![]() Bazin believed realist cinema was a more democratic form of film in that it did not manipulate the audience. The content of realism should speak for itself for the audience to draw their own conclusions. In realism film techniques are important, but not for producing meaning within the film. Realism, by contrast, emphasizes film as a medium that reproduces what is before the camera. For the formalists, film should not merely record and imitate what is before the camera, but should produce its own meanings. Formalism emphasizes film's potential as an expressive medium. Kiarostami has managed to use formalist and realist modes of filmmaking simultaneously and move beyond the simple categorization of film genres. (3) The mimicking of a snuff aesthetic can also be seen in the Japanese Guinea Pig: Devil's Experiment (Satoru Ogura, 1985) and in the.As an artist, photographer and filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami continued his experimentations with the medium, style and storytelling throughout his fruitful career. (2) The documentary authenticity of snuff movies has often been challenged-the retitling of the low-budget horror Slaughter as Snuff (Michael Findlay and Roberta Findlay, 1976) explores this uncertainty. (1) Cannibal Holocaust has often been categorized as a snuff movie, which involves the exploitative documentation of torture and murder. The found-footage horror is an international film cycle whose genesis can be traced back to the Italian Cannibal Holocaust (Ruggero Deodato, 1980), which displayed mock found footage of the tragic deaths of a TV crew shooting a film in the Amazon within the context of a fictional narrative. ![]() These films display the raw cutting, elliptical narrative, and grainy, shaky, and precariously framed images that mimic the style of amateur filmmaking the images are usually introduced by title cards stating that the work we see compiles footage shot by characters that have either died or disappeared. The proliferation of horror movies imitating the style of found-footage documentaries since the late 1990s has transposed the reality factor that once figured in content onto the film's form. With the found-footage horror film, the interpenetration of reality and fiction that was traditionally discussed in terms of allegory or topical references has found a new locus: the film's form. The just-mentioned dialogue also encapsulates the implications of the coexistence between a documentary aesthetic and horrific events. The film suggests that by containing the paranormal activity inside the borders of a screen, Micah and Katie can better understand, measure, and even control it. Indeed, the film repeatedly shows us the two characters trying to make sense of the images they capture, watching them on a computer screen and using technology that translates the recorded sounds they cannot hear into waves they can visualize. ![]() It is as if by recording the slamming doors, floating sheets, and passing shadows that take place while they sleep, Micah and Katie could tame the demon that follows the female lead wherever she goes. This reassuring statement implies that the film image may normalize the events that make up the fabric of Paranormal Activity. "But we're having it documented, it's going to be fine, OK?" Surprised by her boyfriend's excitement about the strange phenomena registered with his HDV camera, Katie (Katie Featherston), the protagonist of Paranormal Activity (Oren Peli, 2007), asks, "Are you not scared?" "It's a little bizarre," he replies. ![]() The article's main case study is the Paranormal Activity franchise, but examples are drawn from a variety of films. I propose the investigation of framing, considered both figuratively (framing the film as documentary) and stylistically (the framing in handheld cameras and in static long takes), as a device that playfully destabilizes the separation between the film and the surrounding world. Abstract: This article finds in the found-footage horror cycle an alternative way of understanding the relationship between horror films and reality, which is usually discussed in terms of allegory. ![]()
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