Área Abierta. Revista de comunicación audiovisual y publicitaria

Word versus Image. Notes on Oral Narrative on the Film Screen

2025-11-18T12:55:40+00:00

This paper reflects on the importance of sound elements in cinema, often overshadowed by the prominence of images. It addresses issues such as the incorporation of speech into the cinematic narrative (during its silent period through intertitles and later through the actors’ voices), the introduction of a narrative voice (internal or external) in certain films, the cases in which the latter appears personified, and the existence of a recipient (explicit or implicit in the film’s narrative). It also includes a section considering two extreme cases related to the voice on screen: its absolute prominence or its irrelevant nature. Finally, it refers to the innovative lines of research proposed in this field by audionarratology studies.

Cinema from Ears: Orality, Memory and Identity in Lusophone African Cinemas

2025-11-18T12:55:37+00:00

Orality, whether in the form of tales, oral tradition stories, or songs, is an aspect present in several African cultures and will be considered here based on film productions made in Portuguese-speaking African countries, namely Angola (O ritmo do N’Gola Ritmos, 1978; Nelisita, 1982; Kuduro: fogo no Museke, 2007), Guinea-Bissau (Po di Sangui, 1996; Kadjike, 2013; Memória/Calling Cabral, 2022) e Mozambique (Canta meu irmão e ajuda-me a cantar, 1982). The aim of this article is to understand how expressions of oral tradition, transmitted intergenerationally, when incorporated into audiovisual works, operate a “presentification” of traditions (Hampâté Bâ, 2010) and transmit a collective memory whose values serve as a subsidy for weaving criticisms about dilemmas that are contemporary to the period in which the film was made (Gama, 2020). Through film analysis and the historical contextualization of the works, it is noted that orality goes beyond words and impacts the very aesthetics of the film by generating narratives marked by the intrinsic relationship between factual and figurative, past and present.

Orality and Cinema in Angola and Mozambique

2025-11-18T12:55:43+00:00

The aim of this paper is to provide an overview of the presence of orality in the cinemas of Angola and Mozambique since independence. We will question the very scarce presence of adaptations of traditional stories, and attempt to provide an explanation, and we will pay special attention to some works which, at the end of the seventies, appear to consciously reflect tensions between orality and writing, Portuguese and local languages, modernity and tradition.

Ranch Comedy and Reply Couplets. The Imprint of Oral Culture

2025-11-18T12:55:39+00:00

The traditional and oral culture of the glosa en décima, and its musical version of the huapango arribeño or the valona, appeared reinterpreted in the beginnings of Mexican sound cinema and, with greater emphasis, in the ranch comedy, its musical and nationalist genre. The article presents the folkloric and specular roots of this oral and musical tradition and takes a look at several of its appearances in the classic era of this film genre.

What’s up, dude? Class-Based Orality in Youth Slangs during the Spanish Transition, between the Madrid Comedy and Cine Quinqui (1977-1982).

2025-11-18T12:55:42+00:00

This paper examines the divergent representations of authenticity and transgression in the orality of cine quinqui and “Madrid comedy” during a double transitional period: Spain’s democratization and the advent of direct sound recording. Through a qualitative, comparative approach—situated between discourse analysis and cultural studies—the paper analyzes the youth slangs used in Tigres de papel (Fernando Colomo, 1977), Ópera prima (Fernando Trueba, 1980), and Colegas (Eloy de la Iglesia, 1982). The contrast between these films reveals an underexplored divide shaped by social class, linguistic agency, and differential access to the means of oral representation. We argue that these slangs are not merely instances of secondary orality in a technical sense, but also serve as repositories of youth identity in an era when freedom of expression in Spain remained nascent and precarious

The Female Voice as Echo in Pedro Almodóvar’s The Human Voice (2020)

2025-11-18T12:55:35+00:00

Pedro Almodóvar’s The Human Voice / La voz humana (2020) can be seen as a meditation on the paradoxes of the female voice in cinema. The fact that it was filmed during the pandemic only serves to intensify the paradoxical nature of the voice: at once spectral and intimate. In this article, I use Almodóvar’s adaptation of Cocteau’s play La voix humaine to explore the extent to which Tilda Swinton’s voice in the role of the protagonist animates vocal apparitions of the other actresses who have held the role before her in an intertextual acoustic network. Drawing on the figure of the mythological Echo, I view Swinton’s performance as an example of vocal singularity and reflect on the ways that this film offers up the female voice as a corrective to the notion of the authority and mastery of the male voice.

Echoes and Resonances from the Movie Theater: The Disembodied Voices in Ojo Guareña (Edurne Rubio, 2018)

2025-11-18T12:55:38+00:00

The article proposes an approach to the “disembodied voices” (Doane, 1980) present in the documentary feature film Ojo Guareña (2018), by visual artist Edurne Rubio. From a review of the theoretical debates that, so far, have addressed the issue of disembodied voices in documentary film and in parallel to issues related to the technological development of sound capture and emission (up to the “relocation of cinema” [Casetti, 2012]), an analysis of the proposed case is carried out. The case is especially interesting if we consider the spatial and resonant use of disembodied voices, arranged on black screen and chiseled as text on it. These voices are the main means by which a certain spectatorial experience is achieved, which is rooted in the analogy between cinema and cave and, therefore, makes the film preferably conceived for its projection in the movie theatre.

Colonial Policies in Japanese Non-Sound Cinema: Narrators and National Spirit

2025-11-18T12:55:36+00:00

The use of cinema as a means of ideological propaganda and a tool for cultural expansion and export in Japan began after its victory in the war against Tsarist Russia between 1904 and 1905. A conflict that marked not only a turning point in the country's expansionist policies, but also the development of internal film infrastructures that favoured and encouraged the war spirit in Japanese society, as well as external ones in order to strengthen imperialist expansion and colonial propaganda in the occupied territories. One of the most interesting case studies is the development of the Japanese film industry in Taiwan by the silent film narrator Takamatsu Toyojirô, a trade unionist agitator in Tokyo who put himself at the service of the expansionist government in order to propagate national ideology.

Once Upon a Time I Went to the Movies: A Thousand and One First Times. Cinema Memories and the Construction of Heritage

2025-11-18T12:55:43+00:00

Drawing on extensive and previously unpublished fieldwork concerning the first cinematic experiences of audiences between 1930 and 1970, this study raises a series of critical issues and questions regarding both the content and aims of national cinema narratives, as well as the complex interplay and hierarchical tensions between oral and written cultural forms. The evocative force of these pieces invites a reconsideration of the relationship between materials and the aims of heritage-making processes within the broader memorial continuum: from testimonial to agential, encompassing documentary, archival, historical, and museological dimensions. The critical perspective adopted here, rooted in academic discourse, proposes an alternative epistemological and methodological approach in which the re-embodiment and reactivation of these materials enable a renewed articulation of the relationship between History and Praxis.

Orality in Cinema: Presences On and Off the Screen

2025-11-18T12:55:33+00:00