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- Volume 7, Issue 1, 2017
Short Film Studies - Volume 7, Issue 1, 2017
Volume 7, Issue 1, 2017
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An in-between place
More LessAbstractThe beach in New Zealand exemplifies a normative ideal, where families frolic their way through endless summers. A short, seemingly simple and discordant film, The Beach challenges this normativity, revealing how affectionate fathers can also be brutes, and how boys worry about what they themselves might become.
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Cruel summer: Decoding subtext through shot design in The Beach
By Derek DuboisAbstractThis article argues that Dorthe Scheffmann’s filmic style, specifically the use of mise-en-scène and cinematography, adds additional layers of meaning to the story of two intimate friends in a startling dramatic conflict.
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The Beach, exposed
More LessAbstractI analyse The Beach through the concept of exposure – both its overexposed aesthetic and the exposure among the characters as the film unravels. Gendering the idea of ex-peau-sition (Jean-Luc Nancy), I posit a form of feminine writing both through the skin (peau) of the film and the skin of Anne.
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The centre cannot hold: The Beach and liminality
More LessAbstractThe article discusses The Beach in relation to the concept of narrative ‘unity’ as an element of short film specificity, and considers a few of the interpretive possibilities enabled by the film’s representation of several aspects of ‘liminality’ by means of its setting, storytelling and visual strategies.
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Evental subjectivity in The Beach
By Tom LordanAbstractFilm-philosophy is a growing branch of cinema scholarship, but to what degree can it be deployed in relation to the short film? Here we attempt to configure The Beach and Alain Badiou’s notion of ‘event’ into a reciprocal relationship, and discover why ‘the subject’ is not who one thinks it is.
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What children see: Dorthe Scheffmann’s The Beach
More LessAbstractThis film focuses on an unexpected reaction to a traumatic revelation as witnessed by a child. However, the film’s final image resists being reduced to its significance for an adult spectator. Instead, the boy’s unreadable expression returns us to the position of a child faced with a bewildering grown-up world.
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A feminist politics of the everyday in The Beach
More LessAbstractCulturally, the family is often treated as a protected space. The public/private dichotomy shields family violence from the outside world. The Beach breaks down the public/private dichotomy by exposing how silence perpetuates violence. It offers a vision of ‘physical feminism’ in an everyday setting, encouraging women to fight back.
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The musical framing of The Beach
By Iben HaveAbstractThe Beach is framed by a musical theme. But although the musical expression remains consistent, our reception of the music changes radically depending on whether it is heard at the beginning or at the end of the film, when it emphasizes the experience of Simon’s lost innocence.
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Echoes of The 400 Blows: Ambiguous closure in art cinema
More LessAbstractThis article compares the ending of The Beach with that of The 400 Blows in order to demonstrate how ambiguity arises from the interrelationship between style and narrative in art cinema. Ambiguity requires audience interpretation, which in The Beach leads to poignant reflection on the nature of domestic violence.
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Narrative closure in The Beach
More LessAbstractThe last sequence and especially the ultimate shot of The Beach provides closure. The shot of the boy gives a distinctive weight to the story by colouring the entire narrative in retrospect. Narrative closure brings out a sense of completeness, which should be differentiated from a forthright ending.
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