CINEMA AND SOCIETY
Landesman, Bendor (2011) – Animated Recollection and Spectatorial
Experience in Waltz with Bashir
Animated documentary films: mixing of ‘realistic’ themes with fantastic forms
x Critique: preposterous to attribute a film that deploys an array of non-realistic
stylistic devices with the capacity to make powerful truth claims about reality
- Nonetheless: Waltz with Bashir synthetically produces a rich, consistent, and
thus trustworthy sense of reality for its viewers, not despite but because of its
unique aesthetic choices – its innovative animation techniques and mixing of
reality with fantasy
§ Animated documentary exceeds its utility for showing what is otherwise
difficult or impossible to represent in non-animated documentaries:
e.g. stream of consciousness, unconscious elements, dreams, imagination
§ Animated documentary serves as a vehicle for fostering a new relationship
between the viewer and the documentary text: moving away from faith
(having faith in the image because it represents reality with photographic
indexicality) to trust (trusting the documentary text to be making truth
claims that reflect the world in sophisticated ways)
Memory: includes events and experiences that took place factually, and events and
experiences that did not
- Mnemic contexture: together, the real and the imagined, the actual and the
fantastic, construct the fabric of memory
› Factual memory: can be empirically (ideally or in practice) verified
› Factical memories: remain beyond empirical verification
Strong somatic responses of viewers: due to content or form?
The movement between factual and factical memories, between surreal and brutal
imagery and sound, creates affective, visceral responses with the viewer. These, in
turn trigger mnemic responses who have experienced the war but could not (or would
not) remember it. For those who have never witnessed war first hand, they provide
‘lightning flashes’ of shock that challenge, destabilize and ultimately shatter
distanciating effects that may be associated with the film’s animated form
Dialectical images: manufacture a unique experience of the past à capacity to
produce a moment of deep historical understanding
- Cinematic spectatorship weaves together individual and collective experience
and affects our political consciousness
Mnemonic ritual: our embodied engagement with the filmic text constitutes an active
participation in the war’s collective perception
, Week 1. Memory
Memory: the power or process of remembering what has been learned
- Processes that are used to acquire, store, retain, and later retrieve information
- Data information knowledge: from data to information to knowledge
- Stories help us make sense of the world and help us remember things
- Three major processes involved in memory:
1. Encoding
2. Storage
3. Retrieval
Can a society have memory?
To grow, societies need to remember who they are, and where they come from à
history, traditions
- [Durkheim] Societies require continuity and connection with the past to preserve
social unity and cohesion: you need a connection with the past
- [Halbwachs] Collective memory: the memory of a group of people, passed
from one generation to the next: stories passed on; created through history and
traditions
- Lieux de memoire/Memory places: a symbolic element of the memorial heritage
of any community (e.g. 9/11 Memorial, Nelson’s Column statue)
- Cultural amnesia: collective, often deliberate forgetting of something important
by a group: we have to choose what we are going to remember
Tale 1: Can we restore memory?
Waltz with Bashir [Ari Folman, Israel/France/Germany/USA/Finland/Switzerland/
Belgium/Australia, 2008]: invasion of Lebanon/Peace in Galilea
Bashir Gemayel: president of the Lebanese Republic
Ari Folman: director and main character: send to war, but could not remember
[Freud] Screen memory: a recollection of early childhood that may be falsely
recalled or magnified in importance and that masks another memory of deep
emotional significance: isolating an incident and putting them behind a screen
memory
- The same for a society: you will either relive it or you will be traumatized
Tale 2: Should we miss the past?
Golden age: the most flourishing period in the history of a nation, literature, etc.
