The filmic representation of reality marks a paradigm shift in the ontologic comprehension of places. As a medium that is strongly attached to the materiality of the world, film simulates the original mise en scène fixed in time. In comparison to other forms of medial representation of reality, e.g. the written, the auditive or the photographic, film excels in its mimetic authenticity, due to the stereokinetic effect and can incite an extraordinarily vivid process of immersion, i.e. the identification and fusion of the spectator with the virtually reproduced place.
When mythical places, which are steeped in history and correspond to a collective creation and negotiation of meaning, are captured on film they become highly relevant to virtual forms of identity construction, since film serves as a medium of relocation in a world where the connective structures of national states are becoming increasingly extra-territorial, as in the case of Mexico.
This project endeavors to analyze the forms and functions of mnemotopia under the medial conditions of film and its caption of places. The concept of Gedächtnisort (site of memory, mnemotopia), coined by the cultural scientist and classical scholar Jan Assmann in close alignment with the work of Maurice Halbwachs and Pierre Nora, seems to be a counter-cyclical utilization of the phenomenon of place in an era of predominant spatial discourses. In his critically acclaimed book, Das kulturelle Gedächtnis, Assmann considers mnemotopia as place, that have a high symbolical meaning for collective memory.
The idea behind mnemotopia will be developed from different perspectives throughout this project; it will be opened up for cinematographic purposes in this following three steps: First and foremost, its affinities for the particular filmic representation will be discussed, then it will be linked to the cultural history of the shaping of Mexican identity and finally it will be employed for a closer explanatory analysis of canonical Mexican films. ¡Qué viva México! (1930), the unfinished cinematic symphony by soviet director Sergej Eisenstein, will serve as the paradigmatic reference for further observations, due to its quality of an early filmic document that offers an astonishingly concise selection of Mexican sites of memory.
The phenomenon of mnemotopia in film will be explored within the framework of the graduate college, and thus held in strong regard with innovative forms of the virtual staging of places. One of the leading heuristic assumptions will be the notion of filmic sanctification and profanation at the moment of staging places. In this regard, this project strives to investigate to extent to which the filmic reproduction of mnemotopia in ¡Qué viva México! alters the profound meaning of Mexican commonplaces and emblematic sights, and whether it contributes to constructive dialogue with contemporary discourses concerning mexicanidad. In a concluding observation, the focus will be placed on the social function of film and the processes of canonization of cinematic places making use of a selection of Mexican films from the so called Época de oro.