Narrative Strategies and Author’s Vision in Disaster Cinema Docudramas

DOI

10.2991/978-94-6463-596-6_56How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Docudrama; Disaster Cinema; Narrative

Abstract

This article investigates disaster films, particularly the genre of docudramas. Docudramas address social issues with the aim of sparking debate and generating discussions on social and political matters that are often in the public eye. Disaster cinema docudramas explore the theme of survival as a common topic, addressing aspects such as heroism and resilience, and are portrayed in various ways by directors and screenwriters. Therefore, this article approaches the topic from an interpretative paradigm and with a qualitative methodology. A case study was designed to understand the author’s differing perspectives on the representation of survival in two disaster film docudramas that recount the same real-life event, Viven and La Sociedad de la Nieve. The films were selected because the accident involving Uruguayan citizens depicted in both movies has regained relevance due to the success of the latter on Netflix and its nomination for the 2024 Oscars in the Best Foreign Language Film category. A content analysis guide was applied to 16 scenes from both docudramas based on three categories of analysis: plot development, characters, and settings. The narrative analysis of the films helped identify patterns or differences in each director’s vision in constructing the same story. The different narrative and characterization strategies used by the directors to represent survival in extreme situations were evident. On one hand, a story focused on the event itself, and on the other hand, a story centered on the depth of the characters facing the catastrophic event. These differences in focus and representation contribute to the variety of cinematic narrative in docudramas. This research contributes to research on formats such as docudramas, as well as to narrative studies of film genres such as disaster cinema.

Copyright

© 2024 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Camila M. Torres Carpio
AU  - Lorena T. Espinoza-Robles
AU  - Oscar. A. Aybar-Cabezudo
PY  - 2024
DA  - 2024/12/17
TI  - Narrative Strategies and Author’s Vision in Disaster Cinema Docudramas
BT  - Proceedings of the International Conference on Communication and Applied Technologies 2024 (ICOMTA 2024)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 639
EP  - 649
SN  - 2667-128X
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-94-6463-596-6_56
DO  - 10.2991/978-94-6463-596-6_56
ID  - Carpio2024
ER  -