The Positive Contradiction(s) of Melancholia Horea POENAR Abstract: The article stands for a critical argument for the present themed issue of Ekphrasis, devoted to A Melancholic Exploration of Humanity (The Solitude of Man). Studies in Visual Representation and Melancholia. This short introduction briefly presents the reasons behind this exploration, the ... Read More Keywords: melancholia, visual arts, aesthetics, affect, contradiction |
Melancholia Towards a Future to Come Dragoș BUCUR Abstract: Exploring the cinematic theme of melancholia, as expressed through temporality, constitutes the main focus of this paper. Though, usually the temporality of melancholia is associated with the past, we will try to ponder upon a past-future dialectic temporality where the melancholic seeking of the past becom... Read More Keywords: temporality, messianism, critical theory, Walter Benjamin, future to come, Jacques Derrida |
“Should I also make a garden out of the desert?”: A Case Against Invisible Hermits Bernardo Marin Diniz Aires FERREIRA Abstract: Ever since Aristotle’s conjoining of the creative and the melancholic state of mind – in the 33rd section of Problems –, much has been written about the relationship between artistic output and melancholy, depression, isolation or even madness. The artist – but also the phil... Read More Keywords: Eremitism, Melancholy, Desert, Isolation, Space |
Melancholia as Destinerrance. On Resolution in Discontinuity and an Art That Could Come After Evil Aura POENAR Abstract: This article is concerned with art’s exploration through melancholia of a world in disaster. We will investigate how art as a form of melancholia – akin to Derrida’s concept of destinerrance – is not only testifying to its limits, but employing its limits, denouncing and per... Read More Keywords: melancholia, negative dialectics, destinerrance, assignable nonplace, split subject, parages, Auschwitz, Tristan chord, undecidable, dissonance, silence |
La phénoménologie de la perception mélancolique. La mélancolie sentie dans le cinéma-corps Melisa MĂRCUȘ Abstract: This paper discusses melancholy as an existential solitude that is acknowledged and amplified through the cinematic experience. In order to prove that this feeling is not only a psychological distress, but it is mainly perceived through the manifestations of the body and, paradoxically, through interaction ... Read More Keywords: cinema; body; perception; Melancholia; Solaris; melancholy; phenomenology; reflections; solitude; absence |
The Melancholy of Residual Anti-stories Călina PĂRĂU Abstract: The following text examines the relationship between the “banal” and melancholy as it appears in the films of three contemporary film directors: Tsai Ming-Liang, Nuri Bilge Ceylan and Tomás Gutiérrez Alea. The questions raised address the means through which the visual discourse pa... Read More Keywords: melancholy, banal, significance, anti-story, unrepresentable |
Crossing a Productive Melancholia in Artistic Work Based on Xerography Maryam MULIAEE Abstract: This paper suggests that xerography or copy art – also called “generative systems” – may incite melancholia. The theoretical framework for this analysis includes Svetlana Boym’s concept of “broken-tech arts” (2001) and her conceptualization of ruins (2010), as well ... Read More Keywords: productive melancholia, xerography, copy art, haptic image, synthetic ruin, ruined image, degeneration |
Melancholy, between Medical Science and Cinematography Lucia LUPEA Abstract: This text examines the history of melancholy starting from Ancient Greece with Hippocrates’s Humorism and going up to its current form, namely an isolated subspecies of clinical depression, the term being almost redundant today. Besides, it showcases several examples of melancholic traits in cinema. O... Read More Keywords: history of melancholy, melancholic traits in cinema, depression, feminine melancholy |
Depression and Desynchronization of Temporal Relation in Lars von Trier’s Antichrist and Melancholia Justine Shu-Ting KAO Abstract: This article aims to apply Thomas Fuchs’ “Psychopathology of Interpersonal Time” to Lars von Trier’s films Antichrist and Melancholia. Fuchs examines melancholia in patients with depression resulting from a desynchronization of inner time and common/social time. To ... Read More Keywords: rift, depression, desynchronization, daimones, Lars von Trier |
Notes on Fatalism and Melancholia in Romanian Cinema: An Imagological Approach Doru POP Abstract: By questioning the mythological and philosophical roots of what makes “Romanianess” a particular mode of thinking, this paper uses the cinematic imagology method in an effort to circumscribe the elements that could form the “Romanian cinematic mind”. The author is exploring cinema&rs... Read More Keywords: cinema imagology, Romanian cinema thinking, Romanianess, fatalist storytelling, melancholic cinema machine |
Ana-Sânziana GHELASE Abstract: The aim of this paper is to analyze the dispositif for the emergence of mourning images in Abbas Kiarostami’s movies and the subsequent melancholic perception of the viewer that is created by the rendition of these images, while also highlighting the importance of the artistic medium of cinem... Read More Keywords: mourning image, melancholia, Abbas Kiarostami, perception, the Other, gaze, respect |
