Film on the Faultline

Description

Film has always played a crucial role in the imagination of disaster. Earthquakes, especially, not only shift the ground beneath our feet but also herald a new way of thinking or being in the world. Following recent seismic events in countries as dissimilar as Iran, Chile and Haiti, Japan and New Zealand, national films have emerged that challenge ingrained political, economic, ethical, and ontological categories of modernity. Film on the Faultline explores the fractious relationship between cinema and seismic experience and addresses the important role that cinema can play in the wake of such events as forms of popular memory and personal testimony.

Introduction: Film Theory as Seismic Research - Alan Wright

Chapter 1: A Tale of Two Cities: San Francisco 1906 and Earthquake in Adelaide - Stephen Morgan

Chapter 2: The Wrath of Heaven: The Great Kantō Earthquake and Japanese Cinema - Alex Bates

Chapter 3: Earthquakes in Film: Exploring Visualization Strategies - Ozge Samanci

Chapter 4: The Virtual of Disaster: Science, Politics and Tectonics in Roland Emmerich’s 2012 - Axel Andersson

Chapter 5: Aftershock: The Cultural Politics of Commercializing Traumatic Memory - Jinhua Li

Chapter 6: The Just Distance: Abbas Kiarostami and the Aftermath of Devastation - Steve Choe

Chapter 7: Towards a Natural History of the Cinema: Walter Benjamin, Film and Catastrophe - Allen Meek

Chapter 8: Seismic Energy and Symbolic Exchange in When a City Falls - Kevin Fisher

Chapter 9: Landscapes in Conflict in Contemporary Chilean Film - Antonia Girardi

Chapter 10: The Earth Still Trembles: On Landscape Views in Contemporary Italian Cinema - Giorgio Bertellini

Chapter 11: Cinema in Reconstruction: Japan’s Post 3.11 Documentary - Joel Neville Anderson

Chapter 12: Ordinary Extraordinary: 3.11 in Japanese Fiction Film - Eija Niskanen

Chapter 13: Earthquake/ΣΕΙΣΜΟΣ - Yuri Averof

Chapter 14: Home in a Foreign Land - Nora Niasari

Chapter 15: Moving: An Interview with Park Kiyong - Zhou Ting-Fung

Chapter 16: “What I Really Saw Could Not Possibly Be Reflected in a Movie”: Abbas Kiarostami on Life and Nothing More … - Hossein Najafi

Chapter 17: Tres Semanas después/Life Goes On - José Luis Torres Leiva

Sujets

• Película fotográfica
• Reference
• History of film
• Cultural Studies
• Film

Informations

• Publié par: Intellect Books
• Date de parution: 05 janvier 2015
• Nombre de lectures: 2
• EAN13: 9781783204359
• Langue: English

