Journal for scientific research and artistic creation in the fields of Theatre and Performing Arts & Film and Media
An actor works with one main tool - his/her/their own being. One‟s physique and psyche work together in order to bring forth subtle nuances of one‟s being. An actor needs to mirror different realities for the spectator in order to move him out of his comfort zone and challenge him to ponder on more profound and complex aspects of life. The actor must first know and understand himself before he can share these deep experiences with others. Self- awareness, one of the most intense challenges for a human being, requires plenty of courage and patience in order for one to explore within himself the deepest emotions experienced that will ultimately reveal the most profound insights.
The Unlearned Lesson from Tartuffe or the Comedic Typology and the Fight Against Fake News
It is often thought that the threat posed by fake news is a problem that strictly affects the modern world in which we live in and has become increasingly more prevalent with the rise of social media. In truth, fake news has been around for a far long a time that we might think, and its presence could be traced all the way back to ancient times. Although it was not always labeled as such, throughout history there have always been leaders or governments who have tried to manipulate the masses by feeding them false information and art has often been used both as a tool for propaganda and also as a means to depict the use of that propaganda. That is also the case with the famous comedy Tartuffe by Molière.
Emotional Expressivity in the Interpretation of Lyrical Characters. The Role of the Dramatic Training of the Opera Performer
In the doctoral dissertation Interpretive alternatives of Shakespearean Characters Born of Their Emotional Universe we assumed the benefit of understanding the characters played in their psychological complexity as if they were real people, so that their behaviours and goals are interpreted from the perspective of their personality core. For this I proposed the analysis of emotions according to established psychological theories and with the help of psychological tools. Given the multitude of opera performances inspired by his pieces, we consider that this approach could be useful for students-lyrical performers. In order to bring sufficiently strong arguments in support of this statement, we conducted a review of research on the reception of the expressiveness of vocal lyrical interpretation versus gestural postural expressiveness. The research results confirm the students' concern for lyrical performers for the technique and expressiveness of the voice that sings to the detriment of expressiveness through non-verbal means and, at the same time, the need of directors and audiences for integrated expressiveness. As a result, we consider useful the multidisciplinary development of future lyrical artists, in the sense of concern for the emotional expression gestural-postural in parallel with the vocal one. The training modules could be greatly improved through interdisciplinary collaboration with acting schools, just as student actors could benefit from the experience of transmitting emotion through song. In this way, the terms “actor” and “singer” will come mutual closer, for the benefit of the performing arts and the spectators.
The Archiving Film: A Pharmacology of the Media Flux
By analyzing films assembled from images from the media flux, this article aims to explore a poetics of what we shall call the archiving film. We argue that such a cinema may be a pharmacological politics of memory, since it archives the ephemeral, often repressed or overlooked images of an operational flux, freeing their potentiality as cultural artefacts. From Walter Benjamin’s view that history belongs to the oppressed, to Foucault’s study of panopticism and Agamben’s poetics of inoperability, we propose to trace the artistic and epistemological value of the archiving film, focusing on an awareness of selectivity and transfiguration on part of the filmmakers. The chosen filmography marks a shift in relation to images from the flux: from a paradigmatic, descriptive state of contemplation (as in Michael Klier’s Der Riese from 1983, comprised of footage from the first CCTV cameras installed in West Germany), to a later syntagmatic turn (in Dragonfly Eyes from 2017, Xu Bing uses extensive hours of surveillance footage from mainland China to create a metafictional narrative). With the advent of desktop cinema and machinima, the hybridization of an archiving cinema thus escapes an analytic scheme set on binary oppositions, including that between author and spectator.
A Diffractive Approach to Archive Film Performativity
This article explores the performativity of archival footage and reframes the archival feminist cinema in Romania through a diffractive methodology inspired by Karen Barad, Donna Haraway, and Judith Butler. Focusing on Vlad Petri’s Between Revolutions and Maryam Tafakory’s poetic cinematic works, it examines how archival footage, voiceovers, and subtitles disrupt linear narratives and reconfigure history. Rather than comparing the films thematically, the analysis reads them through one another to trace how meaning emerges from material-discursive entanglements. The study foregrounds the political agency of filmic elements such as sound, image, and text while also considering how translation, censorship, and female voice shape feminist ways of seeing. Through layered montage and citation, these films are positioned not as representations of the past but as performative acts that imagine new temporalities and relationships. A diffractive reading reveals how history and memory are not fixed but continuously reshaped in the space between revolutions.
