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- Volume 11, Issue 1, 2021
Short Film Studies - Volume 11, Issue 1, 2021
Volume 11, Issue 1, 2021
- Editor’s Introduction
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- La Vis (The Screw) Didier Flamand, France, 1993, B/W, 19 Min
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- Articles
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Mr K meets Modern Times: Intertextual closure in La Vis
More LessAmong the many functions that the doppelgänger-twist in La Vis fulfils, it also stages a convergence of the film’s two most self-conscious influences – Kafkaesque bureaucracy in The Trial (1925) and The Castle (1926); and Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times (1936) – in which Mr K comes face-to-face with the Tramp.
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On the edge of alienation: La Vis
More LessThis analysis will show that Metallika is designed as an absurd and exaggerated form of a mechanical, industrial society in which different types of alienation are organized.
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Shifting perspectives in La Vis
More LessThis short film, obviously inspired by expressionism, conveys Monsieur K’s subjectivity through POV shots but also uses distorted and reverse angles. This article examines the function of such shifting perspectives as the expression of a gradual destabilization of POV and a sometimes ironical reference to spectators’ reception.
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Spectatorship and affective investment in La Vis
More LessThe narrative strategies at work within La Vis challenge viewers to construct an empathetic protagonist, even from challenging, parodic cues. Ultimately, Didier Flamand’s film is as much about how we watch films as it is about a fellow irritated by a faulty screw.
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The power of language
More LessThe language spoken in La Vis is a constructed language. It is both recognizable and unrecognizable; it gives credibility to the characters and to the whole décor. Reality is elusive and yet believable. Perceived as a multilayered language, it is reduced to one single word in the final sequence.
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Verfremdung/Entfremdung and modernism: ‘Pseudo-language’ in La Vis
More LessThis article deals with the role artificial language (pseudo-language) plays in this short film and draws parallels to other examples where pseudo-language has been used to achieve comic effect, from Chaplin’s Modern Times to contemporary use of the effect while emphasizing the concept of alienation in twentieth-century modernism.
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The climax of the show
More LessIn La Vis, dialogues are reduced to their most basic form – random sounds in which just a few words are intelligible enough to carry the characters’ conversations, thoughts and emotions. But if words are how minds take shape and express themselves, does that make these characters mindless? Soulless?
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- Echo Magnus von Horn, Poland, 2008, colour, 14 min
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- Articles
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The intrusive ‘echoing’ of past violence into the present
More LessThe short film Echo shows, through multiple filmic aspects, how violence can resonate from past to present without an instance of glorification. I analyse how the film engages with the indirect representation of violence and how it redirects past violent atrocities back to its perpetrators.
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Echo as mimesis: Interpreting reflections of past crimes
More LessCrime fiction is the narrative echo of an exceptional occasion, transforming everyday life into something unrecognizable. The investigation echoes the original events. The characters echo each other. This article intends to explore how echo is utilized in content and as narrative form in the short film.
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Re-wound: Echo’s (dis)temporality
Authors: Emanuel Tanti and Krista Bonello Rutter GiapponeThis article considers the displacement suggested by the film’s title and the pursuit of the past in the unsettled present. The film occupies an intermediary time and space, as implied by the uncomprehending reactions of those left behind, the investigative reconstruction and the delayed breakthrough of trauma.
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Concentrated Noir: Reinforcing and transgressing genre boundaries in Echo
By Rhian WallerNordic Noir has emerged as an increasingly codified set of aesthetic, political and philosophical televisual elements. Echo compresses these elements, subjecting them to the crucible of short film. This article investigates the dramatic potential of stripping back cross-genre tropes to reveal the defining characteristics of a newly emergent format.
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Blocking and story in Echo
More LessEcho is a perfect example of how form and content can work together to create an intriguing film. In this article I focus on a connection between the structure of the film and the filmmaker’s careful staging and framing of the story.
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