Academic literature on the topic 'Invisibilité – Au cinéma'

O cinema tem o seu apogeu nos anos 1950-1970, mas o que nós sabemos sobre as modalidades de sua difusão a partir do iná­cio do século XX? Este artigo discute o sucesso precoce do cinema, vindo na bagagem de conquista colonial, por meio dos vestá­gios deixados pelos relatos de viajantes, pela imprensa ou pelas memórias de espectadores. Empresários, africanos ou europeus, desempenharam um importante papel de intermediários da modernidade para garantir o fluxo de imagens em movimento. Eles são fotógrafos, engenheiros, comerciantes. Inicialmente, eventos efêmeros que ocorrem no interior de concessões ou hotéis, as sessões do cinema se fixam pouco a pouco. Enquanto o cinema ambulante anima, esporadicamente, as praças da aldeia, os cinemas são construá­dos nas grandes cidades. São eles que atraem a atenção dos administradores. O modelo dominante do entreguerras permanece, todavia, aquele dos espaços fechados, a céu aberto, protegidos por um toldo ao fundo. A diferenciação dos lugares corresponde aquela dos públicos: aos mais pobres, majoritariamente africanos, são destinados os lugares da frente. O ambiente das sessões e a experiência dos espectadores variam fortemente segundo o espaço frequentado. As sessões a céu aberto, onde são projetados, sobretudo, filmes de westerns e os filmes de ação, contrastam com aquelas do centro da cidade em que a atmosfera é mais ”civilizada”.Palavras-chave: Cinema. Colonialismo. áfrica. VISIBILITY AND INVISIBILITY OF CINEMAS IN COLONIAL AFRICA: reviving the first scenesAbstract: The cinema had its peak during the 1950s-1970s, but what do we know about the modalities of its diffusion from the beginning of the twentieth century? This paper analyses the success of cinema, a pastime which followed European colonization, through various sources: travellers”™ accounts, newspapers, memoirs and recollections of audience members. Entrepreneurs, African or European, played a powerful role as conveyors of modernity by circulating moving images. They were photographers, engineers and merchants. At first, movie shows were sporadic events, taking place in compound yards or hotels; they gradually found permanent locations. While mobile shows sometimes animated village squares, cinemas were built in the main cities. The colonial administration focused its attention on them. But the main model between the two World Wars remained the open-air cinema, protected only at the rear by an awning. This differentiation of spaces was accompanied for the same process for the spectators. The poorest, mainly Africans, were located at the front. Therefore, atmosphere and audience experiences differed greatly. The Audience behavior at open-air shows, where Westerns and action movies dominated, contrasted with more polite behavior in downtown theaters.Keywords: Cinema. Colonialism. Africa. Visibilidad e invisibilidad de LOS cineS en áfrica colonial: reviviendo las primeras escenasRésumé: Le cinéma connait son apogée dans les années 1950-1970 mais que savons-nous des modalités de sa diffusion á partir du début du XXá¨me siá¨cle ? Cet article évoque le succá¨s précoce du cinéma, arrivé dans les bagages de la conquête coloniale, á travers les traces laissées par les récits de voyageurs, la presse ou des souvenirs de spectateurs. Des entrepreneurs, africains ou européens, jouá¨rent un formidable rôle de passeurs de modernité pour assurer la circulation des images animées. Ils sont photographes, ingénieurs, commerçants. D”™abord évá¨nements éphémá¨res, se déroulant dans les cours des concessions ou les hôtels, les séances du cinématographe se fixent peu á peu. Tandis que le cinéma ambulant anime, sporadiquement, les places de village, des cinémas sont construits dans les grandes villes. Ce sont eux qui attirent le regard des administrateurs. Le modá¨le dominant de l”™entre-deux-guerres reste toutefois celui de vastes enclos, á ciel ouvert, protégés par un auvent á l”™arriá¨re. A la différentiation des lieux répond celle des publics : aux plus pauvres, majoritairement africains, sont assignées les places á l”™avant. L”™ambiance des séances et l”™expérience des spectateurs varient donc fortement selon l”™espace fréquenté. Les séances en plein air, oá¹ sont projetés surtout des westerns et des films d”™action, contrastent avec celles du centre-ville á l”™atmosphá¨re plus policée.Mots-clés: Cinéma. Colonialisme. Afrique.

A partire dall'"informalita" e dall'"invisibilita" urbana che connotano la condizione di alcuni gruppi religiosi in Italia, l'articolo presenta una possibile soluzione architettonica e urbanistica: la conversione di un cinema romano nel primo centro culturale Sikh in Italia attraverso l'adozione di un approccio interdisciplinare basato sui metodi della geografia delle religioni.

