Silverman, M orcid.org/0000-0002-0601-5866 (2023) Latency in Lebanon, or bringing things (back) to life: A Perfect Day (Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige, 2005). Memory Studies, 16 (4). pp. 694-708. ISSN 1750-6980
Abstract
Many Lebanese films and documentaries of the last few decades have focused on the hidden legacies of the civil war (1975–1991) that remain unprocessed in public, and often private, life. Unsurprisingly, these works have often been discussed by critics through the lens of traumatic cultural memory. In the first part of this article I argue that this model is productive yet insufficient. I suggest, instead, a methodological approach which acknowledges the intersections between trauma and other processes underpinning everyday life in the city. In the second part of the article I apply this approach to the film A Perfect Day (Hadjithomas and Joreige, 2005). Using the directors’ own concept of latency, I analyse the affective modes of touch, breath and the hidden life of objects to show how the performative existential drama that unfolds in the film opens out onto processes that go beyond the haunting legacies of violence from the civil war and includes a vision of singularity and infinite possibility that relates back to the birth of cinema itself.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
---|---|
Authors/Creators: |
|
Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © The Author(s) 2021. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access page (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage). |
Keywords: | affect, latency, Lebanese film, memory, otherness, the everyday, the performative, trauma |
Dates: |
|
Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Cultures (Leeds) > School of Languages Cultures & Societies (Leeds) > French (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 12 Jan 2021 10:51 |
Last Modified: | 06 Jun 2024 11:15 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | SAGE Publications |
Identification Number: | 10.1177/17506980211033333 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:169816 |