A Study on Lyotarian Event in Meta- Cinema Case Studies: “Close- Up” and “Through the Olive Trees”

In analysis and critique of “art”, Lyotard employs the "event" as a concept that attributes singularity, uniqueness, liberation from conventions and customs, indefiniteness, and instantaneity. In his opinion, events manifest themselves in ways that defy genre conventions and thus attest to the unpresentable, as the main duty of a postmodern work of art. This qualitative and archival study, based on Abbas Kiarostami's meta-cinema works Close-Up (1990) and Through the Olive Trees (1994), seeks how events may represent the unpresentable. It revealed that the reviewed films had employed a variety of techniques, including technical interruptions in audio and video, as well as innovative narrative techniques that challenge the conventional and classic narrative form time and again, thereby integrating meta-cinema and the concept of Lyotard's event. As a result, the method of attesting to the unpresentable was studied as an intermediary of the event by creating a cinematic form that defies conventional filmmaking traditions and principles. It thus confirms the unpresentable as the main idea of ​​Lyotard's views on art.