to 1997, but also recalls landmark episodes of colonialism and anti-Semitism that took place near the Wall, in places such as the Reichstag, the Haus Vaterland or Felix Mendelssohn’s house. Regarding the first, the film reminds us that the Berlin Conference of 1884, in which African borders were decided by European politicians, was held in this building. The history of the Haus Vaterland, in turn, recalls the xenophobic atmosphere of the Weimar Republic that led to the Third Reich. Finally, the reference to Felix Mendelssohn’s house, which was located close to the Reichstag, serves to introduce the story of the social exclusion of his family: first, in 1743, philosopher Moses Mendelssohn could not enter the city through a gate located in almost the same spot as his grandson’s future home – he was turned away because he was Jewish – and then, in 1819, Felix Mendelssohn was spat on right there during an anti-Semitic riot. Considering the spatial proximity of these places and events, the genius loci of the centre of Berlin seems to be marked by the

Blinking Spaces  115 systematic exclusion of foreigners, as well as by the subsequent rejection of ‘the other’, whoever it is. Right after telling Mendelssohn’s story, Steyerl shows a communist souvenir shop that stood near the composer’s former house for a few months in 1990. There, she interviews its owner – who knows nothing about Mendelssohn’s house, but can indicate the exact location of a former checkpoint between East and West Berlin – and his sole employee, a Jamaican woman who explains her problems as a temporary resident in Germany. This sequence, which only lasts about three minutes, addresses up to four different historical periods from a single location: first, the mid-18th century, when Moses Mendelssohn arrived in ­B erlin; second, the early 19th, when Felix Mendelssohn lived there; third, the Cold War, when the Wall divided the city; and finally, the interregnum before reunification, when the filmmaker recorded the images. The impression of travelling through time is achieved here by using simpler techniques than the visual palimpsest: the first two periods are referred to in the commentary and visualised through old drawings, the third is recalled in the first interview and the fourth is documented in the contemporary images. Thus, one way or another, Steyerl’s psychogeographical gaze transcends the here and now by locating Berlin’s urban renewal within larger processes, whether the global tendencies of urban planning at the end of the 20th century or the disturbing recurrences in the historical evolution of certain places.

California Company Town: The Archaeological Gaze American travelogue California Company Town (Lee Anne Schmitt, 2008) depicts up to 23 former company towns in California that were abandoned after the closure or bankruptcy of their primary employer. Its director, Lee Anne Schmitt, spent five years visiting and filming these kinds of places in search of their genius loci, which according to her ­images might be in all those remnants which recall that there was once life there, such as abandoned homes, old murals, torn wallpaper or anachronistic posters and leaflets. Wherever she goes, she carefully explores every location in search of significant findings to share with the audience through a series of laconic images and terse remarks. This dynamic, which she will use again in later films such as The Last ­Buffalo Hunt (2011) and Purge This Land (2017), leads her to develop an archaeological gaze towards the landscape that highlights the temporal continuity between distant periods, thus allowing her to address controversial issues from a historical perspective: the relations between capital and labour in California Company Town, the frontier myth in The Last Buffalo Hunt and racial conflicts in Purge This Land. California Company Town, in particular, is organised into a three-act narrative based on the succession of business cycles: the older company

116  Iván Villarmea Álvarez towns belonged to extractive industries, post-war suburbs were associated with the military-industrial complex and the most recent developments are the outcome of high-tech industry (Figure 4.1.1). The first half of the film is therefore devoted to the logging and mining towns in Northern California and the Sierra Nevada Mountains, while the second half moves to the industrial, military, resort and carceral towns of the Mojave and Colorado deserts, using the service areas and agricultural towns in the Central Valley to transition between the two (Figure 4.1.2). The reasons for the abandonment and subsequent dematerialisation of these towns usually have to do with a paradigm shift in the economy. Sometimes, their natural resources ceased to be profitable, as in the case of logging towns, or were simply exhausted, as happened to many mining towns. Other times, the parent company went bankrupt or was ­acquired by larger corporations, as in the case of industrial towns. Finally, the more recent company towns usually failed due to miscalculations in their growth expectations, beginning with those military towns that did not survive the end of the Cold War. Overall, although paternalistic companies that provided their employees with housing and social Town Type

Number of Sections

Towns

Logging Towns

5

Chester (§1), Scottia(§2), Kaweah (§3), McCloud (§7), Westwood (§8)

Mining Towns

5

Calico (§4), Darwin (§5), McKittrick (§6), Boron (§14), Eagle Mountain (§15)

Industrial Towns

4

Corcoran (§9), Trona (§13), Boron (§14), Richmond (§22)

Military Towns

3

Boron (§14), Adelanto (§16), Palmdale (§18)

Agricultural Towns

2

Arvin (§10), Keene (§11)

Resort Towns

2

Salton City (§19), Silver Lakes (§20)

Carceral Towns

2

Manzanar (§17), California City (§21)

Service Area

1

Buttonwillow (§12)

Technopolis

1

Silicon Valley (§23)

Figure 4.1.1  C alifornia Company Town, distribution of towns by economic activity.

Blinking Spaces  117

Figure 4.1.2  C  alifornia Company Town, geographical distribution of towns.

benefits have become obsolete in late capitalism, the film does not intend to praise their legacy. On the contrary, Schmitt harshly criticises their totalitarian control over houses, shops, schools and even union offices, as well as the systematic employer violence against any attempt to change the relations of production. This criticism arises from the first-person commentary, but also from the clash between the contemplative images of abandoned places filmed in the mid-2000s and the set of previous cultural productions included in the film, such as mural paintings, old pictures, archival footage and radio excerpts. The commentary complements the images by explaining what these company towns mean and how their past can be read on their current surface. By recovering the memory of these places, Schmitt seeks to overcome the damnatio memoriae imposed over them due to their nature as alternative, failed or directly ominous locations that might contradict the official historical discourse. In fact, there is a great difference between

118  Iván Villarmea Álvarez seeing an anonymous ruin and seeing the same ruin while knowing that it was formerly the headquarters of the United Farm Workers Union [Keene, §11], the location of repressed strikes [Westwood, §8], the scene of racial struggles [Richmond, §22], a socialist commune [Kaweah, §3; Palmdale, §18] or a concentration camp for Japanese-Americans [Manzanar, §17]. All these places tell a completely different story about the socio-economic evolution of California different from the one that the power discourse holds. In this sense, the reasons these places have been forgotten are precisely the same reasons why Schmitt became interested in them. California Company Town attempts to honour the memory of these places by searching out and making visible their last vestiges, whether architectural ruins, remnants of everyday life or recordings of the past: for instance, the sequence devoted to Eagle Mountain [§15] – a ­thriving community that suddenly became a modern-day ghost town after the closure of its iron mine in the 1980s–features an old recording of the last high school concert held in town, probably circa 1983, when everyone already knew that the place was economically doomed. The gloomy music of the school choir becomes a spectral soundscape that brings the past to the present, giving rise to a blinking space in which the audience can wander the ruins of the town guided by its former residents (­Figure 4.1.3). The resulting images seem to belong to a parallel dimension far away from both the heyday of Eagle Mountain and the time of filming, an impression reinforced by the use of 16-mm film, since this format began to look outdated in the mid-2000s. Schmitt’s detached sympathy towards most company towns disappears in the last sequence of the film, in which Silicon Valley is depicted as an eerie garden city that conceals a landscape tamed by large corporations.

Figure 4.1.3  C alifornia Company Town, Eagle Mountain.

Blinking Spaces  119 This time, the filmmaker does not find any alternative narrative to the economic success of high-tech companies, but only a silence in the territory that is emphasised by a reciprocal silence in the commentary. This change of strategy closes California Company Town with a pastoral stillness that may be interpreted as the calm before the storm, a fleeting mirage that might suffer the same fate as the previous 22 company towns. Accordingly, by claiming a historical and emotional reading of the territory, the archaeological gaze allows Schmitt to discuss the past and present forms of land occupation, warning the audience about the dangerous volatility with which large corporations create and destroy places.

Ruins: Spectral Soundscapes Portuguese film Ruins (Ruínas, Manuel Mozos, 2009) portrays a country haunted by its past. The very title already announces its content: a set of non-narrative sequences showing the ubiquitous presence of ruins throughout Portugal. These ruins, however, are neither heritage sites nor tourist spots, but residential, productive and leisure spaces that were abandoned after becoming obsolete, such as panoramic restaurants, roadside inns, seaside resorts, mountain sanatoriums, boarding schools, popular theatres, museum ships, closed mines, working-class neighbourhoods, and again, company towns. Some of these places are well known in Portugal, but none are especially old: most date from the years of the Estado Novo, the fascist regime that ruled the country from 1933 to 1974. Many of the constructions shown in the film are therefore ruins of modernity (see Hell & Schönle, 2010): not the powerful and triumphant modernity of other richer countries, but a local and incomplete version that has remained unconsciously associated with the Salazar dictatorship. The film focuses on 23 specific locations, most in the metropolitan areas of Lisbon and Porto, but also a few in inland rural regions such as Trás-os-Montes, the Serra da Estrela and the Alentejo (Figure 4.1.4). Contrary to California Company Town, these places are not identified until the closing credits, since Ruins does not follow a geographical logic but an emotional one: the idea is to convey the impression that the whole country, no matter where, has been long neglected. This perception is constructed in the editing room: transitions from one sequence to another are made with close-ups in order to avoid the audience recognising the film’s locations until each sequence is well advanced. Consequently, cinematic space is created here through the gradual opening of the visual field, transitioning from close-ups to long shots and from interior spaces to exterior landscapes. Blinking spaces emerge this time from the contrast between the observational mise en scène and the performative commentary. Manuel Mozos, the director of the film, uses long static shots emptied of human presence, which he overlaps with popular songs, movie dialogues and mysterious voices reading different types of texts, such as public notices,

120  Iván Villarmea Álvarez

Figure 4.1.4  R uins, geographical distribution of film locations.

business letters, medical reports, educational texts, cooking recipes and excerpts of the book Memórias e Receitas Culinárias dos Makavenkos (Grandella, 1919). These voices, as explained by Filipa Rosário, are never identified or contextualised: they appear without any prior introduction to then sink into silence, as if they were ghosts haunting these ruins (2014, p. 190). Their presence, Rosário continues, summons invisible characters that introduce fiction within these spaces, turning them

Blinking Spaces  121 into settings for potential stories that must be imagined by the audience (2014, p. 197). The blend of voices generates a series of spectral soundscapes that allow the past to seep into the present through anecdotal, but highly evocative aspects of everyday life. Most texts are closely related to the depicted spaces, whether because they talk about these places or because they have been written when they were still inhabited. There is even one found on location: the so-called health commandments, which are shown framed and hung on a wall of an old boarding school just after having been recited in the commentary. Another example of site-specific text appears in the sequence filmed in Barrocal do Douro, a modernist company town built in the late 1950s to house the workers of the Picote Dam, in Trás-os-Montes. There, a real report published in a local weekly newspaper aimed at praising the town’s facilities is read aloud over images showing these same facilities. Once again, this sequence gives rise to a blinking space through the combination of two simultaneous temporalities. On the one hand, the images were originally recorded in the late 2000s, when the town had ­already been abandoned. On the other hand, the voice in the commentary seems to come from 50 years ago, when Barrocal do Douro had just been built (Figure 4.1.5). Just as the Eagle Mountain sequence in California Company Town, the more time that passes since these images were filmed, the more timeless they become because they represent, above all, the sedimentation of time in space. Mozos uses both the archaeological gaze and the spectral soundscapes to suggest that the past refuses to leave the Portuguese landscape: it would not only have entrenched itself in already existing ruins, but would threaten to transform any slightly neglected construction into new ruins. This omnipresence of the past ends up being a problem for the country because it conditions its development in the medium and long

Figure 4.1.5  R uins, Barrocal do Douro.

122  Iván Villarmea Álvarez terms. In this sense, the accumulation of images of abandoned places in Ruins conveys an ominous feeling of stagnation that has to do with what Boaventura de Sousa Santos has called “the problem of the past”: The set of representations of the historical conditions that in a given society explain the deficiencies of the present, formulated as backwardness vis-à-vis the present of the more developed countries. Given the historical duration of said conditions, difficulties in overcoming such deficiencies in the near future are to be expected. (2011: 399) The film thus aligns with a long tradition of self-representations that depicts Portugal as an anachronistic and disoriented country, trapped in nostalgia for both a glorious past long gone and an idealised future never reached (see Lourenço, 1978). Its haunted ruinscapes symbolise the systematic pre-eminence of the past over Portugal’s present and future, a burden that prevents the country from synchronising its historical temporality with that of more developed countries. Mozos’ images admit a nostalgic reading, of course, but also warn about the fragility and impermanence of places, and especially about the dangers of living in a temporality out of step with the historical moment. This warning certainly arrived at the right time, since Ruins was released in the midst of the Great Recession. In that context, what was intended to be a reflection on Portugal’s incomplete modernity became a premonition of the later cinema of austerity, which would address the effects and consequences of austerity measures imposed on the European population starting in 2010. Arguably, therefore, spectral soundscapes in Ruins work as a memento mori aimed at Portuguese society because they draw attention to the past’s ability, for better or worse, to pervade, and sometimes even overshadow, the present.

Toponymy: Cinematic Cartography Argentine documentary Toponymy (Toponimia, Jonathan Perel, 2015) is a cinematic tour through four small villages located at the southwest end of the Chaco Plain, 50 kilometres south of San Miguel de Tucumán. These places were founded by the military authorities just a few d ­ ecades ago, in the late 1970s, within the framework of the so-called Operation Independence against the People’s Revolutionary Army (ERP), a guerrilla group that tried to start a war front in the area. The primary function of these settlements was to assemble the population and keep them under surveillance to prevent any contact with the guerrilla fighters, so that the four villages were planned according to a panoptic logic. The most disturbing thing about these places is that they were serially conceived, which means that their architecture and layout are almost

Blinking Spaces  123 identical: the same constructions and the same spaces were reproduced with minor differences in four different locations, imposing a uniform lifestyle on them that discouraged any kind of dissent. Consequently, everything in these villages echoes the authoritarian project of the last Argentine dictatorship, beginning with their names: Teniente Berdina, Capitán Cáceres, Sargento Moya and Soldado Maldonado, which correspond to the ranks and surnames of four military men killed during the Operation Independence. Before directing Toponymy, Argentine filmmaker Jonathan Perel had already made several works on places that had something to do with state terrorism in Argentina, such as El predio (2010), 17 monumentos (2012) or Tabula rasa (2013), in which he embraced an observational mise en scène that privileged location sound and dispensed with any commentary: the only texts included in these films were excerpts of official documents that Perel showed in close-up and then juxtaposed with current images of the places to which they refer to. This system of representation would be further developed in Toponymy by dividing the footage into four similar sections, each composed of about sixty-eight 15-second-long static shots in which the audience first sees the original founding acts of these villages followed by a series of images recorded there in 2014. Each section repeats exactly the same series: the same kinds of spots are shown through the same kind of shots, which are ­edited exactly in the same order. The rules and restrictions of this system of representation are so rigid that they mirror the rules and restrictions of the time, as Patrick Brian Smith has stated: “The rigorous formal style employed by Perel aims (…) to echo not only the rigidity of these fabricated social spaces but, concomitantly, the military dictatorship’s ideological and spatial desires for control and surveillance” (2016). Space itself, according to Irene Depetris Chauvin, was subject to an operation of social domination and transformation at the time (2016, 2017). Nowadays, however, the battle for space has become the battle for its meaning: the names and shapes of these villages anchor them in a violent and militarised past, but Perel’s images suggest that these places strive to release from this legacy, although they do so by neglecting and vandalising its material remains. Toponymy thus documents the perennial tension between the strong ideological discourse that emanates from the architectural programme and the residents’ efforts to ignore it and continue living there like in any other place. By systematically exploring the overwhelming similarities between these places in search of their slight differences, the film adopts what Depetris Chauvin calls a mapping agency, the main aim of which would be to promote contradictions that allow the audience to think critically about the constellation of times inhabiting these spaces (2016, 2017). The system of representation devised by Perel is imbued with what Teresa Castro has termed “the mapping impulse”, which is “a particular

124  Iván Villarmea Álvarez way of seeing and looking at the world” linked to “the processes that underlie the understanding of space” (2009, pp. 10–11). Shot after shot and section after section, Toponymy develops an accurate and meaningful representation of these four villages in order to locate them in the audience’s geographical imaginary: its architectural views faithfully describe the appearance of these places, focusing on their design and constructions, while the unalterable order of shots establishes a recurring itinerary that conveys the feeling of being there, hanging around, looking for something – a meaning – that will only be revealed through the accumulation of repetitions. Hence, the film becomes a cognitive mapping of these cloned spaces, and consequently enters the field of both “cartographic cinema” (Conley, 2007) and “cinematic cartography” (Caquard & Fraser Taylor, 2009, pp. 5–8; Roberts, 2012, pp. 190–218), despite not including any map in its footage. The camera positions seem to have been chosen to identify the spatial elements discussed by Kevin Lynch in the book The Image of the City: paths, nodes, landmarks, districts and edges (1960, pp. 47–48). The paths, for example, would be streets that go nowhere, because all of the village stake the form of a closed rectangle beside the road. The nodes, in turn, would be the institutions that regulate community life, such as churches, communal houses and schools, but also the structures that fulfil a practical function, such as shopping centres, sports complexes, industrial sheds and bus stops. These buildings reproduce the same architectural typology and occupy a similar spot within the villages, which make them look interchangeable for everyone except the locals. The same can be said about landmarks, the elements in which the ideological discourse of the dictatorship becomes more explicit – from the road signs bearing the names of the villages to the water towers with painted slogans, going through entrance gates, plaques, sculptures, stages and flagpoles – because they expose a militarised space halfway between the prison and the barracks. Regarding the districts, each ­village can be considered a different one, although they are actually the same repeated district in a different location. ­Finally, the edges would be the border between the natural and the built environments, in which the planned space gives way to an entropic landscape. Perel’s decision to end each section at the outer limits of the villages (­Figures 4.1.6–4.1.9) invites the audience to look at the off-screen space, which must be understood in both spatial and temporal terms. On the one hand, from a visual and spatial perspective, these images open a vanishing line towards the non-regulated space of the guerrilla. On the other, from a temporal perspective, they send us back to the past, when wilderness was perceived as both a threat and a hope, depending on ­people’s ideology. By means of cinematic cartography, Perel recalls the traumatic past of these villages and shows how they have evolved over time. The structural

Figure 4.1.6–4.1.9  Toponymy (from upper left to lower right: edges of Teniente Berdina, Capitán Cáceres, Sargento Moya and Soldado Maldonado).

126  Iván Villarmea Álvarez

Figure 4.1.10  Toponymy, statue of a mother without her child in Sargento Moya, Argentina.

logic of the editing reveals the oppressive component of their planning, but the images, as Patrick Brian Smith argues, also point out “the ways in which the community has reshaped and reappropriated its social ­milieu” (2016). Oddly enough, the clearest example of these ‘liberating’ interventions is the vandalism of the sculptures that were erected by dictatorship: Sargento Moya’s bust has been removed from their plinth in the homonymous village, the same as the baby that should be in a statue of a mother and child, leaving a gaping hole in its place that becomes an especially significant symbol in a country with thousands of disappeared persons and victims of state terrorism (Figure 4.1.10). These findings suggest that the battle of meaning always remains open: faced with the monuments that force the audience to passively accept a given discourse, Toponymy operates as a countermonument – an artefact that challenges its own constitutive laws, according to Perel’s definition (2015, p. 517) – in which historical memory is first and foremost understood as a work that must be done by the audience. The meaning of the film would then be the audience’s search for a meaning for the film: a search that necessarily involves taking a walk through the blinking spaces of Teniente Berdina, Capitán Cáceres, Sargento Moya and Soldado Maldonado.

Conclusions Moving images help us to remember because they make people, places and events singular, and also because they feed an archive that we can review again and again. Nevertheless, many people and places have not been filmed at the right time, and most have not been filmed in any way at all. In these cases, we have to imagine them from available materials, and space itself is probably the most lasting resource we have. Many filmmakers have realised that they can recall the past by simply showing

Blinking Spaces  127 its vestiges: they just need to find the right place and, what is most ­important, the right way to represent it. The visual techniques and strategies addressed here – namely, the visual palimpsest, the ­archaeological gaze, the use of spectral soundscapes and the practice of cinematic ­cartography – are able to join past and present in the same cinematic space: a blinking space, in which the camera frames the present to allow the audience to experience the past, or, more exactly, the permanence of the past in the present. The films discussed in this chapter use these techniques and strategies to depict different places – whether larger or smaller, from lost villages to entire countries – and to address different issues – from the spatial logic of capitalism to the overwhelming burden of the past – but they all share the same dynamics: they give rise to cinematic spaces in which the here and now is not limited to the time of the filming, inasmuch as they also include traces of the past intended to reach the future.

Note 1 This building housed a 2,500-seat café, a 1,400-seat movie theatre, a large ballroom and several theme restaurants, including an American bar, an Italian osteria, a Turkish cafe, a Japanese teahouse and a Spanish winery. Built in 1928 to replace the Haus Potsdam – a similar but smaller place – the Haus Vaterland remained open until 1943, when it was partially destroyed by fire.

Works Cited Filmography Lanzmann, C. (1985). Shoah. Mozos, M. (2009). Ruins (Ruínas). Perel, J. (2010). El Predio. Perel, J. (2012). 17 monumentos. Perel, J. (2013). Tabula rasa. Perel, J. (2015). Toponymy (Toponimia). Schmitt, L. A. (2008). California Company Town. Schmitt, L. A. (2011). The Last Buffalo Hunt. Schmitt, L. A. (2017). Purge This Land. Steyerl, H. (1998). The Empty Centre (Die leere Mitte). Bibliography Boyer, M.-C. (1992). Cities for sale: Merchandising history at South Street Seaport. In M. Sorkin(Ed.), Variations on a theme park. The new American city and the end of public space (pp. 181–204). New York, NY: Hill and Wang. Caquard, S., & Fraser Taylor, D. R. (2009). What is cinematic cartography? The Cartographic Journal, 46(1), 5–8. doi:10.1179/000870409X430951 Castro, T. (2009). Cinema’s mapping impulse: Questioning visual culture. The Cartographic Journal, 46(1), 9–15. doi:10.1179/000870409X415598

128  Iván Villarmea Álvarez Conley, T. (2007). Cartographic cinema. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Coverley, M. (2010). Psychogeography. Harpenden, UK: Pocket Essentials. Delgado, M. (2007). La ciudad mentirosa. Fraude y miseria del ‘Modelo ­Barcelona’. Madrid, Spain: Libros de la Catarata. Depetris Chauvin, I. (2016). Del Cineasta como Cartógrafo. Políticas de la memoria en Toponimia (2015) de Jonathan Perel. Afuera. Etudios de Crítica Cultural, 16. Retrieved October 24, 2018, from http://revistaafuera16.blog spot.com.es/p/indice.html Depetris Chauvin, I. (2017). Geografías de autor. Escrituras cartográficas en el cine de Jonathan Perel. laFuga, 20. Retrieved October 24, 2018, from http://2016.lafuga.cl/geografias-de-autor/853 Grandella, F. de A. (1919). Memórias e Receitas Culinárias dos Makavenkos. Lisboa, Portugal: Sociedade dos Makavenkos. Hell, J., & Schonle, A. (Eds.). (2010). Ruins of modernity. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Lourenço, E. (1978). O Labirinto da Saudade – Psicanálise Mítica do Destino Português. Lisboa, Portugal: Publicações Dom Quixote. Lynch, K. (1960). The image of the city. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. McGuire, R. (2014). Here. New York, NY: Pantheon. Muñoz, F. (2010). Urbanalización, Paisajes comunes, lugares globales. Barcelona, Spain: Editorial Gustavo Gili. Perel, J. (2015). El cine como contramonumento. Constelaciones. Revista de Teoría Crítica, 7,516–518. Retrieved October 24, 2018, from http://constela ciones-rtc.net/issue/view/51 Roberts, L. (2012). Film, mobility and urban space: A cinematic geography of Liverpool. Liverpool, UK: Liverpool University Press. Rosário, F. (2014). O Lugar da Voz na Construção do Espaço Documental Português: Morais, Mozos e Tocha. Cinema. Revista de Filosofia e da Imagem em Movimento,5,189–205. Retrieved October 24, 2018, from http://cjpmi. ifilnova.pt/5-contents Santos, B. de S. (2011). Portugal: Tales of being and not being. In V. K. Mendes (Ed.), Facts and fictions of António Lobo Antunes (pp. 399–443). Dartmouth, MA: Tagus Press. Smith, P. B. (2016). The politics of spatiality in experimental nonfiction cinema: Jonathan Perel’s ‘Toponimia’. NECSUS. European Journal of Film Studies, 10. Retrieved October 24, 2018, from https://necsus-ejms.org/politics-­ spatiality-experimental-nonfiction-cinema-jonathan-perels-toponimia/ Villarmea Álvarez, I. (2015). Documenting cityscapes. Urban change in contemporary non-fiction film. London, UK& New York, NY: Wallflower Press. Villarmea Álvarez, I. (2016). Blinking spaces: Koyaanisqatsi’s cinematic city. In J. A. Suárez & D. Walton (Eds.), Culture, space and power: Blurred lines (pp. 33–43). Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.

4.2 On the ‘Ghosts’ of Piramida Ruins, Memory and Music José Duarte

Modern Drift: An Introduction In 2012, filmmaker Andreas Koefoed and the members of the D ­ anish band Efterklang – Mads Brauer, Casper Clausen and Rasmus S­ tolberg – ­travelled to Piramida, an abandoned mining town located in the ­Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard that had been part of the former Soviet Union. As a result of that journey, they created two interlinked objects: a documentary, The Ghost of Piramida, and a musical album, ­Piramida. The former, part travelogue, part contemporary expedition, is a powerful register of the town of Piramida; the latter might be considered as a creative document that records the sounds and silences of the town, which would be later used in the band’s 2012 album. Both documentary and album are archives that preserve the memory of Piramida’s life. In The Ghost of Piramida, while filming Efterklang in Piramida, ­ Koefoed plunges into the town’s landscape and memories not only through images, but also through the testimony of one of the workers, Alexander Ivanokic Naumkim, who lived there until 1998, the year the mine was shut down. In the album, Piramida, the band members recall the town through their songs. This essay will consider three readings of Piramida: first, it will explore the origins and context of the town; second, it will examine how Koefoed’s film delves into the themes of representation, memory and nostalgia; and finally, it will consider the ways in which Efterklang engaged with Piramida by participating in Koefoed’s film and by creating an album rooted in the sounds and silences of these modern ruins. Thus, my aim is to explore Piramida’s multiple meanings: a mining ghost town forever lost in time, a landscape that can function as an important cultural archive and a place of memory and ruins, but also of creation, as demonstrated both by Koefoed and Efterklang.

Between the Walls: Piramida before Efterklang Located on Spitsbergen Island, Piramida1 is only 1,000 kilometres from the North Pole. The archipelago belongs to Norway under the Svalbard

130  José Duarte Treaty (1920), but it can be developed for commercial purposes by the differing signatory countries, currently numbering more than 40. In 1927, the Soviet Union started developing Piramida. It existed as a mining town from 1946 until the mine was closed in 1998, seven years after the fall of the USSR. Piramida was highly symbolic for Communist Russia since the USSR used it to offer an image of the Soviet dream to the West. The mining settlement, owned by the state company Arktikugol Trust, was once a place that represented a “Soviet golden age of stability, strength, and ‘normalcy’” (Boym, 2001, p. 10), a model for the great future of the Soviet Union, as Rachel Nuwer notes: To explore Pyramiden is to step back in time, to the heyday of the USSR. Soviet culture, architecture and politics permeate the town, from the block-style housing to the bust of Lenin – the world’s ­northernmost statue of that communist revolutionary – gazing down, ­fatherly and proud, on Pyramiden’s main square. (2014) At that time, the town had more than 1,000 inhabitants and, despite the harshness of the Artic conditions, those who were chosen to work there felt very lucky. As Brandon Presser states: A posting at Pyramiden may seem like a punishment to the uninitiated, but it was one of the most coveted jobs on offer in the Soviet Union. As the sole settlement in the West, Pyramiden was communism’s show pony, on display for the world. As such, the Soviets made the city a perfect paradigm for its hammer-and-sickle ideology, with an exceptionally high standard of living. Only the best technicians and workers were recruited to the Arctic colony. (2017) Piramida was, then, the place where workers and their families could live a comfortable life and be happy. Not only were the employees earning twice the normal salary, they also had access to extremely high-quality facilities and to a relatively luxurious life: they could use a library, a giant swimming pool, a concert hall and a cinema theatre, for instance. The several housing complexes and avenues had Western names – ­London, Paris – and at the very end of one of these – Champs-Elysées – there was a statue of the communist revolutionary leader Lenin. Thus, despite the severe environment, the town symbolised a better quality of life where the residents could exercise both their bodies and their minds, while at the same time, offering an open window for the West to gaze upon. However, with the decline of the USSR, Piramida slowly became evident of what Paolo Magagnoli calls “the crisis of utopia” (2015, p. 9), as the dream proposed by the town’s infrastructure

On the ‘Ghosts’ of Piramida  131 vanished rapidly, a consequence of the economic frailty and ideological failure of the Soviet Union. The last piece of coal was extracted on 31 March 1998. Suddenly, more than 1,000 workers, who had been employed there, were forced to abandon the archipelago and, as they left Piramida, it slowly became a ghost town. Nevertheless, Piramida’s unique geographical location and very low temperatures meant that the settlement did not decay in the same manner as other places would have under similar economic and social circumstances. Its particular conditions allowed the town to remain, to a certain extent, intact and frozen in time, a modern ruin, 2 “a historically postponed site, surviving as a conspicuous Soviet town in a post-­Soviet era” (Andreassen, Bjerck, & Olsen, 2010, p. 155). Notwithstanding, there are clear signs of decadence. As Andreassen et al. note, the body of the town was slowly transformed in the last years: […] doors were broken; offices had been vandalized; walls and concrete were decomposing; and paint and wallpaper had surrendered to gravity; forming new archaeological layers. Nature was introducing and mingling. Nestling gulls competed over cramped spaces on window ledges, while rivers and streams, once held firmly in check by dikes and dams, had reclaimed their original delta space overtaken by the town. In addition, tourists and stray visitors visited Pyramiden in increasing numbers, taking keepsakes from the perceived ghost town. (2010, p. 11) The authors’ trip to the town in 2006 led them to report Piramida as a kind of post-apocalyptic site, devoid of any human presence, except for the increasing number of tourists and vandals who then looked at it as a lost paradise. Under these circumstances, Piramida became a site of different memories evoked by the past and the present, and of the “transience of all earthly things despite the utopian promises of endless social advancement” ­(Ederson, 2005, p. 11). However, the former mining town also o ­ ffers an alternative geography, one where it is possible to obtain new layers of meaning from its architecture and landscape, as Andreas Koefoed did in The Ghost of Piramida and Efterklang did with their album Piramida.

Hollow Mountain: Andreas Koefoed and Piramida Danish director Andreas Koefoed’s seventh work, The Ghost of Piramida, explores Efterklang’s modern-day expedition to Piramida. Part documentary, part travelogue, part diary and part music video, The Ghost of Piramida reflects on specific themes like ruins, memory and creation.

132  José Duarte The original idea was for the band to record a music video in the Arctic, but it slowly became something else, as both the director and the members of the band became obsessed with Piramida’s history and landscape. Nonetheless, getting approval to film there was difficult, as the company who owned the place prevented most people from entering the town. Despite the reluctance, permission was given for a nine-day assignment. The group travelled with a crew led by German director Markus Reher, who was making a TV documentary on modern ruins (Slater, 2012).3 The project included a troubled journey – getting there involved a complete day of travelling using different means of t­ ransportation – and resulted in a film that is more than just a modern-day expedition to a remote area. In The Ghost of Piramida, Koefoed maps and documents diverse perspectives on Piramida through which “private and personal” memories and experiences “are exposed and sometimes contrasted with the official or public record” (Aufdeheide, 2007, p. 100). This is particularly evident in the opening scenes of the film, in which the viewer first meets ­A lexander Ivanokic Naumkim in his apartment in Moscow. Alexander is a key figure for viewers to better understand Piramida, since he worked there as both an electrician and the settlement’s official photographer and camera operator. The amateur footage he collected over the years is used by Koefoed to document two different historical times: Piramida in its heyday and the settlement after its decay. Alexander’s voice-over narration contrasts with the almost post-­ apocalyptic scenes in contemporary Piramida, now reclaimed by nature and time. As he begins reminiscing about a happier period in his claustrophobic suburban apartment, with the footage from the projector covering his whole body, Alexander is brought, and brings his viewers, to a place that no longer exists except in his memory. This nostalgic impulse frames much of his story within the film, while Efterklang’s odyssey, at the same time, points to another path. Thus, the documentary seems to explore two different directions: first, the nostalgic view presented by Alexander’s memories; second, the journey undertaken by Efterklang, in which they experience the present-day Piramida, with all its silences and sounds. “Nostalgia” is defined by Svetlana Boym (2007, p. 2) as appearing to be a “longing for a place, but it is actually a yearning for a different time – the time of our childhood, the slower rhythms of our dreams”, and is depicted here not only through the memories projected on the wall, but also through Alexander’s narration: All the cables and pipes were collected under the walkways that connected the buildings. Like veins connecting the organs in a human body. The town was to be fully self-sufficient. There was a greenhouse for growing vegetables and flowers. We also had cows

On the ‘Ghosts’ of Piramida  133 and pigs. Everything needed to create the society we dreamt of was available. […] – and I think those times were the best in my life. (The Ghost of Piramida, 2012) The voice-over narration and the projection of old footage give rise to a dispositif able to convey Alexander’s memories: a route to a stable world defined by specific physical and emotional borders. Alexander seems to refuse to engage with the present, permanently lingering in this state of not being here, in Moscow, but also not being there, in Piramida. This duality also describes the town, perceived by Bjørnar Olsen as a “postponed place” (2013, p. 212). The film’s focus on present-day Piramida is presented by the band and, as its members enter the differing locations, we are confronted with the fact that the same buildings we saw in Alexander’s images are now empty. Most of the town’s architectural spaces – still intact – suggest a world that is long gone, “a petrified image of Soviet ambitions in the High Arctic” (Olsen, 2013, p. 213). It could be suggested that the crystallised buildings emphasise an impossible project that refuses to disappear completely, since they represent the Soviet ideology (Olsen, 2013, p. 212) while also alluding to the impossibility of that same dream. The modern ruins of Piramida stand for a changing society identified by the forces of globalisation and capitalism,4 as the world opened up to new forms of interconnectedness. Piramida’s idealised society can only exist now in the memories of those who, like Alexander, long “for a land which is often idealized in recollections because of the impossibility of return” (Beumers, 2010, p. 98 – emphasis in the original). The present, on the other side, which is depicted by Efterklang’s expedition, records the material objects and registers the changes effected after Piramida was abandoned. As the members of the band move around the diverse buildings, we discover what happened to the city and how it has been affected by time. The only person who still lives in the town is a guard (Vadim) who not only protects the place from burglars and wild animals, 5 but also stands between the human-made structures and nature. Koefoed’s The Ghost of Piramida explores not only the tensions between past and present, but also between ruins and memory. Alexander’s footage lures the viewers into Piramida’s utopian world, with dreamy sequences infused with nostalgia, while Efterklang’s journey focuses on the absence of that dream. In this context, the term ‘ghost’ in the title invites us to consider a plurality of meanings. There is the ghost from the past, but also the ‘ghostly’ archival images that haunt us; the phantasmagoric presence of Piramida’s residents who had to leave the place hurriedly; the ghost of an ideology; Alexander as a ‘ghost’; and, finally, the ‘ghostly’ sounds retrieved by the band members. This proposal also permits another potential reading of the former mining town, since “Koefoed’s modern-day

134  José Duarte Arctic explorers are not historians or scientists but musicians” (Rox, 2013). Piramida, the album, is a creation that manifests the immense possibilities presented by modern ruins not as useless, but as spaces of potential production and creativity (Edensor, 2005, p. 8).

Dreams Today: Efterklang and Piramida The Ghost of Piramida is not the first time Efterklang explores the ­relationship between space and music: Vincent Moon’s documentary An Island (2011) revolves around the same conceptual constellation  – a ­geographic location/topoi (an island in Norway), its community and music. Using the songs from their third LP, Magic Chairs (2010), Moon’s documentary examines Efterklang’s musical creations, explores the band’s formation and films the island, the local communities and the band’s relationship with the residents. Songs like ‘Modern Drift’ – maybe ­considered an allusion to their inclination towards ­travelling and a ­reference to their own condition as ‘polar explorers’ – or ‘Alike’ are ­revived and reinterpreted as the inhabitants, local bands and ­musicians also participate in the performance in different ways. Thus, An Island, released after Magic Chairs, gives new meaning to the album, creating an intimate relationship between space, music and film. Despite these influences, Piramida, much like Magic Chairs, should not be regarded as a ‘concept album’. As Rasmus Stolberg comments in an interview for Drowned in Sound: It was a big concern. If it’s too big a thing it takes away focus from the actual music because we didn’t set out to do a conceptual album or anything. The beginning is a very conceptual frame but the writing and all the songs and making the music is about the music. (Slater, 2012) Moreover, as Mads Brauer states in the same interview, while there might be some general consistencies in their work, for each new album, the band likes to start anew. Going to Piramida represented an extreme adventure, one in which they aspired to create a sound map/archive of the town. During the nine days of their stay, the band used Piramida as an open-air studio of gigantic proportions and recorded more than a 1000 sounds from that place, even if they used only about 40. In the film, we see the band members walking around the town with their instruments, playing diverse objects in different places. For instance, ‘Hollow Mountain’ – an allusion to Piramida’s mountain – features sounds from an oil tank that the band members named ‘Mrs.  Piggy’; ‘Told To Be Fine’ uses sounds from glass lamps and ‘Dreams Today’ reproduces the sound of Stolberg’s feet running in the town. These are all different songs with different constructions, and therefore, different

On the ‘Ghosts’ of Piramida  135 meanings. Thus, while Efterklang did not use the majority of the sounds they recorded, the album still reflects the time spent in the former mining town and the band members’ creative process. Consequently, Piramida is a product of a particular moment in time, as it represents the exploration of the possibility of all things lost. The album also highlights polemics associated with modern ruins, because, by their very nature, these are at odds with the goal of preservation and heritage promoted by both museums and institutions for ruins alike (Olsen and Pétursdóttir, 2014, p. 15). Unlike ancient ruins, modern ruins stand as constant reminders of death and the transience of things. Nonetheless, by collecting and recording sounds from Piramida, ­Efterklang contributed to recovering and creating new memories of that place. Not only did “[r]aw sounds bec[o]me finished songs” (Ganz, 2013) that would form the album, but the act of creation itself – going to a remote archipelagoon a journey to record sounds of a ghost town – also gave new meaning to Piramida. While still a reminder of the postponed ­Soviet identity and of the rapid global developments that took place in the 1990s, Piramida can no longer be seen as just a ‘ghost town’; it must now be seen as a potential place of creation. Despite the fact that, for the band members, the album was not created with the purpose of documenting the town, it is almost impossible to dissociate one from the other, as even the album art features a cover alluding to their Arctic experience.6 At the same time, the band also ended up creating the soundtrack and melodies for the film: Efterklang’s compositions suit the tone and atmosphere of The Ghost of Piramida. While they accompany the dreamy nostalgic sequences of Alexander’s past, they also experiment with elements of the landscape, like wood, iron and glass. As such, their expedition is collected in different layers open to many interpretations: a personal journey, a creative venture and a work on memory. Piramida, then, is transformed from a modern ruin into something else: remembered in the past as a monument to a distant fallible golden age and presented to the present as several works of art – a soundtrack, album and documentary. Yet, the collaboration between art forms goes beyond this, as Efterklang hosted and promoted free worldwide private-public screenings of The Ghost of Piramida. The private-public screenings have the primary purpose of creating events for a community that shares the same taste in music or films. This also represents a great opportunity for bringing people together. Analogous to these advantages is the fact that a creation like Koefoed’s documentary has a worldwide distribution, the joint promotions offered similar opportunities to the album which otherwise would probably not have happened. In this process, Piramida and its story is celebrated and made famous in several places around the world, which may give it a new interpretation because, while watching the film, viewers will create “new memories and meanings” (Olsen & Pétursdóttir, 2014, p. 12).

