Michael Goddard
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- November 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780231167314
- eISBN:
- 9780231850506
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231167314.003.0002
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter studies Raúl Ruiz's cinema in the period leading up to and during the Allende socialist government in Chile, in context of the new Latin American cinema. Concerning the magical or social ...
More
This chapter studies Raúl Ruiz's cinema in the period leading up to and during the Allende socialist government in Chile, in context of the new Latin American cinema. Concerning the magical or social realism, Ruiz's films of this period can be seen as a micropolitical cartography of social gestures and behaviors, in relation to but critical of surrounding political and cinematic movements. After the Pinochet coup, Ruiz, like most of those working in Chilean cinema, was forced into exile—a condition that was treated in his first major film project, Diálogos de exiliados (Dialogues of Exiles, 1974). However, Ruiz soon embarked on an exploration of different styles, genres, and formats, producing both films of varying lengths and experimental television work. This enabled experimentation with visual and narrative rhetorics, increasingly distant from and critical of normative conceptions of political cinema.Less
This chapter studies Raúl Ruiz's cinema in the period leading up to and during the Allende socialist government in Chile, in context of the new Latin American cinema. Concerning the magical or social realism, Ruiz's films of this period can be seen as a micropolitical cartography of social gestures and behaviors, in relation to but critical of surrounding political and cinematic movements. After the Pinochet coup, Ruiz, like most of those working in Chilean cinema, was forced into exile—a condition that was treated in his first major film project, Diálogos de exiliados (Dialogues of Exiles, 1974). However, Ruiz soon embarked on an exploration of different styles, genres, and formats, producing both films of varying lengths and experimental television work. This enabled experimentation with visual and narrative rhetorics, increasingly distant from and critical of normative conceptions of political cinema.
Michael Goddard
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- November 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780231167314
- eISBN:
- 9780231850506
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231167314.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
Raúl Ruiz, while considered one of the world's most significant filmmakers by several film critics, is yet to be the subject of any thorough engagement with his work. This book sets out on this task ...
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Raúl Ruiz, while considered one of the world's most significant filmmakers by several film critics, is yet to be the subject of any thorough engagement with his work. This book sets out on this task by mapping, as fully as possible, Ruiz's cinematic trajectory across more than five decades of prolific work, up to his death in 2011; ranging from his earliest work in Chile to high-budget “European” costume dramas culminating in Mysteries of Lisbon (2010). It does so by treating Ruiz's work—with its surrealist, magic realist, popular cultural, and neo-Baroque sources—as a type of “impossible” cinematic cartography, mapping real, imaginary, and virtual spaces, and crossing between different cultural contexts, aesthetic strategies, and technical media. It argues that across the different phases of Ruiz's work identified, there are key continuities such as the invention of singular cinematic images and the interrogation of their possible and impossible combinations.Less
Raúl Ruiz, while considered one of the world's most significant filmmakers by several film critics, is yet to be the subject of any thorough engagement with his work. This book sets out on this task by mapping, as fully as possible, Ruiz's cinematic trajectory across more than five decades of prolific work, up to his death in 2011; ranging from his earliest work in Chile to high-budget “European” costume dramas culminating in Mysteries of Lisbon (2010). It does so by treating Ruiz's work—with its surrealist, magic realist, popular cultural, and neo-Baroque sources—as a type of “impossible” cinematic cartography, mapping real, imaginary, and virtual spaces, and crossing between different cultural contexts, aesthetic strategies, and technical media. It argues that across the different phases of Ruiz's work identified, there are key continuities such as the invention of singular cinematic images and the interrogation of their possible and impossible combinations.
Michael Goddard
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- November 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780231167314
- eISBN:
- 9780231850506
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231167314.003.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This introductory chapter examines one of Raúl Ruiz's many short films, Zig-Zag (1980), a film that encapsulates many of the aesthetic themes and procedures that cross Ruiz's work as a whole. ...
More
This introductory chapter examines one of Raúl Ruiz's many short films, Zig-Zag (1980), a film that encapsulates many of the aesthetic themes and procedures that cross Ruiz's work as a whole. Zig-Zag, entitled Le Jeu de L'Oie: La Cartographie in French, can be considered as an allegory that condenses and emblematises not only themes from Ruiz's work as a whole, but also key dimensions of his filmmaking practice. One of the apparent concepts in his film is the idea of film as a form of impossible cartography. Rather than simply presenting an exhibition of maps, the film incorporates cartography gradually into its highly distinctive narrative structure in which a game is played out on a variety of levels, that is suggestive of a limbo space between life and death, and in which cartography itself is both interrogated and pushed to the cosmic level of an impossible cartography. In addition, the film not only engages with actual maps, but also with cartographic theories.Less
This introductory chapter examines one of Raúl Ruiz's many short films, Zig-Zag (1980), a film that encapsulates many of the aesthetic themes and procedures that cross Ruiz's work as a whole. Zig-Zag, entitled Le Jeu de L'Oie: La Cartographie in French, can be considered as an allegory that condenses and emblematises not only themes from Ruiz's work as a whole, but also key dimensions of his filmmaking practice. One of the apparent concepts in his film is the idea of film as a form of impossible cartography. Rather than simply presenting an exhibition of maps, the film incorporates cartography gradually into its highly distinctive narrative structure in which a game is played out on a variety of levels, that is suggestive of a limbo space between life and death, and in which cartography itself is both interrogated and pushed to the cosmic level of an impossible cartography. In addition, the film not only engages with actual maps, but also with cartographic theories.
