L to Walter Benjamin Foundation has cycle Angel faretto FILM CLASS B A copy of a film concept
Films will be screened nine copies of the class B mode produced by Val Lewton between 1941 and 1946. Cat People I walked with a Zombie Leopard Man The seventh victim The ghost ship The Curse of the Cat The body snatcher The Isle of the Dead Bedlam
Before each projection, Angel faretto state the main axes of articulated his conception of cinema with the characteristic features of the Class B mode seminar-workshop. These axes are:
1. Defined as a mode of production 2. Second definition as a mode of representation. 3. Film types and variants of class B 4. Ages and exemplary works of cinema class B 5. Roots and cultural influences of class B movies 6. The horror, fantasy and detective
Information and registration Walter Benjamin Foundation Institute of Communication and Contemporary Culture Lavalleja 1390, City of Buenos Aires, Argentina Tel: (+54 11) 4833-7086, from 16:30 to 20:30 info@walterbenjamin.org.ar - www.walterbenjamin.org.ar
Watchmen, Zack Zynder: denial, confusion and investment
Many things should the movies. In less than one hundred years was able to navigate, analyze, judge and then reconfigure the entire history of the West.
In this age of denial, confusion and investment, the film was (and is, as his works continue to operate beyond the time step, if we are able to see) a beautiful bridge that allowed the man Modern remember its origin, its tradition. Analogical thinking, the ability mythopoeics, terrestrial features (with strong emphasis on the heroic), the tragic condition and transcendent values \u200b\u200bwere elements that the film through his works, put back into circulation reconfiguring through diegesis "contemporary."
This reconfiguration was a necessary addition to any other act of acceptance by the film. What we agreed was the state of the world, its materialism and pragmatic mind. And so, accepting this fate, he was able to carry out this reconfiguration (intensifying what is done by Poe, for example).
But this reconfiguration always avoided the confusion, the allegory and the investment of those traditional skills. So, for example, see the deployment western Homeric heroism in other forms, reviving and constant action. So we also see the appearance in Hitchcock standing myths that are not named explicitly (although it will give us clear clues about it). The important thing, of course, not so much the fact of recognizing a particular myth relates how each film or scene shot by the Master as the transmission of funds to be of those myths.
The film then accept the condition of the world to simultaneously identify the exit doors, or the bridges that help us pass over this wasteland, or like James Cameron did not for many years, boats to survive the shipwreck.
Watchmen, a film adaptation of a popular and acclaimed comic, is the opposite of what we have been describing the film. Is a constant denial. On the one hand denies any narrative and aesthetic order. Instead of that order, imposes a chaos that overwhelmed with sounds furious and violent, dramatic and famous songs slow motion. The narrative breaks into subplots and flashbacks also overwhelm rather than enrich the story. And as if that were not enough, Watchmen seeks to compensate its spectacular empty with a solemn tone that runs through the nearly three hours it takes. It seems that there is a claim (Pseudo) philosophical film, with each character representing different positions. This was expressed in every dialogue, always delivered with a tone of gravity that leads to laughter. It talks about the perception of time, of moral principles, of Alexander, of pharaohs, there is a character with qualities that are supposed divine ... The operation is simple: the idea of \u200b\u200bdoing something prestigious quoting or naming certain issues which themselves are believed important, not realizing that in any case the important thing is to make these issues present something that unfolds before the viewer in operating state . is, as shown, a hybrid, a celebration of the state of confusion by annulling the aesthetic and symbolic potential of cinema.
And confusion leads to investment. Believing that reflects on the heroic, that element is negated and reversed. There are no heroes ambiguous or conflicted. There is, without more, people with certain special abilities (physical, intellectual) unable to use them with virtue. Someone could say just what the film suggests is that in a world like that described in the fable is impossible such a thing. But that would require the appearance of any element that is in conflict with this (dis) order and whose will is defeated or prevented from developing. Nor is there any way conflict, or explicitly, much less symbolic. The doors are closed, collapsed bridges and boats sunk. Simply because there is more than possible. And it is the latter the cause of all evil in the movie.
may Watchmen scream that the world is rotten, ugly, violent, inexplicable. It does furious cry, getting noticed. But he decides to stay there, making massive show in a cynical conclusion. As cynical as all its characters.
Watchmen is one long advertisement for something that films with heroic and transcendent sense, always fought: nihilism.
* Leo out there that Valkyrie (this is the local title) is an "average film." What is the average?
* This could only be asserted if the films used for such are the decade average of 50 '.
* Confronting different war, Hollywood movies always opted for another position . First from any prospect "historic" and "ideological." But above all these conflicts used as starting points, as potential diegesis to deploy a range of symbolic possibilities and to become universal and timeless values \u200b\u200bthat contain these possibilities. The heroism, understood as a function-be it transcendental or moral, is one of them. Valkyrie is.
* Actually, rather than making these values \u200b\u200buniversal and timeless, the film reminds us of the universality and timelessness of them.
* Valkyrie no way is a masterpiece. The average modern film can be confusing. Therefore we must be clear and insistent: it is a movie of the decade average of 50 '.
* Leo also: "... more heroism humanity, in a thriller film that puts the deep, unfathomable historical drama." This is that, of course, as an objection to Singer's film. If the author of the phrase would have understood the film would have used those words to write a sentence like, but surely appreciative.
