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Presentation
By Irma Viana (anthropologist, Master in Literature)
Roundtable Coordinator of the International Film and Audiovisual Seminar
The fourth edition of the International Film and Audiovisual Seminar will bring to Salvador, in six roundtable sessions held on the main stage of the Castro Alves Theater, from July 21-23, 2008, philosophers, theorists and film professionals from all over the world to discuss subjects on the Representation and Reality in Cinema. Therefore, this year the debates will focus on modes of representation – soundtracks (table II), photography (table III) – and history – documentary (table I), movies and history (table V), and social and political realities in cinema (table VI).
As Gianni Vattimo, one of the invited speakers, remembers in his book “The Transparent Society” (Lisboa: Relógio d'Água, 1992), the Philosophy and the Human Sciences, between the 19th and 20th centuries, radically criticized History as a unitary process, revealing the ideological character of historical representation, (imposed by the expansion of European thought, through imperialism and colonization) which marked the end of modernity.
The crisis of the History and, consequentially, the crisis of the notion of progress, coincide with the birth of mass media, which, according again to Vattimo, play fundamental role in the emergence of post-modern society. Despite the efforts of large capitalists monopolies, radio, television and cinema have become vehicles of a blast of "visions of world". Thus the European ideal of humanity has become an ideal among others and that can only be enforced as essence of man through violence.
With the intensification of the possibilities of information on the reality and history, in their most varied aspect, it becomes increasingly less conceivable the very idea of "reality". In fact, with the advent of mass media, “reality” can no longer be understood as the objective data that is under and beyond the images that are offered. If, with the proliferation of images of the world, we lost the "sense of reality" it is because the reality is for us the result of an intersection of the multiplicity, inter-relations, re-construction of images which the media distribute.
Taking this into consideration, could it be that, as Debord speculates in “The Society of the Spectacle”, our generation prefers images to things, a copy instead of the original, a representation in lieu of reality, the appearance rather than being? Representation has always been a part of our constructions and re-constructions of reality, however, the profusion of images has “produced in our reflections new forms of diegesis,” said Ordep Serra (anthropologist, professor and director of the Federal University of Bahia pro-extention, a partner of SEMCINE), while moderating a roundtable on “Narrative” at the 3rd Seminar, adding: “One must consider that we are for ourselves and for others, in a sense, narrative, the way we narrate, today, in the contemporary world, has a lot to do with the powerful construction of cinematographic language.”
The critical reflection on the audiovisual practice and its political-historical articulation has been the axis of the discutions proposed by the successive editions of the Seminar, a unique and democratic place for reflection and meetings, in which were discussed topics such as “globalization and language”, followed by “neo-realism and nouvelle vague”, as well as “Latin American identity and multiculturalisms”; continuing with the development of “cinematographic language”, focusing on “narrative” and, last year, on “the poetics and politics of the contemporary movie”. The political cinema has always been present, starting with the political movies from the sixties (discussed in the roundtabe I, in the inaugural edition of the Seminar), arriving at contemporary political cinema and, this year, putting into debate the role of history and modes of representation of the cinematographic and audiovisual (political) practice.
See the schedule here
See the profile of speakers
co-sponsors
©2008