136  José Duarte

The Ghost: Piramida after Koefoed and Efterklang Combining music, cinema, archive and performance, The Ghost of ­Piramida comes out as a cross-media project that allows us to engage with the abandoned town of Piramida in stimulating ways: ­A lexander’s character looks back upon a utopian past while facing the present; the band interacts with the material ruins of the place to create music. There are, however, distinctions between the projects. While Koefoed’s film seems to be an excavation in time – a time lost but still very much ­present – ­Efterklang’s Piramida is the result of a particular interaction with the human and natural landscape. Together, both works render historical and modern versions of the ­former mining town which, despite their antagonism, are connected with each other: Alexander’s footage is similar to Koefoed’s images; his tales of community are embedded in the relationship that Mads, Casper and Rasmus develop amongst themselves and with the security guard, and both cultural objects explore memory and the importance of the journey – one emotional and the other physical. Moreover, if we agree with Svetlana Boym, Alexander’s memories point towards what she ­defines as a restorative nostalgia, one that “stresses nostos (home) and attempts a transhistorical reconstruction of the lost home” (2007, p. 13). In The Ghost of Piramida, Alexander’s memories linger in a past that no longer exists, but that still resonates significantly in his present life, since in the final scene of the film, his words are “even though we left, we never said goodbye to Piramida forever. Because it will always be in our hearts” (The Ghost of Piramida, 2012). The footage seen not only on the wall, but also on his body leaves the apartment immersed in images that belong to happier days. Rebelling against “a modern idea of time” (Boym, 2007, p. 8), Alexander’s memories long for the utopia of the Soviet Union that can only be present in contemporaneity by way of the buildings and monuments in Piramida. The continuous interplay between the footage and Koefoed’s film allows the viewer to look into Alexander’s life, then and now, pointing towards many memories that were lost and are now only recoverable via what is projected (both by the camera and by himself). In this sense, The Ghost of Piramida is also engrossed with the cinematographic memory: the amateur footage by Alexander portrays a historical image of the ex-mining town and operates as a meta-­cinematographic device, while the documentary filmed by Koefoed depicts contemporary Piramida and is a visual exercise on the power of the moving image. ­Koefoed and Efterklang’s arctic exploration is what renders the recording of Piramida’s historiography possible and, similarly, emphasises the town’s cinematographic potentiality functioning as “an environment or locus of the uncanny” (Löffler, 2015, p. 1). Cinema was there long before Alexander’s or Koefed’s experience.

On the ‘Ghosts’ of Piramida  137 The Ghost of Piramida brings forth images from the past that are very alive in the present because they are “tangible” (Olsen, 2013, p. 214). Piramida is, in Olsen’s words, the site of different material memories, as the buildings, the apartments and the monuments convey not only the idea of past that still lingers in the present, but also of “what was left behind” (2013, p. 215). Inside these structures, and throughout the former mining town, there are many symbols attached to an array of memories: from the Soviet Union to the more capitalist consumer society. Likewise, the sounds captured by the band members while in P ­ iramida represent another type of memory, one that is still in the making, by evoking the sonic aura of the town. Piramida, the album, which is later ­inserted into the documentary as soundtrack, both reflects and reproduces this sonic aura. The songs in the album can then be listened to without any connection to the former mining town, since they can also be considered (artistic) memory, a travelogue or simply the diary of the expedition undertaken by the band members and the director to Piramida. But what about Piramida today? It has in fact become a tourist attraction and Arktikugol, the company still in charge of the mining settlement, developed new infrastructures to attract tourists. Reservations to visit the town can be made on the Visit Svalbard website, and visitors can stay at the Tulpan Hotel, a newly refurbished building that is open seasonally, from March to October, and where the client can choose between modern and old Soviet-style rooms. Besides a guided tour, there is also a museum and a souvenir shop. This new side of the town could be seen both as an expected outcome of the recent interest in rediscovering the place, as well as an obsession with its haunted and haunting past. Revealing how a ghost town can be revived, the two objects analysed in this essay offer examples of the potential stories that places and landscapes can share with audiences. The many faces revealed by Piramida in these productions – a Soviet town, nostalgic landscape, creative space, tourist area – are evidence that modern ruins are sites able to provide a valuable insight into distinct types of memories and between past, present and future.

Notes 1 In most Scandinavian languages, the name of the town is Pyramiden. For practical purposes, I will use the English name: Piramida. 2 Modern ruins are understood as the ruins emerging from a recent past (usually from the 19th century or after). For more on this subject, see the influential work by Tim Ederson, Industrial Ruins: Spaces, Aesthetics and Materialities (2005) or, more recently, Bjørnar Olsen and ÞóraPétursdóttir’s (eds.), Ruin Memories: Materialities, Aesthetics and the Archeology of the Recent Past (2014). 3 The director met with the company owners in Moscow and was granted restricted access to the town to film his documentary Modern Ruins (2011),

138  José Duarte which is a five-part documentary series that focuses on various places around the world and aspires to offer an insight into the disintegration of modern architecture and the many meanings behind it. “Piramida – A Soviet Beachhead on Spitsbergen” is the second episode of the series. 4 In his short study on memory, Olsen notes that Piramida is a place in transition (2013). Even though the Soviet doctrine prevailed, the town represented diverse utopias, one of which was what the author describes as a “utopian consumer society” (p. 214) evident in the many advertisements for consumer goods posted on the walls, as is the example of Seiko and other well-known brands. Therefore, there seems to be a contradiction here, but its analysis remains beyond the scope of this essay. 5 In the film there is a bear which makes the band members feel uneasy. The bear also appears in Alexander’s footage but its presence has a different meaning: while in Alexander’s recording of Piramida, the natural world ­represented by the bear seems to be in harmony with Piramida’s idyllic ­community; in the present context, this is no longer true. 6 Created by Hvass & Hannibal Studio – Sofie Hannibal and Nan Na Hvass – the album artwork is composed of pyramids, numerous references to islands – Svalbard archipelago – and to the polar setting, plus photographs – taken by Efterklang – of the abandoned sites the band members visited in ­Piramida. Additionally, after the album was released, some of the music videos used ­either footage from The Ghost of Piramida or from the town itself. W ­ atching Mads, Casper and Rasmus collecting sounds and using the surrounding landscape as instruments is like attending an abstract performance focused on the relationship between the musicians and the space surrounding them. Alongside the album and the videos, they also performed a series of concerts titled ‘The Piramida Concerts’, in which the band performed the full album with orchestras from different places, the first one being with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra at the Sydney Opera House.

Works Cited Discography Efterklang. (2010). Magic Chairs. Efterklang. (2012). Piramida. Filmography Koefoed, A. (2012). The Ghost of Piramida. Moon, V. (2011). An Island. Reher, M. (2011). Modern Ruins. Bibliography Andreassen, E., Bjerck, H. B., & Olsen, B. (2010). Persistent memories: ­Pyramiden – a Soviet mining town in the high Arctic. Trondheim, Norway: Tapir Academic Press. Aufdeheide, P. (2007). Documentary: A very short introduction. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Beumers, B. (2010). Nostalgic journeys in post-Soviet cinema: Towards alost home? In D. Berghahn & C. Sternberg(Eds.), European cinema in motion:

On the ‘Ghosts’ of Piramida  139 Migrant and diasporic film in contemporary Europe (pp. 96–114). New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan. Boym, S. (2001). The future of nostalgia. New York, NY: Basic Books. Boym, S. (2007). Nostalgia and its discontents. The Hedgehog Review, 9(7), 7–18. Retrieved February 15, 2018, from http://www.iasc-culture.org/ eNews/2007_10/9.2CBoym.pdf Edensor, T. (2005). Industrial ruins: Spaces, aesthetics and materialities. Oxford, UK & New York, NY: Berg. Ganz, J. (2013, March 4). How one band turned a ghost town into a giant recording studio. National Public Radio. Retrieved February 15, 2018, from http://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2013/03/04/173274068/how-oneband-turned-a-ghost-town-into-a-giant-recording-studio Löffler, P. (2015). Ghosts of the city: A spectrology of cinematic spaces. Communication +1, 4, 1–19. Retrieved February 15, 2018, from https:// scholarworks.umass.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://www.google. pt/&httpsredir=1&article=1038&context=cpo Magagnoli, P. (2015). Documents of Utopia: The politics of experimental documentary. London, UK & New York, NY: Wallflower Press. Nuwer, R. (2014, May 14). A Soviet ghost town in the Arctic circle, Pyramiden stands alone. Smithsonian.com. Retrieved February 15, 2018, from http://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/soviet-ghost-town-arctic-circlepyramiden-stands-alone-180951429/ Olsen, B. (2013). Memory. In P. Graves-Brown, R. Harrison, & A. Piccini (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of the archaeology of the contemporary world (pp. 204–219). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Olsen, B., & Pétursdóttir, Þ. (Eds.). (2014). Ruin memories: Materialities, aesthetics and the archaeology of the recent past. London, UK & New York, NY: Routledge. Presser, B. (2017, July 19). Explore Pyramiden: The Forgotten City at the end of the world. Bloomberg. Retrieved March 18, 2018, from https://www. bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-07-19/pyramiden-is-the-abandonedsoviet-utopia-at-the-end-of-the-world Rox. (2013, October 5). Film review: The ghost of Piramida. ­Roxploration. ­Retrieved fromhttps://roxploration.wordpress.com/2013/10/05/film-reviewthe-ghost-of-piramida/ Slater, L. (2012, September 26). Efterklang on the making of Piramida. Drowned in Sound, Retrieved March 18, 2018, from http://drownedinsound.com/ in_depth/4145517-efterklang-on-the-making-of-piramida

4.3 Remembering a Fabricated City Visiting Terezín in Daniel Blaufuks’s As if… Sandra Camacho Can a city first constructed as a fortress, then transformed into a prison and then a concentration camp ever truly shed its ghosts? Can it ever assume a living not anchored on the past? And might fictional representations of such a past become as enmeshed in reality as to become a new form of memory? A prosthetic memory? In the summer of 2014, in the process of making the film As if… (2014), Portuguese artist Daniel Blaufuks visited Terezín in the Czech Republic. The city looked empty, desolate; a disconcerting fact given that this is the city previously known as Theresienstadt. First constructed as a fortress in the late 18th century, Theresienstadt was capable of housing up to 11,000 men during wartime. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, a smaller fortress nearby served as a “notorious, infamous prison, reserved for those who presented grave threats to society” (Schiff, 2012, p. 161). It became known for having housed Gavrilo Princip, the young anarchist who murdered Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo in 1914, a killing that initiated the outbreak of First World War. In 1938, Nazi Germany occupied the fortresses, turning the largest into a concentration camp in 1942: “The camp, which the Nazis also described as a ‘paradise ghetto’ […] was intended as a place where they could send wealthy or prominent Jews, particularly those they felt it would be more difficult to make disappear” (Prager, 2008, p. 179). Close to 150,000 Jews passed through Theresienstadt during the war, and at its peak over 50,000 people were held at the camp. Of these, only 17,247 survived. In October 1943, Hitler ordered the arrest and deportation of all Danish Jews from Denmark. In a daring effort, the Danish Resistance Movement, with the support of the general population, was able to evacuate the majority of Jews, with only some 450 being captured, all of whom were sent to Theresienstadt. Immediately after the capture, the Danish government sought to examine the living conditions in the camp. With added pressure from the International Red Cross, they were granted permission to do so, but not before the spring of 1944. During those months, the Nazis undertook a beautification campaign, which included deporting thousands of prisoners to Auschwitz to make the camp look less overcrowded and, according to survivor Vera Schiff, the naming of

Remembering a Fabricated City  141 the camp streets that had, until then, only been identified by numbers and letters (2012, p. 12). Moreover, as the ‘Town Beautification’ programme advanced, the SS ordered the Jewish prisoners to paint the housefronts, clean the streets, dig flower beds, erect a play-ground for children in the park and a music pavilion on the square, fill the store windows, refurbish the ghetto café and the ghetto bank, and transform the former Sokolovna gymnasium into a community centre with a stage, prayer hall, library and verandas. The embellishment project went on for months. (Margry, 1992, p. 146) On 23 June 1944, the International Committee of the Red Cross arrived for the visit. The examiners were led on a tour of the camp by Nazi Officials and ultimately, based on a visit that lasted only between six and eight hours, the conditions of the camp were deemed humane. The success of the visit prompted the development of a staged documentary film: Terezín: A Documentary Film from the Jewish Settlement Area (Theresienstadt. Ein Dokumentarfilm aus dem jüdischen Siedlungsgebiet, Kurt Gerron under the supervision of Hans Günther & Karl Rahm, 1944), also known as The Führer Gives the Jews a City, of which only excerpts survive. The film, directed by Kurt Gerron – a prominent Jewish filmmaker and actor best known for his role in The Blue Angel (Der blaue Engel, Josef von Sternberg, 1930) – and featuring the detainees as cast and crewmembers, showed the model life led by those in the camp. It presented clean spaces, abundant meals, a range of cultural activities and happy families. However, the family members were not related, the shop windows only displayed the clothes taken from the inmates and the members of the string orchestra had to hide their bare feet behind flower arrangements. It was the culmination of a performance best described in a cabaret song written by Leo Strauss at the camp itself, a song the title of which – Als ob, in German – is evoked in Blaufuks’s film, As if…: I know a lovely little town This town is really spiff The name I can’t quite place for now I’ll call the town ‘as if’ (Kift, 1998, p. 158) As Blaufuks reflects, the most symbolic image in the staged film is the one of the people around a table: a false family at a false meal in a false dining-room

142  Sandra Camacho in a false house in a false city in a false country in a false documentary made by a false film crew. (2008, p. 29) The artist appropriates the remaining excerpts of this film in As if…, interweaving them with the images recorded on his 2014 trip to the town, as well as newsreels and popular television and cinematic depictions of the city camp – namely, Distant Journey (Daleká cesta, ­A lfréd Radok, 1950), Transport from Paradise (Transport z ráje, Zbyněk Brynych, 1963), Holocaust (Marvin J. Chomsky, 1978), War and Remembrance (Dan Curtis, 1988) and The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas (Mark ­Herman, 2008). The viewer first encounters Terezín in the same way the artist did – from the inside of a bus looking out onto the grey, rainy and mostly deserted road, until a plaque announcing the arrival at the city is met. Immediately, Blaufuks cuts to a short excerpt from the propaganda film summarising the history of the fortress. Suddenly, we are back to 2014: the images show the rest of the way into Terezín and then a shot of an audio guide display. A hand presses the keys and a disembodied voice continues to tell the story of the city, this time focusing on what the propaganda film left out: the brutal presence of the Nazis. The steady shots of the architecture work to familiarise the viewer with the space, with a city perfectly organised as a strict geometrical grid – motionless. A view of a sunny pinnacle of the town briefly overlaps with black-and-white footage of a fluttering SS flag (Figure 4.3.1). The empty embankments with overgrown weeds contrast with the images of the resting Jewish prisoners, play-acting leisure. Later, through the excerpts of the openly fictional depictions of Theresienstadt, we come to realise that this was not the last time the city was used as a stage: the town’s worn and torn

Figure 4.3.1  A  s If…

Remembering a Fabricated City  143 streets and buildings being clearly visible in Radok’s 1950 dramatisation. In seamlessly combining fact and fiction, As if… becomes a reflection on the perception of truth and on the construction of collective memory. A construction that in Blaufuks’s film can be considered closely associated with the very procedure of cinematically representing a space “where memory crystallizes and secretes itself”: a “lieux de mémoire” (Nora, 1989, p. 7). It is the construction element present in memory that I will argue is to be as informed by historical facts as by fictional accounts in a process Alison Landsberg coined as the “prosthetic memory” (1995). Spanning 4 hours and 35 minutes in its first version, As if... has since been extended, standing now at a little over five hours. Such temporal extension might transmit the endless quality of memory production, but it might also reflect the constant input of mass media into this same production. With the creation of evermore films, television series and novels around the Holocaust, much of our understanding of the event has become infused with fictional details, boosted and proliferated by ensuing media productions that are reused and amplified in subsequent films, series and novels. As such, mass media becomes a means by which a memory of events is expanded, becoming – as Landsberg advances by posing the following two questions in Prosthetic Memory – a technology of memory: To what extent do modern technologies of mass culture, such as film, with their ability to transport individuals through time and space, function as technologies of memory? In what ways do these technologies of mass culture challenge the distinction between individual and collective memory? (2004, p. 1) This association between technology and memory might have its roots in André Leroi-Gourhan’s Gesture and Speech (1964), a book in which the anthropologist suggests that the evolution of modern man was made possible only through the process of exteriorisation, particularly through our capacity to exteriorise our knowledge and memories: The whole of our evolution has been oriented toward placing outside ourselves what in the rest of the animal world is achieved inside by species adaptation. The most striking material fact is certainly the ‘freeing’ of tools, but the fundamental fact is really the freeing of the word and our unique ability to transfer our memory to a social organism outside ourselves. (Leroi-Gourhan, 1993, p. 235) In this exteriorisation, space is released from our minds to allow for the development of reinterpretation and creativity. However, it also allows

144  Sandra Camacho for something else: it allows for the creation of a memory that is not our own, a prosthetic memory. Landsberg’s definition – inspired by sci-fi films Blade Runner (Ridley Scott, 1982) and Total Recall (Paul ­Verhoeven, 1990) – refers to “memories which do not come from a ­person’s lived experience in any strict sense. These are implanted memories” (1995, p. 176). There is a process of exteriorisation of memory, as in Leroi-­ Gourhan, but what actually enables this process is mass media. Not only that, it is technology that then permits its widespread implantation, as argued by Roberta Pearson: as more and more people go on-line, computer mediated communication may play a large role in the construction of ‘prosthetic memories’. The interactive nature of the Internet results in the same users simultaneously constructing ‘prosthetic memories’ for others while downloading ‘prosthetic memories’ constructed by others. (2014, p. 48) The fact that others might so influence the process of the construction of our memories raises several issues: what happens when images are fabricated or when we lack the images that document a crucial moment in our history? There are few images of the functioning camps and ghettos in which the Jewish captives were imprisoned during the Second World War. The images kept in our collective memory mostly come from photographs taken by the Russian and American armies when liberating the camps, and so our capacity to grasp certain events solely from these images is limited. As observed by Jean-François Lyotard: To ‘have really seen with his own eyes’ a gas chamber would be the condition which gives one the authority to say that it exists and to persuade the unbeliever. Yet it is still necessary to prove that the gas chamber was killing at the moment it was seen. The only acceptable proof that it was killing is that one died from it. But if one died from it one cannot testify that it is because of the gas chamber. (In Lansdberg, 2004, p. 112) Film allows us to overcome these limitations by providing images to shape our historical memory. Many of us first came into contact with the Holocaust through fiction: these films, television series and narratives were the means by which our understanding of the event was first conditioned. It was also through fiction, through W. G. Sebald’s Austerlitz (2001), that Daniel Blaufuks first began his research into Theresienstadt. In W. G. Sebald’s final novel, the reader is taken on a journey that spans several decades, with various accounts retold by a central character whose name is never known. The narrator describes his encounters with

Remembering a Fabricated City  145 Jacques Austerlitz, an academic drawn to the architectural ­evolution within Europe, an evolution that, for him, stops short of the Second World War. Through a lengthy narrative, the reader realises the importance of this fact, for Austerlitz had been sent to England in 1939 in a kindertransport, at the age of four-and-a-half. Many decades later, a­ fter a nervous breakdown, Austerlitz begins to research his past, only to find that his mother, a Czech Opera singer of Jewish descent, had been deported to Theresienstadt, where she disappeared. This finding leads Austerlitz and the reader on a search of the events that occurred in the camp and on a reflection on the extermination of the Jewish population in Europe. Much as in the rest of Sebald’s oeuvre, the text in Austerlitz is interspersed with black-and-white photographs that play a key role in the character’s search for his past. A number of these pictures pertain to the character’s visit to Terezín, having been supposedly taken by Austerlitz. In reality, one might assume that these were taken by Sebald himself, the author who, by attributing them to his character, interweaves reality with fiction. Blaufuks began his research into the camp by reshooting a picture of an unoccupied office space in Theresienstadt that he found in Sebald’s book. The artist then created Terezín (2010), a project that included a photobook and a 90-minute film: Theresienstadt (Daniel Blaufuks, 2007). This film is an appropriation of what remains of Terezín: A Documentary Film from the Jewish Settlement Area, the footage of which is slowed down and tinted red – more like the colour one would see in a photographic darkroom than in any symbolic reference to blood. In ­doing so, Blaufuks replicates Sebald’s description of Austerlitz’s search for his mother in the fabricated film – in which the character slows down the film’s excerpts by four times – and by doing so Blaufuks reclaims the intended duration of the Nazi’s pseudo-documentary in its entirety. Emphasising the staged quality of the original, focusing on what truth might still be read in the prolonged portraits of its reluctant participants, Blaufuks notes: The fact that I slowed the speed of the film of Theresienstadt meant that it went back to its original length. It is thought that the film was originally meant to last about ninety minutes. At the end of the war, the film disappeared and only later were some excerpts found […]. It was these bits that I worked on, and I reduced them to a speed that was four times slower, making it much more slow-moving. And so, in this way, we have returned to the ninety minutes that the Germans wanted the film to last, and which, according to them, would be the amount of time needed for you to get caught up in the lie that those images portray. With this process, a certain truth has been re-established from that lie and that intention of theirs. (2008, p. 57)

146  Sandra Camacho As if…, in part, documents Blaufuks’s return to and interaction with Terezín in 2014. The film transports the audience to its empty streets. Such emptiness, particularly when contrasted with excerpts of the staged film, is stressed by the stillness of the shots, by the prolonged views of the city’s architecture, by its photographic framing. Considering that Blaufuks first encountered the city through the photographs found in Austerlitz, this framing might be seen as unsurprising. Such a connection becomes even more evident as we come to realise that some shots are actually reshootings of Sebald’s photographs, as if the only way the artist could understand Terezín was through Sebald, through Austerlitz’s fictional journey. This is especially evident in the careful filming of the shop windows, the closed city gates and most doorways, which are described in Austerlitz as follows (Figure 4.3.2): What I found most uncanny of all […] were the gates and doorways of Terezín, all of them, as I thought I sensed, obstructing access to a darkness never yet penetrated, a darkness in which I thought, said Austerlitz, there was no more movement at all apart from the whitewash peeling off the walls and the spiders spinning their threads, scuttling on crooked legs across the floorboards, or hanging expectantly in their webs. (Sebald, 2001, pp. 267–272) The stillness in As if... is nonetheless broken at various times by the inclusion of the appropriated footage. This break is usually abrupt, but is at times preceded by the sounds of steps, voices or train engines taken from film’s soundtrack, a spectral soundscape that recalls the ghosts of

Figure 4.3.2  A s If… replicating W. G. Sebald's photograph in page 268 from Austerlitz (2001).

Remembering a Fabricated City  147 those who have passed through Theresienstadt. This effect, once again, is described in Austerlitz: I had just been reading […] a note on one of the display panels, to the effect that in the middle of December 1942 […] some sixty thousand people were shut up together in the ghetto, a built-up area of one square kilometre at the most, and a little later, when I was out in the deserted town square again, it suddenly seemed to me, with the greatest clarity, that they had never been taken away after all, but were still living crammed into those buildings and basements and attics, as if they were incessantly going up and down the stairs, looking out of the windows, moving in vast numbers through the streets and alleys, and even, a silent assembly, filling the entire space occupied by the air, hatched with grey as it was by the fine rain. (Sebald, 2001, p. 281) These hints of the permanence of the past in the present prevent the viewer from taking the apparent peacefulness of the city for granted. There are times when one forgets that the people in the propaganda film were playing a part; occasionally, the staged documentary may serve the Nazis’ purpose of deceiving the viewer. In order to counteract this mirage, Blaufuks juxtaposes such images with those of the aforementioned feature films, whose re-enactments take side with the victims and offer an account closer to the truth. Additionally, as the film progresses and the shifts between excerpts acquire a faster pace, we recognise repeated actions and images – for instance, in the various representations of women scrubbing the sidewalks the morning before the arrival of the Red Cross examiners. These re-enactments have given rise to images that currently belong to the collective memory, a memory that most of us will hold, not from lived experience, but because we have been exposed to it through mass media and, consequently, have been implanted with it – with a prosthetic memory. This is a form of memory that, according to Landsberg, emerges at the interface between a person and a historical narrative about the past, at an experiential site such as a movie theatre or museum. [And] [i]n this moment of contact, an experience occurs through which the person sutures himself or herself into a larger history. (2004, p. 2) Moreover, for some, the lack of mediated images as the ones found in cinema might render certain lived experiences incomprehensible, as Jan Karski – a former courier of the Polish government in exile – suggested

148  Sandra Camacho in Shoah (Claude Lanzmann, 1985) regarding his visit to the Warsaw ghetto: It was not a world. It was not a part of humanity. I was not part of it. I did not belong there. I never saw such things, […] nobody wrote about this kind of reality. I never saw any theater, I never saw any movie […] this was not the world. (Lanzmann, 1985, p. 174) Thus, with no previous references, even if only fictional ones, an unimaginable reality might become something even more inconceivable and, accordingly, completely incomprehensible. Fictional representations in As if… help the viewer understand the ­v ictims’ experiences. Nonetheless, the contrast of these images with those of a motionless, deserted city serves to emphasise the absence of these victims and their physical and symbolical disappearance. There is a scene close to the 15-minute mark of the film that begins with a shot of what looks like a peaceful – if abandoned – field. The sun is shining, birds are chirping and a soft breeze is gently stirring the grass. The stillness of the shot is accentuated by the presence of several weathered concrete posts evenly distributed across an invisible line. There are no barriers connecting them; the space left between them can be easily crossed; they more quickly resemble totem poles – or vestiges of lost civilisations – than what they actually are, namely, remnants of a barbed wire. The shot moves to a close-up of the last rusty wires still attached to the tops of the posts, the darkness of their grey – of what they stood for – contrasting with the bright blue sky. Suddenly, a drum begins playing the sound of a marching tune, and the shot turns into a black-and-white sequence from Radok’s film. The image is that of a pool of water reflecting the barbed wires that existed at the perimeter of Theresienstadt – as is confirmed in the following shot when a plate bearing the town’s name is shown. Continuing the marching tune, a tracking shot shows viewers the fortress walls as seen from the outside, vigils standing at their posts looking down and the city gate – a larger stone arch flanked by two smaller doors one of which is bricked up. On the right, there are SS men leading a group of people into the gate at a slow processional pace, whilst a number of men and women carrying coffins exit the gate on the left. As the music drones on, Blaufuks returns to the present day, to that same gate – the same bricked wall – where there is only one person now, a woman taking her dog for a walk. The intercutting of this scene provides the viewer with contrasting realities – or at the very least representations of realities – taking place at the same location. In the city, the landscape is the same. The concrete posts are no longer in use, but have now become

Remembering a Fabricated City  149 part of the scenery. At the same time, “natural and artificial”, “simple and ambiguous”, they function as memory triggers (Nora, 1989, p. 18). Blaufuks exploits this when he lapses between present and past: he edits the scene so that it might look as if the memories of the past are being summoned by the landscape and architecture, and just as the viewer is confronted with images that will lead to the atrocities that took place, the filmmaker takes them back to the present, back to the safety of an impassive gate on a sunny day. Blaufuks’s use of the abandoned landscape echoes that of Claude Lanzmann in Shoah, which had already inspired his 2008 project Memory Landscapes (Shoah). This work consists of 30 slides disposed on top of a light box that shows landscapes taken from Lanzmann’s documentary. Unlike most films on the subject, Shoah was made without resorting to archival images. Rather, it relied solely on interviews and shots of the camps in the late 1970s. The survivors’ testimonies served to give a deeply emotional and in-depth view of the events and traumas inflicted. By not identifying the source of the images, Blaufuks removes – at least initially – the powerful connotations with the Holocaust that these landscapes might bring up. However, this decision only gives them more poignancy once the viewer realises their source: for these images are especially moving and meaningful because they represent the landscapes the victims would have seen and walked on, landscapes that for many would have been their last. Furthermore, the way in which they are presented – as slides on top of a light box rather than large-scale projections or photographs – contributes to strengthen their meaning, as Blaufuks explains: Since they are images taken from a film, I wanted to maintain its initial connection to light […]. In it there is no sequence, as there is in the film […] but a whole that is immediately absorbed in by the gaze of the spectator. These are landscapes, traversed by light, that we have to lean over, in a position of study or even prayer […]. They exist by themselves, small, full of a memory that we can only guess; an object of light, which accentuates and recalls its strangeness in relation to all other landscapes photographed by travellers and tourists.1 The miniaturisation of images originally made to be projected on a movie theatre as part of the film Shoah creates intimacy with these landscapes in the spectator. In Blaufuks’s version, the viewer struggles to comprehend the details of the images and yet their minute size leads to an interiorising of what they represent. The small-scale of Memory Landscapes (Shoah) contrasts with the artist’s preference in presenting As if… in a large exhibition room. This request stems from Blaufuks’s wish that every detail might be seen by the

150  Sandra Camacho spectator, beginning with the artist’s own reflection on a supermarket window, a reflection that mirrors Sebald’s own in his photograph of an ivory-coloured porcelain figurine representing the following scene: a hero on horseback turning to look back, as his steed rears up on its hindquarters, in order to raise up with his outstretched left arm an innocent girl already bereft of her last hope, and to save her from a cruel fate not revealed to the observer. (Sebald, 2001, p. 276) In this description of an otherwise innocuous porcelain figurine, put in the mouth of Austerlitz by Sebald, the reader might assume that such cruel unrevealed fate stands in for the fate of Theresienstadt’s inmates – a fate concealed in the staged documentary and then revealed in later accounts and their successive fictional re-enactments. As if... ends with a final sequence that combines multiple film and television representations of the transport of Jewish prisoners from Theresienstadt by train. The last three shots, however, were filmed by Blaufuks, and show the landscape from the inside of a rapidly moving train. Such editing leads viewers to imagine they are seeing the leaving of Terezín, just like at the beginning when they saw the entrance into the city. The sounds of the train were not, however, recorded at the same time as the images, but seemed to come from the films or television series. The combination of these materials pushes the viewer to become aware of how easily factual documents and fictional accounts can be intermingled, as there are no longer any trains travelling to and from Terezín. This final train journey might therefore be interpreted as a phantom memory that the victims would have left behind (Figure 4.3.3).

Figure 4.3.3  A s If…

Remembering a Fabricated City  151 In conclusion, in As if..., Blaufuks forwards a vision of Terezín as a location of multiple staged realities, thus emphasising the stage-like quality of the city itself through the prolonged shots of empty streets and buildings. The appropriation of popular film and television productions as a representation of collective memory reflects what Landsberg has called “prosthetic memory”, memories that “people who have no ‘natural’ claim to might nevertheless incorporate into their own archive of experience” (2004, p. 9). In fact, the artist himself experiences Terezín through fictional narratives, particularly that by W. G. Sebald: Austerlitz. In this way, he avoids what might have prevented the audience from understanding never before seen lived experiences: the lack of fictional accounts and mediated images.

Note 1 Email interview with Daniel Blaufuks, 6 August 2012.

Works Cited Filmography Blaufuks, D. (2007). Theresienstadt. Blaufuks, D. (2014). As if... Brynych, Z. (1963). Transport from Paradise (Transport z ráje). Chomsky, M. J. (1978). Holocaust. Curtis, D. (1988). War and Remembrance. Gerron, K., under supervision of Günther, H. & Rahm, K. (1944 unreleased). Terezín: A Documentary Film from the Jewish Settlement Area (Theresienstadt. Ein Dokumentarfilm aus dem jüdischen Siedlungsgebiet). Herman, M. (2008). The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas. Lanzmann, C. (1985). Shoah. Radok, A. (1950). Distant Journey (Dalekácesta). Scott, R. (1982). Blade Runner. Sternberg, J. von. (1930). The Blue Angel (Der blaue Engel). Verhoeven, P. (1990). Total Recall. Bibliography Blaufuks, D. (2008). O Arquivo/The Archive: An Album of Texts. Lisbon, Portugal: Vera Cortês Agência. Kift, R. (1998). Reality and illusion in the Theresienstadt cabaret. In C. Schumacher (Ed.), Staging the Holocaust: The Shoah in drama and performance (pp. 147–168). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Landsberg, A. (1995). Prosthetic memory: Total recall and blade runner. In M. Featherstone & R. Burrows (Eds.), Cyberspace/cyberbodies/cyberpunk (pp. 175–189). London, UK: Sage Publications.

152  Sandra Camacho Landsberg, A. (2004). Prosthetic memory: The transformation of American remembrance in the age of mass culture. New York, NY: Columbia University Press. Lanzmann, C. (1985). Shoah: An oral history of the Holocaust. New York, NY: Pantheon Books. Leroi-Gourhan, A. (1993/1964). Gesture and speech. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Margry, K. (1992). ‘Theresienstadt’ (1944–1945): The Nazi propaganda film depicting the concentration camp as paradise. Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 12(2), 145–162. Nora, P. (1989). Between memory and history: Les Lieux de Mémoire. Representations, 26, 7–24. Pearson, R. (2014). It’s always 1895: Sherlock Holmes in cyberspace. In K. Hellekson & K. Busse (Eds.), The fan fiction studies reader (pp. 44–60). Iowa City: University of Iowa Press. Prager, B. (2008). Interpreting the visible traces of Theresienstadt. Journal of Modern Jewish Studies, 7(2), 175–194. Schiff, V. (2012). The Theresienstadt deception: The concentration camp the Nazis created to deceive the world. Lewiston, NY: The Edwin Mellen Press. Sebald, W. G. (2001). Austerlitz. London, UK: Penguin.

Part 5

Heterotopic Spaces

Since the 1960s, Michel Foucault’s open-ended and undeveloped notion of heterotopia has been a powerful conceptual tool within scholarly literature in the humanities, which, as mentioned in the introduction, tends to produce theoretical discourse if not focused on space, at least structured as spatial thought. By heterotopia or ‘other spaces’, Foucault means the disruptive sites located outside of what is considered to be the norm and the regular, building from that difference. These other spaces can be objectively pinpointed – they are part of ‘reality’ – but what defines them is an alternative order that subverts the co-existing, ruling, predetermined one. Power is the heterotopic operative concept par excellence: it builds – and, through resistance, can destroy – hegemonies in a neo-­ liberal ­globalised age and world, whose spatial tensions take place transversally, within an infinite range of territories, assembling private and familiar spheres, as well as national, continental and universal grounds. These other spaces, albeit not mainstream, can exist within them. They are in a way r­ ebellious spaces, permanently linked to the normative world they stand out from. Heterotopias’ distanced but relational nature is one of the six ­principles ­ niversal; Foucault perceives in them. Very concisely put, they are u ­culturally adjusted; spatial palimpsests; free from linear, continuous time; systems of opening and closing able to generate space. Accordingly, cinematic language, narrative and aesthetics can be heterotopic and, moreover, diegetically locate and announce heterotopias. This part thus explores these two drives in three chapters, by exposing cinema’s agency and ability to map unknown places in Iran, Colombia and Portugal. In Chapter 5.1, entitled ‘On Location: Kiarostami’s Landscapes and Cinematic Value’, Maria Irene Aparício analyses landscapes, hybrid spaces and memory places in The Wind Will Carry Us (‫بادماراخواهدبرد‬‎, Abbas Kiarostami, 1999) in order to understand some of the values of cinematic spaces, as well as their influence on our perception and ­cultural shaping of the world. Building from Foucault’s thought, but also from Gilles Deleuze’s and Rudolph Arnheim’s ideas (among others), Aparício examines the ‘possible world’ of cinema via a conceptual and cultural

154  Heterotopic Spaces interpretation of Kiarostami’s cinematic landscape. By doing so, she exposes the reasons why cinema should not be considered just as Alberti’s window – i.e. representations of history and/or the human experience – but also as ethical gestures and bridges between g­ eopolitical worlds and intertwining poetic spaces. Indeed, at stake here is the ­multifarious nature of a complex system – (Kiarostami’s) film – spatially staged as landscape. Retroactively, The Wind Will Carry Us acquires that specific, unrestricted operative structure, in which it is possible to find, as Aparício argues, references to real and local places, as well as other spaces – or, as she puts it, ‘intra-extra-filmic spaces’. In Chapter 5.2, María Luna develops a mapping of rural ­representations in recent non-fiction films focused on the Colombian armed c­ onflict. It builds from the idea that documentary film ­practices produce an ­imaginary space – a ‘geography of terror’ – in which war ­stories appeal to urban citizens that have never been in these areas. ­Furthermore, Luna creates a correspondence between heterotopia’s internal dynamics and Henri Lefebvre’s spatial model, allowing her to establish the ­continuity between spaces of recording, creation and viewing of this specific type of documentary. This theoretical framework is applied to three ­different case studies, taking into consideration the ­fi lmmakers’ discourse ­regarding the curiosity and fascination of the urban gaze upon rural spaces of an unknown country. Foucault’s spatial ideas are thus a key element to point out the conceptual sophistication of these ­geopolitical cinematic spaces, resulting not only in the effective ­transformation of ­Colombian collective urban imaginary, but also, given their intricate specificity, in the rigorous manifestation of the ways through which ­cinema, ­proceeding as heterotopia, discloses and reconstructs ‘real’ spaces. Finally, in Chapter 5.3, Paulo Cunha maps the ‘cinematographic missions’ that ‘image hunters’ Anathole Thiberville (Gaumont) and René Moreau (Pathé) made to Portugal. These expeditions took place in 1917–1918 with the sponsorship of the Portuguese Tourism Bureau, which contributed to a cinematographic cartography of the territory that would serve as a political reference for successive governments in the ­following decades. Cunha focuses on the institutional mechanisms created to ­improve the country’s material infrastructures, as well as to ­ roject build a modern official image. Thiberville’s and Moreau’s films p ‘counter-sites’ – different from the real sites they reflect upon and discuss, albeit their indexical nature – creating a different propaganda-­ designed Portugal in the process. By tracing the cameramen’ itineraries, Cunha offers an example of how political regimes render film heterotopias ­operational, assuring that, as mirrors, they remain closely linked to the rest of the world, whilst simultaneously operating according to other sets of rules and values.

