On Friday 25th of January 2019, Viktoriia Protsenko presented her PhD research “The Emotional Cinema of Wong Kar-wai”. She faced a committee consisting of Professor David Roas (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona), Professor Maria Àngels Ollé and Professor Alan Salvadó (Universitat Pompeu Fabra). Her thesis director, Professor Ivan Pintor Iranzo (UPF), was also present in the room at the Poblenou campus of the UPF. Protsenko’s thesis was graded “Excellent”.

Viktoriia’s main research topic focused on a specific aspect of film: how do people respond emotionally to cinema? In regular research on film, as Viktoriia explained, emotional responses to a film are measures in terms of character identification, interest in the narrative outcome, genre expectations and hedonism. Yet, she states that emotion is the driving force behind many contemporary social trends (sharing content online, which includes popular reaction videos), which might explain a renewed interest in emotional responses to the media. To investigate this, she used the cinema of director Wong Kar-wai, who is internationally known for his visually unique and highly stylized work. Some of his works include the films “2046”, “Chungking Express” and “Happy Together”.

According to Protsenko, Wong Kar-wai’s movies have various narratives. Wong typically constructs episodic, cyclical and parallel narratives, and disrupts continuity for dramatic effect. Instead of being plot-driven, Wong’s films narrate through images and mood; they remain open-ended and allow a high degree of interpretation. Furthermore, he makes the viewer feel like an active participant, and the plot of his movies is entirely developed from the characters, which makes viewers feel like the story isn’t important, but rather the characters themselves. Also, his movies are branded by intertextuality: by returning to certain aesthetics, milieu and characters time after time, Wong creates a sort of intertextual puzzle, which can be solved by putting the different pieces together. Lastly, she also notes that Wong’s films rarely focus on a single protagonist, which undermines conventional identification and allegiance. Moreover, identification is frequently blocked by narrative and visual means.

Viktoriia Protsenko’s hypothesis stated that Wong Kar-wai appeals to a transnational media-savvy, and active spectatorship, and that he does so by implementing stylistic elements and commercial tactics that engage the viewer, first and foremost on the emotional level. Protsenko quotes cognitive film theorists and reception studies scholars when she speaks of how the spectator's emotional response to film is related to form as well, and the interpretation of the filmic text depends on a variety of subjective factors, such as the viewer's social background, personal experience, ideology and gender. More specifically to Wong Kar-wai’s films, Protsenko states that he plans stylistic elements in a careful way to enhance to enhance both narrative content and affective potential of the film.

Concluding her presentation, Viktoriia Protsenko stated that the contribution of her thesis is aimed to complement contemporary film theories, which can help researchers and educators learn more about the effects and power of film. More specifically, she hopes that the results will prove useful to film scholars and educators in their inquiry of Wong Kar-wai or cinema’s affective potential in general.