The Argument Between Reality and Representation Liao Ching-Hua Lecturer of Kao Yuan Institute of Technology of Information Communication Department Candidate of Professional Doctorate in Design National Institution of Design Swinburne University of Technology Email: visanwa.liao@msa.hinet.net Abstract All documentaries include three different characters : recorders, people 1
who are recorded and viewers. Recorders have different backgrounds, education levels, life experiences and values so they naturally have different feelings and understandings of the same situation. It is very difficult to ask recorders are objective and fair in their films. It is also difficult to ask the people who are recorded to pretend the film workers for example video cameramen and director do not exist during the filming. It is expected that these film workers will not bother the people who are recorded, just as flies on the wall don t bother us. The Argument between reality and representation has become an important issue since viewers are encouraged by postmodernism to express their own opinions bravely and think these opinions are correct. This article discusses this issue by deconstruction, trying to break the realism complex of documentary to provide more diverse styles of creation in the future of documentaries. Keywords: Documentary films, reality, representation, semiotics, semiology, signifier, signified, postmodernism, deconstruction. 電影符號學 詮釋與真實 紀錄片 2003 2
John Grierson, 1898~1972 1926 Robert Flaherty Moana documentary films 1932 First Principle of the British Documentary Film Movement a creative treatment of reality Art is not a mirror but a hammer. It is something more magical. It is a visual art which can convey a sense of beauty about the ordinary world. We believe that the cinema's capacity for getting around, for observing and selecting from life itself, can be exploited in a new and vital art form. reality fiction films reconstruction representation 1948 Teresa de Lauretis 3
nonfiction cinema Georges Méliès, 1861~1938 Jean-Luc Godard, 1930~ Ilisa Barbash Lucien Taylor documentary styles 1. expository documentaries 2. impressionistic documentaries between dramatization and actuality, fact and fantasy, documentary and fiction 3. observational documentaries Fly on the wall 4. reflexive documentaries self-conscious self-questioning Bill Nichols 1. the poetic mode reassembling fragments of the world 20 2. the expository mode 4
mediated by a voice-of-god narration 20 30 3. the observational mode60 direct cinema 4. the participatory mode cinema verite, veritable cinema the honesty of witnesses 5. the reflexive mode 80 6. the performative mode autobiographical in nature 5
symbol signify express represent significance signifier signified Ferdinand de Saussure, 1857~1913 semiotics, semiology Charles Sanders Peirce, 1839~1914 60 Michel Foucault, 1926~1984 power produces knowledge 6
Umberto Eco, 1932~ Opera aperta Jacques Derrida, 1930~2004 Deconstruction Postmodernism Hermeneutics text reading writing 7
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