5.1 On Location Kiarostami’s Landscapes and Cinematic Value Maria Irene Aparício

It is generally agreed that films are windows on human experience and emotions. Since its very beginning, cinema provided a particular view of life, either of history and time or their vivid spaces and memories. Its stories frequently open doors to other worlds, to both outer and inner spaces as different levels of perception and imagination. That is to say that cinema is not just a ‘Screen Scape’ showing people what it is like to be human, but films are confrontation pieces of art performing what I would like to call ‘Land(E)Scapes’: (im)material bridges between reality and poetic inmost spaces. Besides, filmic spaces are also specific sites of meaning, giving spectators critical perspectives of human experience and shared values. The most common and familiar places of the world, once mediated by the camera and the screen, become complex, crossover and hybrid places with multiple layers. The complexity of cinematic spaces depends on films’ historical contexts and political dimensions, and may refer to physical locations, but also to their haunted pasts or even futures. In a sense, every cinematic space is a ‘possible world’. Sometimes the space is real and sometimes it is a mental or spiritual image, depending on the bias towards reality/fiction approaches. In any case, the cinematic possible world can be said to be a true-lifestory. Of course, I am acutely aware of the ambiguity of the expression. For that reason, I would like to introduce the concept as described by Daniel P. Nolan in his book Topics in the Philosophy of Possible Worlds (2002). There, the author describes two conceptions of “possible worlds”: the first refers to pre-theoretic talk about possible situations; the second is mostly used in discussions about the ontology of possible worlds. According to Nolan, “possible worlds might be made up of propositions, or are perhaps set-theoretic constructions”, and do not correspond necessarily to any geographic space or physical time (2002, p. 7). Sometimes, they might be even identical to “highly abstract entities” (Nolan, 2002, p. 7). The subject of modal logic is too complex to be discussed here, but in the light of the possible worlds’ commonsensical conception, we might consider films as possible situations that audiences take at face value. For instance, we accept cinematic spaces and narratives for what they appear to be,

156  Maria Irene Aparício just because they are made on location. In short, movie pictures belong to an inclusive ‘actual world’ as a whole. They refer to both concrete and ­abstract situations, and they surely influence the very meaning and values of any geographical space or place, since the interpretation of the movie by the spectators is based on their own language, knowledge, imagination, remembrances and experiences. Movies are more than the imagination’s windows to ‘escape’ from Kansas and run through a ‘real’ place; “the place [itself] can never be reduced to the site. [Because] the site is characterized by the delimitation of land” (Martin, 2000, p. 63), and despite the framing, the filmic space has no physical limitations at all. So, my claim is that film is sometimes a ‘Land(E)Scape’ or a ‘possible world’. One should also recognise that any film has the ways and means to produce its own poetic and meaningful space, such as the messianic movement of new ‘promised lands’ or the premonition of ‘cursed ones’, which can be either accepted or condemned by audiences. After the Second World War, cinema began disseminating the ruins of wars and conflicts and their correlative dark ‘interior landscapes’ c­ reated by human fears and the mind-blowing experiences of the century. There is no doubt that films are connected with important or trivial human events and pasts, including people’s personal experiences, memories and imagination. As such, it is not surprising that the classical positive ­values of moving pictures, offered earlier by the screen – e.g. hope – are now haunted by the shadows of an unknown ‘ghost land’ shaped by the 20th-century’s multiple events and geopolitical movements. As a consequence, films become loci for keeping the records of both an (in)significant and (in)visible world, and as ‘cultural objects’, films also ‘collect’ and provide sensitive human portraits and life’s narratives. To understand some of the values of cinematic space, as well as their influence on our perception and cultural shaping of the world, I will briefly discuss Abbas Kiarostami’s film The Wind Will Carry Us (‫بادماراخواهدبرد‬‎, 1999). By analysing some sequences within, I will clarify how the common locations become ‘other (hybrid) spaces’. Once dipping into film’s places, audiences can easily transform any constructed and cinematic reality into the real, everyday life beyond the stories, and vice versa. In this way, one can assume that Kiarostami deals with spirals of life and memory, (re)presenting both real places and their inmost poetic ‘different spaces’, or heterotopias, which I will discuss later. My thesis is that Kiarostami’s cinema is deeply rooted in history, which allows me to unfold the proposal that his stories, villages and landscapes are – like heterotopia – spaces that do not only refer to real and local places, but also pertain to a powerful theoretic construction or semantic dimension by the global influence of knowledge and the agency of contemporary devices. In “Different Spaces”, Michel ­Foucault’s ­lecture presented to the Architectural Studies Circleon 14 March 1967,

Kiarostami’s Landscapes  157 the philosopher talked about history as “the great obsession of the nineteenth century [...]: themes of development and arrest, themes of crisis and cycle, themes of accumulation of the past, a great overload of dead people”. He concluded that “the present age may be the age of space ­instead. We are in an era of the simultaneous, of juxtaposition, of the near and the far, of the side-by-side, of the scattered” (1998, p. 175). The fact is that Foucault’s words could also easily apply to the ­21st-­century, but this time both history and space would assume serious political ­positions on arts and, particularly, on contemporary cinema.

On Location: Landscapes, Hybrid Spaces and Memory Places Produced in 1999, Abbas Kiarostami’s film The Wind Will Carry Us was as controversial as its director. According to Alberto Elena, the film was “the first of his full-length features that had the benefit of foreign ­investment” (2005, p. 148) during the troubled years of the post-Islamic Revolution. This was probably one of the reasons why the filmmaker was accused of being distant from the Iranian political situation and ­masking people’s life conditions. Filmed on location in the Kurdish village and hills of Siyah Darreh, the movie’s screened space hardly corresponds to the social and political realities of a country that has been at war for years. Instead, it is a complex inner space, an expression of Kiarostami’s world. At first sight, the film’s opening long shot is a panoramic view of a bucolic and peaceful countryside – a landscape. It is also an idyllic depiction of a small remote village on the top of the hill, overlooking the green valley – how green was this valley? – where life goes on, despite the wars, and apparently without any unpleasant surprises, as if there were neither a violent past nor the dark shadows of history haunting it. But, in the end, the landscape might be seen as an abstraction, wresting land out of its natural context in order to approximate it to an ethical value. There is an ambivalent in-between stage of the film and its narrative, transforming those landscapes into both poetic and political places: a ‘physiognomy’ of the present. Discussing the idea of “different spaces”, Michel Foucault noticed the enormous work of Gaston Bachelard and the descriptions of the phenomenologists [that] have taught us that we are living not in a homogeneous and empty space but, on the contrary, in a space that is laden with qualities, a space that may also be haunted by fantasy. (Foucault, 1998, p. 177) That is why the mythic, sometimes even hostile opposition between inside and outside, the poetics of this picture of a ‘no man’s land’, offers an unexpected meaning of otherness to the film. According to Gaston

158  Maria Irene Aparício Bachelard, “when confronted with outside and inside, [philosophers] think in terms of being and non-being. Thus, profound metaphysics is rooted in an implicit geometry which – whether we will or no – confers spatiality upon thought” (2000, p. 151). ‘This side and beyond’, ‘here and there’, and ‘me and the other’ are additional expressions of the dialectics of outside and inside frequently applied to territorial aspects and political issues. Given the range of language’s common meanings, it is no wonder that Hamid Dabashi underlines the promises and perils of this film visà-vis globalisation, especially for Iranian Cinema (2001). The author ­recognises the film as an exercise of universalisation of “the Iranian ­particular”, arguing that with this film he [Kiarostami] showed that when he achieved the universal he did not know quite what to do with it, and he failed in the face of a global deauthorization of the real, of which, alas, he has not a clue. (Dabashi, 2001, pp. 252–253) The negative focus of Dabashi’s analysis also includes strong critics to Kiarostami’s cinematic options, such as the visual dimension and the mise en scène –“a brutally accurate picture of dehumanization […], ­voyeuristic camera” (2001, p. 253), etc. Additionally, the author considers the film an offensive remark to Persian Poetry itself: […] Kiarostami chooses this hideous instance to introduce one of the most glorious poems in modern Persian poetry. Never has Forough Farrokhzad’s ‘The Wind Will Carry Us Away’ sounded so silly, so graceless, as in this recital by a vulgar man intruding into the private passions of a young woman. (Dabashi, 2001, p. 253) Although for different reasons, Dabashi actually reduces the plot line of the film to a simple ‘map’: the routine of the lead character that repeatedly climbs a hill just to be able to use his mobile phone, while waiting for the moment to shoot the funeral of a woman who is actually still alive. In a sense, this is the search for real life – a ‘real story’ in the ‘real space’ for a specific documentary in an unstable and changing world and its correlative landscapes. The New Yorker’s critic Richard Brody put forward the contrary point of view. He refers to this film as “Abbas Kiarostami and the Winds of change”, which seems to be an interesting and accurate ­title ­ ewspaper report. Like the wind, the political dimension and for a n the very changes at the heart of Iranian society are almost invisible to ­K iarostami’s films’ spectators. But one can feel those ‘winds of change’

Kiarostami’s Landscapes  159 blowing deep on his characters’ inner spaces and actions, even if they are impossible to see. The spectator follows the protagonists’ movements and embodies their experiences. Ultimately, The Wind Will Carry Us is the experience of a future audience observing and judging the small community’s life from ‘God’s viewpoint’ – from an outer space, which is, in fact, the cinema’s point of view and its philosophical – e.g. aesthetical and/or ethical – value. Rudolph Arnheim’s essay about “Outer Space and Inner Space” (1991) helps us understand the relevance of the point of view and how it can ­express a political or cultural idea, once framing the space. The ­author underlines the relevance of human perception on experience, and ­­emphasises the idea that when people first saw Earth’s picture, it was not “the physical distance, but the visual detachment” that made the real ­difference ­(Arnheim, 1991, p. 73). According to Arnheim, the idea of visual ­detachment “should remind us that when we talk about spaces, about outer space and inner space, we are not referring ­primarily to physical facts. What we are dealing with is the ­psychological ­experience of our senses” (1991, p. 73). Arnheim’s passage helps to sustain the belief that within contemporary cinema, space goes far beyond the surface of reality and its framing, i.e. its geographical and ­geometric ­representations. ­ uestions: Therefore, my approach to the issue is defined by the following q Are these specific filmic landscapes inner or outer spaces? Are their spectators in front of windows looking at the ­geographic spaces of Earth? Or is cinema the framing of land(e)scapes of the soul(s), opening up to human condition and life’s vanities? What kind of space is constructed by the spiritual achievements of art itself? Where do the films carry us? These questions could also lead us to the Aristotelian problems of ‘whether places exist or not’, ‘how they exist’ and ‘what they are’, but these specific philosophical points are not our focus here. As mentioned earlier, Kiarostami’s films were shot on location in the Iranian hills. Yet, what makes them real and powerful is not the land’s view, as it might seem at first sight, but something else generated by ­cinema itself, a specific site: “Space is [...] essential to film” (Sesonske, 1974, p. 54), but “the essential fact about the space of a film is that it is created; there is not simply a determinate dimension waiting to be ­instantiated” (Sesonske, 1974, p. 55). From now on, it is possible to ­discuss film and filmmaking as models for deep experiences of places as memories and emotions – inner worlds, souls’ landscapes. Such dynamics occurs because the film form enables vivid spaces to become expressive materials, shattering all the illusions about the existence of ‘a real unique physical space’ or a linear lifeline. By means of cinematic process, audiences find themselves in front of other possible spaces: odd ones, intimate dimensions and affective portraits, whose influence on feelings and thoughts, by the agency of perception and representation, might be disruptive, disquieting and disorienting.

160  Maria Irene Aparício In addition to the previous claims, one could say that film’s places are virtual spaces, in the very sense of Gilles Deleuze’s philosophy, i.e. far ­ etween more real than reality itself. Thus, it is in the light of film forms, b both close-up and long shots, shaping places and non-places, that I  ­propose Kiarostami’s landscapes and places as hybrid spaces, crossroads. These geographical, but also mental, places take the sense of the cross-paths which interfere with life and death – including the director’s path through life, otherwise expressed by his poem: “What a difficult path it is / the passage from night, from day, / from good, from evil, / from silence, / from tumult / from hatred, / from anger, / from love,  / from love” (Kiarostami, 2005, p. 163). Mirroring his words, the film is another mark of his lifelong passion, revealing the deep wounds of life. Elena underlines that “the film undoubtedly deals with the [...] r­ eflections about life and death [...]” (2005, p. 150). Besides, ­K iarostami’s obsession with the process of losing – a friend, a relative, a dream, a home(land) – is quite clear. Based on a short story by Mahmud Aydin, the original project was about the journey of a group of journalists who wanted to film a specific funeral. However, while the crew was waiting for the woman’s death, Kiarostami decided to film what he “saw and found at the shooting ­location” (Elena, 2005, p. 151). Therefore, the film is “about waiting, a waiting consisting of brief meetings which do not, however, overcome the loneliness of its protagonist, who, despite this, undergoes – like most of Kiarostami’s characters [...] – a profoundly life-changing e­ xperience in the Kurdish village of Siah Dareh” (Elena, 2005, pp. 150–151). ­Kiarostami’s poems also reveal his resilience to loneliness and the ­resignation to an eternal and irreversible cycle of life leading to an end. Unlike his filmic ­ bjective – views from landscapes, whose points of view are commonly o outside – his poetry digs deeper into his soul, bringing back memories and fears: “When I returned to my birthplace / I  could not find / my ­father’s house / nor my mother’s voice” (Kiarostami, 2005, p. 90). On the one hand, as argued by John Dewey, art is self-expression and poems and pictures come from both the personal experience and the real world (1980, p. 82). On the other hand, by looking at films and reading poems, people become acutely aware of life’s limits and human joy or suffering under natural and historical conditions. In this way, with the purpose of understanding the idea of ‘land(e) scape’ as self-expression, we will first briefly analyse the word ‘landscape’. If we think about the French word paysage, it immediately ­recalls the idea of territory – pays – which certainly has everything to do with the notions of culture and civilisation; whereas the German word ­L andschaft refers to the land itself, a region or open space; and the ­English ‘landscape’ implies both a physical space and its pictorial – that can be also s­ ymbolic – ­representation. The meaning of ‘landscape’ became a common place through its usage by artists in the 17th century,

Kiarostami’s Landscapes  161 when a particular genre of scenic view or painting – landskip – became popular. In short, the concept of landscape compresses a specific way of regarding the environment, but it also defines the (dis)connections with human activities, such as the aesthetic or contemplative dimensions and their ethical or ecological issues. So, film as land(e)scape holds all these different etymological ­meanings, but it ultimately comprises the glazed surface of a free dimension that goes beyond the notion of land and its cinematic vision, as well as the pictorial and the photographic representation. Thus, the filmic land(e)scape metonymically refers to reality itself, a paradoxical picture of both characters’ imprisonments and directors’ liberation from any kind of control. In this framework, there is a high correlation between landscape, space, place and memory, as conceived by Iván Villarmea ­Á lvarez, in the sense that “subjective spatial history depends on the ­feelings, ­emotions and experiences that we associate with certain places, which may ultimately become our places of memory” (2015, p. 2). In this context, The Wind Will Carry Us is a film on History and Memory. Nevertheless, in the end, just like hundreds of films we have seen before, it becomes the spectator’s affective imaginary ‘land’, mirrored worlds and places where everyone could live or die.

Where Does Cinema Carry Us? We know that every country is simultaneously a natural territory and a political unit with borders between states, but also frontiers between what is known and not known. Giving this separation, and in light of contemporary political and social contexts, including wars, globalisation, etc., one can ask “where does this cinema carry us?” The title of Kiarostami’s film is meaningful; the Persian Poetry and its political ­dimension; the messianic picture of a country and a revolution’s past and future. Indeed, Kiarostami’s film is the hidden story of “an inexplicable wind which suddenly gets up in one shot, [but is certainly, the revelation] of the invisible man in the underground passage of The Wind Will Carry Us (1999)” (Bergala & Balló, 2006, p. 17). It is the wind of History, a sudden blow of its Angel towards the future, whilst looking at the past. As already mentioned, the title is the direct quotation of Forough Farrokhzad’s poem, and the fact that her poetry was censured for more than one decade after the Islamic Revolution in 1979 is absolutely relevant. Her ghost feminine ‘voice’, a political and controversial one, is thus the matrix of the cinematic dimension of Kiarostami’s landscape-spaces. Coming from the past, but also from the grave, Farrokhzad’s words are, indeed, recited in an ordinary moment of life, so that Poetry is the ­director’s powerful instrument to mention some of the most important changes of the country, but above all, his way of telling the story of the resistant artwork: Poetry, Cinema, etc. In fact, the film traces the

162  Maria Irene Aparício very condition of many women through the portrait of that character who ­refuses to talk to her husband, though recognising her fate and servitude. It is a picture of her ‘inner space’, and a huge screening of all oppressed women’s land(e)scapes. Graeme Harper and Jonathan Rayner described cinema’s landscapes as “deterritorialized” emotional spaces, but also “places of memory”; I will say more: Augustinian loci. They refer to cinematic landscapes as geographical, but also as metonymic and metaphoric dimensions, conscious and unconscious symptoms of life experience: “Cinematic landscapes can therefore be landscapes of the mind, offering displaced representations of desires and values, so that these can be expressed by the filmmakers and shared by audiences” (Harper & Rayner, 2010, p.  21). Talking about her film, The Beaches of Agnès (Les Plages d`­ Agnès, 2008), Agnès Varda would say almost the same: she referred to the “landscapes of [her] soul”. Maybe we could compare these ‘landscapes of the soul’ with the very idea of Michel Foucault’s heterotopia, which is close to the ideas of mirror and labyrinth. Certainly, there are similarities between heterotopia and Kiarostami’s spaces. His landscapes are road maps, but villages are labyrinths and mirror places, portraits of someone’s soul. As stated by Foucault: the mirror functions as a heterotopia in the sense that it makes this place I occupy at the moment I look at myself in the glass both ­utterly real, connected with the entire space surrounding it, and ­utterly ­unreal – since, to be perceived, it is obliged to go by way of that virtual point which is over there. (1998, p. 179) More precisely, heterotopia has qualities that involve at least two relevant philosophical approaches that are also possible for cinema and space: it refers to specific worlds and existence, but sees beyond, into the abstract possible worlds – states or conditions – which lead to the ontological question of images. Finally, this particular film takes us somewhere between the village and the surrounding hills, to loci [that will] remain in the memory and can be used again by placing another set of images for another set of material, [...] like the wax tablets which remain when what is written on them has been effaced, and are ready to be written on again. (Yates, 1966, p. 6) That is, the surfaces of The Wind Will Carry Us are exterior landscapes but interior loci, too, projected and reflective places, spaces in-between, as filmic ‘any-space-whatevers’. As Gilles Deleuze foresees, there is an affective dimension of space, which is absolutely evident essentially in

Kiarostami’s Landscapes  163 the close-up. Pointing out the specific value of this shot, once mediated by montage, Deleuze expresses his point quite clearly: it [any-space-whatevers, the close-up] can include a space-time, in depth or on the surface, as if it had torn it away from the co-­ordinates from which it was abstracted: it carries off with it a f­ ragment of the sky, of countryside [...]. It is like a short-circuit of the near and the far. (Deleuze, 1986, p. 104) He mentions Pascal Augé’s term ‘any-space-whatevers’ to describe a ­cinematic space that is neither abstract nor universal. ‘Any-space-­ whatever’ is not a place “in all times, in all spaces” (Deleuze, 1987, p. 109). It is a specific space, which is not immediately – i.e. visually – connected to the real world, and for that reason, audiences can link it to infinite possible worlds: “it is a space of virtual conjunction, grasped as pure locus of the possible” (Deleuze, 1987, p. 109). Let us use an example. The village of The Wind Will Carry Us is an ideal place, a locus. We can say that almost all of Kiarostami’s films have memory places as pictures as well as real ones. His hybrid spaces are identity’s places. Speaking about Close-Up (‫نماینزدیک‬،‫کلوزآپ‬‎, 1990), Kiarostami once said that a title is an identity card for the film. In fact, his films talk about identity, original locations, lost places and their memories, like the Koker Trilogy films – Where Is My Friend’s Home (‫خانهدوستکجاست‬‎, 1987), Life and Nothing More… (‫زندگیودیگرهیچ‬‎, 1992), Through the Olive Trees (‫زیردرختانزیتون‬‎, 1994) – and The Taste of Cherry (‫طعمگيالس‬...‎, 1997). All these films are signatures of the real, and perhaps subversive artwork, or visual ­essays on the political consequences of wars and conflicts. They are maps of places-no-morespaces playing with the audience’s gaze, knowledge, imagination and thoughts. Harper and Rayner had already compared maps and films and considered film directors as map-makers: “Both maps and films assume and position audiences, ideologically as well as geographically” (2010, p. 15), and spectators as pilgrims moving around and (re)discovering either familiar or odd landscapes.

Land, Non-Crystal Spaces and a Conclusion The Wind Will Carry Us takes us through the Persian territory: the ­ancient, magical one. Nevertheless, what we find is a truly disenchanted landscape, for, no matter how beautiful these almost ‘natural’ places are, one no longer believes in the magic value of their landscapes. Though the land is still there, arid and nude, sometimes green, the screen makes it distant and colourful, calm and quiet but full of ghosts, with no ­borders. And cinema will reveal the very deep level of this landscape – an ­incognitae land – which belongs to both reality and film, as well as to the audience’s experiences and (lack of) associated memories. The cultural

164  Maria Irene Aparício landscape, shot as a map of human spirit – a poem, a portrait and the ­language – is the same as the Aryan’s land – e.g. Irān (Aryan) – but it is also a historical and tormented space with no signed truce. As ­K iarostami writes: “Bodies / on the ground / feet / In the mud, / hearts / on fire / heads / gone with wind” (2005, p. 158). Referring to Kiarostami’s films, Jean-Luc Nancy underlines the power of his cinema lying on the fact that these are not fascinating images. For Nancy, every captured image of the world is an ethos, since it shapes and mobilises the spectator’s gaze. In that sense, Kiarostami’s films are “eye openers” (Nancy, 2001, p. 16). This cinema is about reality and “the ­reality of the images is the access to the real itself, with the consistency and the resistance of death, for instance, or life, for instance” (Nancy, 2001, p. 16). As a contemporary filmmaker, he explores the double condition of modern images – i.e. as facts and fiction. His ­characters are ­frequently caught in a double bind, for whatever action they ­decide to take, they cannot escape unpleasant results. One would say that ­K iarostami cannot avoid his own experience and deep innermost ­feelings about life’s cyclic movement to meet its end: “I have come along with the wind, / on the first day of summer. / The wind will carry me along / on the last day of the fall” (Kiarostami, 2002, p. 225). The fact is that after Cinema, Death Valley, the Universe or even the Human Mind – the concept of space itself, either inner or outer, would never be the same. With the movie pictures, the image(s) of space(s) would change forever, as well as the memories of mankind’s near or distant pasts, and the quite (un)predictable fictions of the future. And, all those spaces are true and co-exist(ed) in real time and space, as well as in people’s imagination, or at any fourth dimension. Kiarostami’s films represent realistic spaces through travelling shots and unexpected silences, punctuating landscapes, villages and roads. His plots gather layers of time and meaning, transforming pictures into complex inner intra-extra-filmic spaces. They are ‘places-non-spaces’ of affection and knowledge, where spectators find images, sounds, ­memories, stories, history, art, reality and fiction, a melting pot of ideas, ­mixing and producing something quite new – a new land(e)escape. «The more I think the less I understand why the Milky Way is so distant». (Abbas Kiarostami)

Works Cited Filmography Kiarostami, A. (1987). Where Is My Friend’s Home (‫خانهدوستکجاست‬‎). Kiarostami, A. (1990). Close-Up (‫نماینزدیک‬،‫کلوزآپ‬‎).

Kiarostami’s Landscapes  165 Kiarostami, A. (1992). Life and Nothing More… (‫زندگیودیگرهیچ‬‎). Kiarostami, A. (1994). Through the Olive Trees (‎‫)زیردرختانزیتون‬. Kiarostami, A. (1997). The Taste of Cherry (…‫طعمگيالس‬‎). Kiarostami, A. (1999). The Wind Will Carry Us (‫بادماراخواهدبرد‬‎). Varda, A. (2008). The Beaches of Agnès (Les Plages d’Agnès). Bibliography Arnheim, R. (1991). Outer space and inner space. Leonardo, 24(1), 73–74. Bachelard, G. (2000). The dialectics of outside and inside. In C. Cazeaux (Ed.), The continental aesthetics reader (pp. 151–163). London, UK & New York, NY: Routledge. Bergala, A., & Balló, J. (2006). Erice-Kiarostami correspondences. Barcelona, Spain: Centre de Cultura Contemprànea de Barcelona (CCCB), Institut d`Edicions de la Diputacio de Bacelona and Actar. Brody, R. (2011). Kiarostami and the winds of change. New Yorker. ­Retrieved March 22, 2017, from www.newyorker.com/culture/richard-brody/abbaskiarostami-and-the-winds-of-change Dabashi, H. (2001). Close up. Iranian cinema, past, present and the future. London, UK & New York, NY: Verso. Deleuze, G. (1986). Cinema 1. The movement-image. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Dewey, J. (1980). Art as experience. New York, NY: Perigee Books. Elena, A. (2005). The cinema of Abbas Kiarostami. London, UK: SAQI/Iran Heritage Foundation. Foucault, M. (1998). Different spaces. In P. Rabinow(Ed.), Essential works of Foucault, 1954–1984 (pp. 175–185). New York, NY: The New Press. Harper, G., & Rayner, J. (Eds.). (2010). Landscape and cinema. Bristol, UK: Intellect Ltd. Kiarostami, A. (2002). Walking with the wind. Cambridge, MA: Harvard ­University Film Archive. Kiarostami, A. (2005). A Wolf lying in wait, selected poems. Tehran, Iran: Sokhan Publishers. Martin, J.-C. (2000). Of images and worlds. Toward a geology of the cinema. In G. Flaxman(Ed.), The brain is the screen. Deleuze and the philosophy of cinema (pp. 61–85). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Nancy, J.-L. (2001). Abbas Kiarostami. The evidence of film. Bruxelles, ­B elgium: Yves Gevaert Publisher. Nolan, D. P. (2002). Topics in the philosophy of possible worlds. London, UK & New York, NY: Routledge. Sesonske, A. (1974, Autumn). Aesthetics of film, or a funny thing happened on the way to the movies. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 33(1), 51–57. Villarmea Álvarez, I. (2015). Documenting cityscapes. Urban change in contemporary non-fiction film. London, UK & New York, NY: Wallflower Press. Yates, F. (1966). The art of memory. London, UK & New York, NY: Routledge.

5.2 Mapping Heterotopias in Colombian Documentary Film Maria Luna

Heterotopias, according to Michel Foucault, are real places that do exist and that are formed in the very founding of ­society, which are something like counter-sites, a kind of effectively ­enacted utopia in which the real sites (...) are simultaneously represented, contested and inverted. Places of this kind are outside of all places, even though it may be possible to indicate their location in reality. (1986, p. 24)

These ‘other spaces’ are especially relevant for discussing Colombian documentary films produced in the context of the armed conflict1 ­because they are manifestations of existent counter-sites where people must behave differently in order to be able to resist within war-produced spaces of instability and uncertainty. Foucault’s concept of heterotopia may be combined with Henri ­L efebvre’s spatial triad – formed by spatial practices, representations of space and representational spaces (1991, pp. 38–39) – to address the emergence of such spaces in Colombian documentaries filmed in ­r ural areas. The main purpose of this essay is thus to understand how physical–spatial practices – and imaginary spaces–representations of space–intertwine to produce heterotopias. In this sense, the creation of cinematic rural spaces from the urban gaze of filmmakers is first ­conditioned by physical distance and access difficulties to remote ­areas. But this remoteness has often been desired – and ­designed – by ­f unding, training programmes and film schools operating within the developed world. Accordingly, analysing the representation of ­documentary geo­g raphies, as well as their spatial practices of production of space, requires understanding how remote places and the spatial restriction of entering war zones fuel the imagination and creativity of urban ­d irectors trained abroad. Heterotopias are here understood as relative spaces, encompassing an “unstable process of mediation” (Dehaene & De Cauter, 2008, p. 94) and “a mental and representational category” (Jansson, 2009, p. 306). This

Mapping Heterotopias  167 is why they constantly generate movement between central and ­isolated spaces. In the particular case of documentary representations of forced displacement and situations of war, this movement can be the outcome of different events and itineraries, challenging the idea of a fixed place attached to one single identity. Taking into account that ­heterotopias, in relation to modernity, are defined as “spaces of alternate ordering” or “in-between spaces” (Hetherington, 1997, p. 9, viii), the spaces of war represented in recent Colombian documentaries may also be perceived as spaces of resistance, inasmuch as displaced persons inhabiting them can be seen as both victims and individuals in the process of adapting to a new life in a hostile context. The possibility of considering spaces of armed conflict and forced ­displacement as heterotopias has previously been denied by arguing that isolated and closed spaces, such as battlefields, borders and camps, are precisely the opposite (Dehaene & De Cauter, 2008, p. 5). This debate is quite relevant to the present work, which attempts to use heterotopias to discuss the dynamics of audiovisual representation in the context of an internal armed conflict characterised by the fight for territory, in which places like temporal borders, battlefields and camps do actually exist in rural areas. From this perspective, the emergence of heterotopic spaces in Colombian documentary film has become a geopolitical issue, since it reveals the opening of spaces of resistance in the midst of the most adverse circumstances.

Cinematic Cartographies of War and Forced Displacement The mapping of heterotopias begins with the identification of the ­physical space where documentaries on the armed conflict have been recorded (Figure 5.2.1; Luna, 2014); then, these film locations are put in relation to the visual spatial metaphors linked to rural areas that ­usually ­appear in these documentaries; and finally, the international ­circulation of these works through film festivals is monitored in order to know how far they have come. The aim of this cinematic cartography is twofold. On the one hand, understanding the location is a productive aspect of film analysis. On the other hand, comprehending that the impact of l­ocation goes ­beyond physical places is important because it generates visual metaphors that have different meanings depending on their r­ eceivers – whether the participants in these films, its producers or the audience. Beyond geographical maps, this essay also borrows Jesús Martín-­ Barbero’s notion of “nocturnal map”: “a map which enables us to study domination, production and labour from the other side of the picture, the side of the cracks in domination, the consumption dimensions of economy, and the pleasures of life” (2004, p. 311). Each one of these maps opens a more complex system of production of images influenced

168  Maria Luna

Figure 5.2.1  Documentaries on the armed conflict – film locations.

by the set of practices and worldviews that each filmmaker has learnt and expresses through its gaze towards rural space. I would describe this system as ‘cinematic cartographies of war’. The indexical presence of the physical world in the images produces the ‘other space’ or “the documentary chronotope”, as Michael Chanan has called it, according to which documentaries are not necessarily built on a classical narrative, but on a logic of implication: “In the space of documentary”, Chanan argues, the represented world is not separated from the viewer by reason of narrative principle. On the contrary, the social reality portrayed here is one in which a viewer could in principle find themselves present, putatively, or as a potential historical subject, and sometimes palpably. (2000, p. 60)

Mapping Heterotopias  169 This continuity between spaces of recording, creation and viewing l­ocates the analysis of documentaries within Henri Lefebvre’s t­ heoretical frame­ roduced (1991). work, which states that space is not natural, but socially p Lefebvre’s spatial model consists of three elements: spatial ­practices (perceived spaces), representations of space (conceived spaces) and ­representational spaces (lived spaces) (1991, pp. 36–37). In the schema below (Figure 5.2.2), which presents the production of ­heterotopias – or other spaces – according to Lefebvre’s model, spatial media practice ­corresponds to the physical space that documentary filmmakers traverse in their journeys from urban to rural territories, representation of space is interpreted from the discourse analysis of the films chosen as case studies and finally, representational space arises from the observation of the institutional spaces that determine funding and exhibition. This essay will specifically discuss three films that use the presence of heterotopias as spatial metaphors for the armed conflict. They have all transnationally circulated through international film festivals and are first works of filmmakers that have continued working on this subject. The first is Those Waiting in the Dark (En lo Escondido, Nicolás Rincón Gille, 2007), a documentary that pioneered the poetic representation of the countryside. The second is Meanders (Meandros, Héctor ­U lloque & Manuel Ruiz, 2010), a travelogue that challenged the stereotypes of the space of war by showing a wide variety of spaces of resistance. Finally, the third is The Towrope (La Sirga, William Vega, 2012), a ­sophisticated and poetic fiction film based on true stories, that explores the ­possibility of non-belonging in the life of several displaced persons. ­ articularly meaningful in these works is that they belong to a What is p

Representational Space

Spatial Practice

Figure 5.2.2  P  roduction of heterotopias.

Space of Representation

170  Maria Luna time of sea change in the circulation of Colombian cinema that boosted the production of feature films about the armed conflict aimed at transnational audiences.

Performing the Invisible: Those Waiting in the Dark This first case study documents everyday life in the rural areas affected by the armed conflict, by following a forcibly displaced old woman, Mrs. Carmen. The film was one of the first entirely independent productions recorded during the first stage of the democratic security policy period. 2 It was initially almost unknown in Colombia, but its screening at Cinéma du Réel 2007 – where it won the Joris Ivens Award – turned it into one of the first rural documentaries of this period garnering international circulation. Those Waiting in the Dark was recorded in Carmen’s farm, close to San Juan de Rioseco (Cundinamarca Department), in the central r­ egion of Colombia. The area is relatively close to the capital, but is rarely ­visited by the residents in Bogotá or other major cities of the country. A few years before the recording of the film, a paramilitary raid took the town and Carmen was forcibly displaced. Later, she decided to return to her farm, where she owned a grocery store. Nicolás Rincón Gille3 – the director of the film – met her while he was looking for a good storyteller around Bogotá that could express the plight of the rural areas affected by the armed conflict: I did not want to record in an eccentric or exotic place, such as Chocó or Amazonas. I was looking for someone closer to the ­ordinary ­peasant that we all have in mind, a cundiboyacense ­[inhabitants of the central region]. I searched in several areas. Many people ­introduced me to peasants that matched what I had in mind: I needed a great storyteller. (Rincón Gille, personal interview)4 Oral memory is thus at the base of Those Waiting in the Dark: heterotopias, here, unfold from the performance of memories. The filmmaker has explained that his interest in the countryside comes, in fact, from his childhood fascination with oral storytelling: As a child, my father – an anthropology professor – took me to the countryside alongside his students. These journeys were extraordinary opportunities to listen to the peasants – usually quiet and wary of strangers – and their stories. (Rincón Gille, 2012) This account suggests a magical discovery of a region where oral traditions were a normal mode of communication: a type of speech between

Mapping Heterotopias  171 reality and fiction that took the people ‘elsewhere’. “Something ­uncanny happened then”, the filmmaker goes on, “a tense feeling pervaded ­everyone present. The peasants were not telling imaginary legends, but ­specific facts in which it was impossible to differentiate reality from ­fiction” (Rincón Gille, 2012). One of the most remarkable aspects of Those Waiting in the Dark is the relationship between the filmmaker and the protagonist, which is the outcome of embracing an explicit ethnographic approach based on the will to share strategies of creation: I went to San Juan with a friend of my father who introduced Mrs. Carmen to me. We had a conversation for two or three hours with an incredible trust. For me, this is one of the strongest relationships in a documentary film because it allowed me to work on equal basis. (…) This is not easy when working in documentary. For instance, in my second film the relationships were more unbalanced, and some interviewees asked me for money. This is a more complicated situation, but with Carmen it was totally different. (Rincón Gille, personal interview) The blurred boundaries between directing and acting allowed the ­filmmaker access to both personal and psychological spaces. This way of filmmaking, which presents features of the participatory and ­performative modes (Nichols, 2001, pp. 115–123, 130–137), gives rise to an infre­ ocumentary quent horizontal relationship within the power relations in d ­ armen to direct filmmaking (Nash, 2010). In this regard, by inviting C her own story, Rincón became the guest of her mise en scène, while she was empowered by the camera to the extent of creating her own other spaces. Heterotopia, in this context, can be defined as a ‘space of play’ (Dehaene & De Cauter, 2008), that is, as a theatrical s­ etting that creates a space of mediation by inverting the power relations in a documentary film. The trust bond allowed both filmmaker and protagonist, through performative strategies, to establish fluid communication and open up imaginary spaces based on the re-enactment of memories. The film works on different levels of representation: from the ­chronotope of the gothic castle surrounded by the dark (Bakhtin, 1981, p. 246), to the fear of the invisible but real presence of fighters involved in the armed conflict, both mediated by the peasant’s ­superstition. The ­image of an isolated house surrounded by darkness, however, goes ­beyond the romantic imagination: the threatening presences of the ­outside come from the imaginary space of the protagonist, but they ­actually materialise the latent violence that remains hidden. Darkness, to which the title explicitly refers, somehow expresses the invisibilities of the armed conflict. Accordingly, the heterotopia appears here as a blend of the subjective landscape and the unconscious space of the traumatic memories of displacement. The documentary can thus be regarded as a

172  Maria Luna clear example of the emergence of “landscapes of fear”, a term used by Ulrich Oslender to describe how the materialities of fear remain as traces that the armed groups leave behind after having attacked the civilian population (2008, p. 81). Like Meanders and The Towrope, which will be discussed below, Those Waiting in the Dark never shows explicit violence, but suggests its presence through its traces: the dark light of a bulb, a date of a t­ raumatic event inscribed on the floor, even the sound of the rural landscape. “In my work”, Rincón Gille explains, “I am interested in reverting a ‘neutral’ and objective vision of the landscape in order to inhabit it with a knowledge and a narrative that give it meaning” (in Castrillón, 2007, p. 143). Such a subjective landscape is precisely what allows the audience access to other spaces: more than witness the story of a displaced woman, the viewer experiences the place of fear and resistance that ­Carmen creates through the performance of her memories.