The violence of nuclear catastrophe is fundamentally contradictory. On the one hand, when caused by nuclear weapons, it is highly visible and often spectacular. As is the case with exposure to a large dose of radiation, the consequence of this violence can be instantaneous, too. On the other hand, odourless and invisible, radiation is beyond direct human perception. Furthermore, the deadly effect of radiation often manifests itself gradually over many years or even decades. This paradox of nuclear violence on human lives and the environment, which is simultaneously hypervisible and invisible, poses a particular challenge to film and other types of visual media. In this article, I examine how Japanese cinema has long been struggling with the complex and contradictory relationship between the nuclear question and visual culture. Many Japanese filmmakers, including well-known auteurs like Kurosawa Akira and those who specialize in popular genre movies such as tokusatsu eiga (‘special effects movies’), have tried to overcome the challenge of representing the invisibility of nuclear violence and radioactive contamination of the environment. I discuss how popular Japanese cinema has experimented with various formal and stylistic means to make the invisibility of nuclear violence perceptible or imaginable.

The article studies the early silent cinema motif of disappearance or invisibility of bodies in a frame. In adventure and adventure-fantasy films, this motif performs a whole set of functions. Using the example of several films, I uncover its rich semantic potential. Further on, the mythological origins of the motif are analyzed, as are the role of theater, circus, attraction and fairy tale in the prehistory of the diegetic disappearing. Attention is paid to the aesthetics of the trick in Georges Méliès’ films, where the condition and location of the vanishing body remain uncertain. Narrative films suggest a more definite interpretation of the character’s disappearance. For instance, the final episode of the British film The Life of Charles Peace (1905) implies the hero’s death by execution. However, the invisibility of the body creates the illusion of a likely open finale. Another example is D. W. Griffith’s The Adventures of Dollie (1908) about a girl locked in a barrel and traveling down the river to be returned to her father in the end. The happy-end gives this melodrama a touch of fantasy, presenting America as a wise natural universe. Working with the motif of the diegetic invisible/disappearing is significant for the cinema aesthetics, regardless of the motivations and meaning of what is happening. The diversity of the diegetic invisible reflects the need of cinema to model the picture of the magical universe.

Che cos’è il cinema del corpo? E il cinema del corpo-animale? E ancora: il cinema può darci la presenza del corpo? Sulla scorta del concetto deleuziano di corpo cinematografico in questo saggio cercherò di condurre – con l’ausilio di alcune pellicole esemplari, film di “genere” e d’autore – un’analisi del cinema del corpo e del corpo-animale che, attraverso la raffigurazione di corpi mostruosi e di corpi sacrificabili, di corpi animali e animalizzati, attraverso il divenire animale di corpi visibili e invisibili, possa contribuire a restituire il discorso al corpo, a portare alla luce una nuova narratività del corpo del vivente e a forzare lo spettatore a credere nel corpo, nei corpi, a credere alla carne: poiché il cinema del corpo-animale è sempre cinema politico, come tale può spingere a un’azione politica, un’azione intesa come cambiamento della nostra postura di fronte all’alterità.

This article analyses two British film comedies, The Smallest Show on Earth (1957) and the Welsh-language film Coming Up Roses (Rhosyn a Rhith) (1986), both of which feature projectionists as significant characters. It focuses on the implications of the projectionist as a hero within the narratives, on his portrayal and on the dramatisation of his labour. I examine the paradox of his inhabiting a central narrative role when his professional one requires his isolation and invisibility, when his own attention is funnelled towards the on-screen diegesis he is concerned to project and, moreover, when his obsolescence is mandated by cinema closure. The films' promotion of exhibition itself as object and comedic spectacle is interrogated. Within this, I attend closely to diegetic films: to how the fictive screen relates to the wider text and to how it figures or expresses its concerns and enlarges its meanings. A related area of enquiry is how institutions of cinema mirror and ‘project’ wider social issues and how cinema shapes, and is shaped by, its audiences. How does the restoration of the projectionist's libido, and his rehabilitation through marriage, relate to cinema's place within social, cultural and political life?

Abstract The story of Black women in British mainstream cinema is certainly one of invisibility and misrepresentations, and Black women filmmakers have historically been placed at the margins of British film history. Up until the mid-1980s, there were no Black female directors in Britain. Pioneers like Maureen Blackwood, Martina Attille and Ngozi Onwurah have actively challenged stereotypical representations of Black womanhood, whilst asserting their presence in Black British cinema, often viewed as a male territory. In the 2010s, it seems that the British film industry remains mostly white and masculine. But the new millennium has brought a digital revolution that has enabled a new generation of Black women filmmakers to work within alternative circuits of production and distribution. New strategies of production have emerged through the use of online crowdfunding, social media and video-sharing websites. These shifts have opened new opportunities for Black women filmmakers who were until then often excluded from traditional means of exhibition and distribution. I will examine these strategies through the work of Moyin Saka, Jaha Browne and Cecile Emeke, whose films have primarily contributed to the re-presentation of Black womanhood in popular culture.

