Béla Tarr’s Sátántangó (1994) has been been studied from an aesthetic, political and philosophical perspective, but not from what Tarr and Krasznahorkai consider to be the most important element of their work: the representation of the human condition and dignity. This paper explores how Tarr uses the sequence-shot to represent the dignity of his characters in Sátántangó. Is it possible to identify a specific stylistic pattern in his representation of the human condition? How does Tarr approach the staging of the long take to represent a point of view of humanity? What kind of relationships Tarr establishes between scenarios and characters through camera movement and composition? How do these conceptual relationships contribute to presenting a point of view of the human condition?

Over the past few decades of film theory, significant scholars and acclaimed filmmakers have established that documentary, just like fiction, must resort to ambiguous and subjective rhetorical figures to represent the world. This claim has led some scholars to conclude that documentary as a term referring to itself as being non-fictional might be disregarding its inevitable fictional elements. This argument may suggest that documentary , just like fiction, when representing the historical world fictionalizes reality. If we accept this claim as true, we need to ask whether terms such as fiction and non-fiction or documentary make sense when discussing the process of representing reality. Does this claim mean that cinema can only fictionalize reality and therefore we should eradicate from this discussion terms such as non-fiction or documentary? The questions that this paper intends to answer are: Can the term fiction exist without referring to the term non-fiction or documentary? What roles do documentary and fiction play in representing the historical world? Are these terms necessary to communicate and understand the process of representing reality? This paper has established that fiction and documentary are necessary terms that emerge in cinema narration as a means to mirror human experience’s needs to organize, communicate and understand reality.

This article is a reflection on the relationship between cinematographic discourse and reality: discussing cinema’s technical restrictions and creative possibilities to represent an impression of reality. This article emerges from the assumption that cinema’s technical qualities can only represent a technical appearance of reality which must satisfy certain cultural expectations.

This article emerges from the assumption that representing reality in documentary raises specific complex ethical issues. This is due to the fact that documenting an event partly results from the filmmaker’s mediation with the historical world. The choices involved in this process are subjective, biased and creative. In fact, representing reality results from a particular tension established between that which I represent and how I represent it. From this tension several ethical issues with regard to the filmmaker’s mediation with reality may emerge. This paper aims to revise and confront key literature on this subject to discuss and deconstruct the process of mediation and the ethical issues involved in this process. The key questions to answer are: What role does mediation plays in representing reality? What ethical issues may emerge from this process? Do filmmakers explore “others” to satisfy their own personal needs as artists? Is it possible to control or regulate filmmakers’ mediation with reality? Can we develop a set of parameters or strategies that can be considered ethically more appropriate for representing the world?

Depression in Lars von Trier’s cinema has been studied from a philosophical perspective, focusing on ethical and moral issues, and from a narrative point of view through a cultural and social contextualisation of the disease. This paper explores how von Trier represents depression through his filmic discourse. Is it possible to identify a specific stylistic pattern in his representation of depression? Is his treatment of the theme different in each film or has it remained consistent throughout his career? Can we assume that von Trier’s personal experience with depression informs his films’ aesthetics?

Throughout history we can identify a great number of authors discussing the nature of narrative. From Plato's and Aristotle's original mimetic and diegetic influential theories to Gérard Genette's or Roland Barthes' essential contribution to structuralism, narrative has been studied and discussed as a fundamental process for the human mind in terms of producing and communicating meaning and expressing experience. Over the past few decades major scholars such as Bordwell, Metz, Genette, Carroll, Chatman, Eisenstein, Bal, Abbot, Tan, Smith or Branigan have produced some of the most significant contributions to the study of film narratology. Some scholars envisage narration as a means to process information. Others argue that narration can be better understood as a strategy to cue narrative comprehension. Others envisage narration as a means for emotion. This paper intends to establish that film narrative can be better understood as an act of communication through and from experience from filmmaker to an audience and vice-versa.

This thesis presents original research with regard to narrative construction and event representation in documentary. The thesis incorporates selected bibliographical research and a case study of a documentary shot and edited by myself. The principal objective has been to research the process of narrative construction from the point of view of that who represents the event, the filmmaker: the only individual who has access to all the decisions and justifications involved in representing an event. The focus of the research lies on the concept of “omission” as a fundamental aspect in documentary making for representing the historical world. Omission refers to the process of removing visual or sound event information during the act of filming and during narrative construction in order to represent an event. The case study incorporates the construction of two different narrative versions of the same event and from the same raw material so as to undertake a comparative research analysis on narrative construction, in terms of omission and structure, between both narrative versions. This case study was only possible to implement from the point of view of the filmmaker. This means having complete access to all the raw material and to all the decisions involved in constructing the narrative to represent the event as the filmmaker intended . The research has established that documentary narratives, independently of the mode or strategy used by the filmmaker when representing the historical world, unlike in fiction, emerges from the process of omission. This process consists of organising the filmmaker's experience of the event into a narrative form. During the act of filming, the filmmaker must implement partial and total omission simultaneously from the historical event. This incorporates acquiring images and sounds which offer an indexical relationship with the event's past existence. During the act of narrative construction, filmmakers implement partial and total omission from the raw material. Subsequently, they organised non-omitted raw material into a specific structure. Through the research undertaken I have established that representing an event in documentary consists of organising, via partial and total omission, a limitless source of non-organised event information, the historical event, into an organised limited volume of images and sounds: an audiovisual narrative representing the filmmaker's personal experience. The concept of partial and total omission outlines documentary's fundamental technical restrictions and creative possibilities for representing the historical world. Omission represents a crucial element in documentary making to understand, organise and communicate the filmmaker's experience of the historical event through narrative forms.

This article emerges from the assumption that representing reality in documentary raises specific complex ethical issues. This is due to the fact that documenting an event partly results from the filmmaker’s mediation with the historical world. The choices involved in this process are subjective, biased and creative. In fact, representing reality results from a particular tension established between that which I represent and how I represent it. From this tension several ethical issues with regard to the filmmaker’s mediation with reality may emerge. This paper aims to revise and confront key literature on this subject to discuss and deconstruct the process of mediation and the ethical issues involved in this process. The key questions to answer are: What role does mediation plays in representing reality? What ethical issues may emerge from this process? Do filmmakers explore “others” to satisfy their own personal needs as artists? Is it possible to control or regulate filmmakers’ mediation with reality? Can we develop a set of parameters or strategies that can be considered ethically more appropriate for representing the world?