Abstract: (116 words)
In this paper I’m gonna talk about trauma, subconscious and repressed memories; and their connection to the commercial film industry. I will start by examining how these subjects are manifested in the history of cinema and documentaries throughout the century. Then I will connect this literature review to my present work- a feature documentary about an adult with a repressed childhood memory, trying to deal with his new life, after one day remembering the hidden trauma. I will further investigate how the subconscious mind deals with trauma as a child and as an adult; and I will use my own experiences, as well as neuroscience to expose how the film industry uses subconscious and turn in into a formula in order to sell more products.
Keywords:
“childhood trauma”, “repressed memory”, “subconscious”, “narrative”, “documentary” “film industry” “hollywood”
Background/Overview: (283 words)
I will start by creating a chain of filmmakers starting from 1929 who, for the first time, used trauma, repressed memories and subconscious as a subject-matter in their narrative. I will start with surrealism, and, Louis Bunuel and Salvador Dali’s works on dreams, than move on to Alfred Hitchcock and examine in details his impact on Hollywood and future filmmakers like de Palma, Spielberg, Fincher, and del Torro.
On the second route I will talk about the transformation of film narrative after World War 2; and the use of trauma and memories as a subject-matter in the world cinema. I will review the works of Renais, Varda, Tarkovski and Kurosawa and their contributions to the narrative on the subject.
On the third route I will investigate the history of documentaries starting from the Cinema Verité, part of the Nouvelle Vague movement in the ‘60s, that for the first time started to show regular people in everyday situations with authentic dialogue and naturalness of action.
Finally I will talk about two specific documentaries related to my work, as a showcase of how a documentary engages, in parallel to a fiction film. Elenor Coppola’s Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse (1993) and Werner Herzog’s Burden of Dreams (1982).
Both documentaries start with telling the simple ‘behind the scenes’ story of the fiction films— Francis Coppola’s Apocalypse Now! (1979) and Werner Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo (1982), but both of them along the way find themselves telling the story of their filmmakers, right in the middle of living the same controversies with the fictional story that they’re about to tell. One story in to realities, using two different mediums; mixing the fiction and documentary, mixing the conscious and subconscious.
Question?: Sigmund Freud and Carls Young, Neuroscience and Neurocinematics
The Work: (340 words)
Description:
A feature documentary about an adult filmmaker who starts life over again after recollecting a hidden childhood memory of his own; trying to learn how to live, tracing how he got here in the first place…
One narrative simultaneously examining 3 perception of realities:
Inspirations:
Guillermo Del Torro’s Pan’s Labyrinth (2006), Ang Lee’s Life of Pi (2012), Morgan Spurlock’s The Greatest Movie Ever Sold (2011), Sandi Tan’s Shirkers (2018), BBC’s The Century of the Self (2002).
Content:
1) The journey (actual timeline of the documentary)
Narrating the story from the beginning, I wish to show how big of a silent issue ‘childhood traumas’ are in our daily conversation, how it affects the people who go through with it, and what is the role of our system in it.
This main part of the documentary is dark, calm and slow paced where the character begins a journey to find one’s true self and begins to heal the pain of the trauma.
2) The healing (the animation)
With the guidance of experts and neuroscientists, I wish to use Lucid Dreaming and re-enact my dreams to connect with my subconscious and visualize the trauma.
This will be a ‘Petit Prince’ like drawn ‘Don Chiote’ story of a child against an invisible monster who has been haunting him for his entire life. The illustrations of the dreams will be innocent, chivalrous and heroic.
3) The culprit (Hollywood)
On this part I wish to introduce a basic, formulated Hollywood movie about a college freshman who one day gets a surprise visit from his future self; to prevent him to go through the biggest trauma of his life that will change the entire outcome of his future forever.
The visuals of this ‘made up’ movie, as a contrast will be extremely commercial, and the snippets of the film that we’re going to see will aim to expose insider film industry tricks, subtle commercial messages and pre-designed triggering words that only aims to create an idealized unreachable idea of reality for its consumers.
Same 3 characters, in 3 different realities, in 3 different textures. One narrative.
