scholarly journals How to Watch the Story of Film Adaptation. Cortázar, Antonioni, Blow-Up

Author(s):  
James Cisneros

A brief heuristic survey of research on the adaptation of literature to film shows that it has consistently given priority to the narrative of the classical cinema, effacing the media's respective material support as well as its place in a history of visual regimes. Instead of following this institutional comparative paradigm, with its implications for agency and reception, this article develops an approach to adaptation that places the media's technologies at the center of the storytelling process. A case study of Cortázar's short story “Las Babas del Diablo” and Antonioni's film Blow-Up, it focuses on how each of these nearly theoretical texts outlines the kind of story that pushes its own discursive processes into the foreground.

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-22 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laurence Besnard-Scott

Michelangelo Antonioni’s films are rarely associated with translation and adaptation. Yet, his work consistently explores the very essence of images, their ambiguous relation to reality and the deceptive nature of perception. It is a cinema of uncertainty par excellence, thus of translation; at least, a conception of translation (and adaptation) that does not solely rely on principles of faithfulness, transparency and systematic semiotics. This article thus proposes to look at one of Antonioni’s most compelling films, Blow-Up, through the prism of indeterminacy. Drawing upon Gilles Deleuze’s time-image to present the film as a hermeneutic event that opens up a third space of representation, this article examines the indeterminacy at the heart of Blow-Up on two levels. As a film adaptation, it first considers how Antonioni visually translates the indeterminacy of Julio Cortázar’s short story. This preliminary reading then leads to a sustained attempt at exploring Blow-Up’s filmic landscape, with the view to show how the indeterminacy running through Antonioni’s aesthetics becomes itself a form of translation.


Author(s):  
Odile Moreau

This chapter explores movement and circulation across the Mediterranean and seeks to contribute to a history of proto-nationalism in the Maghrib and the Middle East at a particular moment prior to World War I. The discussion is particularly concerned with the interface of two Mediterranean spaces: the Middle East (Egypt, Ottoman Empire) and North Africa (Morocco), where the latter is viewed as a case study where resistance movements sought external allies as a way of compensating for their internal weakness. Applying methods developed by Subaltern Studies, and linking macro-historical approaches, namely of a translocal movement in the Muslim Mediterranean, it explores how the Egypt-based society, al-Ittihad al-Maghribi, through its agent, Aref Taher, used the press as an instrument for political propaganda, promoting its Pan-Islamic programme and its goal of uniting North Africa.


2010 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-93
Author(s):  
Jessica Moberg

Immediately after the Second World War Sweden was struck by a wave of sightings of strange flying objects. In some cases these mass sightings resulted in panic, particularly after authorities failed to identify them. Decades later, these phenomena were interpreted by two members of the Swedish UFO movement, Erland Sandqvist and Gösta Rehn, as alien spaceships, or UFOs. Rehn argued that ‘[t]here is nothing so dramatic in the Swedish history of UFOs as this invasion of alien fly-things’ (Rehn 1969: 50). In this article the interpretation of such sightings proposed by these authors, namely that we are visited by extraterrestrials from outer space, is approached from the perspective of myth theory. According to this mythical theme, not only are we are not alone in the universe, but also the history of humankind has been shaped by encounters with more highly-evolved alien beings. In their modern day form, these kinds of ideas about aliens and UFOs originated in the United States. The reasoning of Sandqvist and Rehn exemplifies the localization process that took place as members of the Swedish UFO movement began to produce their own narratives about aliens and UFOs. The question I will address is: in what ways do these stories change in new contexts? Texts produced by the Swedish UFO movement are analyzed as a case study of this process.


2018 ◽  
pp. 76-102
Author(s):  
T P. Lonngren

After a short summary of the story behind K. Hamsun’s play In the Grip of Life [Livet i Vold], its plot and stage history in Russia, the article proceeds to tell about an unknown film script. Cinematic adaptations of Hamsun’s books have always dominated Norwegian literature, while none of his dramatic pieces have made it to the screen. However, a film script was uncovered, an adaptation of In the Grip of Life: a play specially written for a Russian theatre. The script was found in the Russian State Archive of Literature and Arts, among the documents of Evgeny Sergeevich Khokhlov. Based on the history of filmmaking and relevant filmography, Khokhlov’s film script is not just the only attempt at film adaptation of a Hamsun play, but the first ever project based on a theatrical play in Russian cinematic history. Written almost 100 years ago, the script is far from perfect in the modern understanding of filmmaking; nonetheless, it has certain merits in the eyes of contemporaries. The very attempt to interpret the play by means of a nascent artistic genre may be considered a proof of its relevance to Russian audiences at the time.


2019 ◽  
Vol 58 (1) ◽  
pp. 147-159
Author(s):  
Young-Seok Seo ◽  
Bong-Seok Kim
Keyword(s):  

Public Voices ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 61
Author(s):  
Nolan J. Argyle ◽  
Lee M. Allen

Pre-service and in-service MPA students share a common desire for hands-on, real world instruction related to their professional career goals, leading to a pedagogic discounting of fiction as an appropriate tool for analyzing and "solving" problems. However, several factors weigh heavily in favor of using science fiction short stories and novellas in the MPA classroom setting. These include the need for interesting case scenarios exploring various administrative issues; leveling the playing field between the two types of students by de-emphasizing the use of "contemporary" cases; access to literature that explores the future shock of increasing organizational complexity; and the desirability of Rorschach type materials that facilitate discussion of. values and administrative truths. The discussion proceeds by tracing the development of the case study technique, its advantages and disadvantages in the classroom, addressing the utility of "fiction" as an educational resource, and showing how the science fiction literature has matured to the point where it can be applied in all of the major sub-fields of public administration. Several outstanding examples are detailed, and a thorough bibliography is provided.


Author(s):  
Kathryn M. de Luna

This chapter uses two case studies to explore how historians study language movement and change through comparative historical linguistics. The first case study stands as a short chapter in the larger history of the expansion of Bantu languages across eastern, central, and southern Africa. It focuses on the expansion of proto-Kafue, ca. 950–1250, from a linguistic homeland in the middle Kafue River region to lands beyond the Lukanga swamps to the north and the Zambezi River to the south. This expansion was made possible by a dramatic reconfiguration of ties of kinship. The second case study explores linguistic evidence for ridicule along the Lozi-Botatwe frontier in the mid- to late 19th century. Significantly, the units and scales of language movement and change in precolonial periods rendered visible through comparative historical linguistics bring to our attention alternative approaches to language change and movement in contemporary Africa.


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