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This thesis focuses on 'carnivals of transition', as it examines cinematic representations in relation to socio-political and cultural reforms, including globalization, from 1960 to 2000, in Cuban and Russian films. The comparative approach adopted in this study analyses films with similar aesthetics, paying particular attention to the historical periods and the directors chosen, namely Leonid Gaidai, Tomas Gutierrez. Alea, El'dar Riazanov , Juan Carlos Tabio, Iurii Mamin, Daniel Diaz Torres and Fernando Perez. This thesis maintains that most of the selected Cuban films are carnivalesque comedies comparable to films made during the same period in Soviet and post-Soviet Russia. This thesis further argues that the carnivalesque became a strategic mode for socio-political subversion in these two countries. Informed by textual, contextual and intertextual examinations of selected films, this thesis establishes that the carnivalesque in both countries has been characterized by an eclectic mixture of genres, ranging from light farcical comedies to black, surreal comedies and satires, thus making this mode instrumental for the representation of competing socio-political. cultural, and intercultural trends. By investigating the evolution. from bright camivalesque film comedies to dark grotesque humour in Cuba and Soviet and post-Soviet Russia, this thesis provides new insights on black humour and on the importance of intercultural dialogue for the formation of new local and global cultural trends. This thesis will also consider how shifting social attitudes prompted the appearance of new genres, such as critical utopia and dystopian critique, The thesis concludes by asserting that as well as serving as a fertile strategy for mutual cultural illumination, the carnivalesque mode is also the cinematic mode that best captures the constant process of renewal in all areas of social life.

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The image of the child has always been used for ideological purposes in national cinemas around the world. For instance, in Iranian cinema representations of children are often utilized to minimise the political risk involved in making radical statements, while in Brazilian and Italian cinemas children’s portrayal has disputed the idealized concept of childhood’s innocence. In Indonesian cinema, internationally acclaimed director Garin Nugroho is the only filmmaker who has presented children as the main focus of narratives that are oppositional to mainstream and state-sponsored ideologies. Yet, even though his films have been critically identified as key, breakthrough works in Indonesian cinema, no research so far has specifically focused on the representation of children in his films. / Consequently, because Garin Nugroho has consistently placed child characters in central roles in his films, the discussion in this thesis focuses on the ideological and discursive implications of his cinematic depiction of children. With the central question regarding the construction of children’s identities in Garin’s films, the thesis analyzes in detail four of these films, dedicating an entire chapter to each one of them, and with the last one being specifically addressed in cinematic essay form. The films discussed are Surat untuk Bidadari (Letter to an Angel, 1993), Aku Ingin Menciummu Sekali Saja (2000), Rindu Kami Padamu (Of Love and Eggs,2004) and Daun di Atas Bantal (Leaf on a Pillow,1997). / The textual analysis of films that is carried out is framed by two key ideas: firstly, Garin’s position as an auteur and, secondly, the specific ways in which he deploys representations of children against mainstream discursive constructions in Indonesia. Following the argument that Garin has used a form of ‘strategic intervention’ to explore particular political issues in Indonesia (Hanan 2004), the thesis identifies ways in which Garin deconstructs children’s images and provides alternatives to dominant discourses on childhood in Indonesia. Through the analysis of selected films, the thesis reveals that while the identities of children are constructed in his films against the idealized image of Indonesian children, they are also utilized by him to convey more broadly his political views about Indonesia.

Can architecture live in the passage of real time and memory? It has occured to me that movement must not be limited to action (horizontal and vertical.) For instance, the movement of people, light or objects are not the only consideration. In fact I have overlooked passive motion. Perhaps a design could link both passive and active motion as the design element. The independent African American Filmmaker creates a cinematic experience that lives in layers of time. In the end the film is sustained in the memory of the viewer. / Master of Architecture

This thesis provides an example of creating a special cinematic style of Film Noir in computer-generated animation. The thesis is designed as a discussion of how a unique lighting style in computer graphics can be used to enhance visual storytelling for cinematic purposes. It provides digital filmmakers a beginning guide to deal with various lighting situations, and with cinematic lighting in 3D production.

Tiek kūrybos procese, tik užbaigtame kūrinyje man svarbiausia yra paties vaizdavimo proceso preparavimas. Savo darbuose stengiuosi balansuoti tarp kūrinį sudarančių elementų ženkliško autoreferentiškumo, tapybos stilistinio autoreferentiškumo ir procesiškumo bei bandymo ženklų ir nuorodų pagalba kurti asociacijų ir būsenų tinklą. Projekto pavadinimas ( Vyksmo vieta ) yra pasitelkiamas kaip dviguba nuoroda. Viena vertus, yra nurodoma į drobės paviršių kuriame yra konstruojamas kūrinys. Kita vertus, pavadinimas veikia kaip nuoroda į įsivaizduojamą ženklų ir asociacijų tinklo kuriamo pasakojimo veiksmo vietą. / My paintings aim at making a preparation of the process of depicting. It applies to both - painting as a completed image and the process of making it. I am balancing between the signifying autoreferntiality of each element in my painting, autoreferentiality of the process of constructing the painting and the network of associations and perceptions generated by signs and references. The title of the project ("Place of occurrence") is used as a double reference. On one hand, it refers to the canvas itself on which the painting is being constructed. On the other hand, it refers to a place of a story, generated by the interplay of signs, references and associations.

