Dissertationen zum Thema „Motion pictures – political aspects – brazil“

Orientador: Suzy Maria Lagazzi
Tese (doutorado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Estudos da Linguagem
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Resumo: Prezado viajante, Este bilhete lhe dá direito a uma viagem pela estrada metodológica da Análise de Discurso Materialista para que você contemple o filme em DVD ?Central do Brasil?, de Walter Salles Jr. Você passará por três estações a partir da ausência do pai como principal metáfora articuladora dos trilhos narrativos, para que você veja o entrecruzamento entre dois caminhos: o discurso religioso e o discurso psicanalítico, na estruturação do funcionamento da falta metaforizada nessa ausência, movimentando o político no social. Inicialmente você verá os mapas da viagem, circunscritos na perspectiva materialista de Análise de Discurso: a apresentação do corpus, e a indicação dos principais conceitos nele operacionalizados. Em seguida a viagem se dará em três ?estações? através do batimento sinuoso entre descrição e interpretação: na primeira estação se dá a descrição da estrutura organizacional da superfície linguageira em suas condições de produção e circulação, e a formulação narrativa da falta, lhe direcionando para o deslocamento desta em objetos discursivos. Na estação seguinte você se deterá na observação dessa falta nos dois significantes representados como sujeitos: Dora e Josué. Vendo isso, você estará apto para a próxima estação: a inscrição da falta em metáforas e metonímias discursivas: nas imagens de Santa Maria e de Jesus Cristo, em relação a Dora e a Josué, no pai e nas cartas, e noutros objetos cênicos, como um pião e um lenço, objetos discursivos visibilizados nos planos como unidades de significação pela fragmentação da montagem do filme. Esperamos que você perceba que o Cristianismo intervém na superfície textual e discursiva, como também a Psicanálise, no tratamento dado às constelações familiares, à Metáfora Paterna, à lettre lacaniana (carta, letra, significante) e às projeções entre Dora e Josué. Não se assuste: há um embate do sujeito com o Real, em derivas e deslocamentos em torno de posições de sujeito. Entenda conosco quais processos discursivos estão em jogo nessa viagem, tomando a falta como um gesto estruturante do político nas relações sociais. Na chegada possível, você verá que os sentidos são possíveis pela relação e determinação entre o Real da história, o Real da linguagem e o Real do inconsciente, de forma que as condições sócio-históricas são constitutivas das significações do texto. Agradecemos sua preferência. Boa viagem
Abstract: This work assumes the Materialist Discourse Analysis methodology to analyze the DVD movie "Central Station", by Walter Salles Jr. Taking into consideration that the father's absence is the main metaphor that articulates the narrative surface, the intention was to understand this absence in the intersection between religious discourse and psychoanalytic discourse, asking about the politics in social relations. The introduction circumscribes the materialist perspective of Discourse Analysis, and presents the corpus, and the main concepts employed into it. The following chapters are formulated as "stations" around the stages of analysis: on the first step the language's organizational structure surface is described under certain conditions of production and circulation, the narrative design of the ?lack? and its displacement as discoursive objects. Observing the treatments in the screenplay, it was noticed the inscription of the sense effects on the names of biblical characters (Joshua, Jesus, Moses, Isaiah, Hannah, Pedrão - Big Peter), references to images of St. Mary and Jesus Christ - stage props noticed as units of meaning in the fragmentation of the shots of film edition. Psychoanalysis derives from the treatment given to family constellations, to the Paternal Metaphor, to the lacanian letter and to the projections between Dora and Joshua. From the crossing between description and interpretation, it was intended to give evidence to the clash between the subject and the Real, drifts and shifts in the subject positions. The last step of the analysis examines the discursive processes, which make the ?lack? a structuring gesture of the politics in social relations. The audiovisual, object of aesthetic completion and an important commodity in the contemporary world, acts as a massive investment in the subject, determining, renewing and contradicting the circulation of capital, and the effects of the spectacle's ideology, imposed by the logic of the market. The [meanings] senses are possible through the relation and the determination between the Real from the History, the Real from the language and the Real from the unconscious, so that the socio-historical conditions constitutes the meanings of the text
Doutorado
Linguistica
Doutor em Linguística

