World Cinema: Realismus, Evidenz, Präsenz

World cinema (as a successor to national cinema) has always defined itself against Hollywood on the basis of its greater realism. Whether one thinks of Italian neo-realism, the French nouvelle vague’s semi-documentary cinéma vérité, or Ingmar Bergman’s clinically probing psychological realism: our notions of "representative" or "authentic" filmmaking are generally tied to some version of a realist aesthetics. At the same time, world cinema also partakes in the increasing realization that in the cinema of the 21st century, we can no longer trust our eyes. Stylistic choices like static shots, deep focus and the long take - traditional markers of an indexically secured realist ontology and the documentary mode of bearing witness - are still in evidence, but they are now being put to different uses. Likewise, materialist critiques of classical Hollywood realism no longer aspire to Brecht’s realism as distanciation, nor do they emulate the political realism of ‘third cinema’ practice of the 1970s. Instead, when foregrounding the different media that construct cinematic representations directors are as likely to resort to fantasy and magic, nurtured from ghost stories and spectral apparitions, as well as confound linear temporality, play with memory and the order of chronology, but invariably making (sense-) perception itself a major issue. The essay sketches several theoretical as well as historical contexts for these transformations in world cinema. Also discussed are some of the conceptual moves that refocus what is at issue when we speak of realism today as part of 'world-making through images'. This may help clarify contested terms as such as ‘evidence’, ‘authenticity’ and spectatorial (self-)presence, here illustrated with examples from the films of Korean filmmaker Kim Ki-Duk.