The Beloved: a Documentary Film on the History
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Edith Cowan University Research Online Theses: Doctorates and Masters Theses 2018 The Beloved: A documentary film on the history and aftermath of Fremantle’s Rajneesh sannyasin community – and – Hidden Realities: Transcendental Structures in Documentary Film: An exegesis Joseph London Edith Cowan University Follow this and additional works at: https://ro.ecu.edu.au/theses Part of the Film and Media Studies Commons Recommended Citation London, J. (2018). The Beloved: A documentary film on the history and aftermath of Fremantle’s Rajneesh sannyasin community – and – Hidden Realities: Transcendental Structures in Documentary Film: An exegesis. https://ro.ecu.edu.au/theses/2130 This Thesis is posted at Research Online. https://ro.ecu.edu.au/theses/2130 Edith Cowan University Copyright Warning You may print or download ONE copy of this document for the purpose of your own research or study. 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Higher penalties may apply, and higher damages may be awarded, for offences and infringements involving the conversion of material into digital or electronic form. The Beloved A documentary film on the history and aftermath of Fremantle’s Rajneesh sannyasin community – and – Hidden Realities: Transcendental Structures in Documentary Film An exegesis This thesis is presented for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Joseph London School of Arts & Humanities Edith Cowan University 2018 ii Abstract This creative work and its associated exegesis examines the concept of what I have termed a ‘transcendental structure’ in relation to a documentary film form, and what outcomes, specific to a non-fiction mode of representation, result from the application of this structure. A transcendental structure in film has a long history of investigation and interpretation in narrative fiction film theory and practice, but is substantially absent from documentary scholarship. The topic appears, in different forms, in the critical writings of Zavattini (1940), Bazin (1946), Pasolini (1965), Schrader (1972), Deleuze (1985), and more recently, Perez (1998) and Minghelli (2016). All of these theorists have identified a cinema of a double nature: on one level, explicit in its narrative programme and engagement, while on another level, simultaneously registering a spatial and temporal ‘beyond’ that invites an alternative experience based on a formal engagement. This aesthetic or non-narrative dimension is made perceivable through cinematic strategies that aim to interrupt or suspend the narrative flow and foreground elements external to the narrative programme. It is for this reason that landscape holds particular importance to a transcendental structure; in its physical interaction with and set-apartness from the human narrative, and through this, in its contrasting temporality to the narrative and less tangible level of registration. This research will proceed by testing this structure through my own creative practice: a documentary feature on Fremantle’s Rajneesh sannyasin community, titled The Beloved. This is an ongoing community in Fremantle, which in the eighties, experienced a dramatic and public rise and fall as a movement. It is also a community with which I have an enduring personal relationship. This has allowed me to address not only their public history, but also the troubled memory that survives within the community. This documentary will be accompanied by the exegesis which will identify the concept of a transcendental structure within fiction film scholarship and, in the absence of critical writings that relate to this concept in documentary, will examine documentaries that are able to be discussed in these terms. The key films that I examine in the exegesis include Shoah (Lanzmann, 1985), which brings the incomprehensibility of the Holocaust into the realm of present experience by rejecting archival imagery in favour of landscapes from the concentration camps in their contemporary state; and sleep furiously (Koppel, 2008), in which the unprocessed trauma of community disintegration is registered through affect-based experience rather than the narrative or representational programme. iii From the sum of this research, I argue that the interview based historical documentary is particularly suitable as a platform for a transcendental structure, and useful to historical subjects of a sensitive, troubled, and unresolved nature. The double nature of the structure, exhibited in the dissociation of the voice recounting the historical narrative from imagery of present-day settings, opens up new communicative possibilities and spaces for the contemplation and processing of incomprehensible, repressed, or traumatic experience. iv Declaration I certify that this thesis does not, to the best of my knowledge and belief: (i) incorporate without acknowledgement any material previously submitted for a degree or diploma in any institution of higher education; (ii) contain any material previously published or written by another person except where due reference is made in the text; or (iii) contain any defamatory material. I also grant permission for the Library at Edith Cowan University to make duplicate copies of my thesis as required. Joseph London 22/6/18 v Acknowledgements I wish to thank in the first instance my principal supervisor, Dr George Karpathakis, for his unwavering support and encouragement for this project from its inception, his editorial advice, his generosity and his comradeship; Dr Cathy Henkel, who came on board two years into this project as my associate supervisor, and whose decisiveness in her advice has been welcome; Dr Kenta McGrath and Dr Rashida Murphy who also provided me with incisive feedback and guidance through the writing of this exegesis; my parents, Joan and Geoffrey London for their boundless support, their wisdom, and their generosity; and finally my partner Tuyen Le for her considerable forbearance over the course of this project, enduring the demands of this project with me, along with the care of our two children Aki and Louis, only recently arrived. For the film production of The Beloved, I wish to thank everyone who contributed to this project by speaking with me – either in a formal or informal basis – who volunteered their private archives, and assisted me in the process of uncovering my own interest and focus in this documentary subject. vi Table of Contents Abstract ................................................................................................................... ii Declaration ............................................................................................................. iv Acknowledgements................................................................................................. v Table of Contents ................................................................................................... vi Introduction ............................................................................................................. 8 CHAPTER 1 Transcendental Structures In Narrative Fiction Film.......................................... 19 Bazinian Realism................................................................................................. 19 Transcendental Style........................................................................................... 24 Metaphysical Implications.................................................................................... 30 The Time Image. ................................................................................................. 33 The Cinema of Poetry and The Open Image ....................................................... 35 The Role Of Narrative In A Transcendental Structure.......................................... 37 Defining Transcendental In The Context Of This Study. ...................................... 39 LANDSCAPE ...................................................................................................... 41 Cinematic Stasis.................................................................................................. 44 Perception, Memory and The Past ...................................................................... 46 Landscape and Memory – History in Narrative Fiction Film ................................. 49 Contemporary Structures And Chapter Conclusion ............................................. 53 CHAPTER 2 Transcendental Structures in Documentary ....................................................... 58 Introduction To Documentary .............................................................................. 58 Documentary And Fiction .................................................................................... 59 Transcendental Structures