As a vital part of cultural heritage, rituals are conveyed through distinctive actions, music, costumes, and settings that express a core value of culture, ranging from coronation ceremonies to wedding celebrations. With the rapid development of the film industry, especially in costume dramas, rituals are often used to highlight traditional culture and immerse modern audiences in a historical atmosphere. Drawing on Jan Assmann’s interpretation of rituals as a form of collective, long-term memory, this study posits that rituals in film can function as new carriers of cultural memory, transmitting specific cultural meanings through audiovisual symbols and narrative strategies.

However, many ancient traditional rituals that lack systematic historical documentation inevitably incorporate fictional elements when adapted for the screen. When viewing these films, audiences often project on-screen ritual depictions into real-life contexts, interpreting them as “authentic” cultural practices. This bidirectional exchange between the mediascape and the reality causes cultural memory to shift between truth and fiction. Therefore, this research adopts a microanalysis to examine the ritual scenes in Creation of the Gods I: Kingdom of Storms as a case study, investigating how these filmed rituals construct cultural meaning through audiovisual language and exploring the possibility of cinematic rituals serving as a reference point for real-world cultural memory. It is hoped that this research will contribute fresh theoretical insights and practical guidance to the fields of ritual music studies, film studies, and cultural memory studies.

Authors:
Sijie Mao, Jiangxi Institute of Applied Science and Technology, China
Xialu Wang, Jiangxi Institute of Applied Science and Technology, China

About the Presenter(s)
Sijie Mao serves as a lecturer at Jiangxi University of Applied Science in China. She is also a doctoral candidate in the Department of Music of Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM).

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