Historical Trauma and the Compulsion to Repeat – the Film Images of the Nanking Massacre
Abstract
The starting point of the article is the question of the possibility of presenting traumatic events in cinema on the example of Chinese films about the Nanking Massacre. Loska seeks to show that the recreation of historical events on screen takes place in these films in two different ways: some filmmakers highlight the discontinuity and fragmentary nature of the narrative, seeing in this an opportunity to grasp the radical incomprehensibility of traumatic experience; others choose a linear structure, bringing consolation, by “sacramental” trauma. The analysis of films by Luo Guanqun, Mou Dunfei, Wu Ziniu, Deng Jianguo, Lu Chuan and Zhang Yimou leads the author to conclude that in documentary and experimental films dominates the first form, while the second one - in historical feature films, that can be classified as part of cinema of new memory, because of the directors’ efforts to impose a dominant narrative, entanglement in the political context and the desire to shape the national identity.
Keywords:
Nanking Massacre, Chinese cinema, traumaReferences
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Authors
Krzysztof Loskakwartalnik.filmowy@ispan.pl
Jagiellonian University Poland
Profesor Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego, dyrektor Instytutu Sztuk Audiowizualnych tamże, wiceprezes Polskiego Towarzystwa Badań nad Filmem i Mediami, redaktor naczelny „TransMissions: Journal of Film & Media Studies”. Zajmuje się kulturą japońską i historią filmu. Autor stu pięćdziesięciu publikacji naukowych, w tym dwunastu książek, m.in. Dziedzictwo McLuhana - między nowoczesnością a ponowoczesnością (2001), Hitchcock: autor wśród gatunków (2002), David Cronenberg: rozpad ciała, rozpad gatunku (2003, wspólnie z A. Pitrusem), Tożsamość i media. O filmach Atoma Egoyana (2006), Poetyka filmu japońskiego (2009), Kenji Mizoguchi i wyobraźnia melodramatyczna (2012), Nowy film japoński (2013), Mistrzowie kina japońskiego (2015), Postkolonialna Europa: etnoobrazy współczesnego kina (2016).
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