ABSTRACT
Magic-realist films take the perpetual struggles between interior and exterior, surface and depth, mind and body, powerful and powerless, past and future, as their galvanising force to explore beyond the frame from within the frame. Colour in magic-realist films can be anything from the de-saturated yellows of Days of Eclipse to the opulent jewel tones of Sergei Parajanov’s film-poems, and the aqua-luminous moods of Hadzihalilovic. While magic realism often indexes a particular historical event, or material object, its magical aspect is a celebration of human, as well as non-human, creative power and imagination. In dialogue with Fredric Jameson’s combinatoire, the author has designed a dynamic map of cinematic magic realism that focuses on continuous flux and movement. In 2015, upon the release of Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights, Salman Rushdie, having said many contradictory things on the topic of magic realism over the years.
