Melancholic memory and mourning images: Death’s resistance to representation in Abbas Kiarostami’s films

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to analyze the dispositif for the emergence of mourning images in Abbas Kiarostami’s movies and the subsequent melancholic perception of the viewer that is created by the rendition of these images, while also highlighting the importance of the artistic medium of cinema in this rendition. The major strategy for the translation of mourning into images is the effacement of the subject, an emblematic technique for Kiarostami’s film-making. The positioning of the viewer as a participant with restrictive access to the world inside the film creates the sensation of longing for a lost visual integrity. The melancholy of the viewer thus identifies the absence and pluralizes it. The mechanisms that will be used in the analysis refer to the genesis of the gaze, the ethical eye of the camera, and the construction of the Other in the process of mourning.