Inni w Ameryce. Odkrywanie pejzażu Nowego Świata – wprowadzenie
The Others in America. Discovering the Landscape of the New World

Author(s): Magdalena Kempna-Pieniążek
Subject(s): Film / Cinema / Cinematography
Published by: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Śląskiego
Keywords: landscape of the New World in cinema; films on discovering America; pre‐Columbian America in cinema
Summary/Abstract: Discovering America was, to a point, concurrent with both: the development of the modern landscape painting theory and recognising the issue of the Other. The author of the article undertakes an analysis of various films with their story set in pre‐Columbian America or at the times of the first encounters of America’s native peoples with Europeans, from Christopher Columbus, John Smith, and Pocahontas biographies that explore the paradisical topos, through dark tales of Viking expeditions to America, to cinematic attempts at reconstructing perception of landscape by native Americans of the time. What constitutes an essential context for the films in question, aside from encountering the Others, often symbolically represented by the constructed space – is the stereotype of an American Indian thriving in harmony with nature, who does not transform it in any way. Depicting native Americans as “spirits melted into the landscape” is a strategy quite frequently devised not only in historical, but also contemporary cinema.

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