Dans les quatre pays dominant le Kurdistan, (Turquie, Iran, Irak et Syrie), la question kurde se traduit avant tout sous forme de visibilité/ invisibilité, autour de la question de la reconnaissance des Kurdes en tant que Nation déniée. Notamment en Turquie, le premier des pays à avoir imposé aux Kurdes son modèle d'Etat-Nation, cette question renvoie aux politiques négationnistes étatiques menées contre la culture et l'identité kurdes, considérées dès 1924, comme des obstacles au processus de création d'une identité nationale turque. Dans ce rapport conflictuel entre le nationalisme turc et le nationalisme kurde, également fruit d'une mémorisation traumatique et d'une longue histoire de résistance kurde dans chaque partie du Kurdistan, l'imaginaire des Kurdes renvoie а une dimension historique devenue spontanément une référence essentielle du traitement cinématographique de la « kurdicité », sous forme d’interaction construite par les Kurdes eux-mêmes ou créée par leurs adversaires politiques.Notre thèse s'efforce de montrer cette influence durable du nationalisme sur le traitement cinématographique de la « kurdicité », principalement dans le cinéma turc traitant les Kurdes sans les designer en tant que Kurdes, puis dans le cinéma kurde au service de la « cause kurde » après les années 1990
In the four countries dominating Kurdistan (Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria) the Kurdish question translates first and foremost under the concept of visibility/invisibility, around the problem of the recognition of the Kurds as a denied nation. This is especially apparent in the case of Turkey, the first of the countries which imposed its own nation-state on the Kurds : this question is associated with the negationist state policies on Kurdish culture and identity,which, since 1924, have been considered as obstacles on the path to the creation of a nationalTurkish identity. In this conflictual relation between Kurdish and Turkish nationalisms – the fruit, among others, of a traumatic memory and a long history of Kurdish resistance inrespective sections of Kurdistan – the imagery of the Kurds refers to a historical dimensionwhich has spontaneously become an essential reference of cinematographic treatment of« Kurdishness » under the form of interactions constructed by themselves or by their own political opponents. The present thesis aims at describing that permanent influence of nationalism on the cinematographic treatment of « Kurdishness » in the Turkish cinema which principally treats the Kurds without designating them as Kurds, then in the Kurdish cinema in the service of « Kurdish cause » following the 1990s

