Psychology and Cinema: Through a Glass Darkly

Film Analysis and Film Appreciation
8th and 9th June, 2024 | ONLINE

OVERVIEW:
The cinema universe of the great Swedish director Ingmar Bergman attained unprecedented artistic and expressive brilliance with the film Through a Glass Darkly (1961), the first offering of the trilogy with the unusual modernist thematic of ‘God’s silence’.
Exploring the psychological depths of the female protagonist Karin with a split sense of perception of the reality around her, Bergman creates an emotional and spiritual landscape as an overwhelming and all encompassing ‘other’, which is barren, desolate, desperate, even fearful, as a kind of condition of the estranged human existence, contoured by the definitive and unalienable markers of rationality, objectivity and alienation.
The psychological churning with a schizophrenic bent and a subconscious yearning for the transcendental experience towards spirituality, Karin’s attitude to her father, husband and younger brother often oscillates within the normative states of transgression, obsession, vulnerability and hallucination.
Shot in the island of Fårö in the Baltic sea, which eventually would become the space for several other films by Bergman, the cinematographic collaboration between Bergman and Sven Nykvist is marked with subtle variations of grayscale and their innovative approach to mise en scène, to map the inner psychological realities of the characters.
The study and analysis of the film also would provide glimpses into the methodology of the cinematic écriture (writing) of Bergman, largely imbibing the available resources of the ‘thickness of the medium of cinema’ and its simultaneous power of addressal to ‘specificity’ and ‘generality’, by which, the psychological explanations of the states of being of the ‘non-normal’ by various canons of psychology and philosophy in the early and mid 20^th century, have been turned on their head, to pose the question of the spiritual alienation in modernist terms, an issue largely non-existent in the discourse of artistic modernism.

Participants are welcome who might be interested in
i) psychology as a resource to cinematic imagination
ii) methodology of putting together abstract mythic and literary ideas and concrete situations
iii) the possibility of a spiritual quest in the paradigm of modernity

Mode of Interaction: Online

Faculty: Deb Kamal Ganguly
An alumnus from Satyajit Ray Film and Television Institute (SRFTI), Kolkata, DebKamal Ganguly is an independent filmmaker, researcher and teacher of cinematic arts. He has taught for 08 years (2012-2020) and designed curriculum in Film and Television Institute of India (FTII), Pune,  in the departments of Film Editing, Film Direction and Screen Studies; and as a guest faculty in National Institute of Design (NID), Ahmedabad, Flame University, Pune, Kalinga Institute of Industrial Technology, Bhubaneswar. Ganguly’s works have been published under special curator-ship from Lowave, Paris; his video art featured in the exhibition ‘Indian Highway’ and showcased in galleries of various cities of Europe and Asia. His films done in the capacity of editor, script-writer and sound designer have been shown in competitive sections of various international festivals and received recognition, including ‘Tiger Award for Shorts’ in Rotterdam (IFFR 2007). Ganguly has presented papers in various international and national seminars and conferences on various themes related to cinema, Deleuze studies, visual art, interfaces of art practices, translation studies, collective memory, Bengal studies, Media studies, pedagogy of cinema, film editing as a discipline, immersive sound etc including CARA-CILECT conference in Witwatersrand University, Johannesburg (2018), CILECT conference in VGIK, Moscow (2019), Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theater (2019). He is a participant of an international project for artistic research involving BRICS countries, being the coordinator for India (2018).

BASELINE CONTRIBUTION TO CONFIRM PARTICIPATION:
BASELINE CONTRIBUTION TO CONFIRM PARTICIPATION:
₹ 1000 – For Indian Participants
€ 25 – For International Participants
(We invite you to contribute over and above the baseline – voluntarily, if you wish)

Bank details:
ICICI Bank, Auroville Branch
A/c name: Film Institute Auroville
A/c no: 163105000766
IFSC – ICIC0001631
MICR – 605229004

UPI ID : filminstituteauroville.ibz@icici 

CERTIFICATES:
Digital certificates of participation will be issued.

QUERIES:
For queries, if any, please write to: info@aurovillefilminstitute.com or call / message +91 9969879319 (whatsapp and telegram only)