This chapter examines the cinematic rendition of W. G. Sebald’s The Rings of Saturn (1995), an autobiographical travelogue-cum-essay novel that chronicles a journey in East Anglia while also traversing broader spatial and temporal dimensions of human history. It explores the ways in which Grant Gee’s Patience (After Sebald) (2012) reimagines Sebald’s work for the screen by dislocating generic boundaries, creating a fluid form that is neither adaptation nor documentary but rather a third mode, in-between. It addresses the theme of memory in Sebald’s work through a series of photographic images taken along his route, while also paying tribute to the memory of Sebald himself through interviewees’ voice-over reflections on his art of writing. Gee’s film “plays patience” with Sebald’s photography, not only recombining but also reinventing it. It takes the viewer back to the original, concrete locations of Sebald’s walking tour. Recreating the places and angles of Sebald’s photographs and setting the still images in motion is in itself uncanny, yet Gee’s film achieves much more. By incorporating new photography in Sebald’s spirit, as well as through the rich employment of photofilmic tableau compositions, framing, superimposition and collage, the film creates an intermedial space—an imaginary, spectral cinematic landscape of an overflowing, sensuous excess.

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Uncanny Spaces of Intermediality in Grant Gee’s Patience (After Sebald) (2012)

  • Judit Pieldner

摘要

This chapter examines the cinematic rendition of W. G. Sebald’s The Rings of Saturn (1995), an autobiographical travelogue-cum-essay novel that chronicles a journey in East Anglia while also traversing broader spatial and temporal dimensions of human history. It explores the ways in which Grant Gee’s Patience (After Sebald) (2012) reimagines Sebald’s work for the screen by dislocating generic boundaries, creating a fluid form that is neither adaptation nor documentary but rather a third mode, in-between. It addresses the theme of memory in Sebald’s work through a series of photographic images taken along his route, while also paying tribute to the memory of Sebald himself through interviewees’ voice-over reflections on his art of writing. Gee’s film “plays patience” with Sebald’s photography, not only recombining but also reinventing it. It takes the viewer back to the original, concrete locations of Sebald’s walking tour. Recreating the places and angles of Sebald’s photographs and setting the still images in motion is in itself uncanny, yet Gee’s film achieves much more. By incorporating new photography in Sebald’s spirit, as well as through the rich employment of photofilmic tableau compositions, framing, superimposition and collage, the film creates an intermedial space—an imaginary, spectral cinematic landscape of an overflowing, sensuous excess.