Et s’il y avait quelque chose de proprement cinématographique dans l’idée de « catastrophe », dans le mouvement spatio-temporel cycliqueindiqué par son étymologie ? À partir de cette hypothèse, notre recherche a voulu articuler « cinéma » et « catastrophe » sous la perspective del’imminence. Sans ajouter au débat sur l’irreprésentabilité (la Catastrophe impliquerait la ruine de la représentation) ni nous attarder sur lareprésentation de la ruine (ce qui reste après), nous avons décidé d’examiner l’horizon catastrophique.Comment savoir qu’une catastrophe est à venir ? Quelle image le cinéma peut-il produire dans l’imminence de la catastrophe ? De telles questions ont été abordées dans deux corpus principaux, que nous avons nommés « films de barrage » et « films sismiques ». Les barrages hydrauliques et les phénomènes sismiques d’ordre naturel (tremblements de terre et éruptions volcaniques) constituent des motifs pour le cinéma depuis ses origines, présents notamment chez les Lumière ou chez Méliès. Dans le premier cas, nous analysons des images cinématographiques de paysages et modes de vie voués à disparaître. Tourné dans la ville chinoise de Fengjie peu de temps avant qu’elle ne soit engloutie par le barrage des Trois Gorges, Still Life (2006) de Jia Zhang-ke fut un opérateur critique au sein de ce premier ensemble. Dans les films du second groupe, nous nous sommes intéressés après-coup aux images tournées avant le désastre : la pellicule, la bande magnétiqueou les fichiers numériques sont-ils en mesure d’anticiper visuellement la catastrophe à venir ? Nous avons observé cette configurationtemporelle dans Sans Soleil (1983) de Chris Marker, et dans deux longs-métrages d’Abbas Kiarostami, Où est la maison de mon ami ?et Et la vie continue, unis et séparés par le tremblement de terre du Gilan (1990) qui a détruit les villages où les films avaient été tournés.L’imminence de la catastrophe se fait notamment sentir dans les situations de faible visibilité, comme une ombre surplombant le personnage et menaçant de le recouvrir complètement, ou comme un relief entraperçu à l’arrière-plan à travers le brouillard. S’il existe quelque chose de proprement catastrophique dans le cinéma, il relève alors de l’instabilité éprouvée par chaque photogramme condamné à disparaître au nom du suivant, dans cet intervalle (presque) invisible qui les distingue et les raccorde
And what if there was something “cinematographic” itself in the idea of «catastrophe,» in the cyclic spatio-temporal movement described by its etymology? Based on this assumption, our research sought to articulate «cinema» and «catastrophe» on the perspective of imminence.Without adding to the debate on unrepresentability (Catastrophe involves the ruin of representation ) or focus on the representationof the ruin (what remains afterwards), we decided to examine the catastrophic horizon. How to know if a disaster is to come? What image cinema can produce in the imminence of catastrophe? Such questions have been addressed intwo main corpus, we have named «dam films» and «seismic films.» Dams and natural seismic phenomena (earthquakes and volcanic eruptions)constitute grounds for cinema from its origins, present for instance in Lumière’s films and in Méliès’ films. In the first case, we analyse the cinematicimages of landscapes and lifestyles doomed to disappear. Shot in the Chinese city of Fengjie shortly before it was engulfed by the ThreeGorges Dam, Still Life (2006) by Jia Zhangke was a critical operator in the first set. In the films of the second group, we looked afterwards at theimages made before the disaster: are film, magnetic tape or digital files able to visually anticipate the coming disaster? We observed this temporalsituation in Sunless (1983) by Chris Marker, and in two films by Abbas Kiarostami, Where is the Friend’s House? and Life and Nothing More(1992), united and separated by the earthquake of Gilan (1990) that destroyed the villages where the films were shot.The impending disaster is particularly noticeable in low visibility situations, like a shadow overhanging the character and threatening to completely hide it, or as a relief glimpsed in the background through the fog. If there is something really catastrophic in the cinema, it could descent from the instability experienced by each frame, condemned to disappear in order to give place for the next, in this interval (almost) invisible that distinguishes and connects them
E se houvesse algo de propriamente cinematográfico na ideia de “catástrofe”, no movimento espaço-temporal cíclico que sua etimologia indica? Partindo dessa hipótese, nossa pesquisa se propôs a articular “cinema” e “catástrofe” sob a perspectiva da iminência. Sem nos incluirmosno debate sobre sua irrepresentabilidade (a Catástrofe implicaria a ruína da representação) nem nos aprofundarmos na questão da representação da ruína (imagens do que resta depois), decidimos investigar o horizonte catastrófico. Como saber que uma catástrofe está por vir? Que imagem o cinema pode produzir diante da iminência da catástrofe? Essas questões foramaplicadas a dois corpus principais, que chamamos de “filmes de barragem” e “filmes sísmicos”. Tanto as barragens hidráulicas quanto os fenômenos sísmicos de origem natural (terremotos e erupções vulcânicas) constituem motivos para o cinema desde seu surgimento, presentes por exemplo nos filmes dos Lumière ou de Méliès. No primeiro caso, analisamos imagens cinematográficas de paisagens e modos de vida condenados ao desaparecimento. Rodado na cidade chinesa de Fengjie, às margens das Três Gargantas, pouco antes de ser submersa, Still Life (2006), de Jia Zhang-ke, funcionou como um operador crítico dentro desse primeiro conjunto. No segundo grupo, observamos a posteriori imagens realizadas em momentos que antecedem a tragédia: seriam a película, a banda magnética ou os arquivos numéricos capazes de antecipar visualmente a catástrofe por vir? Observamos essa configuração temporal no filme Sem Sol (1983), de Chris Marker, e em dois longas de Abbas Kiarostami, Onde fica a casa do meu amigo? (1987) e E a vida continua (1992), unidos e separadospelo terremoto do Gilan (1990), que destruiu os vilarejos que serviram de locação para ambos.É nomeadamente em situações de difícil visibilidade que a iminência da catástrofe se faz sentir, como sombra que paira sobre o personagem e ameaça escondê-lo por completo, ou como vislumbre de um relevo, no fundo do plano, encoberto pela neblina. Se há algo de propriamente catastrófico no cinema, esse algo reside na instabilidade vivenciada por cada fotograma, forçosamente condenado ao desaparecimento em nome da imagem seguinte. E no intervalo (quase) invisível que os distingue e os associa

Ce travail de thèse se propose de considérer le cinéma d’Apichatpong Weerasethakul sous l’angle du visible et de l’invisible et du mouvement qui va de l’un à l’autre. Cet angle est celui de l’apparaissant, c’est-à-dire de ce qui, entre la divulgation, l’émergence et l’occultation, a lieu ou se retire. Il n’est pas seulement – posément – apparent mais bien apparaissant, c’est-à-dire entrevu dans l’inquiétude de l’acte d’apparition. En se concentrant notamment sur les espaces cruciaux des films que sont les jungles, une prospection mésographique est engagée dans les champs de la spatialité et de la corporéité. La phénoménologie (et ses concepts, ses interrogations, son vocabulaire, ses outils) est mobilisée comme moyen de recherche, comme biais, guide ou méthode, pour analyser ces films qui semblent bien observer les propositions principielles phénoménologiques : libération des concepts de substance, du temps comme constance, et du primat théorique de l’intériorité de la conscience, pour un autrement qu’être, une instabilité ontologique qui ouvre à des mondes autres et aux autres du monde
The aim of this thesis is to consider Apichatpong Weerasethakul's cinema from the angle of the visible and the invisible, and the movement from one to the other. This angle is that of the appearing, i.e. of that which, between disclosure, emergence and concealment, takes place or withdraws. It is not only apparent but in appearing, i.e. glimpsed in the anxiety of the act of appearing. Focusing in particular on jungles, which are crucial spaces in the films, a mesographic exploration is undertaken in the fields of spatiality and corporeality. Phenomenology (and its concepts, interrogations, vocabulary and tools) is mobilized as a means of research, as a bias, guide or method, to analyze these films, which seem to observe phenomenological principal propositions: liberation from the concepts of substances, of time as constancy, and from the theoretical primacy of the interiority of consciousness, for an other-than-being, an ontological instability that opens to other worlds and to others of the world

