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- Volume 4, Issue 1, 2014
Short Film Studies - Volume 4, Issue 1, 2014
Volume 4, Issue 1, 2014
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The trunk as a cinematic representation and as a metaphor in Matka
More LessThe trunk the traveller drags along is shown in a variety of powerful shots as he makes his way uphill. It conjures up two familiar myths: Sisyphus and Pandora’s box, which provide interesting clues regarding the symbolic significance of such a voyage.
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Sisyphus screams: The rift between sound and image in Matka
More LessMatka allegorizes cinematic voice. It denotes the distance crossed in order to scream and the distance separating character from scream. Editing desutures voice from (voice) box, scream from mouth and the character from his silent journey. Cinematically, Sisyphus encounters his body as an absurd excess, a hollow armature to his voice.
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Matka: Muteness, metaphor, metonymy
More LessTo say that Matka presents us with essential truths about the human condition may sound trite at best. Nonetheless, the film’s very resistance to a reductive reading along these lines suggests the possibility of a specifically ‘metaphoric’ treatment of these truths that eludes articulation into language.
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Cultural baggage – Pirjo Hokkanen’s Matka
By Ruth BartonDiscussing the place of the short film within a national cinema, Martin McLoone asks whether this art form is uniquely placed to explore questions of the national. I ask the alternative question: how imperative is familiarity with a national cinema to an understanding of a short film such as Matka?
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The community of archetypical travellers
Authors: Florentina Andreescu and Michael J. ShapiroMatka’s viewer is a witness to the archetypical journey each individual takes alone carrying his/her baggage but which nevertheless connects humans through its similarly experienced struggle. Through this witnessing, viewers are invited to realize that they are following an identical path, searching for release atop a mountain.
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Matka, a heterotopia of deviation
More LessDescribed as the epoch of space, the twentieth century saw much of its cultural and film theory immersed in questions related to this phenomenon. Matka, with its careful spatial organization, encourages an interpretation that revisits and contests the familiar opposition between nature and culture through the concept of heterotopia.
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On a happy journey?
Authors: Aaron Kerner and Rachel Mertz HartMatka beautifully re-envisions Albert Camus’ The Myth of Sisyphus (1955), raising questions of burdens and fulfilment. Matka is an existential exploration of the human spirit, that here is contextualized by potential limits.
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‘But There Are No Lions in the Scottish Highlands’: Reading the trunk in Matka
By John WeiThis article reads the trunk in Matka as Lacan’s objet petit a – a reminder of our desiring subjectivity and considers to what degree it might be seen as a MacGuffin. It also argues that the protagonist is an emblem of the human subject in an abstract representation of our life’s journey.
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Suspense and humour in The Bloody Olive
More LessIn a film noir style, Bal presents not just a single joke, but a whole series of jokes about murder and duplicitous behaviour on the part of the characters. The article focuses on how the film manages to play on conventions of genre and style and the viewers’ expectations, repeatedly requiring the audience to revise their hypotheses – all with the aim of making the plot twists successful and funny.
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‘Play it Again, Sam’ – intertextuality, authorship and expectations in The Bloody Olive
By Nathan ShawWhether early literary adaptations or postmodern, pop culture stuffed millennium movies, cinema has continually showcased its penchant for intertextuality. Simultaneously, genre films have constructed a network of paradigms allowing discerning audiences to expect the previously unexpected. These interconnecting elements are prevalent, and toyed with, throughout short film noir pastiche The Bloody Olive.
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Blanc/noir chess in The Bloody Olive
By Vlad DimaThis article first explores the overall mise-en-scène of The Bloody Olive, and then shows that its narrative construction resembles a chess game played on two levels. There is a literal level produced by the lights, outfits, props, etc., and a metaphorical, lampooning level that plays off the internalized tension normally found in the film noir.
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