Thesis (MA)--Stellenbosch University, 2003.
ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The terminology used in segregationist discourse that South Africa is a combination of 'first world' and 'third world' elements has been appropriated from an international discourse about problems of world-wide socio-economic development. The terms are used to describe the sophisticated metropolitan areas inhabited by highly developed whites and simple, backward, isolated, rural regions occupied by undeveloped or underdeveloped blacks. However, in South Africa this dual world metaphor, which has socio-political implications that have brought great misfortune to blacks, was institutionalised by apartheid, with the consequences that blacks have expressed their resistance in what became known as the 'struggle' against the dualist system. Selected South African and African films whose themes have a bearing on such a socio-economic system are explored in this thesis. A supplementary exploration of films dealing with the theme of the 'struggle', which has become a metaphor for the 'generations of resistance', has been undertaken by means ofa detailed analysis. The interpretation of 'development' in this thesis finds a link betweeen the dualist paradigm, the perpetuation of poverty and the migratory labour system. The peculiar relationship which the 'struggle' has had with the cultures of black people, in which there is a mutual influence between the 'struggle' and the nature of these cultures, is explored in the relevant films. However, this thesis offers no solutions, but exposes a VICIOUS system which IS threatening to gain world ascendency.
AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Die terminologie gebruik in die segregasie-diskoers tot die effek dat Suid-Afrika 'n kombinasie van 'Eerste Wêreld' en 'Derde Wêreld' elemente is, is oorgeneem uit 'n internasionale diskoers wat handeloor wêreld-wye sosio-ekonomiese ontwikkeling. Dié terme word gebruik om die gesofistikeerde metropolitaanse areas bewoon deur hoogsontwikkelde blankes en eenvoudige, agterlike, geïsoleerde, landelike streke beset deur onder- of on-ontwikkelde swartes te beskryf. Maar in Suid-Afrika is hierdie dubbelwêreld metafoor - met die sosio-politiese implikasies daarvan wat tot groot ellende vir swartes aanleiding gegee het - deur Apartheid geïnstitusionaliseer, met die gevolg dat swartes hul weerstand uitgedruk het in wat bekend geword het as die 'struggle' teen dierdie dualistiese sisteem. 'n Keur van films uit Suid-Afrika en die res van Afrika, die tema's waarvan betrekking het op hierdie sosio-ekonomiese sisteem, word ondersoek in hierdie skripsie. 'n Bykomstige ondersoek na films wat handeloor die tematiek van die 'struggle', wat metafories geword het vir die 'generasie van weerstand', is by wyse van 'n meer gedetaileerde analise uitgevoer. Die interpretasie van 'ontwikkeling' in hierdie skripsie ontbloot 'n verband tussen die dualistiese sisteem, die voortsetting van armoede en die sisteem van trekardbeid. Die besonderse manier wat die 'struggle' met die kulture van swart mense verhou, waarin daar 'n wedersydse beïnvloeding tussen die 'struggle' en die aard van die kulture plaasvind, word ondersoek in die relevante films. Hierdie skripsie bied egter geen oplossings nie, maar ontmasker eerder 'n wrede sisteem wat dreig tot wêreld-oorheersing.

African Cinema is an entity as diverse as the various countries, languages and cultures on this continent. The entertainment value of Cinema has been more popular than the study of its ideological significance, but nevertheless in a contemporary Africa where politics affect the social, cultural and economical survival of its citizens, Cinema can be used as a valuable asset and a powerful means of communication that can conscientize and educate African audiences. Thomas Hobbes’s leadership model and political theory of sovereignty, though a XVIIth century framework, can theoretically contribute in the analysis of the representation of African leadership styles in Cinema. This article analyzes four fiction films representing four different political leaders in, respectively, South Africa, Uganda, Cameroon and Nigeria. A film content analysis will explore the different representation of leadership styles, the personality of each leader, the power struggles in each society and how this may suggest value judgments about African leadership to the films’ various target audiences.

