• Cross-Cultural Studies
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• v.40
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• pp.185-212
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• 2015

Bruno Dumont's film P'tit Quinquin (2014) trends toward 'the new extremism' in contemporary European cinema. This criminal-mystery-comedy film achieves the cinematic recognition of reality in the new extremist way: like typical new extremist films, P'tit Quinquin contains a lot of 'unwatchable' content, including disembodied parts of human body, carcasses, and the body of a boy who has killed himself. The reality, however, remains confidently invisible, despite everything that is visible within the film. In understanding Dumont's attempt to reach cinematic recognition, the relationship between 'the visible' and 'the invisible' is reconsidered. In the context of the film, the relationship between cinema and reality becomes indirect. The reality can be only felt, not seen. The invisible reality can be perceived only as a void, just like the criminal who is unknown even though he is sought after. To reveal this void, the film strives to give its viewers as much explicitly visible content as possible during its 200-minute run. This essay is an interdisciplinary attempt to examine the working and the effects of this cinematic attempt by Bruno Dumont; aspects of film theory, visual anthropology, (inter-)mediology, posthumanism in cultural theory, etc., are related for this purpose.