New Cinemas: Journal of Contemporary Film - Volume 2, Issue 3, 2004

This article looks at how Álex de la Iglesia can be studied using reviewed auteurist strategies. Such a study has to take into account how he constructs his persona as director in a process which deviates greatly from the images and roles allocated to directors by traditional auteurism. This persona has, in its turn, been the perfect complement to output that has often been seen as a non-legitimate part of Spanish cinema for its reliance on non-realist, popular genres and blatant ‘homages’ to Hollywood. From the constructions of his persona, we propose to look at the adjustments that both his new auteur style and his output impose on the definition of an identity in which official/unofficial discourses on Spanish cinema are continuously engaged. We also suggest that this process must involve a revision of the scholarship on Spanish auteurs that is in currency.

New interactive media works based upon audio-visual material often result in distraction rather than sustained engagement. Contrary to postmodern textual and cognitive presumptions, this study uses dual coding theory, cognitive load theory, and constructivist narrative film theory, to claim that distraction results from cognitive and behavioural multi-tasking which lead to split attention problems that cannot be cognitively handled. Focus is upon split attention resulting from the non-critical use of split screens, from decentred, non-cohering audio-visual and multi-narrative formations, and from interaction. The analysis of several new media works, existing tools and models, particularly those pertaining to narrative- oriented ‘interactive films’, instantiates these claims. For narrative interactive audio-visual texts to sustain deep, wide-ranged engagement, multi-tasking split attention problems inhering in computer-based works have to be managed, and - most importantly - made to enhance rather than reduce engagement. This article outlines some major problems and offers viable solutions.

In Hamam (1997) and The Ignorant Fairies (2001), Turkish-Italian director Fernan Özpetek places a bisexual/bicultural game at the centre of the diegetic space. Three characters whose emotions are in flux become psychologically intimate in honest, non-competitive ways. In the process, each discovers a new self within. In Hamam, a successful, married male professional from Italy discovers bisexual pleasure while in Istanbul. In The Ignorant Fairies, a successful female physician in Rome becomes part of the gay/immigrant community. Players define happiness in their own terms and learn to generate the emotional environment that will sustain it. By modelling erotic behaviours that are conducive of cognitive explorations, the bi-games address global issues like religious intolerance, immigration, and cultural difference. In the context of queer theory, my article analyses the bi-tropes at the centre of Özpetek's films as ludic structures conducive of self-knowledge and self-definition, and as cooperative games in which players maximize their chances for emotional sustainability.

This article considers different readings of 1997 film, Radiance, directed by indigenous Australian, Rachel Perkins. It argues that there is a tension between psychoanalytically informed universalist readings of the film, which are linked to the genre of melodrama, and specific readings of the film in the context of contemporary debates about Australia's colonial history, with specific reference to the stolen generations. This article suggests that these two kinds of readings coalesce around the representation of the dead mother, who is depicted in classically abject terms, and the resulting ambivalence is resolved through both the image of her exorcism and a series of displacements that elide Australia's colonial past.

Marcos Bernstein, Brazilian screenwriter and director, attended the Berlin International Film Festival in 2004. His film O outro lado da rua (The Other Side of the Street) proved to be a great success due, in part, to the participation in the film of Oscar-nominated actress Fernanda Montenegro (who starred in Central Station, for which Bernstein wrote the screenplay). This interview focuses on what led Bernstein to direct his first movie, his experience as a screenwriter, his conception of film-making and the plot and themes of this new film. As a result of his fascination with Fernanda Montenegro, the ‘first lady’ of Brazilian film, he resolved to make a movie about the life and love affairs of older people in Copacabana, the beach-front Rio de Janeiro district where many old people live.

Although the Munich festival has long had to play second fiddle to Berlin's A-list event, it remains in many ways more important for Germany's media industry. This status is reflected in the character and constitution of both film festivals: while Berlin offers a higher profile venue for international competition and independent film - it usually attracts more Hollywood stars as well as film buyers - the Munich festival's biggest prizes are intended for domestic talent. This year's festival was one of the best of the last several, not only because it offered excellent individual films, but also because of its productive mixture of experienced directors and relative newcomers.

This page shows a reference list of all the articles that have appeared in this volume of the journal.