Ruxandra CESEREANU Abstract: This essay aims to assemble (palimpsestically) the visions of several art creators on melancholia and nostalgia. It also undertakes a brief foray into the history of art and film by reference to several influential names: Andrei Rublev, Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Albrecht Dürer, John Everett Millais, Andrei... Read More Keywords: nostalgia, melancholia, Andrei Rublev, Albrecht Dürer, Gian Lorenzo Bernini, John Everett Millais, René Magritte, Andrei Tarkovsky, Lars von Trier, history of art and cinema, history of ideas |
Le récit mélancolique et comment il est généré dans l’animation japonaise Anca-Raluca SOCACI Abstract: The aim of this paper is to analyse the concept of melancholy in connection to three animation films all released in 2013, but coming from directors having distinct artistic styles (Isao Takahata, Hayao Miyazaki and Makoto Shinkai). What interests me is the existence of a common ground that binds t... Read More Keywords: melancholy, network, affect, temporality, récit, reminder |
Iulia CÎRDAN Abstract: The paper focuses on the way melancholia can be rendered visible in movie while perceived as a perpetual feeling – an affect in Deleuze’s terms. Existential crises, horrors, traumas and the unavoidable quest for truth are all tackled by Alain Resnais; the paper strives to analyse the way colours... Read More Keywords: melancholia, identity, art, memory, becoming, affect |
The Melancholy of Desert(ed) Places Constantin TONU Abstract: Being traditionally associated with Saturn (or Chronos, the god of time), the melancholic mood has been most often analyzed in relation to a specific temporality. On the contrary, the aim of this paper is to explore the theme of melancholy as it appears in two films, relating it to cinematic space and to sh... Read More Keywords: spatiality, desert, deserted places, desertion, melancholy, affect |
Luboš PTÁČEK Abstract: The melancholic hero in a nostalgic world forms the dominant element of artistry in Jiří Menzel’s films from the beginning of his work in the 1960s to the present time. The theme of this study is the analysis of melancholic elements, focusing on the director’s last two films, in which he... Read More Keywords: melancholy, nostalgia, modernism, adaptation, Jiří Menzel, historical film |
Ghostly Articulations: Melancholy and Invention in Nanni Moretti’s Palombella Rossa Horea POENAR Abstract: In 1989, Nanni Moretti’s movie Palombella Rossa is not just another comedy dealing with the key aspect of the times: the end of the Communist regimes. Especially in the context already prepared for the triumphant announcement of post-history and post-ideology, his movie is a profound meditati... Read More Keywords: melancholy, commons, figure, Idea, communism |
The Construction of Space-temporality through Melancholy and Forms of Desire Ioana HODÂRNĂU Abstract: Starting from a plurivalent theoretical analysis of the Greek term nostos (both as a return to an identity of self, and as a formula for approaching the modern concept of nostalgia), this paper aims to follow the modality in which a literary thinking changes and it is sucombate by a more s... Read More Keywords: melancholy, desire, imagination, psyche, space, alterity |
The Melancholy of the Machine. Doubting Your Own Ghost in the Posthuman World Călina MOLDOVAN Abstract: The paper attempts to analyse several science-fiction movies with the purpose of identifying the different processes through which melancholy is depicted in the post-human cinematographic context. This topic will be further elaborated by studying how various characters that belong to the spectrum of artific... Read More Keywords: melancholy, robot, computer, cyborg, machine, science-fiction, longing, artificial intelligence |
Daniel SEBIN Abstract: The purpose of this essay is to investigate the melancholic nature of desire in the films “That Obscure Object of Desire” and “I Only Want You to Love Me”. Firstly, a definition of melancholy will be given and then an analysis of the way in which the nature of desire creates melancho... Read More Keywords: melancholy, desire, Fassbinder, Buñuel, Freud, Žižek, Lacan, fantasy, film studies, critical theory |
Melancholia in the Films of Terrence Malick Cristina POPESCU Abstract: Melancholia lies at the core of the films of Terrence Malick; it can be regarded as a lens Keywords: melancholia, Starobinski, Terrence Malick, metaphysical cinema, Tree of Life, Knight of Cups |
Propaganda, Spectacle and Nationalism Lucian ȚION Abstract: Review of: Onoriu Colăcel, The Romanian Cinema of Nationalism: Historical Films as Propaganda and Spectacle, McFarland & Company, 2018. Read MoreKeywords: review, Onoriu Colăcel, The Romanian Cinema of Nationalism: Historical Films as Propaganda and Spectacle, McFarland & Company, 2018 |
Ana-Sânziana GHELASE Abstract: Review of: Yves Vaillancourt, Jeux interdits. Du Décalogue à la Trilogie de Kieślowski, deuxième édition revue et augmentée [Forbidden Games. From Kieślowski’s Decalogue to the Trilogy, second edition, revised and augmented], Québec, Presse... Read More Keywords: review, Yves Vaillancourt, Jeux interdits. Du Décalogue à la Trilogie de Kieślowski, Forbidden Games. From Kieślowski’s Decalogue to the Trilogy, Presses de l’Université Laval, 2016 |
The Travels of Archetypes: From Oedipus to Postmodernity Andrei ZAMFIRESCU Abstract: Review of: Corin Braga, Archétypologie postmoderne. D’Oedipe à Umberto Eco, Honoré Keywords: review, Corin Braga, Archétypologie postmoderne. D’Oedipe à Umberto Eco, Honoré Champion, 2019 |
Re-contextualizing the New Romanian Cinema Mihai DRAGOLEA Abstract: Review of: Christina Stojanova, The New Romanian Cinema, Edinburgh University Press, 2019. Read MoreKeywords: review, Christina Stojanova, The New Romanian Cinema, Edinburgh University Press, 2019 |
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