Archival Effect, Found Footage, and Photographic Dichotomy. Truth and Truthfulness in Historical Documentaries
How do we recover and preserve memories through archived visual sources? This paper will address the use of archived footage in features and documentaries. Helped by digital technology, today we stress the lack of ontological structure of virtual support through its myriad visual declinations from the "original” source. Through documents, film footage, and photographs the historic validation is assumed by the viewer as a trustful proof or, to quote Michael Zry, ”[...] photographic images seem to carry the promise of the true and accurate representation of history” (2003, p. 47). The use of archived footage (motion picture and photographs) is compared in two different directorial approaches in order to exhibit the degree of interventions on each case study. Valuable film heritage is restored and preserved in archives around the globe: What if some ”excerpts from archived movies” are in fact reenactments or fake found footage marked as ”never seen before”? Is digital manipulations of historical footage justified enough for shifting to a ”trendy look” for modern viewers, even if the connection to historical reality is lost?
Opposition to the Communist Regime on Screen: Representations of Intellectual Dissidence in Post-1989 Romanian Cinema
This article explores the evolving representation of intellectual dissidence in Romanian cinema after the fall of communism, focusing on three films: Fox: Hunter (1993), 12:08 East of Bucharest (2006), and The Case of Engineer Ursu (2023). Through a comparative analysis grounded in film theory, memory studies, and political history, the study argues that Romanian cinema has assumed a compensatory role in narrating the moral and historical dimensions of opposition to the communist regime. Drawing on frameworks from scholars such as Marc Ferro, Robert Rosenstone, and David Bordwell, the article examines how each film constructs distinct narrative universes that reflect changing public attitudes toward the recent past. The article traces a shift from the tragic solemnity of early post-revolutionary portrayals to the reflexive irony of the New Romanian Cinema and finally to the factual, justice-seeking tone of recent documentary. These aesthetic evolutions mirror Romania’s ongoing struggle with historical accountability, civic memory, and critical consciousness. By recovering the figure of the intellectual dissident, cinema emerges as both a site of ethical engagement and a space of public remembrance in a post-totalitarian society still negotiating its relationship with the past.
Superposition of Trauma: Temporal and Spatial Displacement in The Brutalist
Trauma does not merely reside in memory – it is structured into space, embedded in material and cinematic form. The Brutalist (2024) does not narrate trauma directly but inscribes it into spatial and visual architecture, constructing trauma as a superpositional phenomenon – both present and unspoken, remembered yet inaccessible. This paper introduces a dual-layered superpositional model, tracing trauma’s displacement across time and space while interrogating the film’s refusal of cathartic healing. The temporal displacement layer examines how trauma remains suspended: neither fully past nor fully present. The film fractures time through ambiguous chronology, elliptical disclosure, and displaced agency, enacting trauma’s delayed return. The spatial displacement layer advances a critical innovation: trauma is not merely remembered but materially embedded. Through mise-en-scène, spatial framing, and architecture, The Brutalist externalizes trauma into built environments, ensuring its structural persistence. The film also foregrounds cinema’s archival function as a spatial displacement technique, extending trauma beyond narration into filmic space itself. Ultimately, The Brutalist expands trauma theory beyond individual psychology, centering its structural, material, and historical dimensions. In doing so, the film does not simply depict trauma – it becomes an archive, preserving trauma’s continuing rupture as an enduring force.
Land of Salvation: A Cinematic Journey Through the History of the Fight Against Tuberculosis
This article presents Land of Salvation, an 18-minute docufiction film created in 2024 as part of the Sotiria Museum’s curatorial design. The museum is housed within one of Greece’s most historic pulmonary hospitals, a former sanatorium for tuberculosis patients in Athens. Structured around three axes—Museum Collection, Sotiria Archive and Monumental Space—the study investigates how cinematic narration and museological practice can reinterpret the history of tuberculosis in Greece. By giving visibility to patient voices and focusing on trauma-informed heritage, it examines how a difficult medical past can be reframed, contributing to collective healing. The conception and script of the film were grounded in long-term research on the Museum Collection and the Sotiria Archive, which preserves belongings left behind by former patients from the 1940s to the 1970s. Filming, captured immediately before the exhibition’s installation, took place in the museum, a restored yet empty space. Drawing on four narrative characters, the film aligns with a broader shift in medical museums toward more human-centered storytelling, while also prompting reflection on unconventional monuments, which are often overlooked or contested. Although produced within a specific framework, the film aims to stimulate additional research and to serve as an open platform for further reflection.
