Department of Film Studies

Tue 28th October 2008 17:15 to 19:15

Centre for Film Studies Talk: Prof. Janina Falkowska: Michael Haneke: Mourning and Melancholia in European Cinema

Janina Falkowska discusses filmmaker Michael Haneke, uniting a framework of melancholia and mourning with a consideration of social and political context. She argues that Haneke's films must be seen against the background of the dissolution of the communist system, German unification, mass migratory movements in Europe, and increasing homophobia and terrorist paranoia, as well as general globalization and unification trends within the new global economy and the Western world. Among the films discussed are Haneke’s early films, Drei Wege zum See (1976); Wer war Edgar Allan? (1984); Schmutz (1985) and Fraulein (1986) , and some later films with particular attention paid to The Seventh Continent (1989), 71 Fragments of a Chronology of Time (1994), Funny Games (1997) Code Inconnu (2000), The Time of the Wolf (2003) and Caché (2005).

Tue 14th October 2008 17:15 to 19:15

Centre for Film Studies Talk: Prof. Robert Burgoyne: Haunting in the War Film: Flags of our Fathers (Clint Eastwood, 2006) and Letters From Iwo Jima (Clint Eastwood, 2006)

Despite its long-standing reputation for realism and authenticity, the war film frequently departs from the conventions of verisimilitude to convey the nightmarish effects of the historical past. Although authenticity and realism continue to play an important role in representing war, the ghostly spectral encounter has become a key mode of expressing war and cultural trauma. Clint Eastwood’s Flags of our Fathers and Letters From Iwo Jima are both centred on the haunting of the present by the past, with artefacts such as photographs and letters becoming a kind of medium of spectral possession.