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Thesis
Kiyoshi Kurosawa and the Question of Cinema: Apocalypse and the Real
University of West Florida Libraries
Master of Arts (MA), University of West Florida
2026
Abstract
This study on the films of Kurosawa Kiyoshi engages with recent developments inpsychoanalytic film theory to conceptualize a cinema of subtraction that utilizes the gaze and
empty form as a way to screen the real and incorporate the unconscious within cinema. By taking Kurosawa’s formalization of horror as foundational to his film practice, I will argue that he articulates the hard kernel of the real as the unsymbolizable gap that conditions the possibility of the visual. Horror as form, rather than genre, formulates the lack of a foundation within cinema.Cinema is horrifying because it is an empty form that undermines systematicity. Within the groundless space of cinema, Kurosawa develops the force of apocalypse as a rupturing event from the symbolic order. By analyzing how apocalypse functions as a rupture throughout his films, I argue for a psychoanalytically derived conceptualization of apocalypse as an emancipatory force by way of encountering the real as it is screened in cinema. I proceed through an analysis of apocalypse and the real in Cure, Charisma, and Bright Future to suggest how a cinematic ethics of the real can be thought through apocalyptic rupture.
Details
- Title
- Kiyoshi Kurosawa and the Question of Cinema: Apocalypse and the Real
- Resource Type
- Thesis
- Contributors
- Regina Sakalarios-Rogers (Committee Chair)David Baulch (Committee Member)
- Publisher
- University of West Florida Libraries
- Format
- pdf
- Number of pages
- 40
- Copyright
- Permission granted to the University of West Florida Libraries by the author to digitize and/or display this information for non-profit research and educational purposes. Any reuse of this item in excess of fair use or other copyright exemptions requires the permission of the copyright holder.
- Identifiers
- 99381757108806600
- Academic Unit
- College of Arts, Social Sciences, and Humanities; English
- Language
- English
- Awarding Institution
- University of West Florida; Master of Arts (MA)
- Theses and Dissertations
- Master of Arts (MA), University of West Florida