This thesis is an interdisciplinary study that traces the commerce-art-politics nexus of Hong Kong cinema since the new millennium, through investigating the current young generation of film workers who joined the industry as it gradually entered an era marked by the domination of Hong Kong/Mainland co-productions. It reveals the filmmaking ideologies of emerging filmmakers from both within and beyond their film texts, and uncovers the artistic and ideological discrepancies between this young generation and their predecessors - the established generation who contributed to the glory days of Hong Kong cinema during its economic boom. By tracing the studies of national cinema and transnational cinema in the last three decades, I debunk the national/transnational antagonism with the case of the post-2000 Hong Kong cinema. It does not only prove that the binary is far more complicated than one being superseded by the other, or them coexisting with each other, but rather evolving into each other from a historical perspective. In this vein, the current Hong Kong cinema has split into two: a transnational cinema represented by the established generation of filmmakers; and a national cinema that is driven by the emerging generation who struggle for better preservation of Hong Kong local culture and their own cultural identities. Furthermore, this thesis scrutinizes the working and material conditions of these young film practitioners, in which employment and economic opportunity are primarily derived from co-productions and mainland productions. It expands the discussion over the concept of precarity and argues that the Hong Kong case demonstrates two extra dimensions of labour precarity: an excessive reliance on an external market (i.e. mainland market), and the workers' dissenting political attitudes towards a politically sensitive regime, namely mainland China under the ruling of the Communist Party. Lastly, developments in Hong Kong film policy since the handover are examined. As its longstanding managing philosophy of "minimal intervention" has largely remained unchanged in Hong Kong, the government has turned from a "laissez-faire" approach to what Mark Purcell terms an "aidez-faire" approach in the local film industry, yet it still failed to meet the industry's expectations of creating a holistic film policy. Nevertheless, film policy in the post-handover era had an undeniable impact in terms of cultivating young filmmakers. To research the topic, 47 in-depth interviews were conducted. These first-hand interviews, combined with data gathered from multiple resources, as well as a text analysis of the 107 films made by young directors between 2000 and 2018, form the factual basis of this thesis. Employing a Hong Kong/Mainland Film dynamics perspective, this study aims to fill a gap in the academic study of Hong Kong cinema, which has paid scant attention to the material conditions and artistic visions of craft labour in the industry, and especially of the young generation of filmmakers who are facing the decline of a once prosperous but currently diminishing local film industry.

Argentine literature at the close of the twentieth century is characterized by a marked interest in the themes of dictatorship, marginality, and exile. Given the shifting of public and private spaces in the country's recent history, a "sinister" space has appeared in the collective subconscious, where all that was negated, prohibited and repressed is now (re)surfacing with tremendous energy in a constant probing into the collective memory effectuated from still present traumas without closure.
The purpose of this dissertation is to analyse the "social tics" which flourish in various art forms, as well as in the underpinnings of Argentine society, and come from the fact that collective suffering has created a defined present which controls the past, and, inevitably, influences the future. In turn, certain themes thus emerge from subjective and fragmented spaces of enunciation where memory plays a crucial role.
In order to do this, I concentrate here on alternative cultural productions to the official propaganda produced during and after the period of dictatorship, paying special attention to women's narratives and testimonies or memoirs of repression. Finally, I undertake an analysis of certain selected cinematographic productions which, like the contemporary literature analysed here, also form part of the movement that demonstrates the need to question Argentine reality---present and past---by foregrounding collective and individual memory in opposition to the generalized trend of amnesia/anaesthesia to point up the very real danger inherent in such "historic amnesia." Taken together, these works reveal the existence of a past that must be recaptured and redeemed, but which, given the existence of the negated and silenced "sinister" space in contemporary reality, forms only a small part of Argentine history still under construction.

This thesis addresses a set of transformations in the symbolic construction of America, as reflected by a number of films released during what is commonly referred to as the post 9/11 period. Following a rich debate in the field of American literary studies, the study investigates the self-image of the nation as projected by four representative films of the decade. Throughout the chapters, the central hypothesis of the thesis is that the cultural symbology of the nation, its symbolic map, continues to act as a territorialising force within the diegetic universes of the texts. In so doing, the meta-narrative of America stands in opposition to a deterritorialising tendency that - as a body of recent critical scholarship attests - inform the post 9/11 context, a tendency borne out of a new, shared awareness of historical violence within the national community. As it displaces codified social boundaries, and established links between individual and communities, such deterritorialising rhetoric threaten the symbolic coherence of the world. The conflict between long-standing symbologies of the nation and the impact of a new cultural milieu thus emerges in the cinema as a representational impasse, whose different textual outcomes are addressed in the main chapters of this thesis. In order to investigate the interplay of different symbolic maps, the present study focuses on four spatial signifiers - the house, the village, the city and the land - and derives its methodological tools from a body of scholarship largely comprised within the so-called 'spatial turn'. The terms of this theoretical engagement are specified in the first part the thesis, while the conclusion expands on the direction of the research, and connects the study to other related disciplinary discourses, both in Film studies and American studies.