The thesis identifies a development integral to contemporary German documentary cinema that has not yet been taken into academic consideration: namely a new will to depict the regional, the rural, or Heimat. I have organised the research under precisely these three thematic motifs: the rural (Chapter One), the regional (Chapter Two), and Heimat (Chapter Three). The importance of the rural and the regional has to date been largely overlooked by academics in the field of film studies. Yet in the context of Germany they are key cultural markers – both are fundamental to the deep‐rooted German cultural concept of Heimat. Heimat, on the other hand, has attracted the recent attention of film scholars; their focus, however, has been mainly limited to historical analyses. I have implemented a number of theoretical frameworks in order to model a much‐needed understanding of this emerging German cinema. My examination of representations of the rural is rooted in a geographic approach to the medium of film, with an emphasis on the shaping (or lack thereof) of cinematic landscapes. My investigation of representations of the regional benefits from ethnographic concepts such as Other‐ing and exoticism. My discussion of a revival of Heimat on screen is based on historical analyses of the genre of the Heimat film. These theoretical frameworks are guided by close textual analysis of eight case study films spanning the period 1999 – 2007: Die Blume der Hausfrau (Dominik Wessely, 1999), Out of Edeka (Konstantin Faigle, 2001), Schotter wie Heu (Wiltrud Baier and Sigrun Baier, 2002), Herr Wichmann von der CDU (Andreas Dresen, 2003), Ich kenn’ keinen – Allein unter Heteros (Jochen Hick, 2003), Die Blutritter (Douglas Wolfsperger, 2004), Durchfahrtsland (Alexandra Sell, 2005), Full Metal Village (Sung‐Hyung Cho, 2007). The thesis not only identifies and analyses this new development in German cinema but also contextualises it in an academic framework.

This thesis proposes the Poetics of Mosaic Narrative as a tool for theorising the creation and telling of cinematic stories in a digital environment. As such the Poetics of Mosaic Narrative is designed to assist creators of new media narrative to design dramatically compelling screen based stories by drawing from established theories of cinema and emerging theories of new media. In doing so it validates the crucial element of cinematic storytelling in the digital medium, which due to its fragmentary, variable and re-combinatory nature, affords the opportunity for audience interaction. The Poetics of Mosaic Narrative re-asserts the dramatic and cinematic nature of narrative in new media by drawing upon the dramatic theory of Aristotle’s Poetics, the cinematic theories of the 1920s Russian Film Theorists and contemporary Neo-Formalists, the narrative theories of the 1960s French Structuralists, and the scriptwriting theories of contemporary cinema. In particular it focuses on the theory and practice of the prominent new media theorist, Lev Manovich, as a means of investigating and creating a practical poetics. The key element of the Poetics of Mosaic Narrative is the expansion of the previously forgotten and undeveloped Russian Formalist concept of cinematurgy which is vital to the successful development of new media storytelling theory and practice. This concept, as originally proposed but not elaborated by Kazansky, encompasses the notion of the creation of cinematic new media narrative as a mosaic – integrally driven by the narrative systems of plot, as well as the cinematic systems of visual style created by the techniques of cinema- montage, cinematography and mise-en-scene.

This thesis explores representations of landscape in Chilean fiction cinema from 2008 to 2014, through a corpus drawn from the so-called novisimo cine chileno, a generation of young filmmakers who have attracted significant critical attention both within Chile and on international festival and arthouse circuits. The thesis is built on close readings of the selected films within a conceptual framework informed by interdisciplinary perspectives from the developing field of landscape studies. It aims to show how these cinematic landscapes function beyond the limitations of narrative setting or symbolic imagery and are instead represented in ways which capture landscape's processual, experiential and polysemic nature, which in turn throws light on landscape as an approach to a wide range of thematic concerns within these films. It begins by placing the selected corpus within a broader cultural history of the Chilean landscape and maps out the conceptual framework which will be applied and developed through the thesis, considering landscape as experience and process, as well as image. The thesis then sets out the foundations for the thesis' close readings by demonstrating how such a conceptual approach can reveal the inherent tensions of film landscapes - between being inside and outside, contemplation and immersion, proximity and distance - and can also uncover the multisensory and embodied aspects of landscapes on screen, with particular attention to the roles of sound and haptic imagery. In the remainder of the thesis, this approach to landscape is developed through further close analysis of selected films in order to demonstrate how landscape functions in relation to certain thematic concerns - what contact between body and landscape reveals about materiality and mortality, how the cinematic landscape both invites and resists its framing as territory, and how film as a medium has a particular capacity to evoke the multiple temporalities at work within landscape. As a whole, the thesis works to illuminate the aesthetic, formal, narrative and thematic functions of landscape in the chosen films and argues for the usefulness of interdisciplinary conceptual approaches in the study of cinematic landscapes in order to reach a more nuanced understanding of film's representation of the relation of people and place.