The Sun in Cinematic Imagination
- conference
-
exhibition
Since the beginnings of cinema, the sun has played a central role as a visual and narrative tool. As a primary source of light, it structures cinematic time, sets the narrative rhythm, and carries multiple symbols: the sunrise evokes hope and renewal, while sunset signals melancholy or the end of an era. This conference will explore how filmmakers transform the sun into a complex cinematographic language. From Terrence Malick's transcendent golden hour in Days of Heaven (1978) to the cosmic eye witnessing creation in The Tree of Life (2011), and the dying star in Danny Boyle's Sunshine (2007), the sun alternates between spiritual illumination and existential threat. The desert sun becomes a dramatic actor for David Lean (Lawrence of Arabia, 1962), where the blinding heat is both a physical and psychological trial, while George Miller turns it into a hostile force in Mad Max: Fury Road (2015). It's a metaphor for power in Apocalypse Now (1979), where Coppola merges the rising sun and napalm fire into an iconography of madness, and for Kurosawa (Rashomon, 1950), it becomes filtered light symbolizing fragmented truth. Its absence defines film noir, while modern dystopias like Blade Runner 2049 (2017) hide the sun behind the smog of a dying world. From the pale northern sun of Bergman (The Seventh Seal, 1957) to Tarkovski's artificial star overshadowing the ocean of Solaris (1972), this conference will reveal how the sun, between romantic glorification and apocalyptic vision, remains one of cinema's most versatile motifs.
Good to know
Conference organized as part of the exhibition Here Comes the Sun: Art, Energy, and Natural Intelligence. Free entry, registration required.
Automatically translated from French.
Where does it take place?
Cercle Cité
Pl. d'Armes
1648 Ville-Haute Luxembourg
by 
Weather forecast (Luxembourg)
Otherwise… check out the agenda
see all the things
to do around you
Hey, don’t go away...
Get the best
outings around you
All the best deals
events
spots
