An exploration of how a feature film narrative might be reconceived as a cin˩-poem

Abstract

This scholarly and creative exegesis explores how cine'-poetic aesthetic strategies can reconceive, interrupt and transform the rhythms of feature film narrative. The scholarly component does so by focusing on two cine'poets operating outside the dominant Hollywood paradigm but within feature filmmaking: Andrei Tarkovsky with The mirror (1974) and Jim Jarmusch with Down by law (1986). In the prologue, the challenge of constructing Tempus or emotional time (Bi'ro) during the edit of my feature film Being Venice (2011) is explored. Drawing on theories of physical thinking, Being Venice traces rhythmic acts of kinaesthetic empathy in the circulation of affect between actors, editor, audience, and the screenwriter's tactile imagination, revealing these as material to the embodiment of Tempus. In Chapter One, Tarkovksy's construction of Tempus deepens the discussion. Tarkovsky concentrates some of his most kinaesthetic yet enigmatic materialisations of Tempus in the slow-motion tracking shots of his central character moving through her Stalinist-era workplace. These shots raise the question: Is the signature of Tempus the unsolved space it leaves in the sound-image relay for the viewer to enter? Chapter Two discusses how one enriches a narrative space that is emptied of characters with strong or legible objectives and conflicts. Two of the film's three protagonists challenge the active/passive character binary of classical narrative design, via embodiments that more closely resemble Walter Murch's 'minor key character' (2002) and J J Murphy's 'ambivalent character' (2007). The chapter explores the way in which such character types demand a more poetic structure to accommodate their rhythms. In Joyriding, the creative component of this exegesis explores poetic aesthetic strategies within the context of writing a feature film narrative with a three-act structure. This screenplay takes the form of an impossible love story set within a film school, sometime in the last decade. The narrative, driven by the endlessly deferred desire of minor-key character Thomas and his teacher Eve, builds slowly but conversationally as it migrates back and forth along a bittersweet, comi-tragic spectrum. Joyriding foregrounds idiosyncrasies of voice, dialogue's approaches and retreats, offbeat character rhythms, and digression, detour and the pooling of Tempus as the lead characters elide goal-driven objectives. As erotic diffidence delays plot, the consequent emptying out of the narrative space is enriched by flights of imagination, films within films, anthropomorphic visions and a mix tape's musical love letter. Sydney is the other topos as, skateboarding through the nocturnal city, Thomas - a vector in constant motion - veers closer to and away from protagonist Eve. In this screenplay, cine'-poetic interventions refract the mystery that is at the heart of the central relationship.

Date of Award	2016
Original language	English