In this thesis I investigate the evolving figure of the holy fool as a critical figure in European cinema. Three national cinemas - Soviet and post-Soviet cinema, French cinema, and Danish cinema – form the primary focus of my analysis. These cinemas correspond broadly to the three main orientations in European Christianity: Orthodox, Catholic and Protestant. The cinematic holy fool of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries is interpreted in this thesis as a protean figure through which different European religious and intellectual traditions percolate (chapters one and two). Against this varied cultural background, I investigate the way in which the figure of the holy fool is used by filmmakers as a means of responding to and critiquing aspects of the modern world. To this end I analyse how filmmakers have represented different types, features and uses of the holy fool in interaction with their particular cultural and religious backgrounds. In particular, I examine how the cinematic holy fool is used to critique the religious and social status quo, the contemporary political power structures, and the abuse of reason. An apparently anachronistic figure, I argue that the holy fool has proved a versatile modern device, employed to question established secular and religious worldviews, from the Soviet regimes (chapters three and four) to contemporary Western European democracies (chapters five, six and seven). Through this thesis I identify how the modern holy fool is one without authority; a figure whose critical function has largely outgrown its confessional traditions, even if indebted to them. Nonetheless, in diverse secular and religious settings, I demonstrate how the fool’s critical function remains morally legitimated by selfless suffering.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of History, 2005. / Title from PDF t.p. (viewed Dec. 2, 2008). Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 66-02, Section: A, page: 0725. Chair: Alexander Rabinowitch.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of Communication and Culture, 2006. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 67-06, Section: A, page: 1962. Adviser: Barbara Klinger. "Title from dissertation home page (viewed June 21, 2007)."

This thesis examines a recent shift in attention to the auditory present in a strand of post-1999 contemporary European film and philosophy. It argues that noise, defined predominantly as unpleasant or unidentifiable sound, has been harnessed by particular filmmakers as a means to tune our attention to different bodies sounding in our environment. Yet while the ear is an organ we perceive to be open, it could always be receiving more. This limit to our audition is a limit the filmmakers examined here productively engage with in ways that raise questions about the politics and ethics of listening to different bodies. The thesis takes Jean-Luc Nancy's articulation of the listening body, what he calls the corps sonore, to posit a theory of a 'cinematic corps sonore' where the boundaries between on-screen bodies, medium and spectator are dissolved in the mutual vibratory soundings that characterise the state of being 'all ears'. In doing so, the thesis offers a revision of the haptic framework that has dominated recent sensuous theories of film as well as applications of Nancy's thought to film in the inter-discipline of film philosophy. The analysis proceeds via close readings of individual films to consider how noise tunes us to different bodies and the specific issues raised in doing so in ways that resonate beyond the philosophical limits of Nancy's corps sonore. Chapter one examines the 'unlistenable' in the work of Catherine Breillat and Gaspar Noé. It revises accounts of the supposed 'unwatchability' of Breillat and Noé's cinema by examining their respective appeals to volume and frequency, revealing both the possibility of intimacy and the risk of vulnerability that the corps sonore poses. Chapter two takes the corps sonore to the question of national borders and social bodies by bringing post-colonial theorist Édouard Glissant's concept of the écho-monde to Tony Gatlif's Exils (2004) and Arnaud des Pallières' Adieu (2004). It argues that both filmmakers appeal to the migratory properties of noise to think through questions of identity, relation and the different degrees of belonging that sound inscribes. The final chapter asks whether cinema constitutes a site that allows for an amplification of the nonhuman. Attention is given both to the practice of Foley and to the use of Foley in Lars von Trier's Antichrist (2009) and Peter Strickland's Berberian Sound Studio (2012) to show how a non-coincidence between body and sound figures cinema as a place of resonance, animated by the scattered structure of dynamic relations between things that Foley brings about. Yet the chapter also casts doubt over the possibility of noise indicating something outside of human world-projection and as such, disrupts the otherwise increasingly prehensile attention that I argue filmmakers have been able to pay to the body through the auditory.

