This study examines the structures of dream and reality in surrealist/modernist film from a scientific perspective we term "dual consciousness," a term borrowed from current research in neurophysiology that postulates an asymmetric consciousness corresponding to the right and left cerebral hemispheres. We apply this scientific theory primarily to the films of Luis Bunuel, though we offer extensive examples from a range of modernist artists, including Ingmar Bergman, Nathalie Sarraute, Camus, Fassbinder, Gunter Grass, etc. We offer an in-depth reading of Tristana and Belle de jour by Bunuel. / Our hypothesis states that the surrealist exploration of non-ordinary reality is an exploration of right cerebral-hemisphere processes that facilitate new insights. If the constructed reality of patriarchy is the closed system of acceptable messages in the secondary system we call consciousness, then surreality is seeing beyond that system through the liberation of unconscious, primary-process images in the "aesthetics of silence." Surrealist/modernist film facilitates transcendence of consciousness and the recovery of being through a heightening of the nonverbal, right-hemisphere mind. / The study reviews the most recent literature on cerebral asymmetry and makes links between neurophysiology and psychoanalysis, as well as film theory, especially the recent work by Brian Henderson, A Critique of Film Theory (1980). This review allows us to draw parallels between such right-hemisphere processes as primary-process thinking, gestalt mechanisms, image-dominant input, musical structures, the affective domain, the grasping of part/whole relations in the text, and nonverbal images (visual, tactile, auditory, and kinetic) to surrealist films that heighten those same processes. / The study focused on how modernist film questions the constructed reality of patriarchy through formal and thematic means. In this context, we explored human motivation (the desire to change, to see, etc.) and cognitive functions as these relate to the neurophysiological processes involved in perception in normal and altered states of consciousness. / The approach to solving the problem of how we question reality requires defining reality in terms of a cultural context. Reality, in other words, only has meaning in the context of culture. In the West, the process of reality-testing results in the repression of the potentially autonomous "other" mind, source of expansive emotion and the irrational, primary-process thinking. / We conclude that modernist films involve competing mindstreams that correspond to the left-hemisphere speech track and the right-hemisphere (nonverbal) image track. The former corresponds to what we term the perverse voyeur and the latter to the surreal seer. / The perspective of the perverse voyeur allows the viewer to conserve and habituate the status quo by engaging the mind in stories through verbal dialogue about the fate of characters. The irrational perspective of the surreal seer is compatible with Roland Barthes' zero-degree writing that questions bourgeois reality. Other of Barthes' writings, such as The Pleasures of the Text, reinforce our hypothesis that the surreal seer merges with the text in an erotics of reading that leads to new insights. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 42-01, Section: A, page: 0001. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1981.

This study presents Andre Bazin as a film theorist and Charles Chaplin as a filmmaker, examining both through a translation of Bazin's Charlie Chaplin. Each chapter of this translation of Charlie Chaplin is followed by annotated footnotes which expand on Bazin's thought and Chaplin's films. Furthermore, the footnotes give the information necessary to understand Charlie Chaplin to its fullest--its writer and its subject. / Three articles in Charlie Chaplin--"Introduction to Charlot's Symbolism," "The Myth of Monsieur Verdoux," and "The Grandeur of Limelight"--were previously translated by Hugh Gray and printed in What is Cinema? These articles are included in the study after having been revised because some inaccuracies and inconsistencies were noted when comparing the original text with Gray's translation. Detailed footnotes were also added to Gray's too few. / The study also includes a synthetic analysis of Charlie Chaplin through methods of criticism derived from Bazin's "De la politique des auteurs," his best known piece. In this section Andrew Sarris' Auteur theory is re-evaluated. The analysis is supported and supplemented by interviews with Francois Truffaut, Janine Bazin, Jean Narboni and Dudley Andrew. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 46-04, Section: A, page: 0820. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1985.

Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 37-10, Section: A, page: 6114. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1976.

Many of the works which fall into that broad category we call the crime genre, are pot-boilers. Like their cousins in other popular genres (such as the adventure, horror, romance, spy, and western stories), the basic crime situation, the mystery, is popular because of its predictable form. By the end of the narrative, a solution to a crime has been found. But within this enormous body of work, there are some narratives which stretch the limits of their form to intersect with the artistic concerns of their time. Rarely, if ever, does a single work in the crime genre achieve such a feat in two different media. And yet, Raymond Chandler's longest and most complex hard-boiled detective novel, The Long Goodbye, is arguably the apotheosis of its type in fiction, and Robert Altman's film version of the work twenty years later uses Chandler's plot to create something totally different, another detective story which extends the form in completely new and unexpected ways. This study, after a brief survey of the artistic evolution of the crime genre, will examine these two significant works in detail because their duality is so intriguing. Chandler's novel is an engrossing detective mystery and it is a novel with the artistic purposes of this century's Modernist authors. Altman's film is a captivating detective mystery and it is a challenging Post-Modernist cinematic experience. By comparing and contrasting the two versions of The Long Goodbye I intend to demonstrate that it is the hybrid nature of each work which accounts for its enduring appeal. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 48-07, Section: A, page: 1559. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1987.

<p> This dissertation offers a preliminary survey of different documentary practices in the digital age. I recognize and discuss several recent modes of filmmaking where documentary and fictional spaces collide and coalesce, modes which existed long before the arrival of the digital, but have been rejuvenated and made more prominent in the digital age. I point to how such a collapse of boundaries is celebrated rhetorically via digital technology to produce a contingent documentary argument made of ontological, epistemological and aesthetic contradictions. The impact of digital technology on the development of such current documentary rhetoric is explored by placing it within the historical context of earlier technological assimilations in documentary (particularly 16mm film and video cameras). By countering dominant arguments about epistemological doubt in the age of digital manipulability, I show how new digital technologies are currently refining the documentary aesthetically and sharpening its argumentative rhetoric. </p><p> I begin by challenging the dominant scholarly tendency that regards the introduction of digital technology into documentary practices through a binary, sensationalist prism. Thus, in chapter one I propose to treat digital technology not as a radical novelty in film with either utopian or dystopian results, but as a transition that forms a complex network of continuities and hybridities with previous technological assimilations and earlier documentary traditions. Chapters two through four illustrate this by describing how the digital refines or extends earlier documentary practices and traditions, whether these are observational, participatory, reflexive, performative or hybrid. Chapter two focuses on the emerging form of the doc-fiction hybrid, and focuses on how digital cameras have contributed to the formulation of a challenging interplay between fiction and documentary for almost two decades. In chapter three, I explore the meeting point between the digital and the essay film tradition, arguing that the former revitalizes essayistic tendencies which have existed in cinema for years, and which were instigated time and again with the arrival of different technological innovations. In the fourth I turn the focus from the photographically-indexical digital image to the computer-generated animated image by discussing the long-lasting tradition of the animated documentary.</p>

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of Comparative Literature, 2007. / Title from PDF t.p. (viewed Nov. 20, 2008). Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 68-03, Section: A, page: 0772. Adviser: Joan Hawkins.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of Comparative Literature, 2007. / Adviser: Joan Hawkins.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of Communication and Culture, 2008. / Title from PDF t.p. (viewed on Jul 23, 2009). Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 69-11, Section: A, page: 4161. Adviser: Joan Hawkins.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Lehigh University, 2010. / Advisers: Dawn Keetley; Alexander Doty.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of Communication and Culture, 2006. / "Title from dissertation home page (viewed July 12, 2007)." Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 67-10, Section: A, page: 3631. Adviser: Barbara Klinger.