Challenging the Media War: Meanders Meanders is one of the most ambitious documentaries produced in the late period of the democratic security policy. This feature film depicts a set of rural communities in areas very difficult to access, focusing on how everyday life goes on in the midst of the armed conflict. It was recorded between 2008 and 2009 on the banks of the Guaviare River, in the ­Eastern region of Colombia. It was first screened at IDFA – ­I nternational Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam – and Cartagena Film Festival, and then presented in Bogotá as one of Colombia’s first web documentaries. Its release also entailed the opening of meandrosdoc.com, a website with an interactive cartography that offers a series of video excerpts located on a map of the Guaviare Department. In order to make this film, its directors Héctor Ulloque and Manuel Ruiz5 entered the region thrice, staying approximately one month per visit. They accessed the area by air, land and water, recording in m ­ ultiple locations along the river. Their initial intention of avoiding the news media acceleration was challenged by the real possibilities of staying in some places and the limitations for recording in others, depending on the presence or absence of fighters: The armed conflict zones change very fast due to their internal ­dynamics. For instance, in a period of one month, there was an ­attack on the mayor, one of our guides was kidnapped and other went to prison. Thus, ‘how long did we stay in each place?’ It ­depends on each case. (Ulloque, personal interview)6 For example, the filmmakers remained in Puerto Alvira for a very ­limited time: “In the village”, one of them explains,

Mapping Heterotopias  173 there is a military base, and the guerrilla, who are on the other side of the river, frequently harassed the population in order to get the military base removed. They want to erase the town. It is a place where we could not stay more than two days. (Ulloque, personal interview) On the contrary, their approaching of the nomadic indigenous tribe Nukak Makuk required a slower pace and, of course, more time. One way or another, the filmmakers needed to build a solid network of relationships to access these territories: In Meanders, (…) more than a long ethnography, we had to do a work of intensity and selection. Here, the people that allowed us to create bridges with the communities were key elements. If you are a stranger, someone has to introduce you and ask for authorization from... the fighters in the zone, and this can change overnight... But, precisely the fact that allowed us to record Meanders was the possibility to build ‘a trust network’ within the area. (Ulloque, personal interview) It is impossible for an external viewer to trace the places visited in the documentary, because even if location changes are marked, specific ­positions are never explicit.7 Most of the time, the film depicts fragments of life, small stories that happen in undetermined villages: “we had little interest in letting the audience know where we were exactly, but we did want them to know that they were embarked on a journey” (Ulloque, personal interview). According to the filmmakers, their documentary is not aimed at portraying the armed conflict, but at representing the way people living in these areas experience their daily life, while ­remaining deeply attached to their territories. Through these micro-narratives, ­Meanders unveils heterotopias of everyday resistances: Our first gaze is the media gaze, the television news gaze, which is what allows citizens a first approach, but it cannot be said that we have lived this reality. I think we are always tourists doing ­ethnography, because one thing is living there and other is going to do research for two, three, six months to record a documentary. (Ulloque, personal interview) Meanders approaches these communities from the gaze of the ­t raveller, through the chronotope of the undulating river and its multiple ­encounters. The Eastern zone of Guaviare is thus depicted as a melting pot of different cultures and traditions, giving rise to a heterotopia of ­resistance, for it witnesses what Jesús Martín-Barbero calls “ways of being together” (2002, p. 638). This is why the people’s choice to stay in their homes is always one of the main subjects of their stories, even

174  Maria Luna though the conflict seems to be always latent: there seems to be more tension in what is not told or shown. Faced with these traumas, the decision to represent everyday life in these areas opens heterotopias that ultimately help in overcoming their isolation caused by the state of war.

The Possibility of Non-belonging: The Towrope The Towrope is one of the most remarkable works regarding the p ­ oetic representation of rural areas in Colombia. Despite being a fiction, it ­exemplifies what I have previously called “the documentary impulse” that pervades all the films depicting real and unfamiliar regions of the country (Luna, 2013). In this type of work, aesthetic and ethnographic practices derived from documentary are used in fiction filmmaking, thus suggesting the importance of “the documentary gaze” (Sobchack, 1984, pp. 283–300) in the evolution of ‘rural transnationalities’ in Colombian cinema. This particular film was recorded in the lagoon La Cocha, located in the Andean mountains almost 2,800 metres above sea level in the southwest region of Colombia. The lake is one of the natural treasures of the region, 20 kilometres away from Pasto, the capital of the Nariño Department. The director of The Towrope, William Vega,8 explained that he found this place during the production of a cultural report to be aired on an environmental television programme. The TV crew went to La Cocha to record a series of short programmes, but once they arrived, they discovered an astonishing place full of visual elements that deserved to be documented: [In Nariño,] there are visually irregular territories, steep terrains. When you have been in the middle of the mountains for fifteen days, and suddenly you arrive in La Cocha, all you can see is a space so flat and horizontal that is like if the gaze could travel upon the lake. (Vega, personal interview)9 Despite the initial amusement, in the rush of a weekly television programme, there was not enough time to develop a reflexive, articulated story. However, the place remained in the director’s mind and later ­inspired his first feature film. “The encounter with territories and their inhabitants”, he states, was a determinant in my life experience in Colombia, [since] the idea of the countryside itself is very mediatised. (…) City dwellers have no personal experience with the countryside and the peasants. (…) I am speaking especially about direct contact, travelling throughout these municipalities for more than eight months, going through places and

Mapping Heterotopias  175 encountering certain parameters related to ­social ­conflicts lived by the peasants. (Vega, personal interview) Vega returned to La Cocha and invited the people of the community to take part in his film. Their collaboration was developed in different ways: for example, the community got involved in the recording process through the construction of the central setting for the film, a ruined hostel. The idea was to create a space that looked authentic, like the original houses in the area. For this reason, the film crew decided to buy brand new clapboards and proposed an exchange of materials with the inhabitants of these houses whose façades had preserved the marks of the passage of time. The physical traces of war, in turn, deeply influenced the aesthetics of The Towrope. A peculiar construction built on the lake, for instance, awoke the director’s curiosity: There were two towers, two vertical figures that literally went through the lake. They looked like structures out of nothing. In the visual line, you had two towers and their long reflection that was cutting the water like a knife. It was very strange. When I asked about them, the guides told me that they were built by an armed group that had settled there to have visual control. The towers were war constructions. At the time, I did not know it, and the people did not clearly tell me... Afterwards, I found out that they were not paramilitaries, but guerrilla watch towers. Such a mystery that nobody wanted to reveal was for me a germinal idea that something needed to be told about this place. (Vega, personal interview) The signs of war, even when the armed conflict was inactive, were still surrounded by mystery, for they revealed the invisibilities of some of the conflict’s heterotopias. The Towrope is thus another example of “geographies of terror” because it offers an alternative story that contrasts with the univocal conception of forced displacement: “the official discourse on forced ­displacement tends to focus on the humanitarian assistance given (or not) to the displaced population in the cities”, Ulrich Oslender explains, “and how a return of these populations to their lands of origin might be arranged”, but not on those who decided to stay (2008, p. 80). Faced with this discourse, the film questions the myths of a radical separation between rural and urban spaces, which is at the root of the perception of forced displacement as a threat. By means of collaborative ­fi lmmaking, understood as a spatial practice in which the community and the film

176  Maria Luna crew work together, The Towrope opens a heterotopia where forced displacement generates strength and community resistance besides fear, thereby helping to create new spaces and discourses within film production.

Conclusions Documentary practices produce imaginary spaces that rely on our symbolically constructed assumptions. In this sense, the curiosity and fascination of urban documentary makers upon rural spaces of an ­‘unknown country’ is a key element in the representation of ‘other spaces’ in the recent Colombian documentary film. Such ­representations, which have traditionally been shaped by a long literary tradition linked to ­“European travel writing on the tropics” (Wylie, 2009, p. 25), have recently given rise to counter-sites of resistance that show “an absolute break with [the] traditional time”, as Michel Foucault argued in the fourth principle of heterotopias (1986, p. 26). Most urban viewers have never visited the rural areas affected by the armed conflict, but they have experienced the imaginary spaces built from their representations: an idyllic countryside broken down by ­violence. Perhaps, paraphrasing the interpretation of Ulrich ­Oslender, every Colombian unconsciously holds an imaginary map on their i­nside to navigate through a personal geography of terror. Nevertheless, when a documentary portrays unsuspected “ways of being together” (Martín-Barbero, 2002, p. 638), the collective urban imaginary of spaces of violence is challenged by specific representations of the s­ truggle and resistance of rural communities that use heterotopias to relieve and overcome their own war traumas.

Notes 1 The Colombian conflict is the longest political armed conflict in the history of Latin America. It refers to the confrontation between the state and guerrillas. Experts marked its beginning with the creation of FARC guerrillas in 1962–1964. In the context of the democratic security policy (2002–2010), to which this article refers, the armed conflict is permeated by complex relationships between the state, paramilitary groups, drug dealers and guerrillas. 2 The democratic security policy was implemented in 2002 during Álvaro Uribe Velez’s government in Colombia and lasted until the end of his presidential period in 2010. It was focused on the fight against armed groups labelled as terrorists – especially FARC guerrillas. The displaced population increased to five million people during this period, making Colombia one of the most affected countries by this issue worldwide. 3 Nicolás Rincón Gille is a Belgian descendent that studied at Universidad Nacional de Colombia in Bogotá. He later returned to Brussels to study at the INSAS film school.

Mapping Heterotopias  177 4 This interview with Nicolas Ricón Gille was held in Brussels on 14 D ­ ecember 2012. 5 Héctor Ulloque and Manuel Ruiz studied at Universidad Nacional de ­Colombia in Bogotá. Ulloque also earned a master’s degree in fi ­ lmmaking from Sorbonne University. Ruiz held a PhD in anthropology from the EHESS-Paris. 6 This interview with Héctor Ulloque was held in Paris on 8 July 2013. 7 On the contrary, the website meandrosdoc.com is especially useful to locate these places, since it contains a detailed map of film locations. 8 William Vega studied at Universidad del Valle in Cali. His film The ­Towrope was first screened at Directors’ Fortnight at the Cannes Film Festival. ­Previously, during the process of scriptwriting, he was a fellow of Fundación Carolina in Madrid. Later, he has also become a fellow of the Cannes Cinéfondation. 9 This interview with William Vega was held in Donostia on 25 September 2012.

Works Cited Filmography Rincón Gille, N. (2007). Those Waiting in the Dark (En lo Escondido). Ulloque, H. & Ruiz, M. (2010). Meanders (Meandros). Vega, W. (2012). The Towrope (La Sirga). Bibliography Bakhtin, M.M. (1981). The dialogic imagination: Four essays. Austin & ­London, UK: University of Texas Press. Castrillón, M. (2007). En lo Escondido de Nicolás Rincón. Revista Universidad de Antioquia, 289, 140–143. Retrieved November 5, 2018, fromhttp:// dialnet.unirioja.es/servlet/articulo?codigo=2475229 Chanan, M. (2000, July). The documentary chronotope. Jump Cut, 43, 56–61. Retrieved November 5, 2018, from http://www.ejumpcut.org/archive/­ onlinessays/JC43folder/DocyChronotope.html Dehaene, M., & De Cauter, L. (Eds.). (2008). Heterotopia and the city. Public space in a postcivil society. Abingdon, UK & New York, NY: Routledge. Foucault, M. (1986). Of other spaces. Diacritics, 16(1), 22–27. Retrieved ­November 5, 2018, from www.jstor.org/stable/464648 Hetherington, K. (1997). Badlands of modernity. Heterotopia and social ­ordering. London, UK & New York, NY: Routledge. Jansson, A. (2009). Introduction. Beyond ‘other spaces’: Media studies and the cosmopolitan vision. The Communication Review, 12(4), 305–312. doi:10.1080/10714420903346613 Lefebvre, H. (1991). The production of space. London, UK: Blackwell. Luna, M. (2013). Los viajes transnacionales del cine colombiano. Archivos de la Filmoteca. Revista de estudios históricos sobre la imagen, 71, 69–82. Luna, M. (2014). Mapdocs integrated map. Retrieved November 5, 2018, from http://bit.ly/1oVGroC

178  Maria Luna Martín-Barbero, J. (2002). Identities: traditions and new communities. Media, Culture & Society, 24(5), 621–641. doi:10.1177/016344370202400504 Martín-Barbero, J. (2004). An octurnal map to explore a new field. In A. Del Sarto, A. Ríos, & Trigo, A. (Eds.). The Latin American ­cultural ­studies reader (310–328). Durham, UK: Duke University Press. doi:10.1215/ 9780822385462-016 Nash, K. (2010). Exploring power and trust in documentary: A study of Tom Zubrycki’s Molly and Mobarak. Studies in Documentary Films, 4(1), 21–33. Nichols, B. (2001). Introduction to documentary. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Oslender, U. (2008). Another history of violence. The production of ‘Geographies of Terror’ in Colombia’s Pacific Coast Region. Latin American Perspectives, 35(5), 77–102. doi:10.1177/0094582X08321961 RincónGille, N. (2012, September 25). The origins. Retrieved November 25, 2013, from http://www.campohablado.com/index-en.php?page=11 Sobchack, V. (1984). Inscribing ethical space. Ten propositions on death, representation, and documentary. Quarterly Review of Film Studies, 9(4), 283–300. doi:/10.1080/10509208409361220 Wylie, L. (2009). Colonial tropes and postcolonial tricks. Rewriting the tropics in the Novela de la Selva. Liverpool, UK: Liverpool University Press.

5.3 Cinematographic Missions to the Portuguese Territory (1917–1918) Paulo Cunha

Let us begin with the facts. It is 1917. Gaumont, a major international production company, sent a camera operator named Anatole Thiberville to Portugal on a cinematographic mission: he has to traverse Portugal from North to South in order to film as much as possible over the shortest period of time, a job that would then result in about 40 films. The following year, 1918, Pathé – Gaumont’s main competitor – sent the cameraman René Moreau to Portugal with an identical mission, resulting this time in 24 films. The large majority of these films – both ­Thiberville’s and Moreau’s – are part of a very particular register, s­ ituated between the tourist and the cultural films. Consequently, they were as concerned with documenting settlements and landscapes as interested in promoting and disseminating a certain image: a ‘postcard’ presenting both ­astonishing landscape views and curious takes on local traditions. A few years later, in 1928, the Portuguese government organised ­similar campaigns for the African territories colonised under Portuguese administration with the aim of collecting images to be shown in the Ibero-American Exhibition of Seville (1929). The films resulting from this Missão Cinegráfica a Angola constituted an enormous effort to ­legitimise Portuguese colonisation in Africa, for they were ordered by the central political administration to document and promote a civilising effort. The same political administration decreed that the propaganda of the Portuguese colonies be intensified in its present state of development and progress by all modern means of publicity, inside and outside the country (Decree No. 27859, of 14 July 1937, p. 681). Although using different terms, I believe that all these missions were actually conceived with similar purposes, inasmuch as the r­ esulting films contribute to a cinematographic cartography of the territory that would be used politically and ideologically by successive ­governments in the ­following decades. The aim of this essay is thus to map the ­cinematographic missions of the ‘image hunters’ Anathole Thiberville and René Moreau to Portugal between 1917 and 1918 in order to reflect on the influence of cinema in the cartographic definition of Portuguese territory in the first half of the 20th century, as well as in the ­construction of a representation and visual identity of some of these territories.

180  Paulo Cunha

The Tourism Bureau and the Portuguese Propaganda The creation of the Propaganda Society of Portugal (SPP) in February 1906 would be decisive in the recognition of tourism as a significant form of economic development and political affirmation. In the 19th century, the SPP, also known as the Touring Club of Portugal, invested in the modernisation of the hotel industry, improving national roads and increasing rail links with the rest of Europe (Matos, Bernardo, & Santos, 2012, p. 394). Despite its associative nature, the SPP assumed a ‘national mission’ of public interest: to promote the intellectual, moral and material development of the country and, especially, to strive for it to be visited, admired and loved by nationals and foreigners (Gazeta dos Caminhos de Ferro, 16-III-1906, p.  86). Despite having emerged from private initiative, the SPP defined its programme in close connection to state, namely in the internal actions with public authorities and local ­administrations and in the international actions (Cerdeira, 2014, p. 112). In the same ‘patriotic’ sense, Licínio Cunha highlights the supra-­ ideological composition of the founders of the SPP: They were monarchists, Republicans, Catholics, Freemasons and journalists of various tendencies that fought among themselves. ­Religion and politics drove them away in hard and rapturous ­confrontations, but patriotism brought them together as a value of union around the search for solutions to common. They were joined by the motto ‘Pro Patria Omnia’: All for Motherland. (2010, p. 132) The first official tourism structures were instituted in 1911, during the Provisional Government of the Republic. On May 13, during the IV ­I nternational Tourism Congress organised in Lisbon by the SPP, the ­Government announced the creation of a public institute, to be ­formalised by the Ministry of Development on May 16 (Diário do ­Govêrno No. 115/1911) with the foundation of the Tourism Council and the Bureau of Tourism, which was endowed with financial autonomy. The third official tourism office established in any European ­country, after Austria (1909) and France (1910), the Tourism Bureau was ­essential to affirming and modernising the sector in the ­following ­decades. ­Sebastião de Magalhães Lima, the “apostle of tourism” (­ Revista de ­Turismo, 5-VII-1918, p. 2) who presided over the SPP, was named the first president of the National Tourism Council. Magalhães Lima was a fundamental component of the country’s strategy for tourism p ­ romotion, which also contributed to the political legitimation of the new ­republican regime recently implanted in Portugal. The tourist organisation process culminated in 1921 with the creation of the Commissions of Initiative based in the climatic and thermal resorts. In this period, cinema would also occupy a central place in the propaganda of the Tourism Bureau.

Cinematographic Missions  181 In May 1917, the Revista de Turismo (5-V-1917, p. 166) reported that, ­ perator after several attempts, Anatole Thiberville, the cinematographic o of Gaumont, would arrive in Portugal with the mission of ­depicting its landscapes and monuments. Unlike the previous attempts, due to the ­pecuniary requirements of other French and Italian p ­ roducers, the ­arrival of this operator in Portugal was facilitated by Magalhães Lima and the expenses associated with his displacement and his ­Portuguese interpreter were covered by the Bureau of Tourism. A month later, the same Revista de Turismo asserted that the broad programme of the French operator was organised by the Tourism Bureau and that he would be joined by Júlio Sequeira (5-VI-1917, p. 178). It is impossible to find out much about Anatole Thiberville. He is mainly identified as a cameraman from Gaumont who worked as an image ­assistant for Alice Guy, the pioneering female French ­director, and ­Marcel L’Herbier, the male French avant-garde filmmaker. An ­experienced veteran of Gaumont, where he worked since 1896, ­Thiberville was the cameraman on a similar cinematic mission led by Alice Guy to Spain, held between October and November 1905, from which 14 films were distributed by Gaumont and gathered in the series Voyage en Espagne (Esteban, 2012, pp. 45–46). In December 1917, Revista de Turismo reported that some of the films recorded in Portugal by Thiberville had already been exhibited in Paris, vindicating that, for the most part, they clearly show local ­landscapes and traditions, which constituted one of the best and most effective means of propaganda for Portugal (5-XII-1917, p. 88). In February 1918, the same publication announced that the Thiberville films would begin to be shown in Portuguese cinemas, stating the supposed objectives of the initiative for the foreign and national public: The impression they will make will be the same as they did in Paris, where they were exhibited. It is that our country is ­something ­beautiful, attractive and worth visiting. And if in Paris, in the eyes of the spectators, they have caused an unprecedented sensation for them, since they considered our land a vague province of Spain, many of us will give the impression that Portugal is not the strip of the beach from Algés to Cascais, nor the two olive trees on the road to Sintra. Many people will be amazed at what comes and more willing to love and admire their land. However, the operation was not as extensive as it was to be ­desired, since many of our monuments were passed in clear, some landscapes were forgotten and many customs remained to be exhibited. And why? Because foreign people did not know what Portugal was, its richness in landscapes and monuments; and hence the Gaumont House sent only a scanty portion of tape, even though it

182  Paulo Cunha thought it was enough to execute the plan that was sent from here. There was a new shipment, but it was not even possible to photograph everything. (Revista de Turismo, 20-II-1918, p. 121) Aware of the gaps in Gaumont’s film mission, the Tourism Bureau, again through Magalhães Lima, began to establish contact with the French house Pathé to bring “one of its skilled operators” to Portugal (Revista de Turismo, 20-II-1918, p. 121). As in the previous mission, the Tourism Bureau would defray expenses related to the transportation and lodging of the operator, interpreter and guide in an attempt to complement the work done by Gaumont. This time, most likely to fill in the gaps in Gaumont’s cinematographic mission, Pathé’s operator, René Moreau, would be guided by an experienced propagandist from the Tourism ­Bureau, José da Guerra Maio: No one better than Guerra Maio could have this responsibility: ­being a true patriot, our editor-master knows his country not only for how much he has travelled, but also for the most vivid impressions, as witnessed his texts published in this magazine. (Revista de Turismo, 20-III-1918, p. 138)1 There are no significant data available on the international circulation of René Moreau’s films, but only about its exhibition in Portugal, a ­project in which the Tourism Bureau actively took part. According to the film magazine Cine-Revista (15-II-1920), the first session was held a year later, on 5 February 1920, in a matinee at the popular Chiado Terrace, promoted by the Tourism Bureau. Only 12 of Moreau’s films were shown, which would end up as part of an autonomous collection called ‘Picturesque and Monumental Portugal’. 2 It is unknown what might have happened to the remaining 12 titles made by Moreau, 3 but it is probable that some, due to their geographical or thematic proximity, may have been juxtaposed in new films – for example, Carrejões do Porto and As margens do Douro may have been integrated into the film O Porto; O Bussaco may have been integrated into the film Palácios e ­jardins; Lisboa e o Tejo may have been integrated into the film Lisboa – or simply the images may have been poorly recorded or preserved during the trip. In March 1923, the Revista de Turismo announced that Pathé was preparing to send a new operator to Portugal, Alexandre Rombert, to collect “ancient and artistic monuments, beautiful landscapes and the ­ridiculous and seductive aspects of this beautiful corner of Europe, as well as its interesting uses and original customs”, on cinematographic tapes that would later be scattered all over the world (Revista de ­Turismo, III-1923, p. 331). Now, under the initiative of the SPP, it was

Cinematographic Missions  183 intended to respond to an alleged campaign of discredit that foreigners were levying against Portugal: It is absolutely necessary to make a great propaganda abroad on our behalf, not only to destroy the effects of the malicious c­ ampaign that is being developed there, but also to compete and avoid the ­channelling of travellers, and especially of tourists to the other ­nations, where they do not find what Portugal offers superior to what is outside. (Revista de Turismo, III-1923, p. 331) Unfortunately, it was not possible to collect more data on this initiative, but most likely it would not have been carried out.

Itineraries Within Anatole Thiberville’s cinematographic mission, it was ­possible to identify 32 titles in the Portuguese film directory Prontuário do ­Cinema Português (1989), a database organised by José de Matos-Cruz: ­Alcobaça, Aveiro, Batalha (91 metres), Braga, Caminha, Cascais, Chaves (10 metres), Coimbra e Arredores (100 metres), Entre-os-Rios, Estremoz, Évora, Faro e Arredores, Figueira da Foz, Guimarães e ­Arredores, Lagos, Lamego, Na Costa de Portugal (108 metres), Notas de Viagem através de Portugal (140 metres), Pedras Salgadas, Portimão e Arredores, Porto, Régua, Santo Tirso, São Pedro do Sul, Tomar, Uma Excursão através do Minho (89 metres), Viana do Castelo, Vidago, Vila do Conde, Vila Nova de Gaia, Vila Real, Vizela/De Vizela a Caniços (105 metres). In the 5 October 1917 edition, in a text entitled, “Portugal in ­Cinema”, the Revista de Turismo presented a detailed summary of the lands and aspects of life shot by Thiberville. In addition to the locations identified by the film titles themselves, the description of each block of images allows identifying other locations and landscapes recorded on film: ­Estoril, Caxinas, Vila Praia de Âncora, Póvoa de Lanhoso, Gerês, Santo Tirso, Penacova, Lousã and Silves. These place names suggest that Thiberville’s film mission focused mainly on Northwest Portugal, with particular emphasis on the Minho and the Corgo Valley, then served by the Corgo Railway. Inaugurated in 1906, with the rail link between Régua and Vila Real, the latter railway reached Vidago in 1910 and would only be ­completed in 1921 with the connection to Chaves, adding approximately 97 ­kilometres in length. Discussed since 1879, this railway link was intended to make important thermal centres – Pedras Salgadas and Vidago – and several towns in the area – Vila Pouca de Aguiar, Vila Real and Chaves – accessible, in order to enhance territorial cohesion in the

184  Paulo Cunha north of the country. At least five films were shot along this railway: Régua, Vila Real, Pedras Salgadas, Vidago and Chaves. In Minho, the railway of the same name would also be the preferred means of transport for the Gaumont mission team. Starting in the city of Porto, the Minho Railway would reach Nine (Famalicão) in 1875, ­Barcelos in 1877, Caminha in 1878 and finally Valença in 1882. In a ­second phase, the railroad would reach Monção in 1915. Branching off the main track, railroad connections would reach Braga in 1875 and Guimarães in 1884, an extension that also served Santo Tirso and ­Vizela. Seven films were made along this railway and its branches: Braga,Caminha, Guimarães e Arredores, Santo Tirso, Uma Excursão através do Minho, Viana do Castelo and Vizela/De Vizela a Caniços. ­ istoric Finally, the cinematographic retinue would also make use of the h Douro River railway. Inaugurated in 1875, with the arrival to Caíde (Lousada), this railway ensured the connection of Porto to the Spanish ­ ntre-os-Rios, border (1887). Three films were filmed along this route: E Lamego and the aforementioned Régua. Accordingly, 14 of the 32 films produced on this mission are linked to these historic railroads of North Western Portugal. This circumstance is quite natural because the promotion of railways as a means of tourist transport was one of the priorities of the Tourism Bureau during this period. This public body also invested in the promotion of ­thermalism, a practice highly valued for its health benefits. All 38 thermal resorts listed by the Revista do Turismo in August, 1920 were served by ­railways (nine were along the Minho and six along the Douro and Tâmega railways), and ten were located in places filmed by Thiberville: Braga, Chaves, ­Entre-os-Rios, Guimarães, Pedras Salgadas, Portimão, São ­Pedro do Sul, Tomar, Vidago and Vizela. ­ irectory However, in addition to these 32 titles, the Portuguese film d lists 12 other Gaumont productions related to Portugal in ­thesameperiod: Actualidades 14: Os Delegados de Portugal à Conferência dos ­Aliados (60 metres); O Antigo Ministro de Portugal, Magalhães Lima, em Paris (10 metres); Cavalaria Portuguesa em Treinos (17 ­metres); ­Demonstração patriotic em Lisboa a favor dos Aliados; O Embaixador de Portugal em Paris, J. Chagas, na Conferência dos Aliados; ­E xército Português; ­Lisboa Pitoresca/Lisboa Panorâmica (153 metres); Marinha ­Portuguesa; Partida de Marinheiros para Angola e África do Sul (26 ­metres); ­Portugal após Declaração de Guerra; Os Portugueses nas Forças Militares e Navais que partem para a África do Sul; Sintra e seus Arredores (112 metres). Of these 12 titles, three were shot in Paris, but the remaining nine were most likely filmed by Thiberville during his cinematic mission to Portugal, contributing to a total of 41 films resulting from this joint initiative between Gaumont and the Portuguese Tourism Bureau. René Moreau, in turn, toured the country in April 1918 and ­completed 24 films: O Alentejo, Braga e Guimarães, O Bussaco, ­C ampinas ­Portuguesas, Carrejões do Porto, Coimbra, Évora, Fabrico de Conservas

Cinematographic Missions  185 de Setúbal, Feira em Ponte de Lima, Leiria e Batalha, ­Lisboa e o Tejo, Lisboa e os seus jardins, As margens do Douro, No Minho, Parques de Portugal – Queluz e Monserrate, Pequenas I­ ndústrias ­Portuguesas, Porto, Regiões Atravessadas pelo Caminho de Ferro de Vigado, Regiões ­ travessadas Atravessadas pelo Caminho de Ferro do Tua, Regiões A pelo Caminho de Ferro do Vale do Douro, Regiões ­Atravessadas pelo Caminho de Ferro do Vale do Vouga, Serra da Estrela, Tipos e ­Costumes Minhotos, and O Vale do Mondego. ­Unlike Gaumont’s ­mission, Moreau’s journey was more widely ­publicised, notably through the travel journal written by Guerra Maio, published over several months in Revista de Turismo, which stated the main destinationsvisited as well as the form of transportation used. ­ alace, The filming of Moreau’s first day was conducted at Queluz P ­Monserrate Park and Palácio da Pena, all in Sintra, where he was ­accompanied by Magalhães Lima himself, the highest leader of ­Portuguese tourism propaganda. On the way back to Lisbon, near ­A madora, the French operator also wanted to record a rancho de saloias  – a group of women – cropping wheat (Revista de Turismo, 5-VI-1918, p. 182). In Coimbra, Moreau recorded several panoramas of the city, the main historical and architectural monuments – Santa Clara-a-Velha, Quinta das Lágrimas, Lapa dos Esteios, Santa Cruz, Jardim Botânico, Penedo da Saudade, Sé Velha and Sé Nova – as well as groups of girls, peasants and students (Revista de Turismo, 20-VI-1918, pp.  191–192). Also in the centre region, another day of shooting began in Buçaco, recording its 100-year-old forest and the local Palace Hotel. The trip continued towards the Vouga Valley, stopping in Aveiro – the ‘Portuguese ­Venice’ – and São Pedro do Sul, where Moreau and his crew remained in the ­Palace of Palme, the main landmark of the region of Lafões, to record their gardens (Revista de Turismo, 20-VII-1918, pp. 12–13). The city of Porto, which Moreau had visited before, was also on his programme, but climatic contrasts and other setbacks – such as a lack of collaboration with many people who refused to be extras – conditioned his plans, reducing the filming to the monuments and some blatant ­aspect of the streets. On board a boat, Moreau also filmed the Ribeira dock, venturing about 10 kilometres up the Douro River to where it meets the Sousa River. From Porto, the mission proceeded on a trip to Minho aboard the train. The first stop was Portugal’s birthplace, Guimarães, although ­ izela Moreau previously recorded images of reservoirs in the Ave and V rivers from the train. In Guimarães, the tour began in the town of São ­Torcato – where one of the greatest religious festivals in Northern ­Portugal was taking place – and was followed with a visit to a traditional clay crockery workshop. On the way to Braga the next day, Moreau stopped in a thermal station at Caldas das Taipas and at Bom Jesus, one of the most important Catholic shrines in Portugal (Revista de Turismo, 20-VIII-1918, p. 28). In Alto Minho, the mission went even

186  Paulo Cunha further north, to Viana do Castelo, Santa Marta de Portuzelo and Ponte de Lima. In addition to the landscapes and other traditional aspects of ­Portuguese culture, such as costumes and popular dances, a fair was also filmed, as well as a folkloric group and an unexpected handle of oxen (Revista de Turismo, 5-X-1918, pp. 52–53). The entourage continued by train to Régua, Barcad’Alva, Vila Real, Vidago and the Tua Valley. On these journeys, Moreau recorded numerous landscapes with the camera ­installed in a wagon placed in front of the locomotive, transforming the train into an authentic cinematographic platform (Revista de Turismo, 20-X-1918, pp. 61–62). Later, the team went to São Pedro Sul, Vouzela and Viseu’s Hotel de Portugal on board a special train offered by the Railway Company of the Vouga Valley. From there, they reached Serra da Estrela, where they filmed Mangualde, Gouveia, Seia, São Romão and Valezim. This visit to Serra da Estrela was prepared with particular care, to the extent that, according to the magazine Cine-Revista (15-V-1918), the delegation was again accompanied by Magalhães Lima and José Athayde, as well as the writer Manuel de Sousa Pinto, Ramos de Paiva – an ­employee of the ­M inistry of Labor – and several gentlemen of the Society for P ­ ropagating the Improvements of Serra da Estrela. On the way back to Lisbon, the team spent the night in Leiria, visiting the castle and the banks of the river Liz, where some local laundresses were recorded on film. The next day, before leaving for the Batalha Monastery, where they would stage more scenes with local extras, Moreau also filmed the popular ­L eiria fair (Revista de Turismo, 20-XI-1918, pp.  76–77). Finally, the tour reached the last stops Setúbal and Évora, south of Lisbon, but without the ­company of Guerra Maio. Although it was presented as a complement to the Gaumont ­mission, the path of the Pathé mission does not seem to add much to the ­images captured the previous year by the competing company. Of the 24 films made by Moreau, few have mapped out new territories, notably the films dedicated to the Vouga Valley and Serra da Estrela, as well as Buçaco, Queluz, Sintra and Ponte de Lima. Most of the films repeat places ­already registered by Thiberville: Lisbon, Porto and the Minho landscapes. The Alentejo – except Évora – the Algarve, the archipelagos of the Azores and Madeira were forgotten on this second mission, which also seems to have privileged the railways, valuing them ­cinematographically, as ­evidenced by the titles dedicated to the landscapes of the Tua, Tâmega, Douro and Vougalines.

Some Final Considerations If, according to Michel Foucault (1986, p. 1), the great obsession of the 19th century was history, the great obsession of the 20th century was certainly the idea of progress, but a progress committed to history

Cinematographic Missions  187 in several forms and senses. The obsession for material and mental progress led to a time between past and future, a time that wanted to respect collective tradition and memory, but that simultaneously also required the acceleration of history. In this sense, the concept of heterotopy ­established by Foucault can help make sense of the set of films under analysis: ­“heterotopia is capable of juxtaposing in a single real place several spaces, several sites that are in themselves incompatible” (1986, p. 6). More than mapping the territory through cinema, the aim of these cinematographic missions was to promote the image of a new Portugal abroad: a country full of tradition, history and natural landscapes, but also a space in full development and modernisation after the implementation of the republican regime. These cinematographic tours clearly assumed a missionary spirit under the patronage of new republican power and were destined to make propaganda of a very specific cause. In fact, in Revista de Turismo, Guerra Maio unequivocally refers to the films ­resulting from Pathé’s cinematographic mission as propaganda for abroad (5-VI-1918, p. 182). In the same sense, the Cine-Revista also highlighted the potential of this initiative: “Portugal, little known or physically unknown abroad, begins to rise before the civilized cities of the world in all the strength of its most beautiful nature, inviting tourists to visit us, to marvel at its precious treasures of nature” (15-IV-1918). In this internationalisation strategy, the Gaumont and Pathé houses were crucial partners. In Portugal at that time, there were already local ­producers with the technical and humanabilities for such a project –such as Ernesto de Albuquerque and the Companhia Cinematográfica de Portugal, or the emerging Invicta Film – but the promise of a broad international circulation of films through the popular catalogues of these French production and distribution companies were decisive criteria for them to be chosen by the Tourism Office. In short, these two cinematographic missions were a complex and impressive public initiative of external propaganda for the republican regime, which shows that the preoccupations with the new propagandistic dynamics and the valorisation of cinema were already visible in Portugal, long before the creation of the Secretariat of Propaganda in 1933 and the later projects to promote the territory and regime abroad launched by António Ferro in the early years of the New State dictatorship. Moreover, the presence of a figure with the prestige of Sebastião de Magalhães Lima in this process reinforces the importance of this propaganda endeavour: a prominent name in Portuguese Freemasonry in the transition from the Monarchy to the Republic, a prominent speaker at journalism congresses and intellectuals’ circuits in several European countries, elected deputy for the elaboration of the Constitution of 1911, Minister of Instruction of the First Republic, he still would be the candidate to President of the Republic in 1923.

188  Paulo Cunha As Foucault’s heterotopical spaces, the locations depicted in these films are “real places” but also “something like counter-sites, a kind of ­effectively enacted utopia in which the real sites (…) are simultaneously represented, contested, and inverted” and form “species of places that are out of all places, although they are effectively locatable” (1986, pp. 3–4). Unlike utopias, these heterotopias are a kind of mirrors that offer “sort of mixed, joint experience” that refer to a “virtual space that opens up behind the surface” (Foucault, 1986, p. 4). Although the depicted landscapes and activities actually existed, the entity Portugal documented in these films was a virtual construction of a proto-utopian territory only possible in cinema. In this case, cinema appears as Foucault’s mirror making that place both “absolutely real, connected with all the space that surrounds it, and absolutely unreal, since in order to be perceived it has to pass through this virtual point which is over there” (1986, p. 4).

