This book analyses photographic and cinematographic representations of war and its memorialisation rituals in the period of late modernity from the perspectives of cultural sociology, philosophy, art theory and film studies. It reveals how the experience of war trauma takes root in everydayness and shows how artists try to question the ‘normality’ of the everyday, to actualise the memory of war trauma, to rethink the contrasting experiences of the time of war and everydayness, and to oppose the imposed historical narratives. The new representations are analysed by developing theories of war as a ‘magic spectacle’, also by using such concepts as spectres, triumph and trauma, collective social catastrophes, forensic architecture and others.
Author(s): Nerijus Milerius, Agnė Narušytė, Violeta Davoliūtė, Lukas Brašiškis
Series: Identities and Modernities in Europe
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Year: 2022
Language: English
Pages: 292
City: Cham
Contents
About the Authors
List of Figures
1: Introduction
References
2: Cold War Cinema and the Traumatic Turn in Europe
Introduction
Social Trauma and the Memory of the Second World War
The Canon of the Holocaust Film
Conclusion
References
3: The Holocaust and Screen Memories of the Soviet and Post-Soviet Cinema
Introduction
De-Stalinisation and the Traumatic Turn
The Soviet Trauma Drama: The Destruction of Ethnic Lithuanian Villages
Facing the Perpetrator in Post-Soviet Cinema
Conclusions
References
4: The Conflict of Photographic and Cinematographic Representations of War in Soviet Lithuania
The Empty Battlefield of the Cold War
The Photograph as a Dislocating Counter-Memorial
Us, an Army of the Past: Film
Choreography of the Crowd
‘Us’ and ‘Them’: Film
Dislocating Monuments and Ideological Signs: Photography
Counter-Memorialisation Now
A Lost Memorial
Conclusions
References
5: The Architecture of Lingering War in Everyday Life: Photography and the Double Time of Military Apparatus
The Event of Photographing and the Event of Architecture
The Lingering Environments and Military Structures
The Eroding Everyday as a War Zone
Trauma Lost in the Everyday and Detected Again as the Architecture of War
Conclusions
References
6: The Erasure of War Crimes and their Visualisation in Post-Soviet Eastern European Cinema
Introduction
Arendt and Bauman: Unmasking the Invisible Destruction System
Arendt and the Unmasking of the Extermination System Onstage
Visualising Death: László Nemes’ Son of Saul
Visualising Crime and Guilt: Matulevičius’ Izaokas
Conclusions
References
7: In Between Hauntology and Representation: Spectres of War in Sergei Loznitsa’s Reflections and Deimantas Narkevičius’ Legend Coming True
Introduction
Hauntology and Film as Practice and Method
Traumatic Events: The (Un)representable
Double Impositions: War and Everyday
Aural Evidence and Ghostly Space: Then and Now
Conclusions
References
8: Vision Machine and Modern Warfare: Visualising Invisible Powers of Images in Harun Farocki and Hito Steyerl’s Films
Introduction
Vision Machine: From Paul Virilio to Harun Farocki
War at Distance: Operational Images and Sightless Vision in Harun Farocki’s Films
How Not to Be Seen: Digital (In)Visibility in Hito Steyerl’s Work
In Lieu of a Conclusion. Understanding Modern Warfare
References
Films
9: From Sites of Atrocities to Films of Death and Vice Versa
Introduction
Cinema as Virtual Dark Tourism
Touristic Experience as a Target and Device for Criticism
Auschwitz and Austerlitz: The Paradoxes of the Mistake
Genocide: What Has Already Happened and Is Yet to Happen
Another Disaster Site: From Auschwitz to Chernobyl
Chernobyl Zone: Political Context (Fig. 9.1)
The Chernobyl Disaster: A Threat That Could Occur Again (Fig. 9.2)
References
Index
