Memory, History, and Trauma in Chris Marker, Alain Resnais, Alexander Kluge, and Mira Nair's Films

The thesis, entitled "Memory, History, and Trauma in Chris Marker, Alain Resnais, Alexander Kluge, and Mira Nair's Films", addresses a range of issues, questions, and debates exploring the relationship between History, Memory, and Trauma in the films of Resnais, Marker, Kluge, and Nair. How does the philosophical discourse (which includes the modernist and postmodernist discourses) of memory, history, and Trauma take shape in their films? The dissertation aims to raise questions crucial to the understanding of how cinema (re)works the ideas of history trauma and memory through representation. What is the nature of this relationship? How does memory become history when realized through the return of the trauma? The rationale for organizing this dissertation is to trace the trajectories of these forces---Memory, History and Trauma---always implicated with each other in the films of these directors.;My effort here is to bring these filmmakers, such as Kluge, Resnais, Marker, and Nair, to our critical attention and to present their films in a systematic manner in order for us to appreciate and evaluate the works in a self-reflexive and intertextual manner. The purpose of this undertaking is to create a field of interest in the early stage of film appreciation by inculcating a desire to go beyond the luster of linear narrative into the realms of personal and elliptical storytelling. To remind ourselves what the cinematic medium itself is? The comprehension of the nature of cinema, both ontologically and epistemologically, is one of main thrusts of this dissertation.