Beth Left Hand Camera

Yugoslavia, geographically located in the Balkan, had experienced hardwartimes in the20th century. Its country name changed four times and ethnicconflicts were always involved in the war. People struggled for their life and politicalparties struggled for political power. Grown up with such special background, EmirKusturica developed his own special film style as a director and held a special place inthe filmdom. His film was gentle and slow but not boring. Absurdity, allegory andromantic elements flood in his film, as well as his suppressing emotions to hiscountry full of chaos and noises.This work is to study Kusturica’s unique film characters by discussing hisfilms themes, narrative matrix, techniques of expression, styles of audio-visuallanguage and interpretations of audio-visual signs. By analyzing the characters andstyles of Kusturica’s films, the causes of his film style are further explored. Thisdissertation is to representing a deep study about Emir Kusturica and his films, andalso offers research materials for researchers who are interested in Kusturica.Author-theory is the basic research method carried in this dissertation.Based on the development course of Yugoslavia, taking Underground, When FatherWas Away on Business and Black Cat, White Cat as Kusturica’s magnum opuses,exploration of his film and character are developed. Further analysis about hisaudio-visual signs and text featuring is to be presented, so as to study the uniquesigns in Kusturica’s films. Moreover, his films offer a way to study the films ofYugoslavia in the sight of its development.Based on the explorative research to Kusturica’s films, this dissertationgeneralized several conclusions. Firstly, political elements are very important inKusturica’s films. His sensitivity to politics is illustrated in Anti-Semitism representedin his graduate work Guernica. Franker expressions of political status of formerYugoslavia can be found from his later works like Underground and When Father WasAway on Business. Besides, he developed the classic narration. In his plot structure,small daily happenings are raised to have their political meaning. He focused on family as a basic unit in his work; while, father, one of the most important familymembers is often absent. Finally, Kusturica has his symbolic signs in his work.Banquet is a classic scenario always used; shooting through the window is one of hisusual shooting tactics; mosaic film-editing, gipsy music and other elements appliedreasonably in his works. Those means help him develop his own typical audio-visuallanguage. From the aspects of aeasthetics and artistic expression, Kusturica’s filmsare given attributes of Magical Realism, Carnivalesque, and Bizarre Aesthetics. Theabove arguments will be discussed in this dissertation and wealth of illustrations willbe used. Kusturica’s special text featuring, audio-visual language and aestheticstatements are synthesized well in his work create his special art tensility, whichmakes him an award favorite in the film festivals.