Caste & the Archives in India: Cinematic Representation of a Minority Community Through the Structural Elements of Film
This article examines the roles of caste and class in the context of modern India, with a particular focus on how they affect Catholic communities along the western coast of Maharashtra. The issue of caste exclusion is as pertinent for the archive as it is for the individual. Moreover, the act of remembering or recreating the past is not a straightforward endeavour, especially given the changing politics in India and the dwindling number of Catholics in Bombay. As a filmmaker, I am intrigued by the structural aspects of film—lensing, sound, music, lighting, colour, and movement—and whether these can convey meanings that extend beyond oral history and archiving. Drawing on Michelle Caswell’s theories of ‘symbolic annihilation’ and ‘liberatory practices’ for archives, I argue that the present moment must be met with revolutionary approaches. By using my film, “Islands of Labour: The Church at Jacob Circle”, as a case study I speculate on how cinema’s structural elements can be utilised to frame liberatory practices for marginalized Catholic communities. The film focuses on a public school teacher from Mumbai whose parents were part of India’s first industrial workforce—the cotton mill workers, Hazel grew up in the Bombay Improvement Trust Blocks at Agripada, a distinctive colonial architectural experiment in social housing, as a member of a working-class Catholic family in mid-20th-century Bombay. The article asks, if cinema’s structural elements can serve as a liberatory archive for marginalised catholic communities excluded from India’s dominant archiving traditions?
Vâlva Băii – Link from Folklore to Societal Structure of the Mining Community in Apuseni Mountains, Romania
This paper explores the figure of Vâlva Băii, a female spirit from Romanian mining folklore, as a tool for social regulation and moral codification within the isolated communities of the Apuseni Mountains. Drawing on anthropological theories of folklore, mining cultures, and visual anthropology, the study positions the legend as a governing system in a microsociety historically shaped by extractive labor and social marginality. Further, it reflects on how documentary cinema may act as an ethnographic method to visualize and archive these immaterial systems of belief. Through an analysis of field research and cinematic representation, this study articulates how Vâlva Băii serves not only as myth, but as mechanism—at once regulating, punishing, and preserving the moral order of mining life.
This issue, Archives, Cinema and Collective Healing: Preserving Memory Through Film, emerged from the conference with the same name, held during the fifth edition of the Film O’Clock International Festival, in partnership with The I.L. Caragiale National University of Theatre and Film in Bucharest, a festival with a strong focus on classic cinema and film heritage. By bringing together filmmakers, researchers and scholars, the conference fostered an international dialogue on how archives and cinema intersect in the processes of preserving memory and addressing collective trauma. This issue extends that dialogue, examining the shifting relationship between image, history, and identity.
Wound and Hemorrhage of the Cinematographic Story in Alejandro González Iñarritu's Trilogy: Amores Perros (2000), 21 grams (2003) and Babel (2006)
The purpose of this essay is to analyze Iñarritu's trilogy formed by Amores Perros (Love's a bitch, 2000), 21 grams (21 grams, 2003) and Babel (2006), under the following concepts: accident, wound and hemorrhage. It is an exemplary work in narrative terms, made with Federico Arriaga as screenwriter. This trilogy deserves special attention, not only because it is a manifesto of the broken and helical narrative, but also because it represents a reflection of the violence that suddenly appeared in the Mexico of those years. In narratological terms, Iñarritu uses a strategy based on dynamic fragmentation, a mixture of impressionism, futurism and Kurt Schwitters' Dadaism, which is animated by a futuristic helical structure.
It is of tremendous importance for an actor-student to have a very well structured and personal method of approaching a role. This can only be accomplished by try, error, experience and self-knowledge. The me-role-character path represents a milestone on which one can rely on whenever faced with difficulties on stage while creating a character or improvising a situation. In respect to the scenic parameters, the focus point, Stanislavski`s theory on the actor`s work on the role and Ion Cojar`s poetic, the actor-student can learn information of prime importance for anyone who wants to be(come) alive on stage. Shortcuts are not possible while one is in the process of learning to become a professional actor / actress. Consequently, the complex road from amateur to professional represents a journey that must be crossed with a great amount of patience and curiosity. Moreover, an important discussion is needed on the significance and the urgency of developing a systematic emotional education in the academic system.