Extrait

First published in the UK in 2015 by
Intellect, The Mill, Parnall Road, Fishponds, Bristol, BS16 3JG, UK
First published in the USA in 2015 by
Intellect, The University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th Street,
Chicago, IL 60637, USA
Copyright © 2015 Intellect Ltd
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by
any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or
otherwise, without written permission.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the
British Library.
Copy-editor: MPS Technologies
Cover designer: Stephanie Sarlos
Production manager: Claire Organ
Typesetting: Contentra Technologies
Print ISBN: 978-1-78320-433-5
ePUB: 978-1-78320-435-9
ePDF: 978-1-78320-434-2
Printed and bound by Hobbs, UK
Contents
Introduction:  Film Theory as Seismic Research
Alan Wright
Chapter 1: A Tale of Two Cities: San Francisco 1906 and Earthquake in Adelaide
Stephen Morgan
Chapter 2: The Wrath of Heaven: The Great Kantō Earthquake and Japanese Cineman
Alex Bates
Chapter 3: Earthquakes in Film: Exploring Visualization Strategies
Ozge Samanci
Chapter 4: The Virtual of Disaster: Science, Politics and Tectonics in Roland Emmerich’s 2012
Axel Andersson
Chapter 5: Aftershock : The Cultural Politics of Commercializing Traumatic Memory
Jinhua Li
Chapter 6: The Just Distance: Abbas Kiarostami and the Aftermath of Devastation
Steve Choe
Chapter 7: Towards a Natural History of the Cinema: Walter Benjamin, Film and Catastrophe
Allen Meek
Chapter 8: Seismic Energy and Symbolic Exchange in When a City Falls
Kevin Fisher
Chapter 9: Landscapes in Conflict in Contemporary Chilean Film
Antonia Girardi
Chapter 10: The Earth Still Trembles: On Landscape Views in Contemporary Italian Cinema
Giorgio Bertellini
Chapter 11: Cinema in Reconstruction: Japan’s Post 3.11 Documentary
Joel Neville Anderson
Chapter 12: Ordinary Extraordinary: 3.11 in Japanese Fiction Film
Eija Niskanen
Chapter 13: Earthquake/
Yuri Averof
Chapter 14: Home in a Foreign Land
Nora Niasari
Chapter 15: Moving : An Interview with Park Kiyong
Zhou Ting-Fung
Chapter 16: “What I Really Saw Could Not Possibly Be Reflected in a Movie”: Abbas Kiarostami on Life and Nothing More …
Hossein Najafi
Chapter 17: Tres Semanas después /Life Goes On
José Luis Torres Leiva
Notes on Contributors
A portion of the royalties for this book will be donated to the relief fund for the earthquake in Nepal.
Introduction: Film Theory as Seismic Research
Alan Wright
Wananga Tu, Wananga Ora Ko Rūaumoko e ngunguru nei! Hark to the rumbling of the Earthquake God! Hī Au! Au! Aue hā! Feel the energy! Ko Rūaumoko e ngunguru nei! It is Ruaumoko who trembles and stirs! Hī Au! Au ! Aue hī! Feel the energy! I a haha Take it in Ko te iwi Māori e ngunguru nei! Hark to the awe of Māori people! Hī Au! Au! Aue hā! Feel the energy! Ko te Waipounamu e ngunguru nei! It is the Southern nation that trembles and stirs! Hī Au! Au ! Aue hā! I a haha Feel the energy! Take it in Ko te whare wānanga e ngunguru nei! Hark to the rumbling of the places of learning! Hī Au! Au! Aue hā! Feel the energy! Ko te Wānanga o Waitaha e ngunguru nei! It is University of Canterbury that trembles and stirs! Hī Au! Au! Aue hā! Feel the energy! I a haha Take it in Tūruki, tūruki Take action Paneke, paneka Make a difference Haere mai te toki Bring forth the challenge Haumi ē, hui ē, taiki ē Gather, bind, all is set
The kōrero pūrākau (ancient stories) refer to the time when the sky father Ranginui was separated from the earth mother Papatuanuku. They had an unborn child, Rūaumoko, who was still inside his mother’s womb. The pūrākau assert that today he remains there, sometimes moving and turning inside Papatuanuku. When he moves, the earth shakes and so he has become known as the god of earthquakes.
Rūaumoko is invoked in this way usually on ceremonious occasions to signal respect for the mana of one to another. In the final analysis, turbulence is followed by calm. 1
I did not understand the words at the time but I must have felt their power. Their meaning would only become apparent through the act of writing. They found their place at the beginning of this book, whether by fate or coincidence, after the decision had been made to compile the current collection of essays and interviews. The original idea for Film on the Faultline had been generated by the experience of excitement, exhaustion and distress in the days following the violent earthquake in Christchurch, the second largest city in New Zealand, on February 22nd, 2011.