Notes 1 Guerra Maio would then narrate the main incidences of René Moreau’s cinematographic mission in a variation of a logbook published by the Revista de Turismo in a section entitled Filmes Portugueses (‘Portuguese Films’) throughout the following months. 2 Palacios e jardins, Vales e campinas portuguezas, A industria pecuária em Portugal, O Porto, A Serra da Estrella, Valle do Mondego, Coimbra, Evora, Lisboa, Leiria e Batalha, A pesca da sardinha em Setubal. 3 O Alentejo, Braga e Guimarães, O Bussaco, Carrejões do Porto, Feira em Ponte de Lima, Lisboa e o Tejo, As margens do Douro, Regiões Atravessadas pelo Caminho de Ferro de Vigado, Regiões Atravessadas pelo Caminho de Ferro do Tua, Regiões Atravessadas pelo Caminho de Ferro do Vale do Douro, Regiões Atravessadas pelo Caminho de Ferro do Vale do Vouga, Tipos e Costumes Minhotos.

Works Cited Boletim da Sociedade Propaganda de Portugal. (1916–1920). Lisbon. Cerdeira, P. (2014). A Sociedade Propaganda de Portugal e o Estado: Competênciaspúblicas e privadasnaconstrução do turismoportuguês (1906–1911). Tourism and Hospitality International Journal, 3(2), 108–125. Cine-Revista. (1918–1920). Lisbon. Cunha, L. (2010). Desenvolvimento do Turismo em Portugal: Os Primórdios. Fluxos & Riscos, 1, 127–149. Esteban, J. M. C. (2012). Luces y rejas: estereotipos and aluces enel cine costumbrista español (1896–1939). Seville, Spain: Fundación Pública Andaluza/ Centro de Estudios Andaluces. European Film Gateway. (n.d.). Retrieved March 4, 2018, from http://www. europeanfilmgateway.eu/pt-pt Foucault, M. (1986, Spring). Of other spaces. Diacritics, 16(1), 22–27. Retrieved March 4, 2018, from www.jstor.org/stable/464648

Cinematographic Missions  189 Gaumont Pathé Archives. (n.d.). Retrieved March 4, 2018, from http://www. gaumontpathearchives.com/index.php Gazeta dos Caminhos de Ferro. (1899–1971). Lisbon. Retrieved March 4, 2018, from http://hemerotecadigital.cm-lisboa.pt/Periodicos/GazetadasColonias/ GazetadasColonias.htm Kermabon, J. (1994). Pathé: premier empire du cinéma. Paris, France: Centre Georges Pompidou. Matos, A. C., Bernardo, M. A., & Santos, M. L. (2012). Atas do Congresso ­Internacional I República e Republicanismo. Lisboa: Assembleia da República. McMahan, A. (2002). Alice Guy Blaché: Lost Visionary of the Cinema. ­Londres: Continuum. Revista de Turismo. (1916–1924). Lisbon. Retrieved March 4, 2018, f­ rom http:// hemerotecadigital.cm-lisboa.pt/Periodicos/RevistadeTurismo/Revistade ­turismo.htm

Part 6

Phenomenology of Space

This book has delved into narrative chronotopes and their relationship with real, geographically located spaces and/or culturally designed places, each part corresponding to a systematic topic that informs its chapters’ take on cinematic space. This last section, however, proceeds differently: it focuses on the viewer’s embodied perceptual experience of cinema, considering the body’s engagement within the material ­dimension of a film projection. It does so because phenomenology is based on the idea that in order to describe a phenomenon, one has to take into consideration all aspects of its intended configuration, whether objective or subjective. Put differently, a phenomenological approach regards the cinematic experience as a bodily construction, objectively structured and subjectively perceived by the spectator’s senses. In that way, the human body lies at the centre of any interaction with the moving image, a phenomenon responsible for giving rise to a specific spatial dimension that addresses the spectator’s body both as object and subject. Therefore, the next four chapters present ­phenomenological readings of film elements – such as screen space, colour, diegetic mental universes and authorship – all of them focusing on the elements that structure cinematic visuality. In Chapter 6.1, Antoine Gaudin, following the books of Gilles Deleuze (L’image-mouvement and L’image-temps, 1983–1985), ­conceptualises what he has called ‘a space-image cinema’: a cinema that regards space not only as a background, a pattern or an agent of representation, but also as a major philosophical issue and a critical material with its own plastic composition. Inspired both by ‘spiritualist’ and ­phenomenological approaches to film, the paradigm developed by Gaudin argues that ­cinematic space has no permanent substance by being subjected to ­constant shaping and reshaping throughout the whole screening. Later, Sander Hölsgens explores in Chapter 6.2 the affective and spatial qualities of the colours blue and grey in An Autumn Afternoon ­(Yazujiro Ozu, 1962) by building upon Gaston Bachelard’s phenomenological writing on the concept of the house. According to the French philosopher, the house covers, exposes, guards, hosts and mirrors body gestures and movements, as well as their affectivities. Drawing on these

192  Phenomenology of Space ideas, Hölsgens contends that Ozu’s film is especially aware of the ­importance of the tonality of domesticity, to the point of showing how memories of home relate to the way we remember the outside world. Here, colours, more than iconography or symbols, must be understood as an affective and emotive filmic form to rethink the dwelling as an intimate space. Bruno Surace, in Chapter 6.3, reflects on film’s ability to generate impossible spaces, such as those of dreams or the mind, by codifying otherwise inexpressible spaces of otherness – spaces unbound to any ideological or moral connotations and, consequently, that have no a ­priori valorisation. The author identifies the main formal cinematic ­registers that work as a connective tissue between the space of reality and that of the mind in order to construct a map of mental spaces in cinema. He resorts to Cabiria (Giovanni Pastrone, 1914), The Passion of Joan of Arc (La passion de Jeanne d’Arc, Carl Th. Dreyer, 1929), The Conversation (Francis Ford Coppola, 1974), A Nightmare on Elm Street (Wes Craven, 1984), In the Mouth of Madness (John Carpenter, 1994) and Lost Highway (David Lynch, 1997), among other films, to address cinematic spaces of dream, hallucination, hypnosis, obsession and paranoia. Finally, Chapter 6.4 discusses the work of Romanian director Cristi Puiu, who, according to author Zsolt Gyenge, creates an unusual ­embodied perceptual experience of space and spectatorship. Gyenge ­interprets some of Puiu’s filmic devices through the analysis of the ­embodied perceptual experience produced by framing and camera movement, which allows the reader to understand how this filmmaker’s films achieve the impact they have on the audience. After the ­theoretical examination of terms such as perception, film’s body, point of view, depth of space and frame, this book closes with a phenomenologically grounded interpretation of Puiu’s latest feature films to date – Aurora (2010) and Sieranevada (2016).

6.1 The Viewer’s Embodiment into Cinematic Space Notes on a ‘Space-Image’ Cinema Antoine Gaudin This chapter is an invitation to consider cinematic space through a new analytical view – which actually is not only a ‘view’, but a c­ arnal ­perception that deeply implies the spectator’s body. The focus of this ­paper is a notion I call the ‘space-image’ (Gaudin, 2015). This name echoes Gilles Deleuze’s well-known concepts “movement-image” and “time-image” (Deleuze, 1983, 1985). Although my study is not grounded in the same theoretical and philosophical field as Deleuze’s, and although I do not intend to ‘complete’ his work, I do adopt one of his general principles: as the movement-image and the time-image, the space-image refers to a space that is not just a content or background of the image, but is at the same time a major philosophical issue and a fundamental plastic material of cinema. At the beginning of my work, though, I had no desire to develop a new notion. My goal was only to study the poetics of space in the works of a few contemporary auteur filmmakers, such as Gus Van Sant, Jia Zhang-ke or Philippe Grandrieux. I would have been satisfied to work within the frame of existing theories of cinematic space – like, for instance, the neo-formalists (Bordwell, Staiger, & Thompson, 1985; Heath, 1981). But if I did remain in this classical framework, there may have been aesthetic issues I would not have tackled. To fully analyse these films, I felt the need for a new paradigm. The concept of space-image, however, does not compete with the ­existing paradigms of cinematic space. Space-image is meant to be a complementary notion, highlighting the fact that before showing and staging an imaginary space ‘behind the screen’, every film is first a ­spatial phenomenon in itself. Thus, space should also be considered as a primary plastic power inscribed within the moving image. This ­phenomenological approach is substantially different from classical ­approaches to space in film analysis. First, in efforts to describe cinematic space, most works about ­cinema use notions coming from other artistic fields, like the pictorial ­‘landscape’ and the theatrical ‘setting’. Even though these notions can be adapted to the properties of cinema, the issue of a plastic notion of space specific

194  Antoine Gaudin to cinema remains largely open – especially if we want to go beyond the spatial ‘grammar’ of classical narrative and editing. Second, most of the time, when the issue of space is raised, it is done spontaneously according to the dominant conception of space within our culture: a space that has been basically conceived as a static container since the Renaissance and the modern age; that is, as an empty box we see according to the optical laws of perspective. This is why, despite a good number of works about cinema dealing with the issue of space in a way or another, only a few actually try to define what they call ‘space’. In fact, cinematic space is most often ‘taken-for-granted’ – meaning that one does not feel the need to define it – since it is based on what Jan Patocka calls our “collective unconscious metaphysics of space” (2002, p. 15). This dominant optical conception of space is surely effective and well-adjusted to our everyday life, but it hides other dimensions of our experience, especially the ones linked to the feeling of our moving body; by that, I mean the phenomenological conception of space, not as an object in front of us, not as a place where we can be, but as a primary kinaesthetic sensation that permanently bounds us to the world. Third, most discourses mentioning cinematic space do so by taking it as a starting point. They focus on how the film uses space in order to express other staging issues – for instance, the evolving r­ elationship ­between two characters – but they do not really raise the p ­ hilosophical issue of space itself – a space that can be considered as both a main subject of the film and a critical dimension of human existence. ­Accordingly, most discourses focus on what cinema does with ‘a space’ that we are already used to perceiving. They do not directly address the phenomenological impact of the cinema medium, that is, its ability to make us experience and comprehend differently the space we live in differently. Of course, there are exceptions to this general observation. For ­instance, the works of theorists like Sergei M. Eisenstein (1929/1969, 1930/1995, 1935/1973, 1946/1986, 1974), Elie Faure (1922/1953), Eric Rohmer (1948, 1954, 1970/1991) and Henri Agel (1978) develop some compelling insights regarding the matter of a space considered both as a primary plastic power of cinema and as a major philosophical issue in films. But despite these early works, we can still say that within Film Studies, the ontological issue of time has been more deeply researched – by authors such as Gilles Deleuze, Andrei Tarkovski, Jacques Aumont, Philippe Dubois, Alain Ménil and Yvette Biro – than the ontological ­issue of space. Maybe that is because unlike cinematic time, cinematic space has been mostly regarded as self-evident and not as a way to think our sensory perception of space differently. In this sense, I intend to ­discuss cinematic space as a perceptive phenomenon. This approach requires a new analytical view, which does not entirely depend on the pictorial or theatrical categories of space – landscape, setting, etc. – nor on the spatial ‘grammar’ of classical narrative and

Viewer’s Embodiment into Cinematic Space  195 editing – which are also cultural constructs. This approach should thus be more closely linked to the abstract and rhythmic powers of cinema. *** There are two distinct ways of understanding cinematic space. On the one hand, there is the space ‘depicted by the film’: it is the static three-­ dimensional space that we are used to perceiving ‘behind the screen’, in which the characters live. Due to the realism of cinema, we experience this space by engaging our viewer’s body into it, identifying with the bodies of the characters that actually, unlike us, inhabit this space (see, for instance, Straus, 1935/2000; Merleau-Ponty, 1945/1976, 1946/2009; Metz, 1968; Michotte van den Berck, 1948; Oudart, 1971; Smith, 1995). Of course, this ‘space depicted by the film’ is constantly shaped by the mise en scène and editing, and it implies a continuous interplay with our imaginary representation of the off-screen space. On the other hand, there is the space ‘inscribed in the film’s body’, which is the main issue of the space-image approach. When it comes to this space, the screen is no longer considered a ‘window open onto the world’ as Bazin wrote, ­quoting Leon Battista Alberti on Renaissance paintings (1985, pp. 69–89). Instead, it must be regarded as a primary physical-dynamic structure, within which a continuous interplay between emptiness and wholeness is inscribed, a continuous variation of an abstract volume of void – referring only to what appears within the frame; there is no offscreen space at this level. This uninterrupted interplay has some effects on the viewer’s body, but it is almost never taken into consideration in discourses on cinema. Yet, some films can reveal this space to us. Let us consider, for ­instance, Serene Velocity by structural filmmaker Ernie Gehr (1970). The film is a very quick succession of shots of the same place, taken from the same point of view: we can identify a corridor that constitutes the space ‘depicted by the film’. All of the shots are taken with a different focal length and, little by little, during the screening, one can no longer refer objectively to the static three-dimensional space ‘behind the screen’. Instead, one may feel the emergence of another space: one that is just a pure succession of contractions and expansions, like an abstract heartbeat, detached of the initial figurative space. That is what constitutes the cinematic space as a primary plastic power inscribed in the film’s body. That being said, I suggest we return in detail to the description of this space ‘inscribed in the film’s body’, before getting back to the global notion of space-image. According to the space-image paradigm, a movie should not only be regarded as an exhibition of space. It must also be considered as a spatial phenomenon in itself, engaging the entire viewer’s body, not only their vision and hearing, but also their kinaesthetic sense. In fact, moving images are always a cinema-specific kinaesthetic experience of space. This stands even in non-figurative movies, since space is a

196  Antoine Gaudin fundamental element of each film. We can say that these abstract films are the ones that make us immediately grasp what cinematic space is, as an image phenomenon, since they do not represent any liveable space behind the screen. For example, in Arnulf Rainer by Peter Kubelka (1960), each flash between black and white produces a kinaesthetic jump effect – for the warm colours seem to move forward, while the cold colours seem to move backward (Doerner, 1935/1984). The important point here is that there is no such thing as a lack of space within the space-image paradigm. There never is ‘no space at all’, for space is a primary matter ‘inscribed in the film’s body’. If we can feel and understand the primary spatial sensation that these structural films make us experience via their pure depth-and-burst variations, that will allow us to address classical narrative cinema, in which we will once again encounter this primary spatial sensation, lying behind the realistic representation of the well-known static three-dimensional space we are used to perceiving. Indeed, before being anything else, a film is a light projection on a screen, opening a space for us and making our body sense a certain volume of void. Take, for instance, the opening shot of Gerry (Gus Van Sant, 2002) (Figure 6.1.1): the movement of the camera, the wide shot, the depth of focus, the lack of objects in the field, everything here works for the kinaesthetic implication of the viewer in a vibrant volume of void. After the movie theatre goes dark, as the light hits the screen for the first time, we rediscover space, not only as a place or a landscape – in this case, a desert – we inhabit more or less naturally, but also as a primitive sensation. In other words, the first image of a film can make us feel space as it suddenly appears – something that we never feel in our everyday life because we are always already in space. In this regard, the cinematic apparatus may converge with the ambition of ­phenomenological philosophy by putting aside our cultural habits in order to join the world in its sudden physical appearance.

Figure 6.1.1  Gerry (Gus Van Sant, 2002) (fair use).

Viewer’s Embodiment into Cinematic Space  197 Such dynamics do not only occur within the movie’s first shot, even if the latter produces the strongest effect. Unlike the Newtonian ­paradigm of space, cinematic space is relative – i.e. not absolute – since it is sensed through a process of continuous variation of forms and v­ olumes ­operating inside the film images. In this regard, each cut, each transition from one shot to another, constitutes a pure spatial variation, a sudden expansion or contraction. For instance, in the transition between two scenes of Still Life (三峡好人, Jia Zhang-ke, 2006) – between the last shot of scene A and the first shot of scene B (Figures 6.1.2 and 6.1.3) – there is a remarkable expansion of the volume of void, which is immediately sensed by our body as something like an abstract vertigo, before leading to the ‘vertiginous’ idea of a natural scenery modified by the laws of money: the bank note ‘travels’ from one shot to the other. How does the viewer’s body react to these spatial modifications within the film? One may answer this question by analysing the well-known

Figure 6.1.2 and 6.1.3  Still life (三峡好人, Jia Zhang-ke, 2006) (fair use).

198  Antoine Gaudin sequence in Sherlock Jr. (Buster Keaton, 1924) in which the dreaming character enters a film, entitled Hearts and Pearls, while it is screening in a movie theatre. Along ten consecutive cuts, the logical continuity of his movements faces the arbitrary nature of the spatial discontinuity ­imposed by the editing: from a crowded street to a desert, and from a beach to a mountain cliff, each cut leads to a total modification of the visual field (Figures 6.1.4 and 6.1.5). In this scene, the body of the ­character, jumping by surprise immediately after each cut, perfectly symbolises the cinematic viewer’s body. The latter is, indeed, always ­impacted by the small spatial trauma of the cut, the sudden change of the whole visual field, a spatial ‘interval’ between two different shots – one

Figure 6.1.4 and 6.1.5  Sherlock Jr. (Buster Keaton, 1924) (fair use).

Viewer’s Embodiment into Cinematic Space  199 that has no direct matching in everyday life. This spatial discontinuity is always sensed in cinema, although we are rarely aware of it – mostly due to the techniques of narrative continuity – except maybe in this great self-reflexive scene. The visual field can also change in a single shot. In this situation, the movement of the image itself causes a more progressive variation of  the volume of void, which depends on the moving visual forms inside the frame. Let us consider the opening shot of The Searchers (John Ford, 1956), where the camera, following the female character, moves from  the inside of the house to the desert outside (Figures 6.1.6 and 6.1.7). The shot begins with a flat bi-dimensional effect of light and darkness – the image of the desert looks like a painting on a black wall – and then, as the camera moves forward through the opened door, it makes us ­gradually sense the immense vastness of the desert, the volume of void of a land that takes the men away from home, and sometimes

Figure 6.1.6 a nd 6.1.7  The searchers (John Ford, 1956) (fair use).

200  Antoine Gaudin allows for one to return: Ethan, arriving from the horizon. The spatial conflict between the vastness associated with solitary wandering and the cosiness associated with sedentary community, which is to become one of the main narrative issues of the film, may be primarily felt by the viewer’s body given the kinaesthetic experience of this first shot. Variations of focus and setting play a major part in creating such an experience of space within a single frame, as do all the parameters of the mise en scène. Let’s take, for instance, the shaky frame, the decreasing light and the increasing blur, which in the opening sequence of Philippe Grandrieux’s Sombre (1998) shot in the Chamonix valley progressively contract cinematic space to make us physically experience a narrowing contact with the natural scenery, far away from the landscape optical paradigm that may have connoted the domestication of nature. In this way, we can instantaneously recognise the troublesome closeness with the wilderness, a key aspect of the character’s destiny. As we have seen, this primary sensation of space is independent from the figurative nature of the image, and subsequently from the ­‘liveability’ of the space depicted by the film. Thus, the question should not only be ‘what specific space does the film show us?’, but also ‘what ­abstract space does the film make us live?’. The word ‘abstraction’ does not ­necessarily imply the non-figurativeness of the image, nor does it ­describe a ­bi-­dimensional space that would be located on the surface of the screen, like the one described by Rudolf Arnheim (1932/1997) or Lev Koulechov (1925/1994). It rather refers to the autonomous ‘life of forms’ that runs simultaneously with the representation. The space inscribed in the film’s body is an abstract spatial power that is a fundamental element of the moving image. Through this space inscribed in the film’s body, cinema brings a primary kinaesthetic sensation of contraction/expansion that runs continuously and simultaneously with the classical perception of a solid liveable space, as a container for the characters and their actions. Meanwhile, of course, the space depicted by the film does not ­disappear. In fact, in every film, the specific space depicted by the film – a three-dimensional world behind the screen – and the abstract space ­inscribed in the film’s body run together like two simultaneous musical voices. Together, they make up a dynamic system of continuous movement and variation, and it is this system that I suggest naming ‘space-­ image’. This paradigm implies that cinematic space has no permanent substance: it is never given as a fixed object, a steady form. Rather, it is constantly shaped and reshaped throughout the whole screening. It is also the case in steady shots where nothing moves, because the passage of time modifies our perception of space by giving a greater importance to the off-screen space, for instance. Thus, through mise en scène and editing, the filmmaker continuously models his primary space material – just as a potter models a clay sculpture, giving its form to an instable moving matter.

Viewer’s Embodiment into Cinematic Space  201 Each film thus elaborates its own ‘spatial rhythm’, which is not a ­ latonic metric rhythm such as the one we find in music. Instead, it is P a Heraclitean rhythm that can be compared to an irregular flow, made up of continuous contractions and expansions. Continuing with the film’s body metaphor – sustained, for instance, by the idea of an abstract ‘heartbeat’ in Serene Velocity – we can say that this spatial rhythm is like the film’s ‘breathing’. Due to this breathing, the space flows in the film’s body, as a pure volume of air, an abstract and dynamic void. This flow becomes the permanent interface between the viewers’ body and the space depicted by the film. Let us check the effects of this spatial breathing with the opening scene of Journey to Italy (Viaggio in Italia, Roberto Rossellini, 1954) (Figures 6.1.8 and 6.1.9). Ingrid Bergman and George Sanders play the parts of a wife and a husband chatting while driving a luxury car on the dusty roads of Southern Italy. The inserts of wide shots of the road are ­primarily perceived as sudden spatial expansions, physically r­ evealing ­ etween the two another space, a metaphorical one: the emotional space b characters that the viewer is meant to understand later, but can be sensed now. It does so in the kinaesthetic effect of the cuts, of the ­volume of void the editing creates between the characters, even at this early stage when ­ pening scene, the everything seems to be fine between them. In this o Italian countryside, that is later meant to narratively reveal the ­failure of the characters’ relationship, is already physically coming ­between them via the editing of the scene, pushing them apart, expanding the distance, the gap, between them. So, it is not only Italy as a ‘primitive’ country that sets them apart, it is also this ‘air full of insects’ – as described by the character of George Sanders – that the editing inscribes into the film’s body, proving that, in cinema, space is not only a matter of content, but also a matter of void. *** Every film builds its own spatial rhythm, meaning that every film can potentially be analysed with the theoretical tool of space-image. However, it would be excessive to pretend that all films contribute to a real ‘space-image cinema’. If such a cinema exists, it is a cinema in which the spatial experience sensed by the viewer’s body matches the treatment of space as a major sensory-philosophical issue by the film itself. This process would imply a global narrative and editing that would ensure, firstly, that the space depicted by the film is no longer relegated to the background of the human drama, meaning that the narrative does not reduce it to a setting, but rather makes it a major sensory issue, maybe by focusing less on the characters psychology (as suggested by Kracauer, 1960/2010); and secondly, that the spatial rhythm inscribed in the film’s body, this fundamental abstract power of the film image comes to the foreground of our sensory attention, thus

202  Antoine Gaudin

Figure 6.1.8 and 6.1.9  Journey to Italy (Viaggio in Italia, Roberto Rossellini, 1954) (fair use).

implying that the filmmaker moves slightly away from the classical cutting. ­I ndeed, ­classical cutting rules tend to work towards the disappearance of this kind of awareness in the viewer’s mind. They do so, notably, by trying, though never totally succeeding, to erase the spatial trauma of the cut. If these conditions are fulfilled in a film, then the relation between viewer and space may be raised through the specific properties of the cinematic medium, among which we must include the spatial power of its basic expressive means – cut, movement, change of light and so on – that some films allow us to rediscover as a phenomenon. I insist on

Viewer’s Embodiment into Cinematic Space  203 the rediscovery of these basic powers because to me, what makes a film ­significant in terms of space-image is not the fact that it makes the space a demonstrative attraction in a spectacular setting, as might be the case in Hollywood big-budget blockbusters. Rather, it is its ability to make the space a sensory and existential issue at a human, everyday scale. In conclusion, in some films, the space-image constitutes a phenomenological way of engaging the fundamental expressive powers of cinema in order to more deeply understand our lived space by going further than the representation of the static three-dimensional space we are already used to perceiving. The latter space ‘depicted by the film’ is still here but due to the movement of images, space no longer presents a self-evident pattern; it becomes an issue again, as cinema makes us live an ‘aesthetic idea’ of space only expressed in film. Accordingly, if cinema reveals a ‘sensory philosophy’ of space, it does so not only because it stages a space behind the screen, but also because it constitutes a powerful ­spatial experience in itself – regardless of what it might show.

Works Cited Filmography Ford, J. (1956). The Searchers. Gehr, E. (1971). Serene Velocity. Grandrieux, P. (1998). Sombre. Keaton, B. (1924). Sherlock Jr. Kubelka, P. (1960). Arnulf Rainer. Rossellini, R. (1954). Journey to Italy (Viaggio in Italia). Van Sant, G. (2002). Gerry. Zhang-ke, J. (2006). Still Life (三峡好人). Bibliography Agel, H. (1978). L’Espace cinématographique. Paris, France: Delarge. Arnheim, R. (1997). Le cinema est un art. Paris: L’Arche. (Original work published in 1932). Bazin, A. (1985). Qu’est-ce que le cinéma? Paris, France: Cerf. (Original work published in 1958–1962). Bordwell, D., Staiger, J., & Thompson, K. (1985). The classical Hollywood ­cinema. Film style and mode of production to 1960. New York, NY: ­Columbia University Press. Deleuze, G. (1983). Cinéma 1: kL’image-mouvement. Paris, France: Éditions de Minuit. Deleuze, G. (1985). Cinéma 2: L’image-temps. Paris, France: Éditions de Minuit. Doerner, M. (1984). The materials of the artist and their use in paintings. ­Orlando, FL: Mariner Books. (Original work published in 1935). Eisenstein, S. M. (1969). Hors-cadre. Cahiers du cinema, 215, 47–56. (Original work published in 1929). Eisenstein, S. M. (1973). La mise en scène théâtrale. In Mettre en scène (pp. 60–132). Paris, France: UGE. (Original work published in 1935).

204  Antoine Gaudin Eisenstein, S. M. (1974). En gros plan. In Au-delà des étoiles. Oeuvres I. Paris, France: UGE. Eisenstein, S. M. (1986). Du cinémaen relief. In Le mouvement de l’art. Paris, France: Cerf. (Original work published in 1946). Eisenstein, S. M. (1995). Le carré dynamique. Paris, France: Séguier. (Original work published in 1930). Faure, E. (1953). De la cinéplastique. In Fonction du cinéma. De la c­ inéplastique à son destin social (1921–1937) (pp. 21–45). Paris, France: Plon. (Original work published in 1922). Gaudin, A. (2015). L’espace cinématographique. Esthétique et dramaturgie. Paris, France: Armand Colin. Heath, S. (1981). Narrative space. In Questions of cinema (pp. 19–76). Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Koulechov, L. (1994). L’art de la creation lumineuse. In L’art du cinéma et ­autres écrits. Lausanne, Switzerland: L’Âge d’homme. (Original work published in 1925). Kracauer, S. (2010). Théorie du film. La rédemption de la réalité matérielle. Paris, France: Flammarion. (Original work published in 1960). Merleau-Ponty, M. (1976). Phénoménologie de la perception. Paris, France: Gallimard. (Original work published in 1945). Merleau-Ponty, M. (2009). Le Cinéma et la nouvelle psychologie. Paris, France: Gallimard. (Original work published in 1946). Metz, C. (1968). Essais sur la signification au cinéma. Paris, France: Klincksieck. Michotte van den Berck, A. (1948). Le caractère de ‘réalité’ des projections cinématographiques. Revue internationale de filmologie, 3–4, 249–261. Oudart, J.-P. (1971). L’effet de reel. Cahiers du cinéma, 228, 19–26. Patocka, J. (2002). L’espace et sa problématique. In Qu’est-ce que la phénoméno­ logie ? (1960–1976) (pp. 13–81). Grenoble, France: Millon. Rohmer, E. (1948). Le cinéma, un art de l’espace? La Revue du cinéma, 14. Rohmer, E. (1954). Vertus cardinales du cinemascope. Cahiers du cinéma, 39. Rohmer, E. (1991). L’organisation de l’espace dans le Faust de Murnau. Paris, France: Ramsay. (Original work published in 1970). Smith, M. (1995). Engaging characters. Fictions, emotions and the cinema. ­Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press. Straus, E. (2000). Du sens des sens. Contribution à l’étude des fondements de la psychologie. Grenoble, France: Millon. (Original work published in 1935).

6.2 Towards the Spatial Affectivities of Colour The Blue Bedroom in Yasujirō Ozu’s An Autumn Afternoon Sander Hölsgens 1. Ludwig Wittgenstein (1977) writes that a planet cannot look light grey. I argue that a bedroom can, but that its shadows always appear of the earthliest blue. In this chapter, I explore the affective and spatial parameters of the colour blue in Yasujirō Ozu’s An Autumn Afternoon (秋刀魚 の味, 1962), by thinking through Gaston Bachelard’s phenomenology of space (1964) and Carol Mavor’s writing on colours (2014), ­respectively. An Autumn Afternoon, Ozu’s last film, seems to sketch a thin and ­delicate filmic form through which the viewer senses the dwelling as an intimate space. Here, colours – and blue, specifically – outline an affect similar to that of a bruise on the skin, which, I argue later, instigates a minor sense of mourning.

2. I cannot forget the fragility of the blue scenographies of bemoaning in Yasujirō Ozu’s An Autumn Afternoon. These moments foreground memories that are still acutely felt, as though they are part of the bruised skin (Mavor, 2012). I am no longer certain whether these memories are Ozu’s or my own – for they awaken a pulse in my body. My body welcomes these filmic memories and their cadence as my own. Within Yasujirō Ozu’s oeuvre, the home is frequently portrayed as an intimate space for family matters. In Late Spring (晩春, 1949), for instance, daughter Noriko feels both pressured and reluctant to get ­married. Her tangible impasse affects her fracturable relationship with her family, as their shared domestic life appears to be at a standstill. Similarly, Tokyo Story (東京物語, 1953) focuses on an elderly couple, whose visit to their children in Tokyo confronts them with dwellings and domesticities that are unlike their own. The form, location and interior of their children’s apartments seem to alienate the couple, for whom a dwelling takes on the shape of a large house rather than a horizontal, relatively small living space in which there is hardly any room to breathe. The seemingly familiar and welcoming guest room becomes, for them,

206  Sander Hölsgens an unfamiliar, inhospitable and unhomely locale – and their visit turns into a shared feeling of homesickness. An Autumn Afternoon, one of Ozu’s six films in colour, announces an architecture of the house that seems to belong to the world of gestures, intimacy and flimsiness, rather than to the domain of geometrical spaces and the discourse of housing (Bachelard, 1964). Here, a seemingly static and immovable dwelling undergoes a felt transformation during and alongside the anticipation of a subtly imposed marriage, disrupting a gentle form of everyday family life that appeared uncompromising and deeply rooted in ostensibly unremarkable habits and routines. Baseball games, imported soda drinks and references to the Second World War position the film in post-war Japan, where a ­militaristic monarchy made way for liberal democracy. Arguably, An Autumn ­Afternoon, as well as Ozu’s other post-war films, responds to and ­critically engages with the so-called Western influences. John Berra, for ­instance, writes that Ozu’s last couple of films, including Late Autumn (秋日和, 1960) and An Autumn Afternoon, “take place in the households of middle-class families and found them adjusting to shifting ­circumstances or value systems”(2015, p. 13). Yet, I feel as though the families in these films are also adjusting to the infinitesimal changes of and within the dwelling. Those inhabiting the filmic home know and remember the bathtub, and their ears are attuned to the front door opening and closing. Those who do not live there are constantly adjusting their body and its motility – anticipating or hoping that this architectural locale will eventually become a familiar space, or at least a space of familiarity. I, in turn, encounter the dwelling in An Autumn Afternoon via precise routines, biorhythms, felt silences and tender everyday struggles and disagreements. In The Poetics of Space, Bachelard proposes that the house is our principal corner of the world (1964, p. xxxvii): it is “our first universe, a real cosmos in every sense of the word” (1964, p. 4), as the house conceals, reveals, protects, makes room for and, at times, seems to mimic the physiognomy and affectivities of the human body. Bachelard notes that the feel of the tiniest latch in the bedroom “has remained in our hands” (1964, p.  15), for our body forms itself after the shapes and ­textures of the intimate spaces we inhabit. That is to say, we not only reside in a dwelling, but the spatiality and architecture of our home also knead the body and its capacity to remember. For Bachelard, then, the house does not imitate the outside world, but is a world of its own, enveloped into the body that is said to be ours: staircases are not analysed but touched, cupboards not measured but smelled, doors not calibrated but heard. The human body feels and remembers such architectural minutiae, which are of the kind of details that transfigure an architectural design into a home. For these reasons, Bachelard argues that the house – he belittles purely horizontal apartments and many others forms of dwellings – is to be understood through

Spatial Affectivities of Colour  207 a phenomenological encounter: a careful consideration of how images of the house strike upon our senses and consciousness. He then sets himself the task of exploring such images of the house in a poetic and anecdotal manner, orienting the experiential and literary towards each other, rather than suggesting a contradistinction between both ­embodied ­encounters with (the) dwelling. Bachelard roots his study primarily within the French poetic ­tradition ­ afon and of the late 19th and early 20th century, moving from André L Jean Wahl, to René Daumal and Jules Vallès (1964). Within the poems elicited by Bachelard, the house is not only portrayed as a universe in and of itself, but also as a shell, a miniature, a nest, an ‘intimate ­immensity’. Through poetics and what I consider to be a p ­ sychoanalytical ­phenomenology, one finds that the lived experience of the attic, located at the vertical edge of the home, frees up space for what he considers to be ‘thinking’. It is a space to be at peace with and in one’s thoughts. The affective implications of the basement, on the other hand, can hardly be ­ idden, the said to be overt, for its subterranean location stimulates the h marginal and the submerged to reside there, in secret. Certain s­ taircases strike one as being more often ascended than descended, ­various doors more frequently opened than closed – and this felt attunement to ­architectural details is a form of spacing and outlining one’s visceral perception of and within the house. Bachelard’s The Poetics of Space is, in short, a phenomenological ­treatise on the affectivities of human dwelling and the dwelling as such. ­ eidegger’s Significantly, his work stands in stark contrast with Martin H approximation of the home, in which the familiar is unfamiliar, the ­comfortable becomes uncomfortable and homecoming preludes ­alienation (1971). Moreover, while Heidegger considers dwelling to be taking place within the world – it is fundamentally a being-in-the-worldwith-others – Bachelard positions the architectural home as a universe in and of itself that encourages its inhabitants to settle and nest. Within the remainder of this chapter, I build upon and criticise Bachelard’s understanding of the home by proposing that the colour blue passes through An Autumn Afternoon in an affective manner, ­accentuating the poignant and pain-full tonality of domestic space and family life.

3. An Autumn Afternoon chronicles the domestic life of widower Shūhei Hirayama and two of his children, Michiko and Kazuo. Although they discuss arranged marriages and embrace certain Northern American influences on post-war Japan, the filmic emphasis seems to be predominantly on how this family lives together and inhabits their home. It is nevertheless remarkable to see how certain types of sports enter the carefully designed margins of this dwelling: Kazuo watches baseball games

208  Sander Hölsgens via a rather small television and Hirayama’s eldest son, Kōichi, regularly practises his golf swings in the narrow living room. Albeit wonderful and hardly discussed elsewhere, this is not the point of this chapter. Instead, I would like to accelerate towards the end of the film – the ­actual focal point of my microscopic argument – when Michiko agrees to take part in a matchmaking session, and we eventually find out that she gets married. The film, however, repudiates the audience’s ­imaginable desire to know whom she marries: an ellipsis – or pillow shot, as Noël Burch describes this kind of filmic transition in To the Distant Observer (1979) – prevents the wedding ceremony from directly appearing in the film. As a result, we are simply never shown or told who her spouse may be. Rather, this ellipsis displays Michiko’s bedroom: we see her sizable mirror, a red stool and a portrait that may be hers. The stool and m ­ irror are then exposed in more detail, the latter reflecting green window blinds and an equally green tall tree. Frustrating as such an unfolding of the scene may be, it allows the marriage to respond to the spectator’s imagination. Or, in more spatial terms, the ellipsis gives room for the ­marriage to affect how both this family and the spectator inhabit this space of intimacy and domesticity. For it is no longer palpable whether this is still Michiko’s bedroom; during and perhaps because of the ­ellipsis, it seems to become a different kind of space, one that at least feels hardly inhabited. Thereupon, Hirayama meets up with his middle-school friends and gets drunk, seemingly appeased by the marriage of his daughter. His friends reassure him that Michiko will be fine – even happy – but this ­sentiment changes when one of them remembers their old teacher. “In the end we spend our lives alone”, his friend proudly exclaims, after which Hirayama envisages what his daughter’s marriage might mean for his ­domesticity: he will soon be living there without anyone’s ­company, and he will be the one who will spend the rest of his life alone. ­Acknowledging his desire to return home, he excuses himself, and, not much later, arrives in a nearly empty house. Both of his sons are there, but they soon leave the stage that is said to be their living room. Hirayama then ­attempts to console himself by singing a patriotic song that he and a friend sang a couple of scenes earlier whilst getting drunk in their ­regular izakaya, or gastropub. In the bar, the song appeared cheerful, but now its sad undertone is foregrounded. The song chronicles a ­patriotic Japan that no longer exists, which echoes Hirayama’s changing family life. He then abruptly stops singing, and mentions – to himself, to the s­ pectator – that he is alone indeed, after which he continues chanting. Did he ­perhaps anticipate his daughter’s presence, even though this was unlikely to be the case? He is noticeably sombre and heartbroken, to say the least. Via still frames, An Autumn Afternoon then encourages the spectator to walk through a vividly coloured hallway, climb a brown staircase and, eventually, enter a poorly illuminated room – Michiko’s former bedroom.

Spatial Affectivities of Colour  209 She is no longer there; the mirror and stool appear to be the only objects left, allowing the moonlight to dominate the space. Michiko’s empty and emptied bedroom pronounces the intimate colour scheme of the film’s concluding moments: grey, black and blue. The blue moonlight and the dark shadows it casts on the bedroom floor give shape to the damaged membrane of this intimate space. Her absence is felt. It is a coloured ­absence, for these objects no longer shimmer to the extent of illuminating a room, as they did only a couple of minutes earlier – for the mirror and stool are no longer green and red, respectively. Rather, the mirror only reflects matte noise, whereas the stool emerges not unlike a blue hurting memory. This room no longer outlines the affectivities of being-at-home; it is no longer a space to look at one’s mirror image. Now, this is a blue bedroom, which is to say, it now exists as a space that bruises.

