Somewhere Between Fiction and Fiction: Disentangling Partial-Geometric Narratives in the Cinema of Hong Sang-soo

Predominantly linear narrative arrangements used to direct the spectator's comprehension are but one of many options made available to filmmakers. Opposing this convention, the films of South Korean director Hong Sang-soo are characterized by their complex narratives as much as the romantic triangles that inhabit them. This thesis addresses the “optional path” narratives observable in Hong's films, which deny the audience the ability to reconstruct an objective, verifiable timeline. Whereas established theories of film narratives foreground the limitations placed on storytelling in order to guide comprehension, key works in Hong's cinema will be understood to adopt a “partial-geometric” model that emphasizes the agency of the spectator in creating meaning in the film text. A style-based narratological approach, operating under Formalist assumptions, will be interrogated for the fissures that emerge when it is applied against these texts. The objects of study are understood as realizing multiple diegeses, or story worlds, the boundaries of which are made speculative through the use of space. Although building upon the existing narratological insights of key scholars David Bordwell and Edward Branigan, this thesis will instead distance itself from limiting narrative frameworks in favor of optionality. The spectator is able to attribute or disarticulate the “truth value” of key events, and is encouraged to recognize the unlimited narrative arrangements and their own subjective agency. This thesis will also make initiatives to extend its insights beyond the borders of Hong's filmography, recognizing film festivals as a discursive site for expanding narrative models

Spectatorship of Film Address and Ideology: A Case Study of Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives

Cette thèse est une étude empirique du film Oncle Boonmee qui se souvient de ses vies passées d'Apichatpong Weerasethakul, premier film thaïlandais à remporter la Palme d'Or en 2010. La question de recherche est quels ont été les accueils et réactions des spectateurs face au film ? Ensuite, elle émet l’hypothèse que l’accueil et les réactions des spectateurs révèlent différents messages connotatifs et idéologiques du film. Les principaux objectifs de l’étude sont premièrement d’examiner la réception par le spectateur du langage, des images, des signes et des sons du film et deuxièmement d’explorer le message connotatif et l’idéologie cinématographique. Par ailleurs, elle envisage une possible motivation pour la construction du film et observe une influence sur la réception du spectateur. La théorie du spectateur, selon le livre Inside the Gaze de Francesco Casetti, est appliquée comme approche principale. Une méthodologie qualitative est employée, basée sur les critiques de films de spectateurs thaïlandais et non-thaïlandais provenant de diverses sources telles que des journaux professionnels, des blogs personnels, des forums de discussion et des articles académiques. L'étude des critiques de films est divisée en deux chapitres : la politique dans le film et la connotation symbolique du film. Les résultats montrent les réactions des spectateurs à travers la forme narrative et les réceptions en termes de quatre significations : idéologie et politique, relation de genre et transformation, nature et non-humain, et lutte des classes. Les critiques reconnaissent que le film montre l'idéologie de l'État et déconstruit simultanément l'idéologie en ouvrant un nouvel espace pour le spectateur du film. En outre, ils ont constaté que le film dépeint les relations entre les sexes et les rôles des hommes et des femmes dans les institutions sociales et religieuses, un fantôme et un singe comme représentations de la nature, ainsi que les relations de classe et la lutte pour le bien-être. Les spectateurs ont pu interpréter les messages connotés du film tout au long de l'histoire plutôt que de les décoder à partir du titre. L'examen démontre en outre la réception de ces critiques à travers la géographie du spectateur de Casetti. -- This thesis is an empirical study of the film Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives by Apichatpong Weerasethakul, the first Thai film to win the Palm d’Or Award in 2010. The research question is what were the spectators’ receptions and reactions to the film? Then, it hypothesizes that the spectators’ reception and reactions reveal different connotative messages and ideology of the film. The study’s primary objectives are firstly to examine the spectator’s reception of the film language, images, signs, and sounds and secondly to explore the connotative message and film ideology. In addition, it considers a possible motivation for the film's construction and observes an influence on the spectator’s reception. The spectatorship theory, according to the book Inside the Gaze by Francesco Casetti, is applied as the principal approach. The qualitative methodology is employed, based on the film critiques of Thai and non-Thai spectators from various sources such as professional newspapers, personal blogs, discussion boards, and academic articles. The investigation of the film critiques is divided into two chapters: the politics in the film, and symbolic film connotation. The results show spectators’ reactions through narrative form and receptions in terms of four meanings: ideology and politics, gender relation and transformation, nature and the non-human, and class struggle. The critiques recognized that the film shows the state ideology and simultaneously deconstructs the ideology by opening a new space of the film spectatorship. Furthermore, they found that the film portrays gender relations and gender roles in social and religious institutions, a ghost and a monkey as representations of nature, and relationships of class and the struggle for welfare. The spectators were able to interpret the film's connotative messages throughout the story rather than decoding them from the title. The examination further demonstrates the reception of these critiques through Casetti's geography of the spectator

Surface attraction: hyphological encounters with the films of David Lynch.

