[audiobook] Frida Kahlo (Critical Lives) by Gannit Ankori in Arts-Photography

Description

In 1957; a decade before Roland Barthes announced the death of the author; Franccedil;ois Truffaut called for a new era in which films would ldquo;resemble the person who maderdquo; them and be ldquo;even more personalrdquo; than an autobiographical novel. More than five decades on; it seems that Barthes has won the argument when it comes to most film critics. The cinematic author; we are told; has been dead for a long time. Yet Linda Haverty Rugg contends not only that the art cinema auteur never died; but that the films of some of the most important auteurs are intensely; if complexly; related to the lives and self-images of their directors. Self-Projection explores how nondocumentary narrative art films create alternative forms of collaborative self-representation and selfhood.The book examines the work of celebrated directors who plant autobiographical traces in their films; including Truffaut; Bergman; Fellini; Tarkovsky; Herzog; Allen; Almodoacute;var; and von Trier. It is not simply that these directors; and many others like them; make autobiographical references or occasionally appear in their films; but that they tie their films to their life stories and communicate that link to their audiences. Projecting a new kind of selfhood; these directors encourage identifications between themselves and their work even as they disavow such connections. And because of the collaborative and technological nature of filmmaking; the directorrsquo;s self-projection involves actors; audience; and the machines and institution of the cinema as well.Lively and accessible; Self-Projection sheds new light on the films of these iconic directors and on art cinema in general; ultimately showing how film can transform not only the autobiographical act but what it means to have a self.