Gender Equality in the European Audiovisual Sector: An Intersectional Perspective
This article interrogates the ostensible progress towards gender equality in the European audiovisual sector through a rigorously applied intersectional framework, revealing the inadequacy of aggregated representation metrics for capturing the multidimensional nature of exclusionary practices. Drawing upon comprehensive data from national film institutes, regulatory bodies and independent research entities, the analysis demonstrates how the modest improvements in women’s overall industry presence—from 21% to 26% between 2015 and 2023 (Fontaine, 2024)—obscure profound disparities when gender intersects with ethnicity, sexuality, disability and socio-economic positioning. The investigation reveals systematic marginalisation patterns wherein women of colour constitute less than 1.5% of key production roles in Britain's film industry (UK Film Council, 2016), whilst the examination of disability representation uncovers that 76% of disabled characters in contemporary media are portrayed as white males (Smith et al., 2023). Methodologically, the research navigates the variable data landscape across European territories, synthesising quantitative representation metrics with qualitative analyses of industry practices and policy interventions. In documenting the evolution from gender-specific to intersectional policy approaches, exemplified by the BFI Diversity Standards' multidimensional framework, the article contributes to emergent scholarly discourse on equitable industry transformation. The findings underscore the necessity for structural interventions that address not merely numerical representation but the complex interplay of privilege and disadvantage operating within European media institutions.
Analysis of Light Absorption in Underwater Filming: A Methodological and Comparative Approach at Successive Depths
The study conducted in the Red Sea at depths of 10m, 20m, 30m, 40m, and 50m clearly demonstrates the progressive loss of warm colors underwater due to selective light absorption, highlighting the critical role of artificial lighting in recovering these colors. A handmade underwater color scale was created, providing an essential reference for comparative analyses and precise calibration during post-production. Future experiments will expand on these findings by evaluating different types of underwater lamps with varying color temperatures and intensities, testing the effectiveness of color-correction filters (red, magenta, CY) at shallow and intermediate depths, and examining the impact of water turbidity on color visibility. Practical recommendations derived from this study include strategically employing artificial lighting beyond 10–15m depth, consistently applying custom white balance, maintaining close proximity to subjects, and using a color reference within the frame. Technological advancements and improved digital post-processing methods promise to further enhance underwater image accuracy. Nevertheless, a thorough understanding of underwater optical phenomena combined with practical diving experience remains indispensable for achieving visually compelling and scientifically accurate underwater photography and cinematography.
Video Didn’t Kill the Radio Star – Transmediality Against the Notion of a “Blind Medium”
This paper interrogates the persistence and transformation of the audio fiction format within the transmedial landscape of contemporary culture, challenging the recurrent notion of radio drama as a “blind medium.” Building on the theories of McLuhan, Baudrillard, Rajewsky, Wolf, and Jenkins, it argues that the significance of transmediality lies less in content migrating across platforms than in the collision and interplay of media themselves. The study considers both historical and contemporary case studies—from Orson Welles to the radio-pollinated war-time myth of Tokyo Rose completely shifting the trajectory of the living human being Iva Toguri - to the resurgence of fiction podcasts such as Welcome to Night Vale and The Amelia Project —to illustrate how audio narratives not only endure but thrive through transmedial relations, sometimes even breaching reality. Rather than being displaced by video or the internet, radio and its descendants have been revitalized within a globalized, syncretic media environment. By reframing radio drama within the dynamics of media fusion, the paper dismantles the reductive critique of its supposed blindness, demonstrating instead its capacity to generate multi-sensory, culturally resonant, and globally networked experiences. Ultimately, transmediality emerges not as a novelty of the digital age but as a constitutive principle of storytelling itself, wherein media perpetually reshapes itself.
The Fire of Love and The Fire Within. Uses and Interpretations of Archives in Documentary Film
For a documentarist, observing the present is constantly accompanied by a glance backward or, rather, an inward gaze. When working with archive material, the filmmakers dig like storytelling paleontologists, exploring and connecting the material without always having full knowledge of what they are making, letting the images lead the way before working backwards to find a narrative. Soon, their subjective perspective comes into play, leading toward the future storytelling. There are multiple types of truth: emotional truths that shape our inner selves and historical truths that mold our external reality. With each piece of archival material, new interpretations of reality emerge, and new authors are born. In this article, I will analyze the different perspectives of two documentary filmmakers regarding the same archival material. Thus, the filmmaker’s subjective viewpoint becomes essential, what can be found in any work.As a result of reinterpretation, the film archive is infinite. History is written and rewritten using all fragments of memory, regardless of their medium of representation.