4. In Black and Blue, Carol Mavor suggests that “black is not the ­opposite of blue: it is its lining. Both are sad colours” (2012, p.  15). Blue is a ­bruising colour, that is to say, a colour that reminds us of the kind of injuries that are neither inside nor outside the body. Instead, bruises are located skin-deep – they are invisible and painless at first, but hardly postpone their will to colour themselves and become sorely felt. Mavor’s blue is nostalgic yet full of anticipation, painful yet attractive. It is this kind of poignant blue that seems to have colonised Michiko’s bedroom in An Autumn Afternoon. Mavor explores the colour blue in a remarkable diverse spectrum of works, ranging from Camera Lucida (Barthes, 1993) and Hiroshima Mon Amour (Alain Resnais, 1959) to La Jetée (Chris Marker, 1962) and Sans Soleil (Chris Marker, 1983). These filmic and literary texts, she says, share a blue tonality, for they all “feel the hurt of war, of love, of time like a bruise (…) Bruises are the before-time wounds of always-­ falling childhood and the after-time of growing old” (Mavor, 2012, pp. 15–16). Physically, these blue and black and yellow bruises are distinctly temporal; yet, they strike and mark the remembering body and its skin in a more perennial fashion. In other words, Mavor proposes a reading of the colour blue that exists on the level of embodied experiences, affect and memory. The diligent history of the colour blue points less at affect and more at deeply iconographic and symbolic meanings, but I consider a close analysis of this kind of sense-making and understanding of the colour to be beyond the scope of this chapter (Hibi, 2001; Pastoureau, 2001). It is, however, remarkable that Gregory Barrett, in his monograph on ­archetypes within Japanese cinema, says that “blue is perhaps universally associated with youth, but the Japanese enhance this symbolization by confusing blue and green, the same word, aoi. Hence, the sky blue

210  Sander Hölsgens of youth is combined with the young leaves and green shoots in spring” (1989, p. 31). I wonder what he would write about Michiko’s bedroom, which is initially coloured by the deep green of the window blinds and the building-tall tree, but is later given form by the blue moonlight. ­Perhaps green, here, is the lining of blue – both existing as an acutely felt and aching memory of a youth that no longer is. Instead of further exploring the significance of its iconographic and symbolic meanings, I would like to approximate a handful of readings of blue that invoke the colour’s affective capacity to afflict and give shape to the human body. Infamously and disturbingly, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe writes about how Werther commits suicide wearing a blue coat, mimicking the moment when he first danced with Lotte (1774/2012). Roland Barthes rigorously questions the socio-cultural implications of this fictional act: “This perverse outfit was worn across Europe by the novel’s enthusiasts, and it was known as a ‘costume à la Werther’” (1978, p. 128). Three decades later, Goethe publishes Theory of Colours (1810/1970), in which he argues that blue is a lively colour that is said to disturb rather than to enliven. For him, blue “has a peculiar and almost indescribable effect on the eye” (Goethe, 1810/1970, pp. 310–311). It is powerful, but also a so-called stimulating negation of sorts. Its appearance, Goethe writes, “is a kind of contradiction between excitement and repose” (1810/1970, p. 311). More recently, Maggie Nelson describe show she fell in love with blue, “as if falling under a spell, a spell I fought to stay under and get out from under, in turns”(2009, p.  1). To me, Nelson’s account of her intimate ­relation with blue embodies recent literary and artistic inclinations to explore the affective tendencies of the colour, ranging from Derek ­Jarman’s Blue (1993) to Moyra Davey’s Notes on Blue (2015). Blue, Nelson notes, has no mind. It is not wise, nor does it promise any wisdom. It is beautiful, and despite what the poets and philosophers and theologians have said, I think beauty neither obscures truth nor reveals it. Likewise, it leads neither toward justice nor away from it. It is pharmakon. It radiates. (2009, p. 65) Here, Nelson echoes Paul Cézanne, for whom blue is a vibration of sorts, and it seems that she aims to approximate how blue radiates before and through her – sometimes as a remembered wound, other times as a loving companion. Writing in close proximity to Julie Maroh’s graphic novel Le bleu est une couleur chaude (2010), Eugenie Brinkema says that “blue is figured as a sign of transition between the present and past, between inner and outer textual frames. Color intercedes line, breaking up space and inaugurating a temporal break in worlds. (Color: a pure form of visible difference)” (2016, p. 6). Here, blue exists as a spacing, a making room

Spatial Affectivities of Colour  211 for, a compositional element, a condensation, a pressure, an imaging. The 2013 film adaptation of Le bleu est une couleur chaude, she then states, “impossibilizes a neutrality towards blue” (Brinkema, 2016, p. 10, ­italics in original text), as it appears to exist as both affect and form, as opposed to a purely physics-driven phenomenon. A couple of years prior to Brinkema’s text, Akira Muzuta Lippit wondered whether filmic images – and thus filmic forms – can in fact be blue: “not the image of blue, the blue of an image, or an image in blue, but a form of being, of being blue”(2012, p. 15). Lippit deconstructs the colour blue, questions and historicises it, and moves from Friedrich Nietzsche and William Gass to Wassily Kandinsky and Amiri Baraka. He does not locate blue on the skin as though it is a bruise, but rather positions it on the limits of human perception and therefore the arts per se: he wonders whether blue is “at the end of eyesight, at the end of cinema, at the end of life, and at the end of light” (Lippit, 2012, p. 30). Yet, here too, blue seems to exist in-between this and that, by being located neither on the inside nor on the outside, or precisely on both inside and outside. In other words, there seems to be a literary lineage of the a­ ffectivities of the colour blue, which gained momentum in the late 2000s and early 2010s in a relatively Western cultural context. As my chapter ­responds to these texts, in efforts to sense and be in resonance with An Autumn Afternoon, it is unmistakably an anachronistic and partly ­decontextualised approximation of Yasujirō Ozu’s work. Yet, this is not to say that An Autumn Afternoon, as a film of felt intimacies, does not bruise through its tonal emphasis on the colour blue. Stronger yet, the film’s ­concluding sequence seems to point at the delicateness and ­fragility of ­domestic space and family life, precisely by displaying Michiko’s ­bedroom in monochromatic, blueish tones.

5. In Black and Blue (2012), Carol Mavor writes that blue produces a tiny, if not violent, affect on her. I perceive her writing to primarily echo and reverberate her felt understanding of how the colour blue takes root in her – and on her body: as a bruise. The bruise dwells in and on the skin, but bruises – and the bodies they reside on – are spatial too. For during the closing moments of An Autumn Afternoon, Michiko’s bedroom ­exists as a bruising space of sorts. Blue, here, dominates and shapes ­domestic architecture. In this sense, Michiko’s blue bedroom recalls a past that can be retrieved as merely a painful (‘pain-full’) memory and an injurious, irreconcilable absence of the child, and perhaps even the child archetype. Within the realm of this fragile yet monochromatic sequence, it is as though Ozu carves out a fixed and limited portion of time and a narrow spectrum of colours to mime the loss of Hirayama’s daughter, which is to say, to offer a cinematic encounter with her displaced presence. She

212  Sander Hölsgens is still in Hirayama’s proximity, as she got married only a couple hours earlier, and some of her most private possessions are still stationed in the bedroom, but she is absent nevertheless. In this tender scenography of bemoaning, Hirayama does not visit Michiko’s bedroom; only the camera and the I/eye directly register the blue and therefore bruising surfaces that delineate the edges of this intimate space. Significantly, though, blue moonlight enters the bedroom through its largest window, but this bruising radiation is weakened by the window’s grey curtains. Perhaps these colourful – but hardly colourfull – ­parameters of Ozu’s filmic bedroom reveal the limits and outlines of the ­human body in its capacity to endure the weight of a minor mourning. Only the camera-body seems to be able to bear such a visit, which is to say, opens up a space for a minor mourning, yet only in an ascending movement – as it never shows the way downstairs. Here, the placid yet rigorous unfolding of the sequence produces a tiny, violent affect on me, to paraphrase Mavor (2012). For the blue bedroom injures but hardly consoles; it traces the movement upstairs without opening its stance towards a descending movement. Instead, An Autumn Afternoon hinders and obscures the pathway downstairs, towards the empathic and consoling presence of Hirayama. In so doing, the film puts in place a minor and bruising form of grief and mourning that is both inescapable and enduring. It is spatially sealed, as it were. The film’s concluding sequence, in other words, makes room for and spaces the affectivities of a minor mourning. I am initially encouraged to carefully (a caring that is full of care) and gently sympathise with Hirayama, but I am thereupon forced to witness the bruising, yet toned down blue of the bedroom. Maggie Nelson suggests that blue radiates both injury and its remedy (2009), but in An Autumn Afternoon, the remedy is conspicuously absent. For although the blue moonlight enters the bedroom through its largest window, the radiating colour is softened by curtains and the grey-black shadows they cast onto the edges of the bedroom. The film’s sole soothing gesture, then, is that it places its blue tones in brackets, by allowing an architectural detail to dampen this hurting colour.

6. Donald Richie would perhaps disagree with my tender attempt to attune to An Autumn Afternoon by punctuating the affective implications of the colour blue. He writes, “Ozu is not an intuitive film artist, he is a master craftsman; for him, film is not expression but function” (Richie, 1963, p. 11). There is a difference, Richie states, between Ozu’s cinematic approach to architecture (as the static, measurable and functional) and his filmed perception of the human (as the living, immeasurable and non-fictional). Furthermore, the so-called emotional experiences offered

Spatial Affectivities of Colour  213 by Ozu’s films ought to be understood through film syntax, by which Richie means the works’ grammar, structure, editing and tempo. For instance, “the long shot is used to show solitude, precisely because it isolates; or humour, for it isolates and makes apprehendable; or aesthetic beauty, because it gets us far enough from it so see it all” (Richie, 1963, p. 12). Here, Richie showcases an interest in patterns, in structures, in shots, in cuts, perchance risking a sterilisation of cinema as such: “[Ozu’s] scrupulousness is extreme and the placing of the cut within the body of the picture shows this” (1963, p. 14). Writing in the face of remembered and enduring bruises, and the ­intimacy and elegance of domestic life, I am no longer sure I desire to speak about ‘cuts’ in bodies, also when these bodies are non-human. I would, however, like to briefly reconsider Richie’s suggestion that Ozu exploits the theatrical dimension of the house, whereby a room acts as a proscenium, as a stage (1977). This argument builds upon Ozu’s ­frequently examined and praised fixed camera position: since this form of stasis prevents him from “following his characters about, their ­entrances and exits are often as theatrical-looking as they are in real ­Japanese life” (Richie, 1977, p.  116). In other words, the plenitude of rooms in these filmic domestic spaces appear to take on the role of a stage that is conscientiously designed and meticulously framed so as to give room to ­entrances and exits. Ozu’s films, Richie writes, “abound in such scenes, with members of the family coming into view and ­disappearing as they move about the house. Since the Japanese house is usually crowded, there is always a lot going on” (1977, pp. 117–118). Following this line of thought, which exists primarily as an anthropological inquiry into the typology of the Japanese house, it is remarkable that An Autumn Afternoon concludes with a bedroom that seems to be no longer entered and exited – or, at most, visited by a hesitant camera-body. Here, the blue proscenium bedroom is devoid of action: it has become a silent space that is neither familiar nor unfamiliar, as it exists somewhere in between. The blue bedroom in An Autumn Afternoon, then, appears not ­unlike a filmic still life, but I would also hesitate to advance Noël Burch’s ­terminology and call it a pillow shot. For Burch, this filmic imaging “is not simply a signature, an individual stylistic trait, but a culturally and complexly determined sign of dissent from the worldview implicit in the Western mode” (1979, p. 161). These images focus on some inanimate aspect of Man’s environment. People are perhaps known to be near, but for the moment they are not visible, and a rooftop, a street-light, laundry drying on a line, a lampshade or a tea-kettle is offered as centre of attention. It is the tension between the suspension of human presence (of the diegesis) and its potential return. (Burch, 1979, p. 161)

214  Sander Hölsgens The crux of the difference between the supposedly archetypical pillow shot and the blue bedroom in An Autumn Afternoon seems to be located in the parentheses of Burch’s definition. For in the concluding images of An Autumn Afternoon, the presence of humans is not suspended from the diegesis. Instead, the greyish-blue tonality of the scene impedes the possibility of Michiko’s return: she has left this room behind and there is no reason to believe that she will revisit it before the film’s ending, or perhaps at all. These are not in-between images that exist by the grace of tension. Rather, the imaging of the mirror and stool and walls within Michiko’s bedroom parallel the texture of a bruising memory: their ­colour-full (green, red)and youth-full appearance has made way for pain-full domestic contours that only show shadows and indications, crusts and vibrations, edges and outlines of its former shell, namely an intimate and concealing bedroom. Michiko’s bedroom turned monochromatic the moment she left her ­father’s home. The ellipsis, during which her marriage is said to have taken place, not only disrupts the temporal continuity of the film’s ­narrative, but also brings for the tonal change. This is not the clinical result of film syntax or the direct outcome of the habitual use of pillow shots. It seems to me that Yasujirō Ozu moves his hands and eyes and technological equipment towards things and people with delicateness, and I consider his estimation of dwellings, of bodies, of relationships, to be intrinsically tender and full of concern. His filmmaking reveals itself as a form of looking after, dealing with, and providing for other ­people’s stay on the Earth, and the blue bedroom in An Autumn ­Afternoon ­displays a filmic gesture of this sort, albeit the one that bruises.

Works Cited Filmography Davey, M. (2015). Notes on Blue. Jarman, D. (1993). Blue. Marker, C. (1962). La Jetée. Marker, C. (1983). Sans Soleil. Ozu, Y. (1949). Late Spring (晩春). Ozu, Y. (1953). Tokyo Story (東京物語). Ozu, Y. (1960). Late Autumn (秋日和). Ozu, Y. (1962). An Autumn Afternoon (秋刀魚の味). Resnais, A. (1959). Hiroshima Mon Amour. Bibliography Bachelard, G. (1964). The poetics of space. New York, NY: Penguin Group. (Original work published in 1958). Barrett, G. (1989). Archetypes in Japanese film: The sociopolitical and religious significance of the principal heroes and heroines. London, UK: Associated University Press.

Spatial Affectivities of Colour  215 Barthes, R. (1978). A lover’s discourse: Fragments. London, UK: Vintage Books. Barthes, R. (1993). Camera lucida: Reflections on photography. London, UK: Vintage Books. Berra, J. (2015). Tokyo is a nice place: The suburban, the urban, and the space in between in early Ozu. In W. Stein & M. DiPaolo (Eds.), Ozu ­international: ­E ssays on the global influences of a Japanese auteur. London, UK: Bloomsbury. Brinkema, E. (2016). On no longer being loved: 11 Formal problems related to method. The Cine-Files, 10. Retrieved October 24, 2018, from http://www. thecine-files.com/brinkema2016/ Burch, N. (1979). To the distant observer. Form and meaning in the Japanese cinema. Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press. Goethe, J.W. (1774/2012). The sorrows of young Werther. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Goethe, J.W. (1810/1970). Theory of colours. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Hibi. (2001). The colors of Japan: Background, characteristics and creation. New York, NY: Kodansha USA. Lippit, A.M. (2012). Ex-cinema: From a theory of experimental film and video. Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press. Maroh, J. (2010). Le bleu est une couleur chaude. Grenoble, France: Glénat. Mavor, C. (2012). Black and blue. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Nelson, M. (2009). Bluets. Seattle, WA: Wave Books. Pastoureau, M. (2001). Blue: The history of a color. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Richie, D. (1963). Yasujiro Ozu: The syntax of his films. Film Quaterly, 17(2), 11–16. Richie, D. (1977). Ozu. Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press.

6.3 Cinema, Allospaces and the Unfilmable Bruno Surace

Allohistory and Allospace Uchronia or ‘allohistory’ is an alternative time referring to an a­ historical reality, that is, “a means of pointing out the flexibility of history and of denying the existence of an absolute necessity”, as Frank Dietz has explained (1998, p. 214). “By imagining alternatives”, he continues, ­“allohistorical novels relativize textbook history and emphasize the possibility for change” (1998, p. 214). A classic example of uchronia is Philip K. Dick’s novel The Man in the High Castle, first published in 1962. The premise takes the reader to an alternative time, based on the hypothesis that Hitler won the Second World War. Inevitably, this time setting contaminates the space setting. Contrary to uchronia, the term ‘utopia’, despite the similar root, ­designates an equally non-existent place, but with positive connotations. The etymology of utopia is divided between the Greek ou + topos – a non-place – and eu + topos – a good or happy place (see Marin, 1984, p. 91). Moreover, an opposing but sometimes overlapping option can be identified – that of dystopia, an antithetical place where everything is negative and degenerate. There is thus a dyscrasia between utopia/ dystopia and uchronia, in which the latter does not contain within itself any positive or negative connotations a priori, but only an instance of ‘temporal otherness’. In this essay, I would like to postulate the adoption of the term ­‘allospace’ – or allotopia, a sort of topological equivalent of the temporal allohistory – to indicate spaces of otherness that are not bound to any ideological or moral connotations and, consequently, have no a priori valorisation. Since its origins, cinema has worked with allospaces a great deal, to the point of establishing linguistic processes for rendering them immediately intelligible. This is the case of the spaces of the mind, of dream, hallucination, paranoia and so on. There is thus a body of rules, a shared “encyclopaedia” (Eco, 1984) regarding allospaces, which are in good part semiotic in nature. Cinema’s capacity of rendering allospaces is due to its syncretism: by appealing to numerous codes, it can make them interact with different results, thus providing room for the creation

Cinema, Allospaces and the Unfilmable  217 of rules ad hoc. The rendering of an allospace is therefore the result of a stylistic and rhetorical operation. Obviously, mental spaces are not the only allospaces to which the ­cinema affords accessibility. In the book De l’invisible au cinema: ­Figures de l’absence, Marc Vernet discussed a series of figures able to give rise, through formal devices, to spaces that are otherwise ­impossible to see or conceive: a few examples are looking into the camera, ­interpellation or suture, subjective frame and overlay or superimposition (2008). Some would refer to the spaces created by these stylistic operations as b ­ elonging to the category of heterotopia, which, according to Michel Foucault, “is capable of juxtaposing in a single real place several spaces, several sites that are in themselves incompatible” (1986, p. 25). Examples of heterotopic devices include mirrors, which open up an unreal, virtual space beyond their surface, but also gardens, which constitute natural microcosms within restricted spaces, according to arrangements that are impossible in nature, such as palms close to bonsais; trains and other means of transport, which are places that are actually in no ­particular place; and, obviously, the theatre and the cinema. Foucault says that cinema is heterotopic (1986, p. 25), since every film puts two spaces into relation with each other that are otherwise impossible to interrelate: that of the screen with that of the viewer.

Allospace and Heterotopia What is then the connection between allospaces and heterotopias? ­A llospaces are always contained within heterotopias. They constitute the ‘mental bridge’ between screen and viewer. A garden is certainly a materially constructed heterotopia, but to read it as such, it is n ­ ecessary to recognise its otherness in relation to the space to which it is attached. This operation is possible thanks to an allospace, that is, a mental space serving as a model for real space. This space can be, for example, the dream space of a person who tries to reproduce a garden in his/her own home that reminds him/her of the jungle, the sight of which can transport him/her towards this destination. The latter idea brings us back to Vernet: allospaces, just like heterotopias, are first and foremost scopic spaces, spaces of vision. They are spaces that exist in the measure in which they have something figural, that is, “neither an actual figure nor even figurative”, “the ‘para-doxic’ force of this confusion and thus its transgression”, “a potential matrix for the emergence of disjunctive ­relations between the image and the word” (Väliaho, 2010, p. 130). The glance of a character looking into the camera therefore exists in a heterotopia, reified by the screen, but it also points to a mental space: the space whereby a diegetic relationship exists between the spectator and the character that is looking at him/her. Thus, Norman Bates’ face in the final frame of Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960) is already part of

218  Bruno Surace a heterotopia, which exists even before he looks at the spectator, and which is already mental, in the measure in which it is cognitively elaborated. The allospace manifests itself when his eyes meet the spectator’s. This formal device makes the absence present, placing it in the middle of the undefined space generated between the viewer and the film. Similar considerations may be applied to the subjective frame. In the final scene of The Evil Dead (Sam Raimi, 1981), a mysterious being catches up to poor Ash and towers over him. It is up to the viewers to ­decide what that monster is – the monster that occupies the space ­towards which the character is looking, maybe towards whatever is behind the viewer, a space called antecampo in Italian – and insert it in a specific space of imagination. Furthermore, it must be noted that Ash himself looks directly into the camera right before being caught. It is therefore clear, and rather commonly acknowledged, that the monster is first of all the viewer him/herself, who creates the space in which it can be reified with his/her glance and mind. The same argument is also valid for superimposition. In the finale of Rosemary’s Baby (Roman Polanski, 1968), the demon manifests itself by superimposing its face over Rosemary’s. The entire film plays on an ambiguous double register. On the one hand, it can be read as a demonic story, which sees the devil take possession of poor Rosemary’s newborn infant. On the other hand, it may be a psychological story, in which we witness the insanity of a woman who rejects motherhood by ­constructing a world in which she is persecuted by Satan.1 The final superimposition does not provide any useful indications for understanding which of these two readings is the right one, but it does tell us that in either case the demon exists, at least as the protagonist’s a mental creation, and this transparency is useful precisely for placing it in an allospace. Whether it is only the fruit of her mind or a real demon, this apparition is caught in a dimension of otherness in relation to the two heterotopias with which it interacts: that of the spectator and that of the film. The allospace the demon is situated in is the bridge. In the same way, the allospace of the monster is the bridge in The Evil Dead – rendered, this time, by means of subjective frame – and the allospace of Norman Bates’ eyes is the bridge in Psycho – conveyed, in turn, by means of interpellation, or looking into the camera. Accordingly, there are infinite allospaces, just as there are also infinite mental spaces, which can be rendered through semiotic tools. A ­specific omnicomprehensive allospace is the dream, which has always been a favourite subject of cinema. Since its origins, filmmakers have created ways of conveying a territory that is quintessentially ‘unfilmable’, ­except through mediation. Already in Cabiria (Giovanni Pastrone, 1914) ­(Figure 6.3.1), there is a dream scene. In this episode, Pastrone’s choice was to place the dreamer and the object of the dream in the same frame, basically, the same composition that also appears, in a slightly different

Cinema, Allospaces and the Unfilmable  219

Figure 6.3.1  C abiria, the dreamer and the dream.

way, in Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby and in many other contemporary films. The idea is to create an autarchic frame (Burch, 1991) which an allospace and the main diegesis can share. 2

From Oneirism to Madness The borders between dream and reality become more marked in c­ lassic cinema. They then resume their interpolation in modern cinema, in which it is often impossible to differentiate between the diegesis and the allospaces. The Milky Way (La voie lactée, Luis Buñuel, 1969), for ­example, is a movie “dominated by dark blues and browns and by its use of cuts and reverse-angles to set up spaces – roads and ­boundaries – which become important yet never quite definite” (Durgnat, 1977, p. 166). In this film, the young protagonist is on a hallucinatory journey towards Santiago de Compostela, interrupted by numerous apparitions. As usual in Buñuel’s cinema, what is real and what is not is never clear. The dream thus becomes a space that is on the same level as the space of waking reality. In this regard, a significant scene is that of the shooting of the Pope, in which the union between dream and reality is e­ mphasised by the absurd testimony of the character who claims to have heard the shots  – shots that he could not have heard since they were in the ­character’s mind. The dream is therefore the allospace par excellence. There is another sequence in The Conversation (Francis Ford C ­ oppola, 1974) in which the specific elements typical of this allospatial dogma can be identified. The film tells the story of Harry Caul, a private i­nvestigator specialised in video surveillance and telephone tapping. In his awareness of the impossibility of living a completely private life, he gets sucked in

220  Bruno Surace a vortex of paranoia, to the point that he is convinced he is being spied on. Harry represents an ambiguous figure: he has always earned a living by spying on people and now, in a sort of Dantesque reckoning, he is afraid of being spied on himself. Within the film, two sequences stand out for their essentially allospatial value. The first is Harry’s dream, a sequence lasting a full four minutes and constituting a textbook case: the moment Harry falls asleep and passes from a physical to a mental space is introduced by extensive camera movement, zooming out. Immediately after that, we are in the dream allospace. It is easy for the spectator to tell dream and reality apart, first because the editing ­alternates the dream with frames of Harry tossing and turning in his sleep, but also because the formal configurations that regulate the dream space are very different from those that regulate the rest of the film. From the ­beginning, we see close-ups disturbed by a kind of shaky camera and by surreal, unnerving sounds. The change in the film’s visual and sound style ­cannot but suggest the passage to the allospace. The places in the dream are then surreally isolated and the whole scene is pervaded by smoke, which, together with a pale lighting is a typical way of suggesting a dream without intervening in the filming procedures. The smoke in this scene actually works as a visual metaphor, inasmuch as it suggests the fuzzy mind of the person who is dreaming. When thinking of allospaces wherein dream is combined with obsession and hallucination, David Lynch, whose work focuses precisely on the mental life of his protagonists, serves as an excellent contemporary reference. In Lost Highway (David Lynch, 1997) – “a specific chronotope, a specific interrelationship between time and space” (Jerslev, 2004, p. 152) – the main character Fred literally constructs an alternative world for himself to live in, as he is unable to come to terms with the fact that he has barbarically killed his partner, probably as a result of a fit of madness. The film thus centres on this mental world: it is not clear if it is a dream, a hallucination or the reification of an obsession. The sequence in which Fred, in his alternative dimension, realises that something is wrong is particularly striking: the scene of his sinister meeting with the so-called Mystery Man at a party. In this case, several elements of ­diegesis and form once again merge in the explication of the allospace. Suffused lighting sets an initially relaxed atmosphere in another demonstration of the fact that the use of light and shadow is ­fundamental to the construction of mental spaces. This is similar to the way Harry is illuminated in The Conversation by the light passing through the grate near his bed, dividing his face into little squares and suggesting that his consciousness is split. The music is Barry Adamson’s song ‘Something Wicked This Way Comes’, a sort of omen, but there is a drastic break when the Mystery Man appears: the music is blocked out and the frames become solely close-ups, behind which nothing except an indistinct background can be seen. The acoustic and spatial isolation of these

Cinema, Allospaces and the Unfilmable  221 close-ups induces the viewer to think that what is happening is, for the most part, the fruit of Fred’s mind. Furthermore, the Mystery Man is significantly different from the other people who were previously in the room, starting with his face, which is completely white. In diegetic terms, what happens cannot but confirm the hypothesis that we are sharing an allospace with the characters: the Mystery Man convinces Fred that he has the gift of ubiquity, since he is in front of him and at his home at the same time. This narrative turn, along with the formal components mentioned before, is the ultimate proof that something is wrong. One could argue that this is not a mental allospace, but rather a ­paradoxical world where situations of this kind can occur, like when we accept the existence of the Kingdom of Oz in The Wizard of Oz ­(Victor Fleming, 1939). We must, however, take two further issues into ­account. On the one hand, the scene in Lost Highway certainly ­represents a f­ undamental node in the definition of allospace, but it is nevertheless ­inserted into a larger narrative economy and supported by other ­elements, such as the final scene, which is the key to the interpretation of everything. On the other hand, Little Dorothy in Fleming’s The Wizard of Oz and Oz himself in Oz the Great and Powerful (Sam Raimi, 2013) do, in fact, make a journey towards impossible worlds, the existence of which we accept by activating a suspension of disbelief.3 Yet, it is always possible to regard these worlds as mental manifestations of the characters, since before arriving both experience problems, which they resolve only after a fantastic journey – a journey that can be read as a mental journey, a coming into awareness, as in a bildungsroman. ­Accordingly, all impossible worlds can be seen as mental worlds gene­ rated by the protagonists who inhabit them. Without leaving the space of hallucination, obsession and paranoia, we can briefly identify another example of an allospace drawn from one of John Carpenter’s best films: In the Mouth of Madness (1994). In that film, John Trent, an insurance investigator, has to go to the mysterious little town of Hobb’s End in search of the writer Sutter Kane, who seems to have disappeared. Trent is a rational man who refuses to contemplate the increasingly plausible eventuality that he has ended up inside a ­horror book, and attributes the strange events that are occurring to a c­ onspiracy hatched by the author’s publishing house in order to collect the insurance after his disappearance. However, Kane persecutes him, driving him to madness. In a scene approximately halfway through the film, Trent is riding home on the bus, trying to recover his mental l­ucidity, when he realises that Kane is in fact in possession of his dreams. At this point, Kane introduces himself into Trent’s dream, exactly as Freddie Krueger does in A Nightmare on Elm Street (Wes Craven, 1984): he appears to him before he falls asleep, telling him that his favourite colour is blue. The allospace is in this way marvellously configured through blue-tinted cinematography, and the protagonist cannot but scream in desperation,

222  Bruno Surace increasingly aware that control of his mind has been taken away from him. In the end, the allospace is revealed in a short circuit, which shows Trent at the cinema, watching himself in the scenes that the viewer has already seen. The allospace can thus be understood as a bridge between the Foucaultian heterotopias, a cinematic bridge, indeed, since cinema is the means through which Trent manages to picture his mind and then give way – laughing hysterically – to total madness.

From Mental to Transcendental All allospaces explored up to now refer to the sphere of the mind, as in the cases of paranoia and obsession. Nevertheless, it is possible to draw up a more elaborate taxonomy, which can reveal the existence of other typologies of allospaces the cinema affords access, while at the same time disclosing its limitations but also its evocative power. Besides the allospace of the mind, which, as has been mentioned, turns out in some ways to be omnicomprehensive – being the allospace that is always activated in the relationship between the mind of the spectator and the filmic ­image – a series of other allospaces will be identified later. As will be seen, while the typology of allospace may change, the various means whereby the cinema evokes it do not, possibly just becoming more complicated. First of all, there is the allospace of transcendence, in which metaphy­ sical instances are depicted, from God to destiny. This is the space evoked, for example, in The Passion of Joan of Arc (La passion de Jeanne d’Arc, Carl Th. Dreyer, 1929). It is no coincidence that precisely another formal expedient, that of the off-screen reified in Joan’s gaze, should nowadays frequently be cited as an instance of metaphysical or absolute off-screen, that is, directed at some place beyond the image that cannot be realised in mere spatiality, but which stretches out ­towards unknowable onto­logies. One of the key scenes in this film is of Joan being burnt at the stake. Her eyes look upwards, tracing a line that ­violently oversteps the upper limit of the frame. One of the more reput­able interpretations ­suggests – and this is reasonable – that she is turning directly to God, who is situated in a metaphysical space. The actress’s eyes, always shining and central to her photogénie, act throughout the film as devices whose orientation has the function of joining the watcher and the watched. The watched is God, who is never given a form. It is a signic evocation, which points to an absence that is, by definition, not ­semiotic. In the scene of the burning at the stake, the heroine’s gaze, in this semi-conscious and ecstatic stage, often turns upwards. These i­mages alternate with shots of the preparation and lighting of the pyre, but also with the restless ­geometries of a flock of birds in which, ­perhaps, she recognises the divine presence. It is thus a ‘subtractive’ representation of God, evoked through formal devices, but confirmed in his unspeakability, which not even ecstasy or, in the end, death can breach. What Joan of Arc’s gaze reifies is an ‘other’

Cinema, Allospaces and the Unfilmable  223 space, the allospace of transcendence, which exists only due to cinematographic evocation, not only indicatory, but also allegorical – the flock of birds. Something similar happens in The Last Temptation of Christ (Martin Scorsese, 1988); yet, Scorsese uses a different register than Dreyer: if the latter makes explicit the space of the metaphysical off-screen with a flock of birds, exteriorising its unfilmable nature through a synecdochic transposing, Scorsese instead follows up Jesus’ gaze as he is agonising – like Joanne – on the cross with a sort of reverse shot of the cloudy sky, subsequently returning to the blood-streaked face of Jesus, who is now aware of his destiny, as if he had received a coveted revelation. For both directors, therefore, the off-screen becomes a similar symbolic instance, the utmost expression of the unfilmable, an interior place that cannot be filmed since it is – essentially – outside of any ontology, and which can only be approached through the gaze of the protagonists. That gaze signifies something inasmuch as it is turned towards the upper ­extreme of the frame, an ‘other’ space coinciding with the sky and with its ­‘appendages’ – the birds, the clouds – that can be intuited, or which must be believed in, even though its meaning is anything but attainable in full. The off-screen, the space of God, the space of the ultimate and defini­ tive instance of destiny, is therefore an only partially negotiable place. Both Joan of Arc and Jesus, in search of the figure that gives sense to their torment and to the ignominy heaped upon them when they are about to die, have exhausted their linguistic possibilities. The trials to which they have been subjected symbolise the asymmetry that they are experiencing: they represent stances from which what is true and what is false is established precisely by virtue of a strictly linguistic encoding, in which the individuals are placed within a grammar. But it is exactly their inability to adhere to that grammar that constitutes the reason for having been brought to trial. Thus, without linguistic security, they are aware that theirs is not even an idiolect, an individual language yet always a language; they can only appeal to the least linguistic of signs, the index. However, their indications are somehow antisemiotic and do not translate anything. Rather, they aim to establish a link of physical contiguity, to erect a physiology in which there is no possibility of a symbology. Seeing or not seeing what they do or do not see is therefore nothing but an act of faith, which is translated in the creation of an allospace of transcendence, acknowledging the concept of a ‘system of signification’ that exists outside the code and that is dictated by the presence of God. It thus amounts, like all the others, to a subcategory of the mental allospace. This taxonomy formed so far by mental allospaces – those of ­paranoia, obsession and transcendence – must also include at least two other ­macro-categories: the forbidden allospace and the allospace of the ­impossible, which have already been briefly addressed with respect to

224  Bruno Surace the unfilmable. The forbidden allospace, previously mentioned when ­speaking about Psycho and The Evil Dead, is that of the antecampo, that is, all that space other than the film where the viewer resides, but which is connected with the film at the time of viewing. Accordingly, this space is activated by the spectator’s direct or indirect interpellation. Let us take as examples the two versions of Funny Games (Michael Haneke, 1997, 2007), in which the two sadistic protagonists, Paul and Peter, amuse themselves by torturing a family who are holidaying in their lakeside house. What might seem to be an ordinary thriller ­assumes great linguistic valence as one of the killers, Paul, momentarily abandons the diegesis a number of times to appeal directly to the viewers, speaking to them or looking at them with a cruel snigger. This brutal laceration of the fourth wall establishes a bridge, a heterotopic passage that reifies an allospace, a space of negotiation between the character and the ­uneasy viewer, since the latter has been called upon to become an accomplice to the atrocities committed in the film. As this ­complicity causes a ­feeling of discomfort in the viewer, it cannot be played out either in the world of the film, which the viewer does not inhabit, or in the audience’s world, which is not inhabited by the film. It must then be played out in an ‘other’ space, an allospace set up precisely by the m ­ eeting of the ­character’s and viewer’s gaze, where their relationship is established: the same space that, for example, is created by the ­characters in Woody ­A llen’s films, when they alternate their actions with soliloquies addressed to the ­camera, as happens in Love and Death (1975) or Whatever Works (2009). The allospace of the impossible also recalls those of the mind, the transcendence and the forbidden, but it focuses on the exquisitely ­cinematic staging of topologies that cannot physically exist in the real world. This allospace is often combined with other c­ ategories, as occurring in Inception (Christoher Nolan, 2010), where the dream environments – which are probably the most cinematic of mental manifestations (see McGinn, 2017) – are constructed on the model of ­ appens Maurits Cornelis Escher’s impossible geometries. This also h in Labyrinth (Jim Henson, 1986), where the tribute to Escher is even more explicit. It can also refer to absurd geometries like those in The Adjustment Bureau­ (George Nolfi, 2011) or in The Matrix ­R eloaded (Andy Wachowski and Larry Wachowski, 2003), where the same door can be the threshold to two different dimensions; places that defy the laws of logic and physics, such as the Overlook Hotel in The ­S hining (Stanley Kubrick, 1980), the handbag in Mary Poppins (­Robert ­Stevenson, 1964), the city in Upside Down (Juan Solanas, 2012) or the entire world of Alice in Wonderland in its various film adaptations. Allospaces of the impossible are frequent in fantasy or science fiction films, as well as in numerous other films, and constitute a prime example of cinema’s ability to open a passage to worlds where the physical and metaphysical laws of the audience’s ­reality can be overturned in countless different ways.

Cinema, Allospaces and the Unfilmable  225

Conclusion The allospace is therefore the place where the dark recesses of the mind can be imagined and materialised in spaces devoted to them, obviously through forms of narrative and formal mediation. It is not possible to ­convey the mental dimension without mediating it: it is, in other words, one of the most interesting manifestations of the unfilmable, perhaps the most enthralling. As we have seen, there are many ways of ­depicting ­allospaces, both by means of stylistic processes and by including ­diegetic elements in the film that lead towards these otherwise unexplored territories. I would like to conclude with one last example, Wild Strawberries (Smultronstället, Ingmar Bergman, 1957), which strikingly combines all of the allospatial elements discussed earlier in a refreshingly positive manner – inasmuch as the protagonist emerges constructively empowered by his allospatial experience. In this film, the main character, an elderly professor named Isak Borg, is awarded a very important prize, which will oblige him to undertake a journey by car to get to the award-giving ceremony. This film can be considered a sort of road movie ante litteram, in which his protagonist simultaneously travels in both a physical space and an allospace, that of memory, regret and nostalgia. The representation of memories is a typically allospatial operation: “Memory, thoughts and visions are grafted onto one another in the intersubjective space that is film” (McNeill, 2010, p. 124). They are subjective manifestations in the mind of an individual, often enriched by ghostly components, false memories or fuzzy traces. In Wild Strawberries, the allospace is introduced by the protagonist himself, who describes the dream while it is being visualised. Other aforementioned components are also present here, such as the character’s total narrative isolation and the dialectic between light and shadow, as well as a specific symbology, represented by the clock without hands: We watch a dreamer see his dreams. We are released from the laws of time and space to enter the filmic dreams, allow the laws of time and space to enter consciousness and, at the same time, remain aloof, outside. (Eberwein, 1980, p. 201) This last passage allows us to understand that allospace can also determine an alternative or subjective time, according to Bergson’s teaching whereby time is in relation to the qualitative content of existence, faster or slower than real time, or even – as in this case – completely still.

Notes 1 An analysis of the reasons for Rosemary’s possible psychosis can be found in Baby Simulacra. Semiotica dei cuccioli al cinema come incubatori di assiologie (Surace, 2018).