After World War II, Hollywood produced a series of low budget pictures characterized by a dark mood, bleak urban landscapes and fierce violence. French critics called them films noirs (black films). These movies presented a critical vision of the social injustice present in the American capitalist society. This thesis examines the socio-political dimension of film noir firstly through its social, literary and filmic origins, then through a piecework study of shots and dialogues from six noir pictures: Body and Soul (1947), Force of Evil (1948), Knock On Any Door (1949), Kiss of Death (1947), I Walk Alone(1948) and The Set-up (1949). It is shown how the Marxist convictions of their makers influenced their style and their content. Even films noirs made by apolitical or moderate filmmakers follow a similar pattern. It is concluded that film noir contains expressions of anti-capitalist struggle toward social justice and moral redemption. The appeal of these ideas to many Americans is shown by the box-office success of these pictures, while many noir writers, actors and directors were the victims of the reactionary repression of the early fifties.

Master of Arts

As ownership of Hong Kong changed hands from the United Kingdom to the People's Republic of China in 1997, citizens and filmmakers of the city became highly aware of the political environment. Film director Wong Kar-Wai creates visually stimulating films that express the anxieties and frustrations of the citizens of Hong Kong during this period. This study provides a political reading of Days of Being Wild (1991), In the Mood for Love (2000), and 2046 (2004) through analyzing various story elements and details within the mise-en-scene. Story elements include setting, dialogue, character relationships, character identities, thematic motifs, musical references, numerology, and genre manipulation. Wong also uses details within the films' mise-en-scene, such as props and color, to express political frustrations. To provide color interpretations, various traditional aesthetic guidelines, such as those prescribed by Taoism, Cantonese and Beijing opera, and feng shui, are used to read the films' negative comments on the handover process and the governments involved. When studied together the three films illustrate how Wong Kar-Wai creates narrative and visual references to the time and atmosphere in which he works, namely pre-and-post handover Hong Kong.

Aiming to make an intervention in critical theory, film-philosophy and British Cinema scholarship, this thesis investigates what a marriage of Lacanian and Badiouian theories of the subject can bring to the study of the radical British feature film of 1968: films which in differing ways represent the political and intellectual debates current in the culture. The question of what can be learnt through an analysis situated within theories of the subject has not been addressed within British Cinema studies. Psychoanalytic film theory in its previous incarnations utilised a section of Lacan's thought in order to focus on the ways in which the spectator was placed into a subject position by the unseen workings of the apparatus. Furthermore, the limited amount of Badiouian film scholarship is concerned with whether films can be thought philosophically. A fuller use of Lacan with Badiou as a hermeneutic model to address films from a specific period and context creates a new interpretive model on the porous boundary between critical theory and film-philosophy. This thesis utilises Lacan's categories of the Imaginary, Symbolic and, predominantly, the Real alongside the Badiouian Event to interrogate the ways in which Morgan: A Suitable Case for Treatment (Karel Reisz, 1966), Privilege (Peter Watkins, 1967), Herostratus (Don Levy, 1967), Performance (Donald Cammell & Nicolas Roeg, 1970) and if ... (Lindsay Anderson, 1968) represent the radical subject of 1968, in order to argue for the efficacy of ideological critique, to think politically about cinema, and advocate the continuing resonance of the period in contemporary praxis.