Staging the Other: Blackface, Stereotypes, and the Cultural Politics of Representation in Theatre and Cinema
This article examines the origins of blackface in European theatrical traditions, examining its ideological foundations and historical expressions from antiquity to the present. It examines how European performance cultures have historically mobilised blackness as a performative and racialised construct, going beyond the often American-centric interpretation of blackface. The study aims to reveal how the visual and embodied motifs of blackface have been used in popular entertainment, judicial spectacles, and religious rituals to articulate changing but enduring forms of racial othering. The approach emphasises the ways in which these activities influenced the creation of cultural identities, the aesthetics of exoticism, and larger systems of colonial authority. The paper argues that blackface in Europe is a unique and deeply ingrained cultural matrix that necessitates critical historical analysis rather than being a derivation of American minstrelsy. Building on this analysis, the article shows how racial stereotypes in early American film are reinforced on the silver screen. This study provides an understanding of how performance has historically shaped perceptions of race and identity.
The Ballet Performance between Tradition and Innovation
At the beginning of the 21st century, exactly as a hundred years ago when the art world recorded a real explosion of artistic genres and styles, all united under the phrase modern art, characterized by its independence from the realistic nature of imagined subjects, the art of dance exhibits today a multitude of genres, styles and types of performances, as an expression of contemporary dance, extremely diverse and innovative, characterized by independence from structure, language or representation. In this context, the present article presents the research undertaken with the aim of identifying the defining element that allows creators of choreographic performances to reconstruct the established titles that make up the international repertoire of classical ballets, from a modern-contemporary perspective. Re-visiting great classics is in itself an extremely complex process, initiated in the period of postmodernism, which contaminated, one by one, all the performing arts.
Sense and Significance in the Art of Dance and in the Choreographic Analysis
The art of dance, often considered a universal language, is actually much more complex and cannot be reduced to just a simple form of communication. Although dance uses body movements to convey messages, these movements are deeply rooted in the cultural, social and historical context of those who practice and perform them. Thus, dance is not a universal language in the strict sense of the word, as the meanings of movements can vary considerably between different cultures and societies. This article explores the importance of cultural context in the presentation and interpretation of dance and the particularities that the dancer's body presents, arguing for a multidimensional approach to choreography analysis.
Ballet Educational Academic Model. Advocacy for an Epistemological Approach
This paper includes excerpts from the opening section of the author's doctoral dissertation on pedagogical action research, successfully defended in September 2023 at Babeș-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca. The PhD action research conducted an epistemological inquiry aimed at redefining ballet education for the contemporary era. It introduced innovative methods for identifying, analyzing, and rectifying systemic shortcomings within the ballet canon. Moreover, it proposed pathways for a fundamental shift in the perception of ballet, advocating for its recognition as a dynamic field that integrates art, profession, science, education, and lifestyle.
A Romanian choreographer who is said to be “one of the ten best choreographers in Europe” today (Teržan, 2020) started his career as a soloist dancer in Maribor Ballet ensemble and succeeded worldwide through his contemporary ballet Radio and Juliet, that he created for six male dancers and one female to the music of the British alternative-rock band, Radiohead. My analysis considered the traditional analysis according to Adshead (1988) and Banes (1994) with contextual, descriptive, interpretive and evaluative aspects as well as intertextual analysis after Adshead-Lansdale (1999), which considers the dance text as an open construction.
The Young Artists Problems of Adapting Professionally and Socially in an International Company
This article will address the young artists problems of adapting professionally and socially in an international company. The article is intended to provide information to experts in this field regarding the differences of education, culture and language. It’s very challenging for an artist to change their life as many times they have to leave a country and with this process it’s hard to find a stable home, to get used to the city and the people. Finally, this article is about being aware of the importance to grow as an artist and have the space for creative projects.
The Importance of Post-Performance Recovery for a Dancer
This article discusses the importance of recovery for dancers after a performance. I will investigate the link between ballet dancers and performance athletes (similarities and differences), what type of physical and psycho-emotional recovery is required, and I will present a case study which analyzes the evolution or involution of the dancers’ bodies after a longer period of rest. In the demanding world of dance, performance excellence hinges not only on rigorous training but also on effective recovery strategies. This paper explores the significance of recovery in optimizing dancers' performance and overall well-being. A comprehensive review of existing literature on dance physiology, sports science, and performance enhancement was conducted to examine the various aspects of recovery pertinent to dancers. The findings underscore the multifaceted nature of recovery in dancers' training regimens. Adequate rest, nutrition, hydration, and sleep emerge as critical factors in promoting physical and mental recovery. Additionally, active recovery and passive recovery using techniques such as foam rolling, massage therapy, and mindfulness practices have been shown to mitigate fatigue, prevent injuries, and enhance performance outcomes.