En 1982, Ingmar Bergman avait pris la décision d’arrêter le cinéma avec une œuvre qu’il voulait ultime : Fanny et Alexandre. Il ne tint pas tout à fait parole et continua à réaliser des œuvres pour la télévision, ce qu’était déjà Fanny et Alexandre. Une fresque de 5h40, film somme et sommet cinématographique. Notre travail souhaite comprendre la complexité d’une œuvre qui renferme à elle seule tous les motifs du cinéaste. Notre désir est de l’étudier sous l’angle de deux notions : le visible et l’invisible. Ces notions viennent d’emblée interroger la présence et l’absence, le plein et le vide, le conscient et l’inconscient, le blanc, couleur de la transparence, et le rouge, celle de l’intérieur de l’âme. Il semble donc que les notions de visible et invisible sondent un univers clivé à l’image d’une œuvre qui, dans sa narration même, oppose la troupe de théâtre à la solitude de l’évêque, la foi dans l’imaginaire à la foi en Dieu, l’enfance à la vieillesse, la vie à la mort, le bien au mal, l’eau de la rivière au feu qui brûle vif le « diable ». Mais notre propos est de tenter de dépasser cette opposition formelle pour parvenir à démontrer sa réversibilité. Les dimensions de visible et d’invisible apparaissent finalement non comme duales mais complémentaires, elles sont un endroit et un envers, où l’invisible est la profondeur du visible. Nous supposons que cette réversibilité, c’est-à-dire un lien qui organise les opposés en manifestant en même temps leur interdépendance, montre comment l’esthétique baroque gouverne le cinéma bergmanien
In 1982, Ingmar Bergman had decided to stop making movies with a piece of work he considered as final – Fanny and Alexander. He didn’t quite keep his word, and kept directing TV works – which he had already started to do with Fanny and Alexander. A 5h40-long epic, a comprehensive piece of work and a cinematic pinnacle. Our research tries to understand the complexity of a piece of work enclosing all of the filmmaker’s motifs. We wish to study it through two notions: the visible and the invisible. These notions immediately question the present and the absent, the full and the empty, the conscious and the unconscious, the white– the color of transparency –, and red as representing the inside of the soul. It thus seems that the notions of visible and invisible probe a divided universe, reflecting a piece of work which, in its very narrative, brings into opposition the theater troupe and the bishop’s solitude, belief in fantasy and faith in God, childhood and old age, life and death, right and wrong, the river stream and the fire that burns “the devil”… Yet, we wish to go beyond this formal opposition to demonstrate its reversibility. Indeed, the dimensions of the visible and the invisible eventually appear as being complementary rather than dual: they represent one side and its reverse, the invisible is the visible’s depth. From our study of the paradigmatic duo “the visible and the invisible”, we assume a reversibility, i.e. a bond that both structures opposites and brings out their interdependence – thus showing how baroque aesthetics reign over Bergman’s cinema

