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Editor's Corner
corner: n. 1. a. The position at which two lines
or surfaces meet. b. The immediate interior or exterior or exterior
region of the angle formed at this position, bounded by the two
lines or surfaces. 2. A vertex, esp. the interior region of a
vertex, formed by the sides of roads or streets that join, meet,
or intersect. 3. A threatening or embarrassing position, esp.
one from which escape is difficult or impossible. 4.a. A part,
quarter or region. b. A remote, secluded, or secret place. 5.
A guard or decoration fitted on a corner, as of a bookbinding.
6. A speculative monopoly of a stock or commodity created by
purchasing all or most of the available supply in order to raise
its price.
(The American Heritage Dictionary)
In his "Cinema as an Instrument of Poetry", Luis
Buñuel wrote that cinema is "an instrument of poetry,
with all that this latter word holds of a sense of liberation,
subversion of reality, a passage into the marvelous world of
the subconscious, and nonconformity to the restrictive society
that surrounds us." [1] Honoring the Spanish Filmmaker's
writings on cinema, this Corner celebrates Buñuel's
birth a hundred years ago on February 22, 1900. This issue enlarges
the scope of its original "Call for Papers" and includes
five essays with diverse approaches to contemporary cinema. Their
authors reveal an equal fascination with images and cinematographic
language, offering alternative visions to our reader's views
on cinema.
Héctor Mario Cavallari's, "El poder del significante:
acercamiento analítico al lenguaje fílmico de Viridiana,
de Luis Buñuel" is a semiotic analysis of one of
Buñuel's most fascinating films. Viridiana (1961)
is a devastating attack on religion and society, and one that
develop an explicit theme of disruptive desire. Buñuel
considered Viridiana a picture of l'humour noir,
"without doubt corrosive, but unplanned and spontaneous,
in which I express certain erotic and religious obsessions of
my childhood" (229).[2] Cavallari studies the analytical
context of the relationship between the "public" language
of the social culture and the "private" one of the
unconscious, and supports Raymond Durgnat's observation that
"Buñuel's mind moves with exceptional smoothness
from the rational logic of the conscious mind to the symbolic
system of the unconscious." [3]
The British filmmaker Peter Greenaway has admitted, in several
statements and interviews, the importance that the Latin-American
fantastic has had for his artistic development. He also attributes
the resonance in his work to the oeuvre of Jorge Luis Borges,
whom he considers, along with Marcel Duchamp and John
Cage, one of his 20th century "heroes", outside
of the world of cinema. In fact, the elements which, in Greenaway,
have affinities with the fictional procedures of the Argentine
writer are not few, especially in what touches the conscious
practice of fictional artifices, the encyclopedic view of the
world, the exercise of fantastic taxonomies, the authorial ruses,
the dizzying citations, the conception of the universe as a "Library
of Babel". These are procedures that Greenaway radicalizes
and intensifies, on making them visually baroque through a sophisticated
technological apparatus, together with the intersection of various
aesthetic languages and disciplinary fields. In Maria Esther
Maciel's, "An Encyclopedic Imagination, Peter Greenaway
in the light of Jorge Luis Borges" aims both to investigate
these links between Greenaway and Borges and to show the conscious,
critical insertion of the British director in the contemporary
cultural context, notable for, among other aspects, the assemblage
of cultures from various eras and origins, as well as the accelerated
proliferation of the so-called "technologies of the virtual"
in daily life. It also intends to discuss how he presents a disturbing
and overflowing cinema aimed at the disruption of the established
systems of knowledge and classification. Maciel also contributes
a valuable Greenaway Filmography.
Fuencisla Zomeño's, "Perceptions of the Feminine
through Art in the European Union" explores how women and
the concept of feminine have been perceived by the European Union
and how this perception has been reflected in art, in particular
literature and film. Zomeño has selected two artistic
expressions from two European countries, Spain and France. The
example chosen from Spain is Los canardos, a novel by
Dolores Soler-Espiauba, which illustrates the role of Spanish
women in the cultural unification of Europe in the 80s. The example
selected from France is Krzysztof Kieslowski's movie Blue,
filmed in the 90s.
Eva Paulino Bueno, "Ficções de paternidade
em dois filmes de fim de século; The Truman Show e
Central do Brasil" discusses how the 1998 films The
Truman Show and Central Station are narratives interested
in discussing the figure of the father. In the first, the father
proliferates. He is the actor who plays the father in Truman
Burbank's life; he is Christof, the director of the show which
is responsible for the existence of the world Truman knows, and
he is the biological father, of whom nothing is known. In Central
Station, Josué, an orphaned boy is helped by a woman,
Dora, in his effort to leave the big city and return to the place
of origin-the Northeast-looking for his father, only to find
out that he no longer lives there. Each narrative proposes a
solution to the problem posed by the anxiety about the father,
as well as about the dilemma of what to do when the father either
does not exist or does not matter.
Rosario Torres, "El pájaro de la felicidad
: la nación desde una nueva perspectiva formal-significadora"
discusses how the cinematographic language of Pilar Miró's
film of 1992 redefines the concept of nation. The essay approaches
the Spanish film in the context of contemporary debates in film
studies, focusing in particular on questions of identity and
sexuality.
Corner's Reader offers Darién J. Davis's review
of Eva Paulino Bueno's O artista do povo: Mazzaropi e Jeca
Tatu no Cinema do Brasil as well as a selected bibliography,
which we consider essential reading for any contemporary film
lover.
CC
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[1]An Unspeakable Betrayal. Selected Writings of Luis Buñuel.
University of California Press, 2000. 136.
[2]"Viridiana", in An Unspeakable Betrayal,
229.
[3]Luis Buñuel. University of California Press,
1977. 55.
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