Styliani-Anna Klimatsaki

Supervisor: Dalila Honorato, Associate Professor 

Members: Aristeidis Tsantiropoulos (Associate Professor), Agnes Papadopoulou (Assistant Professor)

PhD research topic:

Incest in world cinema: the cinematic portrayal of gender, social roles and sexual orientation within incestuous relationships.

The reason behind my research is Sophocles' tragedy Oedipus Rex, which narrates the vain efforts of the hero to avoid violating the two strongest taboos of human's civilization: the practice of patricide and the act of incest.

Taking into consideration that the condition of incestuous relationships in contemporary cinematic portrayals merits further study, my research focuses on the depiction of incestuous desire, on the violation or/and transgression of the incest taboo and on the representation and performance of gender, social roles and sexual orientation within incestuous relationships. The research is based on the study of world cinema films which are distributed during the last twenty years and on the analysis of fiction feature films among countries with differentiated social and cultural background. Apart from the analysis of the material as a filmic creation, my work will be based upon bibliography that pertains to anthropology, to cultural studies, to gender studies.

If incest constitutes the strongest social taboo of human civilization is it similarly portrayed in the cinema? In what ways is incestuous desire as a sexual act are depicted in films? What is the social status and the class origin of the incestuous heroes in world cinema? Is there any difference among them? If so, why? How are individuals signified relating to their social role and sexual orientation in incestuous relationship? Regarding the portrayed (cinematic) reality, are incestuous couples socially included or socially excluded because of their incestuous relationship? Is incest in the cinema art or pornography? Trauma or choice?

Stella Klimatsaki was born in Athens and completed her studies in "Hellenic Cultural Studies" at the Department of Humanities of the Hellenic Open University (2014). She obtained a MA (joint) degree in Creative Writing at the Universities of Western Macedonia and Hellenic Open University (2019). 

Publications:

1. Peer-Reviewed Conference proceedings

-Klimatsaki, Styliani-Anna, “The Oedipus complex in the cinema” in Triantafyllos H. Kotopoulos, Anna Vakali (eds), Procedures of 4th International Conference Creative Writing, Florina: University of Western Macedonia, 12-15 September 2019. LINK

-Drosos, Yorgos, Klimatsaki, Styliani-Anna, “Flesh and Blood: Generic Monstrosities in Contemporary Greek Film”, in António Osório e Sérgio Reis (ed.), Avanca Cinema 2022 Conference Proceedings, Avanca: Cine-Clube de Avanca. ISSN: 2184-0520. LINK

2. Conference Papers

-Klimatsaki, Styliani-Anna, “From Cinema Syntactic to Cinema Semantic”, in 4th (Online) Conference on Epistemology ‘epistemology and Semiotics’: Information & Sign, The Association of Ancient Greek Philosophy ‘syn Athena’, Laboratory of Semiotics of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, 3-5 December 2021, to be published.

-Drosos, Yorgos, Klimatsaki, Styliani-Anna, “Zombies & Inbreeders: Weird romances in contemporary films”, 4th International Conference Digital Culture & AudioVisual Challenges, Hybrid - Corfu/Online, May 13-14/2022, to be published.

-Klimatsaki, Styliani-Anna, “Incest in world cinema: the cinematic portrayal of gender, social roles and sexual orientation within incestuous relationships: Methodology, research corpus, queries & outcomes”. Paper presented at FEMeeting – Women in Art, Science and Technology, Evora (Portogual), 12-17 September 2022. 

3. Other:

-Member of the Hellenic Semiotic Society.

-Member of the Research Team on matters of Art and Science of the InArts Lab of the Ionian University. 

-Member of the European Network for Cinema and Media Studies.