L’elaborato finale si occuperà del tema del travestitismo nel cinema italiano dagli anni ’60 agli anni ’90. Si cercherà di analizzare la figura dei personaggi en travesti e la loro funzione all’interno delle pellicole, da spalla comica/grottesca a una funzione più sociale e progressista per i diritti LGBTIQ+. Inoltre vedremo come per via della cultura cinematografica ancora oggi si creda che il crossdressing sia considerata una pratica omosessuale quando invece dai diversi anni risulti essere praticato soprattutto da persone etero sessuali. Nel corso della tesi si analizzeranno diversi momenti storici del nostro paese e la rappresentazione dei travestiti nel cinema. Nel primo capitolo si farà una panoramica generale di cosa si intenda col termine travestitismo e le varie differenze con i termini quali: Transessuale, transgender e drag queen (più vicino al travestitismo ma con finalità diverse). Nel secondo capitolo si andrà ad analizzare il periodo post bellico e l’avvento del boom economico e come venissero rappresentati gli omosessuali in questo contesto. È proprio in questo periodo che travestitismo e omosessualità diventano sinonimi nella cultura italiana. In questo capitolo verranno presi in esame i primi film che giocano sulla confusione di genere, ma sempre in pieno rispetto della censura, per poi riuscire a raggirarla nel corso degli anni ’60 con l’avvento dei documentari sexy (girati in locali notturni europei con anche esibizioni di travestiti) e l’avvento della commedia all’italiana. Nel terzo capitolo si vedranno invece i film soprattutto degli anni ’70, che subiscono le influenze politiche dell’epoca e delle rivoluzioni avvenute nel paese, non solo studentesche ma anche sessuali. Vedremo infatti le commedie che seguono il flusso della commedia all’italiana fino a giungere all’avvento della commedia erotica. Nel quarto capitolo si prenderanno in esame gli ultimi film sul tema che uscirono nel corso degli anni ’80 e inizio '90, dove notiamo che la figura del travestito torna ad essere una macchietta all'interno delle commedie. Nelle conclusioni si cercherà di tirare le somme di tutta la ricerca, spiegando che anche se con l’occhio contemporaneo i vari personaggi analizzati nel corso della serie possano essere meri stereotipi, quindi macchiette omosessuali o parodia delle donne, rappresentano non solo un interessante punto di vista di come la società italiana vedesse gli omosessuali travestiti (e di conseguenza anche le donne), ma rappresentano anche un passo avanti per la comunità lgbt in Italia che dal dopoguerra cerca di uscire dal silenzio dov’era stato relegato.

Questa tesi prende in esame la traduzione in cinese realizzata da Zhang Mi di “Le Città Invisibili” di Italo Calvino, per condurre uno studio sulle tecniche di traduzione di metafora dall’italiano al cinese. Quest’opera letteraria ha un profondo valore allusivo a tre livelli: l’opera intera, i singoli capitoli e le frasi che ne compongono il testo. Poichè la mia analisi è incentrata sul piano linguistico più che sull’interpretazione dell’opera completa, ho preso in esame nel confronto tra prototesto e metatesto le metafore a livello di parole, espressioni e frasi semplici. Questi elementi, estratti dal testo, sono suddivisi per argomento e per grado di convenzionalizzazione nella lingua di partenza, e confrontati con la versione nella lingua d’arrivo per identificare le scelte traduttive adottate. In seguito, osservando le tendenze delle tecniche rispetto alle varie categorie, mi propongo di individuare punti di contatto o di distanza tra il pensiero metaforico italiano e quello cinese. Nello sviluppo di questa tesi mi avvalgo delle teorie di Lakoff e Johnson, basate sulla derivazione del linguaggio metaforico da una serie di forme di pensiero. Poichè queste strutture mentali sono ampiamente influenzate dalla cultura di provenienza e dall’esperienza di vita credo che lo studio di esse possa costituire uno strumento importante sia per la comprensione del testo dal punto di vista linguistico sia, in prospettive più ampie, per un’indagine sui fondamenti culturali e di pensiero. Considero questo tipo di ricerca un punto di partenza per uno studio dal grande potenziale nell’ottica dell’avvicinamento culturale italo-cinese.

El cine trabaja sobre los cuerpos porque él mismo es un cuerpo y, como todo cuerpo, opera de dos maneras: como el cine-organismo, cuerpo-engranaje en una cadena de montaje de partes ensambladas y firmes, o como el cuerpo heterogéneo cuyas partes exceden lo conjuntable, van más allá del lenguaje. El organismo cinematográfico opera convergencias en función de normas de escritura, enmascara la sutura. El Cuerpo cinematográfico sin Órganos condensa en torno a la sutura misma como punto límite, como singularidad divergente; opera la apertura del intervalo y explora las regiones entre los elementos, lo no conjuntable. Y es en esas regiones entre, en las regiones no conjuntables, donde la imagen se vuelve háptica, donde la imagen ejerce verdaderamente su “toque”, donde nos afecta verdaderamente en tanto que imagen. Donde encontramos no ya una imagen del cuerpo sino una imagen-cuerpo.
Cinema affects bodies because it is a body in itself, and as any other body works in both directions: as a cinematic organism –gears working tightly together in an assembly line– or as the heterogeneous body which parts will not match, going beyond the structure of language. Cinematic organism creates convergences around rules of discourse, disguises suture. Cinematic Body without Organs condenses around the suture as a limit, as a divergent singularity, opens the interval, explores regions in between the elements, the out of joint. It is in those in between regions where images becomes haptic, where they touch and affect us as images as such. Where we find not an image of a body but a body-image.