In the last decades, the influence of digital technology has affected almost all aspects of our lives, including the enchanting world of dance. With a single click, everyone has the possibility to access more than 900.000 dance videos, being able to view a performance or dance tutorial whenever it is desired. Art renews itself when it manages to integrate in the present, and digital technology has embraced the art of dance, giving birth to new interdisciplinary approaches. This paper surveys the use of technology regarding dance education and performance on the screen and analyses in what manner the development of digital machineries is supporting innovation in dance.
Auteur`s Subjectivity and Film Objectivity
As a film director (auteur), I have always been concerned with the form one can choose to represent a story on screen. And to what extent a personal vision can be enhanced or, why not, diminished by the intrinsic objectivity of the film. When I use "objectivity" I mean the inherent actualness of the film image projected on screen (along with its soundscape). How does this actualness ultimately determine the reception of the proposed film (vision), but more importantly, how does the stylistic choice influence the filmmaker's anticipation of this reception? The rules, narrative conventions, structure, cinematography (framing, angles, camera movements, lighting, etc.), sound, editing, etc. do they help or not the speech desired by the auteur (director) of the film? [When I use "auteur" I know that I can be attached to la politique des auteurs (François Truffaut) or the auteur theory (Andrew Sarris). However, I cannot deny the fact that the film is also a joint work, a collaboration between its main auteurs (director, screenwriter, cinematographer, actor, scenographer/costume designer, composer, editor...) – as Pauline Kael and Georges Sadoul.] In this article I will try to briefly analyze this twinning and interdependence between the subjectivity of the auteur (the character) and the objectivity offered by the projection of his vision on screen.
The Potential of Vulnerability, The Core of Creativity in the Art of Acting
In the art of acting, it can be effortless for an experienced professional to identify the problems of another`s actor performance. But the struggle of an actor-student in trying to understand oneself and the exterior can be overwhelming. In order to gain the so much needed creative freedom in the art of acting, the actor-student has to acknowledge, accept and utilize one`s potential of vulnerability. Without this aspect, the outcome of one`s work would be fade, fruitless, unpalatable, and lacking life. Another consequence of the fact that the art of acting is founded on the idea of paradox is that the strength of the actor-student emanates precisely from fragility and vulnerability. Courage and assumption are needed for the purpose of being sincerely and organically vulnerable.
The Musical Actor Between Art and Science
When someone sees a theatre performance — argued director Andrei Şerban at the Ipotesti Traveling Academy, which I attended in the summer of 2013 — it must reach three thresholds to be truly captivating: one should understand the plot, like it and, above all, believe it. But can anybody believe a character who, on the verge of death, begins to sing or a chorus of dancing cats? This is where the fascinating world of Musical Theater begins: a world with its own rules, with a special language, with performing techniques different from those used in classical theatre and special skills requested from the performing artists. The article aims to analyse the complexity of this theatrical genre, as well as the process of the Musical Actor through which he or she can go from the libretto and score to a performance in which his/her character is alive and totally believable. Since this form of theatre requires that performers have various skills and knowledge like acting, singing, and dancing, the article also aims to highlight the importance of developing a teaching method dedicated to the specific needs of the Musical Actor.
Visual Storytelling the Imaginary in Cinema
Based on real-life events—a statement each of us has read in the description of a fiction artwork. Whether it’s literature, theatre, or film, humans have always been attracted to a subject that is similar to their real-life experiences. The Impressionist movement in fine arts and the invention of photography made paintings that included high-fidelity representations of the environment become redundant. This was happening because of the advance in technical means. The used quote supports cinema’s will to empower the imaginary. Fiction films can be treated as a dream, as a universe of those who are trying to project things that are untouchable in the real world. The purpose of this paper is not that of differentiating fiction from documentary. We are trying to discover what means directors use to separate different narrative universes described in a single film so that the audience understands it is being transported to a dream, a memory, or simply an imaginary space created as a result of a mental disorder. Therefore, we won’t analyse the dream as a function, but as a form. Our purpose is to identify the recipes, if those really exist, through which the visual language can suggest or even amplify the existence of a border between real and surreal.