Thesis (M. Ed.)--University of Hong Kong, 2004. / Also available in print.

Thesis (M. Ed.)--University of Hong Kong, 2004.

Den här uppsatsen undersöker hur återblickar och framåtblickar kommuniceras i film och vad dehar för påverkan på narrativet. Syftet var att fördjupa sig i de narrativa verktygen och genomföraen analys på filmen Arrival för att ta reda på hur återblickar och framåtblickar kommuniceras,och hur de kan påverka ett narrativ. Analysen baserades på teori från tre olika böcker: Film Artskriven av David Bordwell, Kristin Thompson och Jeff Smith, Flashbacks in Film: Memory &History skriven av Maureen Turim och Flashbacks in Film: A Cognitive and MultimodalAnalysis skriver av Adriana Gordejuela. Specifika delar från böckerna har plockats ut för attskapa en analysmetod som tittar på kausala relationer mellan händelser, vad återblickenrespektive framåtblicken har för syfte i berättelsen och hur dem har gestaltats. Analysen avArrival genererade ett resultat som visade att återblickar och framåtblickar påverkar narrativetgenom att skapa förväntningar och ge förklaringar till karaktärers beteende. I just Arrivalanvänds verktygen också för att skapa intrig och tvister, och på så sätt vända upp och ner på dennarrativa tidslinjen åskådaren har byggt upp under filmens gång. Resultatet visade också attåterblickar och framåtblickar gestaltas med liknande medel, vilket är något som teorin intenämner. Teorin är främst baserad på analyser av återblickar men det visar sig att framåtblickargår att analyseras med samma metoder

published_or_final_version / Education / Master / Master of Education

In this paper, I will detail the process of making the graduate thesis film Historia Naturalis. I will begin with how the idea came into being in the first part. Next, I will outline the methodology from screenwriting to completion- examining all the major creative and production related elements. Finally, I will attempt to personally analyze the success of the final project.

This essay is a close-reading study of Toni Morrison's novel Beloved. The purpose of this essay is to investigate and describe Gérard Genette's narratological theories and their function in the novel when looking at how the story is told. The questions that are being answered are how flashbacks actually affect the chronological order of events and who the narrator is that’s telling the story. The methods that are being used in the report are a close-reading of Beloved and making a selection of previous research. The selected research will show an overview of some examples of areas and theories that has been used in other essays. In the summary it appears from the result of the analysis that flashbacks functions as explanations of the characters' thoughts or actions in the present and that the narrator most of the time is the character that is in a particular situation.

Recurrent and intrusive distressing recollections of trauma are a hallmark symptom of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). The term ‘flashback’ is used in this thesis to refer to vivid, sensory perceptual (predominantly visual images), emotional memories from a traumatic event that intrude involuntarily into consciousness. Furthermore, intrusive image based memories occur in a number of other psychological disorders, for example, bipolar disorder and depression. Clinically, the presence and occurrence of flashbacks and flashback type memories are well documented. However, in terms of the neural underpinnings there is limited understanding of how such flashback memories are formed or later involuntarily recalled. An experimental psychopathology approach is taken whereby flashbacks are viewed on a continuum with other involuntary autobiographical memories and are studied using analogue emotional events in the laboratory. An initial review develops a heuristic clinical neuroscience framework for understanding flashback memories. It is proposed that flashbacks consistent of five component parts – mental imagery, autobiographical memory, involuntary recall, attention hijacking and negative emotion. Combining knowledge of the component parts helped provide a guiding framework, at both a neural and behavioural level, into how flashback memories may be formed and how they return to mind unbidden. Four studies (1 neuroimaging, 3 behavioural) using emotional film paradigms were conducted. In the first study, the trauma film paradigm was combined with neuroimaging (n = 35) to investigate the neural basis of both the encoding and the involuntary recall of flashback memories. Results provided a first replication of a specific pattern of brain activation at the encoding of memories that later returned as flashbacks. This included elevation in the rostral anterior cingulate cortex, insula, thalamus, ventral occipital cortex and left inferior frontal gyrus (during just the encoding of scenes that returned as flashbacks) alongside suppressed activation in the left inferior frontal gyrus (during the encoding of scenes that returned as flashbacks in other participants, but not that individual). Critically, this is also the first study to show the brain activation at the moment of flashback involuntary recall in the scanner. Activation in the middle and superior frontal gyri and the left inferior frontal gyrus was found to be associated with flashback involuntary recall. In the second study, control conditions from 16 behavioural trauma film paradigm experiments were combined (n = 458) to investigate commonly studied factors that may be protective against flashback development. Results indicated that low emotional response to the traumatic film footage was associated with an absence of flashbacks over the following week. The third study used a positive film to consider the emotional valence of the emotion component of the framework. Positive emotional response at the time of viewing the footage was associated with positive involuntary memories over the following week. The fourth study aimed to replicate and extend this finding, comparing the impact of engaging in two cognitive tasks after film viewing (equated for general load). Predictions were not supported and methodological considerations are discussed. Results may have implications for understanding flashbacks and involuntary autobiographical memories occurring in everyday life and across psychological disorders. Further understanding of the proposed components of the clinical neuroscience framework may even help inform targeted treatments to prevent, or lessen, the formation and frequency of distressing involuntary memories.

Aiming to make an intervention in both emerging Slow Cinema and classical Trauma Cinema scholarship, this thesis demonstrates the ways in which the post-trauma cinema of Filipino filmmaker Lav Diaz merges aesthetics of cinematic slowness with narratives of post-trauma in his films Melancholia (2008), Death in the Land of Encantos (2007) and Florentina Hubaldo, CTE (2012). Diaz has been repeatedly considered as representative of what Jonathan Romney termed in 2004 “Slow Cinema”. The director uses cinematic slowness for an alternative approach to an on-screen representation of post-trauma. Contrary to popular trauma cinema, Diaz’s portrait of individual and collective trauma focuses not on the instantenaeity but on the duration of trauma. In considering trauma as a condition and not as an event, Diaz challenges the standard aesthetical techniques used in contemporary Trauma Cinema, as highlighted by Janet Walker (2001, 2005), Susannah Radstone (2001), Roger Luckhurst (2008) and others. Diaz’s films focus instead on trauma’s latency period, the depletion of a survivor’s resources, and a character’s slow psychological breakdown. Slow Cinema scholarship has so far focused largely on the films’ aesthetics and their alleged opposition to mainstream cinema. Little work has been done in connecting the films’ form to their content. Furthermore, Trauma Cinema scholarship, as trauma films themselves, has been based on the immediate and most radical signs of post-trauma, which are characterised by instantaneity; flashbacks, sudden fears of death and sensorial overstimulation. Following Lutz Koepnick’s argument that slowness offers “intriguing perspectives” (Koepnick, 2014: 191) on how trauma can be represented in art, this thesis seeks to consider the equally important aspects of trauma duration, trauma’s latency period and the slow development of characteristic symptoms. With the present work, I expand on current notions of Trauma Cinema, which places emphasis on speed and the unpredictability of intrusive memories. Furthermore, I aim to broaden the area of Slow Cinema studies, which has so far been largely focused on the films’ respective aesthetics, by bridging form and content of the films under investigation. Rather than seeing Diaz’s slow films in isolation as a phenomenon of Slow Cinema, I seek to connect them to the existing scholarship of Trauma Cinema studies, thereby opening up a reading of his films.