Diese Studie erkundet den Zusammenhang von Gender und Bilderpraktiken in Sanaa vor dem Hintergrund der globalen Zirkulation von Bildern. Von Geschlechtersegregation gekennzeichnet und an der Peripherie globaler Bilderproduktion liegend, bietet sich der Jemen für die Erforschung des Spannungsfelds von Bildern und Gender an. Betrachtet wird insbesondere, wie Jemenitinnen öffentliche Bilder entschleierter Frauen auf eigene Vorstellungen von Sittsamkeit und Unsichtbarkeit beziehen und wie öffentliches Erscheinen von Frauen verhandelt wird. Ein filmischer Zugang führt zur Betrachtung der performativen Dimension von Bildern. Gefilmte Mikrosituationen werden nach einem hermeneutischen Verfahren interpretiert, das sich am Prozess-, Interaktions- und Diskursverlauf der gefilmten sozialen Praxis orientiert. Sprache wird kontextualisiert und zu Bildern in Bezug gesetzt. Befunde zur Rolle des Umgangs mit Bildern bei der Geschlechterkonstitution offenbaren drei zentrale Themen. Erstens sind Bilderpraktiken von Frauen dynamische und konflikthafte Prozesse, in denen Frauen genderspezifische Räume und Rollen aushandeln. So werden beispielsweise jemenitische Frauen, die im Fernsehen erscheinen, dem Anderen zugeordnet, visuelle Elemente öffentlicher Bilder von Frauen werden heruntergespielt. Zweitens gefährden Bilder die Geschlechtersegregation. Indem das Verbot für Frauen, sich zu sehen zu geben, auch Bilder umfasst, wird das subversive und transgressive Potenzial von Bilderpraktiken deutlich. Es wird deutlich, dass sich hinter früheren wissenschaftlichen Befunden zum islamischen Bilderverbot teilweise genderbezogene Blickverbote verbergen. Drittens folgt die Suche jemenitischer Frauen nach dem eigenen Bild einer Dialektik von Sichtbarkeit und Unsichtbarkeit, denn oft erreichen Frauen öffentliche Sichtbarkeit durch die Repräsentation von Unsichtbarkeit. Diese Ergebnisse verdeutlichen die Notwendigkeit performativer Ansätze bei der Erforschung von Bildern und Medienpraxen.
This ethnographic study explores the intersection of gender and image usage in Sanaa, Yemen, against the background of the global circulation of images. Yemen is a gender-segregated society at the periphery of image production and provides a powerful context in which the phenomena of this intersectionality can be captured and analyzed. Of particular relevance is the means by which Yemeni women relate public images of unveiled women to their requirement of modesty in front of men outside their close families. Within this setting, the negotiation of women’s public appearance is studied. A filmic approach leads to a consideration of the performative dimensions of images. Filmed micro-situations are interpreted according to a hermeneutic method, informed by the procedural, interactive and discursive aspects of social practice. Using this methodology, spoken language is contextualized and related to image practices. Findings on the role of image practices in gender constitution concern three main themes. First, image practices are found to be dynamic and conflictual as gender-specific social spaces and roles are negotiated. For example, Yemeni women who appear on TV are often attributed to the Other, and on the level of language, visual elements of public images of women are downplayed. Second, images pose challenges for gender segregation. As prohibitions on women allowing themselves to be seen in person extend to their images, the subversive and transgressive potential of image practices become apparent. Interestingly, this reveals that some prohibitions on images in the Islamic context discussed by previous researchers are in fact gendered restrictions on looking at women. Finally, the search of Yemeni women for an image of self follows a dialectic between visibility and invisibility. Often those women who reach public visibility do so by representing invisibility. This work demonstrates the need for performative approaches to the study of images and media practices.

Lo scopo di questo lavoro è di studiare la ricezione di Calvino nel campo della critica letteraria cinese e di esaminare la lettura e la critica di tre opere di Calvino da parte di due gruppi molto diversi di critici: gli italianisti cinesi e i comparatisti cinesi. Il presente lavoro cercherà di interpretare e analizzare i temi esplorati dagli studiosi cinesi nei loro saggi e studi sull'autore ligure e sulle tre opere, così come i giudizi e le critiche sollevate, nel tentativo di delineare l'immagine di Calvino agli occhi negli studiosi cinesi. Cercherà di osservare quali aspetti della lettura e della critica delle opere di Calvino differiscono tra italianisti cinesi e comparatisti cinesi, così come di tracciare se diversi studiosi hanno offerto nuove intuizioni su temi rilevanti nei numerosi saggi e contributi di ricerca di quest'ultimo.Inoltre, cercherà di esplorare se c'è una correlazione diretta tra gli italianisti cinesi e la scuola italiana di Calvino, e se ci sono discorsi e definizioni distorte nella retorica degli studiosi cinesi di letteratura comparata. Spero che questa analisi contribuisca a fornire una comprensione più chiara della diffusione dell'opera di Calvino in Cina e della ricezione della sua poetica narrativa nella critica letteraria cinese.

