Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: http://hdl.handle.net/1893/22990
Appears in Collections:Communications, Media and Culture eTheses
Title: The aesthetics of absence and duration in the post-trauma cinema of Lav Diaz
Author(s): Mai, Nadin
Supervisor(s): Neely, Sarah
Lovatt, Philippa
Keywords: film
Slow Cinema
cinema
Lav Diaz
Philippines
history
memory
trauma
PTSD
concentrationary
terror
extrajudicial killings
torture
rape
post-trauma
Death in the Land of Encantos
Melancholia
Florentina Hubaldo CTE
Trauma Cinema
Janet Walker
Roger Luckhurst
Susannah Radstone
aesthetics
duration
absence
latency period
instantaneity
flashbacks
anxiety
Cathy Caruth
Raya Morag
failed witnessing
Trauma Studies
Philippine Cinema
trauma therapy
sound
silence
framing
ghosts
haunting
Béla Tarr
Tsai Ming-liang
Apichatpong Weerasethakul
Ari Folman
Rithy Panh
Waltz with Bashir
time
long-take
colonialism
oppression
psyche
poverty
Martial Law
l’univers concentrationnaire
hamlets
speed
off-screen space
temporality
power
psychological warfare
mental paralysis
the disappeared
chronic trauma
backstory wounds
repetition
circularity
post-traumatic cinema
death
depletion
ethics
atrocity
painting
landscape painting
Rückenfigur
Chinese painting
accousmêtre
accousmatic
mourning
grief
Issue Date: Jul-2015
Publisher: University of Stirling
Abstract: Aiming to make an intervention in both emerging Slow Cinema and classical Trauma Cinema scholarship, this thesis demonstrates the ways in which the post-trauma cinema of Filipino filmmaker Lav Diaz merges aesthetics of cinematic slowness with narratives of post-trauma in his films Melancholia (2008), Death in the Land of Encantos (2007) and Florentina Hubaldo, CTE (2012). Diaz has been repeatedly considered as representative of what Jonathan Romney termed in 2004 “Slow Cinema”. The director uses cinematic slowness for an alternative approach to an on-screen representation of post-trauma. Contrary to popular trauma cinema, Diaz’s portrait of individual and collective trauma focuses not on the instantenaeity but on the duration of trauma. In considering trauma as a condition and not as an event, Diaz challenges the standard aesthetical techniques used in contemporary Trauma Cinema, as highlighted by Janet Walker (2001, 2005), Susannah Radstone (2001), Roger Luckhurst (2008) and others. Diaz’s films focus instead on trauma’s latency period, the depletion of a survivor’s resources, and a character’s slow psychological breakdown. Slow Cinema scholarship has so far focused largely on the films’ aesthetics and their alleged opposition to mainstream cinema. Little work has been done in connecting the films’ form to their content. Furthermore, Trauma Cinema scholarship, as trauma films themselves, has been based on the immediate and most radical signs of post-trauma, which are characterised by instantaneity; flashbacks, sudden fears of death and sensorial overstimulation. Following Lutz Koepnick’s argument that slowness offers “intriguing perspectives” (Koepnick, 2014: 191) on how trauma can be represented in art, this thesis seeks to consider the equally important aspects of trauma duration, trauma’s latency period and the slow development of characteristic symptoms. With the present work, I expand on current notions of Trauma Cinema, which places emphasis on speed and the unpredictability of intrusive memories. Furthermore, I aim to broaden the area of Slow Cinema studies, which has so far been largely focused on the films’ respective aesthetics, by bridging form and content of the films under investigation. Rather than seeing Diaz’s slow films in isolation as a phenomenon of Slow Cinema, I seek to connect them to the existing scholarship of Trauma Cinema studies, thereby opening up a reading of his films.
Type: Thesis or Dissertation
URI: http://hdl.handle.net/1893/22990

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