How does one turn a cinematic passion into an academic thesis? This is the question that runs through my work, which is both a labour of love and a series of love letters. Does one, can one, tell the truth about one's love object? Written in solitude about the darkened passions of the cinema, and the commodified reenactment via DVD and video, it seeks to locate this body of work, organized under the signifier David Lynch, within a broader cultural history of film and art, rather than, as so many chronologically based studies have done, to assess the individual films and then collectively to remark upon the auteur's signature. Instead, it seeks to experience again, or anew, the ontological strangeness of film within the saturated market place, and observe how, in this body of work, the normative framework of the North American film industry is disturbed from inside by a practice which explores and critically examines the creative potential of the medium within the constraints of the capitalist mode of production and consumption. Taking Roland Barthes' neologism of the theory of the text as a hyphology as its means of organization, the thesis presents a series of chapters which consider separate concepts or ideas about these films which, although appearing freestanding, come together in the final chapter in this web of engagement with Lynch's cinema and critical theory. In the final analysis, the work reflects upon a range of approaches to its subject to conclude that the solitary, or seemingly isolated, experience of film is itself socially, culturally and politically important and tells us a great deal about contemporary subjectivity

Documenting the making process

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University.This thesis documents the construction of a performance project, At Last Sight, which was made with a group of undergraduates at University College Chester. The leader of that project is the same person as the writer of this thesis; this locates the act of writing as something embedded within the process of performance making. The writing forms an address to the unreliability of objective observational analysis. It does so through a resistance to those attempts at impartiality and detachment that might usually be expected in an academic investigation. In this case partiality and involvement are more than central to the investigative process, they form the very structure of enquiry. The body of this work was written at the same time as At Last Sight was being constructed, and the ideas encountered herein possess many of the rhythms of performance making. Space is both somewhere performance is made and an integral aspect of the made work. In a similar way the following chapters amount to more than the site where work has been recorded. In tracing the footprints that led to At Last Sight the thesis reveals itself as an element of that which is being traced. Where At Last Sight revealed the performers as the to-be-watched and also as the watchers, the study functions as the to-be-read and also as the reading. In this way the documentation becomes the documented. This notion of integration between the subject and its study runs through the thesis. Approaching performance analysis as something `other' creates a gap between it and its subject that can deny the best attempts to bring the two together. Approached in a less compartmentalised way the analysis is allowed to form an indivisible correspondence with the analysed. When the division between the act and the analysis is dissolved the documentation is able to exist as both fixed object and time-based event. Something of the fluidity of process is acknowledged and articulated in each of the sections presented

Sound and Image: Experimental Music and the Popular Horror Film (1960 to the present day)

This study investigates the functional relationship between sound and image within a particular generic and historical context - experimental music and the popular horror film, from 1960 to the present day. The study responds to a significant gap in the literature that requires sustained and in-depth academic attention. Despite recent expansion, the field of film music studies has yet to deal with alternative functional models that challenge the overall applicability of the dominant narrative-based theoretical framework. Recent scholarship suggests that a proper theoretical comprehension of horror film music's primary function requires a refocusing of the hermeneutic emphasis upon dimensions of the cinematic (or audio-visual) sign that can be described as `nonrepresentational.' This study applies a relatively new psychoanalytical framework to explain how the post-1960 horror film deploys these non-representational elements, incorporating them into an overall cinematic strategy which indexes the transition towards a post-classical cinematic aesthetics. More specifically, this study assessesju st how efficiently experimental musical styles and techniques aid the reconfiguration of the syntactical components of horror film to these very ends. Using three case study directors, this study focuses upon major developments in musical style and cinematic technology, describing the ways in which these have facilitated this cinematic strategy. A particularly useful contribution to the knowledge is made here via the study's explanation as to how the particular psychoanalytical framework applied can illuminate the functional and theoretical relationships often posited between both the formal and subjective dimensions of the post-1960 horror film experience. The conclusions reached suggest this theoretical explication of post-1960 horror film music's function can now take its place alongside previously dominant narrative frameworks. Given the influential status of the horror genre, the findings of this investigation prove useful for comprehending the increasing heterogeneity of postclassical film music in general, and the functional relationship(s) of sound and image in particular