This chapter discusses Cahiers du cinéma’s collective text “Young Mr. Lincoln de John Ford,” a critical re-reading of a canonical film from the classical era of Hollywood cinema, and places it in the context of the journal’s long relationship with Ford’s oeuvre. Highlighting the article’s status as a truly communal theoretical undertaking and its indebtedness to the structuralist reading method espoused by Roland Barthes in S/Z, this chapter closely scrutinizes the text on Young Mr. Lincoln. While later critics for Screen noted flaws in the political analysis offered by Cahiers, I show that the value of the Cahiers critics’ reading lies in their emphasis on the American director’s formal language, the play of visibility and invisibility that produces symptomatic discrepancies with the conscious ideological goals of the original project.

The introduction outlines the chronological span and methodology of the book, particularly in relation to existent studies in Italian cinema, in New Cinema History and Feminist Film theory. It also looks at the specific challenges of studying women and feminist archives from a position of posterity, calling for an affective and situated approach, which addresses issues of fragmentation and invisibility in archival sources and historiography more broadly. The chapter also illustrates the articulation of the book in three main sections, respectively dedicated to film consumption, representation, and production. This choice provides a holistic approach to women’s presence in cinema history, as a collective, multifaceted historical subject.

Drawing from Iris Marion Young notion of “pragmatic theorising”, this conclusion addresses issues of archival accessibility and historiography, from the point of view of women’s fragmented sources. It argues that a materialist and sensory approach to the archive leads to a notion of collective subjectivity, which goes beyond the ideas of “absence” and invisibility that inform most of the historiography about women in the cinema.

This chapter explores the recognition, or lack of it, afforded to domestic labour. The chapter takes take a decolonizing feminist approach to representations of the housemaid in films depicting the Big House – an architectural phenomenon synonymous with colonial plantations – in Brazilian cinema, from the 1940s and 1950s to the present. Examining the figure of the black woman housemaid in this cinematic heritage, at the intersection of gender and sexuality, the chapter explores the “invisibility” which is perpetuated today, and which is shown to have roots deep within the colonial history of Brazil, and colonial modernity more generally.

Drawing on Laura Mulvey’s study of photographic stillness, this chapter considers the use of photography as an intermedial device to provoke reflection on that which is only partially visible at the edge of the frame. It argues that this marginal invisibility can act, paradoxically, as the visualisation of social and structural forces of marginalisation. To that end, the chapter explores the short audiovisual essay Babás (Nannies, 2010) and the fiction film Aquarius (2016). While vastly different in themselves, these films are contextualised as part of a prolific recent trend in Brazilian cinema interested in exploring domestic socio-economic relations in today’s Brazil, often in relation to its slave-holding past and via the figure of the maid.

Genèse d’un repas(Moullet, 1979), Ananas(Gitai, 1984) and The Forgotten Space (Burch & Sekula, 2010) constitute three cinematic attempts at representing the global production and distribution networks of commodities. Giorgio Avezzù and Giuseppe Fidotta argue in this chapter that these films, due to their central concern with late capitalism and globalisation, can be labelled ‘World Essay Films’. They question, however, the multi-layered dynamics of global economy and cinema from the standpoint of Cultural Geography and Visual Studies. Although the World Essay Film’s central question pertains to the ways in which the interconnectedness of the world can be made visible, material, spatial, these films also play, as they argue, on the anxieties related to the invisibility of late-capitalist world, whose flows and networks seem to escape conventional representation. This inherent contradiction poses a challenge to realistic aesthetics and the documentary.

This chapter shifts the reflections on marginalization and visibility discussed in chapter 3 to Brasilia, the modernist capital that was built from scratch in forty-one months and completed in 1960. Embodying a strategic visuality intent on ordering urban space, Brasilia also produced massive forms of invisibility, as illustrated by the forced relocation of workers to peripheral satellite cities and by the repression of marginal histories—histories that are buried beneath the city’s surface like the bodies of workers who died during its construction. Paying special attention to Vladimir Carvalho and Adirley Queirós, this chapter examines a counter-visual cinema that is dedicated to what is invisible and even non-visual—such as the sounds of the periphery and the voices of workers whose memories contradict the official record.

In most societies, there is a binary division between males and females, and masculinity and femininity, to which all individuals must conform. Any non-conformity from this binary is considered unnatural and abnormal and is discriminated against. The fear of being shunned, as they do not belong to the binary groups of “male” and “female,” compels the LGBTQ+ community to live in a closeted world. Media is a powerful tool that can represent and discuss minority groups and pave way for their acceptance. However, the entertainment industry specifically reinforces the stereotypical norms related to gender identity. The chapter proposes to construct meaning out of queer representation (or rather misrepresentation) in entertainment industry and analyze the reproduction of hetero-normative ideals. It also attempts to discuss stigmatization of homosexuality and existence of homo-invisibility in the industry. The chapter will focus on queer portrayal in cinema, television, and advertising industry over time.