Orientador: Marcelo Siqueira Ridenti
Acompanhado de 2 DVDs: Cenas compiladas
Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas
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Resumo: De 1979 aos dias atuais, a ditadura militar fez-se presente em um número significativo de obras fílmicas. Analisar essa produção cinematográfica é examinar como está sendo ressignificado o passado, quais questões estão sendo obliteradas, que ambiguidades e tensões perpassam a interpretação do processo sócio-histórico. Esta pesquisa propõe-se a trabalhar a relação entre cinema e sociedade no que tange aos enunciados social e culturalmente construídos a respeito do período do regime militar vigente no Brasil de 1964 a 1985. O objeto de investigação são os filmes de longametragem lançados entre 1979 e 2009 que se reportam ao tema da Ditadura Militar no Brasil e seus desdobramentos. O pressuposto é o de que as obras fílmicas, enquanto produções culturais, podem ser consideradas meios legítimos e diferenciados para o conhecimento da sociedade, uma vez que são constitutivas da realidade social, produzindo significados, valores e proposições expressados através de sua construção própria. Pauta-se na concepção de cultura do materialismo cultural de Raymond Williams (2000) e fundamenta-se essencialmente no referencial teórico-metodológico de Pierre Sorlin (1985,1994). Realiza-se um levantamento amplo e fundamentado da filmografia que tematiza a ditadura militar brasileira e dedica-se um olhar mais atento aos seguintes filmes: E agora, José? Tortura do sexo (Ody Fraga, 1980); Paula - A história de uma subversiva (Francisco Ramalho Jr., 1980); Nunca fomos tão felizes (Murilo Salles, 1984); Corpo em delito (Nuno Cesar Abreu, 1990); Ação entre amigos (Beto Brant, 1998); A terceira morte de Joaquim Bolívar (Flávio Cândido, 2000) e Zuzu Angel (Sérgio Rezende, 2006), os quais correspondem a um espectro amplo de possibilidades cinematográficas.
Abstract: From 1979 to today, the military dictatorship has been theme of a significant number of movies. Analyze this filmography is to examine how the past has been reframed, what aspects are being obliterated, what are ambiguities and tensions that underlie the interpretation of socio-historical process. This research proposes to study the relationship between cinema and society with respect to the socially and culturally constructed enunciations about the period of military rule in Brazil (1964-1985). The object of investigation are the feature-length films released between 1979 and 2009 that relate to the theme of military dictatorship in Brazil. It is assumed that the movies, as cultural productions, can be considered legitimate and differentiated sources for investigate the society, since they are constitutive of social reality and produce meanings, values and propositions expressed by its own construction. It is guided in the concept of culture from Raymond Williams (2000)'s cultural materialism and is based essentially on Pierre Sorlin (1985, 1994)'s theoretical and methodological framework. It is done a broad and grounded survey of the filmography that deals with the Brazilian military dictatorship and is dedicated a closer attention to the following films: E agora, José? Tortura do sexo (Ody Fraga, 1980); Paula - A história de uma subversiva (Francisco Ramalho Jr., 1980);
Mestrado
Sociologia
Mestre em Sociologia

本文是關於泰國導演阿比查邦·魏拉希沙可在2000 年至2010 年間作品的整體性研究，包括電影、短片和錄影裝置等不同形式。我們將討論阿比查邦的現代主義電影風格如何回應當下泰國的社會政治現實和歷史處境，並產生其文化政治效應。同時，我們也試圖借此重申和強調電影的美學研究在把握作品形式與外在歷史社會條件上的融貫性和理論重要性，尤其是在以時間為現代思想和經驗的內在線索這點上。
首先我們將阿比查邦置於世界電影史和泰國電影史交匯的座標之下，然後從個三方面考察他如何將泰國的"非同步"、複調節奏的社會現實納入對"非順時性時間"探索（與戰後現代主義電影的譜系一致）的美學風格中。第一個方面，是他在早期作品中關於"講故事"形式的實驗，據此他發展出一種新的敘事性，打破傳統敘事中統一的"敘述時間"，而替代以一種"居中性"的"時差"效應；同時發展出對分離的聲畫關係的各種新嘗試。第二個方面，是他中期作品中對感性經驗的重塑，包括引入異質化多元的時延、非個人知覺和情感模式。第三個方面，是貫穿電影長片和錄影裝置作品的"分叉"結構（或二分結構）。通過這一結構，他引入對時間性三維（過去現在未來）的靜態綜合和重新分配，即，將編年歷史的順時時間內攝於各種元素差異與重複建立起的超歷史（或非歷史）的時間分化；無論是過去還是當下的事件，都被體驗為一種對先在的純粹的事件如同儀式一般的召喚。這正是阿比查邦式的非歷史性的時間觀念和神話式敘述機制。同時，每一個方面都包含了阿比查邦在相應的作品中處理回應的泰國社會現實問題，將在論文中詳細展開。
This dissertation has three ambitions. The first is to provide an interpretation of the works by Apichatpong Weerasethakul in the 2000s as an auteur study, including feature films, experimental shorts, and video installations, which requires a new vision for film criticism for the compelling mode of filmmaking practice. The second is to discuss the social-political function of the modernist cinema in a contemporary society with specific historical trajectory of modernity, by investigating how Apichatpong’s works relate/respond to Thai historical-social-politic circumstance. The third is to make an argument for the theoretical importance of aesthetics study of cinema in the light of the concern for time that is intrinsic to both thought and being and underlies modern experience.
By locating Apichatpong in the junction of global and local cinema with historical contextualization, this study will unfold around how Apichatpong registers the polyrhythm of the "non-synchronicity" of contemporary Thai reality on his artistic innovative of the non-chronological temporality in three main parts. The first is the "storytelling device" which creates a new narrativity by transforming the "diegetic time" into a pure "time-lag" or "in-between" with an experiment of the disparity of sound and image. The second is a reconfiguration of the sensible, which consists of heterogeneity of durations and impersonal perceptive and affective expression. The third is the "bifurcated structure" as structural composition which sets up an inter-assemblage relation. It redistributes the series of time (past-present-future) in virtual sense and leads toward a kind of dynamic mythology, that the historical event is experienced as ritualistic evocation of a pre-existing event. In so doing, Apichatpong links a supra-historical concept of time with the post-historical situation of our time. Correspondingly, each part thematically covers a set of social-political concerns in contemporary Thailand that Apichatpong tends to respond.
Detailed summary in vernacular field only.
Detailed summary in vernacular field only.
Wang, Yuanyuan.
Thesis (Ph.D.) Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2014.
Includes bibliographical references (leaves 155-164).
Abstracts also in Chinese.
Wang, Yuanyuan.