226  Bruno Surace 2 A brief list of pre-Cabiria films containing dream scenes in autarchic frames: A Nightmare (Le cauchemar, Georges Méliès, 1896), Story of a Crime (­Histoire d’un crime, Ferdinand Zecca, 1901), Jack and the Benastalk (­Edwin S. Porter, 1902), Dream of a Rarebit Friend (Edwin S. Porter, 1903), The Moon Lover (Le rêve à la lune, Gastón Velle & Ferdinand Zecca, 1905), Life on American Fireman (Edwin S. Porter, 1906), The Dream of an Opium Fiend (Le reve d’un fumeur d’opium, Georges Mélies, 1908), Grandmother's Story (Conte de la grand-mère et rêve de l'enfant, Georges Méliès, 1908), Buon anno! (Arrigo Frustra, 1909), The Garibaldi Boy (Il piccolo garibaldino, Prod. Cines, 1909), and The Hallucinations of Baron Munchausen (Les hallucinations du Baron de Munchausen, Georges Méliès, 1911). For more information, see Alovisio and Mazzei (2016). 3 For more information on the suspension of disbelief, see Surace (2015).

Works Cited Filmography Alberini, F. (1909). The Garibaldi Boy (Il piccolo garibaldino). Allen, W. (1975). Love and Death. Allen, W. (2009). Whatever Works. Bergman, I. (1957). Wild Strawberries (Smultronstället). Buñuel, L. (1969). The Milky Way (La voie lactée). Carpenter, J. (1994). In the Mouth of Madness. Coppola, F. F. (1974). The Conversation. Craven, W. (1984). A Nightmare on Elm Street. Dreyer, C. Th. (1929). The Passion of Joan of Arc (La passion de Jeanne d’Arc). Epstein, J. (1923). Faithful Heart (Cœur fidèle). Fleming, V. (1939). The Wizard of Oz. Frusta, A. (1909). Buon Anno! Haneke, M. (1997). Funny Games. Haneke, M. (2007). Funny Games. Henson, J. (1986). Labyrinth. Hitchcock, A. (1960). Psycho. Kubrick, S. (1980). The Shining. Lynch, D. (1997). Lost Highway. Méliès, G. (1896). A Nightmare (Le cauchemar). Méliès, G. (1908). Grandmother’s Story (Conte de la grand-mère et rêve de l’enfant). Méliès, G. (1908). The Dream of an Opium Fiend (Le reve d’un fumeur d’opium). Méliès, G. (1911). The Hallucinations of Baron Munchausen (Les hallucinations du Baron de Munchausen). Nolan, C. (2010). Inception. Nolfi, G. (2011). The Adjustment Bureau. Pastrone, G. (1914). Cabiria. Polanski, R. (1968). Rosemary’s Baby. Porter, E. S. (1902). Jack and the Benastalk. Porter, E. S. (1903). Dream of a Rarebit Friend. Porter, E. S. (1906). Life on American Fireman.

Cinema, Allospaces and the Unfilmable  227 Raimi, S. (1981). The Evil Dead. Raimi, S. (2013). Oz the Great and Powerful. Scorsese, M. (1988). The Last Temptation of Christ. Solanas, J. (2012). Upside Down. Stevenson, R. (1964). Mary Poppins. Velle, G., & Zecca, F. (1905). The Moon Lover. Wachowski, A., & Wachowski, L. (2003). The Matrix Reloaded. Zecca, F. (1901). Story of a Crime (Histoire d’un crime). Bibliography Alovisio, S., & Mazzei, L. (2016). Dream little boy, dream of war! Children, dreams and imaginary war scenery in Italian fiction cinema of WWI. In A. Quintana & J. Pons (Eds.), La Gran Guerra 1914–1918. La primera guerra de les images (pp. 185–200). Girona, Spain: Fundació Museu del Cinema, Anjuntement de Girona. Burch, N. (1991). La lucarne de l’infini. Naissance du langage cinématographique. Paris, France: Édition Nathan. Dick, P. K. (1962). The man in the high castle. New York, NY: Putnam’s Sons. Dietz, F. (1998). The doppelgänger motif in speculative fiction. In B. Coke, G. E. Slusser, & J. Marti-Olivella (Eds.), The fantastic other, an interface of ­perspectives. Critical studies 11. Amsterdam-Atlanta: Rodopi. Durgnat, R. (1977). Luis Bunuel. Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press. Eberwein, R. (1980). The filmic dream and the point of view. Literature and Film Quaterly, 8(3), 197–203. Eco, U. (1984). Semiotica e filosofia del linguaggio. Turin, Italy: Einaudi. Foucault, M. (1986, Spring). Of other spaces. Diacritics, 16(1), 22–27. Retrieved October 30, 2018, from www.jstor.org/stable/464648 Jerslev, A. (2004). Beyond boundaries: David Lynch’s lost highways. In E. Sheen & A. Davison (Eds.), The cinema of David Lynch. American dreams, nightmare visions. London, UK & New York, NY: Wallflower Press. Marin, L. (1984). Utopics: Spatial play. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press Inc. McGinn, C. (2017). A multimodal theory of film experience. In C. Reeh & J. Manuel Martins (Eds.), Thinking reality and time through film (pp. ­150–163). Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. McNeill, I. (2010). Memory and the moving image: French film in the digital era. Edinburgh, UK: Edinburgh University Press. Surace, B. (2015). Sim Sala Segno. Semiotica dello spettacolo magico fra sospensione dell’incredulità e dispositivi della censura. Lexia, 21–22, 301–315. Surace, B. (2018). Baby Simulacra. Semiotica dei cuccioli cinematografici come incubatori di assiologie. In F. Mangiapane (Eds), E|C. Cuccioli, pets e altre carinerie, XII(22). Retrieved October 30, 2018, from http://www.ec-aiss.it/ monografici/22_cuccioli.php Väliaho, P. (2010). Mapping the moving image. Gesture, thought and cinema circa 1900. Amsterdam, Netherlands: Amsterdam University Press. Vernet, M. (2008). De l’invisible au cinema: Figures de l’absence. Paris, France: Cahiers du Cinema - Editions de l’Etoile.

6.4 Framing Doors, Opening Up Spaces Cristi Puiu and His Cruel Phenomenology of Space Zsolt Gyenge Film phenomenology is based on the assumption that there is a close connection and similarity between everyday perceptual experience and cinema. On such an assumption, the analysis and detailed description of perception can be used for the understanding of the filmic reception. Maurice Merleau-Ponty himself, as Orna Raviv points out, considered cinema a model for understanding vision, not as an isolated activity of a subject distanced from the world, but as an embodied experience inseparable from the subject’s way of being in the world (2016, p. 165). This essay will use film phenomenology’s take on the perceptual experience of space in cinema to discuss and interpret Cristi Puiu’s films. Contrary to what some reviewers and scholars argue,1 the specific perceptual experience constructed by the Romanian director is neither intended to create a perfect illusion of immediate realism, nor destined to self-reflexively uncover the “limited possibilities of the perceptual act” (Filimon, 2014, p. 181). On the contrary, Puiu’s mise en scène should be interpreted based on the analysis of the embodied perceptual experience produced by framing and camera movement – an approach that will offer the possibility to understand how his films achieve the impact they have on their spectators.

Film as Perception As Jennifer Barker formulates it, a phenomenological description studies “the intimate entailment with the intentional act of perception to which the phenomenon is present” (2009, p. 11). This means that, according to phenomenology, consciousness is always consciousness of something. As such, this approach insists that to describe a phenomenon, it is necessary to describe both the objective and subjective aspects of this intentional structure. Accordingly, phenomenological film analysis approaches the film and the viewer as acting together, and advocates for the primacy of perception in the understanding and analysis of cinema. Vision is a modality of perception, and like intentionality, vision is directional in structure – thus, vision, as well as the very act of seeing, is of utmost ­importance for all producers of images. Arguing for the

Framing Doors, Opening Up Spaces  229 relevance of such an approach, Vivian Sobchack writes that “the painter’s ­medium, the filmmaker’s medium is less paint or film, than it is sight. Indeed, at their most rigorous, both painter and filmmaker practice a phenomenology of vision” (1992, p. 91). This is why I consider that the close phenomenological analysis of the constructed act of perception should be at the ­centre of any film analysis, especially in the critical or academic ­discourse of cinema. Merleau-Ponty and, following him, Vivian Sobchack emphasise the consciousness of the act of seeing itself, through which we can see as subjects of consciousness and transform our own acts of vision into o ­ bjects of consciousness. This reflective/reflexive performance allows us to ­understand what it is like to be both a seeing subject and a ­visible ­object. Sobchack, translating this idea for use in the field of cinema, argues that viewing a film is based on an interpretive strategy that ­perceptually constitutes meaning on a ground of prior reflexive knowledge: knowledge of the lived body as both the subject of seeing and the object for seeing (1992, pp. 52–53). Perception, and especially the act of seeing, is at the core of the cinematic experience because seeing is an act performed by both the film (which sees a world as visible images) and the viewer (who sees the film’s visible images both as a world and the seeing of a world). (…) the existential structure of seeing is doubled in the film experience. (Sobchack, 1992, pp. 56–57) Representation of space is crucial for cinema, but Antoine Gaudin points out that film does not only represent a space, but it is a spatial pheno­ menon by itself (2015, p. 60). According to this author, there are two ­levels of apprehension of space in cinema: the first is the space r­ epresented by the film, the space as object of the image, and the second is the space inscribed in the body of the film (Gaudin, 2015, p. 64). On this second level, Gaudin explains, the cinematic image is no longer considered an open window onto a world made of bodies disposed in a referential space, but more like a primordial organic structure, in which spatial r­ elations are inscribed (2015, p. 64). To describe the cooperation of these two types of spatial representation, Gaudin – following the logic of the Deleuzian terminology – coins the term ‘space-image’. In his view, the model of the space-image allows us to think film both as a r­ epresentation – the image ­ erceptual flux in itself (Gaudin, of something – and as phenomenon – a p 2015, p. 67). Thus, the space-image is an act of seeing of space, and even more, an act of perception of space that needs to be analysed, as it includes the act of perception of the film itself. Perception has also a temporal side, which is most often described as the act of becoming. The images of spaces in a film exist in the world as a temporal flow, in the sense that, unlike still images, “the

230  Zsolt Gyenge film exists for us as always in the act of becoming. (…) That is, film is ­always ­presenting, as well as representing the coming into being of being and representation” (Sobchack, 1992, p. 61). This is why space is not merely represented on film, but rather unfolds step by step; it comes into ­being through a consciously designed perceptual experience. Therefore, ­according to Gaudin, to analyse a film, one needs to adapt a concept of the film that is being made in front of us, instead of continuing the ­pictorial analysis of freeze frames (2015, p. 68). In his last two films, Aurora (2010) and Sieranevada (2016), Cristi Puiu opted for the creation of such an act of seeing that is not only able to present the unfolding of events and spaces, but also makes the creative presence of this act of seeing itself bodily perceptible. This approach is crucial in the case of Aurora because the monstrous act of killing i­tself is not the centre of attention, but its actual coming-into-being is. In this work, we are provided hardly any information about the characters, ­locations and actions we observe. Instead, we are forced to take part in the slow unfolding of an act of embodied vision, and the spaces perceived only in a partial, fragmented way by the “absent other” (Filimon, 2017, p. 5) are crucial in understanding the protagonist’s situation and motivations (Filimon, 2017, pp. 84–85).

The Film’s Body One of film phenomenology’s best known and most discussed concepts is the film’s body, a term coined by Vivian Sobchack to grasp the e­ mbodied nature of the cinematic experience, the full-bodied e­ ngagement with the materiality of the world (1992, pp. 164–259). Though it might seem a metaphor, film phenomenologists use the concept much more concretely to describe two basic features of (filmic) perception. The first is related to the inseparable, interrelated nature of perception and ­expression, as so wonderfully explained in detail by Merleau-Ponty in his Phenomenology of Perception (1981). The second feature deals with the fact that, as Sobchack puts it, film is the subject of experience, and object for experience. This means that while the camera performs an act of perception, it is also perceived by the viewers as such, so the act of seeing of the film itself becomes the object of the viewers’ own act of seeing. The cinematic image is not transparent in the sense that the spectator regards not only what is presented through the cinematic perception, but also observes this very act of seeing. In Sobchack’s account, from a phenomenological perspective, film is composed of a viewing view and a viewed view, which are always simultaneously present in the viewer experience. The term “viewing view” emphasises the work performed by an intentional lived-body subject, which, according to Sobchack, we might call it the cinema’s “meaningful gaze” (1990, p. 21). Furthermore, she conceives the perceptual experiences provided onscreen by

Framing Doors, Opening Up Spaces  231 the cinematic image as being twofold: on one side, what she calls the viewing view/viewed view; on the other, the film’s body. The film’s body is therefore the other, off-screen and unseen side of this viewing view/ viewed view, but it is important to notice that neither is reducible to the filmmaker or the camera. We can talk of the film’s body because we can see the film ‘seeing’: “we see its own process of perception and expression unfolding in space and time” (Barker, 2009, p. 9). In Sobchack’s view, a phenomenological description of the act of viewing inevitably leads to an embodied viewer – not visible in the act of its productions but generative of the act and its existentially directed and ­diacritical structure. This viewer is not transcendentally located, however ­invisible it is in vision. (1992, p. 135) The perceptual engagement with the film experience is enabled by an eye that does not belong solely to the filmmaker, to the camera or to the spectator, so “the film exists as the visible visual relation between an embodied eye and a sensible world” (Sobchack, 1992, p. 203). It is neither the camera nor the projector, neither the filmmaker nor the spectator who mediates between the perceiving act and the intentional object – this relation, this mediating entity is described by Sobchack via the term “the film’s body”. Although it seems to be clear that while watching a film we experience an act of seeing from inside, it is impor­ tant to note that this does not appear to us as our own vision: “Even as I perceive it as lived from within vision, it does not emerge as my own lived vision because I am seeing it as visible from without” (Sobchack, 1992, pp. 138–139). Jennifer M. Barker uses tactility to further deepen the phenomenological analysis of embodied perception (2009, p. 3). She uses as an example the opening scene of Andrei Tarkovsky’s The Mirror (Зеркало, 1975) to show how an intimate, tactile and kinetic viewer experience is created, due to which we are immersed and involved in the scene “without a single body to align ourselves unequivocally – be it a character in the scene or a neutral camera” (Barker, 2009, p. 6). This points out another important aspect of the film’s body – it is definitely not related to identification with a character or a specific perspective in the film. In Barker’s view, what makes The Mirror’s opening scene (and, as will be discussed later, Puiu’s films) so intriguing is that it refuses any easy identification. In fact, Sobchack is very clear that the film’s body is not identical to the human body, whether that of the filmmaker’s or the viewer’s, and that it is not an anthropomorphic concept (1992, pp. 226–227). When we experience film, it is not simply a matter of identifying with the characters on screen or with the body of the director or of the camera,

232  Zsolt Gyenge “rather, we are in a relationship of intimate, tactile, reversible contact with the film’s body” (Barker, 2009, p. 19). This is exactly the issue dealt with by Christian Ferencz-Flatz in his essay on Aurora, in which he investigates the observational position developed in the film, and considers that the experience offered to the viewers is very close to that of a real hidden ­observer who is offered no background information, but has the possibility to passively watch some of the events (Ferencz-Flatz, 2013). Cristi Puiu developed his formula of representation of the film’s body in three steps throughout his oeuvre. From a more transparent presence in The Death of Mr. Lazarescu (Moartea domnului Lăzărescu, 2005) due to fragmented recording and continuity editing, to the completely static observation of Aurora and finally to the almost palpable ghostly presence in Sieranevada. What is remarkable in the latter two films is that the invisible yet existential bodily perception is made perceivable through the fixed presence of the film’s body in the diegetic space, as an actual perceiving subject doomed to passive observation. The camera is always positioned at the eye level and never leaves the position of a standing person. After a few scenes, this attitude makes us reflect on this ghostly and simultaneously embodied presence that is able to ­follow the protagonists with its eyes, but is never allowed to move. This is how, in Puiu’s films, the act of perception of the film itself comes into focus: it does not offer us an actual character’s observation, but that of the film itself. In Aurora, for example, we see Viorel through the ­inability of the observer to understand his actions – we see and ­experience the impenetrability of the Other, the permanent distance towards the Other. Creating this experience could have been important for Puiu because he was thus able to convey a similar state of mind to that of Viorel, who shows a fatal inability to understand the r­ easons ­behind the dismantling of his life. Thus, by experiencing the limits of perception, we are given the chance to experience the emotions that Viorel might have had when watching his life fall apart. Aurora is about the deception of the senses, the deception of the eye: we are just sitting and watching what takes place in front of us, without being able to fully understand it.

Point of View and Depth of Space Merleau-Ponty explores our spatial experience through the concept of “the own body” and through movement, as bodily cohesion with space and time is essential for his existential analysis of space: “we must therefore avoid saying that our body is in space or in time. It inhabits space and time” (1981, p. 162). What is important for the representation of space in cinema is that Merleau-Ponty understands space not as a setting where things have their place, but rather as “the means whereby the position of things becomes possible” (1981, p. 243). From the point of

Framing Doors, Opening Up Spaces  233 view of the perceiver – both in real life and in cinema – space is not an objective environment, but the place of a web of relations explored by the perceiver himself. One could argue against transposing this description into the field of cinema by positing that we rarely see a space from only one perspective in film. Using several psychological experiments as exemplars, Merleau-Ponty contends that after a certain period, we can correct different visual distortions as our body starts to inhabit the distorted space, the new spectacle. In the case of cinema, this might provide an explanation for the acceptance of spatial constructions and spectacles that differ from the real, and it might also explain why we don’t need first-person camera positions to identify with spaces or characters in those spaces. We are capable of inhabiting a space that is shown to us from different angles: “my motor intentions and my perceptual field join forces, when my actual body is at one with the virtual body required by the spectacle, and the actual spectacle with the setting which my body throws round it” (Merleau-Ponty, 1981, p. 250). Another crucial aspect of space deriving from the previous one is that it is always directional: Generally speaking, our perception would not comprise either outlines, figures, backgrounds or objects, and would consequently not be perception of anything, or indeed exist at all, if the subject of perception were not the gaze which takes a grip upon things only in so far as they have a general direction; and this general d ­ irection in space is not a contingent characteristic of the object, it is the means whereby I recognize it and I am conscious of it as of an object. (…) Thus, since every conceivable being is related either directly or ­indirectly to the perceived world, and since the perceived world is grasped only in terms of direction, we cannot dissociate being from orientated being. (Merleau-Ponty, 1981, p. 253) This is where perspective and depth of space should be taken into ­consideration. According to Merleau-Ponty, depth of space – ­profondeur – is the most important characteristic of perception, as depth of space is the most existential of all dimensions. This is because “it is not i­mpressed upon the object itself, it quite clearly belongs to the perspective and not the things” (Merleau-Ponty, 1981, p. 256). It is the depth of space that brings together the perceiver, the perceived object and the always directional perceived space inhabited by them both. As we have seen, Merleau-Ponty speaks of a lived and perceived space that does not stand on its own. If we turn our attention to film, we can see that the abstract space of photographic representation is dynamised as habitable; in the film space, it is transformed into something more complex than a geometrical configuration, and it becomes the situation

234  Zsolt Gyenge of an existence. This leads Sobchack to rethink the concept of point of view in cinema. As she writes, there is no such abstraction as point of view in the cinema; rather, there is a specific and mobile engagement of embodied and enworlded subjects / objects whose visual / visible activity prospects and articulates a shifting field of vision from a world that always exceeds it. (Sobchack, 1992, p. 62) According to Merleau-Ponty, every embodied experience is intentional, and I would argue that it is also closely related to movement, since movement in cinema can be viewed as the translation of intentionality into spatial relations. Consequently, I propose considering cinematic movement as spatialised intentionality, that is, as the visualised intentionality of the film’s body. In this regard, Sobchack defines the movement of the camera as the physical movement in and through space of the off-screen c­ amera qua subject that is perceived onscreen as the explicitly active movement of the film’s viewing view (...) [This] unseen but situated seeing subject is perceived not only as intentional, but also as materially present to its world. (2016, pp. 84–85) This is why I argue that a detailed phenomenological description of the camera’s ‘behaviour’ – its intentional presence in the space presented by it – could play a major role in the interpretation of films in general, and in Puiu’s cinema in particular. Monica Filimon, assuming a heightened focus in Puiu’s cinema on the inner life of the protagonist, discerns three layers of perception in Aurora: Viorel’s own ‘seeing’ of the causes for the dissolution of his marriage; the film’s own perception in its choices of objects, viewpoints and narration; and finally the viewer’s own perception of the film and of Viorel’s thoughts and emotions. The observational strategy established by Puiu leads to what Filimon calls “an emotional camera”, which has “a palpable presence that filters spectators’ relationship with the narrative” (2014, p. 173). ‘Emotional camera’, on her understanding, means that the observation itself is altered by Viorel’s emotions and moods, and that the camera belongs to a fictional narrative level suspended between Viorel’s world and the spectator’s (Filimon, 2014, p.  173). Nevertheless, Sobchack’s idea of the inexistence of point of view in cinema leads to the issue of the frame: if the point of view is not a geometrically constructed visual structure, the frame’s boundaries also come into question.

Framing Doors, Opening Up Spaces  235

Frame Due to its mobility and illusionary nature, cinematic frame is radically different from that of still images, mostly because it is only a secret and always temporal boundary of the film’s vision. This means that the frame itself is invisible to the intentional act of seeing, that is, the film, which does not take into consideration the presence of the frame in its perception of the space. But, however mobile, the frame – like the human body – is invariantly the bearer of the film’s orientational point, as “the frame functions as an ‘organ of perception’” (Sobchack, 1992, p. 135). When analysing field of vision, Merleau-Ponty contends that this concept is based on the “prejudice of the world” (1981, p. 5). He thus refers to the fact that we are dealing with a concept that is based on ­geometrical-optical laws, but to which there is nothing similar in the actual perceptual experience. If we speak of field of vision, we ought to perceive a part of the world that is precisely delimited. However, ­Merleau-Ponty argues that the territory that surrounds the field of vision is not black or grey. Rather, there is always an indeterminate vision and therefore, “to take the extreme case, what is behind my back is not without some e­ lement of visual presence” (1981, p. 6). In fact, in our everyday experience, the field of vision is not sharply delimited, even more so, the term ‘field of vision’ has to be understood quite broadly: “the limits of the visual field are a necessary stage in the organization of the world, and not an objective outline” (Merleau-Ponty, 1981, p. 277). Of course, camera movements are crucial in the constant reframing of the cinematic image, as they are the most obvious means to present the continuous unfolding in the act of seeing of a space that is wider and larger than that which can be included in the frame of a still ­image. Regarding reframing, Sobchack, when analysing the always moving and mobile frame of film, points out the clear difference between forward dolly and zooming, the latter being the visual representation of a change in attention-span (Sobchack, 1990, pp. 25–27). This distinction is ­important in our case because Puiu rarely uses zooming, depriving himself – ascribing to a somehow minimalist strategy – of a cinematic tool capable of expressing the emotions of the observer. In Cristi Puiu’s two latest feature films, as the invisible and ­embodied observer of the events is never allowed to move in the diegetic space, ­reframing through camera movement is limited to panning. This ­cinematic decision is important at least for two reasons. First, because the elimination of the actual movement of the camera creates a very ­anthropomorphic presence for the act of seeing: the pans that follow the characters from the eye level clearly suggest a person turning its head or gaze. Second, because this limitation allows Puiu to construct a web of frames through the many doors and gates that constantly close, limit and open up spaces between themselves. These physically existing frames

236  Zsolt Gyenge allow us to perceptually, bodily understand the contrast between vision ­ bservation, and embodiment: by being bound to a certain fixed place of o we are only partially able to see where the characters can go and inhabit the whole space freely. In Aurora, most of the time we see and follow Viorel’s movements with our and the camera’s gaze, but when he crosses a door, we are forced to imagine what happens behind that door. We are nonetheless still constantly watching in that direction, so he actually never gets out of our field of vision, even though we are unable to see him. This logic is exacerbated to the limits of absurdity in the scene in which Viorel beats her mother-in-law to death. The fixed camera f­ ollows the protagonist with its gaze while he climbs the stairs to the upper floor, and continues to do so even when he disappears behind a wall and then the ceiling. The audio clues help us imagine what happens to the characters and to the invisible and immobile observer, who reacts to what is happening without being able to see it. This is taken to the extreme when, after the first few punches, the camera tilts downwards a few inches, probably reacting to the fact that the woman has fallen on the floor and Viorel has to kneel in order to continue the beating. Do terms like hors-champ or hors-cadre have any meaning in such a case? When the camera follows Viorel’s movements behind the wall, is he ­actually out-of-frame? Filimon points this scene out as the one that most ­obviously emphasises the role of the author, the self-­reflexivity of the ­cinematic narrative presented to us. She argues that the refusal to follow the ­antihero upstairs “goes against viewers’ expectations, ­emphasizing their inability to see (and control) events” (Filimon, 2017, p. 94). ­Discussing Puiu’s framing strategy, she states that the aim of these frames is epistemological: they are intended to further emphasise “the ­ ltering of narrative information”, that is, to raise constant subjective fi awareness of the limited ­possibilities of the perceptual act (Filimon, 2014, p. 181). I consider the interpretation of the construction of such an act of perception as simply a modernist take on the role of the author being limitative, so I will provide an alternative interpretation below. 2

Cristi Puiu’s Act of Seeing In Puiu’s cinema, the emphasis put on the perceptual process, on the observation of the space, tends simultaneously to represent and ­create an embodied perceptual experience for and of the viewer. Filimon ­argues that Puiu’s goal is to make spectators conscious, not only of the film as a subject with its own intentionality – this would be Sobchack’s ­account – but also of their own act of seeing (Filimon, 2014, p. 171). The ­director’s approach, however, is one of epistemological pessimism as his films seem to speak about the essential failure of observation and perception. As Filimon formulates, “the phenomenal experiment Puiu seems to have ­designed is to emphasize the existential impossibility of unbiased,

Framing Doors, Opening Up Spaces  237 coherent and incontestable knowledge of an individual’s ­inner world” (2014, p. 173). She calls “perceptual realism” the specific exploration of reality that the viewer can experience in Puiu’s films, especially in Aurora (Filimon, 2014, p. 171). According to her interpretation, through the emphasis put on the permanent representation of the perceptual act of seeing itself, Puiu “highlights the relativity of any observer’s – whether a camera’s or an individual’s – perception of the world, and declares consistent, intelligible characters as mere illusions” (Filimon, 2014, p. 170). This would mean that the whole visual design of Puiu’s cinema is ­intended to uncover the illusory nature of observation and perception. In my view, however, all this very consciously designed style and structure of cinematic representation, this ghostly presence of a “hypothetic observer” (Filimon, 2014, p. 174), would be excessive, even redundant, if the goal was only to expose the limited nature of perception. I argue that a thorough phenomenological analysis of Aurora and Sieranevada leads us to the recognition of an actual ghostly presence in both films. ­Aurora is dealing with a schizophrenic, split personality, and the filmmaker ­offers us the perspective of one side of it. It is Viorel, the protagonist, who watches himself falling apart, destroying everything around him; he has the ability to observe, but he is doomed to eternal passivity. It is not by accident that the director plays this character: thus, Cristi Puiu, the filmmaker, watches – together with us – Cristi Puiu, the actor, and fails to understand and to stop him. In her recent book on Puiu, Filimon offers a different interpretation. She points out that one effect of the socio-economic changes that took place in Eastern Europe after 1989 was the dismantling of the ­patriarchal, virile and potential male figure. Thus, she continues, “Puiu’s antihero is (….) a ‘redundant male’, whose nostalgia for a patriarchal world of male privilege becomes extreme in the aftermath of his divorce” ­(Filimon, 2017, pp. 78–79). By connecting this idea with one of Puiu’s statement from an interview, she finally concludes that the unseen observer of the events, the absent other we have mentioned earlier, is nobody else than the ghost of Viorel’s dead father looking at his child (Filimon, 2017, p. 89). This new interpretation opens more possibilities than the ­previous one, but nevertheless remains problematic. Instead of focusing solely on self-reflexivity, Filimon here tries to anchor in the ­narrative the meticulously designed act of seeing provided by the film. However, the story of the dead father is neither central to the main ­character nor to the narrative. Moreover, though Filimon presents her analysis in psychoanalytic terms, she does not address any ­psychoanalytically informed research, so she fails to uncover the deeper consequences and possible conclusions of such an interpretation. There is another interesting issue here. Filimon’s book was written before the premiere of Sieranevada at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival. Somehow different from Aurora, though still on a fixed tripod, in this

238  Zsolt Gyenge new film the camera is extremely mobile in the sense that it is permanently turning towards different parts of the space it examines through its almost imperceptible wobble, thus imitating the small movements of an otherwise still human body. Based on this observation, I suggest that in this film, that takes place in its entirety during the family ­gathering organised to commemorate the father’s recent death, such an act of ­perception represents in an unspoken way a haunting presence, namely, the ghost of the dead father. In this regard, Filimon’s interpretation of the previous film presented earlier could work better for Sieranevada, but her analysis nonetheless points out that the issue of the missing ­father was already present in Cristi Puiu’s universe. The film is set in two locations: the overwhelming majority of the scenes are located in the tiny apartment of the parents, with a few ­moments ­being placed on the street and in the car of the oldest son, Lary. Especially in the apartment, the behaviour of the observational ­camera is that of an uninvited guest, who, feeling somewhat a­ wkward, tries not to be in anyone’s way, and tries to keep a distance while ­observing ­everything with attention. The spatial distance is already ­evident in the first shot of Sieranevada, where the camera is positioned on the other side of the street, two rows of parking cars and the street itself ­separating us from the characters and their actions. Spatial relationships are then ­translated into emotional ones when during the day there is ­absolutely no visible reaction from the camera to the sometimes ­hilarious, but mostly ­disturbing or even tragic manifestations, disclosures, increasingly creating the impression of an absent presence. An important step in the refinement of Cristi Puiu’s cinema is the fact that the sense of passivity we have described regarding Viorel in Aurora has become even more integrated in the visual forms of expression. Compared to Aurora, there is a significant change in montage in ­Sieranevada that radically changes the act of perception. Instead of shooting each scene in one take, in the latest film – though still opting for long takes – Puiu often moves the camera to another position within the space during a scene, and on a few occasions even uses jump cuts. Such a representation destabilises the position of the observer, making its spatial embodiment precarious, an ambiguity that further strengthens the impression of simultaneous presence and absence in the viewer, leading to the conclusion that the subject of observation might be the ghost of the father being celebrated. There are only two instants when this ghostly presence seems to be briefly noticed. The first takes place at the beginning, when we follow Lary and his wife driving to the apartment. During their quarrel, the man very briefly looks in the rear-view mirror and directly into the camera. The second moment happens much later, when the supposedly unfaithful husband of Ofelia intrudes into the family commemoration. At a certain point, the indignant mother shouts, “you wouldn’t dare to behave like this, if Emil were still here” – while at the same time pointing with her hand towards the head of the

Framing Doors, Opening Up Spaces  239 big dining table (supposedly the regular place of her late husband) and towards the camera that is positioned nearby. What is remarkable in Sieranevada is that the ghostly presence of the dead father is not mentioned or even suggested on the level of the narrative or in the dialogues; it is constructed solely through the observational attitude showcased by the act of perception of the film. Thus, I suggest that the complex nature of both Aurora and Sieranevada is due to the fact that through the conscious design of spatiality and the act of seeing, Cristi Puiu is able to provide an additional layer of meanings, one that goes beyond the simple representation of the troubles and uncertainties of a society and generation trapped in permanent transition.

Notes 1 See Doru Pop’s book on the Romanian New Wave, in which he argues that Puiu’s cinema has evolved from realism to naturalism (2014, p. 42). Dominique Nasta also speaks of minimalism, documentary style and hyperrealistic depiction in Puiu’s cinema (2013, pp. 155–164). For several interpretations based on realism of New Romanian Cinema in general, see the volume Politicile filmului: contribuţii la interpretarea cinemaului românesc contemporan (Gorzo & State, 2014). 2 We should, however, consider the similarities with modern cinema. András Bálint Kovács identifies three types of minimalism: he names the style developed by Bresson “metonymic minimalism”, mostly due to the extensive use of the off-screen space, which is used mostly to reduce redundancy – we only hear what takes place off-screen (Kovács, 2007, pp. 141–142). This is very close to what one can observe in the two case studies in this paper, although I do not have the possibility to develop this issue further here. This similarity to Kovács’ definition of metonymic minimalism has also been observed by Doru Pop (2011, p. 67).

Works Cited Filmography Puiu, C. (2005). The Death of Mr. Lazarescu (Moartea domnului Lăzărescu). Puiu, C. (2010). Aurora. Puiu, C. (2016). Sieranevada. Tarkovsky, A. (1975). The Mirror (Зеркало). Bibliography Barker, J. M. (2009). The tactile eye: Touch and the cinematic experience. Berkeley: University of California Press. Ferencz-Flatz, C. (2013). Aurora: Elements from an analysis of misunderstanding. Close Up: Film and Media Studies, 1(1), 32–42. Filimon, M. (2014). Incommunicable experiences: Ambiguity and perceptual realism in Cristi Puiu’s aurora (2010). Studies in Eastern European Cinema, 5(2), 169–184. doi:10.1080/17411548.2014.925337 Filimon, M. (2017). Cristi Puiu. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

240  Zsolt Gyenge Gaudin, A. (2015). L’ espace cinématographique: esthétique et dramaturgie. Paris, France: Armand Colin. Gorzo, A., & State, A. (Eds.). (2014). Politicile filmului: contribuţii la interpretarea cinemaului românesc contemporan. Cluj-Napoca: Tact. Kovács, A. B. (2007). Screening modernism: European art cinema, 1950–1980. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Merleau-Ponty, M. (1981). Phenomenology of perception. London, UK: Routledge & Kegan Paul. (Original work published in 1945). Nasta, D. (2013). Contemporary romanian cinema: The history of an unexpected miracle. London, UK & New York, NY: Wallflower Press. Pop, D. (2011). The aesthetic of the new wave, according to Cristi Puiu. Ekphrasis, 2, 60–76. Pop, D. (2014). Romanian new wave cinema: An introduction. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, Inc. Raviv, O. (2016). The cinematic point of view: Thinking film with MerleauPonty. Studia Phaenomenologica, XVI, 163–183. Sobchack, V. C. (1990). The active eye: A phenomenology of cinematic vision. ­Quarterly Review of Film and Video, 12(3), 21–36. doi:10.1080/10509209 009361350 Sobchack, V. C. (2016). “The Active Eye” (Revisited): Toward a p ­ henomenology of cinematic movement. Studia Phaenomenologica, 16, 63–90. Sobchack, V. C. (1992). The address of the eye: A phenomenology of film experience. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

List of Contributors

Maria Irene Aparício is an Assistant Professor of Cinema and Artistic Studies in the Faculty of Social Science and Humanities at the New University of Lisbon (Portugal), and a Full Member and Researcher of CineLab – Laboratory of Cinema and Philosophy of Nova’s Institute of Philosophy (IFILNOVA). She is the co-author, with Joao Mário Grilo, of the book Cinema & Filosofia: Compêndio (2014). Her research interests include Cinema and Philosophy, Film Theory, Film Directing, Art’s Practices and Research, with main focus on the issues of Art and Science, Film and Memory, Arts, Ethics and Aesthetics and Portuguese Cinema, as well as philosophical, ethical and political problems of contemporary film, art and visual culture. She has published several essays and articles on these subjects. Sérgio Dias Branco (PhD Film Studies, University of Kent, UK) is an Assistant Professor of Film Studies at the University of Coimbra (Portugal), where he coordinates the film and image studies and LIPA – ­Laboratory for Investigating and Practicing Art. He also directs the MA in Art Studies. He is an Integrated Researcher at IFILNOVA – Nova Institute of Philosophy – and a member of the film analysis group ‘The Magnifying Class’ at the University of Oxford. He has been a member of the Direction Board of AIM – Association of Moving Image Researchers – since 2014. He co-edits Cinema: Journal of Philosophy and the Moving Image and Conversations: The Journal of Cavellian Studies and is the author of Por Dentro das Imagens: Obras de Cinema, Ideias do Cinema [Within Images: Film Works, Cinema Ideas] (2016). Sandra Camacho is a PhD student in Comparative Studies at the University of Lisbon, where she is developing a thesis entitled, From the Analogue to Image Retrieval: Concepts of Archival Art in Daniel Blaufuks. She holds an MA in Art and Multimedia from the Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Lisbon (2011) and an MA in Contemporary Art from Sotheby’s Institute of Art, University of Manchester (2013). Her main areas of interest are the archive as contemporary art practice, the digital archive, media archaeology, interarts studies and memory studies.