The Canterbury earthquake, like many other seismic disasters of such magnitude, left a host of powerful images and memories in its wake. What happened then is now a matter of record: you can read about the event online or in news reports or watch video clips on Youtube or Facebook that were filmed at the time on mobile devices and cameras. You can see buildings collapse and people running this way and that in fear and confusion. There are pictures of a vast cloud of dust rising over the city, of cars and buses under rubble, of the Christchurch Cathedral as its walls crumbled. TV cameras, stationed beneath the blackened shell of the CTV Building, the iconic epicentre of the disaster, kept vigil as rescue teams searched the wreckage for survivors. Many of the building’s occupants, including 70 foreign students, died in the earthquake.
Then, on March 11th, the images from Japan overwhelmed us...
*
The haka, which stands here in the place of a poetic invocation, was performed a few weeks after the earthquake at an emergency briefing for university staff in preparation for a return to work. Amidst the speeches on safety and security and the strategic plan for the progressive resumption of services, a group of Māori colleagues and friends quietly recited the waiata [Māori song] in te reo . It struck a chord (with me at least). The collective performance of the waiata offered a poignant testament, a public acknowledgement of the loss, however deferred, that everyone had experienced as a result of the earthquake. It also revealed the extent to which the discourse of crisis management and operational planning was at odds with a more intimate and immediate understanding of the meaning of the disaster. This vague premonition was confirmed much later upon reading the text of the waiata in English.
The words of the haka express a particular relationship to power. They demand respect for the awesome power of Rūaumoko, the god of earthquakes, but they also encourage an awareness of the creative potential released in the encounter between human agency and natural disaster. By affirming the collective spirit of the people [ tū ] and “the connection of all living things” [ ora ], the waiata converts the deadly power of the quake into a source of vital energy. It conveys, with the full force of a categorical imperative, the need to recognize and realize the existential, ethical, political and material dimension of the earthquake as a catastrophic event. The earthquake places the very principle of being at stake. The challenge, as laid down by the Rūaumoko haka, is to gather and bind the seismic energy of the quake as a positive source for action rather than to limit or fix its creative promise. 2
*
After the earthquake, our colleagues in the Sciences and Engineering brought their knowledge and expertise to bear upon the events in Christchurch. They did a tremendous job in analysing the risks and results of seismic activity. They played an important role in the media and other public discussions and have made a remarkable contribution to the city’s recovery. The Arts and Humanities have much to contribute as well to an understanding of the earthquake from a social, cultural, historical and theoretical perspective. An earthquake is a conceptual event of telluric proportions. In many respects, the political, ethical and ontological categories that ground the project of modernity in its current globalized form are unthinkable beyond the limits of catastrophe. The great Lisbon earthquake of 1755 is often cited as the mythic catalyst for many of the foundational texts of the Enlightenment, such as Kant’s “Analytic of the Sublime” and Voltaire’s Candide . The senseless destruction, pain and human suffering wrought by the disaster could only be comprehended from the vantage point of a secular frame of reference, a position of critical distance and human understanding as opposed to one of divine judgment or sovereign authority. “Through the power of reason and its moral law,” Gene Ray writes in reference to the Kantian Sublime, “the great evil of natural catastrophe is elevated, transfigured, and ‘sublimed’ into a foil for human dignity.” 3 But a trembling, a shaking and shattering very much on the order of an earthquake, Enschütterung is the term used by Kant, signals the immanent persistence of a moment or movement of breakdown at the very core of Enlightenment thought. 4
If Lisbon supplied a new conceptual paradigm for Goethe, Voltaire, Kant and their contemporaries, the spate of earthquakes between 2010 and 2012 could serve, perhaps, a similar function in relation to the traumatic legacy of modernity and its most recent variations. Indeed, after the earthquake, Christchurch felt like it had more in common not only with Haiti or Chile but also with Athens and Cairo. The global financial crisis or the Arab Spring suddenly seemed more real, their cause and effects more urgently visible in the ruined facades of shop fronts and businesses in what remained of the so-called CBD. For a moment, the naked truth was apparent. One could read the natural history of destruction in the skeletal remains of damaged buildings and eerily empty streets.
The earthquake marks the violent irruption of nature into history. It functions less as an exceptional occurrence,