A research report submitted to the faculty of Humanities, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts, Wits University, Johannesburg, 2017
In blackface colonial history, “amusing” white blackface performances that depicted black people as the “natural born fool” were popular with white audiences during a time when whites perceived their racial superiority to be threatened. In Post-1994 South Africa, white supremacy is no longer an uncontested “fact”. As a result, white identities that are premised on “old” legislated notions of racial superiority are made insecure by perceived threats posed against whiteness. The previously disenfranchised and excluded black is now the central focus of South African power and politics and the loss of white centrality creates the “victim” perception that all post-apartheid societal pressures and changes are put on, and against whites. Their power has been “confiscated” and thereby no longer unique to white identity. Blackface is utilised by Leon Schuster in the post-apartheid film, Mama Jack (2005) to reproduce old ideologies of whiteness that remind viewers of its presence, privilege and power. As in the colonial past, it is through the principle white character Jack Theron and his mobilisation of blackface that white supremacy remains intact throughout the film.
XL2018

The aim of this study was to explore language censorship in Zimbabwean films in Shona and English. The study concentrated on the themes of politics, culture and economic in the genre of the documentary, feature and short film genres. It was demonstrated that the Zimbabwean laws enabled authorities to impose censorship strategies that ranged from banning, restriction, persecution of filmmakers, withdrawal of films from circulation, and threats of withdrawal of permits of film retailers. These visible, direct and banal forms of censorship have forced some filmmakers to flee the country. Most of the filmmakers who have remained in the country have been forced to deal with themes that appear harmless to the state. This state induced form of self-censorship on the filmmakers has resulted in the production of uncritical, and unreflective films whose staple diet were embedded in cultural stereotypes. The study argued that language is a signifying practice that cannot be interpreted in a single direction. Thus, despite these realities of film censorship some filmmakers deliberately encoded or used verbal and visual film language that generated surplus meanings with which the films could be re-read in ways that reveal new linguistic strategies to evade and challenge both the restrictive censorship laws as well as criticise the undemocratic political culture that has taken root in Zimbabwe. The study used eclectic theories such as Marxism, audience-reception approach, critical legal theories and language theories to analyse the films. The explanatory capacity of these theories helped to reveal the contradictory ways in which the desire to impose restrictions on film meanings was constantly undermined in the innovative language of the films.
African Languages
D. Litt. et Phil. (African Languages)

A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Humanities, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in African Languages. Wits University, Johannesburg, 2015
This report interrogates the representation of blackness in post-1994 black-centred films in South Africa. With a particular focus on Khalo Matabane’s films, I analyse Conversations on a Sunday Afternoon (2005), When We Were Black (2007) and State of Violence (2011) across a spectrum of themes. I also interrogate and introduce several critical concepts such as ‘blackness’, ‘the image of blackness’, ‘black identity’, ‘masculinity’, ‘femininity’, ‘the Gaze’ and ‘Otherness’. These concepts are interlinked in ways that bring about an understanding of the concept of black-centred films, which is central to the research report. Amidst the different interpretations of black-centred films, the vantage point from which the concept is used is interested in black-centred films as films that are made by a black filmmaker, whose content addresses issues of blackness and is targeted at a black audience. However, these three factors need not always resonate in a single film in order for it to be considered and analysed as a black-centred film. The lens through which Matabane holds the camera questions his representation of the black image and whether it is from an insider or outsider’s perspective. The view from which Matabane holds the camera is important in establishing whether he has purported to represent historically stereotypical images of blackness, or whether his endeavours in filmmaking are occupied by the relentless pursuit to present new images of blackness.