Critics have analyzed Leni Riefenstahl's four feature length films from 1932 to 1954 largely for their depictions of fascist ideals while often neglecting how they represent gender. Viewing Riefenstahl's films using the theoretical gender models of Judith Butler and R.W. Connell provides a greater understanding of gender roles in Germany during both the Weimar and Nazi eras. Beginning with Das Blaue Licht (The Blue Light, 1932), and continuing to Triumph des Willens (Triumph of the Will, 1935), Olympia (1938), and concluding with Tiefland (The Lowlands, 1954), there is a clear evolution of how Riefenstahl understood and represented gender. Riefenstahl's earliest film Das Blaue Licht depicts a strong and independent female protagonist in Junta, but with the rise of fascism in Germany this type of character disappears and evolve into the weak and helpless figures like Martha in Tiefland. This study will look at these films within the cultural context of early-twentieth century Germany and National Socialism to consider how Riefenstahl's films participate in the understanding, articulation, and performance of gender at a crucial turning point in the history of Western Culture.

What is at stake for female fans and followers of horror cinema? This study explores the pleasures in horror film viewing for female members of the audience. The findings presented here confirm that female viewers of horror do not refuse to look but actively enjoy horror films and read such films in feminine ways. Part 1 of this thesis suggests that questions about the female viewer and her consumption of the horror film cannot be answered solely by a consideration of the text-reader relationship or by theoretical models of spectatorship and identification. A profile of female horror film fans and followers can therefore be developed only through an audience study. Part 2 presents a profile of female horror fans and followers. The participants in the study were largely drawn from the memberships of horror fan groups and from the readerships of a cross-section of professional and fan horror magazines. Qualitative data were collected through focus groups, interviews, open-ended questions included in the questionnaire and through the communication of opinions and experiences in letters and other written material. Part 3 sheds light on the modes of interpretation and attempts to position the female viewers as active consumers of horror films. This study concludes with a model of the female horror film viewer which points towards areas of female horror film spectatorship which require further analysis. The value of investigating the invisible experiences of women with popular culture is demonstrated by the very large proportion of respondents who expressed their delight and thanks in having an opportunity to speak about their experiences. This study of female horror film viewers allows the voice of an otherwise marginalised and invisible audience to be heard, their experiences recorded, the possibilities for resistance explored, and the potentially feminine pleasures of the horror film identified.

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The aim of this thesis is to analyse the function of colour in film through three films by British director Nicolas Roeg. To this end, this thesis has the following three correspondent aims: first to consider the theoretical relationship between colour and film within film studies as a discipline. Second, to propose a means of discussing film colour outside the dominant approach of restoration and degradation. Third to explore how Roeg’s implements colour within three of his films Performance, Don’t Look Now, and finally Bad Timing, and the ideological and aesthetic questions that emerge through a consideration of colour in these works. By looking at colour and Nicolas Roeg this thesis will not only present a critical response to the research question but it will also fill a small gap in the current dearth of work that exists on both colour and British cinema in the 1970s.

O objetivo desta tese é propor uma comparação das formas como o espaço e o tempo são elaborados em filmes das mais diversas inclinações, a fim de estabelecer alguns parâmetros do que seria a composição fílmica de maneira geral. A hipótese central é que uma análise comparada dessas formas possibilita organizar uma visão de conjunto do cinema: uma visão descritiva, não prescritiva; uma visão baseada nas próprias estratégias composicionais utilizadas pelos cineastas, mais do que em teorias externas. Para realizar essa investigação, será proposto um esquema em três partes que permite um diálogo com a bibliografia tradicional e que serve como referência para a análise dos filmes. / This thesis proposes a comparative study of the modes by which space and time are constituted in films of various dispositions, in order to establish the parameters of what would be film composition in a more general sense. The central hypothesis is that a comparative analysis of those forms enables us to organize a more unified point of view towards the films: a point of view which is descriptive, not prescritipve, and which is based on the strategies utilised by the filmmakers themselves, more than on preconceived theories. In order to advance this, we propose a three-part structure which serves as a reference to compare both theoretical writings and the films to be analyzed.

Bodily Sensation in Contemporary Extreme Horror Film provides a theory of horror film spectatorship rooted in the physiology of the viewer. In a novel contribution to the field of film studies research, it seeks to integrate contemporary scientific theories of mind with psychological paradigms of film interpretation. Proceeding from a connectionist model of brain function that proposes psychological processes are underpinned by neurology, this thesis contends that whilst conscious engagement with film often appears to be driven by psychosocial conditions – including cultural influence, gender dynamics and social situation – it is physiology and bodily sensation that provide the infrastructure upon which this superstructure rests. Drawing upon the philosophical works of George Lakoff, Mark Johnson and Alain Berthoz, the argument concentrates upon explicating the specific bodily sensations and experiences that contribute to the creation of implicit structures of understanding, or embodied schemata, that we apply to the world round us. Integrating philosophy with contemporary neurological research in the spheres of cognition and neurocinematics, a number of correspondences are drawn between physiological states and the concomitant psychological states often perceived to arise simultaneously alongside them. The thesis offers detailed analysis of a selection of extreme horror films that, it is contended, conscientiously incorporate the body of the viewer in the process of spectatorship through manipulation of visual, auditory, vestibular, gustatory and nociceptive sensory stimulations, simulations and the embodied schemata that arise from everyday physiological experience. The phenomenological film criticism of Vivian Sobchack and Laura U. Marks is adopted and expanded upon in order to suggest that the organicity of the human body guides and structures the psychosocial engagement with, and interpretation of, contemporary extreme horror film. This project thus exposes the body as the architectural foundation upon which conscious interaction with film texts occurs.

Este trabalho relata aspectos do processo criativo da redação de um roteiro cinematográfico de longa metragem. Procurou-se investigar, durante o fazer do roteiro, o modo como a narrativa pode ser utilizada para despertar emoções e interesse no espectador. Através da revisão de obras de teóricos cognitivistas do cinema e de manuais de roteiro, levanta-se considerações sobre possíveis estratégias para se envolver emocionalmente o espectador. Para ilustrar estas estratégias, é apresentada uma análise da obra Aconteceu naquela Noite (1934). A partir destas considerações, realiza-se a descrição do processo de escrita do roteiro, procurando demonstrar de que forma as considerações teóricas influenciaram neste processo e no produto final, o roteiro completo. / This dissertation reports some aspects of the creative process on writing a feature movie script. During the screenwriting, it was attempted to investigate how the narrative can be used to elicit emotions and interest in the spectatorship. Through the review of Cognitivist Film Theory Scholars and Screenwriting Guides, considerations were raised on possible strategies to emotionally involve the viewer while telling the story. To elucidate these strategies, the analysis of the movie It happened one night (1934) follows. Having reached these considerations, the script is presented along with the trajectory of its writing.

Student Number : 9803476V - MA research report - School of Arts - Faculty of Humanities / By drawing on contemporary scholarship that addresses spectatorship in the cinema generally, and in the horror genre specifically, I analyze the perverse pleasure afforded by The Blair Witch Project. To do this I argue that pleasure in horror is afforded through the masochistic positioning of the viewer, especially in relation to psychoanalytic theories surrounding gender in spectator positioning. I also look at the way the film re-deploys conventions, both documentary conceptions of the ‘real’, as well as generic expectations of horror, to activate the perverse pleasure of horror.