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E-book Cinematic Histospheres : On the Theory and Practice of Historical Films

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Penilaian

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The film opens with shots of a barbed wire fence, warning signs, and bar-riers, accompanied by a dramatic score and an omniscient voice-over that embeds the historical situation depicted on screen within a particular nar-rative. The narrator explains that the film is the story of East German fac-tory worker Anna Kaminski (Eva Kotthaus) and West German border guard Carl Altmann (Erik Schumann). The year is 1952, and the two lovers are separated by the inner German border. Following a series of almost static shots, the camera pans slowly, awakening the film to life. Finally, human figures appear: refugees making their way along an over-grown path on the bank of a border river.As we watch Helmut Käutner’s skywithoutstars (himmelohnesterne, 1955), we construct a spatiotemporal structure out of moving images, sound, and words that allows us to experience the history of Germany’s division. The audiovisual figuration of the past becomes a liv-ing encounter in the present. Conceptions of history are inscribed into the filmic world’s formal and aesthetic features even before the plot begins. The iconic images of the border and the voice-over commentary localize the action in a historical setting distinguished by landscape, costumes, set dressings, and the way the characters act and comport themselves. By cre-ating visual and aural spaces, the film both represents and constructs his-tory, producing a fluid historical world that we can synesthetically “live.” This blend of historical model and fiction draws us powerfully into the world of the film, and the immersion is helped along by the flow of the montage, the music, and the subjectivized gaze of the camera-eye. All these operations bring us “physically and mentally closer to the action of the film.”1 I shall use the term histosphere to refer to the “sphere” of a cinematically modeled, physically experienceable historical world. The prefix “histo-” refers here not just to (popular conceptions of) history, but also to a particular bodily dimension. In the phenomenological space between audiovisual figurations and historical experience, a histosphere functions—in the manner of histology—as an innervated tissue that relays the potential semiotic meanings of the cinematically constructed past via physical-sensory stimuli.2 In this book, I conduct a “vivisection” of the praxis of histospheres—an exploratory surgery on a living organism.

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Ketersediaan

Informasi Detail

Judul Seri

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No. Panggil

791.43 GRE c

Penerbit

Switzerland : Springer Nature., 2021

Deskripsi Fisik

235 hlm

Bahasa

English

ISBN/ISSN

9783030705909

Klasifikasi

791.43

Tipe Isi

text

Tipe Media

computer

Tipe Pembawa

online resource

Edisi

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Subjek

Motion Pictures, Movies

Info Detail Spesifik

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Pernyataan Tanggungjawab

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Versi lain/terkait

Lampiran Berkas

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