This study discusses and analyses recorded/filmed speech, translation, and cultural identity in film discourses in early European sound film. The purpose is to frame these issues from a number of theoretical perspectives in order to highlight relations between media, speech and translation. The points of departure are 1. “universal language” vs. “linguistic diversity”, 2. “media transposition” vs. “language translation”, and 3, “speech as words” vs. “speech as body”. An important aspect in order to discuss these topics is the problem of “versions”, both different translated versions, and versions in different media of speech representation. The correlation of theory with a historical focus offers a contextualisation of translation as an issue of cinematic culture, and also sheds new light on topics that previously have been referred to as details (such as foreign accents in film) or as phenomena considered to be unrelated to “cinematic quality” (such as “filmed theatre”). The object of analysis consists of German, French and Swedish films, trade and fan press, and film theory from the 1920s and 1930s. The study begins with a theoretical and historical introduction, which addresses representation of speech in reproduction media focusing on early sound technology predominantly from the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Chapter two offers a discussion of speech as signifier of differentiated ethnicity in relation to a utopia of universal language embodied in film and sound media. Chapter three addresses film speech as a multimedia issue revealing a problematic of version as a context for the various means of translating. Chapter four offers a general discussion of film translation in the period of transition to sound with a focus on dubbing, subtitles and inter-titling. The two last chapters deal exclusively with the multiple language version film, a translation practice based on re-making the same script in different languages.

This dissertation focuses on film co-productions of the East German film studio DEFA (Deutsche Film-Aktiengesellschaft) with East and West European partners. It revisits patterns of institutional and transnational collaboration during the Cold War in order to challenge the predominant cliché of the isolation of East European film industries. The project seeks to re-position East German cinema within evolving debates on European film, deriving its argument from archival research on production histories and contemporaneous press releases, as well as from correspondence and personal testimonials such as interviews with former East German and East European filmmakers. The discussion is structured around three categories that focus attention on the interplay between the East German studio’s co-production agenda and state-imposed film policy: cultural prestige, popular entertainment, and international solidarity. I devote a chapter to each category in my study, and show how co-productions, as collective enterprises at the intersection of national cinemas, allowed DEFA to compete for internationally renowned film stars and to re-appropriate Hollywood genres by forming multinational film collectives and sharing sets, talent, and production costs, while simultaneously negotiating complex economic, political, and market conditions in each host country. This project moves beyond previous approaches to East German film as European cinema’s ‘other.’ DEFA co-productions provide a privileged route into the examination of socialist film production as a state-controlled and ideologically compliant cultural domain, and, at the same time, as a venue for artistic collaborations that challenged the limitations of state censorship and sponsorship. Undoubtedly, East German and East European films were influenced by international developments and responded to them. Focusing on DEFA as a case study, I shed light on the negotiation of cultural policies not only within a discrete film studio, but also among the various institutions involved in filmmaking in Eastern Europe. / text

In my dissertation, I discuss three of Akın’s feature films: Im Juli (In July, 2000), Gegen die Wand (Head-On, 2004), and Auf der anderen Seite (The Edge of Heaven, 2007) in order to investigate Akın’s filmic visions of Europe. Through close textual readings, I analyze three aspects of his films in particular: the spatial conceptions of Europe (city- and landscapes), the sounds of Europe (music and languages) as well as the display of ethnic minorities and the changing urban demography in Germany and Europe. I argue that Akın employs an “aesthetic of heterogeneity” to portray his filmic Europe as a diverse space, in which multiethnic and multilingual music, people, and sceneries are juxtaposed with regions that often have been perceived historically and politically as distinct and complicated. My first chapter discusses Akın’s conceptions and depictions of European Space in In July. By analyzing city- and landscapes, soundscapes, and dynamic spaces in In July, I argue that Akın provides a dynamic, fluctuating, and interconnected European space, including Eastern Europe and Turkey. In my second chapter, I scrutinize language use and dialogue in Head-On to map out the changing demographics in European urban spaces. Ultimately, I argue that Akın moves beyond Hamid Naficy’s theory of “accented cinema” by including accented languages and dialects for all protagonists, including Western Europeans. Through this linguistic polyphony, multilingualism and a diversity of accents are depicted as integral elements of today’s Europe. In my final chapter, I discuss the sound of Europe as depicted in The Edge of Heaven. Looking particularly at music (and music lyrics) in the film, I argue that Akın’s use of dubbed and remixed music (especially by the artist Shantel) underscores Akın’s filmic challenges to (national) European borders. By foregrounding the mixed styles of music, where an “original” becomes hard to decipher, the director shows, on an aural level, that blurring boundaries and multidirectional movement are the predominant components of today’s Europe. / text

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