A time that never truly existed, except in memories
Fantasy: a book, movie, etc., that tells a story about things that happen in an
imaginary world; speak about the comfort of the past
- Slaying the dragon: the dragon doesn’t exist to scare us; it is giving us the
strength to defeat the dragon à [Chesterton] “Fairy tales do not give the child
his first idea of bogey. What fairy tales give the child is his first clear idea of the
possible defeat of bogey”
- Strength of the past: look what we overcame
Nostalgia: pleasure and sadness that is caused by remembering something from the
past and wishing that you could experience it again
Landesman, Bendor (2011) – Animated Recollection and Spectatorial
Experience in Waltz with Bashir
Animated documentary films: mixing of ‘realistic’ themes with fantastic forms
x Critique: preposterous to attribute a film that deploys an array of non-realistic
stylistic devices with the capacity to make powerful truth claims about reality
- Nonetheless: Waltz with Bashir synthetically produces a rich, consistent, and
thus trustworthy sense of reality for its viewers, not despite but because of its
unique aesthetic choices – its innovative animation techniques and mixing of
reality with fantasy
§ Animated documentary exceeds its utility for showing what is otherwise
difficult or impossible to represent in non-animated documentaries:
e.g. stream of consciousness, unconscious elements, dreams, imagination
§ Animated documentary serves as a vehicle for fostering a new relationship
between the viewer and the documentary text: moving away from faith
(having faith in the image because it represents reality with photographic
indexicality) to trust (trusting the documentary text to be making truth
claims that reflect the world in sophisticated ways)
Memory: includes events and experiences that took place factually, and events and
experiences that did not
- Mnemic contexture: together, the real and the imagined, the actual and the
fantastic, construct the fabric of memory
› Factual memory: can be empirically (ideally or in practice) verified
› Factical memories: remain beyond empirical verification
Strong somatic responses of viewers: due to content or form?
The movement between factual and factical memories, between surreal and brutal
imagery and sound, creates affective, visceral responses with the viewer. These, in
turn trigger mnemic responses who have experienced the war but could not (or would
not) remember it. For those who have never witnessed war first hand, they provide
‘lightning flashes’ of shock that challenge, destabilize and ultimately shatter
distanciating effects that may be associated with the film’s animated form
Dialectical images: manufacture a unique experience of the past à capacity to
produce a moment of deep historical understanding
- Cinematic spectatorship weaves together individual and collective experience
and affects our political consciousness
Mnemonic ritual: our embodied engagement with the filmic text constitutes an active
participation in the war’s collective perception
, Week 1. Memory
Memory: the power or process of remembering what has been learned
- Processes that are used to acquire, store, retain, and later retrieve information
- Data information knowledge: from data to information to knowledge
- Stories help us make sense of the world and help us remember things
- Three major processes involved in memory:
1. Encoding
2. Storage
3. Retrieval
Can a society have memory?
To grow, societies need to remember who they are, and where they come from à
history, traditions
- [Durkheim] Societies require continuity and connection with the past to preserve
social unity and cohesion: you need a connection with the past
- [Halbwachs] Collective memory: the memory of a group of people, passed
from one generation to the next: stories passed on; created through history and
traditions
- Lieux de memoire/Memory places: a symbolic element of the memorial heritage
of any community (e.g. 9/11 Memorial, Nelson’s Column statue)
- Cultural amnesia: collective, often deliberate forgetting of something important
by a group: we have to choose what we are going to remember
Tale 1: Can we restore memory?
Waltz with Bashir [Ari Folman, Israel/France/Germany/USA/Finland/Switzerland/
Belgium/Australia, 2008]: invasion of Lebanon/Peace in Galilea
Bashir Gemayel: president of the Lebanese Republic
Ari Folman: director and main character: send to war, but could not remember
[Freud] Screen memory: a recollection of early childhood that may be falsely
recalled or magnified in importance and that masks another memory of deep
emotional significance: isolating an incident and putting them behind a screen
memory
- The same for a society: you will either relive it or you will be traumatized
Tale 2: Should we miss the past?
Golden age: the most flourishing period in the history of a nation, literature, etc.
A time that never truly existed, except in memories
Fantasy: a book, movie, etc., that tells a story about things that happen in an
imaginary world; speak about the comfort of the past
- Slaying the dragon: the dragon doesn’t exist to scare us; it is giving us the
strength to defeat the dragon à [Chesterton] “Fairy tales do not give the child
his first idea of bogey. What fairy tales give the child is his first clear idea of the
possible defeat of bogey”
- Strength of the past: look what we overcame
Nostalgia: pleasure and sadness that is caused by remembering something from the
past and wishing that you could experience it again