242  List of Contributors Jeffrey Childs is an Assistant Professor of English and American Studies at Universidade Aberta (Lisbon, Portugal) and a Researcher at the Center for Comparative Studies and at the Centre for English Studies at the University of Lisbon (Portugal). His current research interest lies in the restructuring of the field of rhetorical studies, insofar as the work carried out in this domain allows for the articulation of older disciplinary areas (literature, history, philosophy) with more recent artistic and multidisciplinary practices. His recent publications include the essays “Poets in Glass Houses: Carlos Drummond de ­A ndrade, Wallace Stevens, Mark Strand” (2016), “Alegoria e Imagem no Filme Broken Blossoms, de D. W. Griffith” (2016) and “Style, Narrative, and Cultural Politics in Bullitt” (2017), among others. Furthermore, he has recently completed a translation of Clepysdra, by the Portuguese symbolist poet Camilo Pessanha. Paulo Cunha (PhD Contemporary Studies, University of Coimbra, Portugal) is an Assistant Professor of Film Studies at the University of Beira Interior (Covilhã, Portugal), where he coordinates the Master’s Degree in Cinema. He is a member of LabCom.IFP research centre (University of Beira Interior) and collaborator on CEIS20 – Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies of the 20th Century (University of Coimbra). Along with Michelle Sales, he co-edited the book Cinema Português: Um Guia Essencial (2013). He is also the editorial coordinator of Aniki: Portuguese Journal of the Moving Image, the coordinator of Jornadas Cinema em Português (University of Beira Interior) and the vice-president of the Portuguese Federation of Film Societies. Moreover, he works as a film programmer at the Curtas Vila do Conde and Porto/Post/Doc international film festivals. José Duarte teaches North American Cinema and History of Cinema at the School of Arts and Humanities, University of Lisbon (Portugal). He is a Researcher at ULICES (University Lisbon Centre for English Studies) and has co-edited the books Cinematic Narratives: Transatlantic Perspectives (2017) and The Global Road Movie: Alternative Journeys around the World (2018). His research interests focus on the relationship between the cinema and the city, as well as on independent cinema. Francisco Ferreira (PhD Architecture, Universidade do Minho, Portugal; and M.Sc. Architecture Metropolis, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Spain) works as a Professor at Escola de Arquitectura da Universidade do Minho (EAUM), where he has been teaching, amongst other subjects, a course on Cities and Cinema since 2010. He is a researcher at Lab2PT, Universidade do Minho, and a co-­editor at Jack – Journal on Architecture and Cinema, the second issue of which is about to be published. Moreover, he has written and directed two short films:

List of Contributors  243 ­ ational Short FicPanorama (2013), which was awarded as the Best N ­ isbon, and Anywhere tion Film at the Arquitecturas Film Festival, L (2014). Antoine Gaudin is an Assistant Professor (Maître de conférences) in Film Studies at University Paris 3 – Sorbonne Nouvelle (IRCAV). He is the author of L’espace cinématographique. Esthétique et dramaturgie (Armand Colin, 2015) and the co-editor of Représentations-­limites des corps sexuels dans le cinéma et l’audiovisuel contemporains (Presses de la Sorbonne Nouvelle, 2017). To be published soon: Le vidéoclip musical: approaches théoriques et critiques d’un art pop (Presses du Septentrion, 2019). Zsolt Gyenge works as an Associate Professor at the Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design (Budapest, Hungary), where he teaches courses in film theory, film history and visual communication theory. His field of research includes interpretation theories (phenomenology, hermeneutics), experimental film, video art and Romanian Cinema. He is the author of the book Kép, mozgókép, megértés. Egy ­fenomenológiai filmelemzés elmélete (Image, Moving Image, Interpre­­tation: A Theory of Phenomenological Film Analysis, 2017). He is the editor of the scholarly journal on design and visual ­culture Disegno, and is a member of two international research projects (Space-ing Otherness; Cine-versity). He is currently working on a postdoctoral research project entitled, Expanded Screens: New Spectatorship and Subversion in Contemporary Moving Image Installations. He is also active as a freelance film critic. Sander Hölsgens  (PhD Architectural Design, The Bartlett School of ­A rchitecture, University College London) is a Filmmaker and Writer currently working on dust and deserts in Southern California. His films include Reverberations (2016), Blue Bluer (2017) and Clouds of Blue Dust (2018). Moreover, he also works as a visiting scholar at Leiden University. María Luna (PhD Communication Contents at the Digital Age, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, UAB) teaches as an Adjunct Lecturer at Tec­ arcelona). As a nocampus ESUPT – UPF (Universitat Pompeu Fabra, B member of the research groups Narrativas de la Resistencia (UPF) and Grup Internacional d’Estudis sobre Comunicació y Cultura (UAB), she has published several essays on documentary, transnational cinema, audiovisual distribution and public television. She has co-edited the volume Culturas indígenas, investigación, c­ omunicación y resistencia (2018) along with Amparo Huertas-Bailén, and is currently working on a volume on new approaches to documentary research and practice with Pablo Mora and Daniela Samper. Moreover, she is an academic co-coordinator and curator at MIDBO (International

244  List of Contributors Documentary Film Festival in Bogotá) and a member of ECREA, NECS and HoMer Network. Maurizia Natali  (PhD Film Aesthetics, Sorbonne Nouvelle, France) has taught Film and Art History at RISD (1996–2016), RI College and Brown University. She has lectured in New York, Providence, Montreal, Cerisy, London, Rome and Lisbon. She published the book L’Image-Paysage, Iconologie et Cinéma (1996) and numerous essays, such as “The Sublime Excess of the American Landscape. Dances with Wolves and Sunchaser as Healing Landscapes” (2001), “Warburg et Godard. La mise en scene de l’ecran” (2004), “The Course of Empire: Sublime Landscapes in American Cinema” (2006), “L’installazione post-cinematica in Aurelien Froment” (2012), “Il corpo delle donne by Lorella Zanardo. Allegoria della pornocrazia italiana” (2013), “Gradivae & Nymphs: Walking Women in Italian Cinema” (2015) and “Avatar, SF mannerism in the Anthropocene” (Forthcoming), among others. Recently, she lectured at the French Studies Conference ‘Sous le Pave’ conference (Providence, RI) with a lecture titled, “Agnès Varda: Voyages aux marges de l’Anthropocène, ou Le peuplen’a pas (encore) disparu”. María Novela de Aragón  (M.Sc. Architecture, Superior Technical School of Architecture of Madrid, Spain) is one of the co-founders of Cabana Partners for Architecture, an architectural firm based in Madrid, where she currently works. As a researcher, she has focused on the use of staircases in film, especially on the morphological features that make them so useful to filmmakers. Anna Poupou (PhD Film Studies, Sorbonne Nouvelle, France) teaches as an Adjunct Lecturer at the Theatre Studies Department, National & Kapodistrian University of Athens and at the Hellenic Open University. She has worked as a programmer at the Greek Film Archive and collaborated as a researcher with the Department of Communication and Media of the University of Athens for the European programme I-Media Cities. Her research interests focus on the history of Greek cinema, the urban space in film and the Greek film noir, subjects on which she has co-edited three collective volumes – City and Cinema: Theoretical and Methodological Approaches (2011), Athens: World Film Locations (2014), The Lost Highway of Greek Cinema 1960– 1990 (2018) – and a thematic issue at the Filmicon. Journal of Greek Film Studies. Filipa Rosário (PhD Artistic Studies – Audiovisual and Cinema Studies, University of Lisbon, Portugal) is a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Centre for Comparative Studies at the University of Lisbon, where she is developing a research project on landscape and Portuguese cinema. She coordinates the project ‘Cinema and the World – Studies on Space and Cinema’ at the same centre and also co-coordinates

List of Contributors  245 the ‘Landscape and Cinema’ work group at AIM – Association of the Moving Image Researchers, whose Directive Board she currently integrates. She is the author of the book O Trabalho do Actor no Cinema de John Cassavetes (The Actor’s Craft in the Cinema of John Cassavetes, 2017). Paolo Simoni  (PhD Cultural Heritage, Turin Polytechnic, Italy) is a Founding Member and current Director of the Italian Amateur Film Archive (Home Movies – Archivio Nazionale del Film di Famiglia, Bologna, www.homemovies.it). His interests are in both academic research and audiovisual production. As a research fellow at the University of Padua (2016–2017) and formerly at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, he is engaged in projects on recovering and studying archival film materials. He has written several essays on amateur cinema, focusing primarily on the relation between ­audiovisual sources, personal stories and history, as well as the book Lost Landscapes. Il cinema amatoriale e la città (2018). As an author, curator and producer, he has completed a large number of audiovisual archive-based projects, including found footage films (Catherine, Formato Ridotto, Miss Cinema – Archivio Mossina), installations (Expanded Archive), exhibitions (Family, Cinematic Bologna) and apps (Play the City). Bruno Surace is a PhD student in Semiotics and Media at the ­University of Turin and a Member of AISS (Associazione Italiana Studi ­Semiotici), CUC (Consulta Universitaria Cinema) and CIRCe (­Centro ­Interdipartimentale di Ricercasulla Comunicazione, Turin). He has co-­edited the volume I discorsi della fine: Catastrofi, disastri, apocalissi (2018) and is currently co-editing a book on the Japanese imaginary in Western society. He has published several articles in peer-reviewed journals, participated in European summer schools and given lectures in international conferences and seminars. Moreover, in the first ­semester of 2017, he was a visiting scholar in the Department of Film and Screen Media at UCC (University College Cork, Ireland). Finally, as a film critic, he participates in a weekly Italian radio show. Iván Villarmea Álvarez (PhD History of Art, Universidad de Zaragoza, Spain) works as a Postdoctoral Researcher at Universidade de ­Santiago de Compostela (Galicia, Spain). His research career is focused on the representation of space and landscape in films, a subject on which he published the book Documenting Cityscapes. Urban Change in Contemporary Non-Fiction Film (2015) and a special issue – edited with Filipa Rosário – in Aniki. Portuguese Journal of the Moving Image (2017). Moreover, since 2011, he has contributed to the online film journal A Cuarta Parede, for which he has co-edited the volume Jugar con la Memoria. El Cine Portugués en el Siglo XXI (2014) along with Horacio Muñoz Fernández.

Index

abstraction 157, 200 act of seeing 228–231, 235–237, 239 aesthetics 3, 27, 30–32, 76, 97, 153, 175 affect 78, 205, 208–209, 211–212; affection 13, 164; affectionate eye 23; affective 159, 161–162, 191–192, 205, 207, 210, 212; affectivities 191, 205–207, 209, 211–212 Alexiou, A. 12, 29, 31, 34–37, 38n1 allegory 34, 68, 75, 102–103 allospace 216–225 America 68–69, 76, 90, 92, 94, 98–101, 103; American 80; American army 144; American bar 127n1; American cinema 68–69, 79; American city 87, 89; American cityscapes 35; American community 86; American culture 68, 85–87; American dream 104; American domestic environment 93; American families 99; American films 29, 67–68, 85; American home 92; American lifestyle 51; American neo-noir 34; American noir 29, 85, 93, 95; American people 80; American private-eye 91; American refugees 75; American suburbs 51; American territorial expansion 68; Americannes 93; Americans 75; Japanese-Americans 118; NorthernAmerican influences 217; smalltown America 98, 100 Anthropocene 68, 70–79, 81 anxiety 30, 35, 61, 63, 69, 71, 73, 78, 87, 90, 95 archaeology 18, 23, 68; archaeological 13, 79, 131; archaeological gaze 109, 112, 115, 119, 121, 127

architecture 4, 20, 23, 27, 30, 33, 35, 37, 56, 58, 64, 113, 122, 130–131, 138n3, 142, 146, 149, 206, 211–212; architectural 5, 16–17, 19–20, 27–29, 31–33, 35–37, 43–46, 48, 53, 56–57, 60, 64–65, 73, 113, 118, 123–124, 145, 185, 206–207, 212; architectural space 5, 12, 43–45, 54, 133 archive 4, 11, 13, 22, 25, 38, 65n1, 72, 126, 129, 134, 136, 151; archival corpus 19; archival footage 25, 117; archival images 133, 149; archival material 14, 112; archivist 25; archivist gaze 12, 24; Archivio Nazionale del Film di Famiglia 11, 15 Arctic 130, 132–136 art 70–71, 73, 76, 79, 81, 88. 135, 155, 157, 159–160, 164, 211; art cinema 27, 30; art department 43; art direction 43; art films 12, 31; art history 4; artist 47–48, 73, 111, 113, 140, 142, 145–146, 149, 151, 160, 212; artistic 57, 85, 93, 106, 137, 182, 193, 210; artwork 138n6, 161, 163; martial arts 37; visual arts 4 As if… (film) 110, 140–151 Athens 12, 29–30, 32–33, 35–37, 39n7 Aurora (film) 192, 230, 232, 234, 236–239 Austerlitz (book) 144–147, 150–151 An Autumn Afternoon (film) 191, 205–209, 211–214 Avatar (film) 75–77, 80 Bachelard, G. 92–93, 157–158, 191, 205–207 background, as area behind 13, 15, 22, 33, 59, 63, 73–74, 85, 191, 193, 201, 220, 233; as context 69, 232

248 Index Bakhtin, M. 28, 171 baroque 76, 100–102 Benjamin, W. 28, 70–71, 79, 87–88 The Big Heat (film) 92–93 Blackmail (film) 45, 47–48, 54 Blaufuks, D. 110, 140–151 blue 32, 75–76, 148, 191, 205, 207, 209–214, 219, 221 body 1, 3, 5, 32, 46, 57, 93, 97, 100, 131–132, 136, 191, 193–198, 200–201, 205–206, 209–213, 229–233, 235, 238; film’s body 192, 195–196, 200–201, 229–232, 234 Bologna 11, 14–21, 23, 25 border 16–17, 21, 23, 75, 86, 101, 113–114, 124, 133, 161, 163, 167, 184, 219 bruise 205, 209, 211, 213 California Company Town (film) 110, 115–119, 121 Cameron, J. 68, 75–77 capitalism 3, 75, 79–80, 89, 91–92, 117, 127, 133; capitalist 68, 71, 73, 79, 102, 113, 137 Capitalocene 73, 80–81 cartography 14, 20, 172; cartographic 179; cartographic cinema 124; cinematic cartography 4, 109, 112, 122, 124–127, 154, 167–168, 179 Castro, T. 4, 20, 123 Christopher, N. 99, 105–106 chronotope 28, 168, 171, 173, 191, 220 cinema 1–4, 17, 20, 23, 25, 27–28, 30–31, 33, 36, 45, 58, 64, 70–71, 73, 78–79, 85, 95, 97, 109, 111, 124, 136, 147, 153–159, 161–164, 179–181, 187–188, 191–196, 199–203, 209, 211, 213, 216–219, 222, 224, 228–230, 232–234, 236–239; art cinema 27, 30; amateur cinema 13–25; cinema of austerity 122; Colombian cinema 166–177; genre cinema 31, 37; Greek cinema 27–37; Iranian cinema 155–164; Japanese cinema 205–214; popular cinema 30, 34, 93; sci-fi cinema 68–69 Cinemacene 72–74, 79, 81 city 3, 11, 13–14, 16–25, 29–30, 32–33, 35, 68–69, 85–95, 102, 106, 114–115, 118, 130, 133, 140, 142,

146–148, 150–151, 184–185, 224; amateur city 11, 13, 15–16, 18, 21, 25;cityscape 11–16, 19–20, 22–25, 27–33, 35–37, 67, 112–114; city centre 16, 19–20, 22–23, 30, 113; city life 15, 21, 94; city residents 16, city symphonies 25; city skyline 23; city tableaux 113, image of the city 14–17, 21, 33, 91, 113, 124; modern city 86, 90, 92; noir city 87, 90, 100 close-up 52, 119, 123, 148, 160, 163, 220–221 Colombia 153, 170, 172, 174, 176n2; Colombian armed conflict 154, 166–173, 175–176; Colombian cinema 170, 174; Colombian documentary film 166–167, 176 colour 32, 34, 145, 191–192, 196, 205–207, 209–212, 214, 221 community 34, 86, 92, 118, 124, 126, 134–136, 138n5, 141, 159, 175–176, 200 composition 2–3, 32, 45, 59, 111, 135, 180, 191, 218 Conley, T. 4, 97, 107n2, 124 contraction 195, 197, 200–201 cosmos 65, 206 crisis 12, 27–28, 34, 36–37, 56, 69–72, 90, 130, 157; climate crisis 69, 71, 73, 80 creation 5, 27, 29, 58, 129, 131, 134–135, 143–144, 154, 166, 169, 171, 176n1, 180, 187, 216, 218, 223, 230 cut 14, 197–198, 201–202, 213, 219, 238 Deleuze, G. 68, 70–71, 75, 100–101, 153, 160, 162–163, 191, 193–194 Dimendberg, E. 3, 30, 32, 85–91, 93, 95 disaster 63, 68–70, 72, 74–75, 77–81; disasterfilm / movies 5, 67–68, 79 displacement 88, 104, 181; forced displacement 167, 171, 175–176 drama 48, 86, 201; dramatic 2, 43, 79, 89, 98; dramatisation 89, 143 dream, as noun 35, 71, 74, 85, 89, 132–134, 160, 192, 216–221, 224–226n2; as verb 91, 105, 107, 133; American dream 104; dreamer 74, 218–219, 225; dreaming 74, 198, 220; dreamy 133, 135

Index  249 documentary, as adjective 24, 60, 154, 166–168, 171–172, 174, 176, 239n1; as noun 2, 19, 24–25, 28, 80, 110, 122, 129, 131–132, 134–138n3, 141–142, 145, 147, 149–150, 154, 158, 166–174, 176; documentary filmmakers 169; musical documentary 110; psychogeographical documentaries 5, 109, 111–127 domestic 33, 43, 57–60, 62–63, 67–68, 85–86, 92–94, 205, 207, 211, 213–214; domestic environment 64–65, 93; domesticity 34, 192, 205, 208 Double Indemnity (film) 35, 68, 86, 91 dweller 14, 94, 174; dwelling 51, 92–93, 192, 205–207, 214 dystopia 69–72, 80, 216; dystopian 67–69, 79 Economides, Y. 12, 31–32, 38n1 Eden 61, 76; Eden-like 63, 75; Edenic qualities 58 editing 1–2, 11, 13, 126, 150, 194–195, 198, 200–201, 213, 220, 232; editing choices 52; editing room 119 Efterklang 110, 129–138 Emmerich, R. 68, 74–75, 77–78 empty, as adjective 16, 30, 32, 38n4, 38n5, 86, 90, 94, 133, 140, 142, 146, 151, 157, 194, 208–209; emptiness 27, 91, 146, 195 The Empty Centre (film) 109, 112–115 enclosed, as adjective 27, 44, 58, 60, 63, 97; enclosed staircase 43, 45–48, 54; enclosure 31, 64, 94, 98, 103 environment 57–59, 61–62, 65, 71, 73, 75, 77, 136, 161, 213, 224, 233; built environment 4, 56, 124; city environment 14; domestic environment 64–65, 93; environmentalist 77, 80–81; environmentalism 70; everyday environment 11, 28, 109; marginal environment 33; mental environment 70; middle-class environment 30; social environment 31–32; urban environment 11, 14, 89, 92; working-class environment 23

event 15, 22–23, 28, 32, 36, 65, 69–72, 74–75, 78, 80, 100, 103, 109–112, 114, 126, 135, 143–145, 149, 156, 167, 172, 221, 230, 232, 235–237 everyday 85, 94; everyday element 43; everyday environment 11, 28, 109; everyday experience 1, 228, 235; everyday life 14, 31, 37, 49, 57, 79, 89, 118, 121, 156, 170, 172, 174, 194, 196, 199, 206; everyday object 49, everyday resistances 173; everyday scale 203; everyday space 111; everyday struggles 206 expansion 22, 68, 86, 195, 197, 200–201 expedition 129, 131–133, 135, 137, 154 experience 52, 57, 64, 67, 88, 90–91, 132, 135–136, 147–148, 151, 156, 159–161, 163–164, 188, 194–195, 200, 212, 225, 230, 232; aesthetic experience 78, 89; cinematic experience 74, 191, 229–230; daily experience 13, 61; embodied experience 209, 228, 234; everyday experience 1, 228, 235; film experience 229, 231; human experience 103, 154–155; life experience 162, 174; lived experience 144, 147, 151, 207; perceptual experience 5, 191–192, 228, 230, 235–236; personal experience 156, 160, 174; social experience 4, 89; spatial experience 3, 61, 201, 203, 232; subjective experience 1, 3; urban experience 11; viewer experience 230–231; visual experience 22 exterior, as adjective 43, 62, 101, 119, 162; as noun 48, 64–65, 91, 104; exteriorisation 143–144 feeling 1, 28, 30–31, 33, 35, 43, 45, 47, 52, 54, 56, 58, 62, 70, 72–73, 78, 80, 85, 94, 105, 112, 122, 124, 159, 161, 164, 171, 194, 206, 224 femme fatale 30, 92, 101, 104–106 fiction 23, 50, 69, 72, 78, 80, 91, 120, 143–145, 155, 164, 169, 171, 174; fictional 43, 60, 64, 69–70, 72, 79, 87, 99, 101, 110–111, 140, 142–143, 146, 148, 150–151, 210,

250 Index 234; non-fiction 109, 112, 154; non-fictional 212; science fiction 60, 62, 67, 69–81, 224 film, film analysis 167, 193, 228–229; film collection 15–16, 22–23, 25n6; film device 15, 25; film festival 31, 34, 38n1, 167, 169, 172, 177n8, 237; film heritage 13, 25; film location 11, 23, 109, 111, 120, 167–168, 177n7; film noir 5, 27, 29–32, 34–36, 38n2, 67–68, 85–95, 97–107; film phenomenology 5, 228; film set 4–5, 11, 23, 43; film’s body 192, 195–196, 200–201, 230–232, 234 Forbidden Planet (film) 44, 57, 61–65 Foucault, M. 3, 153–154, 156–157, 162, 166, 176, 186–188, 217 frame 15–16, 18, 21–22, 45, 52, 54, 60, 64, 103, 106, 111, 113, 134, 192–193, 195, 199–200, 208, 210, 217–220, 222–223, 226n2, 230, 234–236 future 5, 19, 24–25, 37, 56–57, 59–60, 68, 70, 75, 77, 79–81, 85, 89, 90, 107, 110–111, 113–114, 122, 127, 137, 155, 159, 161, 164, 187; House of the Future 44, 57, 59–65 Gaumont 154, 179, 181–182, 184–187 gaze 11–16, 24–25, 35, 37, 43, 48, 112, 115, 149, 154, 163–164, 166, 168, 173–174, 222–224, 230, 233, 235–236; archaeological gaze 109, 112, 115–119, 121, 127 genre 3, 5, 11, 27–31, 37, 45, 67–69, 71, 79, 85–86, 88–89, 97–98, 100–104, 107n4, 161 geography 4, 18, 107n2, 110, 131, 166; geographic / geographical 14, 59, 89, 99, 101, 117, 119, 120, 124, 131, 134, 155–156, 159–160, 162, 167, 182; cinematic geography 14, 16, 32; filmic geography 28–30; geography of terror 154, 175–176; urban geography 29 ghetto 140–151 ghost 110, 120, 133, 140, 146, 156, 161, 163, 237–238; ghost town 110, 118, 129, 131, 135, 137; ghostly 63, 133, 225; ghostly presence 92, 232, 237–239

The Ghost of Piramida(film) 110, 129–138 Gilda (film) 68, 93, 101 God 159, 222–223 Greek New Wave 27, 31 grey 31–32, 142, 147–148, 191, 205, 209, 212, 235 hallucination 192, 216, 220–221; hallucinatory 90, 219 Hamilton, R. 44, 57–59, 61–62, 65 heterotopia 153–154, 156, 162, 166– 167, 169–171, 173–176, 187–188, 217–218, 222; heterotopic 153, 217, 224; heterotopic spaces 5, 153–188 Hitchcock, A. 5, 43, 45–54, 99, 217 Holocaust 112, 143–144, 149 home 56–59, 61–62, 68, 81, 85, 92–93, 95, 105, 107, 114–115, 136, 160, 173, 192, 199, 205–209, 214, 217, 221; family home 51, 92; home movies 13, 15–16, 22–23, Home Tree 75, 77; homecoming 207, homelessness 89; hometown 106 horizontal 35, 46, 48, 52–53, 171, 174, 205–206; horizontality 54 house 19, 27, 43, 45, 47–54, 58, 60–65, 93–94, 111, 114–115, 117, 124, 142, 160, 171, 175, 191, 199, 205–208, 213, 224; House of the Future 44, 57, 59–65 huis-clos 97–98 image 3–5, 13–15, 17–18, 20–22, 24–25, 27–28, 32–36, 58–61, 64–65, 70, 73, 86, 88–89, 91, 93, 103, 110, 113–115, 117–118, 121–124, 126, 129, 133, 136–137, 141–142, 144–145, 147–151, 154–155, 162, 164, 167–168, 171, 179, 181–183, 185–187, 193, 196, 199–200, 203, 207, 209, 211, 213–214, 217, 222, 228–229; archival image 133, 149; image of the city 14–17, 21, 33, 91, 113, 124; imagery 12, 28, 34, 43, 56–57, 60–61, 64, 87, 102; cinematic / filmic / moving image 1–4, 11, 13–16, 18–19, 24, 71–73, 109, 111, 126, 136, 191, 193, 195, 197, 200–201, 211, 222, 229–231, 235;

Index  251 space-image 191, 193–203, 229; still image 111, 229, 235 Impact (film) 67–68, 97–107 impossibility 33–34, 133, 219, 236; impossible 39n7, 46, 133, 135, 159, 171, 173, 181, 192, 217, 219, 221, 223–224 interior 36, 45, 59, 61–62, 64–65, 91, 98, 119, 156, 162, 205, 223 interpellation 217–218, 224 interpretation 4–5, 71, 76, 78, 97, 111, 135, 154, 156, 176, 192, 221–222, 234, 236–238, 239n1; interpretable 73; interpreter 68, 73, 181–182; reinterpretation 143 Jameson, F. 3, 78–79, 81, 102 Just What Is It That Makes Today’s Homes So Different, So Appealing?(collage) 57–59 Kiarostami, A. 5, 153–154, 155–164 Koefoed, A. 129–138 Krutnik, F. 86–87, 90–92 landmark 11, 14, 16, 27–28, 30, 33, 35, 37, 86, 113, 124, 185 Landsberg, A. 110, 143–144, 147, 151 landscape 3–4, 19–21, 23, 28, 34–37, 62–63, 65, 67, 70–71, 73–74, 76–80, 87, 90, 98, 102–103, 107, 109–110, 112, 115, 118–119, 121, 124, 129, 131–132, 135–137, 138n6, 148–150, 153, 155–164, 171–172, 179, 181–183, 186–188, 193–194, 196, 200; cinematic / filmic landscape 20, 102, 154, 159–160, 162 Lanzmann, C. 112, 148–149 Lefebvre, H. 3, 28, 154, 166, 169 location 1, 4, 5, 14, 17, 19, 23, 25, 31, 33, 35, 37–38n5, 43, 45, 86, 94, 109–112, 115, 117–119, 123–124, 131, 133–134, 148, 150, 155–156, 163, 166–167, 172–173, 183, 188, 205, 207, 230, 238; film location 11, 23, 35, 109, 111, 120, 167–168, 177n7; location shooting 91; on location 94, 121, 153, 155–157, 159; shooting location 160 Loci 156, 162; genius loci 111, 114–115 Lost Highway (film) 192, 220–221

Lubin, A. 68, 98–99 Lynch, D. 34, 192, 220 Lynch, K. 14–15, 21, 91, 124 madness 71, 219, 220, 222 Magalhães, S. L. 180–182, 184–187 map 2, 14–15, 17–18, 20, 25, 35, 76, 100, 103–104, 124, 134, 158, 162–164, 167, 172, 176, 177n7, 192; mapping as noun 4, 11, 14, 16, 21, 101–102, 123–124, 154, 167; mapping impulse 20, 123 Martín-Barbero, J. 173, 176 material as bodily 1, 4, 43–44, 107n2, 110, 123, 133, 136–137, 143, 154–155, 180, 187, 191; material as constituent 13, 14–15, 102, 110, 112, 150, 159, 162, 175, 191, 193, 200 Meanders (film) 169, 172–174 media 18, 73, 79, 86, 89, 111, 143–144, 147, 169, 172–173 Melbye, D. 4, 102 melodrama 29, 99, 101, 104–105, 107n4 Melville, J. P. 29, 31–32 memory 4, 13, 23–24, 28, 63, 71, 88, 91, 109, 113–114, 117–118, 126, 129, 131–133, 135–138n4, 144, 147, 149–152, 156, 161, 170, 209–211, 214, 225; collective memory 23, 110, 143–144, 147, 151, 187; place of memory 129, 161–162; prosthetic memory 110, 140, 143–144, 147, 151 Merleau-Ponty, M. 195, 228–230, 232–235 metropolis 29, 35, 90, 93, 100 mind 5, 63, 71–72, 101, 143, 162, 164, 170, 174, 192, 202, 210, 216, 218–222, 224–225, 232; mental 5, 14, 21, 46, 70–71, 109, 155, 160, 166, 187, 191–192, 217–218, 220–225 miseen scène 2, 43, 109, 119, 123, 158, 171, 195, 200, 203, 228 modernism 28, 34–35, 37, 56–57 Moreau, R. 154, 179–188 movement 2, 3, 34, 56, 62, 68, 86, 146, 156, 159, 164, 167, 191, 198–199, 202–203, 212, 232, 234–236, 238; camera movement 2, 34, 192, 220, 228, 235

252 Index Mozos, M. 110, 119–122 music 118, 129, 134–136, 201, 220 Naked City, The (film) 88–89 narrative as story 25, 28–29, 33, 40, 45–46, 58, 63–64, 71, 88, 91, 99, 104, 115, 119, 144–145, 147, 151, 153, 155–157, 168, 172, 194, 201, 214, 234, 236–237; narrative as relating to the process of telling a story 2–3, 25, 29, 31, 34, 43, 45, 74, 77, 88–89, 97–98, 102–103, 105–106, 113, 119, 168, 191, 196, 199–200, 221, 225, 234, 236 neighbourhood 11, 22–23, 33, 86, 93 neo-liberalism 3, 28, 36–37 neo-noir 5, 12, 27–29, 31–34, 36–37 non-places 30, 160, 216 nostalgia 28, 30, 35, 77, 79, 90, 122, 129, 132–133, 136, 225, 237; nostalgic 24, 33, 110, 122, 132, 135, 137, 209 obsession 32, 137, 157, 160, 186–187, 192, 220–223 off-screen 222–223, 231 oikos 71, 73 Olympic Games 28, 32, 35–36 Out of the Past (film) 67–68, 87, 97–99, 101–106 Ozu, Y. 5, 191–192, 205–214 paranoia 71, 94, 192, 216, 220–223 past 1, 12, 18–19, 25, 30, 32, 36–37, 60, 70, 79, 85, 88, 99, 103, 105, 109–112, 117–119, 121–127, 131, 133, 135–137, 140, 145, 147, 149, 155–157, 161, 164, 187, 210, 211 Pathé 154, 179, 182, 186–187 perception 14–15, 18, 23, 43, 54, 56, 58, 89, 92, 112, 119, 143, 153, 155–156, 159, 175, 192–194, 200, 207, 211–212, 228–239; perceptual act 228, 236–237; perceptual experience 5, 191–192, 228, 230, 235–236 Perel, J. 110, 122–126 performance 28, 64, 134, 136, 138n6, 141, 170, 172, 229; performative 119, 171 Persian poetry 158, 161 pharmakon 73, 79, 210

phenomenology 3, 5, 191, 205, 207, 228–230; phenomenological 191, 193–194, 196, 203, 207, 228–231, 234, 237 philosophy 4, 75, 155, 160, 196, 203; philosophical 78, 81, 159, 162, 191, 193–194, 201 photography 1, 73 picaresque 101–102 Pickup on South Street (film) 89, 94 Piramida 110, 129–138 place 1, 3–5, 7–8, 11–15, 19–20, 22–24, 28–29, 43, 50, 62–65, 68, 73, 85, 87, 90–92, 94, 98, 102, 109–115, 117–119, 121–127, 129–137, 138n3, 138n4, 138n6, 140–141, 153–157, 159–164, 166–167, 170, 172–175, 177n7, 180, 184–188, 191, 194–196, 216–217, 220, 222–225, 233, 236, 239; place of memory 129, 161–162 point of view 14, 19, 22, 34, 52, 58, 61, 64–65, 76, 81, 158–159, 192, 195, 232, 234 Polemocene 73, 75, 77, 81 police procedural 29, 101, 104 politics 3, 70–71, 76–77, 130, 180 Portugal 119–122, 153–154, 179–188 possible world 1, 153, 155, 156 present 56–57, 70, 79, 109, 112, 118, 121–122, 127, 131, 133, 135–137, 147, 149, 157, 210 propaganda 142, 147, 179, 180–181, 183, 185, 187 Psycho (film) 43, 46, 52, 54, 217–218, 224 Puiu, C. 5, 192, 228–239 railway 22, 183–184, 186 realism 3, 11, 27, 31, 195, 228, 237, 239n1 reality 56–57, 64, 72–74, 79, 88, 90–91, 94, 140, 145, 148, 153, 155–156, 160–161, 163–164, 166, 168, 171, 173, 192, 216, 219–220, 224, 237 Rebecca (film) 43, 45–46, 50–51, 53–54 representation 4–5, 13, 18, 27, 31, 34, 36, 58, 64, 68, 78, 88–89, 98–99, 110, 112, 122–124, 129, 147–148, 150–151, 154, 159–162, 166–167, 169, 171, 174, 176, 179, 191,

Index  253 195–196, 200, 203, 222, 229–230, 232–233, 235, 237–239 resistance 92, 153, 164, 167, 169, 172–173, 176 rhythm 4, 88, 132, 201 Rincón Gille, N. 169–172, 176n3, 177n4 ruins 28, 32, 36, 69–70, 74, 78–81, 109, 118–122, 129, 131–137, 156; ruins of modernity 28, 119 Ruins (film) 110, 119–122 Ruiz, M. 169, 172 rural 20, 87, 95, 100, 112, 119, 154, 166–170, 172, 174–176; rural space 154, 166, 168, 176 scale 50, 56, 59, 64–65, 78–80, 85, 87, 203 Schmitt, L. A. 110, 115–119 screen 1–2, 5, 28, 36, 70–71, 73, 103, 109, 155–156, 163, 193, 195–196, 200, 203 Sebald, W. G. 144–147, 150–151 semiotic 216, 218, 222 setting 13, 15, 21, 23, 43, 45, 48–49, 53–54, 63, 87, 90, 95, 97, 121, 138n6, 171, 175, 193–194, 200–201, 203, 216, 232–233 Shadow of a Doubt (film) 45, 51, 54, 99 Shoah (film) 112, 148–149 shock 69, 71, 78, 88 shot 2, 13–15, 18–22, 24, 32, 35, 37, 48, 52, 89, 103, 113–114, 119, 123–124, 142, 146, 148–151, 157, 160–161, 163–164, 195–201, 208, 213–214, 219, 222–223, 238 Sieranevada (film) 192, 230, 232, 237–239 Smithson, A. and P. 44, 57, 60–61, 65 Sobchack, V. 174, 229–231, 234–236 sound 2, 34, 110, 129, 132–135, 137, 138n6, 146, 148, 150, 164, 172, 220; location sound 123; soundscape 34; sound mixing 1; spectral soundscapes 109, 112, 118–122, 127, 146 space 1–5, 11, 13, 15–16, 18, 20–23, 27–3737, 43, 44–54, 56–65, 67–69, 74, 85, 87–94, 97, 99–107, 109– 112, 114, 119–124, 126–127, 131, 133, 134, 137, 138n6, 141–143, 145, 147–148, 153–164, 166–169,

171–172, 174–176, 187–188, 191– 197, 200–203, 205–213, 216–225, 228–236, 238; blinking spaces 109–127; centrifugal space 30, 86; centripetal space 30, 35; inner space 157, 159, 162; off-screen space 2, 124, 155, 195, 200, 239n2; other space 68, 168; rural space 154, 166, 168, 176; space-image 191, 193, 195–196, 201, 203; urban space 5, 11, 13–15, 17, 18, 20, 25, 27, 29, 114; virtual space 188, 217 stage 15, 28, 54, 68, 105, 124, 141–142, 208, 213 staircase 43, 45–54, 93, 206–208, 244 Steyerl, H. 110, 112–115 Stratos (film) 12, 29, 31–34, 38n1 strange 24, 36, 60, 62, 64–65, 72, 92, 175, 221 sublime 71–72, 75, 78–80 superimposition 217–218 Suspicion (film) 45, 48, 50, 54 Terezín 110, 140–151 terrestrial 3, 60, 69, 71, 73, 78, 80 Theresienstadt 110, 140–151 Thiberville, A. 154, 179–188 thriller 12, 27–29, 31, 34, 224 Those Waiting in the Dark (film) 169–172 time 2–4, 5, 18–19, 21, 23–24, 28, 36, 43, 56, 64–65, 68, 70, 77, 88, 91, 100, 109–111, 115, 118, 121, 123, 130, 132–133, 135–136, 143, 153, 155, 163–164, 175, 176, 187, 194, 200, 209, 211, 216, 220, 224–225 Toponymy (film) 110, 122–126 Touch of Evil (film) 86, 101 tourism 33, 110, 180, 185; tourist as noun 11, 131, 137, 149, 173, 183, 187; tourist as adjective 33, 119, 137, 179–180, 184 Tourneur, J. 68, 87, 98–99 The Towrope (film) 169, 172, 174–176, 177n5 transcendence 222–224; transcendental 222 trauma 30, 69, 78, 90–91, 149, 174, 176, 198, 202; traumatic 72, 74, 77, 79, 124, 171–172 Ulloque, H. 169, 172–173, 177n5, 177n6

254 Index urban 4–5, 11, 13–25, 27, 29–30, 33, 35, 37, 67–68, 85–95, 97, 99–100, 102, 104, 112–115, 154, 166, 169, 175–176 unfilmable 216, 218, 223–225 utopia 76–77, 110, 136, 138n4, 166, 188, 216; utopian 76, 131, 133, 136, 138n4, 188 Vega, W. 169, 174–177 vertical 32, 35, 46, 48, 50–52, 93, 98, 175, 207; verticality 35, 53–54, 93, 103 Vertigo (film) 43, 45–48, 54 view 11, 18–25, 28, 32, 37, 48, 56, 59–61, 65, 76, 101, 104, 112, 124, 132, 142, 146, 149, 155, 157, 159–161, 179, 193–194, 213, 230–231, 234; viewer 3, 18, 21, 24, 43, 47–48, 50–51, 54, 64, 71–73, 75, 77–81, 92, 99, 103, 106, 112, 133, 135, 136, 142, 147–150, 168, 172–173, 176, 191, 193, 195–198, 200–202, 205, 217–218, 221–222, 224, 228–232, 234, 236–238

violence 24, 34, 73, 77, 85, 89, 93, 117, 171–172, 176; non-violent 76; violent 31, 80, 93, 123, 157, 211–212 visual field 48, 119, 198–199, 235; visual palimpsest 109, 112–113, 115, 127 void 46, 195–197, 199, 201 war 19, 24, 29–30, 56, 64, 69–73, 76–77, 80–81, 87, 89, 122, 140, 145, 154, 157, 166–169, 172, 174–176, 209; Cold War 69, 71, 113, 115–116; First World War 70, 140; Second World War 16, 19, 29, 56, 87, 104, 113, 144–145, 156, 206, 216 waste lands 8, 69, 71–72 Wednesday 04:45 (film) 12, 29, 31, 33–34, 38n1, 39n7 Wilcox, F. M. 44, 57, 61–64 Wilder, B. 35, 86, 91, 93 The Wind Will Carry Us (film) 153–164 The Wizard of Oz (film) 98, 221 Wonderland 61, 65, 224 worldview 4, 67, 79, 168, 213